Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 01, 2020

01/01 Links Pt2: BDS or BS?; Netflix Doco on Murder of Argentine AMIA Bombing Prosecutor; Gertrude Himmelfarb, 1922-2019; Corner of God’s Altar in Shiloh’ takes 2nd place in 2019 top discoveries

From Ian:

Another feature of BDS is that it often condemns both an action and its opposite. If the Israeli government were to restrict gay rights, it would be homophobic – if it extends them, it is pinkwashing. If the local Israeli embassy pays the airfare for a director to come to discuss what is more than likely a pro-Palestinian film, then the festival is accepting blood money and should be boycotted. But if the Embassy didn’t make the payment, it would be accused of running a North Korean type hasbara propaganda machine, supporting only films supporting the government’s line. UK films are universally supported by the government through generous tax credits, of course, but you don’t see screaming mobs outside showings of Hugh Grant films, despite some of our questionable actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our complex relationship with the Saudis.

The government is right to propose an anti-BDS bill (and let us not kid ourselves that any council would apply a boycott to Malaysia, despite its open discrimination against its Chinese population, or the Iranians for persecuting almost everyone, dare we even bother mentioning the prospect of a boycott of China, currently operating concentration camps?), because those who are at the sharp end will otherwise have an impossible job. Can you allow council premises to be used for an Israeli/Palestinian dialogue group (normalization), or host a singer who has recently performed in Israel? Could a university host a Jewish Society that serves Israeli kiddush wine, or allow a speaker who has been in the Israel Defence Force? Could a library order Amos Oz books or host a church group organising a trip to Jerusalem and Bethlehem? Could the mayor welcome a group of disabled IDF veterans? No-one really knows the answers, but the hope of BDS activists is that people will take the safest route by simply not asking, so achieving the movement’s goals by default.

Given that your average declared anti-Zionist would struggle to find the West Bank on a map, the chance of a council worker or university administrator being able to make a reasoned decision on BDS is close to negligible. And the legal and administrative costs of getting it wrong will be borne by the benighted taxpayers and ratepayers, very few of whom have the slightest interest in the Middle East conflict. Meanwhile, a generation of otherwise engaged Jews would grow up fearful that their local authority considers them to be second-class citizens, and their Israeli relatives to be uniquely and irredeemably evil.

BDS activists can of course try to boycott Israel, Zionists, or anything they like when doing their shopping, but should leave their personal prejudices at the door when it comes to local or national government.

Stand With Us: A New Middle East?

In the past decade, Israel has developed closer ties to Arab states in the region. From sporting events to official diplomatic delegations and regional infrastructure plans we are seeing a positive shift in the Middle East. Peace is possible!

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: I saw the writing in the sky

For years, organized American and European Jewry have refused to take a courageous stand about Jew hatred. Please note that I am not calling this “antisemitism.” I have been using the phrase “Jew hatred” for many years now, sometimes the regrettably ungraceful term: “Judeophobia”. Scholar Shulamit Magnus has a very good piece about this. In short: Jews are not a “race,” we are a people, and we exist in all the colors of the rainbow. Arab Muslims and Arab Christians are also Semites and the term “antisemitism” applies to them as well.

Most big-monied American-Jewish groups have tended to universalize antisemitism as “racism” or “prejudice,” perhaps in the hope that Jew haters who oppose anti-black, anti-brown, and anti-immigrant racism would therefore magically realize that nearly half of all Jews, at least in Israel, are black, brown, or olive in skin color and that even white-skinned Ashkenazi Jews are human beings who are currently being verbally and physically menaced, shot down, stabbed, punched, and blown up in Israel and in the West.

I started writing about this almost full-time in the fall of 2000. I saw the writing on the sky. I’d seen it before in the early 1970s and 1980s, but never so clearly, never so alarmingly. Others did too. Some had been our shomrim for a long time. They were barely and only rarely heeded and were defamed as conservatives.

However, most American Jewish organizations, including the ADL, insisted that the greatest danger to Jews was coming from white Christian conservative men. They refused to name Islamic Jew hatred or black American, black Caribbean, or black African Jew hatred. The media happily kept quoting such views. Oddly, the ADL’s own stats, which they’ve released over many years, tells us another story.

Jews are not lemmings, Mr. Gandhi

“They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.”- Mahatma Gandhi, suggesting that mass suicide should have been the preferred Jewish response to the Holocaust, as opposed to fighting back or seeking refuge elsewhere.

Throughout the West various leftists and pacifists still worship the passive resistance legacy of Gandhi. This worship or virtue-signalling, however, does not impress me, especially because my father was a slave labourer in Auschwitz and his parents and then 8 year old sister were murdered in the gas chambers there.

We should also examine myths surrounding lemmings jumping off cliffs, as Gandhi seems to infer that is moral, as quoted above.

Non-violence is a fair tactic when dealing with the British or Indian authorities, but we contend that it is a very stupid and immoral practice when dealing with Hitler and the Nazis (and more recently with Islamist supporters of terrorism and oppression of their own people and their neighbours all over the world).

First let us think about Gandhi’s preference for jumping into the sea when confronted with enemies seeking your death.

Non-violence is a fair tactic when dealing with the British or Indian authorities, but is a very stupid and immoral practice when dealing with Hitler and the Nazis (and more recently with Islamist supporters of terrorism and oppression of their own people and their neighbours all over the world).
The notion of jumping into the sea reminds us of the supposed conduct of Norwegian lemmings. According to a good Wikipedia article about them, it is accepted that these lemmings do periodically jump off cliffs. However it argues that they have become “the subject of a widely popular misconception that they are driven to commit mass suicide when they migrate by jumping off cliffs. It is not a deliberate mass suicide where the animal voluntarily chooses to die, but rather a result of their migratory behavior. Driven by strong biological urges, some species of lemmings may migrate in large groups when population density becomes too great.

Tiffany Harris

After every antisemitic attack on Jews, the talking heads tell us what we "must” do to combat antisemitism. These all-knowing oracles run the gamut of political and religious beliefs and this should be comforting. All these people, irrespective of their beliefs, know just what we “must” do to end the killing, the attacks, the fear and hate.

It’s kind of hard, however, to take any of them seriously in a world in which antisemitic attacker Tiffany Harris is not only released without posting bail on her own recognition, but awarded a metro ticket, two debit cards, and a burner phone. For all we know it was the fare, free money, and phone that inspired Harris to do it again: to assault an innocent victim. But what we know for a fact is that Tiffany Harris was back on the streets in less time than you can say “bail reform,” only to be arrested and re-released, 24 hours later (with another metro ticket, two debit cards, and a burner phone), for punching a woman in the eye.

Tiffany's most recent victim of assault (as of this writing), subsequent to her slapping three Orthodox Jewish women while yelling, "F-U Jews," was not believed to be Jewish. It matters little. Tiffany Harris committed several violent, criminal offenses prior to the recent antisemitic attack which makes her a danger to society, and she does, in fact hate Jews. Violent and antisemitic? Not a good combination.

Tiffany Harris isn't and won't be the only violent antisemite to be affected by bail reform. And antisemitism existed before the new legislation. Still, it's a bad time to be implementing these reforms, given the current spate of attacks. What it all means, bail reform legislation, is that come January 1, a whole lot of criminal offenses will no longer qualify for bail, though law enforcement officials are already complying with the spirit of the law. According to WTEN, (emphasis added):

On January 1, a number of criminal offenses will no longer qualify for bail. It’s something police and prosecutors are not happy about when it comes to public safety. The long list, courtesy of The District Attorneys Association of the State of New York, includes:

· Assault in the third degree

· Aggravated vehicular assault

· Aggravated assault upon a person less than eleven years old

· Criminally negligent homicide

· Aggravated vehicular homicide

· Manslaughter in the second degree

· Unlawful imprisonment in the first degree

· Coercion in the first degree

· Arson in the third and fourth degree

· Grand larceny in the first degree

· Criminal possession of a weapon on school grounds or criminal possession of a firearm

· Criminal possession of a controlled substance in the first and second degree

· Criminal sale of a controlled substance in the first and second degree

· Criminal sale of a controlled substance in or near school grounds

· Specified felony drug offenses involving the use of children, including the use of a child to commit a controlled substance offense and criminal sale of a controlled substance to a child

· Criminal solicitation in the first degree and criminal facilitation in the first degree

· Money laundering in support of terrorism in the third and fourth degree

· Making a terroristic threat

· Patronizing a person for prostitution in a school zone

· Promoting an obscene sexual performance by a child

· Possessing an obscene sexual performance by a child

· Promoting a sexual performance by a child

· Failure to register as a sex offender

· Obstructing governmental administration in the first and second degree

· Obstructing governmental administration by means of a self-defense spray device

· Bribery in the first degree

· Bribe giving for public office

· Bribe receiving in the first degree

· Promoting prison contraband in the first and second degree

· Resisting arrest

· Hindering prosecution

· Tampering with a juror and tampering with physical evidence

· Aggravated harassment in the first degree

· Directing a laser at an aircraft in the first degree

· Criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree

· Criminal sale of a firearm to a minor

· Enterprise corruption and money laundering in the first degree

· Aggravated cruelty to animals, overdriving, torturing and injuring animals

· Failure to provide proper sustenance

· Animal fighting

When you read this lengthy list of crimes, you begin to see how an antisemitic attacker might be released without bail, even multiple times. Meanwhile, we had a total of 8 antisemitic attacks in New York City over Chanukah. That’s one for every day of the festival. And then there was the Monsey attack, which overshadowed all the other attacks, involving, as it did, a machete in the close quarters of a rabbi’s home, during a holiday celebration.

Bail reform, coming precisely at this time, is helping to unleash this wild spate of antisemitic crime, for there are no longer any serious consequences to attacking Jews. At least in New York. There, the Jews may be attacked with impunity.

The light at the end of this very dark tunnel is that leaders from every quarter were confident they knew just what we “must” do about all this hate and xenophobia, which they say is the cause of the attacks. (Rather than, for example, state-sanctioned mayhem with our perennial favorite target, the Jews). On the left, for example, we have Rabbi Michael Adam Latz and Carin Mrotz, toting their peerless, far-left JStreet social justice warrior creds in NBCNews, to tell us that in order to fight antisemitism, we must fight all sorts of other ugly things. Because, we are meant to understand, antisemitism is not unique or distinct from other hatreds.

“We must continue our work to end racism and poverty, sexism and transphobia. We must grapple with the truth that the very mechanisms we seek out to shore up our own safety might put others at risk and push us further apart.”

That last little bit was a nice touch. Translated, it means that if we don’t implement bail reform, we might save a few Jews, but we would be putting others at risk. Those “others” are not named and it’s all very vague, but perhaps the authors mean people like Tiffany Harris, who, as a black woman, is from a population considered “underserved.”

As Jews, from the perspective of the authors, we are supposed to sacrifice our own safety for that of Tiffany Harris. This is because she is black and underserved which makes her oppressed, all of which makes her vulnerable. In order to keep Tiffany safe, it seems, we have to let this violent criminal back on the streets, but only, of course after making sure she has what she needs to get a fresh start: a metro card, two debit cards, and a burner phone, all on the house. Each time she does it: hits someone.

If Tiffany Harris has learned that crime pays, embattled Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has learned a different lesson. You will remember how Pelosi caved in to The Squad on the antisemitism bill, allowing it to be watered down to include every other kind of bigotry and hate. Pelosi’s tweet after Monsey was all-inclusive, hence skewed far left, like the bill:

"We must condemn and confront anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry and hate wherever & whenever we see them.”

Heartbroken and deeply disturbed by the stabbing in Monsey and the many recent anti-Semitic attacks in the NY metro area, especially during this holiday season. We must condemn and confront anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry and hate wherever & whenever we see them.
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) December 29, 2019

The tweet itself, as you can see, stands as Nancy’s “condemnation” of antisemitism by way of making a statement. “Confrontation” comes in the form of spinning antisemitism as nothing special, no different from any other hate. This is the mantra we are expected to absorb and repeat about antisemitism. The truth has nothing to do with it.

Unlike Latz, Mrotz, and Pelosi, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations comes close to speaking about antisemitism as a singular phenomenon, by mentioning the lack of serious consequences for attackers. The problem is the failure of the Conference of Presidents to name the reason for this deficiency. That would be the new bail reform legislation. Instead, they go at the problem backwards, by describing what is needed as what the new legislation has taken away: the rule of law.

“There must be real measures by law enforcement, governmental leaders, and judicial authorities at the city, state, and federal levels. … There must be serious consequences for perpetrators.”

We‘re outraged at the latest attack at a synagogue celebration in Monsey, NY that reportedly left 5 wounded, several very seriously. There have been many attacks in the past week. There must be real measures by law enforcement, governmental leaders and judicial authorities at 1/3
— Conf Of Presidents (@Conf_of_Pres) December 29, 2019

As experts in antisemitism, the more narrowly-focused Rabbi Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, are better. Hier and Cooper understand the nature of antisemitism. They know that antisemitism needs to be dealt with as a unique phenomenon, lest you neutralize its impact by diluting the field with all manner of unrelated things. They see the problem as a bigger picture thing: national rather than specific to New York. Their solution for antisemitism, therefore, seems to be to delegate the problem to a different body: the FBI.

“Enough is enough! Jews should not have to fear for their lives in America to go to their houses of worship. The FBI must step up and take the lead in all recent violent hate crimes targeting religious Jews.”

A Fox op-ed, “Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Hanukkah stabbings show anti-Semitism thriving in US – Here’s what we must do,” is more expansive. Here, thankfully, the bail reform issue is mentioned, along with BDS and college campus antisemitism, as different facets of a larger problem. We are told that the fight against antisemitism must be bipartisan, and that African American leaders need to get involved. This is certainly true. And there’s even a reference to social media: “We must demand that the social media giants do much more to cripple the online recruitment and marketing of bigots and terrorists.”

The last feels like a dig at Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who has been expanding on his views on the subject.

At any rate, when it comes to what the FBI must do about antisemitism, Rabbi Cooper is short on details, saying only that “We need a more robust FBI-led response to the violent targeting of Jews.”

Everyone, it seems, knows what we must do about antisemitic attacks. But no one seems to be able to identify exactly what that is. At the very least, Mayor Deblasio was able to tell us what we will NOT do, which seems to involve not becoming complaisant (but perhaps instead to stand by and feel really, really bad as Jews are attacked--or at least to say so):

“We will NOT allow this to become the new normal. We’ll use every tool we have to stop these attacks once and for all. The NYPD has deployed a visible and growing presence around Jewish houses of worship on the streets in communities like Williamsburg, Crown Heights and Boro Park.”

We will NOT allow this to become the new normal. We’ll use every tool we have to stop these attacks once and for all. The NYPD has deployed a visible and growing presence around Jewish houses of worship on the streets in communities like Williamsburg, Crown Heights and Boro Park.
— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) December 29, 2019

We cannot and will not let attacks on our Jewish community become the new normal. That means not only responding to attacks but preventing them.
— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) December 29, 2019

No community should have to live in fear of the next act of violence or terror. We won't let that become the new normal for our Jewish neighbors — or ANY New Yorker. pic.twitter.com/Zs01IZaZRO
— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) December 30, 2019

“The menorah symbolizes the positive, the light, the hope. Everyone should remember that hope and act to build it."
- @NYCMayor pic.twitter.com/tLlVCO3pnq
— NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) December 30, 2019

de Blasio speaks of using “every tool we have to stop these attacks." But when "every tool" includes letting a Tiffany Harris back on the street times two—each time with a metro card, two debit cards, and a burner phone in her hot little hands, New York has got no tools. None at all.

Except, perhaps, for de Blasio.

The Tehran Times, official English language media of the "Islamic Revolution" in Iran, has an article attacking Hamas for sitting out the last escalation in Gaza between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ.)

Hamas silence over the November aggression of Zionism during which the leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip and Damascus were killed, suggests certain thoughts about the conformism and apathy of the ruling party in the Gaza Strip.

This is not about secret agreements between the invaders and Hamas, but rather about a secret alliance against the leading Palestinian forces seeking to fight the colonialists. Otherwise, how to explain a number of facts, such as the non-interference of the military wing of Hamas - the Al-Qassam Brigade in the fight against the Zionists, on the side of the Al-Quds Brigade (military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad)? ....For its part, Hamas is gradually losing credibility in Gaza due to a move away from direct resistance to the enemy, has moved away from Iran amid crises in Syria, Iraq and Yemen to the camp of enemies of the Islamic Republic....

There seems to be trouble in paradise between Hamas and Iran. Iranian media wouldn't directly attack Hamas unless this was a serious rift.

This section is interesting:

PIJ plays one of the key roles in Tehran’s foreign policy, the Palestinian resistance movement is ideologically connected with the Islamic Republic of Iran and in many vectors of its policy coordinates with the IRGC.

None of this is new information, but the European powers (and US Democratic candidates) that still seek to cooperate with Iran should be forced to answer why they want to work together with a nation that openly brags about its ties to terrorist organizations.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

01/01 Links Pt1: Monsey stabbing victim suffered permanent brain damage; Pittsburgh rabbi warns of ‘open hunting season on Jews’; Trump warns Iran of ‘BIG PRICE’ for attacks, sends 750 more troops to Mideast

From Ian:

After Monsey attack, Pittsburgh rabbi warns of ‘open hunting season on Jews’

For Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, the attack in Monsey had an eerie feeling.

“For me it was an ‘oh no, not again’ sort of moment,” he told CNN’s John Berman on Monday morning.

Myers was at the pulpit of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018 when a gunman opened fire inside, killing 11 worshipers.

On Saturday night in Monsey, an intruder injured five people with a machete at a Hanukkah party held at the home of a rabbi.

“It made me sort of wonder, I don’t recall them selling licenses to have open hunting season on Jews, but it sure can make Jews feel that way,” Myers said. He also said we “cannot allow terror to win.”

The rabbi said he cannot point to one “root cause” for the rise in hate and anti-Semitism, but singled out hate speech spewed by unnamed elected leaders and on social media as contributing to “this illness.”

“It sure makes you pause and wonder what’s going on in our society that people feel they have a god-given right to attack any human being for whatever reason they choose to,” he said.

In a statement released Sunday on behalf of Tree of Life, Myers wrote, “We call upon all good people to work together to remove this evil from existence. We must eliminate H* (which stands for hate speech) in its simplest form by getting to know our neighbors and fellow human beings.”

Labour’s defeat has not ended anti-Semitism

Progressives who talk of little else suddenly do not want to talk about race. That is because these attacks are, in the main, not being carried out by dead-eyed youths with ‘14 Words’ tattoos. The New Jersey killers, the alleged would-be killer in Monsey, and many of the spitters, punchers and verbal aggressors on the streets of Brooklyn and in the Subway cars beneath the city are black or other ethnic minority. We should bear in mind that some of these individuals will be mentally ill, though that standard should apply in all race-based incidents or none. Black anti-Semitism — the very locution unsettles liberal stomachs — is nothing new but now the fanatic pronouncements of some Black Hebrew Israelites and conspiracy theories of Jewish culpability for slavery vie with woke mutterings about ‘gentrification’ and the postmodern mindjunk of intersectionality, a worldview that is anti-Semitic in effect if not by design.

New York mayor Bill de Blasio has previously blamed the upsurge in anti-Semitism on ‘the forces of white supremacy’ and ‘the right-wing movement’. When progressives see a white man beat a black man, their instinct is to condemn. When they see a black man beat a Jewish man, their instinct is to look away. Just as British socialists struggle to comprehend anti-Semitism from their comrades, the American left needs all racism to flow from Donald Trump and be a product of ‘white privilege’. For it to emanate from elsewhere, for non-whites to be culpable, requires a doctrine-debunking revision of the demonology. Identity politics makes it more important that the bad guys be the right guys than that bad guys stop doing bad things.

This is what allows progressives to overlook Women’s March anti-Semitism, Jew-baiting from Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, and Bernie Sanders’ use of Linda Sarsour as a media surrogate. It is the breezy hipster upgrade to liberal forbearance of Al Sharpton (‘If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house’), Jesse Jackson (‘That’s all Hymie wants to talk about is Israel; every time you go to Hymietown, that’s all they want to talk about’) and, for some, even Louis Farrakhan (‘I’m here to separate the good Jews from the Satanic Jews’). There’s no end of racism you can get away with if you get yourself called a ‘civil rights leader’.

Jews have civil rights, too, and they are under attack almost daily in New York City and around the world. Whether that is from white nationalists or black separatists, Christian bigots or Islamist hate-mongers, anti-Zionist radicals or Bibi-loving Euro-populists hardly matters to the victims. Jew-hatred is Jew-hatred. Your terribly original rationale never is. Institutions whose anti-Semitism has thus far evaded scrutiny — higher education, mainline Protestant churches, the democratic right — should bear this in mind.

Nita Lowey and David Harris (NYT): Why Is Anti-Semitism Making a Comeback?

Why, when American Jews have felt unmatched levels of inclusion and equality, is anti-Semitism making a comeback? Anti-Semitism dates back millenniums. Its ability to reinvent itself should never be underestimated. Even here in the U.S., it never entirely vanished.

The resurgence of anti-Semitism could be a result, in part, of the vanishing legacy of the Holocaust. Recent surveys reveal abysmal levels of knowledge among young people about what happened to the Jewish people in the Second World War.

Social media may also be playing a role. In the past, anti-Semites lived in small ideological circles with limited reach. Now the Internet amplifies the voices and influence of these otherwise marginal groups.

We need to recognize the problem for what it is: an epidemic. We are no longer talking about isolated, occasional actions but a regular phenomenon. There are multiple ideological sources feeding this hate; it is not a result of a single political outlook. There is no one-size-fits-all profile for the perpetrators of these attacks.

We cannot allow this situation to become the "new normal," as if attacks on Americans because of their religious or ethnic identities are now an expected part of our everyday lives. These attacks violate everything that Americans should hold dear. An attack on any American group is a threat to the pluralistic fabric of our nation.

In a survey of American Jews by the American Jewish Committee, released in October, 31% said that they had taken steps to hide their Jewish identity in public, while 25% said they now avoided Jewish sites. This is unacceptable. It is not our America.

According to the Jordanian Waqf, about 29,610 "extremist settlers" had "stormed" the Temple Mount in 2019, "with the protection of thousands of Israeli police and occupation forces."

If we trust their statistics, this is a slight decrease from 2018, when they counted 29,800 "extremists" who visited the holiest site in Judaism.

The General Director of the Waqf Azzam Al-Khatib warned about the dangers of allowing Jews to respectfully visit the Mount because of the "effects of millions of Muslims around the world." Yet somehow 60,000 visits over two years didn't provoke Muslims worldwide to mass riots that people like Al Khatib warn are inevitable.

(Mrs. Elder and I were two of the "settlers" who visited this year, where we were privileged to actually pray on the site, something that has become a daily occurrence there.)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

From Joe Truzman:

Fatah gunmen in the streets of Ramallah today celebrating the 55th anniversary of Fatah’s first attack against #Israel. #WestBank pic.twitter.com/0WCBpxPDrf
— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) January 1, 2020

Nothing says "peace on Earth, goodwill to all men" like shooting automatic weapons in the air towards a Christmas tree.

It has now been 12 years since Mahmoud Abbas has claimed that he dismantled all Fatah armed groups - and here they still are, wearing masks, in Ramallah, shooting guns in the air.

It is almost as if Abbas wasn't telling the truth.

And although the PA pretends to be a normal state, what state would encourage shooting guns in the air during a national celebration? Bullets tend to come down, after all.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

I had missed this insane piece in The Guardian this week:

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to up the police presence in multi-ethnic neighborhoods to combat a rise in antisemitic hate crimes has received pushback from liberal Jewish groups that say the measures will further divide communities.

“This is what dividing vulnerable communities looks like,” said Jews for Racial & Economic Justice in a tweet. “Instead of investing in restorative solutions that prioritize the safety of all communities, [De Blasio] is implementing a plan that treats abuse of black and brown communities as the answer to antisemitic violence. It isn’t.”

Jewish Voice for Peace said “the rise of antisemitic violence this past week highlights the urgent need to organize as Jews with our allies who share an expansive idea of equality and freedom” but that “calls for more police and paid security” were not a solution.

The group continued: “We know we have to address rising white nationalist violence – against Jews, Muslims, Black people and all people of color – while not relying on the very forces detaining and locking up and killing our friends, family & neighbors.”

David Klion, an editor of Jewish Currents, said: “Flooding ‘POC’ neighborhoods with cops is going to carry real costs, potentially even fatal ones, for tens of thousands of people who have no complicity in these attacks. I’m also deeply uncomfortable with the optics of cops functioning as security for Jews against POC.”

Black antisemites are only targeting religious Jews - and these groups represent none of those. So these non-religious, leftist Jews are telling religious Jews that their lives are not important because of the "optics" of having police protecting a group of people - the actual job of the police.

Has there ever been an innocent person of color hurt or killed by police protecting Jews? If the answer is "no," and I suspect it is, then these people are saying that protecting Jews is less important than a theoretical and unproven theory. Which means that they really don't give a damn about Jewish lives.

In addition, this is a slander against police altogether. To assume that all or most police are violent, insensitive thugs is disgusting. Let these people who pretend to care about Jewish lives except when protecting Jewish lives is in conflict with their hatred of police campaign to eliminate the police departments in their own communities first, not in religious Jewish communities.

There is a further issue with the reporting itself. These groups are far left fringe groups. As far as I can tell, no one who represents an actual Jewish community signed the JFREJ "pledge" to forego police protection. The Guardian is mistaking fringe Twitter accounts for actual Jewish opinion. The vast majority of Jews of course support more police protection for Jews, but they aren't tweeting the obvious.

UPDATE: Here's a video of some of the attacks against Jews in New York that these moral midgets think "solidarity" will solve.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

12/31 Links Pt2: Palestinian NGOs Reject European Aid, Due to Refusal to Renounce Terror Ties; New Israeli Scholarship Shows That an Alleged 1948 Massacre Never Happened

From Ian:

Palestinian NGOs Reject European Aid, Due to Refusal to Renounce Terror Ties

Over 100 Palestinian NGOs have refused to sign an EU grant request because it demands that funds cannot be handed over to terrorist groups.

The director of the BDS organization Al-Haq, Shawan Jabarin, told The New Arab, “We demanded to include conditions stipulating that we do not have to recognize the criteria listed regarding terror groups.”

Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs said in a statement that this was due to “shared ties between supposed Palestinian human rights organizations and terrorist groups,” and cited its report “The Money Trail,” which found that “EU institutions have awarded millions of euros in financial aid to Palestinian civil society organizations which have ties to terrorist entities and promote boycotts against Israel.”

In another report, titled “Terrorists in Suits,” the ministry revealed “over 100 ties shared between BDS organizations and internationally designated terrorist groups … including the PFLP and Hamas.

“According to the report, so-called Palestinian civil society organizations act as medium for funds for terrorist entities, enabling them to raise money for their activities through legitimate bodies including the EU,” the ministry added.

“The opposition of these organizations to criteria preventing the transfer of funds to terror related activities proves the report’s claim,” the ministry’s statement asserted.

50 Leftist Jews to Spend Winter Vacation in ‘Direct Co-Resistance’ in Judea & Samaria, Fly Home in 10 Days

To start, you should know there’s a thing called The Center for Jewish Nonviolence, and that it “strives for a future that honors the full equality and shared humanity of both Palestinians and Israelis.”

Then you should know that on Monday the CJNV tweeted: “CJNV delegation begins—International Jewish activists defy crackdown on Palestinian solidarity activism during delegation to the Occupied Territories.”

IfNotNow, one of the groups represented in this unusual Xmas vacation in the Holy Land, tweeted: “A group of our members, along with members of J Street, JVPlive, Naamod UK and other Jewish left orgs around the world just hit the ground in the West Bank as part of CJNV’s newest delegation. They’ll engage in direct co-resistance work with Palestinian activists.”

We have no blessed idea what the crackdown on Palestinian solidarity activism even means, never mind how one goes about defying it, and what’s the meaning of “direct co-resistance work” – in ten days or less (they’re flying home at the end of the revolution). We do know from the group’s press release that it will include “civil disobedience, educational sessions and community building projects.”

Then lunch.

That’s a lot to accomplish in ten days. We signed up for the daily updates, in the hope they’ll be as entertaining as the first couple of tweets.

David Collier: Antisemitism and the conflict – explained in two simple maps

This is the entire story of antisemitism and the Israel / Arab conflict delivered in two simple maps. One map is based on Jewish populations in the 1930s, the other Jewish populations today. The maps are not just of Europe or the Middle East, but the entire Europe, Middle East and North Africa region. People love to make everything seem complex. Sometimes the best thing to do is cut out the noise:
Map: Jewish populations Europe and MENA region 1930s

Map: Jewish populations Europe and MENA region 2010s

If anyone notices any important mistakes, let me know. The figures in the maps are a collation of official European pre-holocaust figures, scholarly estimates from the Arab ethnic cleansing of their Jewish populations and contemporary population figures. Only significant populations of 50k+ have been considered unless the population is smaller but still a sizeable % of the total population.

Put the two images side by side and everything suddenly becomes clear. The horrific scale of the destruction of Jewish communities. But also the antisemitic obsession with Israel. Some spend their time arguing that anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism, but just look at the maps. Tell me that having hounded, persecuted, expelled and murdered their Jewish communities throughout the regions, that the current obsession with that one tiny concentration of Jews that is left – the Jews in Israel – isn’t driven by antisemitism.

News that the media missed: Israel installs system to allow 12,000 Palestinian workers to speed through Tulkarem crossing daily

We hear horror stories about how demeaning and time consuming it is for Palestinian workers to cross into Israel.

Yet when Israel fixes the problem, the media suddenly loses interest in reporting the story.

10 new SpeedGates were recently installed at the Ephraim Gate (Tulkarem) Crossing. More than 12,000 residents pass through the crossing from the West Bank each day and travelers can already feel a significant improvement in transit conditions and a reduction in travel time. pic.twitter.com/amaKuzsfGA
— COGAT (@cogatonline) December 19, 2019

It is much easier to report the lie that Israel wants to humiliate Palestinians for no reason than to report the reality that Israel wants to make everyone's lives easier while maintaining its security.

Unfortunately, the lie sells newspapers and helps ratings, while the truth is complicated and messy and doesn't conform with what so many people want to believe.

So the truth is buried.

(h/t Irene)

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12/31 Links Pt1: Anti-Semitism Is a Threat to Western Civilization Itself; Victimhood Culture Leads to Anti-Semitism; Peace through sports? Qatar to let Israelis in for 2022 World Cup

From Ian:

Anti-Semitism Is a Threat to Western Civilization Itself

On Saturday night, a man burst into a rabbi’s home in Monsey, NY, where a Hanukkah party was taking place, and began stabbing people with a machete. In North London, that same night, the walls of a synagogue and several shops were spray-painted with anti-Semitic slogans. Daniel Johnson comments on both incidents:
The appearance of graffiti in North London seems, by comparison, merely symbolic. Yet the fact that it happened against the background of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labor party gives it a sinister significance.

The fact that these incidents happened at Hanukkah is also ominous. In the German city of Halle, a synagogue was attacked by a gunman at Yom Kippur only last month. Jewish festivals present opportunities for anti-Semites to target victims wherever they gather together. By deliberately turning solemn occasions of communal worship into times of fear and anxiety, anti-Semites seek to disrupt the rhythm of the religious calendar that is the essence of Judaism.

Yet the Jewish people has never allowed itself to be intimidated, let alone subdued, by such threats. The Hebrew Bible is the story of a nation that survived every attempt to crush its identity and suppress its faith in the God of Abraham and Isaac.

It is up to the rest of society to show their Jewish friends and neighbors that they will not look the other way as the oldest hatred renews itself. . . . Western leaders, too, have a responsibility to protect their Jewish citizens. This Hanukkah, Boris Johnson tweeted: “Britain would not be Britain without its Jewish community.” True enough, but tweets and gestures are not an adequate answer to lies, murder, and mayhem. Anti-Semitism is a mortal threat not only to the Jewish people but to Western civilization itself.

Victimhood Culture Leads to Anti-Semitism

The left’s leading populists have fetishized the victim status of certain minorities, including African Americans. They’ve made slavery and its legacy the focal points of American life. They’ve determined, without evidence, that police are on a campaign to kill unarmed blacks. And they speak generally as if we’ve suddenly been transported to a pre-civil-rights-movement America.

What’s more, unlike Donald Trump, some of the left’s leading populists have gone out of their way to steer their followers toward blaming the Jews. The stand-out figures here are Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. Their public record of blaming Jewish money for corrupting American politics is so well known that it needs no rehearsing here. And it’s either been ignored or defended by the larger left. If you called either of them out on their anti-Semitism, you were charged with racism and misogyny. Democratic leaders were so petrified of Omar that they couldn’t even pass a House resolution condemning her blatant anti-Semitic remarks.

But the problem on the left goes beyond Omar and Tlaib. And it goes beyond the rest of the Squad, who engage in constant anti-Israel theatrics. It stretches to the identitarian populism of most of the 2020 Democratic candidates for president, to the liberal garment-rending over the defeat of the anti-Semitic Jeremy Corbyn, to the intersectional gobbledygook that divides college campuses by ethnicity, to the Women’s March activists who embrace Louis Farrakhan, and down to the community level, where, for example, the NAACP, Passaic branch posts Facebook rants blaming tainted water supplies on the Jews.

Historically, indulged victims have needed no encouragement in pointing their finger at Jews. Telling them that others are responsible for their woes has usually been enough to get them headed in that direction. But some on today’s left have given Jew-hatred an extra nudge. Their winks, dog-whistles, and outright calumnies have served as a noxious propaganda campaign and led to a surge of minority anti-Semitism. With the attempted murders in Monsey, this can no longer be kept a secret, and maybe those who have facilitated it will begin to know a little shame.

Bethany Mandel: Stop using Jewish blood to smear your political enemies

Those who reflexively blame President Trump for any and all attacks, no matter how unrelated his administration, actions, or rhetoric are, have made a conscious choice: They would rather play politics than put an end to the violence. And worse, it seems they would like it to continue, in order to have more ammunition against the White House leading up to the 2020 election.

Just as dangerous are those on the Right who are using the occasion to lecture Jews on how they should be voting, that they should be arming themselves and fortifying their houses of worship, and where they should be living. The problem of anti-Semitism isn’t because Jews vote one way or another. (This is a complicated issue when you break down voting histories between Orthodox and secular Jews, but that is a conversation for another time.)

Solving anti-Semitism doesn’t involve making our supermarkets, schools, synagogues, and more into fortresses. That’s not how any of us want to live. Unfortunately, we’ve begun to, and yet the violence continues and is becoming more serious by the day. Most of the attacks in New York have been in the streets, and they’ve taken place against men, the elderly, and even women with their children, in broad daylight and in full view of the public.

Advocating for Jews taking advantage of the protections of the Second Amendment is a moot point for many panicked Jews living in areas where obtaining a gun permit is an uphill climb and a conceal carry permit an absolute impossibility. We can recognize that Jews are safer while armed and advocate for less restrictive gun laws while still acknowledging that guns aren’t a magic bullet to solve this crisis, either. In the long term, there is a battle to be fought for expanded access to guns, but in the short term, lectures about firearms are paternalistic and can be deeply frustrating for panicked people unable to avail themselves of the option.

That this is the case in New York and New Jersey isn’t the fault of the Orthodox Jews living there. Instead of being condescended to about needing to move, allies would be far more appreciated and be doing far more good, continuing to advocate for less restrictive gun laws in these jurisdictions instead of expecting a small community under siege to flee the homes of their parents and grandparents.

There are societal issues that are much more complex and deeper at play — the rot is far more complicated than mere politics and Trump. As long as the violence striking the Jewish community is treated as a political cudgel, it will continue unabated.

December 30, 2019 - Hour 1 (Guest Host Jon Gabriel)

Jon Gabriel, Editor-In-Chief at Ricochet, columnist for the Arizona Republic, and co-host of "The Conservatarians" podcast, fills in for Seth.
Guests: Bethany Mandel of Ricochet.com. (first 20 minutes)

Ken Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch, tweets more that President Trump does. Yet I cannot find any tweets where he denounces antisemitism that cannot be blamed on white nationalists.

Essentially, he denies that any other sort of antisemitism exists.

The one tweet that shows this more than any other was written in 2018:

Of 1,453 anti-Semitic crimes in Germany in 2017, nine out of ten were committed by members of far-right or neo-Nazi groups. But let’s blame the Muslims. https://t.co/T3W3DLMJ1p
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) April 27, 2018

The New York Times article he refers to is about a rally against antisemitism that was prompted by an attack by a Syrian on someone (who wasn't Jewish!) wearing a kippah.

The article describes all kinds of antisemitism in Germany - from immigrants, from a rap duo as well as from the far-Right. But Roth ignores almost the entire article to take one sentence that claims that 90% of antisemitic attacks are from the far-Right as he sarcastically demeans anyone who says that Muslim antisemitic attacks are worth mentioning.

Yes, a human rights advocate is literally making fun of anyone concerned about Muslim attacks on Jews.

Certainly Roth knows that the vast majority of violent attacks against Jews in Europe have been done by Muslims. He not only fails to acknowledge them, but he smugly denounces anyone who mentions it!

What about this German study that supposedly says that 90% of attacks are from the far-Right? It turns out that the study was worthless.

The German government uses outdated and ambiguous definitions of the motivation behind antisemitic attacks that by their nature do not include specifically Muslim antisemitism as a category, only the vague "foreign ideology" or "religious ideology" as well as right and left wing. So, for example, when 20 Muslims chanted "Sieg Heil" at an Al Quds demonstration in 2014, the government absurdly classified that as "right wing" antisemitism. Four Palestinians who burned down a synagogue were not charged with an antisemitic crime.

In reality, German Jews have reported that 41% of the antisemitism they have experienced comes from Muslim extremists, and only 20% from the far-Right - not much more than the 16% from the far-Left.

The German government itself has written a 40-page report specifically on Muslim antisemitism.

Ken Roth never mentioned any of this.

If the German government and German Jews (as well as other studies) refute the claim that nearly all antisemitism in Germany comes from the far-Right, then why does a supposedly human rights defender actively deny the evidence and cherry picks only one specific type of antisemitism to ever denounce?

There is nothing wrong with combating the very real danger of right wing antisemitism. There is something very wrong about denying that any other types exist or are worth talking about. If you deny the very existence of a type of antisemitism that conflicts with your political beliefs, then you are a denier and enabler of antisemitism.

What kind of a human rights leader makes fun of the very real fears of people of Islamic extremist antisemitism?

Ken Roth, by sarcastically denying that any non-Right version of antisemitism even exists, shows that he is unqualified to call himself a human rights advocate at all.

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Abbas reiterates: If he has only one penny in his budget, he will use it to pay terrorists

PA president Mahmoud Abbas has emphasized that he will not allow any Israeli or Western moves to limit the salaries he pays terrorists, whom he calls "martyrs and prisoners."

Abbas said that if only penny remains in his budget, he will spend it on terrorists and their families. He said that he considers this issue a red line that he will not allow any change to.

The funny thing is that Abbas has reduced the budget for paying terrorists as a result of Israeli pressure, he just doesn't admit it. Members of Hamas have had their terror salaries cut a few months back and they even went on a hunger strike to protest that cut in November.

It seems that Abbas has no problem cutting Hamas out of his budget, even their "martyrs," something we've known for quite a long time.

Nevertheless, the West's "moderate" darling has made it abundantly clear that he supports "pay for slay." He proudly tells his people that his number one priority is not a state, not independence, not jobs, not the economy, and not even Jerusalem.

Abbas' top priority is rewarding terrorists who have killed and injured Jews.

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In 2014, after Israel refused to release a final batch of prisoners unless the PLO agreed to extend peace negotiations, the PLO responded by violating an agreement with Israel that it wouldn't sign international conventions join international bodies. In a very short time, the PLO signed the following conventions, without reservations:

The Fourth Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and the First Additional Protocol
The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (on the involvement of children in armed conflict)
The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
The UN Convention against Corruption
The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations
The Vienna Convention on Consular Services
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
The Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

As we have been reporting, the signing of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has been rejected recently by the Palestinian Authority's own Supreme Fatwa Council and has been denounced by a group of tribal leaders. An analysis of Palestinian Authority laws also shows that CEDAW was never implemented in legal codes; discrimination against women is in fact the law.

Given what we know about the Palestinian Authority, it clearly has not taken seriously a number of other conventions it signed in 2014, including the ones against racial discrimination (which include the rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and association); corruption, torture, civil and political rights, and apartheid. Its policies still include antisemitic laws against selling land to Jews. It is considered one of the most corrupt regimes in the Arab world. It still tortures prisoners with impunity.

The editor-in-chief of the Ma'an media network, Dr. Nasser Al-Lahham, made an astonishing admission about the Palestinian Authority in a television show over the weekend on the topic of CEDAW:

Regarding the CEDAW agreement, which recently sparked controversy, Al-Lahham sees it as a fabricated crisis for partisan reasons, and that its signature is important so that Palestine is part of the international system, calling on those concerned about the CEDAW agreement to be reassured that there is no civil marriage in Palestine...
He continued: "The government cannot implement CEDAW in its entirety in light of the existence of a societal system, and that the signing of the agreement is political and was not intended to undermine the Sharia, and had it not been for the signing of CEDAW and many other agreements, the International Criminal Court would not have accepted us."

He is admitting that the PLO never had any intention of honoring its agreements with the international community, and the only reason these conventions were signed were to take on the trappings of a state so they could join the ICC and prosecute Israel!

It is notable that Israel signed CEDAW with reservations on two of its paragraphs because Israel relies on Muslim and Jewish law for personal issues like marriage that cannot be reconciled with CEDAW. The PLO didn't sign it with any reservations about Sharia law, simply because it never intended to honor the convention to begin with - and by extension, it never intended to honor any of the agreements it signed.

This proves yet again that the PLO and PA have no intention for "Palestine" to be a serious member of the international community. The only reason for its existence is to attack Israel, not to build a functioning state that protects the rights of its citizens.

The ICC prosecutor should be made aware that the "State of Palestine" is not a state and its signed agreements that underlie its claims to statehood are meaningless.

Ironically, Muslims say that Jews are inherently violators of treaties, based on Quranic stories about Mohammed. Here we see that Palestinians knowingly violate international treaties and never intended to abide by them from the outset.

The international community should revisit every single treaty signed by the PA and PLO and demand full compliance - or it should expel the Palestinians from treaties that they have joined without intent of implementing.

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12/30 Links Pt2: The ICC has some nerve to target Israel; Prosecutors find anti-Semitic materials on Monsey suspect’s phone, journals; After US attacks Iranian-backed militias, is America back in the game?

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: The ICC has some nerve to target Israel

Bensouda’s prosecution is utterly lawless. As a political matter, the West must push back against this encroachment on the sovereignty of a democratic nation-state.

For starters, the ICC is structurally biased against Israel. As international-law expert Eugene Kontorovich noted when the Palestinian Authority sought formal ICC membership in 2015, the Rome Statute, which created the ICC, included language at the behest of the Arab states specifically designed to demonize Israeli “settlement” activity in the West Bank.

That should have given away the ICC game. But even under the ICC’s own terms, Bensouda’s attempted prosecution doesn’t pass muster. It lacks jurisdiction.

Under the Rome Statute, the ICC can go ahead with a prosecution in a country only if the state has delegated jurisdiction to the international court. But which state could delegate jurisdiction to the ICC in the case of the Palestinian territories? Certainly not the fictional “State of Palestine,” which even the United Nations doesn’t formally recognize as a state.

Plus, if Israel is a nefarious “occupier” of Palestine, as Palestinian propaganda constantly claims, then it means that the “State of Palestine” isn’t sovereign over its own claimed territory and therefore can’t delegate jurisdiction to the ICC.

An ICC prosecution, moreover, would flout the Oslo Accords, which call for direct negotiations between the parties to reach a final political settlement and under which Israel retains full civil and military control over the majority of the West Bank territory.

A still more glaring problem: Israel is a democratic state with civilian control of the military and an independent, rigorous judiciary that can adjudicate war-crimes allegations. This isn’t some war-torn, broken state or one transitioning out of recent dictatorship — like, er, Gambia. Israel doesn’t need ICC supervision to prosecute war crimes by its own soldiers.

But Bensouda cares not for legal niceties. She has previously opined that Gaza, from which Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005, remains occupied, because the “international community” says so. The fact that she has gone ahead with this prosecution means she already buys the anti-Israel narrative wholesale: that “Palestine” is a sovereign state; that all of the West Bank belongs to that Palestinian state; and that Jews living in their biblical heartland are war criminals.

Did ICC prosecutors engage with Hamas when drafting case against Israel?

Prosecutors from the International Criminal Court did not deny that they engaged with representatives of the terrorist groups Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) when preparing their case to investigate Israel for alleged war crimes.

When asked whether it heard arguments from Hamas, the ICC told The Jerusalem Post it engages with all kinds of groups within Israeli and Palestinian society. However, it added, its official focal point is with the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas.

Still, the PA’s official committee, appointed by President Mahmoud Abbas to handle matters related to the ICC, which definitely engaged with the court, includes representatives of Hamas and PFLP, among them individuals with known ties to terrorism.

PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat, head of the ICC committee, said on official Palestinian TV earlier this month – the day after the probe of Israel and the Palestinians was announced – that Hamas had been involved.

“This committee includes all the bodies of the Palestinian political spectrum without exception… We worked together as a team,” he stated in a video translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). “Dr. Ghazi Hammad, for example, was elected as the committee’s spokesman… He is one of Hamas’s leaders. There were six Hamas members in the committee. Khalida Jarrar – may she be released [from prison] soon – represented the PFLP. I don’t want to go into the names, but I will just say that no [faction] was left out.”

Fatah terror group holds parade in Gaza. Practically no one shows up.

The Nidal Al-Amoudi brigades of Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades held a parade in Gaza to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the first Fatah terror attack.

About ten years ago, Mahmoud Abbas claimed he dismantled all the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades military groups. He lied.

There were a few teen gawkers at the parade, based on the photos, and no one else.

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