Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 16, 2020

Book review: "The Aleppo Codex"

I love Matti Friedman and decided I want to read all of his books. I had already read "Spies of No Country," although I didn't review it, and I recently ordered The Aleppo Codex and Pumpkinflowers.

The Aleppo Codex, circa 930 CE, is one of the most important books ever written. It was an attempt to codify the entire Hebrew Scripture, with all vowel marks and cantillation marks, as a single standard, since Torahs are written without vowels and they were only known by tradition.

Friedman's book runs through two parallel histories. One is the actual history of the codex, as it was written in the Galilee and then traveled to Jerusalem, where Crusaders held it for ransom which was paid by rich Egyptian Jews. It was then brought to Cairo, used as a reference by Maimonides, and then made its way to Aleppo, Syria, where the community zealously guarded it for centuries. Friedman brings the details to light, including the theory that the writer of the Codex was in fact a Karaite and not a Rabbinic scholar.

The other history is what happened to the codex in the days and years after the UN voted to partition Palestine. The official story is that crazed Arab antisemites destroyed the synagogue and burned its contents, including the Codex, and the surviving pages were smuggled to Israel where it was entrusted to the State.

The reality is much more complex, and much messier. Friedman spent a great deal of time trying to break the wall of silence by the Syrian Jewish community surrounding the codex. They regarded the book as a talisman that would protect them.

Friedman unravels much of the mystery, but not all of it.

The story is not complimentary to the State of Israel. The Syrian community did not want to part with the book and Israel managed to take it from their members with a combination of subterfuge and an unfair, secret trial. Anti-Mizrahi racism underlies a lot of the plot.

The remaining mystery is what happened to most of the missing pages. They were not burnt, as had been assumed, but nearly all of the Pentateuch is missing - yet the book appears to have been largely intact with perhaps only a few missing pages when it was retrieved after the pogroms. The Syrian community remains mum on that issue, with rumors of some people having individual pages that they still use as a mystic protection.

The one man who may have possessed the bulk of the missing pages, a haredi rare book dealer, was murdered in 1989. The trail goes cold after that.

Friedman is a gifted storyteller as well as a dogged reporter. He brings to life the Crusader siege of Jerusalem, with Muslims and Jews both defending the city, as much as he describes the events of 1947 and later. Although much of the mystery remains, he has brought to light a great deal about the Aleppo Codex that was hushed up by both Israel and the Syrian Jewish communities of Israel and abroad. As always with Friedman, The Aleppo Codex is a very worthwhile read.

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.

03/16 Links Pt1: Israeli Nobel Laureate: Coronavirus spread is slowing; Jerusalem mayor to the people of Italy: We are with you!; Blue and White's political hara-kiri

From Ian:

Israeli Nobel Laureate: Coronavirus spread is slowing

However, that doesn't mean Levitt is dismissive of the precautions being put in place by governments around the world.

“You don’t hug every person you meet on the street now, and you’ll avoid meeting face to face with someone that has a cold, like we did,” Levitt said. “The more you adhere, the more you can keep infection in check. So, under these circumstances, a carrier will only infect 1.5 people every three days and the rate will keep going down.”

Isolation and limiting social contact is not the only factor at play, however. In Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, the whole population theoretically was at risk of becoming infected, but only 3% were.

The Diamond Princess cruise ship represented the worst-case scenario in terms of disease spread, as the close confines of the ship offered optimal conditions for the virus to be passed among those aboard. The population density aboard the ship was the equivalent of trying to cram the whole Israeli population into an area 30 kilometers square. In addition, the ship had a central air conditioning and heating system, and communal dining rooms.

“Those are extremely comfortable conditions for the virus and still, only 20% were infected. It is a lot, but pretty similar to the infection rate of the common flu,” Levitt said. Based on those figures, his conclusion was that most people are simply naturally immune.

Looking at the picture globally, Levitt was reticent to make predictions country-by-country as to when the spread of the virus will slow. China is nearing the point at which the number of new infections will be zero, while South Korea had already moved past the median point, and was starting to see a slow down in new infection rates.

Italy's higher death rate, he said, was likely due to the fact that elderly people make up a greater percentage of the population than they do in other countries such as China or France. “Furthermore, Italian culture is very warm, and Italians have a very rich social life. For these reasons, it is important to keep people apart and prevent sick people from coming into contact with healthy people.”

Israel doesn't have enough cases to provide useful data from which to make predictions, Levitt said, although he praised the government for its preventative measures. "The more severe the defensive measures taken, the more they will buy time to prepare for needed treatment and develop a vaccine,” he said.

The IDF's Policies on Coronavirus

The IDF will continue conducting regular situational assessments and will limit the movement of military personnel as necessary.

The IDF’s Home Front Command is assisting the Ministry of Health and civilians as needed. On March 15, 2020, the IDF Home Front Command opened a joint information center with Magen David Adom—Israel’s national emergency medical service—in order to act as a source of information for civilians who may have questions about the virus and increase the response to those infected.

In order to limit the spread of coronavirus in neighboring countries and in the Palestinian territories the IDF has:

- Closed Allenby Bridge border crossing (with Jordan), Erez border crossing (with Gaza), and Bethlehem except for emergencies.
- Conducted joint medical training sessions with the Palestinian Authority.
- Transferred test kits and disinfectant materials to the Palestinian Authority.

The IDF remains committed to protecting the people of Israel and its soldiers from any and all threats, while ensuring continuous and full operational capabilities.

Jerusalem mayor to the people of Italy: We are with you!

Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion expressed solidarity with the people of Italy during the coronavirus pandemic on Sunday when he said “Italy! Jerusalem is with you!” a press release on behalf of his office reported.

The walls of the Old City of Jerusalem were lit with the colors of the Italian flag in a show of support to the hardest hit nation after China with COVID 19.

Lion wished a quick recovery and plenty of health to the people of Italy and everyone in Israel and the world.

Rome and Jerusalem have a long mutual history, one of the founding texts of modern Zionism is the 1862 work by Moses Hess Rome and Jerusalem in which he framed the Jewish question in the framework of modern European, including Italian, nationalism.

"Israel Apartheid Week 2020" is a victim of the coronavirus. Awww.

From Palestine Solidarity Committee:

Hold on - they want to see apartheid off campus? Like off-campus apartments?

Anyway, as far as I can tell, every campus event has been canceled because the schools have shut down. In fact, Facebook warns not to have large events - not that so many would have attended anyway. Here is the Facebook warning along with an event that has not officially been canceled yet but that had zero people interested in attending:

Thousands of person hours of preparation by rabid Israel haters have all gone to waste because their annual hatefests have been canceled by an obviously Zionist virus.

All together now - "Awwwwww."

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.

One of the more interesting aspects of the Old White Men Who Pretend To Be Woke Debate last night was the discussion of which opposed authoritarian regimes more.

They both claimed to be against authoritarianism and for human rights, but Bernie Sanders praised the progress made under Castro against illiteracy and in China's economy, while accusing Joe Biden of being soft on the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Biden made the point that Sanders consistently praises Communist authoritarian regimes as he did in the 1960s on the Soviet Union.

But neither of them had anything bad to say about authoritarianism in Iran or Turkey.

This part of the debate was most illuminating:

Joe Biden: Why did you vote not to sanction the Russians?

Bernie Sanders: You know why? Because I had every … you keep talking about Iran that was tied to Iran. Russia was in Iran. I think John Kerry indicated his support for what I did. That was undermining the Iranian agreement. That’s why.

Suddenly, the Iran agreement - to prop up a regime that is so authoritarian that it mandates how women must dress - was considered more important than human rights to Bernie Sanders. Biden also rushed to take credit for sending billions of dollars to Iran as part of a sham agreement, money that directly goes to Syria and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad who are hardly poster children for human rights.

Similarly, in response to Sanders' praise for China's progress in boosting its economy, Biden slammed him for ignoring the million Uyghurs in Chinese prisons.

Even the Cuban literacy program that Sanders praises came on the back of tens of thousands of citizens who were forced to become teachers against their will, teaching course materials that were all pro-government propaganda, with success proven by forcing the newly literate to write letters of praise to Castro.

An unintentionally ironic tweet during the debate from Jewish Voice for Peace highlights the hypocrisy of those on the Left who pretend that human rights is their major platform:

These are people who pretend to support Palestinians and yet they never say a word about the authoritarian Abbas and Hamas regimes, which shut down freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and are against LGBTQ and women's rights. Not to mention JVP's silence on human rights abuses in Iran, or the discrimination against Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon or Egypt.

They are all hypocrites.

The Right doesn't care about human rights any more than the Left does. They will use it as a tool to demonize the other side without really caring about the victims of human rights abuses in nations they are allied with. The difference is in who they choose as their allies - the Right in America will tend to support nations who support the US, while the Left seems to want to coddle America's enemies in an always vain attempt to get them to change.

Politics will beat human rights every single time - even, and especially, among those who claim that human rights is the center of their concerns. It is time to stop pretending otherwise.

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.

This was all over the news last week:

A prominent Iranian cleric has said it is permissible to use a future coronavirus vaccine developed by Israel if “there is no substitute.”

The Iranian regime views Israel as a mortal enemy. But Iran has also faced one of the most severe outbreaks of the COVID-19 coronavirus outside its origin and epicenter in China.

“It is not permissible to buy and sell from Zionists and Israel,” Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, 93, told the Iranian daily Hamdeli on Wednesday.

“Unless the treatment is unique and there is no substitute,” he added, “then this is not an obstacle.”

Shirazi, one of the highest authorities in Shiite Islam and a former member of the regime’s Assembly of Experts that appoints the supreme leader, is considered among the regime’s more hard-line ideologues.

Now, the same cleric denies ever saying those words, although he fell short of saying that he would refuse such a vaccine.

A top Shi'a cleric in Iran has denied approving the purchase of a possible anti-coronavirus vaccine from Israel, which Islamic Republic considers as its top enemy.

In a statement on March 14, the office of an officially-recognized "Grand Ayatollah", Nasser Makarem Shirazi, reiterated that he was never asked about an anti-coronavirus vaccine produced by Israel.

"The Q&A on the subject never took place, and it is absolutely fake news," the office asserted.

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.

Cleric close to Khamenei wants Iranians to widely infect the world with Covid-19 to help bring about the Mahdi messiah

A prominent hardline Iranian cleric, Ali Reza Banahyan, called on the Iranians to spread the coronavirus to speed up the emergence of the expected Mahdi, the messianic figure in Shiite Islam.

Banahyan said that the outbreak of the virus is a sign of the emergence of the Mahdi, which Shiites believe will emerge at the end of time.

Banahyan is close to the guide the Ayatollah Khamenei, according to the local Tasnim News Agency.

The cleric added that the world before the emergence of the Mahdi will suffer from widespread fears and many economic problems and deaths, and people will need a religious government led by the Imam Mahdi.

Is it really so outrageous to think that people who bankroll suicide bombings all the time against their enemies would not send people infected with the coronavirus to different parts of the world?

I always find it fascinating that the people who are scared as hell of, say, Mike Pence for his fundamentalist Christian beliefs never seem to show much worry about a wannabe nuclear superpower that believes that widespread deaths are a good thing to help bring about the end of the world.

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.

Arabic media has been reporting this story that's good enough make you forget all about other news:

A housewife in Alexandria, Egypt, took revenge on her husband by cutting off his penis and leaving him bleeding, after seeing messages on his private phone confirming his betrayal and his many female relationships.

The Egyptian security forces received a notification from a hospital that a government worker was suffering from severe bleeding due to the cutting of his penis.

Investigations revealed that his 23-year-old wife drugged him, and after making sure he lost consciousness, his penis was cut off with a kitchen knife.

The accused was arrested, and she confessed to the crime, and she did this to her husband in retaliation for his multiple episodes of adultery.

In her confession, she said that she was suspicious of his behavior for returning late every day, texting more than one conversation on his private phone. She confronted him and he and he promised his commitment to her.

After a while, she discovered that he was in a relationship with one of the women, so she decided to take revenge on him. To be 100% certain, she decided to drug him so that she could open his phone and confirm the text messages. She put narcotics in his tea, and after making sure he was asleep, she opened his phone and saw texts about his promise to marry the woman.

That's when she took out the kitchen knife and took things into her own hands.

Unlike John Bobbitt, it does not appear that the husband was reattached with his member.

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.

03/15 Links: Hamas antisemitic propaganda story taught in our schools; Rivlin: Coronavirus emergency will make Israel more resilient; Gantz gets 61 backers to form coalition, topping Netanyahu

From Ian:

David Collier: Hamas antisemitic propaganda story taught in our schools

The Times ran an exclusive in May 2018 about a young child, an aspiring footballer in Gaza being shot whilst playing football with his friends. A few months later the World Health Organisation (WHO) published an embellished version on their website -having the Israeli soldier deliberately shoot the child after a face-to-face confrontation. Schools provides the WHO story as a key case study for students to learn. The only problem – much of the story surrounding this tragedy was created by the Hamas propaganda machinery. Bookmark this blog – it details how the propaganda of a radical Islamic terrorist organisation ends up being taught to British students at school.
The boy who plays football

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), Scotland’s largest teaching organisation, provides material on the Israel /Arab conflict for both teachers and students. As you would expect, there is a lot of disinformation and distortion in their content. I was going through it to highlight the errors when I came across a shocking case study (activity 5) regarding the shooting of a young boy along the Gaza border.

The case study is a horror story. It is about Abdul, an eleven-year-old boy who loves to play football. He was too scared to play in his neighbourhood because of the ‘March of Return’ protests. Eventually his friends convinced him that his playground was far enough away from the fence. Then this happened:
One of the boys shot the ball too far and Abdul started running to get it. He was not aware that the ball had landed near the fence until he found himself face-to-face with an Israeli soldier. Abdul-Rahman had no time to run before the soldier aimed his gun at Abdul’s leg and fired. Because the bullet was fired at close range, Abdul-Rahman’s leg shattered and needed to be amputated below the knee. He is now the youngest amputee as a result of the mass demonstrations.

Propaganda Problems
Almost anyone who understands the Gaza protests can immediately see there is something wrong with the story. It claims Abdul came ‘face to face’ with the soldier who then deliberately shot him at near point-blank range. Israeli soldiers are not standing by the fence. Abdul would never have been face-to-face with anyone.

The case study describes a brutal, callous and deliberate shooting. It reads like it is carefully written propaganda. No student ever reading this would be left untouched by the tale. The story even has an image of a schoolboy kicking a football – designed to created identification between the student and the victim. The horror of this story made me look a little closer at the details. I am glad I did.

Reuven Rivlin: Coronavirus emergency will make Israel more resilient

President Reuven Rivlin told the Israeli public on Sunday to “keep calm and avoid hysteria.”

Speaking ahead of his meetings with members of the 23rd Knesset to receive their recommendations before announcing which member of Knesset will be tasked with forming a government in the next 28 days, the president reminded people to “follow the rules and instructions and do not give way to fear and panic.

“More than ever, the success of the State of Israel in dealing with this extreme crisis lies in the hands of our civil society,” said the president. “Now is when we are asked to give our children, on our own, a positive and normal routine. Now is when we are asked,more than ever, to take responsibility for our fellows, particularly the elderly among us – in our buildings, communities, neighborhoods, and those who are at the highest risk not just of getting sick, but of finding themselves isolated and without supplies.

“That is the spirit, our spirit, and if we maintain it, it will take care of us,” the president said.

He made clear that he did not believe that dealing with the coronavirus emergency - there are now around 200 people with the sickness in Israel - would be at the expense of Israeli democracy. Rather, he said, as in the past, dealing with enemies “has rather strengthened it and made our country, the State of Israel, more resilient.

“We are committed, more than ever, in light of the urgent need for a government, to hold essential democratic processes, even in a time of crisis,” he said.

Cabinet meeting taking place in 6 different locations to set an example of social distancing pic.twitter.com/ZRY5kSRLWz
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) March 15, 2020

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: The virus that has nothing novel about it

I have been tracking this virus for the last twenty years—no, make that for the last fifty years.

I am talking about another virulent virus, that of Jew hatred, a deadly plague that has managed to mutate over time and geography so that it is always at-the-ready, both in good times and bad, definitely in times of war, famine, plague, and natural disaster but also when hope is high and the going is good.

As has happened many times before, the Jews and Jewish Israel are being blamed for the Wuhan Virus by the mad mullahs of Iran. They say that “Zionists” are behind the Wuhan (Corona) Virus and that “Zionist elements developed a deadlier strain of Wuhan (Corona) virus just against Iran.”

China, ground zero for the pandemic, is now blaming America for having brought it into China in the first place.

Let’s visit Wuhan, Hubei Province, China for a moment.

My friend and colleague, Marion Dreyfus, has written about her time in Wuhan in the early part of the 21st century. The city had absolutely no potable water and little hygiene; there was open sewage in open marketplace “eateries,” where wild dogs roamed and where bats and all other manner of fish, fowl, and bird were slaughtered, sold, and eaten.

For lunch, Dreyfus and her Chinese friends went to “the dirty alley” where they purchased “unidentified frying objects in woks,” which were as “delicious” as they were unknown. Wuhan’s live market was like a “free zoo,” where rats, bats, snakes, and scorpions were sold to be eaten and the “floors were awash underfoot with spill from the livestock.” As she so delicately phrases it: “The smell was... not Chanel #5.”

Due to the Wuhan Virus, I cancelled my upcoming Sunday lecture in Philadelphia on Anti-Semitism. I’ve continually kept up with this subject—‘twas easier and easier to do since there have been so very many awful-beyond-belief incidents and many thousands of pages of analyses. It is a subject that never seems to go out of style. But for this new lecture, I wanted to read and re-read absolutely everything relevant since my last public lecture on this subject which took place four years ago.

On Monday, a member of the Iranian National and Foreign Political Security Committee, Shahrouz Berzakr, claimed that an unknown deadly virus diefferent from Covid-19 has appeared in one of the Iranian provinces and caused the death of a nurse.

Barzakr told the ISNA news agency that "after a meeting of the members of the committee and the speaker of parliament with the Iranian Minister of Health this morning, what we understood from the words of the Minister of Health today is that there are two types of Coronavirus circulating in the country, one of which is the Chinese Wuhan virus and the other is a virus of an unknown source, and that the second virus did not show mercy to a 25-year-old nurse and killed her immediately. "

"The other virus is likely to be a type of American biological terrorism that Washington has transmitted to the country," he noted.

Hours later, a spokesperson for the Iranian Health Ministry flatly denied that they claimed anything of the sort.

Meanwhile, about eight Iranians accidentally killed themselves by drinking alcohol in an effort to inoculate themselves from the coronavirus, four in Fars and four in Shiraz.

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.

Time magazine has had two special double issues recently.

In February, there was an issue centered around today's youth and the future. Featured was a piece by Mahathir Mohamed, then-Prime Minister of Malaysia.

Mohamed is a proud antisemite. He's said so directly less than five months prior to this issue as well as previously. Yet Time didn't think it was important to bring that up. In fact, Time also honored Mohamed as one of its most influential people of 2019 also without mentioning his antisemitism.

If Mohamed had defended racism, it seems unlikely that Time wouldn't mention it. But antisemitism is more acceptable than racism is.

In its more recent special double-issue on a century of "Women of the Year," Time honored over a hundred women. The short bios were not hagiographic - they admitted that, say, birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger was associated with the eugenics movement, and that Indira Gandhi destroyed many basic human rights under her rule of India.

However, its piece on Angela Davis is entirely worshipful - despite her own antisemitism.

Besides her current support for boycotting the Jewish state, recognized by many nations and US states as being antisemitic and similar to Nazi boycotts of Jewish goods, Davis also scornfully rejected a chance to help Soviet Jewish dissidents in prisons behind the Iron Curtain. Around 1973, when Alan Dershowitz found out that Davis was accepting an award in the Soviet Union, he asked that she speak up to help the Jewish refuseniks, many of whom were arrested on charges of teaching Judaism. Her response was "They are all Zionist fascists and opponents of socialism" and the Jews should stay in prison where they belonged.

Yet Time doesn't see fit to mention this proof that Davis is not a freedom fighter but an antisemitic socialist.

To add insult to injury, her bio in the piece was written by Ibram X. Kendi, author of "How To Be an Antiracist." If you believe that Jews who want freedom from tyranny should be jailed, you are not an anti-racist.

A single racist tweet is enough to destroy careers. But explicit antisemitism is not. Time magazine proves that even in 2020, antisemitism is an accepted form of bigotry in mainstream media.

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.

Samir Geagea, chairman of the Lebanese Forces Party, called to impose a siege on Palestinian camps in Lebanon and to prevent Palestinians from entering and exiting the camps under the excuse of helping to contain the coronavirus.

As far as I can tell, no one in the camps has been diagnosed with the virus.

Geagea said in a speech from his party’s headquarters in Ma’arab on Friday, “It is necessary to announce measures against Palestinian camps and the Syrian presence in Lebanon, to close the camps, and refusing to allow anyone to enter and leave..."

Palestinian groups denounced his speech as a transparent means to attack the government while using them as pawns. An official from the PLO in Lebanon said, not inaccurately, that Geagea's words were "racist statements that are repugnant, rejected, condemned and incompatible with human values and with human rights, and it is clear that Samir Geagea are trafficking in politics at the expense of the rights of the Palestinians to a decent human life in Lebanon."

I have yet to see major human rights organizations outside Lebanon say a word about the endemic and explicit discrimination against Palestinians in Lebanon like this, which are always clothed in righteous language but are in truth the real apartheid against Palestinians in the Middle East.

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.

03/14 Links: Netanyahu: All leisure activities to stop Sunday; Bethany Mandel: Collapse of Bernie Sanders campaign saves us from administration full of anti-Semites; Iran Rages Against the Perfect Storm

From Ian:

PM says all leisure venues to shut, urges Israel to adjust to ‘new way of life’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and government officials on Saturday announced a shutdown of all leisure businesses and activities throughout the country, with the premier pressing upon the public the need to “adopt a new way of life” for the coming weeks and possibly months as the country deals with the new coronavirus — and particularly underlining a guiding principle of individuals maintaining a distance of at least two meters from others at all times.

Sunday morning will see public life further diminished, with the closure of all cafes, restaurants, hotels, malls, movie theaters, gyms, event halls and the like. It was implied that all non-essential shops would close, though not specifically stated. But Netanyahu stressed that supermarkets, pharmacies, banks and other essentials would continue to function.

Sunday will also see the closure of preschools, kindergartens and daycares that had remained open on Friday amid a closure of all educational institutions.

Furthermore, the government announced a new restriction on gatherings of over 10 people in the same place. There were no new restrictions announced on public transportation; Netanyahu said this matter was still under discussion.

For non-leisure workplaces, the prime minister said work would continue, but all employers were urged to encourage work from home wherever possible.

“This is a battle for public health,” Netanyahu said at a press conference from the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. “We are at war with an invisible enemy…We are adjusting as things develop. The situation is dynamic.” But, he said, “we can beat it.”

Comparing the situation several times to a state of war, the premier said it was imperative for Israelis to change gears and “adopt a new way of life” for the near future, noting that many Israelis appeared not to be heeding officials’ calls to avoid physical contact and displays of affection, but stressing that this was crucial for the nation to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Noah Rothman: Iran Rages Against the Perfect Storm

This violence comes at a time of unprecedented stress on the Iranian regime. The Islamic Republic has been hit particularly hard by the Coronavirus, in part, as a result of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions regime. Tehran’s efforts to evade American sanctions has increased its reliance on China—links that it could not afford to sever even as the outbreak worsened. “Iran’s strategic partnership with Beijing has created a constellation of potential contacts that helped unleash the illness,” the Wall Street Journal reported. This has only contributed to the anti-regime sentiment in Iran that has produced sporadic episodes of violent unrest for the better part of three years. “We were unhappy with all these crappy Chinese goods everywhere,” one Iranian housewife told WSJ reporters. “Now they brought us this crappy virus, too.”

According to official regime statistics, just over 500 people have died as a result of the outbreak. But there’s reason to be skeptical of these figures. As CNN reported, private satellite imagery indicates a rapid excavation of trenches around the city of Qom—a municipality with some of the closest economic links to China—which analysts believe are to be used as graves. A provocative analysis by the Atlantic‘s Graeme Wood concludes that Iran is deliberately underreporting domestic COVID-19 cases by tens or even hundreds of thousands. Still, Iran’s official news agencies are reporting that the disease has taken a grim toll on the nation’s governmental and security apparatuses. “Iran’s senior vice president and two other Cabinet members have contracted the new coronavirus,” Iran’s FARS news agency reported this week. “Among the dead are five of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard members and an unspecified number of the Guard’s volunteer Basij force,” Iran’s health ministry revealed.

“The economic depression is far more pervasive and contagious than the virus itself,” said one Iranian business owner. Iran’s economy is already estimated to have contracted by almost 10 percent in 2019 as a result of international sanctions, and the reduced domestic economic activity and trade with its remaining partners will only exacerbate these conditions. Perhaps more urgent for Iran, the efforts by Saudi Arabia and Russia to ramp up energy production have sent global oil prices into a tailspin.

Tehran is slightly more insulated from the oil-price shock than it might have been in the absence of American sanctions, which have curtailed Iranian energy exports. But plummeting rates of production and export have deepened the economic crisis in Iran and produced “mass layoffs” in the Iranian oil sector. It was only last November that the economic pressure on the Iranian regime forced it to pare back the subsidies that kept domestic gasoline prices low, yielding to widespread protests, violence, and a shutdown of the Internet. It’s unlikely to be coincidental that this domestic unrest coincided with the escalating military provocations against Americans and their allies in Iraq that culminated in the Soleimani strike.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the level of risk the Iranian regime is prepared to accept is directly proportional to the economic hardships it endures. And for Tehran, the threat posed by a global Coronavirus pandemic alongside the collapse of global oil prices is a perfect storm. It’s reasonable to assume, then, more violence in the Middle East will be forthcoming.

Bethany Mandel: Collapse of Bernie Sanders campaign saves us from administration full of anti-Semites

In the wake of recent 2020 primary election results, there is an unexpected silver lining for Jewish Americans: Sen. Bernie Sanders will almost certainly not be the Democratic presidential nominee.

One would think that for the Jewish community, having a Jewish nominee would have been an achievement to be celebrated instead of a possibility to fear, but sadly, no. Due to both the Vermont independent’s radical beliefs and policy positions, as well as his propensity for surrounding himself with suspect characters, the prospect of a Sanders presidency was concerning indeed for many Jewish Americans like me.

Sanders often touts his trip to Israel to live on a kibbutz when he discusses the America-Israel relationship. But there is an important point lost on many Sanders supporters: He wasn’t spending time in the Jewish state learning about or promoting Judaism or Zionism.

Writing for the Hudson Institute, Ron Radosh explained:
"But in 1963 when Sanders worked on Hashomer’s kibbutz, its members considered themselves Marxist-Zionists, and they held a pro-Soviet orientation which included supporting Soviet foreign policy. Their ideological orientation on Zionism and socialism came not from the social democrats of the Socialist International, who were strongly anti-Communist and anti-fascist during the years of World War II (like Germany’s Willy Brandt), but from a rather unknown figure, a Zionist named Ber Borochov.

"I knew members of Hashomer Hatzair in the same period that Bernie worked on their kibbutz. They would always urge me to read Borochov’s books. Although he passed away in 1917, too early to see the horrendous results of the Bolshevik Revolution, Borochov’s followers argued that he had proved that “socialist Zionism” had to be Marxist-Leninist.

"Their only criticism of the official Israeli Communist Party was its refusal to see that Stalin was wrong to argue that Jews did not need their own nation and that they instead should work within their own countries to foment a communist revolution. (If you want to know more about Borochov, Wikipedia accurately summarizes his views.)"

Things aren’t any better in the present day either. Sanders has consistently surrounded himself with surrogates who are clear about their position not just on the Jewish state but on Jewish people as well — and it’s not pretty.

Ilhan Omar Iranian minister for antisemitism https://t.co/Kv0hpYz3oG
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) March 14, 2020

Hamas Joins Bernie Sanders’ Presidential Campaign (satire)

Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has taken some public criticism for some of his campaign surrogates’ questionable views on Israel. It seems though that rather than attempt to assure Jewish communities that the Sanders campaign doesn’t support anti-Semitic propaganda, they’ve gone the other direction:

Earlier this week, Hamas announced that it was going to join the Sanders 2020 campaign as a digital media partnership.

In a statement, one Hamas spokesperson said, “The Bernie Sanders campaign is struggle against a powerful regime to achieve hilariously unrealistic goals by calling anyone who disagrees with them a terrorist and we very strongly identify with that attitude.” He continued by explaining “that it was nice to work with someone who hates Benjamin Netanyahu as much as we do”.

Although the Sanders campaign is facing serious criticism for the choice, Sanders supporters such as IfNotNow, Linda Sarsour, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are praising the bold choice. The campaign has also defended itself saying that the choice to include Hamas in their election efforts stems from Hamas’ position as being anti-occupation and their commitment to make sure every citizen of Gaza has a job in tunnel construction. The Sanders campaign comms director said that “Hamas was hired for their experience creating viral videos like the 2014 song titled Kum, Aseh Piguim, whatever that means”.

Palestine Today reports that Hamas official Mohamed Awad announced a series of measures taken to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in the Gaza Strip.

Awad said during a joint press conference with the Ministry of Health on Saturday evening, "It was decided to close the Gaza Strip crossings in both directions until further notice except for emergency cases."

Just the day before, IfNotNow complained that Israel, by enforcing a partial closure on Gaza, was going to make things worse for Gazans trapped inside. Somehow I don't think they will say a word against Hamas for their far more draconian closure of the entire Strip.

Because they are allies of the terror group.

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.

03/13 Links Pt2: Jonathan S. Tobin: Pandemic panic a breeding ground for Jew-hatred; Melanie Phillips: Will a microbe seal the fate of Iran's virulent regime?; Caroline B. Glick: What happened to the Israeli Left?

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Pandemic panic a breeding ground for Jew-hatred

What happened during the period when the bubonic plague through Europe from 1347 to 1351 has been burned into the historical memory of the Jewish people. The "Black Death" was one of the greatest demographic catastrophes to afflict the human race in recorded history. Historians estimate that up to 50% of Europe's population died in the pandemic with death rates as high as 75% in Italy, Spain, and France, where the disease was present for four years.

The tragedy for Jews was not just the risk of a deadly contagion. In the midst of unimaginable suffering, many European Christians wanted a scapegoat. The Jewish minority – often set apart in ghettos, and subject to demonization from both church and state – was an easy choice, and massacres and pogroms targeting Jews across Europe followed.

Though the world changed a great deal in the following centuries, the impulse to find someone to blame for diseases or other calamities is still embedded in the human psyche. It's hardly surprising to learn that there has been a surge of anti-Semitic activity in which anti-Semites have sought to tie Jews to the creation and/or spread of the coronavirus.

As JNS reported on Monday, a group of George Washington University students attended the AIPAC policy conference and, due to fears of an affected person being at the event in Washington, DC, were briefly quarantined. Some of them found themselves being targeted on social media by other students who spread the lie that people would get the disease because of the actions of "white supremacists" and "Zionists." Another student, who wears a kipah, reported that he was surrounded and taunted by a group who called him "yahood" (Arabic for "Jew") and asserted that Jews had "started" and "produced" the virus.

The presence of an infected person at AIPAC also drew an unhealthy interest from many Israel-haters with none other than Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) reportedly retweeting (and then subsequently deleting) an account of what happened – either out of a sense of schadenfreude or to please fans of the hate she's spread about Israel and its Jewish supporters.

The disturbing reactions to the AIPAC story weren't isolated incidents. The Anti-Defamation League reported in early February that neo-Nazis and white supremacists were using the Internet to spread conspiracy theories about Jews being behind the disease. Since then, the contagiousness of anti-Semitic bile has kept pace in parallel with the spread of the virus and likely will continue to build, as frustration over the increasing shutdown of communal life gives idle minds even more time to waste staring at the screens of computers and smartphones.

There are some obvious conclusions that can be drawn from this depressing example of humanity's weaknesses.

Melanie Phillips: Will a microbe seal the fate of Iran's virulent regime?

This week, the International Atomic Energy Authority has reported that Iran is accelerating its production of enriched uranium and is blocking its nuclear inspectors from inspecting Iranian activities. Some analysts suggest that Iran has dramatically shrunk its theoretical "breakout" time to acquire a bomb's worth of weapons-grade uranium to less than four months.

The regime's failure to protect Iranians against the virus has provided a fresh outbreak of public protests. More ominously for the regime, the people are openly mocking it. Since mockery is a sign of condign disapproval in Iran, the regime will be well aware that its already fragile hold on power over the public is slipping further.

This all adds to the increasing pressure the regime has been under through the resumption of sanctions, not to mention the grievous blow it suffered from the US drone killing of its principal military strategist, Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

In addition to all of the above, having empowered the Shia from Beirut to Baghdad, the regime is now finding that these people are also turning against it. They are blaming its corruption, ineptitude and foreign adventurism for causing their many woes. In Iraq, the Shia are literally praying for the coronavirus to kill the mullahs.

This week, two Americans and one British soldier were killed after the Taji military camp hosting US and UK troops in Iraq was hit by a rocket attack. No one has claimed responsibility, but the most plausible suspect is Iran.

If so, this suggests that the regime is panicking. For when fanatics feel cornered, they are likely to lash out on the basis that if they're going down, they'll take down with them the enemies they believe are their Divine mission to destroy. Perhaps that's also why it's not fanciful to suggest that the coronavirus is "a blessing" they wish to magnify.

This microbe might just achieve what humankind has failed to do and seal the fate of the regime itself. With the pandemic predicted to reach its peak around Passover, the coronavirus may thus lay claim to becoming the 11th plague.

Caroline B. Glick: What happened to the Israeli Left?

This week, with the liberal mass media providing wall-to-wall support for Blue and White's efforts to form a post-Zionist government dependent on the anti-Zionist Joint Arab List, it appears that over the past 19 years, Shelah's post-Zionism has moved from the margins to the mainstream. The media's energetic attempts to defend Blue and White's efforts show that post-Zionism is the predominant position of the Israeli left.

How did this happen?

Dozens of leading lights of Israeli society signed the Kinneret Charter in July 2001. The next month, the ideals they embraced were bludgeoned by the international community. In late August 2001, the UN convened its anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa. At Durban, UN member states and the most prominent non-governmental organizations in the world came together to libel and criminalize the Jewish state and people with unprecedented brutality.

Just ten years before, in 1991, the US used its post-Cold War clout at the UN to repeal UN General Assembly resolution 3379 from 1975. Resolution 3379 defined Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement as "a form of racism." At that time, it was still taken for granted in the Western world that it is anti-Semitic to deny the Jewish people's right to self-determination in their homeland.

Two conferences were convened at Durban – a conference of UN member nations and a conference of non-governmental organizations. In both, Resolution 3379 was not merely brought back from the dead. It was transformed into the cri de coeur of the UN and the international NGO community. The NGO conference produced a shocking resolution that called for Israel's destruction as a Jewish state and accused Israel of being a Nazi, Apartheid regime that was committing genocide and other war crimes. UN member states and NGOs were directed to enact a total boycott of Israel.

The international boycott campaign against Israel was initiated shortly thereafter.

One of the groups most responsible for the diplomatic pogrom at Durban was an Israeli Arab legal advocacy organization called Adalah. The heads of Adalah played leading roles in drafting the resolution. Adalah, which is funded by the EU and anti-Israel foundations in the US set about organizing the Israeli Arab community around the NGO resolution. Arab MKs all parrot the language of hatred and rejection of Israel and Jewish peoplehood that was so violently expressed in the Durban resolution.

Together with other subversive, anti-Zionist NGOs, Adalah works through the post-nationalist Supreme Court to block elected officials in the government and Knesset from enforcing the laws of the state towards Arab Israelis. In accordance with the Durban NGO resolution, they demand that Israeli Arabs be accorded "communal rights," and so effectively undermine Israel's ability to operate as a democracy governed by the rule of law. Internationally, Adalah is actively involved in boycott efforts against Israel whose goal is to criminalize Zionism, Israel's supporters abroad and Israel's very existence. The anti-Israel portion of the Black Lives Matter charter was reportedly written by Adalah.

Among Israeli Jews, views like Adalah's have long been dominant in many universities. Already at the outset of the Palestinian terror war against Israel, professors from Israel's premier universities signed petitions calling for IDF soldiers to refuse to serve in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and calling for the economic boycott of Israel.

The @NYTimes, painting Israeli Jews as racists, asks the wrong question

From the New York Times:

Israelis eager to end Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s career won a slim majority in last week’s election.

But one thing has kept them from uniting to send him packing: A sizable chunk of the anti-Netanyahu majority consists of Arab lawmakers, and the Jewish ones cannot agree on whether to consider them partners or the enemy.

Mr. Netanyahu says the Arab bloc includes lawmakers who support terrorism and oppose Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state.

His opponents, led by the former army chief Benny Gantz, who held coalition talks with Arab party leaders on Monday, say a vote is a vote, and that Mr. Netanyahu is happy to rely on those same lawmakers when it suits him.

But even some of Mr. Gantz’s supporters balk at teaming up with Arab politicians, saying that a state established to protect the Jewish people, and still in conflict with the Palestinians, cannot entrust weighty policy decisions to people whose sympathies may be with the other side.

The roiling debate, which has set back the effort to depose Mr. Netanyahu and could force Israel to hold a record fourth election, turns on a question at the heart of the country’s existence as a democratic and Jewish state:

Are the votes of Arab citizens worth as much as those of Jews?

No, that is not the question. And it is insulting to say that is the question.

The question is whether a political party that is against the founding tenets of Israel, that is against the existence of a Jewish state, should be considered a partner in a governing coalition of a state whose reason for existence fundamentally oppose.

The major parties in Israel have had Arab members. No one has a problem with that.

The "Joint List" includes the Israeli Communist party Hadash which has one current Jewish member of Parliament. That doesn't make its positions as part of the Joint List any more palatable to most Israelis.

Here's the thought experiment that proves that the NYT thesis that assumes Israeli racism is wrong: Imagine a moderate Arab party that accepts the concept of a Jewish state and that seeks to join a coalition to push an agenda of helping fight for equality for all Arabs in Israel. Not only would Labor eagerly work with it, not only would Kachol Lavan work with it, but even Likud would negotiate with it to be part of a coalition. The fact that they are Arabs is not the issue - as long as they accept that Israel is the Jewish state, no one would have a problem with that.

Yes, Israeli politicians have an unfortunate tendency to lump all Arabs as voting for the "Arab party." But Israel is some 20% Arab and the Joint List gets about 13% of the vote, which means that (assuming that Arabs vote in roughly the same proportion as Jews) plenty of Arabs are voting for Zionist parties.

I would welcome a moderate Arab party being active in Israeli politics. I think most Israelis would. If they were racist, they wouldn't.

(h/t David B)

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.