Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

03/17 Links Pt1: Until the Arab Parties Abandon Their Hatred of Israel, They Don’t Belong in the Government; Remembering the Terrorist Bombing of Israel's Embassy in Buenos Aires

From Ian:

Until the Arab Parties Abandon Their Hatred of Israel, They Don’t Belong in the Government

Thus we have Tibi telling President Reuven Rivlin during the September 2019 parliamentary consultations that “we are the owners of this land… we did not immigrate here, we were born here, we are a native population.” Six months later, after another round of national elections brought the Joint List’s Knesset representation to an unprecedented tally of 15 MKs, Tibi was far more brazen. “The Land of Israel is a colonialist phrase,” he stated in a radio interview. “I contemptuously reject the term ‘Judea and Samaria’. This is the Palestinian bank, the occupied Palestinian territories.”

Of course the Land of Israel was known as such millennia before the advent of European colonialism, or even before the Roman colonialists renamed it Syria Palaestina precisely to obliterate the millenarian Jewish entitlement to this land. The biblical areas of Judea and Samaria were known by this name since biblical times, thousands of years before they were renamed the West Bank (of the Hashemite Kingdom) in 1950 by King Abdullah ibn Hussein. The League of Nations’ mandate for Palestine delineated the country’s borders according to its interpretation of the biblical term “from Dan to Beersheba,” while Mandatory Palestine included a substantial Samarian district comprising much of the would-be “West Bank.”

It is hardly surprising that Tibi and his fellow members of the Joint List would remain impervious to the historical truth. Theirs is the agenda of rewriting the story of the “Nakba”—the Palestinian misnomer for their wholly unnecessary self-inflicted 1947-48 disaster when, rather than accept the UN’s partition resolution, they tried to destroy the state of Israel at birth—and nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of this (self-destructive) agenda. As the Joint Arab List’s leader Ayman Oudeh told President Rivlin on March 15: “We are not solely interested in full civil equality. We are a national group that deserves full national equality.” In other words: ending Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

But what about the three former IDF chiefs of staff heading the Blue and White party? Don’t they realize that they are but “useful idiots” for the Joint List’s ultimate goal (as candidly revealed by Oudeh, who described collaboration with this party as a steppingstone to “toppling the Netanyahu-led right-wing rule” en route to ending “the Zionist hegemony”)? Has their hatred of Benjamin Netanyahu blinded them to the point of forgetting the values and ideals for which they fought for decades and putting Israel’s future at risk?

David Singer: Gantz promises chaos and confusion in Israel for next six weeks

Gantz’s new partner was making it crystal clear to Israel’s President that Israel was not recognized by Tibi’s party as the Jewish National Home reconstituted after 3000 years by and with the unanimous resolution of all 51 member states that comprised the League of Nations and endorsed the Mandate for Palestine.

Balad – the second party included in the Joint List and now in partnership with Gantz - had a former MK Said Nafa among its ranks. Nafa was convicted of maintaining contact with a foreign intelligence operative and spent time in prison. Another former Balad Knesset member, Basel Ghattas, was convicted of smuggling cellphones to Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli jail, an offense for which he too was convicted and imprisoned.

Spokesperson for the Joint list is Ayman Odeh – the head of Hadash - the third party in Joint List.

Odeh stated on 5 March 2020:
“Right now, with Gantz’s attitude [in favor] of a Jewish majority and unilateral annexation, we have no one to recommend to the president. If there is a change after the elections in the direction of peace and equality, we will weigh our position again.”

Gantz has apparently capitulated to Odeh’s demands just 11 days later.

Vice President of the fourth party in the Joint List – Mansour Abbas - has declared:

“Of course, we are against the Zionist movement. However, from a pragmatic perspective, we are ready for a compromise between the Zionist movement and Palestinians”

Gantz has already caved to Balad's demands

In the past, Balad members described Gantz as someone who suffers from Zionist ideology, and is therefore unacceptable. On Tuesday, in another one of his speeches following his receipt of the mandate to form a government, he used the term "patriotic government." Some would interpret this as forgoing the term that has been accepted since Herzl – "Zionist."

Not everyone in the Arab street likes the support for Gantz. Balad's response: "Removing Netanyahu from power is the No. 1 priority." Balad also issued a statement pointing out what it had secured in negotiations with Gantz: "The first and most important [achievement] – recognition of the principle that no unilateral steps will be taken on annexation of areas of the West Bank; upholding the status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque; and a stop to the demolition of illegally built homes."

With these "achievements" in place, Gantz launching negotiations for a "unity" government with the Right is a recipe for time wasted on pointless talks that will ultimately result in a fourth election.

Right now, we have a prime minister who is handling the coronavirus outbreak, one of the worst crises in the history of Israel, excellently. Next to him, Gantz looks like a sideshow attraction. Still, Gantz is doing everything so that the work to establish a government winds up undermining the prime minister. The natural, right thing to do – what former Labor party voters wanted – is a unity government under Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has legitimacy that is based on broad popular support and the Right's electoral victory. Gantz, on the other hand, is supposed to form a unity government to which those who recommended him object.

https://t.co/SRDDAcim3G
— Yair Netanyahu 🇮🇱 (@YairNetanyahu) March 16, 2020

Assad al-Azzouni is an award-winning Arab novelist and writer.

He's also an antisemite.

His latest screed is about how Jews are behind the coronavirus, and much more.

The Corona virus can only be a product of the hatred of Jews throughout the world, and that its spread in America comes to confirm this, and it becomes an electoral weapon in the hands of Trump in the upcoming elections, to ensure his second term as a reward to him for what he presented to the Israeli Khazary Zionist Talmudic terrorists, the foremost among them is the deal of the century, Jerusalem, the Golan and the settlements.

When the Jews ignited the fire of the First World War, they reaped the Balfour Declaration, and when they set the fire of the Second War, they reaped behind them the establishment of the Khazars in Palestine, and they want to ignite the third war to announce the establishment of the Great Talmudic Kingdom of Israel, and here we live in the atmosphere of the third war, where the military and political horizons regarding regional and internal conflicts, and the recession that is deepening day by day due to the high price and political stalemate.

Not long ago, Jews tried to ignite the war between Iran and America by creating severe tension in the Gulf. In one of its forms, the Hajj Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, was killed. This was preceded by some skirmishes that almost ignited the third war, but the rationality of decision makers in Iran and America prevented it.

After this failure, the Israeli Mossad, in cooperation with the CIA, sent Coronavirus to China... Corona was the curtain that Jews used to achieve their goals and pressure the international community to turn a blind eye to their human crimes, implement the deal of the century as a whole and perhaps get some more because Shylock did not die, they urgently need media silence in order to exercise their duties in the manner that satisfies them, especially since the Israeli and American public announced their rejection of the deal of the century, and the fact that after that the coronavirus became the global "trend", in the media and social media, and I expect that they used the American secret runaway project who became partners in it after its completion, and it is used to control the weather and the general mood, and therefore I do not rule out that they used it on the subject of corona .........., and despite Corona we also expect to detonate the fuse of the Third World War.

This guy is interviewed regularly on TV.

Arabs take him seriously.

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The General Union of Palestinian Students branch in Hungary issued a statement that they are willing to help fight the coronavirus in that country.

The group is arranging that Palestinian students and graduates in the fields of medicine and public health register with Hungarian authorities to volunteer in any way they can. The coordination is happening through Dr. Ibrahim Al-Sharrouf, secretary of the Fatah movement in Hungary.

Very nice, right? Well, not really. Because this press release, whether it is true or not (it is not on the group's Facebook page,) is just another excuse to attack Israel.

The statement said, "We can be proud of this act and the human feeling of solidarity and this Palestinian act. As long as we are still Palestinians, our human feelings and morals are driven by the reality of the tragedy, oppression, looting and diminishing of our national and human rights due to the occupation and its daily criminal practices against our people for more than 70 years."

Can you imagine a Jewish group volunteering to help people - which happens all the time - and at the same time saying "We Jews are proud that we are really great and moral, especially since the gentiles have been attacking us for thousands of years"?

Suddenly, what could have been a nice gesture turns into a self-aggrandizing political attack. Both the pride at the idea of volunteering before anyone actually volunteers, and the attack on Israel, indicate that this is not a real attempt to help Hungarian authorities but an excuse to issue a press release saying "We Palestinians are moral human beings and Israelis are evil tormenters."

It will be interesting to see if any actual volunteering is ever documented.

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"Pro-Palestinian" activists don't care about Palestinian racism

Here is one of the postponed/canceled events for "Israel Apartheid Week" at Lancaster University:

Notice that the theme of the event was supposed to be "United Against Racism."

Which is funny, because the intended speaker has written about racism - Arab racism against black Palestinians.

On his Facebook page, in Arabic, he wrote last month:

About three years ago, I read an article in the Al Monitor newspaper titled "Black Palestinians Shrug Off Racism"… After I read the article, I was angered, thinking "What?! We don't have racism in Gaza!" So I decided to write an article that would refute the original article. Then I began to conduct interviews with some dark-skinned youth, and I was shocked to find that yes, indeed, we do have despicable racism in Gaza, and dark-skinned people suffer because of our racism.

After I published the article, I was surprised to see that it reached the (Ministry of) Interior, and the criticism began to pour down on me, as well as accusation of being a traitor, and (people said that) I am trying to distort Gaza's image… And no one thought or felt even once what the wronged people (i.e. the black Palestinians) feel because of our racism.

The Al Monitor article mentions "According to Gaza Through History, a book by Ibrahim Sakik, wealthy families in the Gaza Strip participated in the slave trade hundreds of years ago." But there is not a single book about the history of black Palestinians.

The Israel haters say they are against racism, yet they know quite well that Arabs are racists - but that fact cannot be publicized because anyone who is brave enough to say a word is threatened by the Hamas or PA governments!

In fact, Palestinians learn when they are young that they are not allowed to criticize their own people or government at the risk of imprisonment and social stigma. The only people who can be insulted are Israelis and whatever Arab nations that seem to be aligned with Israel.

A society that cannot handle criticism can never grow. The Israel haters are doing their Palestinian pets no service when they censor any criticism of them - censorship that in the past has extended so far as to hush up stories of Western female "peace activists" being raped by Palestinians.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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03/16 Links Pt2: The true nature of the BDS movement; Joe Biden: Israel's Fake 'Friend'; Fearing the end is nigh, man returns stolen 2,000-year-old artifact to park

From Ian:

Daphne Anson: Zara's Zionism

Here's are excerpts from an article entitled "My Journey Through Antisemitism to Supporting Israel" by Zara Shaen Albright, a Muslim-born British lady of Pakistani heritage who converted to her husband's Catholicism.

From a position fot antisemitism and hostility to the Jewish State she came to realise, thanks to an open-minded mother who encouraged her curiosity about the Shoah and matters Jewish, that her previous stance was unjustified.
'For as long as I can remember, I grew up hearing some form of antisemitism. From hearing the casual “let’s go shoot some Jews” to being advised not to be open about my support in Eurovision for Israel, to being told that the holocaust was “Allah’s way of showing the Jews what would happen if Israel was formed”, to being told that I “look like a Jew with a big nose” as an insult, it became so normal to hear such sentiments, that they essentially became background noise....'

A visit to Israel proved seminal.
'Luckily, I ... was able to visit both Israel and Palestinian territories.... I able to see many holy sites that hold a lot of significance for me as an ex-Muslim-turned-Catholic-convert ... I was also able to explore the beauty of Israel’s culture, to hearing from Israeli settlers ... to seeing the Kibbutz where cute Winnie-the-Poo murals were painted on and inside bomb shelters so the children would not be afraid, to seeing the celebration of martyrdom in the refugee camps, and the expectations that awaited the little boys when they grew up, I changed from being neutral to being a Zionist, which, as it turns out, is the mere belief that Jewish people should be able to have a homeland....'

Regarding Muslim hostility to Israel Zara writes:
'Remember that Islam once had its own empire, and the existence of Israel is a reminder of the felt pain and anguish over such a great empire now only being a memory.

The true nature of the BDS movement

BDS focuses on the “settlements.” By this term, BDS supporters refer to Judea and Samaria Jewish towns, which they blame for the lack of “peace.” However, there was no peace before these “settlements” existed.

Why are Jews not to be allowed to live in Judea and Samaria? Jewish settlements in this area were based on virgin lands where no previous Arab homesteading took place. The idea that as Jews multiply, Palestinian Arabs “lose” more land is absurd. The truth is that there should not be any problem with Jewish towns, irrespective of where the Palestinian Arab state could in theory exist, in the same way there is no problem with Arab towns in Israel proper.

“Settlements” are not the cause of the lack of peace. Instead, this is due to the rejection of any Jewish presence at all in the area. BDS supporters do not care that Palestinian Arabs are second-class citizens in many Arab countries. For example, Kuwait expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs after the First Gulf War. Many Palestinian Arabs are now living under the brutal Islamist dictatorship by the Hamas in Gaza, or under the tyranny of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, whose “democratic” term ended a decade ago. Why is BDS not protesting these injustices against Palestinians?

Do Jews have a right to live, build and create on un-homesteaded land? Yes, because they are human beings, and as such they are entitled to homestead any virgin resource. The fact that they chose Israel is due to the millennia-old connection between Jews and Judea.

According to UNESCO, the Temple Mount is actually Al-Haram Al-Sharif. Jerusalem is now Al-Quds, and the Western Wall is Al-Buraq Wall. This nomenclature constitutes a systematic attempt to erase the connection between Jewish history and the Jewish holy of holies. It would be offensive if it was not so transparently inane, even in terms of denying Christian history, and by extension that of the Muslim.

BDS supporters may very well stop buying Israeli products if they want to, and are free to persuade others to do so. However, they cannot legitimately lobby governments to use force against their own citizens who wish to trade with Israelis on a voluntary and mutually beneficial basis.

BDS is not primarily a pro-Palestinian movement, but an anti-Jewish one. Denying one group, and one group only, the right to homestead land is unjust.

‘Missing a Tablespoon of Blood’: Quincy Institute Scholar Laments Lack of Violence Amid Corona Outbreak in Israel

The managing director for research and policy of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft appeared to celebrate the draconian measures employed by the Israeli government to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Then she argued that whatever discomforts they impose on Israeli citizens, they are not enough to compensate for the suffering Israel has inflicted on its Palestinian neighbors.

"Such a tiny taste. Missing a tablespoon of blood," Sarah Leah Whitson wrote in a now-deleted tweet.

Whitson was responding to a tweet from the Israeli-American journalist Mairav Zonszein, who wrote, "6 million Jewish Israelis will now get a taste of what around the same number of Palestinians living under occupation have experienced for over half a century." Zonszein was referring to the tactics now being embraced by the Israeli government to reduce transmission of the coronavirus, including antiterrorism measures like cell phone tracking of infected individuals.

Neither Whitson nor the Quincy Institute replied to a request for comment. The Israeli government took drastic action over the weekend, including the closings of restaurants, bars, and gyms. Whitson appeared to be expressing frustration that the measures would not offset the violence perpetrated by the Israeli government on the Palestinians.

"It is stunningly revolting," said Deborah Lipstadt, a scholar of modern Judaism and anti-Semitism at Emory University and the author of a modern history of anti-Semitism.

After facing a flood of criticism on Twitter—as well as inquiries from the Washington Free Beacon—Whitson deleted her tweet and posted a follow up arguing that her previous tweet "didn't come out right" and that she had deleted it "to prevent misinterpretation." She made no reference to the possibility that she had hurt or offended Jews.

The BDS leader in South Africa lied on live Tv. His problem is that i was there to expose it. pic.twitter.com/gd3QJZYury
— יוסף חדאד - Yoseph Haddad (@YosephHaddad) March 16, 2020

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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.