Before Covid-19 struck, Boris Johnson had decided to invite the Chinese tech giant Huawei to provide parts of Britain’s 5G communications network. Now, with China condemned for causing the pandemic through its reckless behaviour and then behaving like a gangster state in resorting to lies, threats and manipulation, the government is proposing an alliance of ten democratic nations to develop alternatives to Chinese technology.
This “D10” would be composed of the G7 nations — the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan — plus Australia, South Korea and India. It’s an idea that is not only excellent in itself but encapsulates an insight with far-reaching potential to restructure global institutions.
What’s actually outdated is the idea that peace and justice can only be advanced by the world acting as one big united family. This belief in the brotherhood of man lay behind the foundation of the United Nations in 1945. Yet the UN has not only failed to live up to its ideals of confronting aggression, preserving peace and defending human rights, but has in fact helped thwart them.
Given that most countries are tyrannies, kleptocracies or rogue states, a global body which brings them all together will inevitably be dominated by their unsavoury characteristics.
What’s needed instead is a United Democratic Nations. This is an idea that has often been floated wistfully by critics of the UN but dismissed as quixotic. The D10 proposal, however, could be the launchpad for just such a body. Going beyond the issue of Huawei and 5G technology, democracies should band together to defend freedom and justice by standing up to the depredations of regimes that seek to extinguish them.
The UN might have been created as a result of the shattering impact of the Second World War. It was founded, however, on a starry-eyed denial of the fact that if a lion lies down with a lamb, the lion doesn’t turn vegan but the lamb gets eaten.
I am a Jordanian Arab from a Muslim family. I was born in 1989. In 2010, I decided to leave Islam after becoming fed up with all the jihadist violence and intolerance and persecution of non-Muslims. What made my decision final was the realization that this violence and hatred was justified by verses of the Koran and Hadith.
From 2010-2012, I was an atheist, though I continued to seek the truth regarding God and religion, even visiting Buddhist temples in Amman.
I was a university student at the time, and announced my newfound atheism through social media, which immediately turned many friends and colleagues against me. They felt I was backwards in my thinking, and I came to feel the same about them.
As you are no doubt aware, atheism is detested in the Arab and Islamic world. I faced a lot of hurtful opposition from those around me, but I kept my head down and focused on completing my university studies. It wasn’t easy. There were those who tried to have me kicked out because of my stance against Islam, but they failed.
In 2012, I decided to visit a church and learn more about Christianity. I was curious about Jesus. After four months of investigating, I joined an international church under the auspices of an American priest. On the very first day, I was asked to pray for salvation, after which one of the Christian brothers gave me weekly Bible lessons. Shortly after, I was baptized in the Jordan River.
Jordan is seen by many as a moderate Arab Muslim country. But even here, it is illegal to leave Islam. The civil courts are still governed by Sharia law, and to have someone complain against you for rejecting Islam can result in criminal punishment.
This didn’t deter me, and in 2012, I made an online video telling people in Arabic about how I’d become a Christian. Several days later, I was attacked by three radical Muslims. I also received threats from a radical Salafi movement under the leadership of Jarrah Rahahleh, an international terrorist, who used to send jihadists to Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and was arrested many times by Jordanian authorities. Further threats came from others.
Thus it was that the group that would come to be known as the “Nakam,” Hebrew for “Avengers,” was born. In the spring of 1945, a Passover gathering of survivors in Bucharest was addressed by Abba Kovner, the young leader of the Jewish uprising in the Vilna ghetto. Kovner was born in 1918 in Sebastopol, Russia, and spent his high school years in Vilna, where he joined Ha-Shomer Hatzair youth movement. When the Germans invaded and occupied Lithuania, they rounded up the Jews and put them in a ghetto. Kovner pleaded with Vilna’s Jews to join the partisans in a popular uprising, but they refused. After briefly fighting the Germans, Kovner and other partisans fled to the forest. While there, they destroyed 180 miles of train tracks, five bridges, 40 enemy train cars and killed 212 German soldiers. He returned to Vilna with the Red Army on July 7, 1944, capturing the city from the Germans on July 13, 1944. After the war, he and 50 other partisans attempted to poison thousands of Nazi and SS prisoners in a Nuremberg POW camp. It is unknown how many Germans were killed. In 1961 he testified at the trial of Adolf Eichmann. In 1970, he won the “Israel Prize” in literature for his poetry.
At that gathering, Kovner spoke passionately and invoked Psalm 94, in which God promises that he shall deal with the enemies of the people of Israel. “He will turn upon them their own violence and with their own wickedness destroy them.” This, Kovner suggested, was the fate that should be meted out to the Germans. And if the courts of international justice would not do it, then the Jews should do it themselves.
Calmly, the group set about implementing the death sentences they themselves had passed. First, they would identify a Nazi who had melted back into civilian life. They would then stage an arrest and spirit the German away. Some of these ex-SS men were strangled, others hanged. The deaths of those who were hanged could be passed off as suicides. Hangings might take place in a garage, with the subject forced to stand on a car roof while his neck was placed in the noose attached to an overhead beam. An Avenger would drive the car away and the man would be strangled. These efforts endured into the 1950s. The executioners kept their mouths shut and took their secrets to their graves.
The Nakam went to Spain, Latin America, Canada, and other places where Nazi murderers found refuge. In one such operation, the Nakam tracked down Alexander Laak, responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Jews at the Estonian concentration camp of Jagala. One evening they waited for Laak’s wife to leave for the movies, went to his home, and confronted him with his crimes and their intended punishment. They gave him a choice: They would kill him, or he could do it himself. He hung himself.
Benjamin Levi, one of the avengers, recalled that period in his life saying, “I saw a lot of things. I saw very noble people become animals. And very plain people become noble.” He had joined the partisans during the war and helped to liberate Vilna. He and his comrades rounded up Lithuanians who had collaborated with the Germans and shot them on the spot. “We didn’t keep prisoners,” he said. “There was no discussion. It was a normal thing.” All enemies were immediately shot. “The moment I start to think about this more and more memories come,” he said to a later interviewer. “We don’t talk about this anymore. But it’s alive inside.”
After the founding of the State of Israel, the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, undertook the task of tracking down former Nazis and killing them, and in some cases, putting them on trial. But that’s another story.
Malki Roth, 15, was murdered
for eating pizza while Jewish in Jerusalem. That she was with her best friend,
also murdered for eating pizza while Jewish in Jerusalem, is of little comfort,
though the two are buried next to each other, together in death as they were in
life. But what grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let you go is that the
mastermind of the Sbarro Restaurant Massacre, Ahlam Tamimi, lives free and
clear in Jordan, a celebrity to her people.
Why a celebrity? It’s simple.
Ahlam Tamimi is celebrated in Jordan for causing Jewish blood to be spilled. In
particular, the blood of Jewish children, which apparently brought her great (and
very public) delight.
Now if you are an American, you
should care about this because Malki Roth was an American citizen. The United
States has an extradition treaty with Jordan. But the United States has done
next to nothing to seek justice for one of her own. Which is shameful.
Jordan gets a lot of money from
the United States, so it would seem to be the easiest and most sensible thing
in the world to accomplish the extradition of Tamimi, a wanted terrorist. Cut
the money pipeline and they, Jordan, will hand Tamimi over quick enough.
But that hasn’t happened.
Why not? And how do Malki’s
parents, Arnold and Frimet Roth, live with that reality and betrayal, even as
their daughter’s blood cries out from the ground for justice?
Arnold and Frimet Roth gaze at a photo of their daughter Malki, HY"D.
Arnold
Roth was interviewed in this space one year ago in an effort to raise
awareness of this story, this travesty of justice. But twelve months on, the extradition
has still not occurred. Tamimi has not been
put on trial. She is still free,
still celebrated as a hero in Jordan. And Malki Roth’s blood still cries out
from the ground.
It seems appropriate, one year
on, to take stock and ask: What has changed in the course of one year? Is there
any hope, any progress at all? I spoke to Arnold to learn more:
Varda Epstein: In our interview of a year ago, you mentioned some
concrete achievements in your efforts to persuade the US to increase the
pressure on Jordan to extradite your daughter’s murderer, Ahlam Tamimi. Tamimi
had been charged and a reward for her capture issued. But there were unnamed
officials who seemed to be blocking this process. Can you tell us more about
this? Has anything changed, at least on this score?
Arnold Roth: A terrific question. Let’s
look first at what hasn’t changed.
A major
news organization recently called fugitive bomber Ahlam Tamimi “the
most wanted woman in the world”. It wasn’t meant as a compliment. But it’s
also not clear what it really does mean. There are 28 people on the FBI
Most Wanted Terrorists list as of today. Of these terrorists, 26 are
men. Tamimi is one of the only two female terrorists on this list.
But it would be a stretch to say she’s
living the life of someone on the run. Tamimi lives with her husband/cousin in
a fancy apartment in Jordan’s capital. That’s where she was when you and I
spoke about her last June. And that’s
where she is now. She’s still free as a bird, unrestricted in her movements,
frequently quoted and published in the Arabic media. Tamimi, above all, continues
to be a figure of malignant influence, a devotee of Islamism in the most
violent sense, a woman who uses every accessible part of the media to keep
pumping out lethal hatred often, widely, and to a hugely appreciative audience.
Tamimi Has Never Been in Hiding
And contrary to its own carefully
manicured public relations, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, an ally of Western
governments that has one of the world’s most restricted and tightly controlled
media strategies, continues to be perfectly fine with all of this.
Tamimi was not in hiding when we spoke
last time and she’s not in hiding today. She has, in fact, never been in hiding—not
even for a single day since she returned home to Jordan in 2011 after several
years in an Israeli prison cell. Jordan is where she was born and educated, and
Jordan is where Tamimi still lives today, out in the open, though she was
supposed to spend the rest of her life behind bars.
Sentenced by a judicial panel to 16
terms of life imprisonment after confessing to her role in the Jerusalem Sbarro
pizzeria massacre, Tamimi got her freedom back by way of the Shalit Deal. In
this “exchange,” Israel released 1,027 terrorists—more than half of them
killers—for a soldier held hostage for more than five years by Hamas terrorists
in conditions that, according to lawyers, constitute a war crime.
Tamimi's Life is Public
Photos of the Tamimi apartment in Amman,
even more than when we spoke last year, are still easily found on social media.
The Tamimi home has been photographed from the inside, from the outside, from the
terrace looking up and looking down. The trajectory of Tamimi’s life and career are public information. Herwedding got live TV coverage. She earned a master’s degree in journalism the same week your first interview with me was published, and this too, made it into the news. Everything Tamimi does is eagerly scrutinized by her adoring Jordanian public.
Should this trouble thoughtful people?
Yes. Because the U.S. government announced a $5 million reward on her head in
January of 2018. But it’s obvious that the Tamimi reward doesn’t work the way
such rewards normally do. No one needs to be financially incentivized to hand
over the details of where Tamimi is when every relevant person already knows
her location.
If the reward was never intended to apply inside Jordan, why is this never stated publicly and how can U.S. officials claim relentless efforts to bring Ahlam Tamimi to U.S. justice?
High-level U.S. officials obviously
know this particular reward was never intended to apply inside Jordan,
leaving inquiring minds to wonder (a) how it is that this is never stated
publicly, and (b) what goes through the minds of officials as they make eloquent
speeches or issue media releases about Tamimi and their “relentless” efforts to
bring her to U.S. justice?
At a certain point, those
well-composed, emphatically-phrased official statements coupled with the
refusal of a long line of U.S. diplomats and other officials to engage with me
and my wife leave us—picking my words cautiously—troubled.
The regime of King Abdullah II,
meanwhile, is still fully engaged in illicitly blocking U.S. law enforcement’s efforts
to take Tamimi into custody. Amman’s willingness to stare down the United
States, its most important ally and the source of more foreign aid that Jordan
gets from anyone else, remains as it was when you and I last spoke, something deeply
puzzling.
Prominent Officials Heap Praise on Abdullah
Deepening this puzzle further, there’s
no shortage of U.S. institutions, politicians and prominent Jewish community
figures who persist in heaping generous praise upon Abdullah’s majestic head.
First: A
high-ranking official, the kingdom’s foreign minister, let himself be provoked
in November 2019 to break Jordan’s protracted official silence on Tamimi. We
blogged about it here: “13-Nov-19:
Thank you, Mr Foreign Minister”. Our gratitude to Mr Ajman Safadi was
sincere. His statement means that Jordan’s disgraceful, almost incomprehensible
policy of standing firmly in solidarity with the engineer of the Sbarro
pizzeria massacre is now a matter of policy that diplomatic double-talk simply cannot
disguise.
Next: The
United States, after a long period of avoidance and ambiguity, came out with its
own brief but clear statement (as we wrote here)
in November 2019:
In 2018, Jordan continued to cite a court ruling that its
constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals. The United
States regards the extradition treaty as valid.
Until those words in italics appeared
in an official U.S. government publication, the matter was arguably unclear. Now
it’s not. That’s very important.
Important Warning Letter
Another step forward: On April 30,
2020, a small group of U.S. lawmakers sent off a letter to Jordan’s ambassador
to Washington. In their letter, the lawmakers politely asked highly relevant
questions that go to the legal theory behind the March 2017 decision of
Jordan’s Court of Cassation to invalidate the 1995 Jordan/US treaty.
The lawmakers’ letter also touched on a
crucially important development that, again, has gotten almost no media attention.
Here’s the short version:
In December 2019, President Trump
signed into law a powerful sanction that, while it does not mention Jordan by
name, applies to a beneficiary of US foreign aid (Jordan is the third largest
recipient of such aid), has an extradition treaty with the US (as Jordan does,
though it denies this fact), and is in breach (as Jordan surely is, and the
State Department now at last agrees) of its obligations under that treaty.
The sanction, which the Secretary of
State can waive, means that in such circumstances foreign aid to the
beneficiary, ceases.
Jordanian Public Opinion Ignited
Jordan’s reaction to the letter from
these members of Congress is worth understanding. Impassioned lectures from
outside Jordan about terrorists and Islamism, justice and core values and dead
children blown up in a pizzeria were easily ignored in Amman. But when the story
turned to money, public opinion was ignited. Jordan’s media was incensed
by an all-too-credible threat that the U.S. might stop shoveling cash into the
Jordanian treasury.
So that’s the most substantive change:
that finally, via baby steps, the Jordanian leadership has been forced to think
about acknowledging the cost of the Jordanian public’s adoration of a
child-killing bomber living in its midst as a celebrity.
Arnold Roth with Malki
Frimet Roth and Malki
Varda Epstein: Am I correct in thinking that there has been more
coverage of your efforts to have Tamimi extradited in recent months? Why is the
media willing to cover this story now, when it was mostly silent until now?
Arnold Roth: Media
coverage, or more importantly its absence, is a cause of considerable ongoing embitterment
for us. The exceptions are, I am pleased to say, significant but they don’t
change the sense we have that for the mainstream news industry, we and our
cause are untouchable.
When I tell people we feel like
the town lepers, I don’t feel like I am exaggerating very much.
·A Hebrew
translation of David Horovitz’s article appeared on the Times of Israel’s
sister publicationZman Yisrael on May 23, 2020. And
that, sad to say, was the first, and so far only effort to explain the
Tamimi/Jordan affair in a serious, analytical way to an Israeli audience.
Let me connect the dots. We live in
Jerusalem and have a broad and varied circle of friends, contacts, and
colleagues. Most of them, and even many of our Israeli family members, have little
or even no idea of what we have done or of what’s been done to us since the
Shalit Deal and the renewal of Tamimi’s terror career in Jordan. No one is
going to persuade me that this—the media suppression of an obviously
significant chain of events, is a normal situation.
Varda Epstein: What progress has been made toward having Tamimi
extradited to the States?
Arnold Roth: Let’s
begin with the first public notification milestone.
But it was immediately clear to us that
unsuccessful secret efforts had been made repeatedly to persuade Jordan to hand
Tamimi over for prosecution in Washington years before that. (Tamimi had returned
to her homeland, Jordan, in October 2011 as a result of her unforgivably being
included in the Shalit Deal walk-free list.)
As to progress, that’s a binary thing.
Either she’s being extradited or she’s not. Currently she’s not. We believe she
will be.
Varda Epstein: Jordan claims it has no extradition treaty with the
United States. Can you tell us about that?
Arnold Roth: On this
aspect, there is a huge amount of disinformation, most of it deliberate and
calculated. In large measure, that’s the outcome of a systemic news industry
failure. It’s shameful that this is still happening and that, by definition, so
few people know.
Jordan’s assertion that Tamimi cannot
be extradited because of Jordanian law has been dismissed by I think every
single expert source we have consulted.
The Jordanian judges in their brief
hearing and terse judgement spoke of a constitutional problem—that the National
Assembly, Jordan’s parliament, ought to have ratified the treaty which everyone,
including the Jordanians agrees, was certainly signed by the two governments
back in 1995.
They Found Their Hook
Non-ratification is the only ground
they cited for invalidating the extradition treaty. The court relied on no
other legal flaw. They found their hook and they hung the conclusion on it: Tamimi
cannot be extradited. That was all they needed or intended to find.
Since then, numerous Jordanian
commentators, including reporters, politicians, assorted charlatans and lawyers,
have gone public with claims that what this is really, truly, honestly is
about, is that Jordan never
extradites Jordanians. Or alternatively that this is not an extraditable
matter. Or that the doctrine of double jeopardy applies. Or that it’s a matter
of Jordanian national pride. Or that anyway what she did was not a crime if she
did it—but she didn’t, or so they claim.
They've Extradited Fugitives Before
In our unanswered communications with
Jordanian officials (not one of whom has ever acknowledged our existence, let
alone our arguments), we have rhetorically asked whether Jordan has extradited
fugitives to the US before. That’s a more significant question than it appears.
And the answer is: yes, it
surely has, even if the highest court in Jordan and no mainstream media anywhere
want this to be known.
We have tried to draw them out on other
questions. Does Jordan have extradition treaties with other countries? Is extraditing
Jordanians foreign to Jordanian constitutional law or jurisprudence or
political philosophy or royal decree? Is treaty ratification always done? Or
never done? Or done only once a treaty takes effect?
Jordan Remains Silent
The answers are clear to us even while
the Jordanians stay silent.
Look at the issues dispassionately and
it’s hard to avoid an irksome conclusion: that for people engaged in politics
and diplomacy, what’s true about Jordan’s egregious breach of its treaty
with the U.S. takes a backseat to what’s flattering and complimentary
and helpful to our Hashemite allies.
Even if I weren’t the father of a
child murdered by the main beneficiary of this odious fig-leafing, I would be
disgusted by it. And by those who know and yet still engage in it.
Varda Epstein: What are the risks and benefits for King Abdullah in
refusing to honor Jordan’s extradition treaty with the United States?
Arnold Roth: Let’s distinguish
between risks/benefits that are real and those that are illusory.
Here’s how it’s often said to us. Good
King Abdullah’s freedom to act is limited by the realities of a kingdom that
could explode at any moment. Of course he wants to do the right thing. Of
course he feels Tamimi is an embarrassment to his country’s fine name. Of
course he respects and wants to do honor to his father’s values and
achievements and treaties. But put yourself in his shoes, and etc.
All of this is nonsense. It’s also
doubtful whether other heads of state would be spoken of in terms as
condescending and contradicted-by-the-facts as these.
What Jordan Risks
So to your question, the risks Jordan
faces by continuing to demean its treaty obligations come down to:
·Potential loss of U.S. foreign aid;
·The continued growth and normalization of
overt antisemitic and violently-hostile-to-Israel sentiments at every level in
Jordanian society;
·Ditto for anti-U.S. sentiment and activity;
·Growing instability because of unchecked
forces active in Jordan that happen to be the same forces with which Tamimi is
aligned.
Jordan stands to keep benefitting
hugely if it chooses to stay a U.S. ally. But Americans need to ask themselves
whether Jordan’s actions make that possible.
Varda Epstein: There have been some signs that Tamimi is laying low,
that she is nervous about extradition. Can you tell us about that? What does
this indicate?
Arnold Roth: You’re
perceptive. We don’t communicate with our child’s vicious killer. But we track
her statements in the conventional media as well as via the social media where
she has always been happy to play. And to be clear—in the age of online
translation-on-demand, I am referring to what she says in Arabic. Only
the Arabic counts.
The Tamimis claim the pressure for
extradition is coming from “Zionists” when it’s actually the U.S.
Congress and the executive arm of the US government. They declare their trust
in “Jordan's leadership, government and people.” But that’s not true
either.
"Where's Abdullah?"
Ahlam Tamimi herself says that: “We
are still awaiting the Jordanian official response to the latest escalation…I was amazed at the silence of the Jordanian political side and its failure
to respond to the message of the seven members of the American Congress...”
Translation: “Where is King
Abdullah II?”
The answer may be related to something
she herself published just days before the U.S. Congress adopted its
Jordan-centric sanction: “15-Dec-19:
The Sbarro bomber trashes the ruler who protects her from the FBI” in
which Tamimi compares King Abdullah II unfavorably with his late father, King
Hussein.You might wonder after reading her post, as I do, why Jordan’s proud and capable king troubles himself to keep
this dangerous ingrate safe. It doesn’t make sense.
And something to note about her social
media presence: Tamimi, a journalist, gets op-ed space in the Arab media on
request. She’s frequently featured on the vastly influential Aljazeera platform, for instance. But she’s
evidently devoted to social media.
One By One They Shut Her Down
I mention this because whenever we
find them we report her accounts to the security people at Twitter, Instagram,
et al, and one by one we have seen them shut her down. The most recent shut
down was yesterday. She keeps coming back but each time, she has to rebuild her
following.
I also want to mention something
important your esteemed host, Elder of Ziyon, noted in the past couple of
weeks: “Ahlam
Tamimi says she’s “terrified” she will be extradited.” What onlookers
ought to be asking is: Why is this happening only now? Which homicidal fugitive
from the law, with the blood of at least sixteen people on her hands, is
entitled to sleep peacefully in her bed at night? How did this ever happen?
Varda Epstein: What could the U.S. do to pressure Jordan, if it were to
get serious about extraditing Tamimi?
Arnold Roth: So, as we
have already discussed, the U.S. now has a well-focused sanction in its
arsenal. But given the close and strategic ties between the leadership of the
two countries of Jordan and the U.S., and given the very black-and-white nature
of the criminality at the heart of this absurdly stretched-out affair, there’s
really only one thing the U.S. ought to be doing and that’s to say to the
powers in Jordan: We’ve been left waiting for far too long. Send Tamimi for
trial in Washington now.
And the only possible answer is: Which
flight?
Varda Epstein: Why would the U.S. not want to pressure Jordan on the
extradition issue?
Arnold Roth: I’m an
ignoramus on such matters. The more I engage with people from the U.S.
Congress, or with Washington insiders, or senior-level Jewish community
leaders, the more I realize how little I actually grasp about how they approach
questions like the one you just asked. I wish you would ask the people in those
groups. Especially those who refuse to take my calls. I will give you a list
after we finish here. Good luck.
Varda Epstein: What would it mean to you and your wife Frimet,
personally, to see Tamimi extradited, and hopefully sentenced: behind bars or
executed?
Arnold Roth: We want
justice to be done. So long as it’s not, there’s an ongoing pain deep inside us
that it makes no sense to talk about because those who have it inside them already
know and those who don’t are fortunately immune from empathizing.
Best friends Malki Roth, left, and Michal Raziel were enjoying a slice of pizza at Sbarro, when the busy, popular Jerusalem eatery was bombed.
Gravestones of best friends Malki Roth, left, and Michal Raziel, buried next to each other in the Holy City.
Varda Epstein: What can we, as regular people, do to help bring justice
for Malki?
Arnold Roth: First, and
easiest: give us the chance to share and explain the Tamimi/Jordan scandal to
you and the people among whom you live. You, Varda, have earned my deep
gratitude for having understood that without anyone saying it. Thank you, thank
you. We’re nowhere close to achieving this and our progress is plainly impacted
in a negative way as a result.
For everyone else: Frimet and I write
and talk with the passion, with the credibility, and in my opinion with the
clarity that comes from being at the heart of this for the worst of all
possible reasons. Please try to help us reach out to people who have never
heard of the Sbarro massacre, of Malki, of the ugly games politicians play in
order to see that Tamimi stays safe and untouched by U.S. justice.
That might mean Zoom events; interviews
or op-eds in the media that serve your community; introductions to senior
politicians with the backbone to speak out in ways that the Hashemite Kingdom
of Jordan will hear and gradually understand. In other words, please help us
create awareness because darkness and gloom—some of it generated maliciously,
some of it simply the result of apathy and neglect—need to be dispelled by
light.
About the less obvious and more
complicated things, we don’t talk much. We share (some of) them with our
activists’ mailing list. To be part of our campaign for justice, please sign on
to the list by emailing your name and city and email address to thisongoingwar@gmail.com
Thank you, Varda. Two final thoughts—one
from Benjamin Franklin. “Justice will not be served until those who are
unaffected are as outraged as those who are.” The other is from the Torah: “Justice,
justice shall you pursue.” Or in Hebrew: “Tzedek tzedek tirdof”
which is not so much a quotation as an actual divine precept, a commandment for
life.
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.
Although we had technical problems – no video and the audio is a bit hard to hear – it is very worthwhile to listen to J.E. Dyer’s take on the current unrest, the potential role of the National Guard or US Army, Israel’s riot control expertise, the military/strategic importance of the Golan and the Jordan Valley, the cyberhack of Iran’s major port and its implications for future cyberwar, and what she thinks of both Biden and Trump as commanders in chief.
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.
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 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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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