Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Palestinians continue to use "elections" as a means to grab control of Jerusalem

As I have been reporting for many weeks, Palestinian leaders have been using Mahmoud Abbas' promise of new elections at the UN as a pretense to ask the world to pressure Israel to allow Arabs in Jerusalem to participate in the elections.

This past week Palestinian prime minister Shtayyeh met with representatives of the German Green Party and the director of the Middle East and North Africa Department at the British Foreign Office, where he said, "We cannot accept any situation in which elections are prevented in Jerusalem just like any of the Palestinian cities and governorates. Holding elections in Jerusalem is a national and political priority and not holding them means dedicating their separation from the rest of the Palestinian components."

Ma'an's editor wrote an article about the importance of elections in Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority has formally requested that Israel allow elections in Jerusalem, and has not received a response - and might not until Israel forms a government, he fears.

In the past, Israel banned any campaigning in Jerusalem altogether. For previous elections, Israel allowed ballot boxes to be placed in post offices in some Arab areas of Jerusalem, where they were transported to the PA-administered territories afterwards and counted. This way Israel considered them to be absentee ballots and Palestinians can claim that Jerusalem Arabs were allowed to vote. But this time the push seems to be to allow full campaigning and polling places, something the current Israeli government would not allow - but the PA loves to use the international community, especially Europeans, to pressure Israel on Jerusalem in any way possible.

I am still skeptical that any elections will ever take place, but the pressure on Israel will exist whether they do or not - and, as we have seen, that is a major goal of the elections farce to begin with.

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On Saturday a "Palestinian Canaanite Conference" was held in the Mahmoud Darwish Museum in Ramallah.

At the conference, Palestinian prime minister Mohamed Shtayyeh claimed that the Palestinians are descendants of the Canaanites.

There is no historic evidence of this claim. But Shtayyeh seems to know this, because at the same time he said that this is a war of "narratives."

"We launched this conference because Israel is waging a systematic war against us. Of all those wars - geography, demography, water and money - the most dangerous is the war of the narratives."

Shtayyeh continued, "All the excavations under the Aqsa Mosque, the settlers' attacks on the Ibrahimi Mosque [Cave of the Patriarchs], Joseph's Tomb, and the enactment of the Law of Nationalism all relate to the war of the narratives."

In other words, the entire purpose of the conference was to push the fiction that Palestinians are Canaanites, because even the Torah admits that the land was Canaanite before the Israelites conquered it. Identifying as Canaanite allows Palestinians to claim that not only were they there before the Jews, but that the Jews had expelled them thousands of years ago.

Even more absurdly, Shtayyeh claimed that the modern Palestinians still worshiped Baal as their alleged ancestors did: "Baal was the most important god among the Canaanites, and we to this day call on his name when we pray for water for the land which is watered from rain water."

Worshipers of Baal were known for other things he might not wish to be associated with.

Engraving of Baal Pe'or, defecating

UPDATE: Shtayyeh ("Winter") is a relatively rare name for Palestinians. I see a Shtayeh family centered in northern Egypt and a Syrian Bedouin tribe with that name in the 19th century.

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12/14 Links: Bernie Sanders Has a Big Jeremy Corbyn Problem; Jersey Mayor: Gunmen wanted to target next door yeshiva with 50 kids inside; Adam Sandler's frenetic new film ‘Uncut Gems’

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The British working-class saves Britain – and its Jews

Among shallow, tunnel-visioned Corbyn supporters, the Chief Rabbi’s plea not to vote for Corbyn merely served to identify British Jews with the Conservatives and therefore with right-wing capitalism.

But the northern working-class was having none of that. For them, the antisemitism scandal confirmed their view that the Jews were the potential victims of bad forces within the Muslim world just like them, and were also the victims of those trying to silence such concerns by claims of “Islamophobia”.

In fact, these decent working people would doubtless be baffled to learn that most British Jews are on the other side of that particular issue. Its leaders grotesquely equate antisemitism with Islamophobia, and hardly breathe a word about Muslim antisemitism.

And most British Jews voted Remain. For although the Jewish community has mostly voted Conservative since the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, it also mostly subscribes to liberal universalist principles that seek to erase national borders because it believes that affinity to the nation-state creates nationalism and antisemitism.

Such British Jews thus deny the facts staring them in the face and which have caused them so much fear and grief: that liberal universalists are now the principal incubators of antisemitism.

The seismic shift at this election may herald a realignment of British politics along the lines envisaged by the thinking known as “Blue Labour”.

This embodies the insight that working-class communities have always been innately small-c conservatives deeply attached to traditional values. Consequently, Blue Labour stresses personal responsibility and attachments to family, community and nation. And of course, these are at root Jewish values – the very ones that have been under assault from liberal universalists for decades.

Corbyn has been defeated. That danger has now passed. But the antisemitism remains; and the culture war over the soul of Britain and the west goes on.

Noah Rothman: Bernie Sanders Has a Big Jeremy Corbyn Problem

Don’t take my word for it; take that of Sanders’s own surrogates. Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of Sanders’s most visible endorsers with whom the senator frequently shares the stage, has apologized for some of what she’s admitted were anti-Semitic remarks. Or, if that’s not good enough, take the Democratic Party’s verdict. Those anti-Jewish slights for which Omar declined to show remorse had been targeted by her fellow caucus members for censure before a revolt of the party’s progressives and Black Caucus Members scuttled the initiative.

Amid the failed Democratic effort to condemn Omar, Sanders’s foreign-policy adviser, Matt Duss, attacked the maneuver as one purely designed to “police criticism of Israel.” It is worth recalling that the remark Duss considers scrutiny of Israel was Omar’s claim that pro-Israel lawmakers exhibit an “allegiance to a foreign country.”

Duss joins Sanders’s campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, as two of the more prominent members of the Sanders team who have been implicated in the propagation of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. In 2012, when Duss served as the Center for American Progress’ Middle East director and Shakir edited the organization’s blog, Think Progress, the institution’s writers were accused of drafting statements that groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center regard as indicative of anti-Jewish bias.

Another Sanders endorser and surrogate on the stump, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, is similarly implicated in blurring the lines between opposition to Israel and anti-Semitism. The congresswoman has made absurd and callous claims about the Holocaust, shared anti-Semitic artwork online, approvingly compared the often anti-Semitic (according to the ADL) Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement to the Boston Tea Party, and blamed the massacre of Jews at a Jersey City kosher market on “white supremacy” (the alleged perpetrators killers in fact associated with the hate group Black Hebrew Israelites).

Sanders may be insulated from the charge that he shares these suspicious sentiments because he is Jewish, but this clear pattern raises some disturbing questions. It is incumbent on the press to ask them. To at least a degree, Sanders clearly evinces some of Corbyn’s instincts on policy, but his affiliations suggest a similar tolerance for the radical left’s occasionally anti-Semitic indulgences.

Sanders stands a good chance of winning his party’s presidential nomination, and any major-party nominee can win the White House. If the Democratic Party is on the verge of succumbing to the same sordid temptations that consumed the Labour Party, the public deserves a full understanding of all that would entail. In that event, the abolition of private health insurance might be the least of our worries.

An American Corbyn? Jewish Groups Demand Sanders Abandon Anti-Semitic Surrogates

The same day Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party was going down to defeat in Great Britain — in part due to his party’s uncomfortably close relationship with anti-Semitism — an American Jewish group became the latest to demand Corbyn’s ally Sen. Bernie Sanders disavow his anti-Semitic surrogates and supporters in the 2020 presidential campaign.

In recent days, two Jewish organizations publicly condemned Sen. Bernie Sanders’ association with two different campaign surrogates accused of anti-Semitism, the latest in a series of controversies involving bigotry by Bernie supporters.

Sanders’ troubles began Thursday with a statement from J’accuse Coalition for Justice, a think tank dedicated to combating anti-Semitism, over Sanders’ decision to campaign with notorious anti-Semitic congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in the key primary state of New Hampshire.

“Given the critical role New Hampshire plays in shaping our presidential elections, Democratic primary voters have an obligation to hold Senator Bernie Sanders accountable for the people he associates with his campaign,” Executive director Zach Schapira told InsideSources. “Now, in the immediate aftermath of the most recent anti-Semitic attack in Jersey City, it feels particularly insensitive for him to choose to appear alongside someone who has had a troubled history with anti-Semitism.”

A day earlier, the American Jewish Congress released a letter urging the Vermont senator to stop using anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour as a campaign surrogate as well. Sarsour, who the group describes as having “a long history of flagrant anti-Semitism and hatred for the State of Israel,” campaigns for Sanders.

There are three main criticisms of Trump's executive order on antisemitism.

One, prompted by the truly offensive New York Times article that said initially that the law would define Jews as a separate nationality, is that somehow regarding Jews as "Jewish Americans" deserving of special protection is a step on the way to taking citizenship away from Jews. This was absurd from the start - are Korean Americans, protected from discrimination under Title VI, considered less than American?

Yet the NYT now reports on the "controversy" over the law based on its own inaccuracy:

In Chicago, Rabbi Hara Person, the chief executive of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, saw the president’s action and worried. ...
“Not to overdramatize, but it feels dangerous,” she said. “I’ve heard people say this feels like the first step toward us wearing yellow stars.”

Even two days after the NYT report was found to be an example of poor reporting, critics are citing the article as the truth, and not the text of the executive order itself.

The second criticism of the EO is based on its supposed potential to suppress free speech. Supposedly, since it says that schools should consider the IHRA definition of antisemitism when deciding whether someone is being discriminated against, critics claim that the order is an assault on free speech.

But if you read the actual text of the EO, it explicitly says the opposite:

[A]gencies shall not diminish or infringe upon any right protected under Federal law or under the First Amendment. As with all other Title VI complaints, the inquiry into whether a particular act constitutes discrimination prohibited by Title VI will require a detailed analysis of the allegations.

Title VI protects students (and others who receive government funds) from discrimination. Only when speech becomes harassment does that become an issue. And this is an issue under the existing Title VI with respect to racist and xenophobic harassment already. Why is putting antisemitism on the same level as racism a problem? Those who are complaining, whether they realize it or not, are arguing that Jews do not deserve the protections that other minorities have on campus.

Isn't that antisemitic?

Law professor David Bernstein discusses the third criticism of the EO, and notes the hypocrisy of those who advance that argument.

There is a separate, more sophisticated argument: that college administrators will proactively suppress constitutionally protected speech for fear of "hostile environment" liability. But as I noted elsewhere, there's nothing in the EO that remotely suggests colleges do this, and if colleges react in that way to hostile environment law, it's not the least bit unique to Jews; they could equally suppress, say, speech about affirmative action for fear of creating a hostile environment for blacks, or about abortion for women, etc.

In other words, if that's the problem, the problem is not with the EO, which doesn't address hostile environment law at all, but with the long shadow on speech cast by hostile environment law, and it's hostile environment law, not the EO, that needs to be addressed.

There are also those who want hostile environment law to suppress speech, but only speech leftists abhor, which doesn't include genocidal speech about Israel. Such individuals of course oppose the EO, but their claim that it's because they care about free speech is disingenous.

Rather, they see the possibility that hostile environment law will apply to some anti-Israel speech as a barrier to their goal, which is to use that law to suppress other speech.

Indeed. The people who are the most vocal about the EO are those who support those who routinely shut down pro-Israel speech and events on campus. If anyone is chilling free speech, it is anti-Zionists, not an executive order that notes that anti-Zionism is often a form of antisemitism.

One must wonder protecting Jews - or even "Zionists" - from discrimination is a bad thing. And the only reason that makes sense is that some people want to take away the rights of Jews and Zionists on campus and elsewhere.

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12/13 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Why American Jews slander President Trump; Like Pepsi, Democrats Need To Reverse Course On Boycotting Israel; Print to Fit A 120-Year Exposé of the New York Times

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Why American Jews slander President Trump

The royal host of the American Jewish establishment hissed that in speaking thus, Trump reinforced the anti-Semitic stereotype that Jews love money.

Such twaddle.

As he said, Trump was addressing his fellow real estate developers in the crowd. He was talking to them as his competitors, not as his enemies. When he said, "You’re brutal killers" he was paying them a compliment. They understood, which is why they laughed.

Trump’s claim that they would vote for him even if they didn’t like him because they feared the Democrats’ confiscatory tax policies is his standard line on Democratic tax policy. He says it to everyone, not just to Jews. The audience knew this too – which is why they laughed and applauded.

The Jewish establishment types joined the bandwagon and agreed Trump’s playful, friendly statement was anti-Semitic because they want to believe Trump is an anti-Semite. If Trump is an anti-Semite then it’s reasonable for them to remain loyal to the Democratic party which, led by "the squad" is leaping towards the anti-Semitic cliff that Britain’s Labour Party jumped off when it elected Jeremy Corbyn its leader.

In other words, they slander Trump as an anti-Semite because they prefer their partisan interests to the interests of the Jewish community in America and the Jewish people throughout the world.

Luckily, as Trump’s consistent record of support for Israel and the Jews in America and worldwide and as his warmth for Jewish people makes clear, the President doesn’t have an anti-Semitic bone in his body. And he won’t become an anti-Semite no matter how poorly the American Jewish establishment treats him.

Trump’s Jewish critics said he was trafficking in anti-Semitic "tropes" when he told the IAC, that in the U.S. "you have people that are Jewish people, that are great people – they don’t love Israel enough." But he was doing no such thing. He was telling the truth. Those Jewish people love neither Israel nor the children of Israel, the Jewish nation enough.

Thankfully, President Trump loves the Jews and Israel so much that he makes up for them.

President Trump deserves our thanks for combating antisemitism

This is an important start – but it’s not nearly enough, given how successful BDS has been in its efforts to spread antisemitism. Hatred of Jews is on the rise around the world, with more than 20% of Europeans claiming that Jews have too much influence in business, finance, media and politics, according to a recent CNN poll. France and Germany both reported marked increases in antisemitic attacks over the past year, and incidents closer to home – in San Diego this year, Pittsburgh last year and likely Jersey City this week – make clear that America has not been spared.

This rising tide of antisemitism is especially dangerous given the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors who have for decades acted as a bulwark against those who seek to propagate hatred of Jews. Without the evidence of our history – of the horrors that arise when antisemitism goes unchecked – we are liable to lose the knowledge and understanding of it as well. Once that is gone, it may not be recovered. Without it, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past.

That’s why it is more important now than ever before to preserve Jewish heritage. As the chairman of the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, I’ve been tasked by President Trump with protecting historic sites of great significance to US citizens and particularly to members of the Jewish community and their ancestors.

Thankfully, the president has been a tireless advocate of the commission’s work. American heritage is inextricably linked to the tapestry of identities that make up the American experience, and with President Trump’s support we have been more active in preserving that heritage than ever before.

JPost Editorial: What is the situation of American Jews, if Trump needed to issue an EO?

What has the situation for Jews in the United States come to if the president needs to issue an executive order to combat antisemitism?
Forget for a moment about all the backlash surrounding the executive order – and there has been an enormous amount, ranging from thoughtful, qualitative considerations of free speech and criticism of Israel, and babbling debate about whether Jews are a nation, race or religion, to absurd claims that its enactment marks the beginning of an ominous era aimed at seperating Jewish people out of the collective.

Instead, let’s focus on the facts. In 2019, nearly 75 years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust – years in which American Jews experienced unprecedented freedom and opportunity and rose to become a hugely proactive force across all facets of American life – there is a remarkably frightening rise in violent antisemitism.

What is US President Donald Trump’s executive order? It directs the Justice Department and the Education Department to address discrimination cases against Jews under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which stipulates that discrimination on the basis of “race, color or national origin” is prohibited. It also adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which states that efforts to demonize, delegitimize or apply double standards to Israel are antisemitic.

NYTs: Executive Order on Jews Has Firm Legal Grounding

President Trump signed an executive order instructing federal agencies to use Title VI of the Civil Rights Act - the law that bars federally funded programs from discriminating on the basis of "race, color, or national origin" - to combat anti-Semitism.

His interpretation of Title VI as applying to anti-Semitism is neither new nor troubling. The characterization of anti-Semitism as a form of racial or national-origin discrimination has a secure place in American law.

In 1982, after Shaare Tefila synagogue in Silver Spring, Md., was spray-painted with swastikas, Ku Klux Klan symbols and other anti-Semitic messages, the synagogue and several members responded by suing those who had vandalized their house of worship. The plaintiffs cited the Civil Rights Act, arguing that even though Jews are not a racially distinct group, the vandals viewed Jews as a distinct race and were motivated by racial animus. The case ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which voted unanimously in the synagogue's favor. Jewish groups cheered the ruling.

The Shaare Tefila case teaches that placing a group within a racial category for purposes of civil rights protection does not require us to endorse the idea that the group is racially distinct. Anti-Semitism can be racism for legal purposes even though Jewishness cannot be reduced to racial terms.

Jews do not fit neatly into categories of "race," "religion" and "national origin" that took their present shape millenniums after the Jewish people came into existence. The nuances of Jewish identity do not, however, shield Jews from attackers who see Jews as a nation apart. Jews can suffer national-origin discrimination regardless of whether Jewishness is a nationality.

The Education Department under President George W. Bush recognized that anti-Semitism could constitute racial or national-origin discrimination within Title VI's ambit. The Justice Department under President Obama reaffirmed that view. President Trump's executive order is consistent with those interpretations.

Joel Embiid is a basketball star for the Philadelphia 76ers.

Even though everyone recognizes that he has incredible talent, for most of this season he has been playing well, but not at superstar level.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Joel Embiid had a phone call to make. The Sixers were shipping up to Boston, headed for a showdown with the second-place Celtics, but first the big man needed to clear his mind.

The night before, former NBA greats Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley had made headlines with their blistering critiques of Embiid’s performance during TNT’s broadcast of the Sixers win over the Nuggets. He wasn’t living up to his potential, they said. He was playing as if he was satisfied with being good, instead of yearning to be great. It was the sort of criticism that can dampen a soul: not doubt, or diminishment, but disappointment.

Then a funny thing happened. Embiid listened to their words and found himself agreeing. So instead of cursing or brooding, he picked up the phone. He dialed O’Neal’s number. He assured the Hall of Famer that he was not mad. And then he asked for advice.

“I just wanted to talk to him,” Embiid said. “I’ve been kind of frustrated. ... He was just telling me, ‘Be aggressive. You’re the guy. So just go out there and dominate.’ ”

Twenty-four hours later, that’s exactly what he did. In a 115-109 win over the Celtics on a frigid New England night, the player Embiid’s critics have been clamoring to see returned with a vengeance.

This 25 year old seven footer from Cameroon has more maturity than the entire British Left, it seems.

Embiid heard criticism, looked inside himself and found it to be valid, and worked on himself to fix the issue. That is called maturity.

Compare to how the British Left is acting today.

In the wake of the UK Labour Party drubbing at the polls, Jeremy Corbyn's fans are doing everything they can to blame everyone else but the party leader for his abysmal performance.

And it isn't only British fans of Corbyn:

Wow. French politician Melenchon blames the loss of Labour on “stupid accusations of antisemitism” brought up by chief rabbi and on “Likud Networks” - extreme party of Netanyahu. https://t.co/kG9MIezn7X
— Michael Elgort ✡️ (@just_whatever) December 13, 2019

This is a side effect of how the Left views the world. To them, victimhood equals righteousness. Corbyn's loss isn't his fault - it is his critics who are the bad guys. He's an innocent victim.

The bigger the victim, the more they are considered to be right. It is absurd and illogical and it has brought many problems into the world, as too many people decide that being professional victims is the best way to go through life. (cough, cough, palestinians, cough.)

This explains Leftist antisemitism. Jews are generally successful and always want to improve. The exact opposite of the victims that the Left canonizes.

They have no self reflection. No sober accounting of one's faults. Being a victim is the best thing to be, and doing something to improve yourself takes you out of that wonderful, warm place where people can tell you how the people who beat you are terrible and you did nothing wrong.

They can learn a great deal from Joel Embiid.

Taking responsibility is something every child should be taught from birth. The Left in Britain, and seemingly the US as well, have forgotten that basic life lesson and blame everything on "the other" - Trump, Israel, "neocons," whatever.

And when people are dishonest about themselves, they are dishonest with everyone.

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12/13 Links Pt1: Ben Shapiro: The Left’s Grotesque Politicization Of Anti-Semitism; UK: Conservatives crush leftist Labour Party in massive election landslide; John Podhoretz: Thank You, British Voters

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: The Left’s Grotesque Politicization Of Anti-Semitism

The Left, increasingly, does not care about anti-Semitism.

That’s been true for a while— just look at the British Labour Party’s embrace of anti-Semite Jeremy Corbyn (today, the UK Guardian openly editorialized, “The pain and hurt within the Jewish community, and the damage to Labour, are undeniable and shaming. Yet Labour remains indispensable to progressive politics.”), or the Democratic Party’s defense of Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. But the Left has been able to cover for its own anti-Semitism problem by focusing in on the rise of white supremacist violence, connecting that violence with President Trump.

Here’s a quick rule of thumb: If you only want to have a conversation about anti-Semitism when you can blame anti-Semitism on your political opponents, you don’t care about anti-Semitism.

And that’s precisely what we’ve seen over the past 24 hours.

On Tuesday, two shooters targeted a kosher supermarket in Jersey City; six people died, including the shooters, three civilians, and a police officer. The shooters were apparently affiliated with the Black Hebrew Israelites, a fringe black supremacist group claiming that Jews aren’t actually the true Jews — that the actual Jews are black Americans. Members of this group have been involved in violent incidents in the past, of course.

The identity of the shooters meant that the media Left was eager to ignore the case. And indeed, within 24 hours, it was no longer trending on Twitter. No broad discussions of left-wing tolerance for anti-Semitism, particularly in minority communities, ensued. New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio had the temerity to tweet, “This tragically confirms that a growing pattern of violent anti-Semitism has now turned into a crisis for our nation. And now this threat has reached the doorstep of New York City.” Now, broadly speaking, violence against Jews in New York City has been spiking in the past few years — none of that violence attributable to white supremacists. But we already know why De Blasio has been able to ignore that violence – The New York Times told us as much back in November 2018:

If anti-Semitism bypasses consideration as a serious problem in New York, it is to some extent because it refuses to conform to an easy narrative with a single ideological enemy. In fact, it is the varied backgrounds of people who commit hate crimes in the city that make combating and talking about anti-Semitism in New York much harder. … [B]ias stemming from longstanding ethnic tensions in the city presents complexities that many liberals have chosen simply to ignore. …

New Jersey AG: Shooting ‘fueled by anti-Semitism,’ being probed as terror attack

The two killers who stormed a kosher market in Jersey City were apparently acting alone and were “fueled both by anti-Semitism and anti-law enforcement beliefs,” New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said Thursday.

Grewal said the attackers expressed interest in the Black Hebrew Israelites, a fringe group whose members have been known to rail against white people and Jews. He told a news conference that authorities are investigating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism.

While there have been fears since the shooting Tuesday that a hatred of Jews was behind the attack, Grewal and some others had been cautious in describing the motive, noting it was still under investigation.

New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal on the Jersey City attack on a kosher market: The evidence now points to acts of hate, I can confirm that we are now investigating this as acts of domestic terrorism fueled by antisemitism and a hatred towards police. pic.twitter.com/NIqIt2wKeH
— Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) December 12, 2019

Surveillance video released Thursday that was apparently shot from a security camera above the store entrance showed the two assailants entering the supermarket, as well as a man who was inside the shop when they entered fleeing down the street.

Sorry to share this other video of the shooting but it shows something that the other CCTV video didn’t. You can see the shooters target the man trying to run away from the store. They targeted Jews 💔pic.twitter.com/21bQWT19JU
— ~Legacy~ נפתלי בן מתתיהו (@Immort4l_Legacy) December 12, 2019

The FBI on Wednesday searched the Harlem headquarters of the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, which is the formal name of the Black Hebrew group, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation, who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The evidence points toward acts of hate,” Grewal told reporters. “I can confirm that we’re investigating this matter as potential acts of domestic terrorism fueled both by anti-Semitism and anti-law enforcement beliefs.”

Black Hebrew Israelites - Jewish Enough To Be Killed By Palestinian Terrorists (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Two Black Hebrew Israelites deliberately attacked a kosher grocery in Jersey City this past Tuesday.

We can leave it to the media to report who the Black Hebrew Israelites are.
There will be articles about just how Jewish they are, about their history and about their community in Israel.

But while they are not considered Jewish by the Israeli government, Black Hebrew Israelites are Jewish enough for Palestinian terrorists.

According to an article in the Chicago Tribune in 2002, Death bridges gap for Black Hebrews:

Under a cool, clear sky and with a large crowd of mourners on hand, 32-year-old Aharon Ben-Yisrael Elis was buried Sunday in a new section of this town's cemetery.

He was the first of the Black Hebrews--a small group of African-Americans, most of whom came to Israel from Chicago more than three decades ago--to be born in Israel. He also was the first of the group to die from the terrorism that has haunted the Jews of Israel for years.

Aharon Ben-Yisrael Elis. Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Because the group had their own religion, combining Judaism with other beliefs, the Black Hebrews were not fully accepted into Israeli society and were not granted citizenship.

But those differences were set aside in the face of the terrorist attack:

Yet Elis' passing at the hands of a terrorist provoked an outpouring of Israeli mourners, including Dimona's mayor, a member of the Knesset and the two top rabbis from this town in the northern tip of the Negev desert. Elis was killed Thursday, one of six people slain by a Palestinian gunman who had stormed a banquet hall in a northern town where a bat mitzvah, or a coming-of-age ceremony, for a 12-year-old Israeli girl was under way.

...Dimona officials talked about how the Black Hebrews had found a home in their community and were welcomed. Av Shalom Vilan, a member of the Knesset from the left-of-center Meretz Party, said he hoped that the death of a Black Hebrew as a result of Arab violence would open the hearts and doors of Israel's society for citizenship for the group, which the Black Hebrews have long sought.

Rabbi Shalom Dayan, the chief Sephardic rabbi of Dimona, summed up in a few words what the others said Elis' death meant for the Black Hebrews' long-term quest to win full acceptance into Israeli society.

"You have just sealed one of the most difficult pacts with our Israeli society," Dayan said.

More than that, the Israeli government took action too.

Israel destroyed the Palestinian broadcasting center and Israeli tanks came up to Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. Israeli troops entered Tulkarem, where they searched houses, detained a number of Palestinian Arabs and put the city under curfew.

But that was then.

And it makes this week's tragedy even more bitter.

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On Sunday, I noted (on a tip by WC) that a director and Oscar nominee Elia Suleiman said he wished to "drown Israel" but since he couldn't, his films are meant to accomplish the same "resistance" in a different way.

Tomer Ilan noticed that the Israeli Education Ministry lists his films as "recommended" in the official high school curriculum for Cinema.

This seems to have gotten the attention of B'Tslamo, a pro-Israel NGO. Makor Rishon reports today that B'Tsalmo's Shai Glick appealed to the Minister of Education Rafi Peretz to remove any films by Suleiman from the curriculum, and he did.

As far as I know, EoZ was the first to publicize this - I couldn't find any articles in Hebrew media about Suleiman's hate.

This is the third time this week that EoZ has helped with "tikkun olam," so to speak, where my posts led to actions.

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Yet more proof that "pro-Palestinian" is a codeword for "inciting against Israel"

The "Adalah Justice Project," an influential American group that claims to be "pro-Palestinian," tweets:

The Executive Order was against antisemitism, which includes treating the Jewish state as a proxy for traditional antisemitism (by subjecting it to double standards, false accusations and analogies meant to hurt the feelings of Jews such as comparing it to Nazis).

In no way does it cover "advocacy for Palestinian rights."

But Adalah, as well as any so-called "pro-Palestinian" organization you can name, cannot even imagine advocating for Palestinian rights - which no one is against - and attacking the Jewish state. The two are one and the same.

Well-meaning people are saying that the IHRA definition of antisemitism may be used to chill free speech. There is no proof for this. There is also no proof that existing Title VI legislation, which could be used to attack free speech that could be descried as racist or xenophobic, is problematic. But for some reason the Adalah-style argument - that antisemitic speech must be protected on campus while anti-racist and anti-immigrant speech cannot be - has resonated with the liberal media and organizations.

This is quite worrying for those who actually care about antisemitism.

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12/12 Links Pt2: Trump's Redefinition of Jewish Identity That Wasn't; The Guardian Throws British Jews Under the Bus; Pro-Israel Event in Madrid Disrupted by Violent BDS Activists

From Ian:

Yair Rosenberg: Trump's Redefinition of Jewish Identity That Wasn't

Regular readers of this newsletter know that I have not been sparing in my criticism of President Donald Trump, or his conduct towards Jews. I’ve spent years writing about the anti-Semitism within his ideological circle and evident from his own rhetoric and conduct. These facts remain real concerns. But the danger of a powerful narrative is that it can lead us to shoehorn events into it that don’t actually belong.

That’s what happened yesterday when it was announced that Trump would be signing an executive order to combat anti-Semitism on university campuses. Critics immediately seized on a New York Times report that claimed that the order—whose text it did not cite—would “define Judaism as a nationality, not just a religion.” In short order, “Judaism” began trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons. Countless celebrities and commentators claimed that this was an attempt to define Jews as un-American and suggested it was the first step towards deportation or even a Holocaust.

My goal here is not to shame people who were expressing their legitimate heartfelt concerns, which is why I’m not embedding any of those tweets. I just want to explain what really happened, what the executive order actually says, and how we can avoid being taken in by such panics in the future.

Because as it turns out, the executive order does not redefine Judaism as a nationality. The full text, which was released today, simply echoes Obama era doctrine for protecting Jews under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Because Title VI does not mention discrimination based on religion, it could be interpreted to exclude protection for religious groups like Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, and others. To close this loophole, the Obama administration’s assistant attorney general for civil rights Tom Perez—now the head of the Democratic National Committee—crafted a policy based on prior precedent that stated that these religious groups were nonetheless covered under Title VI’s provisions, despite the language of the act. Basically, the idea was that although these groups might not define themselves as a “nation” or “race,” because racists define them that way and attack them as such, they are protected. A loophole of sorts to get around a loophole. Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern has an excellent detailed breakdown of this policy and its history.

Explaining Trump’s Executive Order on Anti-Semitism

President Trump is expected to sign an executive order today aimed at cracking down on anti-Semitism on college campuses. The order will define Jewish people as a nation or race and thus allow the federal government to withhold money from universities that ignore Jew-hatred.

For those interested in a deeper understanding of the plan, the original idea behind it was laid out in the September 2010 issue of COMMENTARY by Kenneth L. Marcus, who now serves as the assistant secretary of civil rights in the Trump Education Department. Marcus’s essay, “A Blind Eye to Campus Anti-Semitism?” explains:

The lack of a coherent legal conception of Jewish identity has rendered the Office for Civil Rights (henceforth, OCR) unable to cope with a resurgence of anti–Semitic incidents on American college campuses, of which the Irvine situation is enragingly emblematic. The problem stems from the fact that federal agents have jurisdiction under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act over race and national-origin discrimination—but not over religion. And because they have been unable to determine whether Jewish Americans constitute a race or a national-origin group, they found themselves unable to address the anti-Semitism at UC-Irvine. This confusion has led to enforcement paralysis as well as explosive confrontations and recriminations within the agency.

Study: Israeli Elections Rampant Because Kids Play Election-Filled Video Games (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Tel Aviv, December 12 - Researchers seeking to explain the many more rounds of voting citizens of the Jewish State must endure than their predecessors did have seized on the realization that the current generation of voters grew up during and immediately following an explosion in the prevalence of virtual interactive entertainment, leading them to conclude that the increase in parliamentary balloting results from prolonged exposure to the influence of that entertainment.

Academics in the Political Science and Sociology departments at Tel Aviv University announced today the findings of a study they conducted beginning with the first instance of elections in 2019, this past April, but which took on heightened relevance as another round of voting took place in September - with yet another to come in March 2020. The study looked at the close correlation between the increase in election frequency and the rise of immersive video games, and concluded that a causative relationship exists between the latter and the former. The study appeared in this week's issue of the journal Specious.

"We observed a direct relationship between the prevalence of video games and the increase in size of the electoral cohort that grew up playing those games," the article stated. "Closer examination led us to the realization that given the axiom that exposure to violent video games produces a more violent society, an analogous dynamic must be in play in Israeli society: video games with gratuitous elections in them leading to unnecessary and harmful elections in the real world."

The researchers also pointed to the relative paucity in neighboring Palestinian society - and all the Arab or Muslim societies in the region - of both a robust cohort of gamers or former gamers, and therefore of elections. "By examining the negative hypothesis as well," the article continued, "we determined that the relationship carries significance. Palestinian elections have not taken place in more than a decade, and examination of the prevalence of video games in Palestinian society reveals insignificant levels of such activity. The causative link also exists in wider Arab society throughout the Middle East, where both video games and regular elections of any real democratic import remain vanishingly rare."

Researchers offered few specifics for practical measures the link suggests. "The phenomenon deserves further study," the article concludes. "We recommend related interdisciplinary explorations, such as any correlations between blindness to left-wing antisemitism in video games and the same feature of large swaths of Western society, or between the lack of female gamers playing driving-related games and the common understanding of women as inferior drivers."

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Rashida Tlaib is heartbroken over murdered Jews. Oh, they were killed by blacks? Never mind.

US Representative Rashida Tlaib tweeted this morning:

Within seconds, people started responding that she should apologize because the Jersey City murderers were black, not white supremacists.

About 20 minutes later, Tlaib deleted her tweet.

But she didn't apologize.

She didn't correct herself.

She didn't send another tweet explaining how she is heartbroken over the deaths that weren't done by white nationalists.

The reason is as disgusting as it is obvious and as obvious as it is politically incorrect: Rashida Tlaib identifies more with the Black Hebrew murderers than with the Jewish victims of antisemitic violence.

They identified as persons of color, as does Tlaib. They thought of themselves as being oppressed by white people, as does Tlaib. They hated cops, as does Tlaib. They were antisemitic, as is Tlaib.

The anti-Israel political forces in America align themselves with angry black people in the false pretense that they are fighting the same battles. They succeeded in convincing Black Lives Matter that Jews/Israelis were responsible for American police violence.

You just know that as soon as Tlaib realized her mistake, she started thinking - what were Jews doing in a black neighborhood? How have they upset the locals? What did they do to deserve to be murdered?

Because the only people who are lower in the intersectionality totem pole than Jews are Trump supporters and neo-Nazis. When someone with a lower score is involved in a conflict with someone with a higher score, the presumption of innocence goes to the higher score. By finding out that the victims has a lower intersectionality score (-6) than the murderers (8 and 14) suddenly Tlaib was no longer heartbroken...except, perhaps, for the poor black people who felt so marginalized by the rich powerful Jews moving into their neighborhood that they felt they had to defend their community.

This is the sick mentality of the "progressive" Left.

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12/12 Links Pt1: Jewish Blood on the Streets of Jersey City; The Silence Surrounding Violence Against Us Orthodox Jews Is Deafening; Could Jordan’s Economic Crisis Solve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

From Ian:

Jewish Blood on the Streets of Jersey City

In the early afternoon, after the governor and mayor had come and gone, Rabbi David Niederman, the president of United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and one of the public faces of the city’s Satmar communities, arrived on the scene. I followed him and various leaders of the Jersey City community up that side stairway and into the first floor of the school, where dozens of children had been hiding in fear just a day earlier, and where a massacre beyond all imagination might have been narrowly avoided. There was a board game half out of its box, and cards strewn across one of the hallways. A single page of cursive Yiddish handwritten on notebook paper sat at my feet.

Niederman, who was likely in the midst of one of the most intense and complicated days of his life, had appeared at a press conference with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio just a couple hours earlier. He ate an egg salad sandwich and then said birkat hamazon under his breath.

Niederman had tirelessly sounded the alarm about the frequent attacks and harassment of Jews in Williamsburg. It was important for him to come to Jersey City as soon as he could, he said, because “my brother and my sister were killed here.”

In his experience, the attack was not a single, shocking incident of violence but rather the latest episode in a year-and-a-half-long period in which a Haredi Jew was hit, beaten, or threatened on the streets of New York on what felt like a monthly and then a weekly basis. That the steady drumbeat of attacks on Jews had finally turned deadly left him with a feeling of inevitability, exhaustion, and waste. “It’s incremental,” Niederman said of the worsening attacks. “The target moves.”

Niederman had a message for the non-Haredi Jews who form the vast majority of New York’s incredibly diverse Jewish community. “Don’t think that because you don’t have a kippa and you don’t dress like the Hasidim that you are safe,” he said. “Speak out, and say anti-Semitism has to be stopped, no matter who the recipient of the anti-Semitic acts are. Say: Those are our brothers and sisters. It’s our brothers and sisters, and people should start understanding that they are also Jewish, and therefore they can be next on the line.”

Jersey City rampage victims remembered as generous Satmar community members

Two of the Jewish victims of the Jersey City shooting rampage were remembered on Wednesday as a dedicated mother of five “full of love,” and a charitable young member of the Satmar Hasidic community who was involved in the founding of the local yeshiva.

A police officer, three bystanders and the two suspects all died in the violence Tuesday afternoon in Jersey City, just across the Hudson River from New York City. Two of the bystanders have been identified by local community members as Leah Mindel Ferencz, 33, and Moshe Deutsch, 24, both members of the local ultra-Orthodox community.

The 40-year-old slain officer, Detective Joseph Seals, who led the department in the number of illegal guns removed from the streets in recent years, was cut down by gunfire that erupted near a cemetery. The gunmen then drove a stolen rental van to another part of the city and engaged police in a lengthy shootout from inside the kosher market, where the five other bodies were later found.

Ferencz, 33, was part-owner of JC Kosher Supermarket. Shortly before the gunmen stormed the store, her husband, Moishe, went to the synagogue next door to pray, according to Chabad Rabbi Moshe Schapiro.

Thousands mourn at funerals of 2 Jewish victims of Jersey City shooting

Thousands of mourners took to the streets of Brooklyn and Jersey City late Wednesday for the funerals of Mindel Ferencz, 31, and 24-year-old Moshe Deutsch, who were killed in the kosher store shooting.

In Brooklyn, thousands of mostly men followed Ferencz’s casket through the streets hugging and crying. Many prayed. She was later laid to rest in Jersey City, where she had made her home in recent years and ran the grocery with her husband.

Thousands also accompanied Deutsch, a rabbinical student from Brooklyn who was shopping at the grocery when the assailants entered. The funeral service was held at the Satmar Beit Midrash in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Eulogies, in Yiddish, were broadcast to the crowds who filled the roads and stairs of homes along the route, with many sobbing and wailing.

At the funeral of Moshe Dautsch, murdered yesterday in the kosher grocery yesterday in Jersey City. This should not be. pic.twitter.com/oDQnRDt8kN
— Motti Seligson (@mottiseligson) December 12, 2019

Police provided escorts to both funerals.

The prospect of attacks against Jews weighed heavily on the more than 300 people who attended a vigil Wednesday night at a synagogue about a mile from where the shootings took place.

“I think maybe we have two parts of our brain,” said Temple Beth-El president Tom Rosensweet. “One part is absolutely not expecting something like this to happen in Jersey City, but the other part knows we have to be careful.”

I reported yesterday about a survey of Arabs throughout the Middle East by Transparency International that showed that Palestinians see their government as very corrupt, among the worst in the region.

The Palestinian Authority set up an anti-corruption commission about 14 years ago to supposedly fight corruption. The building looks very impressive. But how did the commission respond to this survey?

With denial and whining, of course.

Instead of saying that they will study the matter, they said that the methodology of the report was bad (many Arab countries were not included so they say their rankings aren't really so bad.)

They blame the sextortion reports in the survey as being all in Gaza under Hamas, and nothing to do with their bosses in Ramallah.

It said, "The report does not reflect the reality, and came in light of the cut in salaries and the difficult conditions experienced by the Palestinian people."

In short, the commission whose entire job is to root out corruption washed its hands of having to investigate a major report of corruption.

For all of the hundreds of reporters and NGOs in Israel and in the Palestinian territories, no one seems much interested in reporting stories like this. Corruption in an entity that receives billions of dollars from the West is not considered as newsworthy as Jews building a house.

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