Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 05, 2020

The pandemic shows that globalism has lost

There will be long lasting and still unknown effects from the current pandemic, and it will affect all industries, how people socialize, how they work, and how they go to school from now on. It is way too early to predict what the world will look like in six months, let alone five years.

But one immediate result seems to be the serious injury that this has done to the globalist movement, what some would modern imperialism, where all nations are expected to subsume their own national goals to that of a greater good, as judged by unelected international leaders at the UN and EU.

From the Washington Post:

The coronavirus pandemic, with its simultaneous health and economic crises, is deepening fault lines within Europe in a way some leaders fear could prove to be a final reckoning.

The cohesion of the European Union had been battered by Brexit, bruised by the political fallout from the 2015 migration surge and the 2008 financial crisis, and challenged by rising autocracy in the east that runs contrary to the professed ideals of the European project.

Now, if Europe’s leaders cannot chart a more united course, the project lies in what one of its architects described this week as “mortal danger.”

In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, the response among European Union member states showed that national interests trump more-altruistic European ideals. Border restrictions were reimposed haphazardly, and Germany and France threw up export bans on medical equipment such as masks and ventilators, even as Italy clamored for assistance.

Similarly, the UN has become irrelevant to the current crisis. No one is looking there for leadership.

It is natural that in a time of a worldwide pandemic, with shortages of medical equipment and protective clothing, people want to look at their own governments to obtain scarce resources and protect them before they will rely on an abstract world governing body to make judgments as to who will live and who won't. In fact, the idea of a world government that is so attractive to the global Left goes against the instincts of human beings who naturally care about their own family, tribe and people before everyone else.

Someone who decides to spend his or her life helping poor children in Africa, for example, may be looked upon as a saint - unless it is seen that they abandoned their own children to do it. In that case everyone instinctively understands that people need to take care of their own before others. That is the problem of globalism in a nutshell - great in theory, but dependent on the idea that there are unlimited resources so no one goes without. When the situation is triage, no one will volunteer to be the one who sacrifices themselves for the sake of the others.

Right now governments are begging, borrowing and possibly stealing equipment needed to take care of their own people. Israel is being open about the involvement of the Mossad in this enterprise but it is clear that all governments are doing the same thing, just not as publicly:

Mossad people, scattered throughout the world, are now creating a new “battle heritage” in a totally new field. They raid factories, make connections with manufacturers, urgently dispatch boats and trucks to all kinds of strange sites, only to discover how this world is full of swindlers and con men. In one case, middlemen tried to peddle counterfeit coronavirus test sets to the Mossad. In another case, a Mossad truck rushed to an industrial plant in Europe only to discover that another truck, sent by the German government, had beaten them by a single hour and emptied out the entire inventory....

But along with the failures came successes as well. Twenty-seven ventilators were brought to Israel on Tuesday morning in a special operation; hundreds of additional ventilators are on their way. They also got their hands on new technology to create ventilators, and 30 Israeli factories have begun the race against time to create these machines that can hopefully resolve the shortage in a few weeks.

“It’s similar to an armament race,” one of the war room people told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “Once upon a time, countries competed in acquiring weapons and war materials. Next was the nuclear-armament race, and now everyone’s searching for ventilators. The prices have gone up at least 500% for ventilators as well as all the other protection measures connected to the coronavirus. Countries impose embargoes; they prohibit exports. People offer crazy prices and make senseless promises in order to get what we need. Into all this, we bring the special abilities of the Mossad, the far-away and dangerous places that are accessible to us, our special ties. We hope that we will be successful.”

The far Left hates Israel precisely because it prioritizes its own people over others. They want no national borders, with everyone working for a common good - something that goes against people's natural instincts, probably biologically hardwired, to protect their own first. Demanding that people submit to some nameless bureaucrat in Brussels or Geneva deciding where respirators should go when your own city, state or country has a shortage is against every human instinct. It is roughly as unnatural as asking people to change their sexual orientation.

This is not to say that countries shouldn't cooperate - of course they should. But that should happen in ways that benefit everyone. International groups meant to identify and stop deadly diseases before they infect the planet is one obvious example.

Altruism is wonderful as well, and should be encouraged, but only when there are enough resources. Placing your own people at risk to help others may sound like a Christian ideal but in fact it is immoral.

Israel is even going above and beyond in helping Palestinians, as this Bloomberg piece mentions: "One of the spy agency’s main missions is to source at least 7,000 ventilators, a number that also takes Palestinian needs into consideration, a man identified as a senior Mossad official told Channel 12." But even that is in Israel's self interest, because an outbreak in Gaza or the West Bank is dangerous to Israel. While Israel is happy to facilitate international organizations like WHO or the UN to provide aid for Palestinians, ultimately Israel has to do what's best for Israel - and that includes getting enough respirators for the Palestinians if their need for them increases.

The BDS movement had a webcast last week with Khury Petersen-Smith where he expressed his discomfort that the US Navy sent hospital ships to New York and Los Angeles, with no media criticism. He was unhappy with the idea (33:00) that the military gains legitimacy by saving lives. While the entire purpose of a military is to protect a nation's citizens, to the far Left, that is an illegitimate goal. Yet even he and his co-host realize even now that their opinions are way outside the mainstream.

People want to feel protected and they naturally expect that their family, city and country will do that for them. They protest when that aid is not forthcoming. But New Yorkers aren't protesting outside the UN headquarters demanding the world give them masks and respirators, even though New York City is the one place on the planet that needs them most today. No one remotely expects that the UN can do a thing to help.

The COVID-19 pandemic proves that globalism is a fiction and it always has been.

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.

IfNotNow posted a tweet on Friday that is so bad, on so many levels, that I dedicated an entire episode of EoZTV to it.

Watch as I discuss it with Mrs. Elder:

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04/04 Links: Israel’s virus death toll rises to 43 with deaths of three more people; The corona pandemic and peace in the Middle East; Virus brings spike in anti-Semitic posts

From Ian:

Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Rabbi Marvin Hier: The corona pandemic and peace in the Middle East

The rapidly unfolding global tragedy of the CoronaVirus pandemic sheds the light of reality as to why Peace in the Holy Land remains a far-off dream: Israel is confronted by Palestinian leaders who for decades refuse to accept the legitimacy of their Jewish neighbors. They teach their children in word and deed to embrace death over life.

The threat against Israel from Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists has been guided and exacerbated by their paymasters in Tehran whose leaders believe the Jewish state uses “demons”. That regime as well has proven over and over again it also doesn’t give a damn about the lives of its people. For these thugs hate always trumps hope.

But all this doesn’t mean we have to accept that tyrants and terrorists will always dictate the narrative.

We recall that just a few short months ago, we prayed and danced in a Synagogue just across the Gulf from Iran. It was the first minyan in Bahrain’s capital since 1948. (The authors are pictured in the video).

We watch in awe and wonderment as frontline-medical and scientific personnel– Jew and Arab– work and pray side-by-side in Israel’s hospitals, alongside their ambulances, united in the struggle to defeat the unseen enemy that has stolen the joy of this year’s Passover, Easter and Ramadan and that threatens each and every one of us.

So, we tell our friends and ourselves to stop feeling helpless and hopeless.

At this year’s Passover Seder or before it, we should be teaching our cooped-up children to always identify- not with bigots or bullies- but rather with the unsung heroes who selflessly strive to save us and all humanity from the 11th plague.

Israel’s virus death toll rises to 43 with deaths of three more people

Israel’s death toll from coronavirus rose to 43 Saturday, with 7,589 people diagnosed with COVID-19.

Two women were reported to have died of the virus in the morning: an 88-year-old woman at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital and a 67-year-old woman at Beersheba’s Soroka Medical Center. A man, 76, died at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon close to noon.

The 88-year-old woman was the fifth victim to come from the Mishan assisted living facility in the southern city of Beersheba.

She was later named as Holocaust survivor Dr. Nelia Kravitz, who worked as a physician at Soroka Medical Center for 20 years.
Dr Nelia Kravitz, who died after contracting the coronavirus at the Mishan assisted living facility in Beersheba.(Courtesy)

“It was not possible to contact the Mishan facility, and only later were we informed she was transferred to Soroka. We said goodbye to her over the telephone,” Kravitz’s son Micha told the Kan public broadcaster.

The Health Ministry said Saturday morning that 115 patients were in serious condition, with 98 on ventilators. At least 427 Israelis have recovered from the disease.

Noah Rothman: The Rise of the Immunity Caste

How does this all end, you (and everyone else) ask? Well, the miserable realists answer back, it doesn’t—not until there’s a vaccine, at least.

Given the skyrocketing unemployment rate and the prospect of GDP contraction of between 20 and 30 percent, “for the foreseeable future” is palatable only to those who concern themselves exclusively with public health. If you’re in the business of ensuring there is a society left to reactivate after this initial lockdown has passed, getting people safely back to work is both a priority and a conundrum. How do you reignite the nation’s economic engine without jeopardizing the public and, ultimately, damaging the economy further? The answer to this riddle has some Western political leaders contemplating a fraught stopgap measure: immunity registries.

The advent of approved serological tests that can determine whether someone contracted this unique Coronavirus and developed the antibodies that presumably render them immune to future infection has opened this avenue up to policymakers. Apparently, they’re taking it.

The German government plans to introduce “immunity certificates” to COVID-19 survivors that would allow license holders to reenter society. The U.K., too, will reportedly provide residents who test positive for Coronavirus antibodies with “immunity passports,” liberating recipients from lockdown. For some American policymakers, these seem like worthy models to follow. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for example, has repeatedly entertained slowly reopening society to “people who can get antibody tests.”

In theory, this would seem to be the best of all the terrible options before policymakers. And for a nation with a history of codified social stratification, it might work. Germany’s experience is amenable to imposing these temporary stations on individuals. Class is an unseen but ubiquitous force in Britain, too. But the United States does not have a similar experience with social castes. Its class structure is permeable; indeed, the country’s national identity is predicated on transcending the categories into which we are consigned by conditions beyond our control. And this new class—the immune—is permeable. But public health officials aren’t going to like how the public goes about penetrating this stratum.

04/03 Link Pt2: Melanie Phillips: For Israel, recognising another enemy is second nature; Anti-Semitism and Israel Advocacy Matters Even More During Coronavirus; LATMA: The Coronavirus Song

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: For Israel, recognising another enemy is second nature

In mid-March, however, when Prime Minister Boris Johnson finally realized from the Italian death toll that Britain was heading for a similar catastrophe, he abruptly changed course and started to impose social-isolation rules. Yet even now, Britain hasn’t restricted flights from China, Italy or other hot spots.

Israel took a different approach from the start because it’s a very different kind of society. Unlike the pampered West, Israel permanently lives in a state of potential emergency and existential threat.

From its experience of decades fending off attacks from physical enemies, Israel is geared to be proactive against threats to national security. Despite its famously dysfunctional politics, it doesn’t flinch from taking desperately difficult decisions in order to save lives—like shutting down much of its economy.

More deeply still, Israel views every unnecessary death as a national tragedy. It would be unthinkable for Israel to do what Britain did at the start—flirt with the idea that it could sit out the threatened epidemic, until enough people had been infected to provide “herd immunity” protection, because those most likely to die in this process were “only” the old.

In stark contrast, because the duty to protect the whole population is built into Israel’s DNA, the same military and security forces that fight a physical enemy have been deployed to battle COVID-19.

So the fabled Israeli spying agency, the Mossad, was instructed to scour the world, including countries with which Israel does not enjoy diplomatic relations, to obtain virus testing kits and other essential medical equipment.

Accordingly, the Mossad has reportedly brought in from undisclosed locations some 500,000 testing kits, which are essential to offer a safe route out of lockdown by starting to get people back to work. Other such Mossad shipments over the past few weeks have included thousands of respiratory and surgical masks, protective overalls and, most important of all, dozens of ventilators.

Senior officials told the Israeli TV show “Uvda” that, by this weekend, the operation would bring to Israel another 2 million masks for medical staff, 2 million protective overalls and visors, and a further 180 ventilators. One Mossad officer described this as the most complex operation he had ever dealt with.

Caroline B. Glick: Coronavirus lessons for the coalition talks

It is hard to know how Iran and the other states in the region will look when this pandemic has passed. But it is safe to assume that they will be less stable than they were when it first hit.

This returns us to Israel which entered the crisis with a strong economy and an advanced, well-funded and functioning health system.

The coronavirus and the chaos engulfing our neighbors tell us two things. First, we need to preserve and strengthen the bonds that hold us together as a nation. Social solidarity is the vital foundation of all national efforts in times of crisis.

The second lesson is that in a world and region plagued with uncertainty and instability, we must do everything we can in the spheres that we do control to minimize uncertainty and maximize stability.

A week ago, Israel almost lost it all. Last week Israel was on verge of internal unrest and chaos the likes of which we hadn't seen since the 2005 expulsion of ten thousand Israelis from their homes and communities in Gaza and northern Samaria. Indeed, the social cleavages that emerged since last month's election foretold an even greater disaster than the crisis we experienced back then.

The fact that three former Israel Defense Forces chiefs of general staff were willing to work in concert with the Joint Arab List placed a question mark over the future of our society and state.

The Joint Arab List is an alliance of parties that rejects Israel's right to exist. Its members work openly in the Knesset, in the courts and in the international arena to delegitimize the Jewish people's right to self-determination and to undermine Israel's ability to defend itself from external attack and internal subversion. Blue and White's willingness to work with the alliance called into question the Israeli Center-Left's commitment to the continued existence of the Jewish state.

The Tikvah Podcast: Moshe Koppel on How Israel’s Perpetual Election Came to an End

With the recent agreement between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief political rival, Benny Gantz, a governing coalition is at long last beginning to emerge in Israel. After three national elections in a single year, the Jewish state will soon have a regular cabinet and resume the work of government. It couldn’t have happened at a better time. The coronavirus pandemic will have significant effects on Israel’s politics and economy, while Israel’s citizens continue to live under threat of attack from enemies in the Gaza Strip, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. And questions remain about what will become of the Trump peace plan, especially with American elections just a few months away. In this podcast, Jonathan Silver is joined by Moshe Koppel, chairman of the Kohelet Policy Forum, a member of the Department of Computer Science at Bar-Ilan University, and one of Israel’s leading conservative political activists and policy experts. They analyze the causes of Israel’s political crisis, explain how it finally came to an end, and probe the larger significance of these recent events in Israeli history. Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

This global health crisis and Passover

A special message from [Australian] Prime Minister Scott Morrison for an out of the ordinary Passover.

Scott Morrison writes:
Passover is a time when we remember the journey of the Jewish people. A journey from slavery to freedom. It is a tradition dating back several millennia that has inspired Jewish communities around the world through the best of times — and the very worst, too.

At a time when we face great challenges, the festival of Passover has special meaning. This year it has a poignancy with many grandparents and grandchildren not able to be with each other for the Seder.

We are distancing from each other this year, so that next year and beyond, all our family members can gather and share the seder together.

This global health crisis that we face is a once-in-one-hundred-year event.

It requires all of us, no matter what our faith, to do our duty as citizens.

All of us have a role to play in keeping our community safe: employers, nurses, doctors, teachers, scientists, friends, family and neighbours.

The Jewish people have shown they can endure the most trying of circumstances, and such resilience gives me great confidence that our nation will also get through this.

I am very behind in my book reviews, and I need to write them before I forget the books!

Pumpkinflowers is a truly great book. It tells the story of the tail end of Israel's first Lebanon war, from first person perspectives of the soldiers who were defending one specific unremarkable hill in Lebanon, named Pumpkin, that was deemed critical at the time.

Friedman is an excellent storyteller and a really great writer. It is clear that he is also a fantastic researcher as well, in putting together sources to build a seamless story, especially in the first section of the book.

That section describes Avi, a soldier at the Pumpkin who was sent there soon after what was known as the Pumpkin Incident, where Hezbollah attacked the soldiers there and for a brief time put up a Hezbolah flag - and then publicized it. It was an early example of how a militarily meaningless action can become a great victory in the public relations war, and it showed how warfare itself is changing.

Avi's story is told in his own words and ends in a very unexpected and heartbreaking way which highlights Friedman's considerable writing talent.

The second part of the book is Friedman's own story as a young soldier at the Pumpkin. Here he really has a chance to show off his talent of observation. It is the story of the mundane, highly regimented life of low-level soldiers, following orders to obtain objectives they cannot possibly understand, with weeks of boredom punctuated with occasional dangerous and deadly incidents.

Yet it is much more than that, because that story of the soldiers at Pumpkin is the story of Israel in Lebanon at large, at a point where no one wanted to talk about it. This was during the Oslo process and people were intoxicated at the idea that peace was possible. The low level Lebanon quagmire was an embarrassing sideshow, yet there were real actors in that show, some who died way too young.

In the final part of the book, Friedman narrates his final visit to Pumpkin, coming as an American tourist to Lebanon a few years later, trying to understand what it all meant.

I'm not doing the book justice in this review. Just read it.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

A very short video about the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism

The point I am trying to make is that while people can argue endlessly about how there are theoretical differences between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the rage that Jew-haters and Israel haters exhibit are absolutely identical. Antisemites and anti-Zionists are equally irrational, equally obsessed and equally wrong.

If racism and antisemitism are wrong because they are examples of irrational hate, then that same hate is immoral in any context. While the Israel haters would argue that they have justifications for their obsession, so do antisemites, racists and xenophobes.

There's no difference.

The only thing that can explain the seething and manic, obsessive hate for Israel is the fact that it is the Jewish state. No one has the same hatred towards Syria or China to the point that they say that they have no right to exist. Only Israel is such a target.

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.

04/03 Link Pt1: 40 victims of coronavirus, more than 7,000 Israelis are infected; Tom Cotton Says China Is Due for a ‘Reckoning’

From Ian:

40 victims of coronavirus, more than 7,000 Israelis are infected

The Israel Defense Forces will provide the civilians of Bnei Brak with assistance, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affirmed Friday, as preparations for traffic restrictions in and around the ultra-Orthodox city were put into place and the Health Ministry announced that more than 7,000 people were diagnosed with coronavirus.

By evening, the National Emergency Authority published a procedure for approving entry and exit from the restricted area on Friday.

Four more people died on Friday, victims 37, 38, 39 and 40 were all elderly people.

The ministry's report showed that some 115 people were in serious condition, including 95 are on respirators.

The government officially decided to crack down on Bnei Brak on Thursday, approving a full military-enforced closure on the city. Armed troops from the IDF’s Paratrooper Brigade began being deployed early Friday to work with the Homefront Command and Netanyahu stressed that the responsibility for enforcing these new restrictions, including enclosing the city, rests with the Public Security Ministry and the Israel Police.

Bnei Brak has more coronavirus per capita than any other city in Israel, the Health Ministry showed. On Friday, 1,061 people were diagnosed with the virus there - up 513 people in the last three days.

Israeli coronavirus fatalities are mostly elderly men, average age 79.8

Most of Israel’s coronavirus fatalities have been elderly men with underlying medical conditions, in line with global averages.

The average age of Israel’s dead was 79.8 years old as of Thursday afternoon. Of the 34 dead, 21, or 64 percent, were men, and 13 were women.

Ninety-four percent of Israel’s fatalities — all but two — are over the age of 60, in line with the average in Europe of 95%.

The vast majority of Israel’s dead had underlying medical conditions, as do most senior citizens. Israeli medical authorities rarely specify which preexisting conditions the fatalities had.

The World Health Organization said Thursday that 10% to 15% of people under 50 with the disease have moderate or severe cases.

Dr. Hans Kluge, head of the organization’s office in Europe, said recent statistics showed 30,098 people had died in Europe, mostly in Italy, France and Spain. More than half of Europe’s dead were over the age of 80.

Kluge said more than 80% of those who died had at least one other chronic underlying condition like cardiovascular disease, hypertension or diabetes.

There are more than 980,000 confirmed cases worldwide, led by the United States with more than 226,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. The US has recorded over 5,100 deaths, with New York City, the US epicenter, recording 1,374 fatalities.

The number of deaths worldwide passed 50,000 on Thursday. Over 204,000 have recovered from the illness.

Netanyahu urges wearing masks outside; announces stipends for kids, elderly

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday evening said all Israelis should wear masks when out in public, and promised stipends for Passover for Israeli children and pensioners.

He also introduced strict limitations to travel in and out of Bnei Brak, the ultra-Orthodox city with one of the highest coronavirus infection rates in the country, as part of new directives to stop the spread of the pandemic.

Netanyahu, emerging from voluntary quarantine at his official residence in Jerusalem after an aide tested positive for the coronavirus, said that people who don’t have masks can use an improvised facial covering such as a scarf.

Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar Siman-Tov reiterated that Israelis should not rush out to buy masks as they should be left for medical professionals, but can improvise with material and rubber bands.

The most important thing, Bar Siman-Tov said, was that the nose and mouth were covered.

Netanyahu also announced that families will receive a one-off payment of NIS 500 per child (approximately $140), up to the fourth child, ahead of the upcoming Passover holiday. There will also be stipends for the elderly, he said, without specifying the minimum age. He said these payments will be approved via emergency legislation, and that payments will be made directly into bank accounts, with no bureaucratic red tape.

Employee uses Goldman Sachs name to promote Holocaust inversion on Quora

Most large companies have very specific policies against any employee giving the appearance of speaking on behalf of the company unless specifically authorized to. So while, for example, an employee is free to rant about abortion on message boards, he or she cannot associate themselves with their company in their posts. Doing so would imply that the company itself is behind these statements.

I would imagine that Goldman Sachs has a similar policy.

Meet Jameel Kassouri, a senior quantitative analyst at Goldman Sachs in London. He writes frequently on Quora about his opinions on the Middle East, opinions that are misinformed, biased and false.

And he does it while identifying himself as an executive at Goldman Sachs.

And then there's this bit of antisemitism:

There is of course no shortage of ignorant people on Quora pretending to be experts. But when they attempt to give their opinions credibility by saying that they are a vice president at a major international financial institution, they are smearing the name of their company.

I don't think Goldman Sachs would be happy to know how their name is being used.

(h/t E)

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Sinwar during a TV interview last night

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar threatened to kill all of Israel's Jews if Gaza does not get enough ventilators.

“If ventilators are not brought into [Gaza], we’ll take them by force from Israel and stop the breathing of 6 million Israelis," he said, as reported by Times of Israel and Arab media.

Israel has close to 9 million people, of whom about 6.9 million are Jewish. Sinwar's use of the word phrase "six million" is meant to apply only to Jews, as well as to evoke the Holocaust.

No "human rights" group seemed bothered by that.

But, at the same time, Hamas pretended to offer a deal if Israel released prisoners who are old and sick, women and those under 18. A Hamas press release said, "We can offer a partial concession on the issue of the captured Israeli soldiers, in exchange for the release of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian prisoners, the elderly, the sick, women and children."

The nature of this "partial concession" is not even hinted at. Maybe Israel can expect a fingernail or a 1 cm square piece of cloth from one of the uniforms of the dead.

Left completely unspoken is the fate of the two Israelis who are still presumed alive in Gaza, Hisham al-Sayed, an Israeli Arab, and Avera Avraham Mengistu, an Ethiopian Jew, both of whom are said to be mentally impaired and both of whom walked into Gaza on their own where they disappeared. They are clearly not soldiers and therefore not mentioned by Hamas, although Hamas has implied that it is holding them hostage.

Under international law, the Israeli hostages and the remains of the soldiers must be released unconditionally.

Even though Hamas is not offering anything concrete or specific for the unnamed "partial concessions," it is congratulating itself on its humanity by even pretending to make an offer. "As a humanitarian initiative in light of the coronavirus crisis, it reflects the values, ethics and principles of this movement that values man, his life, his freedom, his dignity to everything, and the flexibility of Hamas in dealing with this situation," the press release said.

Yes, at the same time they are threatening a new Holocaust against Jews, they are telling the world how moral they are. You could not make this up.

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Saudi textbooks say Jews turned into "real monkeys"

IMPACT-SE did a study of Saudi textbooks.

While they say that the textbooks are much less hateful than they were in 2017, they still have some pretty bad stuff.

Here's an excerpt showing both how bad it is now and how much worse it was two years ago:

Jews Turned into "Real Monkeys" [by Allah]
The curriculum interprets a Qur'anic surah (A'raf 7:163–66), which narrates the story of one group of Jews who (in pre-Islamic times) did not respect the Sabbath and set fishing nets to catch fish during the day. The text refers to the changing of a group of Jews by Allah into "real monkeys" ruling out other, gentler interpretations that usually view this as a metaphor.

139 3. Falsehood of the deception leading to the disruption of the law of Allah, breaking limits (hudud) 140 set by Him, and performing what He forbids. The way the Jews acted when they threw their nets into the sea on Friday for fishing, and then pulled the nets out on Sunday. And they say: 'we did not do anything on Saturday [the Sabbath].' 6. Allah punished [these] Jewish oppressors by turning them into real monkeys. Tafsir 1, Grades 10–12 (Joint Track), 2019, p. 73.

While one can find more examples of extreme anti-Jewish polemic in this Qur'anic commentary textbook, the 2017 edition of this very same book includes more such examples. In other words, there is a certain toning down of rhetoric even in pure religious polemic that mimics hate messaging.

Examples of the removed subject matter follow:

The Islamic nation is the best of all nations, and their greatest in status. It carried the torch of guidance, led humanity to glory and eminence, eliminated superstition and charlatanism, and established the rules of justice. It has received this in return for harsh sacrifices, the most important of which are faith in Allah, care for the guidance of Allah's creation, and the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice. For the People of the Book to drink from this benevolence, and be lighted by this light, they should only believe in Allah as God, Islam as religion, and Muhammad as messenger. And if they refuse, as a proper punishment they deserve humiliation and servility and the anger of the Mighty. Tafsir 2, Grades 10–12 (Humanities), 2017, p. 78.

The textbook then explains that in this particular case the People of the Book are specifically the Jews. While this text has been removed in the 2019 edition, the idea that Islam is the one and only legitimate religion is presented elsewhere in the curriculum and is not meant to be merely theological, but has practical dimensions.

(h/t Alexi)

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04/02 Links Pt2: The Man Who Saved the World from Two Pandemics; Coronavirus Passover: Why is this year different from all others?; The Coronavirus in Perfect Hindsight

From Ian:

The Last Resort: The Man Who Saved the World from Two Pandemics

Scandal, anti-Semitism, and experiments on human beings – when we opened this fascinating archive to have a look at the documents contained within, we could not have imagined how this incredible tale would unfold – the story of a Zionist scientist who was determined to save the world from the plague and cholera against all odds. Introducing Waldemar Mordechai Wolff (Zeev) Haffkine.

Haffkine was born in the Russian Empire in 1860 in what is today the Ukraine. His life trajectory was determined as soon as he completed his studies in Switzerland in the late 19th century, when he decided to dedicate his life to the study of tiny organisms. At the time, Louis Pasteur was one of the best-known scientists in the field, and Haffkine decided to seek work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He was accepted but was given a job as a librarian, as that was the only available opening at the Institute. Bureaucracy, what can you do?

While Haffkine was working with experts like Pasteur and Ilya Mechnikov, cholera outbreaks in Russia and India emerged as a serious threat. Haffkine felt his time had come, and after tireless research, he managed to develop a cholera vaccine based on attenuated bacteria. People may have been dying in masses of a rampant pandemic, but no one stepped up to support Haffkine’s research. He decided to take a drastic step – a last resort to prove the vaccine’s credibility: Haffkine picked up a syringe full of an attenuated strain of cholera, inserted the needle into his arm, and injected the disease straight into his bloodstream. How many would have done the same?

After several days of suffering from fever and worrisome symptoms – the long-awaited turnaround arrived, and on July 30th, 1892, Haffkine reported his findings and the success of the vaccine to the Biological Society in France. But France and other European countries remained skeptical and suspicious of his methods, and refused to accept his results. At the time, European official medical establishments weren’t very enthusiastic about the idea of vaccines in general.

Holocaust Remembrance Day can still be held communally despite coronavirus

As measures to curb the coronavirus around the world keep people isolated in their homes, Jews are still able to commemorate the Holocaust together on Holocaust Remembrance Day as the social initiative project "Zikaron BaSalon" is now holding events online via Zoom.

"This year, even more than ever, we will mark Holocaust days and the heroes at home, in our private living rooms together with family members," said project founder Adi Altschuler.

In the past, Zikaron BaSalon – meaning "remembrance in the living room" – hosted events in private homes, where discussions were held on the Holocaust in attempts to keep the memories alive. Bridging the past to the present, the project has had over a million hosts in over 54 countries worldwide.

This year a website has been launched online so that hosts can hold events, since official events have been canceled, parades and tours have been stopped and Holocaust survivors have been told to stay home in order to stay healthy. "Despite all of this, it is important to hear the stories and testimonials of the survivors," said Altschuler.

On the website, special events can be found tailored to families, designed for kids and teens alike, as well instructions on how to have a Zoom meeting with grandparents or second generation family members.

As the Holocaust survivors are most vulnerable to the virus, the project will unfortunately proceed without their live testimonials, as the social initiative aims to protect them.

"It is the personal responsibility of all of us to commemorate the Holocaust Remembrance Day along with its heroes, listen to the testimonies and stories, in every way possible, even in today's reality – despite the coronavirus, so we will never forget," said Altschuler.

Coronavirus Passover: Why is this year different from all others?

As the Health Ministry strives to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic across Israel, it has issued a list of guidelines in conjunction with the Chief Rabbinate to help keep Israelis safe.

Why is this Passover different from all others before it?

This Passover:
1. We will celebrate in our own homes and only with our nuclear families.
2. None of our dishes or other utensils will be kashered and no hametz will be burned outside of our homes.
3. We will not hire outside cleaning help but will clean our homes on our own with store-bought bleach or other cleaning products.
4. We will order our groceries to be delivered.

“This Passover, send love remotely through Zoom or phone calls,” the ministry advised, adding that if for any reason people leave their homes, they should wear a face mask and stay two meters from anyone they encounter. The ministry said people should pray alone, refrain from taking walks in nature or anywhere more than 100 meters from their homes.

“Please obey the Health Ministry guidelines so that we can all celebrate together next year,” the Health Ministry wrote.

Human rights groups strangely unconcerned at the @NYTimes ability to invade our privacy

(This is a Twitter thread I wrote earlier)

A @nytimes observation in three parts:

1) It criticizes Israel and @netanyahu for using cell phone records to track people's locations so it can inform them if they were near someone with COVID-19 saying it is an invasion of privacy.

Netanyahu’s Bold Moves: Fighting a Virus or Risking Democracy?Israel’s prime minister has shut down the courts and ordered the government to track people by their cellphone data in the name of fighting an epidemic.https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/world/middleeast/israel-virus-netanyahu.html

2) It publishes its own analysis of where Americans have been traveling during the crisis, based on billions of cell phone records. But it insists that the data they used is anonymous.

Where America Didn’t Stay Home Even as the Virus SpreadPeople in Florida and elsewhere continued to travel widely last week, potentially exposing more people to the coronavirus, phone data shows.https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-social-distancing.html

But...

3) Last December, it publishes an expose showing how easy it is to figure out who people are based on the same kind of cell phone data that the NYT obviously has access to.

Showing that "anonymous data" is a lie, by their own reporting.

Opinion | Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero PrivacyWhat we learned from the spy in your pocket.https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html

So what, exactly, is the difference between what Israel is doing to help slow down the pandemic and what the NYT is doing to publicize how people are behaving?

Because I cannot see any moral difference between the two.

But there is one significant difference:

Israel's surveillance has oversight, it was agreed to by the High Court and the cabinet.

The NYT does its surveillance with no transparency whatsoever.

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Unaware Imams Promised Them Immunity, Coronavirus Kills Muslims Too (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

: PJL Laurens, via Wikimedia Commons

Gaza City, April 2 - A pathogen responsible for tens of thousands of deaths worldwide and hundreds of thousands more with life-threatening respiratory symptoms has either ignored or remains unconscious of the guarantees of various Islamic preachers that the faithful will remain unscathed, and has ravaged those believers along with everyone else.

SARS-CoV-2, known by various other appellations such as COVID-19, The Wuhan virus, or the more general term coronavirus, has killed thousands of Muslims in Iran and other predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East, in addition to Muslims residing outside the region, such as in the US or UK. The virus has infected millions of people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, indicating that it either does not know or does not care that Imams from Malaysia and the Philippines to Nigeria and Gaza have pronounced COVID-19 a divine weapon against the infidel that will cause no harm to loyal followers of Muhammad.

"No one seems to have told the virus to avoid Muslims," lamented an epidemiologist in Mashad, Iran. "All this trouble with the disease spreading outwards from the holy city of Qom, and the shrines there that people licked for protection, all because of that oversight. Like, even putting a Quran up on the telephone wires hasn't kept COVID-19 out of people's neighborhoods, even though many of our spiritual leaders issued guarantees that such measures would shield us. We need an inquiry into whose job it was to inform the coronavirus only to attack infidels."

After the pandemic claimed the lives of three Muslim healthcare workers in London last weekend, Imams began to suspect a more fundamental problem. "This looks a lot more systemic than simple negligence," worried a preacher at a mosque outside Paris. "I think we need to consider that the entire mechanism for sparing faithful Muslims from the ravages of misfortune and evil - be they war, disease, famine, oppression, enslavement, or indignities of all kinds - requires attention. Far too many examples just in recent memory provide evidence that divine protection for Muslims has not been implemented as we have been led to expect: conflicts in Yemen, Afghanistan, and Iraq; the current pandemic; droughts that hit Africa every few years; Uighurs in Chinese concentration and forced-labor camps; and ongoing subjugation to non-Islamic regimes in India and Israel as well, just to name a few."

Specimens of the COVID-19 pathogen declined to be interviewed for this article, citing social distancing precautions.

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04/02 Links Pt1: Israeli scientists: Coronavirus vaccine to be tested on humans by June; All Israelis must wear face masks; Pakistan Commutes Death Sentence of Main Suspect in Daniel Pearl Murder

From Ian:

Israel’s coronavirus deaths jump to 33, after 7 succumb in a single day

Israel’s coronavirus death toll rose to 33 on Thursday afternoon as patients in Ashkelon and Tel Aviv succumbed to COVID-19, sustaining an increase in the fatality rate over the last several days.

The deaths were the sixth and seventh announced on Thursday, bringing the toll over just the last day and a half to 13.

Barzilai Medical Center said one fatality was a 77-year-old man who suffered from several preexisting medical conditions.

The medical center said the man, whose name has not yet been released, had been brought to the hospital on March 22.

“His condition deteriorated and he was transferred a few days ago to the intensive care unit. In the past two days, his situation got much worse, and despite treatments with all possible equipment, the patient passed away,” the hospital said.
Medical personnel after evacuating a suspected COVID-19 patient at Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, March 31, 2020. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

A second man, 90, died of the virus at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, the medical center said. It said the victim had preexisting conditions.

All of Thursday’s victims have been men over 72 years old, and five of them had underlying conditions, according to hospitals announcing their deaths.

The death toll has more than doubled from 16 since Monday, and the number of people on ventilators or in serious condition has also nearly doubled in the last week.

Israeli scientists: Coronavirus vaccine to be tested on humans by June 1

A team of Israeli researchers says that they are days away from completing the production of the active component of a coronavirus vaccine that could be tested on humans as early as June 1.

“We are in the final stages and within a few days we will hold the proteins – the active component of the vaccine,” Dr. Chen Katz, group leader of MIGAL’s biotechnology group, told The Jerusalem Post.

In late February, MIGAL [The Galilee Research Institute] committed to completing production of its vaccine within three weeks and having it on the market in 90 days. Katz said they were slightly delayed because it took longer than expected to receive the genetic construct that they ordered from China due to the airways being closed and it having to be rerouted.

As a reminder, for the past four years, researchers at MIGAL scientists have been developing a vaccine against infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), which causes a bronchial disease affecting poultry. The effectiveness of the vaccine has been proven in preclinical trials carried out at the Veterinary Institute.

“Our basic concept was to develop the technology and not specifically a vaccine for this kind or that kind of virus,” said Katz. “The scientific framework for the vaccine is based on a new protein expression vector, which forms and secretes a chimeric soluble protein that delivers the viral antigen into mucosal tissues by self-activated endocytosis, causing the body to form antibodies against the virus.”

Corona Victims in Israel Had Pre-Existing Conditions

At the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, a 67-year-old patient who had been in an induced coma and on a ventilator for two weeks was taken off the ventilator on Tuesday night and is breathing on her own. Her condition has been upgraded to moderate. The patients contracted the virus while visiting Egypt with her partner.

The director of the corona ICU at Wolfson called the woman's case "encouraging."

"Of course, we are continuing to monitor the patient's condition closely, and hope that we will soon be able to report more improvement," he noted.

Israel Hayom has elected to take a closer look at the "pre-existing conditions" that have been reported for all the corona fatalities in the country thus far and discovered that while the term might imply that the victims were already critically ill, in at least some cases the "pre-existing conditions" were common medical conditions that in approximately one-third of the Israeli population over 40 have: diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure.

Israel Hayom identified the "pre-existing conditions" from which 18 of the 21 victims suffered and discovered that eight were diabetics; eight had high blood pressure; and seven suffered from heart and vascular disease. Five of the patients were in varying states of dementia or had suffered strokes or a loss of cognitive functioning. Another four had respiratory illnesses. One patient who succumbed to coronavirus already had liver disease, an autoimmune condition, and cancer.

J Street seems to make it a point to find ever-innovative ways to lower the bar on what passes for pro-Israel.

J Street Support For The Goldstone Report

In an October 23, 2009 piece for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami. In response to Goldberg's concern that there are those "who are glomming on to you guys as a cover, just using you to advance another agenda entirely," Ben-Ami replied:

I hope that we have a very strong left flank that attacks us, that Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups that are consistently upset with us for backing Howard Berman's sanctions plan and for refusing to embrace the Goldstone report and for standing up for the right of Israel to defend itself or for its military aid -- I hope we get attacked from the left because I would characterize J Street as the mainstream of the American Jewish community. [emphasis added]

The following week, October 30, The Standard's Michael Goldfarb posted J Street Adviser Morton Halperin Goes to Work for Goldstone. According to Goldfarb, in response to H.R. 867 -- condemning Goldstone's report claiming Israel committed war crimes in Operation Cast Lead -- a document authored by Judge Goldstone was being circulated on Capitol Hill.

Goldfarb notes that

it seems that certain elements of J Street have indeed embraced Goldstone and his report. Upon further inspection of the Goldstone letter, the actual author seems to be Morton H. Halperin [president of the Open Society Institute (OSI)], who serves on the J Street advisory council and is a senior adviser at George Soros's Open Society Institute.

...Individuals with official ties to J Street are not just embracing the Goldstone report, they are involved in efforts on behalf of Goldstone himself to scuttle opposition to the report in Congress. It's just another example of the disconnect between J Street's official positions and the actions of those who are connected to the organization. [emphasis added]

In an article for The Washington Times, Eli Lake revealed that

J Street — the self-described pro-Israel, pro-peace lobbying group — facilitated meetings between members of Congress and South African Judge Richard Goldstone, author of a U.N. report that accused the Jewish state of systematic war crimes in its three-week military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

Ben-Ami told The Washington Times that while “J Street did not host, arrange or facilitate any visit to Washington, D.C., by Judge Richard Goldstone,” but that “J Street staff spoke to colleagues at the organizations coordinating the meetings and, at their behest, reached out to a handful of congressional staff to inquire whether members would be interested in seeing Judge Goldstone.” Ben-Ami reiterated “We believed it to be a good idea for him and for members of Congress to meet personally, but we declined to play a role in hosting, convening or attending any of the meetings.”

When asked later how many congressional offices had been contacted, a J Street staffer told the Times that it was 2 or 3. Mr. Ben-Ami later said he did not remember reaching out to Congress. [emphasis added]

But Goldstone himself contradicted both the staffer and Ben-Ami:

Judge Goldstone said he remembers attending “10 or 12” meetings. J Street co-founder Daniel Levy, who accompanied the judge to several of the parleys, said that the New America Foundation (NAF) — whose Middle East Task Force he co-chairs — had also hosted a lunch with Judge Goldstone for “a group of analysts and Middle East wonks.” The judge, Mr. Levy, and J Street all declined to identify the members of Congress. [emphasis added]

As the article points out, all 3 of those organizations connected with Goldstone’s visit to Washington -- J Street, NAF and OSI -- are funded by Soros.

Contrary to J Street, most of the organized American Jewish community, across the spectrum from left to right was critical of the report.

In the end, the House passed a resolution condemning the Goldstone Report by a vote of 344-36. However, J Street said that it was unable to support the resolution as written.

J Street And Betty McCollum's Military Detention Bill HR 2407

In 2019, Congresswoman Betty McCollum introduced the Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act:

This bill prohibits the use of certain foreign-assistance funds to support the military detention, interrogation, abuse, or ill treatment of children in violation of international humanitarian law. The bill also prohibits such funds from being used to support certain practices against children, including torture, sensory deprivation, solitary confinement, and arbitrary detention.

The bill also authorizes the Department of State to provide funding to nongovernmental organizations to (1) monitor and assess incidents of Palestinian children being subjected to Israeli military detention, and (2) provide treatment and rehabilitation for Palestinians under 21 years of age who have been subject to military detention as children.

McCollum has the distinction for being the first US lawmaker to ever publicly accuse Israel of apartheid, in October 2018 during the annual national conference of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.

McCollum is also endorsed by J Street -- one of 3 Democratic congressional Democrats that are endorsed by both J Street and the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace.

NGO Monitor gives the underlying claims of McCollum's bill a thorough debunking.
But what does J Street think of this bill?

Apparently, J Street is divided over H.R.2407 - according to Bill Harper, McCollum's chief of staff, there is an internal debate among J Street board members over whether they should support the bill:

McCollum sent a letter to J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami on June 4th [2019] seeking his endorsement of the bill. In a response sent almost two months later, Ben-Ami described his board’s internal deliberations. He wrote that J Street strongly opposes unique standards being applied to Israel, but also believes Israel must adhere to legal requirements placed on all recipients of taxpayer-funded military assistance.

“While our Board of Directors has not yet made a decision on whether to support H.R. 2407, it is seized [sic] of the matter and has instructed our staff to engage in further research and consultations with relevant experts and stakeholders on this legislation and the critical issue it addresses,” Ben-Ami wrote. J Street Communications Director Logan Bayroff confirmed that this continues to be the organization’s position on the bill.

But J Street was not always so hesitant.

H.R. 2407 is the second iteration of McCollum's bill.

Originally, in November 2017, Congresswoman Betty McCollum introduced the Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act (H.R. 4391):

This bill prohibits U.S. assistance to Israel from being used to support the military detention, interrogation, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children in violation of international humanitarian law or the use against Palestinian children of: (1) torture, inhumane, or degrading treatment; (2) physical violence or psychological abuse; (3) incommunicado or administrative detention; (4) solitary confinement; (5) denial of parental or legal access during interrogations; or (6) force or coercion to obtain a confession.

The website OpenSecrets notes that 4 organizations registered to lobby on the issue of H.R. 4391 -- and one of those lobbying on the issue of McCollum's bill was J Street.

The site links to a lobbying report indicating J Street lobbying activities during the second quarter of 2018 were done by 4 different lobbyists.

That was then.
What would account for J Street's hesitation this time around?

According to The Intercept, there is a change in the language of McCollum's bill that has a number of Congressmen concerned:

Instead of directing the secretary of state to certify that U.S. aid is not being used by Israel to detain children, as the 2017 version does, the new bill amends U.S. law to explicitly ban U.S. aid from going toward the abuse of children, a move that takes discretion over such a ban out of the hands of the State Department.

But more than that, H.R.2407 amends the Leahy Law that prohibits the US from giving aid and training to either foreign military or individuals who are accused of "gross human rights violations" -- and adds a focus on Israel:

McCollum’s bill would make the Leahy Law even more explicit by barring foreign security units from using U.S. aid to carry out the “military detention, interrogation, abuse, or ill-treatment of children.” The bill’s amendment to the Leahy Law would apply to all countries that receive U.S. military aid, but its focus on Israel has made it particularly controversial. [emphasis added]

The potential for cutting aid to Israel concerns not only Democrats in Congress, but J Street as well.

J Street’s endorsement could provide wavering members of Congress enough political cover to back the bill. But J Street is still debating whether to ultimately endorse it. “We haven’t taken a position on this bill yet. We are still looking at the language and researching the very important issue it deals with,” said Logan Bayroff, a spokesperson for J Street.

Advocates for the bill have heard from congressional staffers that J Street is skeptical about using the Leahy Law to bar aid because, in J Street’s eyes, the law should be applied to only the most extreme human rights violations like mass sexual violence, massacres, or ethnic cleansing.

It is not surprising then that J Street has not been lobbying on the issue of H.R. 2407 as it did on H.R. 4391.

Ben-Ami was the one who bragged to Jeffrey Goldberg "I hope that we have a very strong left flank that attacks us."

But the increasingly vocal radical left is not impressed by Ben-Ami's claim to represent the American Jewish mainstream. Instead, just as Ben-Ami once admitted to The New York Times "our no. 1 agenda item is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s [Obama's] blocking back,” progressives expect Ben-Ami and J Street to keep moving to the left and provide cover for increased attacks on Israel by Democrats.

J Street has bragged they will fill the need to "validate, organize and amplify the voices" of American Jews and politicians.

Now vocal anti-Israel progressives demand J Street do just that.

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