Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 02, 2020

Not only was Jerusalem never the capital of Muslim Palestine - it wasn't even a PART of what Muslims called Palestine

Here is the abstract of the academic article "Was Jerusalem Part of Palestine? The Forgotten City of Ramla, 900–1900" by Zachary J. Foster of Princeton University, published in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies in 2016:

When the Muslims conquered the Levant in the seventh century they at times changed the meaning of ‘Palestine’. They preserved its erstwhile sense as a region but also came to see Palestine as synonymous with the city of Ramla. From the tenth to the early twentieth century, dozens of Muslim exegetes, travellers and chroniclers explained that Ramla and Palestine were the same place. Others thought Palestine was a small region based around Ramla, one that did not include Jerusalem, or that Palestine had much more to do with Ramla than it did Jerusalem. The association had much to do with the cultural tendency in the Arab Middle East to conflate cities and regions as well as the critical role Ramla played in Palestine for much of its history: it served as the capital of the District of Palestine for more than three centuries, its economic hub for many more and its imagined geographical centre up until the early nineteenth century.

The article brings large amounts of evidence from Arab geographers and writers that what they considered "Palestine" was really Ramla or the region around it, and Jerusalem was a completely separate place.

Most cities never came to mean the same thing as their parent regions. But Ramla was not like most cities. Ramla become the seat of the most powerful empire in the world when the seventh-century Umayyad Caliph, Sulayman ‘Abd al-Malik (d.717) moved the seat of Islamic power from Damascus to Ramla. Soon enough, the city emerged as the political, geographic and economic centre of the District of Palestine during the Umayyad (661–750) and most of the Abbasid (750–1258) periods, for it lay at the crossroads of the key trading routes within the District of Palestine as well as the route connecting Damascus and Cairo. Although a massive earthquake in 1068 left some 15,000 people dead and the city in total ruins, Ramla recovered during the Crusader (1095–1291), Fatimid (909–1171) and Ayyubid (1171–1260) periods and remained the most important regional trading hub well into the Mamluk period (1250–1517). The town recorded steady population growth even after the Ottoman conquest in the early sixteenth century. (Jerusalem, by comparison, was a small and sleepy town for most of Islamic history. It had never been located on any major trading routes and its defensive walls were destroyed by an Ayyubid ruler in the early thirteenth century and only rebuilt in the 1530s by Suleiman ‘the Magnificent’.) And so even though Ramla’s population size, economic prosperity and political relevance diminished significantly from the late sixteenth century onwards, names have never been so easy to change. And so the city continued to be associated with Palestine; indeed, it continued to be known as Palestine as late as the eighteenth century if not later.

The Persian traveller Nasr Khusraw (d.1088) was the very first Muslim to say it explicitly. ‘The city of Ramla is called Palestine in both Sham and the Maghreb’, he wrote...
Soon enough, a slew of other writers across the lands of Islam embraced the nickname. The Andalusian geographer and historian al-Bakri (d.1094) noted that Ramla was known as Palestine; the high official in Mamluk Syria Ibn Fadl Allah al-‘Umari (d.1349) claimed that Filastin was also called Ramla in his definition of the Holy Land and commented elsewhere that Sulayman bin ‘Abd al-Malik bin Marwan (d.717) founded the city (madina) of Filastin; the famous Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta (d.1369) also explained after his visit to Jerusalem and Ashkelon that he ‘traveled to the city of Ramla (madinat al-Ramla), which is Filastin (wa hiyya Filastin)’.

...But we have more explicit evidence that Palestine may have been considered a small region based around Ramla, one that did not include Jerusalem. Consider that the great historian al-Waqidi (d.822) consistently listed Jerusalem and the Land of Palestine separately in his account of the conquest of the Levant as if they were separate places. ...
Similarly, a number of other Muslims from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, including the famous biographer Ibn Khallikan (d.1282), Egyptian historian Ibn al-Furat (d.1405) and the Jerusalemite scholar and judge al-Din al-‘Ulaymi (d.1522), described the Kingdom of the Kurdish Ayyubid Sultan al-Mu‘azzam in the early thirteenth century as ‘expansive, from Homs to al-‘Arish, including the Islamic coasts, bilad al-Ghawr, Palestine and Jerusalem’. In this instance, there is no reason to assume that these writers meant Ramla only when they wrote Palestine, as this list included both cities and regions, leaving us with the impression that Palestine may have been considered a region based around Ramla that did not include Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was not even a part of "historic Palestine." It was Christian pilgrims who consistently associated Jerusalem as the most important city of what Christians considered Palestine, and that idea eventually influenced Muslims.

Finally, Foster notes that Palestinians consciously wanted to change history to de-emphasize Ramla and emphasize Jerusalem in the 20th century for purely political reasons:

In other cases there may have been wilful intent to delete Ramla from memory. The historian Muhammad al-Husayni wrote in his 1946 history book about Palestine that ‘we have chosen to focus on Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis) because it has been, and remains, the political and religious capital of this Arab country since the Arabs and Muslims first arrived, save for a brief moment (burha wajiza) in which it was transferred to Ramla’. Whether or not we define the three and a half centuries that Ramla was the political capital of Palestine as brief, or the seven or eight centuries that Ramla was the most important regional economic hub as ephemeral, or the millennium of the linguistic and cultural role that Ramla played in Palestine as fleeting, al-Husayni probably wanted us to believe in Jerusalem’s time-immemorial importance and Ramla’s time immemorial irrelevance. But the record suggests that Ramla was a central part of Palestine’s history...

...And Jerusalem was not.

This is not to say that Jerusalem was not considered part of the Muslim world - of course it was. But it was not part of what Muslims - even colloquially - called "Palestine" for most of the history of Islam. Jerusalem was not a place of pilgrimage and it was not treated as important by most Muslims throughout history.

The claim that Jerusalem is the "eternal capital of Palestine" is complete fiction.

Zachary J. Foster is not a Zionist by any measure - his Twitter account is quite anti-Israel and he even throws in a gratuitous and irrelevant anti-Israel comment in a footnote of this paper. Which makes his research in this area even more compelling - he has completely ripped apart any historic claims that Palestinians have for Jerusalem as their traditional capital.

UPDATE: Israellycool found this article as well.

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03/02 Links Pt1: Let’s Stop Lying About the Two-State ‘Solution’; Sanders on Battling AIPAC: They Have a Lot of Money and Power; Shi'ite Azerbaijan's Historic Speech at AIPAC

From Ian:

Let’s Stop Lying About the Two-State ‘Solution’

Sometimes people believe something so much that even once the belief is no longer viable, they can’t quite let go of it, because it is now indistinguishable from their own sense of self. Case in point: I once asked a leader in the American Jewish community, a liberal Zionist, what he would think if the two-state solution were no longer possible. After a long pause, he responded, “That would be the end of my Zionism.” And so, he continued, he could not give up on the two-state solution.

This may be where liberal Zionists are today. As a University of Pennsylvania political scientist and longtime scholar of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Ian Lustick writes in his excellent and provocative new book, Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality: “Two states for two peoples was a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it is not a solution today.” For many liberal Zionists, this is a hard pill to swallow. But it also might be true.

In many Jewish circles, when talk of two states commences, it often very quickly devolves into: “If only we had a partner for peace!” It is imagined that Israelis are generally willing, but the other side is not. Lustick wants us to shelve that reflexive, and convenient, abdication of responsibility, and look at the situation from a different direction. Whatever the foibles of the Palestinian side, he wants to explore this notion of two states solely from within the structures of Israeli governments and society from the 1970s until today. What he concludes is that the possibility of two states was never really viable on the Israeli side, not because Israelis weren’t willing to try it—many were—but because the very structures of government and societal reactions to changes on the ground made sure it would not happen. In short, once the two-state solution emerged as a possibility in the early 1970s, it very quickly became obsolete.

Lustick begins his argument by suggesting that “two-state solution” or “one-state solution” are mistaken and obfuscating terms. Instead of “two-state solution,” he wants us to understand the “two-state paradigm.” And instead of “one-state solution,” he suggests the “one-state reality.” There is no one-state solution; but there is, from the river to the sea, one state. And that state is called Israel.

Attacks Prompt Swift UK Legislation Blocking Terrorists From Early Prison Release

The United Kingdom has just passed emergency legislation that will stop the early release of convicted terrorists from prison. This decisive action comes on the heels of two recent terror attacks in London by jihadists who were released from prison earlier than the end of their sentences for terror-related crimes.

In November, Usman Khan, who had served eight years in prison before being granted an early release, killed two people and wounded three others in an attack near London Bridge. Khan was wearing a fake suicide vest when he committed the attack. Khan participated in a de-radicalization program. Clearly, the program did not guarantee that Khan was genuinely rehabilitated or would not re-offend.

The second attack came in February, when Sudesh Amman, 20, stabbed two people in the Streatham section of South London. Amman had been released from prison just a week earlier, after he had served about half of his 40-month prison sentence for a 2018 terror conviction.

Undercover police were watching Amman, but they were not able to stop his stabbing spree. He was shot and killed by police within a minute.

The legislation enacted Wednesday blocks early release for about 50 imprisoned extremists, a statement from the UK Ministry of Justice said. It requires that any inmate convicted of a terror-related crime, such as training for terrorism, membership in a terror organization, or disseminating terrorist literature, must complete at least two-thirds of his or her sentence before being considered for release. Even then, the release is not guaranteed.

“No terrorist should be released early only to kill and maim on our streets,” said Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland. “Protecting the public is Government’s first duty and our message is clear — enough is enough.”

The hypocrisy of Amer Zahr’s antisemitic anti-Zionism (part 1 of 2) (Petra Marquardt Bigman)

By Petra Maquardt-Bigman

Sanders surrogate Amer Zahr has never tried to hide his hatred for Israel, and like most anti-Zionists, he thinks it’s perfectly fine to talk about the Jewish state pretty much like the Nazis talked about Jews. But in order to illustrate how fanatic Zahr is, a few pictures are worth a thousand words.

Zahr isn’t shy about announcing his agenda: getting rid of the world’s only Jewish state.

While Zahr will usually proclaim that his Palestine from the river to the sea should be democratic, secular and open, his current Facebook cover photo reflects a different vision: Palestine is Muslim and Christian, Judaism is erased.

Another photo Zahr used as his Facebook cover reveals his support for terrorism: it shows him serenading convicted supermarket bomber and US immigration fraudster Rasmea Odeh. (Here is another photo of Zahr and Odeh having a jolly good time together; and last year, Zahr posted a photo of notorious terrorist Leila Khaled for International Women’s Day. He also seems to be an admirer of the Tamimis, whose most celebrated family member is Sbarro massacre mastermind and facilitator Ahlam Tamimi.)

Given Zahr’s intense hatred for Israel, it’s hard to describe how stunned I was when the awesome kweansmom recently found out that Zahr has Israeli citizenship. Inevitably, this discovery also trains a spotlight on the truly breathtaking hypocrisy of Zahr’s anti-Israel activism, and it’s hardly surprising that the stories he likes to tell about the bitter “refugee” background of his family turn out to be not particularly truthful.

Since this post is based primarily on material shared on Facebook, it should be noted that all cited material is freely accessible at the time of this writing; the links I provide are to archived copies of Facebook posts so that I cannot be accused of making stuff up in case anything is deleted or access is restricted.

Let’s first look at how the Jordanian-born Zahr got Israeli citizenship. Ususally, Zahr claims that his parents were Palestinian “refugees” who were “driven from their birthplaces of Yafa and Akka by Israel.” Yet, as Zahr told The Jerusalem Post in an interview four years ago, he “comes to the Palestinian territories and Israel between one and three times annually” to perform his “comedic routines” – which also means that his BDS advocacy takes the form of “do as I say, not as I do.”

During one of his visits to Israel in 2015, Zahr boasted on Facebook: “At Tel Aviv airport, Israeli security asked me, “What is the purpose of your visit?” I said, “What is the purpose of yours?” #colonizers”. Naturally, some of his followers then wondered why the evil Zionist entity would let him enter the country – after all, it would probably not be advisable to respond like this to a US border security official.

Zahr then explained: “i hold their passport.” When asked how he got “their passport,” Zahr responded: “israeli laws allow for the children of “israeli” mothers to be “naturalized” even if they are born abroad. my palestinian mother was born as an israeli citizen in akka after 1948. so even though i was born in jordan, i could get the passport.” He added sarcastically: “i’m sure that law was meant for cases like mine of course.” To which I’d like to add: I’m sure that Amer Zahr realizes that his relentless demonization of Israel is undermined by the fact that he could get an Israeli passport as the Jordanian-born son of an Arab-Israeli mother who left Israel as a child.

And obviously enough, if Zahr’s “palestinian mother” was “born as an israeli citizen in akka [Akko/Acre] after 1948,” and he was able to get an Israeli passport because of his mother’s Israeli citizenship, it’s doubtful that his claims about her being a “refugee” who was “driven” out by Israel are true.

This apparent lie prompted kweansmom and me to dig a little deeper. After all, Zahr is not only a surrogate who might remain influential if Sanders becomes the Democrats’ presidential candidate or even wins the election, but his anti-Israel activism will arguably benefit in the long run from the visibility he now enjoys as a Sanders surrogate.

As is so often the case with anti-Israel activists, Zahr seems resolved not to let facts ruin his demonization of the world’s only Jewish state. So let’s try to find out how Zahr’s “palestinian mother” became a “refugee” who was “driven” out by Israel while retaining her Israeli citizenship.

Zahr repeats the claim that his mother and her family “were forced out of their homeland” in a Facebook post from February 2018 that includes a photo which, according to Zahr, was taken in “Akka, Palestine in the 1960s,” showing his mother as a child along with one of her sisters and a cousin.

In another post that Zahr wrote when his maternal grandmother passed away in December 2016, he shares some further details: “In 1965, Laila [Zahr’s grandmother], Muhammad [Laila’s husband, i.e. Zahr’s maternal grandfather], and their four daughters [incl. Zahr’s mother] embarked on a boat ride from Haifa to New York, then a bus ride from New York to California, where Muhammad planned to educate himself for two years and then return with his family to Palestine. In 1967, the Israeli state took the opportunity of this short absence to exile Laila, Muhammad, and their children from their ancestral homes. The six became refugees in California.”

Zahr seems to keep his story intentionally vague, but it is not particularly credible for several reasons. From what Zahr writes in this post about his grandmother, it is clear that she married in 1950, when she was just 16. However, it is reasonable to assume that the man she married was at least a few years older. If her husband was just 20 when they got married, he would have been 35 in 1965 – which, at the time, was considered middle-aged. It would have been rather unusual for a middle-aged man with a wife and four children to decide to uproot the whole family to travel half around the world just “to educate himself for two years.” Needless to say, it would also have required considerable financial resources.

But there is another, much more credible version of this story that was posted by Amer Zahr’s aunt, i.e. his mother’s sister (whom he had identified and tagged in the previously cited post from February 2018). In August 2015, Zahr’s aunt posted an old family photo and wrote: “August 8, 1965, fifty years ago, my father, Mohammad Jardali, and my mother, Leila Hawari Jardali, made a life changing decision to move the whole family to the U.S. I am amazed by my parents’ courageous and bold move which encouraged many from our home town in Acca, and family members from Nazareth to follow suit.”

There’s no denying that in 1965, it made a lot of sense for Israeli Arabs to emigrate to the US in search of a better life. Israel was still a fledgling state, surrounded by hostile neighbors bent on its destruction, and the assumption that the Arab minority would be sympathetic to efforts to eliminate the re-established Jewish state meant that until 1966, martial law was imposed on Israeli Arabs. But the perhaps most compelling reason to contemplate emigration was economic: when Israel was founded, its standard of living was just 30 percent of the US standard of living, and particularly in its first decade, the country was still reeling from the War of Independence and strained almost to the breaking point by the challenges of absorbing hundreds of thousands of destitute refugees from all over the Arab-Muslim Middle East.

Zahr proudly describes his grandfather Muhammad as “smart and industrious,” and obviously, his decision to emigrate turned out well: Muhammad “was able to find work and made a respectable and comfortable life for himself, Laila, and his four daughters.” And as we know from the post of Zahr’s aunt, this American success story “encouraged many” from Akko, as well as “family members from Nazareth to follow suit.”

Perhaps Zahr would like us to pity them all as “refugees” and blame Israel for their decision to emigrate to the US?

But it was interesting to find out that there was at least one member of Zahr’s family who apparently reconciled himself early on with Israel’s existence – even though his motivation might have been that he simply hated the Arab regimes more than the new Jewish state: meet Amer Zahr’s maternal great-grandfather Muhammad Nimr al-Hawari.

I chanced upon Muhammad Nimr al-Hawari when I noticed a comment on the post Zahr had written about his maternal grandmother in December 2016. Zahr mentioned that his grandmother Laila Muhammad Hawari was the daughter of “Muhammad … a well-known judge and lawyer in mandate and post-mandate Palestine, hailing from a well-known family in Nazareth.” A man named Faisal Saleh, who describes himself as “Founder and Executive Director of Palestine Museum US”, posted the following response [emphasis added]:

“Our deepest condolences to the Jardali and Hawari families for their loss. It is a small world but I have a connection, though by friendship not blood, to the Howari [Hawari] family. My father […] was best friends with Muhammad Hawari senior - the lawyer and judge - both of them were active members of the Najjadeh movement in pre-1948 Palestine. Muhammad was the commander and overall head of the organization headquartered in Yaffa and my father was the commander of the Salameh area (5 km East of Yaffa). After the 1948 Nakba, Muhammad returned to his native Nazareth choosing to live there rather [than] under the corrupt Arab regimes. […] Muhammad Hawari wrote a book called سر النكبة The Secret of Nakba covering the events and circumstances that lead to the loss of Palestine. A copy of the book was donated to the @palestine Museum US […]. The book, on exhibit at the Museum, was banned in most of the Arab countries.”

One might think that Zahr is bursting with pride that his great-grandfather was among the first to devote a whole book to the “nakba” – so wouldn’t it be a great idea for a committed anti-Israel activist like Zahr to translate the book and use it in his activism?

Well, maybe not. The fact that “The Secret of Nakba” was “banned in most of the Arab countries,” and even more the fact that its author preferred to live in Israel rather than “under the corrupt Arab regimes” indicates that Zahr’s great-grandfather blamed the plight of the Palestinians primarily on the Arab leadership. (See also e.g. here: “Hawari, whose writing is very emotional, concentrates his efforts and energy on attacking the corrupt Arab leadership, particularly the Mufti”.)

The biographical information on Muhammad Hawari’s that is available in English also suggests that he was a complex figure whose story might not go well with his great-grandson’s simplistic anti-Israel activism.

For Zahr, the perhaps most uncomfortable aspect of his great-grandfather’s remarkable story is that, due to his political pragmatism, he was regarded as a “collaborator” in some circles. A very interesting article entitled “The Intimate History of Collaboration – Arab Citizens and the State of Israel” discusses Hillel Cohen’s book “Good Arabs” and claims that Israeli officials admired Hawari’s “charisma” and sponsored him, hoping he would be able to establish a new anti-communist Arab party:

“In the higher echelons of collaborative politics, the state sponsored public figures such as Archbishop George Hakim as anti-communist leaders. Another sponsored anti-communist was Muhammad Nimr al-Hawari, founder before 1948 of the al-Najjada paramilitary brigades. Because al-Najjada participated in the fighting against the Zionist militias, but also because Hawari negotiated with Haganah to avoid fighting in Jaffa, by the end of the war he became a refugee in Lebanon. Admiring his charisma, Israeli intelligence decided to allow his return to Israel in 1950 as an alternative anti-communist leader. The idea was that Hawari would establish a new Arab popular party. Based on reports of collaborators from within Maki [Israeli Communist Party], Cohen covers the fascinating struggle between Hawari and the communist organization, which ended with the former’s defeat. When politics failed, Hawari became a judge in the municipal circuit court in Nazareth.”

As a judge and public figure, Hawari was apparently greatly respected: a 1969 photograph from Israel’s National Library shows him as one of the prominent members of a council that was established to investigate the devastating fire that was set by a mentally ill Australian tourist at the Al-Aqsa mosque.

If Amer Zahr wasn’t a bigoted anti-Israel activist, he could be very proud of his great-grandfather.

[…to be continued with a post exploring why Zahr was born in Jordan, even though his mother had emigrated from Israel to the US]

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Video from gay Tel Aviv Arab Likud voter shows that Israel is much more complex than the media claims

Last week, Matti Friedman wrote an amazing article in the New York Times about Israel's number one pop star, an Arab convert to Judaism who sings modern Mizrahi music.

In China it’s the Year of the Rat, but here in Israel it’s the year of Nasrin Kadry, who began life on rough Arab streets near the docks in Haifa and has now, at 33 years old, ascended to the pinnacle of pop in the Jewish state. The biggest concert venues, the judging dais of “The Voice,” A-list duets — all belong to Nasrin. Her improbable rise has much to say about this society and specifically about the way it operates in the places where highbrow experts don’t look.

In a similar vein, here is a video showing a gay Tel Aviv Arab who hates the "Joint Arab List" and will vote for Netanyahu's Likud today, another person who simply doesn't exist if you read the Western media about Israel.

(h/t Yoel, @LikudnikTLV for the video, @MoranT555 for the translation, errors in placing the translation on top of the corresponding Arabic are mine.)

UPDATE: Sorry, I uploaded the video without the subtitles, fixed.

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It is midday here in Israel and the third time Israelis go to the polls to try to elect a majority after two earlier, unsuccessful attempts. This, in many respects, is the proof that Israel is a democracy: We have equal numbers of people on the right and on the left. We are split straight down the middle. And that is allowed!

How wonderful is that, after centuries of repression in Russia, Poland, Germany? Syria, Morocco, and Spain?? We get to disagree. With the government and with each other. With anyone we damned well please!

That is what we express with our vote: that it’s good to have an opinion and it’s even better to be able to express it with your vote.

And I vote to use this liberty to strengthen the right.

It’s not yet time for someone to take over from Bibi. And Gantz is capable of great damage on a scale of which I do not even want to dream, God forbid.

So I got up early and I voted for Bibi.

Because the alternative is Gantz.

In Israel we have a saying, “Hold your nose and vote for Bibi.”

That’s what I did.

And that is my right.

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Mahmoud Abbas, meeting with members of his Fatah movement on Sunday, reiterated that he will never negotiate with Israel as long as the "Deal of the Century" is on the table.

Of course, he hasn't negotiated since he rejected Obama's parameters so his lack of negotiations has nothing to do with Trump. It is simply Abbas' rejectionism, holding on to positions that the PLO has held since 1988.

He did say that he would participate if the negotiations are done under the auspices of the Quartet - remember them? - and if UN resolutions are preconditions, what he calls "international legitimacy."

Abbas also put forth a novel theory, saying that he doesn't believe that Jared Kushner or Jason Greenblatt wrote the plan. He thinks it was Israel's Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, that dictated it to the Americans. His "evidence" is that the Peace to Prosperity Plan mentions knafeh from Nablus and (I think) something about Palestinian ice cream, something the Americans wouldn't have possibly known about.

The Peace to Prosperity plan mentions nothing about Nablus knafeh or ice cream. Apparently Abbas never actually read the plan and had some underling summarize it for him, badly.

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Hate and antisemitism outside AIPAC (video, screenshot)

Some tweets that show the hate outside AIPAC on Sunday:

Things got a little intense as some #AIPAC2020 attendees confronted them. Police seperated what looked like it was about to be a fight.

"This is America, not Israel," one protester said. "You will get fucked up badly, motherfucker!" pic.twitter.com/gCrLaYt5n5
— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) March 1, 2020

Police formed a line separating the two sides.

One activist held a peace sign✌️ and said into my camera, "Let them know, this doesn't mean peace. This means victory. That's what's coming!"

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!" they chanted on. pic.twitter.com/2s1C0dhnEq
— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) March 1, 2020

"The Holocaust will come back to you," one yelled at AIPAC attendees. "You're going to get burned if you don't give us the land!"

"Hitler will come back! Burned, all of you!"

Others tried to cool him down and keep him away from the frontlines a bit during this. pic.twitter.com/gpQIkFNJ0x
— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) March 1, 2020

I couldn't see anyone trying to stop the person threatening Jews with another Holocaust in the longer footage.

Also heard at the rally was a chant, "Resistance is justified when people are occupied" - a call for terrorism.

It is interesting to see the same people chant against the "occupation" and in the next breath saying "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." It is obvious that when they say "occupation" they mean all of Israel.

I also sat this antisemitic sign saying that voting is rigged by Jewish media - along with someone walking through with a sign saying that the Vegas shooting was a hoax.

Again, I couldn't see anyone objecting to the explicit antisemitism shown here.

The reason? Because people who hate the Jewish state also hate Jews.

This is more obvious when you look at these signs outside the Holocaust Museum on Saturday:

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If Palestinians were a nation, why did they accept Ottoman control?

I am looking at the beginning of Rashid Khalidi's "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017."

Khalidi exaggerates the influence of the tiny number of Arab nationalists, specifically Palestinian Arab nationalists, before 1917. He doesn't mention that the Arab nationalism that did exist was a result of Christian missionary influence and British attempts to subvert the Ottoman Empire - it was never a native Arab desire, and most Arabs were loyal Ottoman subjects.

When one sees a paragraph like this, it brings up some questions:

So rule by the British was "alien rule" but by the Ottoman Turks wasn't. Why not? If Palestinians wanted independence so much, shouldn't they have been equally upset at the Ottomans as they were the British? Wasn't the Ottoman Empire every bit as colonialist as the British?

Questions like these are glossed over when people like Khalidi make up their history. He says the Palestinians were nationalists in one paragraph and in the next he says they were satisfied with foreign rule. The only way to reconcile these is to note that the entire point of the book is to blame Zionists for the Palestinian plight: noting that their nationalism was nonexistent before Zionism proves that it was in fact a reaction to Zionism and not organic. So Khalidi must exaggerate the nationalism before the Ottoman empire fell and also pretend that the only colonialism they suffered under was from the West.

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03/01 Links: Israel's Sheba Medical Center named world's ninth best hospital; Israeli MDs give free counseling to coronavirus patients worldwide

From Ian:

Israel's Sheba Medical Center named world's ninth best hospital

Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer has been named the ninth best hospital in the world by leading US magazine Newsweek, climbing one place since last year's rankings.

The hospital, located east of Tel Aviv, is Israel's largest medical facility and cares for approximately 1.6 million people annually. The hospital is also home to more than one-quarter of all Israeli clinical research.

The weekly magazine cited the hospital's collaborations with biotech and pharmaceutical companies worldwide to develop new drugs and treatments, in addition to research specialities including cardiology, cancer, brain diseases and genetics.

The Rochester-based Mayo Clinic led the global rankings for a second year, followed by Cleveland Clinic and Massachusetts General Hospital. Tel Aviv's Sourasky Medical Center, also known as Ichilov Hospital, was named the world's 34th leading hospital.

Tens of thousands of medical professionals were invited to participate in the survey ranking the world's best hospitals, which also took into account results from patient surveys and other medical performance indicators.

Other leading hospitals included Toronto General Hospital, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Johns Hopkins Hospital, University Hospital Zurich and Singapore General Hospital.

Israeli company develops rapid diagnostic kit for COVID-19

Israeli company BATM of Hod Hasharon announced that its biomedical division has developed a diagnostics kit to detect coronavirus from saliva samples in less than half an hour.

CEO Dr. Zvi Marom tells ISRAEL21c that the test is compatible with the current hospital-based method for diagnosing COVID-19, reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) – a type of gene sequencing that takes about eight hours.

“This kit has undergone testing by several central laboratories and hospitals that have now verified its ability to diagnose COVID-19,” says Marom, referring to the disease caused by coronavirus infection.

Marom, who has degrees in medicine and in industrial electronics, said BATM already has an advanced diagnostics kit that detects SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome). The COVID-19 aspect will be added to that kit.

“BATM is working with academic and research institutions, mainly in Europe, to progress the kit to make it at a price point suitable for large-scale production,” says Marom. “The kit, which supports all the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations, has already received interest from customers in several countries.”

By next year, BATM expects that the test will be commercialized as part of its NATLab doctor’s office solution using artificial intelligence and individual disease cartridges to diagnose bacterial, viral or fungal infections within 90 minutes. For now, only meningitis can be diagnosed with NATLab, produced by BATM subsidiary Ador Diagnostics in Rome.

Israeli MDs give free counseling to coronavirus patients worldwide

Thanks to a new social-action project, Chinese coronavirus patients were able to ask Israeli primary care physician Dr. Rachel Libenson Vansh how to maintain proper health and hygiene while confined at home.

Using a Zoom video link over China’s Weibo social network, Libenson Vansh answered their questions in English with immediate translation into Chinese.

This remarkable setup, which took place over a week ago, was the first in a series of interactive video broadcasts spearheaded by Israeli organization Innonation, which links talents, companies and organizations across borders through its hubs in Israel and China.

One hundred Israeli physicians have volunteered to speak remotely with quarantined COVID-19 patients on topics of concern — such as family and children; dermatology (including sensitivity to protective masks); diet; psychology (as well as dealing with anxieties); pregnancy; and signs of serious illness that require immediate attention.

Figures today show the COVID-19 virus has infected 86,584 people in more than 60 countries and caused 2,976 deaths. Many people who have been put into quarantine, or are self-isolated at home, are worried and fearful and have many questions about their situation and how to look after themselves.

“The health systems in countries affected by the coronavirus are under tremendous pressure. They find it difficult to deal with the medical needs of people living under quarantine and with the general population that fears going to clinics and hospitals,” says Amit Gal-Or, who cofounded Innonation in 2016 with his father, Amir, and brother, Raz.

Hamas delegation to Cairo

Today, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is traveling to Cairo.

According to The New Arab, this trip was requested by Israel.

Gaza suffers from a severe shortage of medicines. This is not because of Israel but because the PA has limited transfers of medicines to Gaza for years.

Israel does not limit medical aid to Gaza at all.

In the face of the coronavirus outbreak, Israel is asking Egypt to provide large amounts of medical aid to Gaza, and to help improve Gaza's health infrastructure. This would of course help Egypt as well in case the virus breaks out in Gaza.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad members routinely travel to Iran which has been hit hard by the virus, and the concern is that they can become a conduit for bringing the virus into the sector, which is ill-equipped to handle it.

Once again, Israel is showing more interest in the health and welfare of Gaza than the Palestinian Authority is.

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From MEMRI:

Iraqi political analyst Muhammad Sadeq Al-Hashemi said in a February 26, 2020 interview on Al-Ayam TV (Iraq) that in the 1981 thriller novel titled The Eyes of Darkness, American author Dean Koontz had written about the coronavirus. Al-Hashemi argued that this proves that coronavirus is an American plot and he said that the goal of the plot is to reduce the world's population. He said that in the past 10 years, two patents have been filed in the United States for the development of virus strains with the name "corona" and he compared this American "conspiracy" to when the Jews used blankets infected with anthrax to wipe out 86% of the native population in what is today the United States in order to have a real Jewish homeland. He said that the Zionist lobby similarly cleansed one third of the population of Scotland and that the Rothschild family has a monopoly of laboratories that develop biological and nuclear weapons. Al-Hashemi added that the Rothschilds had been the ones who decided to use nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

In Koontz's book, he created a fictional bioweapon caleld "Gorki-400" but he renamed it "Wuhan-400" after the fall of the Soviet Union. (Wuhan does host China's main advanced virus research facility, and some people are claiming that COVID-19 may have come from there.)

Hashemi isn't the only one to come up with a way to blame Jews for the virus. This enterprising tweeter said it too:

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More bogus claims of "settlers" cutting down Palestinian trees - on Shabbat

The official Palestinian Wafa news agency says:

Settlers continued for the third day in a row, cutting down trees in the lands of Al-Khader, south of Bethlehem , raising the number of trees that were targeted cutting to 780 trees.

The youth activist in Al-Khader, Emad Da`dou, told our correspondent that today, Saturday, the settlers cut down 200 vine trees in the "Fagur" area belonging to Mohammed Ibrahim Abu Al-Kata'a .

All of the Jewish communities near Al Khader are religious - Givat Eitam, Givat HaDagan, Givat Hatamar.

The residents there would not be cutting down trees or vines on the Sabbath.

The photo that accompanies this story in one local Palestinian news site shows what are obviously pruned olive trees, not destroyed or uprooted trees.

The lies continue.

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02/29 Links: US, Taliban sign historic deal aimed at ending war in Afghanistan; Israeli who recovered in Japan develops coronavirus again

From Ian:

US, Taliban sign historic deal aimed at ending war in Afghanistan

The United States signed a peace agreement with Taliban militants on Saturday aimed at bringing an end to 18 years of bloodshed in Afghanistan and allowing US troops to return home from America’s longest war.

Under the agreement, the US would draw its forces down to 8,600 from 13,000 in the next 3-4 months, with the remaining US forces withdrawing in 14 months. The complete pullout, however, would depend on the Taliban meeting their commitments to prevent terrorism.

President George W. Bush ordered the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Some US troops currently serving there had not yet been born when the World Trade Center collapsed on that crisp, sunny morning that changed how Americans see the world.

It only took a few months to topple the Taliban and send Osama bin Laden and top al-Qaeda militants scrambling across the border into Pakistan, but the war dragged on for years as the United States tried to establish a stable, functioning state in one of the least developed countries in the world. The Taliban regrouped, and currently hold sway over half the country.

The US spent more than $750 billion, and on all sides, the war cost tens of thousands of lives lost, permanently scarred and indelibly interrupted. But the conflict was also frequently ignored by US politicians and the American public.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended the ceremony in Qatar, where the Taliban have a political office, but did not sign the agreement. Instead, it was signed by US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Pompeo called on the Taliban to “keep your promises to cut ties with Al-Qaeda.”

Martin Kramer: The Trump Plan Will Be "Transformative" for Palestinians

Martin Kramer, chair of the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Department at Shalem College in Jerusalem and the Koret Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, spoke to Middle East Forum Radio host Gregg Roman on February 5 about President Trump's "deal of the century" plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

According to Kramer, the importance of the Trump proposal "transcends whether either of the parties accept it" because "it's not a peace plan, it's a partition plan ... the proposal of a third party, looking from the outside, that has some authority." The Palestinians refused to accept partition plans put forth by the British in 1937 and by the United Nations in 1947, yet both had "historic effects," notably culminating in the establishment of Israel. The details of these plans were largely irrelevant – it was their underlying assumptions and core principles that proved enduring.

The same is true of the "deal of the century." Details of the plan are flexible and sure to be superseded by future negotiations. The important focus should be on the assumptions and principles of the plan.

A key assumption of the Trump initiative, according to Kramer, is that "history only goes in one direction." Previous peace plans, he noted, were based on expectations of "massive movement of peoples" as part of a final settlement – removing thousands of settlers from their settlements in today's Israel and absorbing a large number of descendants of Palestinian refugees from other countries into the West Bank and Gaza – which "is not going to happen."

A core principle of the Trump plan is that "everyone stays in place" – a reality that Palestinians must eventually come to accept. "Much of the responsibility for the predicament of the Palestinians today relies not just on them, but on their ... supposed friends who ... promised they would deliver to them on fantasies which were completely detached from reality."

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: No secret talks with Trump administration

The Palestinian Authority on Saturday denied having any contacts with the US administration regarding US President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled plan for peace in the Middle East.

The denial came in response to remarks by US Ambassador David Friedman, who told the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera network that the Trump administration has “back channels” talks with some Palestinians.

Friedman did not reveal the identity of the Palestinians involved in the alleged talks with the US administration.

He also said there is recognition that some parts of the Trump plan are good for the Palestinians, such as the two-state solution, a Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem, connecting the West Bank with the Gaza Strip and investment in infrastructure and increasing the size of land offered to the Palestinians.

The PA, which has been boycotting the Trump administration since December 2017, when the US president recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, reiterated its rejection of the Trump plan and denied having back channels with the US administration.

“I dare Friedman to reveal a name of a single Palestinian official who is in contact with President Trump’s administration,” said PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat.

Referring to Friedman’s talk about a Palestinian capital, Erekat said that the Trump plan “specified that Abu Dis and Kufr Aqab can be named as Palestine’s capital.”

Erekat added: “East Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine, is the Old City of Jerusalem, including Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Musrara, and Salah Edin Street. Lies and distortions of one of the authors of the conspiracy of the century are doomed to failure.”

Knowing the Palestinian Auth. and how well they treat those who do not agree with party line, revealing such name would almost certainly put this person / s life in jeopardy. https://t.co/xnbu2jOxJw
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) February 29, 2020

.@IfNotNowOrg echoes neo-Nazis by accusing member of Congress of "pandering to Jews"

IfNotNow tweeted:

In a tweet that accused the Republican party of inciting white nationalist violence, the purportedly Jewish organization parroted neo-Nazi talking points of politicians "pandering" to all-powerful Jews to gain politically.

Because, obviously, no sane Gentile would ever support a position most Jews support unless they are politically forced to.

Usually posts like this will substitute the word "Zionists" for "Jews" to maintain the fiction that the anti-Zionists are animated by the exact same hate that antisemites have had for millennia. In this case, the mask slipped off, and IfNotNow showed not only that it is a deeply antisemitic organization itself but that its pretense of being a Jewish organization is a sham.

As of this writing, IfNotNow has not removed the tweet, nor has it apologized, 25 hours after it was posted.

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02/28 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The post-modern, anti-Jewish reconfiguration of the WestCaroline B. Glick: Gaza, elections and the Corbynization of the Democratic party

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: From Aalst to America: The post-modern, anti-Jewish reconfiguration of the West

This eruption hasn’t been created by Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn; nor, as some believe, by the populism of Donald Trump or Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Victor Orbán.

Populism is not in itself an extremist movement (although some bits undoubtedly are). It is rather a response to the extremism that has overtaken the entire progressive movement, and which represents the idea of the West as intrinsically evil and sinful.

Sanders and Corbyn, who are both undoubtedly extreme, are not the cause of the phenomenon, but the product of a broad cultural shift. When Bernie Sanders called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a reactionary racist” in Tuesday’s Democratic presidential candidates’ debate, the audience broke into applause.

The real cause of the descent into anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist hatred is secular liberalism, and the cultural fissure that has opened up along fault lines stretching back to the 18th-century Enlightenment.

This proclaimed the death of God and the enthronement instead of the autonomous individual freed from biblical moral codes. This led to the destruction of hierarchies of values without which there can be no morality, the replacement of duty by man-made and highly contingent human rights, and the collapse of truth and reason.

The result is the moral and philosophical carnage we see all around us. There’s the psycho-pathological unmooring of individuals caused by the undermining of the family. There’s the abolition of objectivity in the universities by moral and cultural relativism.

And there’s the apocalyptic environmental movement, which mirrors the belief by medieval, Jew-massacring Christians that fallen humanity must be punished for its sins to bring about the perfection of the world—and which has sanctified as its prophet a psychologically damaged child.

Better advocacy for Israel, necessary as that is, will not address this anti-Jewish derangement. That’s because what’s driving it is the repudiation of the Jewish precepts at the heart of the Christian West. And the problem—and tragedy—for the Jewish people is that so many of those subscribing to this liberal onslaught are themselves Jews.

The Aalst Carnival shows how quickly we forgot 'Never Again'

When I look at disturbing displays like those at the Aalst parade, I don’t just see modern-day antisemitism; I see a societal willingness to ignore religiously motivated hate, akin to that shown in the Weimar Republic and elsewhere throughout pre-war Europe. The promise of “never forget” means that we must remember the Nazis’ violence against Jews, and also those non-violent tactics which enabled the Holocaust.

We must keep in mind that hatred toward Jews quickly morphs into hatred toward other minority groups. Hate has no borders, and those with antisemitic beliefs can easily target other vulnerable people. If we turn a blind eye to antisemitic tropes today, there’s no telling what we might permit tomorrow, and soon, violence is at hand.

Indeed, antisemitic beliefs similar to those widespread in Western Europe are responsible in part for motivating some of the worst mass violence against Jews in recent years. The Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue shooter shared Holocaust-denial memes, and posted about Jews exercising control over major world events, like immigration.

The Poway shooter published a manifesto espousing the white genocide conspiracy theory, and one of the Jersey City shooters was connected to the Black Hebrew Israelites, many sects of which have been designated hate groups for their antisemitic beliefs and practices.

Antisemitic tropes and stereotypes do not always lead directly to murder, but there is an inescapable correlation between their perpetuation and violence targeting Jews. It is for this reason most of all that the international community, as well as leaders throughout Belgium, both national and local, must not afford antisemitism any public forum, whether in the name of free expression, humor or any other excuse used to justify hate.

Only by taking decisive and immediate action can we fulfill the promise of “never again.”

The Gay Rights Movement Has an Anti-Semitism Problem

My identity as a Jew and my identity as a gay man are inseparable. Contrary to traditional beliefs regarding religion and sexuality, I believe these two parts of myself enhance each other rather than compromise each other. The LGBTQ Jewish community carries a long history of excellence. We are writers, activists, artists, politicians, academics and teachers. The convergence of identity and the greatness that has been born from this community are special to me. From Rabbi Sandra Lawson to Troye Sivan to Efrat Tilma, queer, Jewish expression seems to be stronger than ever.

Yet, despite this representation, blatant anti-Semitism currently wreaks havoc in the LGBTQ community.

The first time I heard the word “pinkwashing” was when I mentioned to a friend that I was interested in attending the Tel Aviv Pride Parade last summer. My friend supported me but warned me against posting any photos of the parade online, as I would be accused of pinkwashing. I asked her what she meant. “Pinkwashing?” she said. “When Zionists pretend that Israel is the pinnacle of human rights because of how they treat gays? To distract from the way they treat Palestinians?”

This was the first time I heard this term, but it certainly was not the last.

The “anti-pinkwashing” movement is gaining traction in the gay community. My friend was correct in her description: Its mission is to end government-sponsored exploitation of gay constituents so as not to distract from inexcusable corruption or wrongdoing. On paper, the movement seeks to separate nationalism from queer liberation and to honor the voices of queer, oppressed people worldwide. But in reality, the movement tethers the identities of gay Israelis to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and undermines their autonomy simply because they are citizens of the Jewish state. To the devout gay rights activist, any display of Jewish gay pride is now conditional; it must totally and officially distance itself from the Jewish state to be valid.