In Israel, the checks and balances move in only one direction. The Knesset and the government – that is, the elected branches of government – are fully checked by the legal fraternity. The justices, attorney general and state prosecutors, for their part, have no checks on their power at all. The reason they keep seizing the powers of the Knesset and the government is because they can.
Whereas Likud and its coalition partners are committed to pursuing significant reform to check the power of the prosecutors and justices, Blue and White's platform dismisses outright all possibility of reform. The Left knows what its source of power is. And it isn't the people.
On Wednesday, Blue and White announced it will seek the passage of a law barring indicted officials from serving as prime minister. In so doing, Blue and White formalized its rejection of democracy. If passed into law, Blue and White's bill will do two things which are both antithetical to democracy.
First, it will give the unelected attorney general the power to decide who can run for office. If all that is needed to block a politician from running is a criminal indictment, then the only person who matters in Israeli politics will be the attorney general.
Second, the bill seeks to cancel Monday's election. More than two million Israelis voted for Netanyahu, either directly by voting for Likud, or indirectly, by voting for its coalition partners. And the Blue and White bill intends to throw their ballots into the trash.
If the law passes, Israel's parliamentary system will have more in common with Iran's parliamentary system than with Britain's. In Iran, the Guardian Council of the Islamic Revolution decides who can run for office. In Israel, the Guardian Council of the legal revolution will perform the same function, and to the same end.
It's not at all clear how we can proceed from this point. But what is clear enough is that we have reached an inflection point. Either three members of the Blue and White coalition break ranks and join Netanyahu to form a government and save Israeli democracy, or Israel will cease to be a democracy.
Israel is a country that has known more than its share of national emergencies. Over time its citizens have weathered Arab invasions, ballistic missiles and terror bombing campaigns. The sudden attack of coronavirus is something new. For once, we and the rest of the world are on the same side.
In the first stages of the virus, Israel's aggressive instincts have kicked in as it has adopted emergency measures. Tourists from countries affected by the virus have been sent home. Foreigners from "contagious" nations were banned. Avoiding panic is central to the government's strategy. Officials want to contain the virus as much as possible. It appears to be working. No Israelis have yet died from corona and less than two dozen are hospitalized.
"We are in control of the situation, thanks to the great caution we have adopted," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the country on Wednesday. "We have been forced to take very severe steps to slow the spread of the virus in Israel and that is what has happened. We have ordered quarantines and mass checkups that many other countries haven't done."
Critics say that the hardline virus defense policy is exaggerated. But that is unknowable in advance. Risking lives to placate treasury officials, tourist agencies, business travelers or disappointed children on Purim is a step responsible officials can't contemplate.
El Al on Friday cut back flights to San Francisco and a number of European cities amid a global drop in travel over fears about the new coronavirus, with a senior company official calling it “an unprecedented crisis.”
Flights that left for San Francisco Friday morning were combined, according to El Al, due to the low number of passengers on each plane.
In Europe, the Israeli airline was cancelling some flights to Berlin, Barcelona and Zurich. All three cities are located in countries which Israel began restricting the entry of non-nationals to on Friday as part of efforts to slow the spread of the virus.
“This is an unprecedented crisis,” a senior El Al official told the Ynet news site.
“The consequences of this crisis are huge and we are trying to do everything we can [to handle it],” he said.
El Al was also expected to cancel flights on Sunday to Munich, Budapest, Amsterdam, Brussels, Bucharest, Vienna and Marseille.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday encouraged his countrymen to adopt ‘Namaste’ - the Indian way of greeting - instead of the normal handshake as one of the measures to prevent the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
At a press conference following a review meeting to fight the spread of coronavirus, Netanyahu said that several measures will be announced to prevent the spread of coronavirus but some simple measures like avoiding the normal handshake while greeting people may possibly be replaced with other forms of greetings like the Indian ‘Namaste’.
He also demonstrated at the press conference as to how the Indians do ‘Namaste’ while greeting people.
Netanyahu said that “we are in the middle of a global epidemic”, but Israel has done well as it was quick in taking action to prevent the spread of the virus in the country.
Palestinian Arabic histories online continue to create fantastic new facts about a people who never existed before the last century.
This article in Al Watan by Ali Oqla Arsan about the history of Jerusalem says that Arabs were in the area from the fourth millennium BC, something that historians would be interested in knowing.
For the purposes of the article, though, everyone in the area had to be Arab because then, if they were between the Mediterranean and the Jordan they could be considered "Palestinians."
As a result, the Jebusites who controlled Jerusalem - who we only know about from the Jewish scriptures - are Palestinians.
In his fantasy retelling of history, the writer says that the native Arabs resisted the invasion of the Jews. Even David wasn't able to wrest control of Jerusalem from the Arabs. During the days of David and Solomon, Jews only had a kind of limited autonomy that was graciously granted by the Arabs of the area.
My favorite part is this:
The Arab Canaanites who gave the world the alphabet from 1400 to 1200 BC - as the Phoenicians are part of the Canaanites - remained the people of civilization, the people of the lands, and the people of sovereignty in most of the cities of the Levant in the time of that city-state. Their struggle with the Jews continued after they entered the Levant, and the invaders were not able to extend their control over the region nor to provide it with a special cultural presence - just as they could not form a prominent presence in it even at the military level except in the time of David And Solomon (1000-923 BC).
In this "history" the Jews contributed nothing to civilization and the "Palestinians" introduced the world to everything.
Not only that, but history is viewed from the distorted lens of how Arabs see the world today. Therefore, when Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Israel, he was being lobbied by Babylonian Jews who were his advisors - just like AIPAC does today!
I've seen previous articles that claim Palestinians invented chariots - because of the Hittites.
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Every year, Gallup polls the world for their attitudes towards American leadership.
In 2013, 80% of Palestinians disapproved of the job performance of Obama administration. This was the highest disapproval rating in the world at the time.
Things didn't change much during his last year in office, when the disapproval rate among Palestinians of the US leadership was at 79%.
In 2007, under Bush, the disapproval rating was 83%.
And now? In the 2019 survey (for 2018), the Palestinian disapproval rating for the Trump administration was 81%.
The Palestinian attitude towards the US barely changed under the most pro-Palestinian administration ever compared to the previous and following administrations.
There is a strange mindset among many that if only the West would be nicer to those who hate us, then they wont hate us as much. These people think that goodwill will be reciprocated. But it doesn't work that way: it didn't work with Iran and it didn't work with the Palestinians.
When people say they hate you, giving in to their demands doesn't make you more loved.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Hossam Khader, a Fatah member in the Balata camp near Nablus, was arrested from his home in the middle of the night by Palestinian Authority security forces.
He had been critical of Mahmoud Abbas recently. When doctors threatened to strike, Abbas criticized them and Khader in turn criticized Abbas, demanding that he apologize.
Khader's daughter said that the arrest by Palestinian security was brutal and they forcibly retrained her.
Khader himself has been an outspoken critic of the "old guard" leaders of Fatah for decades. He criticized Arafat to Western media in the early 2000s and he was attacked by Abbas supporters in 2009.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
A Jewish woman filed a lawsuit against her former New Jersey school district Wednesday after she said officials failed to protect her from “endemic anti-Semitism."
Students at the Marine Academy of Science and Technology drew swastikas in notebooks and read “Mein Kampf” in public, according to the lawsuit. One posed for a photograph next to the words, “I h8 Jews.” After her parents complained, the woman became “a pariah,” the complaint said, while school leaders were “deliberately indifferent” to her plight.
The state attorney general’s office previously found “reasonable suspicion” that the district overseeing the Sandy Hook school broke New Jersey’s anti-discrimination law.
The complaint named the Monmouth County Vocational School District, its board of education and school leaders in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey.
“I’m forever saddened that this happened to me, but I have grown to accept that my family and I did the right thing by reporting it," the 18-year-old said in a message sent by her lawyer, Eric Hecker. He asked that the former student’s full name not be used to protect her privacy. She is no longer at the academy.
"I am trying to move forward but this will always be something I carry,” she said.
In a statement, District Superintendent Timothy McCorkell said the school had “appropriately disciplined” the students involved with the “I h8 Jews” photo.
Soon after that photo was taken, the school consulted with the Jewish Federation in the Heart of New Jersey. The South River-based nonprofit recommended curriculum about Jewish history and hate speech.
“Ongoing education” is crucial in situations like these, said Lisa Karasic, a spokesperson for the federation. “Both for students and educators.”
Many students at the academy were later enrolled in programs about the Holocaust and “cultural competency,” McCorkell said, in line with recommendations made by the state attorney general.
House Democrats on Wednesday blocked the consideration of a bill that would have prohibited domestic support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Rep. Lee Zeldin (R., N.Y.) sponsored the bill, which would have modified existing law to take aim at the anti-Israel BDS movement by forbidding domestic support for foreign boycotts from organizations like the United Nations Human Rights Council and the European Union.
Lawmakers voted along party lines to defeat the consideration of the bill by a margin of 219 to 194.
"We cannot be quiet when it comes to combating anti-Semitism and anti-Israel mentalities," Rep. Debbie Lesko (R., Ariz.) said on the House floor. "We need to work together in Congress and pass common-sense legislation on this issue. H.R. 5595 does just that."
Zeldin added that the bill established Congress's opposition to the BDS movement and condemned the United Nations "blacklist" of companies that do business in the West Bank. He called on Congress to also condemn the United Nations' actions against Israel.
"BDS tries to delegitimize Israel by turning it into a pariah state, cut off from all trade, tourism, military, diplomatic, and cultural ties with the rest of the world," Zeldin said.
If true, this shows exactly what BDS are about, they are willing to put millions of people at risk because of their obsessional hatred of the only Jewish state - Israel
Their compulsion for hatred isn’t rational & comparisons can be drawn to the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses https://t.co/hKmILflWXx
An Arabic-language Canadian newspaper has published an article praising Palestinian terrorists and accusing Israel of burying prisoners alive and stealing their organs.
Al-Meshwar, which circulates in the Greater Toronto area, dedicated half a page in its February 28 edition to an article titled "The Abuse of the Martyrs and the Manipulation of Their Bodies Are Jewish Commandments and Israeli Directives,” according to B'nai Brith Canada.
The article was penned by former Hamas official Dr. Mustafa Yusuf al-Lidawi, who has a track record of accusing Jews of blood libel and other antisemitic charges. In it, he praised the "martyrdom" of Muhammed al-Na'im, a commander in the al-Quds Brigade of Palestinian Islamic Jihad who was killed on the Gaza/Israeli border last month trying to plant a bomb. An IDF bulldozer prevented other Palestinians from retrieving his body, in a tit-for-tat action over the holding of fallen IDF soldiers in Gaza.
Of Palestinian terrorists, Lidawi wrote: “Blessed is their martyrdom, and congratulations to them on their dwelling [in heaven], and hail to them in the highest Paradise.” He also accused Israel of burying prisoners alive and stealing their organs, ascribing such a practice to Israel's “ancient malice, and Talmudic and Torah commandments.”
B'nai Brith Canada has filed a complaint with Toronto Police.
“It is unacceptable that Canadian publications, in any language, continue to demonize Jews and glorify terrorism,” said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada. “These relentless and baseless attacks on our community undermine inter-communal relations and increase the risk to our safety.”
Last month, Israeli judoka Peter Paltchik won the gold in Paris Grand Slam tournament.
During the playing of Israel's national anthem Hatikva, the president of the Algerian Olympic Committee Mustapha Berraf was seen, standing up, along with the entire crowd. You can see him circled in a couple of quick scenes here.
Naturally, there was an uproar in Algeria for his not thinking of sitting down during the Hatikva.
Berraf resigned from his position, even though the Olympic Committee didn't want to accept his resignation.
A major Algerian news site today published how awful normalization with Israel is, based on this story, and it then descends into antisemitism as it accuses Algerian Jews of never being loyal subjects.
The Jews of Algeria were a fundamental cause of the occupation of Algeria in 1830. The Bakri and Bushnaq families were among the largest Jewish families at the time, enjoying strong political influence and high economic status, through their control over foreign trade and specifically the wheat trade, which represented most of the Algerian exports to France. And they were involved in the famine and debt crisis that caused the occupation of Algeria. The Jews of Algeria were agents and traitors working as translators and spies for the French army, which caused the French government to grant them citizenship by virtue of a decree (Cremieux) dated October 24, 1870 AD, and this decree states that the Algerian Jews have become French citizens. Their number was estimated at about 37,000 Jews at the time, which means the voluntary abandonment of their Algerian identity and their acquisition of French identity, and the enjoyment of all political and civil rights, after they betrayed their religious courts and accepted military service in the French occupation army.
This is the insanity of how much of the Arab world looks at Jews and Israel. And it proves yet again that anti-Zionism and antisemitism go hand in hand.
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Of COURSE We Will Allow Jews To Live In Palestine. Then We Will Kill Them. by Saeb Erekat, Chief Palestinian Negotiator
Ramallah, March 5 - We Palestinians have grown tired of the contention that we demand a state with no Jews in it. Not only does it distract from the core issue of our statelessness and displacement, it presumes something false. In fact we make no such demand - any Jews whom we can exterminate will receive a warm welcome to remain within our borders, until we unleash our just wrath against them for the suffering we have endured for more than seventy years.
Accusations such as "Apartheid," "ethnic cleansing," and the like only serve to divert attention from the real injustice: Palestinians living under foreign occupation since 1948, who want nothing but the sovereignty and liberty to slaughter as many Jews as they can. Calling unwarranted attention to some spurious would-be policy that the State of Palestine would establish itself a priori as Judenrein only distorts the reality that the people of Palestine would have no problem accepting Jews living within its borders, no matter how many. You read that correctly - contrary to the slanders of the warmongering Zionists, all the Jews who wish to remain withing this state once Palestine asserts its rightful borders may continue to do so, until we kill them.
We fully understand that some Jews might choose to move elsewhere before the State of Palestine reclaims it rightful boundaries and sovereignty, and they may do so. We in fact recommend they do so right now. We have been recommending it for many decades. Palestinian activists have expended enormous effort to persuade the Jews in this land to make some other place their home, for more than a hundred years. We have made clear, again and again, as painfully as possible, the wise choice to make. For a group reputed to have higher-than-average intelligence, well, let us simply say one might have expected a quicker grasp of our intent.
It must therefore be made clear: Jews may stay in Palestine. Permanently. This time we might not even bother desecrating your graves, because in the circumstances I foresee, you will not have to go through the trouble of preparing for maintaining any such thing. Our policies toward the Jews who do stay will spare you the effort necessary to dig an individual grave.
Stop the slander. Palestine need not be Jew-free; disbelieve the lies the Zionists tell you about our supposed ethnic policies. The Jews may stay, as long as we allow them.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Instead, everyone looks the other way — condemning Israel, which is actually Gaza’s greatest, though still-hated, benefactor.
In reality, Egypt could open its border with Gaza tomorrow. It could declare a free trade zone to aid the shattered Gazan economy. It would have masses of trucks and civilian transportation crisscrossing the border, as they do at Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing, giving Gazans freedom of travel and employment in a place their leadership hasn’t insistently deemed worthy of total destruction. After all, Gazans and Egyptians are Arab brethren, with a shared language, culture, and religion.
So why doesn’t Egypt open their arms to their Gazan brethren? Simple: thanks to Hamas and PIJ, Gazans are thoroughly indoctrinated in militancy and terrorism. Islamist elements that have made it into Sinai from Gaza have murdered Egyptian citizens and soldiers on a large scale. What’s more, Egypt has enough trouble containing the Muslim Brotherhood on its own territory — remember the Morsi regime? The last thing Egypt wants is to allow the free movement of Hamas operatives into Egypt; Hamas is, after all, the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
So why then does the media ignore Egypt’s critical role in keeping Gaza boxed in and isolated? The answer is simple: When in doubt, blame Israel. Gazans inevitably get shot trying to invade Israel, making for good TV and photos. Plus, it fits neatly into the mainstream media’s preferred narrative — Israel is Goliath. Likewise, the Hamas leadership fully appreciates that attacking the Egyptian border and launching hundreds of missiles into Egypt would cause a reaction that would make Israel’s responses look positively pacifistic in comparison.
Egypt is responsible for the perpetual pressure cooker that is Gaza. While Israel’s blockade of Gaza completes its encirclement, that encirclement would not be possible if the world demanded that Egypt throw open its border with Gaza. The focus on Israel as the culprit in Gaza’s misery is misplaced and hypocritical.
Since the administration of President Jimmy Carter, nearly every American president has sought to attain the holy grail of diplomacy: a solution to the conflict between Israel and her Arab neighbors. In some ways, the Trump Administration’s new peace initiative, “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People,” is merely another proposal for an American-brokered arrangement, the next plan in a line of many.
But its vision is based on political premises that reveal a fundamentally different understanding of American interests in the region. From its approach to Israeli settlements and the “land for peace” paradigm to the nature of its ambitions and its conception of America’s role, this new plan, whether it proves successful or not, could come to be seen as the beginning of new era in Israeli security and regional order.
In this podcast, Professor Eugene Kontorovich, who participated in the crafting of the Trump Administration’s plan, joins Jonathan Silver to explain the details of the “Peace to Prosperity” vision and why it represents a step forward for U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East.
Senior White House advisor Jared Kushner on Thursday briefed a bipartisan group from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the U.S. Middle East peace plan.
Kushner argued that the status quo is broken and something else has to be tried. He added that the lingering Israeli-Palestinian conflict is used as a pretext for more radicalization in the Middle East.
He said the White House wanted to use the plan to bring Israel and the Arab and Muslim worlds closer together. He also presented a list of reforms he said the Palestinians must undertake to achieve statehood and reduce the risk of creating a failed state.
A White House official slammed the Palestinian response to the plan, saying, "It has exposed the Palestinian leadership who is defending the status quo. We are moving the debate to discussing the technical challenges and the details as opposed to romanticizing about things that people know will never happen."
Kushner's PowerPoint presentation notes that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
If you read part 1 of this documentation, you know already that Bernie Sanders surrogate Amer
Zahr hates Israel, but got an Israeli passport for himself and regularly visits
to perform his “comedic routines”
– which presumably include an act on the topic “BDS for thee but not for me.”
Unsurprisingly, it turned out that Zahr is also not particularly honest
when he claims that he comes from a family of Palestinian refugees. His maternal
grandparents apparently decided to emigrate from Israel to the US; but what
about his paternal grandparents – and how come Zahr was born in Jordan?
The relevant story is recounted in a post on Zahr’s website, which – all too predictably – includes some creative
re-writing of history. The two sentences that deal with the birth of Zahr’s
father are a good example: “In March 1948, George [i.e. Zahr’s father], their first child, was born. […] One month later, Zionist forces
(with the support of the British government) took Yafa by military force,
forcing tens of thousands of Arabs from the city, including Elias, Salma, and their infant child” [i.e. Zahr’s grandparents, who were Christians,
and his father].
Zahr could probably learn a lot about what really happened in Jaffa from
the book of his maternal great-grandfather (see Part 1) – though he might not
like what his great-grandfather wrote. In any case, Zahr is wrong: “Zionist
forces” – which did NOT have “the support of the British government” – didn’t
take Jaffa in April 1948, but only on May 13, 1948. Most importantly, however,
the “Zionist forces” did NOT force “tens of thousands of Arabs from the
city.”
The supposed ethnic cleansing of Jaffa by evil Zionists is a fairly popular
myth, but it is well documented that the more affluent Arab residents of Jaffa set an example for the
rest of the population by starting to leave the city soon after the United
Nations Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947. Jaffa’s poor neighborhoods had been swelled by tens of thousands of migrants since the early 1920s, and many of the
local migrants soon decided to return to the villages they had come from, while
migrants who were from further away may have tried to get back to wherever they
had come from.
More recent research has also shown that tensions between the
politically moderate Arab upper- and middle classes in Jaffa and supporters of
the militant mufti and Nazi collaborator Amin al-Husseini (whom the French had allowed to escape to Egypt) created chaos in Jaffa – indeed, as Amer Zahr
surely knows full well, his own maternal great-grandfather “fled from Jaffa
to Ramallah in December 1947”
because he feared being assassinated by Husseini’s people. In addition, “violent clashes erupted and tensions ran high between the
local population and the Arab Army of Salvation recruited by the Arab League,
which consisted of Syrian, Iraqi and other volunteers, if not mercenaries […] Many Arab testimonies […] describe cases in which the
foreigners engaged in looting and arbitrary confiscation of merchandise from
local Arab shopkeepers.”
The vast majority of Jaffa residents who left the city well before
“Zionist forces” took over in mid-May 1948 fled preparations for a war
instigated and pursued by an Arab leadership and Arab governments resolved to prevent Israel’s re-establishment with “a war of
extermination and momentous massacre.” Already in October 1947, Arab League
secretary-general Azzam anticipated that
this war would “be an opportunity for vast plunder,” but while he insisted it would be seen “as
dignifying every Arab and every Muslim throughout the world,” he also expected “horrible battles.”
In order to avoid getting caught up in these “horrible battles,” Amer
Zahr’s grandparents left Jaffa with their newborn son and, as Zahr puts it, “refuged
to Amman.” According to Zahr, the family
had a “hard life in Amman,”
because although “Palestinians were granted citizenship
in Jordan, they were and remain second-class citizens. King Hussein constantly cracked down on them, most notably
during the fighting of the fall of 1970, dubbed ‘Black September.’ During
that time, the Jordanian army killed at least 10,000 Palestinians.”
Zahr apparently hopes that those who have no clue about the “Black September”
fighting won’t suspect that it was a result of the reckless conduct of Arafat’s
Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which used Jordan as a base for a
terrorist war against Israel in total disregard for the interests of Jordan’s
government and King Hussein.
But it seems that Amer Zahr’s grandparents managed to get through “Black
September” unscathed, and after his father George Zahr “graduated from
college in Jordan,” he went “to study further in Beirut, and
eventually earned a PhD from the University of California-Berkeley, where he
married a fellow Palestinian refugee.”
However, Zahr’s mother was not a “refugee,” and it also doesn’t make much sense to describe his father
as a “refugee.” It’s true that Zahr’s paternal grandparents had left Jaffa with
their newborn son to escape the bloody war that Arab League
secretary-general Azzam had anticipated
so eagerly, and they may not have intended to settle permanently in Amman. But
as Amer Zahr acknowledges, “Palestinians were granted citizenship in
Jordan,” i.e. both his grandparents and
his father, who grew up in Jordan, presumably had Jordanian citizenship.
Moreover, by the time George Zahr met his future wife during his studies
at Berkeley, she was already living in the US for about a decade, and it’s
reasonable to assume that she had acquired American citizenship (in addition to
her Israeli citizenship). Since George Zahr participated in research “sponsored by the United States Government” at Berkeley, he also might
have applied for, or acquired, American citizenship.
After finishing his studies (in chemistry) in 1976, George Zahr was apparently hoping to pursue an academic career, and in
1977, “he returned to Amman and
became a professor at the University of Jordan.” Soon afterwards, Amer Zahr was born, but he didn’t get to grow up in
Amman, because in
1979, “as a result of an ugly and
unjust political episode, George, wildly popular with his students, was fired
from his post. He was exiled from Jordan and found a new life in America.”
Needless to say, Amer Zahr thinks that this made him a “refugee”. As he
wrote in a 2001 article entitled “On visiting the place of my birth”:
“While I am Palestinian, my roots in Jordan are
deep. After being expelled as a refugee at the age of one month in 1948 as a
result of the creation of the state of Israel, my father was raised and
attended university in Amman. Amman was his home in exile, and it was also the
place of my birth. At the age of three, amid my father’s political “disagreements”
with the government of Jordan, I became a refugee and was subsequently raised
just outside of Philadelphia, PA (Incidentally, the ancient Roman name for the
city of Amman was ‘Philadelphia’). When it comes down to it, my father and his
families were expelled from Palestine in 1948 for being Palestinian and
expelled from Jordan in 1980 for acting Palestinian.”
But it seems Zahr doesn’t really bear a grudge against Jordan. After
all, it’s an Arab country where hatred of the world’s only Jewish state runs
deep – which is something that makes Amer Zahr very happy. As he posted in December 2018: “Jumana Ghunaimat,
Jordan’s minister of media affairs and communications, stepped on the Israeli
flag at a building in Amman. Jumana, that leaves with me with one
question: Are you single? #FreePalestine #Palestine #Jordan.”
It’s worthwhile to look at one more version Amer Zahr offers for the
“refugee” story of his father. In a post written in May of last year under the title “DON’T MESS WITH
PALESTINIANS!”, Zahr pondered the
Palestinian “nakba”, i.e. catastrophe, and presented his father as an example
for his claim that “this whole Nakba-Naksa-Youm El Ard stuff has actually made
us [i.e. Palestinians] stronger.” According to Zahr, Palestinians are now “the
hardest working people in the world” and
“the smartest people in the world”:
“To illustrate all these points, I’d like to tell you of the case of a
particular refugee I know quite well. His name is George Zahr. He was born in
Yafa, Palestine in March 1948. At one month old, he became a refugee. He
grew up in Jordan, starting his education in UNRWA schools. Then, he finished
high school with honors, college with honors, master’s degree with honors, and
a doctorate degree in chemistry with honors. As you can see, there’s a theme.
His education got
him a professorship, then a well-paying research position in America for
thirty-five years. A big house. Nice cars. College-educated kids. That’s the
Palestinian story. From nothing to everything.
Education
catapulted my dad from a shoeless Palestinian refugee to a spoiled American who
owns a triple-control, seven-jet, multi-functional, Bluetooth-enabled,
state-of-the-art, voice-activated shower. I love this country.
And it all
happened because Israel tried to get rid of him.”
It’s nice to hear that Amer Zahr loves America – which you wouldn’t
always know from his social media posts. And it’s of course very nice to hear that his father was so successful
in pursuing the American dream. But it didn’t “all happened because
Israel tried to get rid of him”: Zahr’s
father was born before Israel was established, and his parents fled the
preparations for “a war of extermination” that Arab leaders and governments threatened and incited in order to
prevent Israel’s re-establishment.
Reading Zahr’s “nakba” post from last year illustrates not only his
usual disregard for facts and his seething hatred for Israel, but it also
reveals his almost pathological Palestinian nationalism. This is how he
concludes his post:
“Remember how I said Israel created
800,000 Palestinian refugees in 1948? Well, that was true. But they didn’t
get everyone. About 150,000 Palestinians remained in what is today Israel. Now,
if those 150,000 people had increased at the average global population growth
rate, today they should number about 350,000-400,000 people. But they’re not
350,000-400,000 people. Nope. They’re 1.8 million people. That’s right, they
drop bombs, we drop babies. They have tanks and helicopters, but we have the
strongest weapon in the world.
And that
population spike is not our fault. When you shut down the roads, deprive us
jobs, and confine us to ghettos, there’s a lot of free time to fill. And don’t
forget, two thousand years ago, we got a woman pregnant without touching her.
What did you think was gonna happen when we started touching each other?
So, I guess my
message is this. Don’t push us. Don’t challenge us. We end up as multilingual,
super-educated, hyper-reproductive, overachieving marvels.
That’s right.
Don’t mess with us Palestinians. If you do, we will outwork you, we will
outsmart you, and we will, if necessary, outfuck you too.”
Perhaps Zahr feels he can write like this because people will keep in
mind that he’s a comedian and be inclined not to take him too seriously. But
when he boasts that “two thousand years ago, we [Palestinians] got a woman pregnant without touching her,” he picks up a recurring theme of his
activism that should be taken seriously, because it echoes the long and bloody
history of Christian antisemitism.
It’s unclear if Zahr identifies as a Christian because his father was
born to Christian parents. Zahr’s mother is Muslim, and it seems that Zahr
sometimes performs at events
where organizers probably assume that he is Muslim. Most likely, Zahr views
religion like he views facts: as something that can be twisted, or ignored
altogether, depending on what’s more convenient.
But Zahr’s efforts to use Christianity in order to promote an
antisemitic message are quite serious and sustained. At the time of this
writing, Zahr’s pinned tweet is from December 2018 and announces: “Merry PALESTINIAN Christmas! Jesus
was one of us! Palestine is full of history. Could you be named after a
Palestinian? #MerryChristmas #Palestine #FreePalestine #Jesus
#JesusIsPalestinian”
The clip featured in the tweet is downright idiotic and leaves you
wondering if Amer Zahr is perhaps not particularly bright, or if he just thinks
his followers are hopelessly dim.
Zahr starts out claiming that celebrating Christmas means “celebrating
the birth of a Palestinian.” He goes on to list figures from the New Testament,
including Mary, the mother of Jesus, and tells his viewers that anyone sharing
any of the names of these New Testament figures is named after a Palestinian.
It gets even more ridiculous when Zahr asserts: “Jesus fought against
occupation and tyranny” – but if that’s what you believe, it’s obvious that
Jesus would have fought against the Roman occupation of his ancestral Jewish homeland. When the Romans executed Jesus, they mocked him as “King of the Jews”; and it was of course the Romans who
eventually “exiled the
majority of the Jewish people and renamed
Judea ‘Palestina’. To be clear, ‘Syria Palestine’
officially became a Roman province about a century after Jesus’
crucifixion. The idea was to erase the Jewish presence from Judea and to
designate their homeland with reference to their Biblical enemies”, i.e.
the Aegean people (from what is
now Greece) called “Philistines”/“Plishtim.” The “Philistines” had
disappeared centuries earlier, but the Roman renaming of the Jewish homeland
was obviously intended as “a last humiliation.”
The Jew-haters of today may enjoy it when people like Zahr try to
re-enact the Roman humiliation of the Jews, and Zahr is only too happy to
promote antisemitic Palestinian propaganda by abusing Christian
holidays for his “Jesus was a Palestinian” nonsense.
But while the kind of Palestinian propaganda promoted by Zahr might seem
ridiculous, it shouldn’t be ignored that it reflects the roots of Christian
antisemitism. As the eminent scholar Walter Russell Mead has emphasized, some of the writings in the Christian New Testament illustrate that it
was considered “extremely important that Jesus was a Jew and that the
story of Jesus is part of the story of God’s encounter with the Jewish people.” However, “Christians going back to the
first century AD have often wished this wasn’t so. In ancient times, various
Greek and Roman cults grew up that detached the figure of Jesus from this
Jewish context […] More recently,
the Nazis in particular hated the idea of Jesus being a Jew, and some of them
went so far as to invent an “Aryan Christianity” with an Aryan Christ. The Nazis were picking up on a kind of
anti-Semitism that flourished in the first and second centuries after Christ as
theological writers like Marcion argued that the Jewish God of the Old
Testament had nothing to do with the much higher, more noble, and
philosophically acceptable deity proclaimed by Jesus.”
One of the links Mead provides leads to a book on “The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi
Germany,” which seems sadly relevant for Palestinian efforts to “dejudaize”
Jesus. Here is the introductory paragraph:
The Palestinian need to deny that Jesus was a Jew is of course rooted in
the refusal to acknowledge that the Jews are indigenous to today’s Israel and
the historic areas of Judea and Samaria; needless to say, this also includes
the denial of the fact that Jerusalem became a holy city for Christians and
Muslims because the Temple Mount had first been – and remains – Judaism’s
holiest site.
Putative “progressives” like Bernie Sanders surrogate Amer Zahr would
never even dream of denying the history of indigenous people anywhere – except
for the Jews. Zahr may be a comedian, but there’s nothing funny about the
endless lies and fabrications he comes up with in order to demonize the world’s
only Jewish state.
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Interestingly, Kushner's argument was anti-settlement. A White House official was quoted, “Kushner’s message was that every time negotiations failed, the Palestinians got more money and Israel was able to keep expanding the settlements, but the peace process became a false notion and didn’t solve anything. Both parties' leaderships just kept getting what they want without improving the lives of the people."
Kushner told the committee that the plan was still quite alive. he said that there were several positive statements about the plan from Arab countries, that the EU was not united in opposition to the plan, and that the Palestinians push against the plan stalled at the UN when they tried and failed to create a Security Council resolution.
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A 175-page lawsuit was reportedly filed in District Court, District of Columbia with the fascinating title of
COMPLAINT FOR AIDING AND ABETTING (1) THE DENATIONALIZATION AND
DEHUMANIZATION OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE, (2) THE INSTALLATION OF
AN APARTHEID REGIME IN THE OPT, AND (3) AND (4) SECURING AWARDS OF
DECLARATORY RELIEF THAT THE ISRAELI CITIZEN KNOWN AS MR.
NETANYAHU IS A WAR CRIMINAL AND THAT THE ISSUE OF THE LAND
TRANSFER COMPONENT OF DEFENDANT KUSHNER’S PEACE PLAN SHOULD
BE REFERED TO THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY.
Plaintiffs include Ahed and Bassam Tamimi, the Dawabshe family, and a number of people whose names I don't recognize but who are supposedly Palestinians or Palestinian Americans.
The defendants include Donald Trump, Bibi Netanyahu, Andrew Cuomo, Miriam Adelson, AIPAC, David Friedman, Jared Kushner, Newt Gingrich, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Huckabee and more.
The text looks more like a manifesto of a mass murderer than a real legal document. It is filled with completely nutty assertions, antisemitic allegations, and fantasies.
The antisemitism is clear. Some 15 times it accuses Israel of poisoning Palestinian water wells and livestock, an echo of one of the original blood libels.
Here is one of the introductory paragraphs that contain nothing but fantasies:
The war crimes inflicted on the Palestinian civilian population were necessary because the Zionist Organization of America (herein after ZOA) mandated in 1898 that the country of Palestine would be the location of the new Jewish homeland. Consistent with that mandate, PMN (Netanyahu) and former PM Sharon decided forty years ago that Palestinians had to become a denationalized, dehumanized, and an irrelevant population if Ben-Gurion’s vision of a sterile Jewish state was to be established in Palestine. The World Zionist platform (removal of all non-Jews from Palestine) dictated that Israel’s founding father, Ben-Gurion (1948)- “must take over all of Palestine,” as confirmed by former PM Golda Meir- “We must destroy any vestige of the Palestinian culture.” To accomplish these objectives, PMN gave a green light to his local guerilla army, i.e. settlement militia units, to maim and murder Palestinians, destroy their olive groves and their livestock, and steal their private property.
We learn, for example, that Jared Kushner is Netanyahu's adopted son.
Netanyahu changed the name of the "Israeli Army" to the "Israel Defense Forces" to make the world believe that it was meant for defense.
The main aim of AIPAC is to expel all Palestinians from the territories.
Trump planned to "defund the UN before being inaugurated so he could deprive Palestinians of any foreign aid and deny them healthcare, i.e. genocide."
This story is especially idiotic and antisemitic:
In 1998, at the height of the Tiananem Square demonstrations, PMN wanted to remove approximately 50,000 non-Jews from the OPT, thinking the world’s focus would be elsewhere, which it was. He concluded that if Israeli leadership could not get rid of the Palestinians, he must exterminate them, much like the Nazi regime concluded with respect to the Warsaw Jewish population, i.e. the final solution. He knew he needed some major financial support to make this happen, so he assembled a group of zealous, wealthy Americans, a representative sample being the Defendants named herein. He also needed a propaganda campaign machine, enter AIPAC. He needed massive off the books funding, enter Adelson and Kushner families and phony 501(c)(3)s. He needed a core group of vile, disgusting individuals who would do his dirty work and that of the Adelson family, i.e. settlers from Brooklyn. They never owned property before, and they took advantage of the situation in the OPT. They basically proclaimed that Jesus gave them this property, and told a BBC work crew, “this is our land, get the fuck out of here.”
The lawyer, Martin McMahon, who seemingly drafted this stream of consciousness drivel, has done stunts like this before.
The Jewish Press also has an article about this absurd suit with more background.
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Rutgers professor Jasbir Puar has been invited to speak at Scripps College in California by its chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and several of the college’s academic departments.
Puar is one of the most vicious antisemites and misozionists* in America. You can read excerpts from a 2016 speech she made at Vassar University to get an idea of her creative presentation of medieval blood libels in a more modern form. She is also a prolific “scholar,” casting her poisonous inventions in the form of just barely penetrable academic jargon (if you think you are capable of understanding her, see how long you can listen to this video).
Among other things, she accuses the IDF of deliberately stunting, maiming, and creating disabilities among Palestinians, in order to suppress their resistance. We would kill them, she argues, but then we would damage our claim to be the primary victims of genocide in history. And when we do kill them, we take their organs for scientific research. Of course she claims that we specialize in hurting Palestinian children – how can she reprise the story of Simon of Trent if she doesn’t accuse us of victimizing children?
The truth of the matter is that the IDF does its best to avoid any collateral damage, that the Palestinians employ child soldiers, and that Palestinian terrorism (the Ma’alot Massacre, the Coastal Road Massacre, the bombings of the Dolphinarium and the Sbarro Pizza restaurant for just a few) does disproportionately target children. But never mind.
Puar is inventive, and finds ways to turn what others believe to be moral behavior into examples of Israeli depravity. “Pinkwashing,” the supposed tactic of contrasting Israel’s tolerance of homosexuals with Arab and Muslim homophobia (which often rises to the level of murder) in order to “whitewash the occupation” is a favorite subject.
She also argues that Israel’s attempts to reduce collateral damage while at the same time defending herself against terrorism and rocket attacks actually constitute a deliberate policy to maim rather than kill Palestinians. The “knock on the roof” technique used in recent mini-wars when a structure in Gaza was about to be bombed is presented as merely a pretense at reducing casualties (she falsely claims the time between the knock and the destruction of a building is only 60 seconds, when it is typically closer to 15 minutes). According to Puar, phone calls warning residents of coming attacks are a form of psychological warfare “a reminder of how powerless they are,” and not a practical way of reducing civilian injuries and deaths.
Nonlethal methods to control riots, deter incursions across the Gaza border, and stop attempts to damage the security barrier are described by Puar as methods of torturing Palestinians or inducing permanent disability, instead of attempts to protect Israelis without killing their attackers. She believes we want to break their spirit, but keep them alive so we can exploit them economically. And we just plain enjoy hurting them.
Her obsessive attribution of the most evil motives imaginable to every action of Israelis to protect themselves against an enemy which, after all, wants to kill them, tries to do so on a regular basis, and often succeeds, is disconnected from reality – I would use the word fanatical. She advocates both BDS and “armed resistance.”
Puar’s fantastic anti-Israel polemic is interwoven with and connected to her discussion of sex, gender, “queer theory,” race, disability, and other topics characteristic of today’s post-modern academic milieu. She seems to have invented the concept of “homonationalism,” which explicates “how homosexuality – and in particular homonormativity, the adoption of heteronormative values by the ‘queer’ community – is instrumentalised as part of nationalist and geopolitical interventions.”
Why do I care?
Because there has never been a better contemporary example than Jasbir Puar of the distortion of the academic mission to find and teach the truth since that great fraud, Edward Said. I say this even though there has been a Ward Churchill and a Steven Salaita. Unlike the latter two, she is an academic star. She is a full Professor, and Graduate Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, where she has taught since 2000. She holds graduate degrees in Ethnic and Women’s studies, and has a massive list of publications (although most are in marginal journals), speaking engagements, fellowships, and other academic honors. She has had three books published by Duke University Press, which has a disturbing record of anti-Israel bias.
And despite her reality-distorting obsession, she is welcomed to speak at places like Scripps College. She continues to receive grants and fellowships (although some of them, like the “Palestinian American Research Council Fellowship” she got in 2018 may simply constitute payment for her political activity). She is a tenured member of the Rutgers faculty.
The fact is that the Western academic world – particularly the portion of it called “Ethnic and Gender Studies” – is so thoroughly indoctrinated with misoziony that it doesn’t see anything wrong with her ideas. What look to me like conspiratorial fantasies indicative of mental illness appear as perfectly normal academic discourse to them. This seems to be the case in most universities in the US, the UK and Canada – and to some extent, in certain institutions even in Israel.
Apparently the Scripps people think that her ideas are important and should be heard. But I am guessing that if a pro-Israel group of students wished to invite someone like me to discuss Palestinian terrorism against Israeli children (see, for example, this unrepentant murderess), I am certain that there would be no such event.
Part of the problem (at least outside of Israel) is that for years Arab countries (and Iran, too) have donated large sums of money to academic institutions, have made grants to individual academics, and have built up specific departments (usually Middle East Studies) in key colleges and universities. Combined with the traditional left-wing orientation of many academics, and the strong commitment in academia to “free speech” and “academic freedom” – as long as said speech or freedom is aimed in the proper direction – this has created an atmosphere in which Jasbir Puar is not considered an extremist.
The universities and colleges are supposed to be beacons of light, which support humanist ideals of justice and fairness for all peoples. Instead, they have taken the easy, convenient, profitable, and cowardly path of joining the dark forces of Jew hatred and misoziony, while preening themselves for promoting “social justice.”
_______________________ * Misoziony (pronounced mis-OZ-yoni) is the extreme, irrational, and obsessive hatred of the Jewish state. It is antisemitism raised to one degree of abstraction. Although it is not identical to antisemitism, most misozionists also hate Jews as individuals and the Jewish people as a group.
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The Executive Director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Ken Roth, accepted a major donation from a Saudi real estate tycoon by promising not to support advocacy of the LGBT community in the Middle East and North Africa.
The Intercept first reported Monday on the quid pro quo between Roth, who has gained a reputation for strident attacks against Israel, and Saudi billionaire Mohamed Bin Issa al-Jaber.
“Human Rights Watch [HRW] accepted a sizable donation from a Saudi billionaire shortly after its researchers documented labor abuses at one of the man’s companies, a potential violation of the rights group’s own fund-raising guidance,” wrote The Intercept’s Alex Emmons.
“In 2012, Roth signed a memorandum of understanding with al-Jaber containing language that said the gift could not be used for LGBT rights work in the region. He was later pictured next to Jaber at a 2013 ceremony to memorialize the funding,” the self-described online “adversarial journalism” site wrote.
“The controversial donation is at the center of a contentious internal debate about the judgment and leadership of Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth,” wrote The Intercept.
“The 2012 grant from al-Jaber’s UK-based charitable foundation amounted to $470,000,” the news site said.
The Jerusalem Post can report that last year Roth praised Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a tweet, after he defended his regime’s execution of gays.
2/ HRW now admits that its chief @KenRoth himself solicited the donation from Sheikh Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber. Roth himself signed the agreement with the accused Saudi human rights abuser promising that HRW would not use the funds to promote LGBT rights. https://t.co/nX6Uwso7Q9pic.twitter.com/7WfalnPy5J
As regular readers are no doubt aware, the BBC is usually very quick off the mark when it comes to providing amplification for reports, campaigns or talking points promoted by the political NGO ‘Human Rights Watch’ (HRW).
Nevertheless, we have yet to find any BBC coverage (including on its website’s ‘human rights’ page) of a recent story concerning that organisation.
On February 27th HRW put out a “Statement on Return of Donation” which opens:
“In 2012, Human Rights Watch made a deeply regrettable decision to accept a donation that included conditions that the funds not be used to support HRW’s work on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in the Middle East and North Africa. We also regret that the grant was made by the owner of a company that Human Rights Watch had previously identified as complicit in labor rights abuse. This decision stood in stark contrast to our core values and our longstanding commitment to LGBT rights as an integral part of human rights. Accepting a grant with such a condition was anathema to HRW’s commitment to protecting the human rights of all people.”
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Friday, March 06, 2020
