Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Cartoon of the Day: As long as you avoid the J-word....

Continuing my series of re-captioning single panel comics...

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If Not Now To Offer 'Ultra-ULTRA-Orthodox' Rabbinic Ordination (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

New York, January 23 - Two progressive, pro-Palestinian organizations that play up Jewish connections and names to bolster their otherwise negligible Hebraic legitimacy have launched a joint initiative to underscore the traditional bona fides they often get accused of lacking, the groups announced today, with a program that aims to train members for the title "rabbi," the main qualification for which will be anti-Zionism. Based on the group members' understanding that "true" Jews oppose Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish ancestral homeland, the two organizations intend to identify their rabbis as "ultra-ULTRA-Orthodox," reflecting a level of anti-Zionism that goes even beyond that of such groups as Neturei Karta.

If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace unveiled a new syllabus today for members who wish to carry the religious title Rabbi, so they can wield it to fend off criticism of their manifestly anti-Jewish activities, rhetoric, and ideologies, representatives of the organizations disclosed Thursday.

According to materials distributed at a press event, the curriculum will include homiletic pointers on how to extract anti-Israel messages from facile readings of canonical texts; how to distort the plain meaning and intent of a passage to make Zionism appear evil; and how to remove context and neighboring material to prevent discovery that the source in question actually means the opposite of what the activist contends.

"We've struggled with Jewish authenticity issues for some time," admitted If Not Now founder and director Seth Woody, an evangelical Christian. "At first we simply dismissed challenges to our Jewishness as pretexts for fascist Jewish supremacism, which is basically what Zionism is - just ask Linda Sarsour, for example, if you want an authentic Jewish perspective. But gradually we realized what an opportunity we had on our hands."

"We're used to taking terms and redefining them to suit our purposes," he continued. "Well, we figured, why not do that to the entire institution of rabbinics? Before long, we and our Jewish allies at Jewish Voice for Peace - have I mentioned they're Jewish? - will be ordaining rabbis of our own who can challenge the mainstream idea of who gets to interpret Jewish tradition, without the distraction of who actually has the background to do so. And we're going to be unassailable in that, because it'll be even more anti-Zionist than our Neturei Karta friends who visit Tehran for Holocaust denial conferences. It'll make us more Jewish than all the Jews. Kind of like followers of Jesus."

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01/23 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Sovereign or beggar – It is Israel’s choice to make; Richard Grenell: Why EU should ban Hezbollah; The time the CIA took a terrorist to Disneyland

From Ian:

Caroline B. Glick: Sovereign or beggar – It is Israel’s choice to make

And after the damage he caused, in 2011, Barack had the gall to accuse Netanyahu of causing a "diplomatic tsunami" against Israel due to his refusal to make even more expansive concessions to the PLO.

The Lapid/Barak/Peres model of statesmanship is the Beggar in Jerusalem paradigm. The beggar paradigm begins with an assertion that Israel's default status is that of a pariah state. Its very existence depends on the goodwill – and pity – of America and Europe.

Lapid's Beggar in Jerusalem paradigm requires Israel to dance to the US-EU fiddle. To this end, the paradigm requires that Israel surrender Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem to the PLO while sucking up to Arafat's PLO heirs. It is only by pleasing them, the beggars claim, that Israel will make Europe – and the American Left happy.

The beggar paradigm was the basis for Israel's foreign policymaking from 1992 until it was exchanged in 2009 for another one. That alternative paradigm should rightly be called the Sovereignty paradigm.

The Sovereignty paradigm is the model championed by Netanyahu. At its core is the assumption that Israel's strength is the key to its success. The Sovereignty paradigm asserts that Israeli strength is what attracts foreign partners to work with it in ways that advance its economic, diplomatic and military interests. The advancement of those interests makes Israel even stronger, which in turn, attracts still more foreign partners.

The motorcades of the dozens of foreign leaders who ascended the Judea Hills to Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem this week are like a thousand bells proclaiming the victory of the Netanyahu's Sovereignty model of foreign policy over the Beggar in Jerusalem paradigm of his predecessors and would-be successors.

The fact that these leaders have come to Jerusalem at the same time that Israel's elected leaders are openly working to extend Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea only underscores the wisdom and success of the sovereignty model.

Clifford D. May: Iranian regime's 'gray-zone' war tactics are the new norm

In his recently published book, “Call Sign Chaos,” former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis recalls that when he led U.S. Central Command from 2010 to 2013, he understood that “we faced two principal adversaries: stateless Sunni Islamist terrorists and the revolutionary Shiite regime of Iran, the most destabilizing country in the region.” He adds: “Iran was by far the more deadly of the two threats.”

Gen. Mattis was disappointed when President Obama treated the foiled 2011 Iranian plot to bomb a restaurant in Washington — yet another “act of war” — as merely “a law enforcement violation, jailing the low-level courier” and making no attempt to hold the regime accountable.

Mr. Obama went on to conclude a deal that gave Iran’s rulers a $150 billion windfall. If they were appeased, they didn’t show it.

Mr. Trump exited the deal. France, Britain and Germany remained. Nevertheless, in June 2018, French authorities foiled a plot by Tehran to bomb a gathering of Iranian dissidents in Paris.

In response, the French froze the assets of two suspected regime intelligence operatives. You think that caused Soleimani and Ayatollah Khomenei to shiver in their shoes?

Here’s what we should know by now: Gray-zone war is the new normal, the new black, if you will. After four decades, we ought to have settled on a strategy to counter this threat.

But when a distinguished scholar on the left and a popular television host on the right don’t even grasp the reality — insisting instead that striking back at those attacking us could put us on “the brink” of war — it becomes apparent why we have made so little progress in this conflict.

Richard A. Grenell: Why EU should ban Hezbollah

In one of its last acts of 2019, the German parliament called on the government to ban Hezbollah. Recent developments show the government is ready to act, using available legal tools to deny the Iranian terror proxy the ability to plan, recruit and raise funds on German soil. The European Union should follow the German parliament’s lead and recognize Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organization.

Berlin’s action comes in the wake of continued paralysis in Brussels, where some member countries still argue for Hezbollah’s legitimacy due to its political role in Lebanon. The EU thus maintains an artificial distinction between Hezbollah’s “political wing” and “military wing,” a division the terror group itself does not recognize. The EU’s stated intent for creating this false distinction is to preserve an open channel with Hezbollah and its representatives in the Lebanese government.

The facts belie the EU’s stance. Hezbollah works for the Iranian regime, not the Lebanese people, who have protested against Iran’s influence in their country since October. It contributes to the 400,000-plus death toll in Syria, and remains dedicated to the extermination of Israel. It has planned and executed terrorist attacks on European soil. And it flouts the rule of law, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in financing per year through criminal networks and transnational money laundering schemes originating in or transiting Europe. An EU-wide designation of Hezbollah is necessary to deny it the vast European recruiting and fundraising networks it needs to survive.

This designation would not deprive Brussels of its open channel to the Lebanese government. The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and others each recognize Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and each maintains a robust relationship with Lebanon. In fact, Lebanon receives more foreign assistance from the U.S. than from any other country in the world. Designating Hezbollah as a terrorist organization does no harm to U.S.-Lebanese relations, but it does empower the U.S. to disrupt the international criminal networks that help fund Hezbollah’s support for the Assad regime and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

On January 10, U.S President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting revenue used by the Iranian regime to fund and support its terrorist proxy networks. The U.S. imposed additional sanctions against broad sectors of the Iranian economy, including construction, manufacturing, and mining, to further deny funding to terrorist groups that threaten the U.S., Europe and our partners in the Middle East.

An Alternative Solution

Michael Lumish

Enno Raschke is a researcher and historian for Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Center in Jerusalem. I am happy to say that we occasionally cross swords, but I respect the guy. It is, after all, difficult for me not to respect a historian with Yad Vashem.

On Facebook, I recently put out a brief note claiming that "The two-state solution is dead. Get over it."

This seems pretty self-evident at this point, but people -- particularly Jews -- will always disagree about almost anything. Enno responded in a way that I consider entirely reasonable. He wrote:

People who say "The Two State Solution is dead" never have a credible, doable alternative solution (as in: one that is acceptable for people outside of their own political bubble). And as long as that remains the case, the 2SS is not dead.

This is a core question among those of us who care about the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel.

Enno seems to think that there is no other possibility than continuing to pursue a two-state solution that the Arabs have rejected since at least the Peel Commission of 1937. That is to say, he refuses to take "no" for an answer. He wants us to go on and on and on requesting peace while the Arabs always refuse.

What I am considering is more along the lines of Caroline Glick and Martin Sherman. It is one possible answer to Enno's question. Annex Judea - Samaria, up to the Jordan River. Those hillsides above Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are traditional Jewish land. The Arabs, along with others, conquered it, but the Jews are the only extant indigenous people to that land. That is our land and we should not respect the rights of conquerors to steal it from us, particularly within living memory of the Holocaust (Shoah).

There are two major fears concerning the Jewish annexation of Jewish land. The first is demographic and the second is international reaction. What I propose -- with some modesty, thank you -- is that Israel annex Judea - Samaria up to the Jordan. The demographic problem need not be a problem if it is dealt with in a straightforward manner. A reasonable percentage of non-Israelis who live on that land would need to be interviewed. Those who despise Jews would need to move elsewhere. Those who do not express any such hatred would need, just like Jewish citizens of Israel, to do a few years of national service. Those who complete that service with good report should be offered Israeli citizenship.

The international reaction to a Jewish annexation of Jewish land is more complex. Western-Europe, the European Union, the United Nations, and the Democratic Party leadership essentially despise the Jewish people and our state. If Israel were to annex our own land they would throw a fit. But if we fail to do so in coming years than we will never be able to do so and we will remain forever back on our feet. We will always be at the mercy of Europeans who think that persecuting Jews is a matter of "social justice" and Arabs and Muslims who simply want us dead or gone from our own historical homeland.

But if there was any a moment in recent Jewish history to claim our land, now is probably the time. Not only do we have an ally in the White House, but we have greater economic, technological, medical, scientific, and diplomatic reach than in any time in Jewish history.

What I would suggest to my friend, Enno, despite the fact that I am sitting in my perch in northern California, is that perhaps now is the time for bold action.

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Hundreds gather to celebrate 55th anniversary of Fatah's first terror attack against Israel - in London

Every year the terror group Fatah, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, celebrates the anniversary of its first terror attack against Israel, a failed attempt to attack Israel's water carrier on January 1, 1965.

Fatah holds these events for weeks, including in other countries. This year they held them in Turkey, Syria, Tunisia, Malaysia, Egypt and Cyprus.

And Britain.

Hundreds gathered in London this past Saturday night to celebrate the terrorists of Fatah.

And, yes, they were celebrating violence:

As far as I can tell, Cyprus and the UK were the only non-Muslim nations to host celebrations for this terror anniversary.

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Palestinian reaction to Holocaust forum: "Palestinians have lived with a Holocaust every day for 70 years"

Felesteen has an article of Palestinian reaction to the International Holocaust Forum being held in Jerusalem. And it is quite predictable.

"The Palestinians are subjected to the Holocaust and daily crimes committed against them for 70 years. The international presence indicates that the world is heading towards the extreme right, and the peoples of the world deal in the language of self-interest, not in the language of principles of international law," the article states.

Writer and political analyst Rasim Obaidat told the newspaper, "The participation of the leaders of about 40 countries in the (Holocaust) Forum demonstrates that the countries of the Western world and the colonial powers always stand by the occupation state." He added that the forum also demonstrates the weakness of Palestinian diplomacy and the collapse of the official Arab system. The presence of major countries is an indication that the occupation is achieving international successes, he said.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said the large participation in the forum indicates the "hypocrisy of the capitalist system with the Zionist entity's crimes against the Palestinian people." The PFLP added that "this forum and other endeavors of the Zionist entity to exploit the issue of (the Holocaust) is aimed at covering up the imperialist and Zionist crimes against our Palestinian people that have continued to be committed around the clock since 1917".

An article in Fatah's website says

Europeans victorious in the European war called the Second World War meet to announce remorse for their heinous colonial actions against the Jews, but at the same time they put their hands in the new terrorist monster they made, which is the state of the Zionist aggression, ....to atone for their sins where the persecution took place, but they were established on our land, with a loose religious cover.
They wrote history and lied in their racial greed, just as the priests of the Torah lied. Instead of respecting them in their countries in Europe and Russia, they considered them garbage that must be disposed of.

....The Holocaust of Palestine has been happening since the entry of General Allenby to Palestine.

Again, Holocaust denial seems to be out of fashion. Now it is Holocaust revisionism where the main victims are Palestinian.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

“…the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.” – the will of Alfred Nobel

The Nobel Prize for Peace has been awarded several times for accomplishments in Middle East peacemaking. It’s been given to some truly deserving people, like Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, to some undeserving ones, like Shimon Peres, and to some who – if there were such a thing – in truth deserved the Hitler/Stalin Prize for evil, like Yasser Arafat.

Because of its anti-nationalist and anti-Western bias, the chance that the Nobel Committee will award the prize to US President Trump is microscopically small. But I think that an dispassionate examination will show that they ought to think about it.

Before I explain what I suppose will be considered my contrarian position, I should note that Nobel said nothing about ethical business practices, avoidance of conflict of interest, or general likeability. He did not require monogamy, or insist that a Nobel Laureate refrain from vulgarity in expression, or other unsavory things that Trump could be credibly charged with. The prize is awarded to those who have “conferred the greatest benefit to humankind” by promoting peace; and as I will argue, nobody has done more in recent years to reduce Middle Eastern conflict than Donald Trump.

The biggest threat to peace in the Middle East today comes from the Iranian regime: its expansionism, support for terrorism, and of course its nuclear weapons program. Less serious, but still relevant, is the ever-ongoing Arab war against Israel. Trump has acted in a way that promotes peace in both of these areas.

The Obama Administration agreed to a deal (the JCPOA) which removed painful sanctions from Iran in return for an agreement which – in the best case – would have merely delayed Iran’s breakout as a nuclear weapons state for a decade. In fact, the agreement was full of holes relating to inspections and verification, so it is doubtful that even the hoped-for delay would have been realized.

The removal of sanctions mandated by the deal enabled Iran to invest its newly available funds in training and arming terrorist militias in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, in missile development, in undercover terror cells around the world, and in its nuclear program, taking advantage of the various loopholes in the agreement.

Trump exited from the deal, re-imposed sanctions, and took other actions – for example, the targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani – which have greatly weakened the Iranian regime and thrown a monkey wrench into its plans, at least temporarily.

The Iranian regime wants a nuclear umbrella to protect it against the US and Israel, while it implements its plan to dominate the region and its oil resources, to push out all American influence, to destroy Israel, and to establish a Shiite caliphate that will replace Saudi Arabia as the center of the Islamic world.

Apparently, the Obama Administration believed that the interests of the US would be served by aligning itself with the Iranian regime against former American allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, even if this meant providing Iran a safe path to acquire nuclear arms. On the face of it, this seems absurd, but the administration’s actions throughout the eight years of its tenure can’t be interpreted in any other way. The deeper motivations of Obama and his people remain a matter of (dark) speculation. But Trump’s leaving the JCPOA and his killing of Soleimani unambiguously mark the repudiation of this policy.

The Iranian regime’s Hezbollah subsidiary has been exporting terrorism, particularly against Jewish targets on every continent except perhaps Antarctica. Arch-terrorist Soleimani was pulling the strings at the center of this web, and his elimination was a serious blow to it. He was in the process of setting up proxy militias similar to Hezbollah in Iraq and Syria when he received his 72-virgin salute.

Soleimani was in charge of foreign operations for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), but was also considered one of the three most powerful men in the regime, who might even become the successor to Ali Khamenei. The IRGC is also responsible for suppressing dissent and protests within the country, and Iranian dissidents cheered the death of Soleimani, which they saw as greatly weakening the regime.

Trump’s tweets of support in Farsi to the Iranian people (as opposed to the lack of support shown to Iran’s Green Movement in 2009 by the Obama Administration) also bolstered popular opposition. Although the regime is highly oppressive and not loath to shoot protesters, the present unrest is its most serious challenge since the 1979 revolution.

Trump hasn’t limited his activism to the problem of Iran. It used to be fashionable to claim that the “plight of the Palestinians” was the primary source of instability in the Middle East, and that when it was “solved” (always at Israel’s expense), all of the various players in the region would lie down together in peace. And while this theory ignored things like the Sunni/Shiite conflict, Iranian expansionism, and radical Sunni groups like ISIS, it is nevertheless true that the Palestinian Arabs created chaos for decades, leveraging the Cold War, and now the Iranian-American conflict, to keep their anti-Israel war going.

In 1970, the PLO fought a mini-war against Jordan. Then it moved to Lebanon, where it started a vicious civil war whose embers still smolder and threaten to flare up. In 1982, it provoked Israel into a destructive war in Lebanon. During the 1980s, Palestinian terrorists brought their murderous activity to Europe as well as the Middle East, hijacking planes and even a cruise ship, and murdering Jewish athletes.

Part of the Obama/Ben Rhodes plan mentioned above to realign US interests included “solving” the Palestinian problem by weakening Israel and creating a Palestinian state. The idea was originally enunciated in the Iraq Study Report that Rhodes contributed to in 2006. Forcing Israel back to pre-1967 lines was part of the plan.

Obama and his people ignored the fact that Palestinian objectives didn’t stop at the Green Line (maybe they were aware of this and thought that the original creation of a Jewish state was a mistake anyway). They ignored the Iranian regime’s oft-stated intent to “wipe Israel off the map.” They followed a course that would reinforce the belief of both the ayatollahs and the PLO/Hamas that they would be given Israel on a platter, a dangerous tactic that could bring about a regional war that might dwarf the “big wars” of 1967 and 1973.

Trump short-circuited all of this. He cut funding to UNRWA, the UN agency dedicated to building an army of stateless “Palestinian refugees” to use as both a diplomatic and military weapon against Israel. He rectified the embarrassing failure of the US to admit reality, recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and move the US Embassy there. He signed the Taylor Force Act to keep American taxpayers from subsidizing Palestinian terrorism. He recognized Israel’s possession of the Golan Heights, essential for her security. His State Department rejected the idea that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria were automatically illegal. In short, he took steps to put an end to the decades-long policy of encouraging the PLO and Hamas in their belief that a combination of terrorism and diplomacy would ultimately evict the Jews from the land of Israel.

Trump may have cut the Gordian Knot in the Middle East. If the American voters give him time to follow through, he may be able to prevent Iran from going nuclear, and perhaps help the Iranian people throw off the oppressive revolutionary Islamic regime. He might even end the Arab war against Israel, after some 100-odd years.

And if he succeeds, nothing could be more fitting than Donald Trump becoming the fifth American president to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

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British Muslims reject Jewish solidarity over Uyghur Muslim persecution

Last month, the Board of Deputies of British Jews announced an event to be held at the London Central Mosque as an interfaith event in solidarity with the oppressed Uyghur Muslims:

Last week, the BOD issued an update. The event will now be held at the House of Commons, and there will be no representation from the London Central Mosque.

Note the difference is the subheading, from "How can Muslims and Jews unite" to "How can communities unite..."

What happened?

A group of Muslims wrote a letter to the London Central Mosque urging them not to host the event because the Board of Deputies was too "Zionist."

It said, in part, “it is the connection of the Board supporting Israel, who are renowned for human rights abuses against the Palestinians, and them being part of your event to overcome human rights abuses against the Uyghurs, that is difficult to reconcile. In order to seek freedom and justice for the Uyghur, no event/organisation/individual should partner with any organisation that is seen as publicly expressing and supporting human rights abuses in other parts of the world.”

The letter concluded requesting the mosque to "reconsider its decision to host this event with the Board until such time that the Board distances itself from the Israeli occupation of Palestine and its apartheid policies.”

And the London Central Mosque caved.

This was originally publicized in a British Muslim site called 5pillars. The article itself was taken down, but its editor, Roshan M. Salih, tweeted it:

That same 5Pillars site has articles that justify Palestinian attacks on Jewish civilians. Here's one that supports and praises shooting rockets at Israeli Jewish civilians, a war crime by any definition:

Resistance rockets fired from the Gaza Strip provide a necessary counter-discourse. The Israeli Jewish public must understand that there shall be no security so long as they do not turn their anger and frustration at their very supremacist privilege and ideological system which is embodied in the Israeli government, left-wing, centrist, or right-wing.
No one is asking them to leave, but they must accept Palestinian resistance insofar as they accept the arrogance which characterises the Zionist ideology. The radical potential of Palestinian rockets, of sirens going off, lies in these rockets’ ability to disrupt a system of privilege which Israeli Jews enjoy at the expense of colonised and displaced Palestinians.
Rockets, in other words, are a radical declaration of existence and unmediated expression of self-determination.

Only two months ago the same site wrote, "Palestinians have been left with no alternative to resistance, in all its forms," the second phrase meant to include attacks on Jewish women and children.

So it is the height of hypocrisy to say that "no event/organisation/individual should partner with any organisation that is seen as publicly expressing and supporting human rights abuses in other parts of the world" when clearly British Muslim organizations like 5Pillars that explicitly and proudly support terrorism against Israelis would be welcome to any such event.

No, the reason that the London Central Mosque decided to drop the event is because of the unadulterated antisemitism of some British Muslims who essentially threatened the mosque if they go through with it. The London Central Mosque and its director who was to speak knew exactly who the Board of Deputies was when they originally agreed to host the event; it is fear of the Muslim antisemites that caused them to change their minds. They didn't have the moral fiber to stand up to them and say that the symbolism of solidarity with the most prominent Jewish organization in the UK was far more important. Essentially, they threw the Uyghurs under the bus in order to placate Jew-hating British Muslims.

Notice that the Board of Deputies could have cancelled the event altogether after being treated like this by their partners. Instead, they found another prominent venue to push this very important conference. And they are partnering now with the World Uyghur Congress, who understand that some things are more important than anti-Zionist pissing matches.

British Jews actually want to help the Uyghurs; too many British Muslims would rather play politics.

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01/22 Links Pt2: President Rivlin: We must all demand: Never again; What Martin Luther King Thought of Israel; BDS: War by Other Means; Jesse Eisenberg to portray's resistance-era Marcel Marceau

From Ian:

President Reuven Rivlin: We must all demand: Never again

Memory is the cornerstone of the ethos of the Jewish people. We are not prisoners of the past, but rather we consider our steps carefully as we face past events and look to the future with hope.

It is this shared memory that makes a people into a nation, that shapes our national character and outlines our way. This is why we are duty-bound to preserve it and to pass it down to future generations.

The Fifth World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem is a historic gathering where we will once again commit to preserving the memory of the Holocaust and imparting its legacy to future generations.

It is with the deepest appreciation that I welcome each of the leaders visiting the capital of Israel, who bring with them their unique voice and national identity. Together we stand, shoulder to shoulder, in our fight against anti-Semitism in all its forms. This is a struggle that we must wage unwaveringly.

We must recognize anti-Semitism wherever it rears its ugly head; when it is legitimized in the centers of power, in the public arena, and even in academia, and we must fight it.

We, the members of the family of nations, are required to realize the oath "never again" through action: to educate future generations, enforce the law, eradicate incitement on social media, keep the Jewish communities safe, and to promote the study of the Holocaust without political restriction.

For the sake of our children – for our sake and for all of humanity – we will call from Jerusalem together, "Never again;" we will preserve the memory of the Holocaust and fight anti-Semitism.

World leaders to make online 'Never Again' pledge

President Reuven Rivlin and dozens of world leaders attending this week's Fifth World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem will take part in the online Holocaust education project known as "Eva Stories," which tells the story of a Hungrian girl through Instagram.

In the project, dozens of Instagram video posts, in a special format known as "stories", show a cast in period costume and locations acting out passages from the diary of Eva Heyman, a 13-year-old Hungarian deported to her death in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944.

The leaders will be active participants in the stories, sending the digital character online messages. This, organizers say, will help make the project even more widespread and help combat anti-Semitism. Their messages, which will address Eva and contemporary children, will include the pledge of "Never Again."

Responding to Those Who Claim Judaism is ‘Just a Religion’

Recently, on a friend’s page, an Arab Supremacist Israel hater wrote the following to me:

“I respect Judaism for what it is, a religion. European Zionism is Colonialist and racist. Arab Jews and Arab Muslims lived in a relatively peaceful state of co-existence until the intrusion of European Zionism. The European Zionists sowed the seeds of hatred and mistrust between Arab Jews and Arab Muslims which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews being forced out of Arab countries and into Palestine. It then forced hundreds of thousands of Arab Muslims out of Palestine and into the Arab countries from whence the Arab Jews came.

The European Zionists manipulated and displaced the indigenous Arab Jews and Arab Muslims for the sake of their own Colonialist ambitions. The Arab Jews(Mizrahi) soon became the silent victims of European Zionist oppression and racism.”
As this ahistorical antisemitic nonsense is often part of the talking points of the antisemitic Arab Supremacists and their allies on the far-right and far-left (ironically); I thought I would share my response:

What a colonialist Arab Supremacist and thoroughly patronizing screed – which is what one should expect from a racist supremacist trying to sound enlightened and trying to couch his racism and supremacism in modern politically correct rhetoric.

Let’s take your above historically inaccurate and baseless claims one at a time:

First: [“I respect Judaism for what it is, a religion.”] No. As I have written before – and which you have not even tried to respond to – Judaism is not just “a religion.” It is plainly and has always been a tribal faith and a peoplehood. It is why one can have Jewish atheists and why – according to the Tanach and the Talmud and the writings of all great Jewish thinkers and philosophers – that even if a Jew converts to another religion or faith, he or she remains a part of the Jewish people. It is why Ruth, the great-grandmother of King David, and the most famous person to undergo the tribal acceptance process called “giyoor” (very loosely translated to be a conversion) in order to become a member of our tribe, first and famously said, “Your people shall be my people” as literally every person undergoing a giyoor first avers to this very day. Peoplehood – joining the Jewish people, becoming a member of our tribe is literally the first oath and commitment undertaken by someone who was not born Jewish becoming a Jew. Because, Judaism is not “just a religion” it is a nationality, an ethnicity, a peoplehood. Always has been.

Second: [“European Zionism is Colonialist and racist.”] – Coming from someone who plainly supports Arab colonialism and wants all of the lands in the MENA to remain under the control of arguably the most racist, misoyginst, homophobic, regimes in the world, where the most common way to refer to indigenous Africans is “abeed” the Arabic word for “slave” … this is particularly rich. To be clear, all Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. The land of Israel is where the Jewish people had its ethnogenesis. Our language, culture, tribal faith, … literally everything that matters to making a Jew a Jew, originated in the land of Israel. For the Arabs occupying the rest of the MENA, everything that defines them as Arabs had its ethnogenesis in Arabia. To the extent they exercise dominion and control over any lands outside of Arabia, that is purely the product of brutal conquest and colonialization. (h/t IsaacStorm)

What Martin Luther King Thought of Israel

Not a year goes by without an attempt by someone to associate the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. with the Palestinian cause. It's particularly striking, since the late Palestinian academic Edward Said noted in 1993: "I was very soon turned off by Martin Luther King, who revealed himself to be a tremendous Zionist, and who always used to speak very warmly in support of Israel, particularly in '67, after the war."

King knew the "plight" of the Palestinians perfectly well, having visited Jordanian-held East Jerusalem in 1959, where he got a tutorial from the leading lights of Arab Palestine. Yet he never left a quote in support of any aspect of the Palestinian Arab cause.

King believed that the Palestinian refugee problem, if not the Arab-Israeli conflict as a whole, could best be resolved through "a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, where we lift those who are at the bottom of the economic ladder and bring them into the mainstream of economic security." Today that would be called "economic peace."

UCLA historian Robin D.G. Kelley recently claimed that King kept his silence on Israel to win Jewish financial or political support for the civil rights movement. But this notion of a quid pro quo takes no account of the spiritual dimension of King's ties to Zionist Jews. The two who were closest to him were refugee rabbis from Hitler's Europe.

Joachim Prinz (1902-1988), who allied himself with King in 1958, spoke just before King at the 1963 March on Washington. Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) marched in the front line with King in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Both were eloquently committed to Israel. For King, these men were not "supporters," they were fellow visionaries, with whom he shared prophetic values.

The attempt to make King into an advocate for Palestine is an offense to history.

David versus Goliath Source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:David_gegen_goliath2.jpg

David vs. Goliath, seen in a 13th century drawing by a Jew in France.

It seems like I’ve always had a bug about Israel. I’m not sure when it began. But I remember reading stories about Solomon and David, kings of Israel. These were chapter books in the Beth Shalom library in Squirrel Hill. They were tailored to very young children.

I wish I remembered the names of the author and titles of those books. I don’t. This is a very early almost sense memory of a book series I could not stop reading. I would be very sad if I went to the library and found that someone had already taken out those books. I would walk out of the library and back to Sunday school class, downcast and quiet.

Those stories made Jews into people the whole world looked to for counsel and advice. They made Jews wise and valiant. Heroes on the battlefield and champions of wisdom.

We were a warrior people. That is a key truth I absorbed early on about my personal history. I understood from this that Israel was something worth fighting and dying for.

Israel shone like a gem in the time of Solomon and David. She was the prize for excellence as a people. A land with qualities and potentials never to be found elsewhere in all of the world. A land others would covet for eternity.

I felt the truth of these stories and their ancient wisdom, drawn from midrashim about the kings, with Israel as the backdrop. Even when served up in simplified language and embroidered with illustrations to make them digestible for children, these stories ignited in me a fire that has burned until now.

This was the Israel and the people with whom I fell in love. The Israel that made me hold my head back and my shoulders high. For if God gave the Jews this special place, it had to mean that we were a special people. We were truly fortunate in Israel.

I did not yet know the word “symbiosis" at the age of 7 or 8. But reading those storybooks, I understood that Israel and the Jewish people were intertwined and interdependent. Tied together, forever.

I absorbed the customs and the rituals of my people, learned the language and the culture. It was all of a piece: a part of the same dynamic. Every time I answered a question with a question, ate a bowl of chicken soup, or said the shema, I was strengthening and deepening the bond. There was a feeling, a passion about it all, and it was quite specific to being a part of the Jewish people of the Land of Israel. A people predating the birth of Mohammed. I breathed it all in through my pores and dreamed of leaving for Israel until I did more than dream. I made aliyah. I came to live in Israel.

When I think back on how the passion grew, how I am where I am today, I know it begins with stories of kings. It begins with a vision of the Jews as a fine wise warrior people. This is what made me catch fire for Israel, where I am today, 40 years and counting.

Every morning I wake up filled with joy to be in Israel. This is a deep happiness that has nothing to do with material wealth, or anything else, really. It’s a mindset, or perhaps more accurately a "heart" set: a case of Israel in the heart.

That is how it is with your first love.

My love of Israel is a love that begins with fairy tales of kings.

It has a beginning, but apparently no end.

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.@HRW's @KenRoth proves again how dishonest he is

This tweet from Ken Roth, head of Human Rights Watch, shows yet again what a dishonest and reprehensible person he is.

Roth is implying two falsehoods.

One is that he cares about antisemitism.

The other is that Israel didn't care about antisemitism until Netanyahu "weaponized" it against groups like Human Rights Watch.

Now, let's look at the actual article that Roth linked to, by David M. Weinberg. Here's what he says about Israel's attitude towards disapora antisemitism in its early days:

The State of Israel has not always seen the struggle against global anti-Semitism as its fight. For the first 25 years of Israel’s existence, the unspoken attitude in Jerusalem was that if Jews abroad had a problem with anti-Semites, they could always immigrate to Israel. Immersed in the business of building and defending the Jewish state, Israel’s leaders had no time for “troubles of the Diaspora.”

Attitudes began to change after the Yom Kippur War. The campaign of political delegitimization against Israel launched by Arab countries led to the infamous 1975 “Zionism is Racism” resolution at the United Nations, alongside an avalanche of propaganda that blended anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. Israel began to take notice. But still the prevailing attitude in Jerusalem was that anti-Semitism was a Diaspora problem for Diaspora Jews and their host countries.

However, after the 1980 Rue Copernic synagogue bombing in Paris and other terror attacks, then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin took the decision to have Israeli intelligence officials begin advising Jewish communities abroad on security measures. Response to global anti-Semitism thus found a concrete place on Israel’s national agenda.

Israel had to worry about its survival in its early days, it didn't have the luxury of protecting the world Jewish community. The despicable Roth twists that into saying that Israel didn't give a damn about antisemitism until it could selfishly conflate it with anti-Zionism.

The article explains quite well how anti-Zionism and antisemitism were conflated for as long as Israel existed, but especially with the "Zionism is Racism" resolution at the UN and through the infamous 2001 Durban conference of which HRW was an enthusiastic participant even as the US withdrew because of its antisemitism.

Weinberg notes:

Israel also has sought to dialogue with the international human rights community on these matters. But groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the World Council of Churches have studiously ignored the IHRA framework or rejected its definitions. In fact, they frequently stray into anti-Semitic territory in their incessant and fierce criticism of Israel. They also have consciously ignored the vast amounts of anti-Semitic materials emanating from Arab and Islamic countries.

This is an understatement. Roth has ignored left-wing antisemitism, urban US antisemitism as well as Arab antisemitism.

Since Roth only recognizes right-wing antisemitism, and ignored the rest, it shows that he doesn't care about antisemitism. He is the one who weaponizes antisemitism against his political enemies, not Israel.

Notice also that Roth chose to illustrate the tweet with a photo of Bibi at AIPAC, the "Jewish lobby." His subtext was not lost on his own antisemitic followers, some of whom tweeted back their own antisemitism with no pushback from Roth.

This tweet shows how incredibly dishonest and beneath contempt Ken Roth is, as he uses the mantle of "human rights" to promote his own antisemitic agenda.

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01/22 Links Pt1: Itamar Marcus: Palestinian Authority fights Jews to ‘defend’ all humanity; Israel's UN Ambassador, Speaking in Persian, Says Israel "Stands with Iranian People"

From Ian:

Itamar Marcus: Palestinian Authority fights Jews to ‘defend’ all humanity

This week’s marking of International Holocaust Remembrance Day must be both a commemoration of the past as well as a beacon for the future. If the victims are remembered and the survivors honored, but the world doesn’t implement the lessons that must be learned, we are inviting a recurrence of history’s worst horrors.

One fundamental lesson of the Holocaust is that the world must be vigilant to expose and eliminate all demonization that leads to the justification of murder, whether directed against Jews or any other group.

One of the great failures of the international community has been its tolerant attitude toward the Palestinian Authority’s systematic demonization of Jews.

Antisemitism is now endemic among Palestinians. According to an ADL Global 100 poll a few years ago, the Palestinians are the most antisemitic people in the entire world. Ninety-three percent of Palestinians believed that at least six of the 11 negative stereotypes tested were “probably true,” higher than Iraq at 92% and Yemen at 88%. For example, 91% of Palestinians believe “Jews have too much power in the business world,” 72% believe “Jews think they are better than other people,” and 88% of Palestinians say “Jews have too much control over global affairs.”

The pervasive Palestinian antisemitism is the direct result of the PA’s teachings. PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement recently produced a propaganda video purportedly about Jewish history in Europe which it publicized on Fatah’s official Facebook page. It teaches that Jews see themselves as superior – “We [Jews] are a nation that is above the [other] nations... only we are people, and all the others are our animals” – and others as inferior: “Non-Jews... according to their worldview are snakes.” The Jews, Fatah explained, “led the project to enslave humanity” and allied with Nazis to burn Jews “to accumulate wealth.” The Jews themselves established “ghettos in order to separate from other people out of arrogance and disgust for non-Jews.” It was in the ghettos, the documentary further lies, that the Jews schemed against the non-Jews, leading to European antisemitism: “[Jews] were hated because of their racism and their filthy behavior.”

David Singer: Another anti-Jewish Textbook Gets the Publisher’s Thumbs Down

The decision by Pearson Education Limited (Pearson) to withdraw Hilary Brash’s text book – The Middle East: Conflict, Crisis and Change, 1917-2012 – comes after trenchant criticism by blogger David Collier.

Collier questioned – among many other criticisms – why two timelines did not mention the Holocaust and why references to massacres of Jewish communities had been branded as "clashes".

Collier said:
"It is almost impossible for the untrained eye to pick apart fantasy from fiction."

A spokesman for Pearson said:
"An independent review of the texts by an educational charity found no overall evidence of anti-Israel bias. It identified some areas where the balance of sources could be improved and we are updating the texts and offering existing customers the option of replacing them for free. We always welcome feedback and are committed to creating engaging, accurate and objective content. We are the only awarding body that tackles this subject matter at both GCSE and international GCSE level. We do it as we think it is an important topic, even though it is likely to provoke emotive responses."

Pearson is the UK's largest organisation offering academic, vocational and work-based learning qualifications.

Brash’s book was a textbook for Pearson Edexcel General (GCSE) and International (iGCSE) Certificate of Secondary Education studies.

Last year, 2,341 students took the General unit on the conflict for GCSE and 1,509 for iGCSE.

Pearson’s decision follows McGraw Hill’s decisionin 2016 to trash copies of its textbook Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World.

Catherine Mathis – a spokeswoman for McGraw-Hill – then explained the company’s reasons for destroying the textbook – which contained four misleading and inaccurate maps of “Palestine”:
“As soon as we learned about the concerns with it, we placed sales of the book on hold and immediately initiated an academic review. The review determined that the map did not meet our academic standards. We have informed the authors and we are no longer selling the book. All existing inventory will be destroyed. We apologize and will refund payment to anyone who returns the book.”

The Palestinian Authority’s word and the media’s silence

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has admitted that it will not honor any agreements that violate Sharia (Islamic law). And the press, it seems, has declared that it won’t cover the Authority’s admission. The Authority’s decision illustrates the value of its word. And the media’s decision to ignore it illustrates its own value, as well.

PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh recently said, “The government adheres to Palestinian values and principles, and does not violate the Sharia. …Our religious and national values are above everything else, and this is in keeping with the decision of the Constitutional Court’s decision, and as a protection of our (women’s) honor, the unity of our society and the rule of law [emphasis added].”

The Constitutional Court’s decision, according to an Al-Monitor report, was for “international agreements” to “prevail over local laws, provided these are consistent with the Palestinian religious and cultural legacy.” That ruling was prompted by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 2014.

But as the blogger Elder of Ziyon noted, the PLO did so “without any real intention of implementing it, but to make it look like they are a liberal modern state so they can use that impression to attack Israel at the ICC and elsewhere.”

The signing of CEDAW prompted a backlash, particularly among several Palestinian Arab clans in Hebron, as Al-Monitor noted in a Jan. 5, 2020 dispatch. However, as Elder of Ziyon highlighted, this “goes way beyond CEDAW and women’s rights. This goes to the fundamental issue that the PLO and the Palestinian Authority will happily sign agreements they have no intention of keeping. They will tell the West that they signed the agreement, yet will privately ignore the agreement – just as they have with CEDAW.”

Ma'an reports that Israel today allowed five pieces of earth moving equipment into Gaza after four years of refusals.

The equipment is meant to be used by the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility.

The vehicles, valued at $876,350, were purchased in 2015 with funding from the World Bank within the Gaza Water and Sanitation Systems Improvement Project.

The UNDP negotiated with Israel and an agreement was struck where Israel equipped the vehicles with GPS systems to ensure that they are used only on water projects and not for Hamas to dig tunnels.

Whether that control will be effective is anyone's guess. I don't know what would stop Hamas from simply removing the GPS units at night, digging tunnels and then returning the equipment. Drones would see if the vehicles are moving through Gaza, though.

Ironically, the equipment is from Caterpillar, the company that Israel haters want the world to boycott.

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An op-ed in Al Hayat al Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, says:

The Israeli colonial state is taking advantage of the 75th anniversary of the Holocaust in Europe during World War II to accuse Palestinians of being anti-semites when in fact it is the Arabs, including the Palestinian people, who are Semites, and they are afflicted by Zionist antisemitism, which the Israeli colonial state implements using the tools of repression for more than seventy years since the Palestinian Nakba in the year 1948 and until this day.

And the Palestinian people, and with them all the Arabs, were and are still more in solidarity with the followers of the Jewish religion, who were subjected to the Holocaust in Europe in the 1940s, and which was led by the Hitler regime for its determination against millions of innocent people in Germany, Poland and other western and eastern European countries. Nevertheless, the Zionist movement, supported by all the evil forces in Europe and America, exploited the Holocaust against the Jews to implement the evacuation project at the expense of the Palestinian people, and the catastrophe of its people by expelling its sons from their motherland Palestine to the exiles, and did not respond to the implementation of the international partition resolution No. 181 issued in November 1947, her crime continued to occupy and control 78% of historic Palestine, and not only did that, but in 1967 it occupied all historic Palestine in addition to the Egyptian Sinai, the Syrian Golan, the Shebaa Farms and the Lebanese village of Ghajar. She claimed on all occasions that she wanted "peace." But in reality, it tore up all the international legitimacy decisions related to the Arab-Zionist conflict, struck the foundations of the peace process references, and worked around the clock to criminalize Palestinian national rights and interests in full view of the world, and closed every horizon to avoid reaching an acceptable and possible political settlement determined by the agreements concluded between them and the leadership of the PLO, which made significant and unprecedented concessions by accepting the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital over the area of land it occupied on June 5, 1967, which equals 22% of the area of Palestine, and less than half of what is guaranteed by the Palestinian state partition resolution.

...[The Palestinians] are Semites, not Khazars, who are the Jews who came from Russia, Central Asia and the countries of Europe and other countries in the world....

One of the important lessons from the Holocaust was not to reproduce the Holocaust against the Semitic Palestinian people....

It is not enough for world leaders to shed tears for the victims of German Nazism, but their duty to shed tears for the victims of Zionism...

This laundry list of lies is the official Palestinian narrative about Jews, Israel and the Holocaust.

Ten years ago Palestinians and Arabs routinely denied the Holocaust in their media. The publicity was bad and they mostly abandoned this argument. Now they are just claiming to be the major victims of the Holocaust, that Jews aren't really Jews, and that they were more supportive of Jews in Europe than Zionists were.

When one lie stops getting traction, there are always ten more that can take its place.

This article was also published in other Arabic newspapers. As always, there is not a single Arab in official media who is publicly disagreeing with the lies.

See also:

"Arabs should use Holocaust as a political weapon" (2010)

Pal newspaper: Balfour Declaration worse than Holocaust (which is fake anyway)

Review and excerpts of Mahmoud Abbas' Holocaust denial book

Arabs consider the Holocaust a myth - until it becomes convenient for them to say Jews are worse than Nazis

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Once again, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs puts something out in Arabic in social media - and
Arabs are freaking out.

On Instagram, the IsraelArabic account said:

The Shakshuka dish is one of the most popular dishes among the people of Israel, and its history goes back to the Jewish immigrants from North Africa, and it consists traditionally of pieces of cooked and spiced tomatoes with boiled eggs🍅🇮🇱

There is nothing inaccurate there - it is talking about how Israel learned about and fell in love with the dish. It doesn't say Israel claims to have invented it.

But that is not how Arabs are interpreting it:

Roya News showed the post and after going through the supposed history of how Israel stole falafel and hummus, it says, "In the most recent theft of Palestinian and Arab heritage, they stole Shakshuka, and claim it is a Jewish breakfast!"

The Israel Foreign Ministry has certainly hit the jackpot with its Arabic pages. They attract a large audience, many fans, and they make Arabs who complain about it look infantile.

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