Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 03, 2020

06/03 Links Pt1: John Podhoretz: Only an intellectual could ‘justify’ these riots; Why the Israeli left backed annexation; Half of Israelis Support West Bank Annexation, Poll Finds

From Ian:

Ha'aretz: Don't Confuse the Struggle of African Americans with the Struggle of the Palestinians

Despite the temptation to draw a comparison, the struggle of black people in the U.S. has nothing in common with the struggle of the Palestinians. The struggle being waged by blacks in the U.S. is a racial one, while the Palestinian struggle against Jews is nationalist in character.

The Palestinians refused the UN partition plan in 1947. They refused then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak's peace proposal in 2000. They refused to turn the Gush Katif settlement bloc, which was evacuated for their benefit in Israel's 2005 disengagement from Gaza, into a heaven on earth, choosing instead to create terrorist strongholds there. They chose Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Some chose, and still choose, terrorism.

In contrast to blacks in the U.S. who seek to live in peace with their American compatriots, the Palestinians don't want genuine peace. It's true that we and the Palestinians do not belong to the same nation, share the same language, or were raised with the same values, but that doesn't mean we cannot live in peace. But for that to happen, the Palestinians will have to recognize Israel's Jewish character and its link to Zionism.

In fact, such Palestinians already exist: Israeli Arabs, who enjoy full equality in terms of civil rights. The Israeli national anthem is addressed to the yearning Jewish soul and it will remain that way. Nevertheless, Arab citizens are not asked to sing it, the way that American Jews sing the U.S. national anthem and French Jews sing the French national anthem. They need only to recognize that it is the national anthem of the country of which they are a part.

If not for the extremist worldview adopted by many Palestinians and their supporters, which seeks to change Israel's Jewish-Zionist character, perhaps they would have their own state already.

John Podhoretz: Only an intellectual could ‘justify’ these riots

The difference between the hoodlums of Mailer’s day and the antifa “insurgents” of Thrasher’s and our time is that our insurgents are fully aware there is a phalanx of media and academic apologists at the ready, who will not only excuse their behavior but laud it. This both provides them internal psychological cover for the unleashing of the evils inside them and a vocabulary to explain away the evils they release.
Business owners from Mercado Central, a cooperative of largely Latino-owned businesses on Lake Street, nail pieces of white cloth onto the boarded-up building as a symbol of peace and a possible deterrent against rioting, in Minneapolis.Business owners from Mercado Central, a cooperative of largely Latino-owned businesses on Lake Street, nail pieces of white cloth onto the boarded-up building as a symbol of peace and a possible deterrent against rioting, in Minneapolis.AP

Making excuses for rampant violence has been a reflexive habit among the cognoscenti in the United States since the 1960s, from the Leonard Bernsteins hosting the Black Panthers at the elegant party immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his essay “Radical Chic” to the aftermath of the 1977 New York City blackout, when the looting of entire neighborhoods causing more than $1 billion in damage ($4.5 billion in today’s dollars) was justified in the op-ed columns of The New York Times as a consequence of (wait for it) a cutback in city-provided teenage summer employment.

Ideological partisans of all stripes face this temptation every day — the temptation to believe that those who seem to be making the same argument you make but then add violence to the mix only do so out of an excess of zeal. In other words, the violent people may be wrong in their tactics, but their passionate loathing of injustice simply got the best of their good intentions.

Perhaps they feel it necessary to do so because they don’t want the bad behavior to discredit their beliefs, or because they can’t bear to examine their beliefs in light of the violence and wonder if they are a part of what made the violence happen.

Or they double down and come to think that the violence is a mark of virtue — that the violent are even more committed than the cowardly couch potatoes who sit on the sidelines bemoaning injustice but refuse to put it all on the line. That was also the story with the cop-killing and bank-robbing terrorism by the Weathermen and others that erupted from the anti-Vietnam-War student protests.

The perpetrators were romanticized rather than vilified. That was half a century ago. And the spiritual virus that provided such rancid moral “immunity” has surged anew with a recurrence of the evil.

The glib comparisons between US racism and Israel (Daled Amos)

by Daled Amos

The tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of police has triggered an ongoing outcry across the country. Anger has generated protests from coast to coast. These started off as peaceful protests and many of those protests continue to be organized as peaceful protests. But many have turned violent. And others have been violent from the start. For its part, the media has made a point of emphasizing that these are protests as opposed to riots -- and 'peaceful' protests at that. For example, early on, a reporter from MSNBC was determined to convince viewers that the protesters were "not generally speaking unruly" -- while a building was in flames behind him.

The New York Times just cannot seem to help itself either. It is determined to call them protesters instead of rioters -- and no burning neighborhoods or smashed shop windows are going to get them to say otherwise.

For a week, cities across America have been theaters of dissent. The protesters are in the torched neighborhoods of Minneapolis. They are banging the barricades outside the White House, surging through New York’s Union Square, smashing shop windows in Beverly Hills.
The people giving voice to their anger are individual pieces of a movement, like drops of water to a wave. Their strength is in cohesiveness. Yet they are strangers, divided by geography, age, color and experience. [emphasis added]

There is an agenda, of course. The politicians want to play down the violence, because their failure to control the situation makes them look bad. As for the media, they see the 'protests' as a cause to be promoted, not as a news event to report. And if they can play up police's frustrated reactions while playing down the mob violence and then blame it all on Trump -- so much the better. Matters have come to the point that some want to control the narrative by controlling the language that is being used:

This is reminiscent of the ongoing attempt of the media to frame the Gaza riots -- and the attempts to infiltrate into Israel -- as 'peaceful protests'.

But there is more than just a passing similarity in the narratives the media is trying to pass off on its readers. There are some who are very determined that people should draw a connection between the riots in the US and Israel. The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) claims that programs that send police from the US to be trained in Israeli techniques in law enforcement are the direct cause of the death of George Floyd in general, and police abuse in general. Former Israeli politician and author Dr. Einat Wilf is among those who address the issue, which assumes there is no other source or history of police brutality in the US (let alone in other countries)

The Guardian tries to draw a comparison between the police killing of George Floyd and the death of Iyad Halak who was shot and killed by Israeli police who apparently mistook his cellphone for a gun. Both policemen were questioned and one was put under house arrest. In reaction to the effort to compare the two incidents as examples of deliberate neglect, CAMERA UK notes:

Though Palestinian Arabs were, from the earliest Jewish return to the land in the 19th century, subjected to bad decisions by their leaders, who rejected any Jewish presence in the land, many if not most are willing participants in the decades of war, terror, incitement, antisemitism, and rejectionism that’s driven the conflict. The conflict in general, and the occupation of disputed land in particular, isn’t fueled by race, but by the failure of two people to reach a political agreement on how to share the land. The black civil rights movement in the US was overwhelmingly non-violent, and based, to this day, on co-existence and classical liberal principles of freedom and equality expressed in the US Constitution. Martin Luther King often characterised his movement as one dedicated, by peaceful means only, to encouraging the country to fulfill the moral and political creed of the founders.

Not surprisingly, the advocacy group J Street has also made an effort to make hay out of this situation:

Gilead Ini, a senior research analyst for CAMERA, responds:

Again, the underlying point is the distinction between Blacks and their history in the US in contrast to the Arabs in Israel. There is a world of difference both in terms of their situations among the larger population and in how they deal with it. But none of that matters to those who want to exploit the tragic killing of George Floyd and are determined to never let a crisis go to waste.

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Naharnet reports:

Interior Minister Mohammed Fahmi on Tuesday warned anti-government protesters against insulting political leaders, the blocking of roads and what he described as “provocation.”

“Insults against the President and the Parliament Speaker are unacceptable,” Fahmi said, commenting on the latest protests outside the Baabda palace and the Ain el-Tineh palace.

“Let them be peaceful during protests and I'll be with them, but provocation is prohibited,” Fahmi went on to say.

Indeed, Lebanese law has a string of prohibitions against freedom of speech, including against libel and defamation of public officials, insulting the army, president, flag or national emblem.

Lebanon is probably the most liberal nation in the Arab world in regards to freedom of speech. While there are occasional articles complaining about the lack of freedom of speech in Lebanon – I found this one from The Guardian in 2010 - and other Arab countries, in general this topic is widely ignored.

Some of the protests have included speeches against Hezbollah, and one that is aimed specifically at Hezbollah is planned for Saturday.

The anti-government protests have slowed down with the coronavirus but have been growing again in the past couple of weeks.

Speaking of insulting Lebanon’s army, anonymous Internet users seem unworried about it, as these commenters said in response to a tiny incident on the Lebanese border with the IDF yesterday:

Black (and Asian) lives don’t matter in Lebanon

This is Lebanon is the name of a group to protect migrants in Lebanon. The stories of the migrant workers reveals a system of slavery and sexual abuse for people of color who went to Lebanon hoping to make money as domestic workers.

The stories are horrific.

Do black lives matter in Lebanon? More than two domestic workers die every week. All Black and disposable. Faustina: “I feel so weak. My body is swollen, I can barely stand for five minutes. I don't want to die.”

A domestic worker from Ghana named Faustina Tay was killed by her employer in March after months of beatings and torture and sexual abuse and false promises of her being paid. When she wanted to go home her employers, Hussein Dia and Mona Nasrallah, told her that she had to work for two more months for free and they would pay for her tickets. They lied and then accused her of theft, threatening her with jail unless she worked several more months as a slave. The exact circumstances of her death are still unclear but she was found fallen from a fourth story window, her head hitting the pavement first, shortly after telling her story to the NGO. The employers even got a Lebanese doctor to lie for them about her injuries to claim it was a suicide while he ignored her known injuries from being beaten.

A similar story is told here, of a Filipino woman who was a slave for 13 years working for a wealthy Lebanese family – the husband the cousin of Walid Jumblatt. When she complained yet again about not being paid the woman of the house – a lawyer - accused her of theft and had her jailed. She says that another domestic worker was raped by the husband of the family; the wife was infertile. They took the boy she gave birth to and deported her.

The site has story after story about workers, many African, who are treated literally like slaves. Today.

Do black lives matter in Lebanon and in other Arab countries that bring in domestic workers from Africa?

06/02 Links Pt2: BDS is failing - the never ending story (June 2020); BDS co-founder says goal of movement is end of Israel; Netanyahu’s life story to be made into HBO series ‘Bibi’

From Ian:

BDS is failing - the never ending story (June 2020)

Here’s the latest installment in our ongoing series of posts documenting BDS fails.
Political BDS Fails

Oklahoma stands with Israel

Oklahoma stands with Israel 🇮🇱

HB 3967 makes it clear Oklahoma will not do business with companies that boycott Israel & declares them as a prominent trading partner with our state. Thank you Rep. McBride & Sen. Weaver for your hard work! pic.twitter.com/8SJRpWo0vq
— Governor Kevin Stitt (@GovStitt) May 21, 2020

Biden condemns pro-Palestinian boycott movement

Former Vice President Joe Biden condemned the pro-Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in a new policy page posted on his campaign website.
The page, titled “Joe Biden and the Jewish community,” vows that the presumptive Democratic nominee will “firmly reject the BDS movement, which singles out Israel — home to millions of Jews — and too often veers into anti-Semitism, while letting Palestinians off the hook for their choices.”
While much of the page details Biden’s plan to combat the rapid rise of anti-Semitism within the United States, a significant portion of it also details the candidate’s Israel policy.

BDS Fails to block anti-BDS bill in Missouri

The Missouri state legislature passed a bill SB 739, the “Anti-Discrimination Against Israel Act.”.
The state’s House of Representatives passed the measure, 95-40, while the state Senate did so, 28-1, on April 30. Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, is expected to sign it into law, which would make Missouri the 28th state to enact such a measure to combat the anti-Israel BDS movement.
The legislation would prohibit Missouri and its political subdivisions from entering into contracts worth more than $100,000 with companies with 10 or more employees that engage in BDS.
Moreover, it exercises the state’s freedom to choose firms for contracts. It does not penalize or infringe on any individual’s right to free expression, or penalize companies that choose not to do business with Israel for legitimate economic reasons.
Jewish and pro-Israel groups applauded the bill’s passage.

US Fifth Circuit Throws Out Challenge to Texas Ban on Boycotting Israel

In litigation challenging a Texas law blocking state agencies from hiring companies boycotting Israel, the Fifth Circuit ordered dismissal of the case Monday but declined to decide if the law is constitutional.
Bahia Amawi, a Palestinian U.S. citizen, had worked for the Pflugerville Independent School District for nearly a decade as a speech therapist for kindergarteners when the school district offered to renew her contract for the 2018-2019 school year.
She refused due to a new clause in the contract requiring her to certify that she does not boycott Israel nor would she do so while working for the school district.
Texas joined 25 other states with similar legislation when lawmakers passed House Bill 89 and Republican Governor Greg Abbott signed it in 2017.
The so-called “No Boycott of Israel” bill’s sponsor, Representative Phil King, R-Weatherford, told news outlets in 2017 he introduced the legislation because as a Christian he felt his religious heritage is linked to Israel and the Jewish people, America’s national security depends on having Israel as an ally in the Middle East, and Texas has a large Jewish population and does a lot of business with Israel.

BDS co-founder says goal of movement is end of Israel

While Israel’s supporters claim that the BDS movement is aimed at the Jewish state and is a form of new anti-Semitism, its supporters in Western countries say it’s merely a tool to change Israeli policies.

However, in a newly recorded interview on May 21 with the Gazan Voice Podcast, co-founder of the BDS movement Omar Barghouti explains that should the movement’s goals be achieved, Israel would cease to exist.

“If the refugees return to their homes [in Israel] as the BDS movement calls for, if we bring an end to Israel’s apartheid regime and if we end the occupation on lands occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem, what will be left of the Zionist regime? That’s the question. Meaning, what will the two states be based on?” he said.

During the 20-minute interview in Arabic to the Gazan audience, Barghouti appears to have let slip the real objective of the movement he founded.

“International law and the right of return? There won’t be any Zionist state like the one we speak about [in present-day Israel]. There will be two states: One democratic for all its citizens here [Palestine] and one democratic for all its citizens there [Israel]. The Palestinian minority will become a Palestinian majority of what is today called Israel.”

Organizations that promote BDS include the Jewish Voice for Peace, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and Students for Justice in Palestine.

Schumer PAC Boosting Valerie Plame Ahead of Contested Primary

The super PAC aligned with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) is the largest donor to a prominent progressive group that has thrown itself behind Valerie Plame’s congressional bid.

Schumer’s Senate Majority PAC, which is working to help Democrats win back control of the Senate, has donated nearly $8 million to VoteVets, the liberal group backing Plame in Tuesday’s contested Democratic primary in New Mexico’s Third Congressional District.

The relationship indirectly links Schumer, the Democratic Party’s top-ranking Jewish official, and his top outside allies to a congressional candidate who has struggled to shed her reputation as an anti-Semite. Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman who has, like Schumer, been a reliably pro-Israel voice among Democrats, was among VoteVets’ largest donors in the 2018 cycle.

A spokesman for the Senate Majority PAC did not respond to a request for comment. A Bloomberg spokesman said the Democratic financier has yet to give money to VoteVets in 2020.

VoteVets, which dropped tens of thousands of dollars on advertising to boost Plame in the closing weeks of a crowded primary, received more than half of the $14 million it has raised in the 2020 cycle from Schumer’s PAC, according to the Federal Election Commission. The group has also defended Plame against an aggressive attack ad that used Nazi imagery to blast Plame as a "disgraced racist millionaire," calling for the ads to be pulled down.

These young British people who support Jewish rights to Judea and Samaria are a sight for sore eyes

Seeing a diverse group of young British people who think Israel should extend sovereignty over its historic homeland is a nice counterpoint to the anti-Israel propaganda we normally see.

From TheJC:

A video featuring the voices of “young unapologetic Zionists” has been released in an attempt to challenge the claim that the overwhelming of majority of British Jewish students oppose plans to extend Israel's sovereignty over the West Bank.
Harry Markham, National Director of Magshimey Herut UK, told the JC the near six-minute long recording had been circulated on social media ''in order to counter the myth that there is an anti-annexation consensus amongst young British Jews''.

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.

Marc Lamont Hill is a popular apologist for Palestinian terror and has made antisemitic statements. So of course he is in the forefront of justifying violent riots in the US.

He justifies riots by calling them “rebellions” – with lots of video showing things burning. things like shops and other buildings owned by people who have nothing to do with any racism, or who are often people of color themselves. You know – what he would call “collective punishment.”

Then, however, he quotes Martin Luther King Jr. to justify rioting. He accurately quotes him as saying “the riot is the language of the unheard.” But King wasn’t justifying and praising rioting like Hill is. He said:

Now I wanted to say something about the fact that we have lived over these last two or three summers with agony and we have seen our cities going up in flames. And I would be the first to say that I am still committed to militant, powerful, massive, non-violence as the most potent weapon in grappling with the problem from a direct action point of view. I'm absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method that brings about tangible results. But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

King is very much against riots, although he is explaining why they occur – in the context of continuing inequality. Hill, however, is not advocating non-violence. He is not warning of the negative consequences of violence, or of the danger of them spiraling out of control. Hill explicitly says that “we” must get the message across by “damaging their property and making them feel as unsafe as we feel every single day.”

Of course, then he says the shouldn’t just burn stuff down. Right after saying they must damage “their” property. He then calls destroying and looting a Target “shutting down a Target” as if they simply picketed the store. He threatens that “we” will continue to burn down cities until white people give blacks respect.

This is as far from Martin Luther King as you can get. How dare Hill quote King.

Why should anyone be surprised that an apologist for Palestinian terror is also an apologist for antifa-style terror?

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.

06/02 Links Pt1: The Palestinian Refusal to Negotiate with Israel and Trump Is a Cowardly, Fateful Mistake; Guardian exploits George Floyd killing to vilify Israel

From Ian:

Linking the Murder in Minneapolis with Israel's Efforts to Defend Itself Against Palestinian Terror Is a Big Lie

As always, some of those looking to exploit the tragedy in Minneapolis are attacking Jews. Asserting that Jewish groups that have facilitated trips to Israel by American first responders and police are somehow responsible for killings of unarmed blacks by U.S. cops is not only untrue, it's a classic example of an anti-Semitic blood libel since it seeks to blame Jews for crimes for which they bear no responsibility.

The training Americans get in Israel actually focuses on the antithesis of stereotypical police brutality by seeking to promote community engagement and nonviolent policing that would make confrontations less likely.

The mission of the Israel Defense Forces is to defend the people of Israel against foes which have not given them a day of peace in the 72-year history of the country. Its record in protecting civilian lives, including Palestinians who are used as human shields by terrorists, is unmatched.

Intersectionalism is a thinly disguised form of anti-Semitism. It is hate masquerading as advocacy for the oppressed. It is vital that all decent people reject the attempts to smear Israel and its American friends by associating them with incidents like the Minneapolis murder.

Guardian exploits George Floyd killing to vilify Israel

A Guardian article by Jerusalem correspondent Oliver Holmes (‘Palestinian lives matter’: Israeli police killing of autistic man draws US comparison, June 1) legitimises those exploiting the killing of George Floyd in the US to demonise Israel. Though Holmes used others’ voices to advance such agitprop, he failed to challenge their claims or offer a quote from anyone critical of such facile and toxic comparisons.

The article begins thusly:
A caregiver for an unarmed, autistic Palestinian man killed in Jerusalem by Israeli police has said she repeatedly warned officers he was disabled before they opened fire, in a case that has drawn parallels with US police violence.

The body of Iyad Halak, 32, was buried late on Sunday night. He was shot dead the day before, reportedly after becoming confused by shouting police and fleeing in a panic to hide among rubbish bins.

Israeli police said in a statement they had spotted a “suspect with a suspicious object that looked like a pistol”. “They called upon him to stop and began to chase after him on foot, during the chase officers also opened fire at the suspect, who was neutralised,” the statement said.

Holmes later noted the two Israeli officers “were questioned under caution..with one placed under house arrest while investigators looked into the incident”, and that Defence Minister Benny Gantz apologised for the incident during a cabinet meeting.

That both Halak and George were tragically killed by police, and both incidents have elicited understandable outrage, is of course not in dispute. However, Holmes goes further than merely noting the two incidents, by advancing a narratives common amongst anti-Zionists and anti-Semites suggesting the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is one between racist ‘whites’ (Israelis) and oppressed ‘people of colour’ (Palestinians).

Here’s how he does it:
The killing…has been pointed to by Palestinian, Israeli and US activists as an example of what they say is similar neglect for the lives of Palestinian and black people in Israel and the US.

At small protests in Israel and Palestine since Saturday, people held signs reading “Palestinian lives matter”, a reference to the US-based Black Lives Matter movement. Others posted online old photos of Israeli police and army officers kneeling on the necks of arrested Palestinian men – similar images to that of the death of George Floyd, whose killing while under police restraint has spurred protests across the US.

The Ramallah-based Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy shared a drawing on Twitter of Halak and Floyd side by side, with “two countries, similar systems” written above them. “[Iyad] and George were victims of similar systems of supremacy and oppression. They must be dismantled,” the advocacy group said.

Yisrael Medad: Antifa in Mandate Palestine

“Antifa” was a group founded by the International Communist League in Mandate Palestine in 1934 to promote radical socialist ideas as well as to oppose Revisionist Zionism. Its members were extreme moderates (pro-Havlaga restraint policy during Arab riots 1936-39) who sought compromise with nationalist Arabs and eventually went on to volunteer in the Spanish Civil War.

From the JTA, February 10, 1937
A delegation including a Jew and an Arab-Morris Efrom and Najib Yusuf – have arrived in New York as representatives of the Antifa Committee of Palestine for a tour of the United States sponsored by the American Antifa Committee, which includes Roger Baldwin, Prof. Morris R. Cohen, the Rev. John Haynes Holmes and Ernst Toller.

And six days later:

The Ma’an News Network has been the recipient of millions of dollars of grants from European sources over the years, including a donation of hundreds of thousands of euros from the EU earmarked for 2016-2019 for “Leveraging Media Initiatives to Promote Participatory Engagement in the Peace Process.”

I don’t know about funding for 2020, because Ma’an is not transparent about its funding sources, but Ma’an certainly does not even pretend to support peace with Israel today.

An editorial last week said:

Whatever Netanyahu does… and whatever he says

However he begs… and however he threatens

We will not relinquish the idea of one-state

Farewell to the past

Farewell to area A

Farewell to half-solutions

We are coming, oh Tel-Aviv

That sounds pretty explicitly against peace – and against the agenda of the EU.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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From The Media Line:

Under slogan ‘It’s Me or the Coordinator,’ activists seek to pressure people to stop following COGAT’s Arabic-language Facebook page

Palestinian activists and public figures have launched a campaign against “Al-Munasek,” the Arabic-language Facebook page of COGAT, Israel’s liaison body for coordinating activities in the Palestinian territories.

Under the slogan “It’s Me or the Coordinator,” the idea is to convince Palestinians to unfollow and even boycott the page, which features news and announcements about Israeli activities in the West Bank. Information includes the operating hours of checkpoints and border-crossing stations, and, more recently, ads for entry permits for purposes of work and medical treatment.

The activists call the COGAT page an effort to “whitewash” the Israeli occupation.

The COGAT Arabic page has some 570,000 followers. It provides critical information for people who need to cooperate with Israeli authorities, such as workers and traders who need to travel to Israel.

Last week it posted one of the videos that drive haters crazy. Israel opened up the crossings for all workers with permits to enter Israel, and it showed a 15 minute clip of Palestinian workers entering the Qalandia checkpoint – live and unedited. The workers averaged about 4 seconds at each face-recognition turnstile, and the only slowdown was when they forget to remove their mask to be recognized.

The Arabic comments on the video were overwhelmingly positive and polite. A few commenters went so far as to say “All respect to the Coordinator (COGAT)” but those elicited derisive responses upset that anyone can say anything nice about the IDF, and counter-responses that there is nothing wrong with showing appreciation to Israel’s efforts to streamline the checkpoints and save them hours that they used to waste.

The page also dispels rumors (today many Arabs heard that COGAT was giving out permits to traders without checking them, and they gently explained that the procedures have not changed) and other important information (workers whose permits expired during the coronavirus shutdown were given an automatic 30 day extension.)

Telling people, especially workers, to boycott the page shows that those activists don’t care about their own people. Frankly, the idea that boycotting the page hurts Israel and not Palestinians is bizarre.

(h/t YMedad)

Jordanian news site Sawaleif has an op-ed by Dr. Bassem Rubeen where he brings a novel theory that Israelis have to fabricate their enemies in order to gain sympathy from the West.

Yes, he has written an anti-Israel, antisemitic article claiming that Jews don’t have anyone who hates them.

He quotes a study by a Major General Falah al-Ma’aitah saying that “the Jews have a firm conviction that ensuring the permanence of the State of Israel and the continued sympathy of the West and their support for it is only possible if an enemy threatens their being, even if that enemy was fabricated.”

Finding enemies for the Jews provides them with great logistics, so we see them since the era of the great Messenger, peace be upon him, have broken their covenants, and here they deny the agreements of Wadi Araba and Oslo, and all the United Nations resolutions related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, but they always create the conditions for the escalation of the situation, as a guarantee of the continued flow of aid.

They attract diaspora Jews from different races, and that is another reason for them to manufacture enemies, they are confident that the enemy industry will push the internal and diaspora Jews to stand together and stand up to any enemy…

Therefore, the Arabs, after having tried all the methods that were imposed on them, and made all the concessions, must be convinced that the Zionist ideological strategy does not want peace even if the Arabs agreed to all their requirements and the Palestinian negotiator has achieved this. This is entrenched by their lack of commitment to any peace agreements concluded with the Arabs, because achieving peace, as we mentioned, will cause them internal unrest due to the many races, spectrums, colors and beliefs within the Jewish community.

Yup. It is Israel that has refused to make peace. The writer even says that Israel hasn’t kept its agreements with Jordan. And this is a longstanding Jewish trait.

Pure antisemitism, published openly in Jordan – Israel’s “peace partner.” Today.

06/01 Links Pt2: HonestReporting Takes Legal Action Against Twitter and Ayatollah Khamenei; Bending the Jews; The Times retracts claim Palestinians fled in '48 due to Israeli 'rape and torture'

From Ian:

Michel Foucault and Iran’s Ayatollahs

The Islamic Revolution in Iran, which brought Islamists to power for the first time in modern history, pitted the global left—perhaps best personified by Michel Foucault—against the global right. To this day, the global left’s advocacy for Islamism continues to guide the West’s general approach toward the Middle East.

The Islamist regime in Iran has now been firmly in power for over 40 years. The leaders of the regime and those they favor continue to benefit from their decades-long rule, but the people of Iran—as well as the countries in its neighborhood—suffer from the tyranny and terror unleashed on them by the regime and its ruthless Revolutionary Guards.

Analysts of different stripes usually tend to interpret the so-called “Islamic Revolution” of 1979 as the manifestation of the yearning of the Iranian people to free themselves from the tyranny of monarchy and Western interference. They tend not to mention that the revolution had a broad ideological scope that pitted the global left against the global right on the Iranian battleground.

Some of the most influential Western leftist intellectuals had a great personal stake in the Iranian revolution. They played a significant role in pushing Iran into the arms of Islamism in order to fulfil their ideological dream of “defeating capitalism” around the world.

The foremost of those intellectuals was French philosopher and journalist Michel Foucault.

Foucault’s interest in Islamism started in 1978, when the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera called on him to write a series of articles about Iran. To fulfill that assignment, Foucault spent time among members of the left-leaning Confederation of Iranian Students and other opponents of the Pahlavi regime in Europe. He then went to Tehran and met with many prominent revolutionaries. When he returned to France, he visited Ayatollah Khomeini in the village of Neauphle-le-Château near Paris where he was exiled at the time.

HonestReporting Takes Legal Action Against Twitter and Ayatollah Khamenei

Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader of Iran, is spreading hate and calls for violence against Israel and Jews. That’s nothing new. Except now the Iranian dictator is becoming increasingly active on Twitter. These days “media” is not just print and television, but social media too; and that’s where HonestReporting comes in.

Khamenei is abusing his Twitter account to broadly distribute antisemitic conspiracy theories, threats of violence and incitement for others to commit violence, including a link to his web site which contains calls for a Final Solution: a thinly veiled reference to Hitler’s notorious plan to murder all Jewish people in the world, which formed the centerpiece of the Holocaust.

Other specific examples include: calling the Jewish state a “cancerous tumor,” and calling for Palestinians to defeat the “Zionist enemy” through greater “access to weapons.” Like many modern antisemites, Khamenei declares he is not actually a Jew-hater, before going on to portray himself as a mere anti-Zionist whose aim is to “eliminate” the worlds only Jewish state, and the country with the world’s biggest concentration of Jews.

Incitement to violence is not only not free speech, it’s also illegal under U.S. law. So is aiding and abetting incitement to violence, which is exactly what Twitter is doing in this case.

Incitement to violence violates Twitter’s terms and conditions, terms which the company often enforces aggressively even against only marginal violations. So why does one of the world’s most brutal dictators receive different treatment?

Israel Advocacy Movement: Twitter enables antisemitism

If Twitter can censor Donald Trump, why don't they censor genocidal antisemites?

Bending the Jews

Deep-pocketed funders—including the Rockefellers and the Buffetts—are creating a constellation of activist groups like Stosh Cotler’s Bend the Arc that aim to rewire American Jewish life

From her 19th floor corner office in the Bend the Arc headquarters, Stosh Cotler took in the panoramic view of downtown Manhattan. It was a warm weekday last summer, and far below her the pedestrian foot traffic inched along like dollhouse miniatures on the sidewalks of Seventh Avenue. To the west under detailing light, white yachts traced long lines away from the piers of the Hudson River.

By that point, Cotler had been CEO of Bend the Arc for more than five years, but her role had changed since the 2016 election. She was in near-constant triage mode, she said, on guard to respond to whatever inflammatory statement or action was coming out of the White House. On television, radio, and in major print publications Cotler had assumed a regular profile, her strong, forceful presence fast becoming a recognizable voice speaking out on behalf of Jews in America. The day prior, President Donald Trump said, “If you vote for a Democrat, you’re being disloyal to Jewish people,” a reference to the ongoing support for the BDS movement by Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

Cotler’s assistant popped her head in to tell her she had an interview request with The Washington Post. No problem, she said.

Slim and athletic, Cotler’s motorized scooter and neon-green helmet leaned beside her tidy stand-up desk in the corner. At 50, Cotler wears her curly hair high, large earrings, and thick bracelets on her wrist. Though calm and on occasion friendly in conversation, a notable intensity emanates from her dark brown eyes, particularly when Cotler speaks on the burden on American Jewish organizations to chart the proper path forward for a country she sees veering into dangerous waters.

“At this point in time we’re really seeking to become the institution that redefines the center of gravity in the American Jewish community,” Cotler told me. “We have a vision and we have an agenda that we believe to now be the communal agenda of the Jewish community.”

Last summer, when I first encountered Bend the Arc in the news, I did not know what the group was or what they did. Then I saw them nearly everywhere—or at least they appeared to maintain a constant presence in the media on the issue of the southern American border and immigration detention facilities. Wearing organization T-shirts and carrying banners with the Bend the Arc logo, their protesters appeared in dozens of demonstrations and marches for immigration policy reforms covered by the mainstream press. At protests in the halls of Congress, their staffers were being arrested. On cable news and the radio, their leaders were brought on to condemn the policies of the Trump administration. In my social media feeds, I started to see photos and videos of smaller events in between those covered by major news outlets.

Though tracing its lineage back to predecessor organizations that were founded as far back as 1983, the Jewish social action organization is essentially a recent construction that has taken on a new and diffuse slate of political issues at both the state and national level—immigrant documentation, tax laws, voter rights, among other causes that may have little to do with what are generally defined as the specific needs of any particular Jewish community but are often championed by progressive Democratic politicians.

The PLO salutes health care workers. They don’t mention that many Palestinian terror leaders were doctors!

From the PLO propaganda Twitter account:

The killing of Al-Najjar was a tragic accident from a bullet that ricocheted off the ground over 30 meters away from her.

But for the Palestinians to say that they support health workers is a bit disingenuous.

After all, Hamas uses ambulances to hide terrorists.

And some terrorist leaders were doctors themselves.

George Habash and Wadie Haddad, founders of the PFLP, were medical doctors.

Fathi Shaqaqi, co-founder of Islamic Jihad, was a pediatrician.

Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, co-founder of Hamas, was a physician.

So, yes, I fully believe that Palestinian leaders salute health workers. Just not for the reasons they claim.

EoZTV: Interview with David Collier

David Collier is the amazing researcher who has written book-length exposes of antisemitism in the British Labour party as well as at Amnesty International.

I spoke to him on Sunday about his work and his opinions. We discussed the current unrest in the US, the white supremacy and racism in the Left, and how his opponents try to pain him as a racist.

It was a good interview. Check it out!

06/01 Links Pt1: Sovereignty over the Jordan Valley Is Key to Israel's Security; Iran Attempted to Raise Chlorine in Israel’s Water Supply to Dangerous Levels

From Ian:

Sovereignty over the Jordan Valley Is Key to Israel's Security

In order to thrive, and not just survive, Israel must have a minimally defensible eastern border, located in the Jordan Valley, and it must retain control of the eastern mountain ridge.

Yitzhak Rabin, architect of the Oslo Accords, included full Israeli security control over Jewish cities in Judea and Samaria/the West Bank, and full freedom of maneuver for Israelis along the main roads of the area, within those parameters.

The Trump peace plan, with its endorsement of Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, accurately reflects the Rabin parameters. It also calls for a two-state solution and a demilitarized Palestinian state, with Israeli security control over the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The U.S. peace plan was coordinated with Sunni states and Israel. That coordination is the result of the Sunni view that an alliance with Israel is an existential imperative in their fight against Iran - something that is of far greater significance to them than the Palestinian-Arab cause.

Jordan, despite its rhetoric, is unlikely to cancel its peace treaty with Israel. It is Israel and the U.S. that stabilize Jordan, not the other way around. There is no Jordanian interest in having a Palestinian military presence on their western border.

The Palestinian public in Judea and Samaria, for its part, has demonstrated that it is primarily interested in its economic wellbeing. The Palestinian-Arab street has shown little appetite to return to the days of the Second Intifada.

David Singer: Trump Needs to Revise his Vision for Judea and Samaria

President Trump’s deal of the century envisioning the creation of a second Arab state in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan – is in tatters following its absolute rejection by the PLO – requiring its urgent revision by the president.

Trump has vainly struggled to keep the statehood possibility alive despite PLO President Mahmoud Abbas having consigned it to the dustbin of history on the day of its publication – 28 January 2020 -but the PLO has refused to play ball.

Being a beggar does not fit Trump’s persona. He is allowing Israel to apply sovereignty in 30% of Judea and Samaria in July – with allocation of the remaining 70% requiring another Arab interlocutor to negotiate with Israel.Trump’s vision was always a mirage – offering the PLO less than 100% of Judea and Samaria it had been demanding since 1967– supported by the international community since the 1980 Venice Declaration.

Trump had predicated his vision without even defining who comprised the “Palestinians”. In addition his plan had incorrectly asserted:
1. “Palestinians have aspirations that have not been realized, including self-determination”.

All West Bank Arabs became Jordanian nationals in 1954 until their nationality was revoked by Jordan in 1988.

2. “The State of Israel has also exchanged sizeable territories for the sake of peace, as it did when it withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace with the Arab Republic of Egypt.”

Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 didn’t rate a mention.

3.“One reason for the intractability of this problem is the conflation of two separate conflicts: a territorial, security and refugee dispute between Israel and the Palestinians and a religious dispute between Israel and the Muslim world regarding control over places of religious significance. ”

There is only one conflict – between Jews and Arabs - fuelled by the Arab League’s refusal to recognise the State of Israel since its establishment in 1948.

The religious dispute was resolved under the 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty granting Jordan control over places of Islamic religious significance in Jerusalem.

Jonathan Tobin: Whatever happened to the Emergency Committee for Israel?

Ten years ago, it came in with a bang, but this spring, it disbanded without even a whimper.

The Emergency Committee for Israel came into existence in 2010 in response to President Barack Obama's increasingly aggressive criticism of Israel and his attempt to pressure it to make concessions to the Palestinians. In the following years, as Obama's push for appeasement of Iran culminated in a disastrously weak nuclear deal, the ECI depicted the administration's policies as not just wrongheaded or counterproductive, but an "emergency" that decent Americans should mobilize to oppose.

Democrats blasted the group for what they claimed was an attempt to turn Israel into a partisan wedge issue. Yet by helping to frame the debate about Obama's push for more "daylight" between the United States and Israel, and a rapprochement with Iran, the ECI played a not insignificant role in generating dissent about such dangerous folly and electing members of the House and Senate who disagreed with the administration.

Once Obama got his way on the Iran nuclear deal, the ECI went silent. Earlier this spring, it formally disbanded. But it's prime mover, former Weekly Standard publisher William Kristol has moved on to a different cause, albeit one that puzzles many of those who agreed with him about Obama's attitude towards Israel.

After leading the effort to brand Obama a threat to Israel's existence, Kristol has, along with some other celebrity pundits like The Atlantic's David Frum and The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin, who were cheerleaders for the ECI, become the voice of the #NeverTrump movement. He leads a new organization whose purpose is to convince Republicans to support presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. But unlike the ECI, which was often torched by the mainstream media, his new effort is gaining the same kind of sympathetic coverage in The New York Times that the left-wing lobby J Street – ECI's principal antagonist during its most active period – usually receives.