Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, June 12, 2020

06/12 Links Pt2: Making Holocaust Education About Jews and Anti-Semites; BDS Is about Bigotry; Polish Police Involvement in the Nazi Final Solution

From Ian:

Making Holocaust Education About Jews and Anti-Semites

Acknowledging the centrality of conspiratorial Jew-hatred to the Holocaust does not preclude also acknowledging the suffering of tens or hundreds of millions of people across Europe who fell victim to Nazi aggression, occupation, and oppression. Nor does it downplay the horror of the millions of non-Jews who perished in Nazi death camps—including Romani, gays, and Poles. It simply highlights the reason those death camps existed in the first place. Without the pressing need to eradicate international Jewry, the Nazis would never have developed their industrial death machinery. And like all other weapon systems, once the Nazis perfected it, they were inclined to deploy it broadly. “Never Again” is not meant to protect only the Jews; it is meant to stave off societal suicide.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is the entity charged with developing educational material under the new law. The museum currently teaches that anti-Semitism has “its origins in the days of the early Christian church.” It traces the Holocaust’s origins only within the context of Christian Europe. But Jews have recorded anti-Semitism, and attempted genocide, for many centuries before the church and in many cultures untouched by Christianity. As described in Jewish literature from the epochs of ancient Egypt, Persia, Rome, and Greece, and until today Jew-hatred has defined a unique, stunningly consistent, niche in the annals of human hatred. Millennia of Jewish literature relate how, in the deranged minds of conspiratorial anti-Semites of all races, creeds and cultures, the real battlefront is always the war against the Jews.

Holocaust education is not getting that message across. It was not merely “hate” that created the Holocaust then or that threatens Jews today. It was not the charismatic leader, the socialist, nationalist, and populist overlays, or even the assertion of racial purity. Nor was it merely a continuation of Europe’s Christian anti-Semitism. Haman is described to have won his bid for Jewish genocide based on claims that the Jews of the Persian Empire were a disloyal fifth column. Today, with the advent of the State of Israel, this argument takes the form of suspicions of Jewish “dual loyalty.” The Holocaust itself was framed as a conscious, strategic response to imagined Jewish manipulations.

For Holocaust education to counter anti-Semitism, it must be reoriented away from hyperfocus on the externalities and mechanics of Nazism toward the inner obsession that remains relevant and dangerous in disparate guises. Teaching the threat of conspiratorial Jew hatred can counter the barbarism of a Europe intent upon atoning for its atrocities against Jews by opening its borders to violent anti-Semites. It can explain why a member of Congress’ paranoid public fulminations about the Jewish State hypnotizing the world and Jewish money manipulating Washington are cut from the same cloth as swastika-brandishing white supremacists chanting about not being replaced. It can halt the accelerating descent of the American intelligentsia into paranoid blood libels that characterize hardcore anti-Zionism and BDS—including the rising obscenity of Jewish groups trafficking in the same delusional psychosis.

Understanding—and holding at bay—the ancient, culture-destroying threat of anti-Semitism lies not in obsessing over the inconstant identities of fungible Jew-haters, but in seeing beyond those details to the unique and consistent nature of toxic anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives.

Understanding history is vital. Fighting bigotry and racism is imperative. But those who take up the “Never Again” banner must not look away from what lurks in the heart of darkness that once again threatens to engulf society. “Never Again” education must focus directly on the dangerous delusions of the anti-Semite and stop providing that beast the narrative tools by which to scapegoat us. Anti-Semitism—including the Holocaust—is always all about the Jews.

Belgian TV show on Holocaust says Jews ‘massacred’ Palestinians

A Belgian state broadcaster claimed in a Holocaust documentary that Jews repeatedly “massacred” and “systematically” displaced Palestinians.

The claim was aired on May 26 in a voiceover narration in the fifth episode of the Dutch-language television documentary series titled “Children of the Holocaust,” produced by the VRT broadcaster.

After seven Arab armies declared war on and invaded Israel in May 1948, “Israel’s army systematically destroyed Palestinian villages, expelled the population and destroyed their homes,” the narrator said about the days following the end of the British Mandate over Palestine.

In the civil war between Arab and Jewish residents of the Mandate that preceded the Arab invasion, “Jewish militias perpetrated massacres in 20 Palestinian villages, prompting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee,” the narrator says in the 48-minute episode.

The series mentions neither Arab killings of hundreds of Jewish civilians in the years 1947-49 nor dozens of Arab settlements that were left intact and incorporated with their residents into the State of Israel.

The Forum of Jewish Organizations of the Flemish Region sent a letter to VRT protesting the depiction and disputing its assertion of “massacres” by Jews.

“This objectionable and demonstratively inaccurate presentation implicitly subtracts from the messages of the Holocaust survivors” interviewed, Hans Knoop, the Jewish group’s spokesperson wrote.

Ha'aretz: Polish Police Involvement in the Nazi Final Solution

Polish historian Jan Grabowski's new book, On Duty: The Role of Polish "Blue" and Criminal Police in the Holocaust, published recently in Poland and forthcoming in English later this year, has upset the Polish right wing. Grabowski responded in a Facebook post: "I am glad that the book has had its impact not only among the more enlightened readers but also among those who prefer to build their historical identity on historical fallacies and myths."

"I was surprised to discover the role played by the Polish police in the murder of Poland's Jews," Grabowski told Ha'aretz this week. "Murder, rape, robbery - the scale is incomprehensible," he writes in the book.

The Polish police was reconstituted by the Germans in 1939, immediately after their conquest of the country. Many of the personnel in the new force came from the local Blue Police that had existed before the war. The Polish police under German command, Grabowski explains, became "a murderous and criminal organization which was a key element in the implementation of the Final Solution."

Grabowski provides documents that demonstrate that under German auspices, but with independent initiative and great fervor, the Polish police officers took part in the systematic murder of Jews in cities and villages, in ghettos and in places of hiding. "Without the Polish police, the Germans would not have succeeded in their plan," Grabowski said. "The Polish police became important actors in the German policy of extermination."

The Germans found it difficult to distinguish between Polish Jews and Poles who were not Jews. "The Germans were rather at a loss and did not have a clue about how to distinguish those who were Jewish, once they blended into the outside population and took off their arm bands." In this they were aided by the Polish police, who knew their Jewish neighbors well. Grabowski also documents many other cases in which Polish police officers acted independently and murdered Jews without any German involvement. "They were the people who made certain that there was no way for the Jews to escape."

1950s cartoons against racism, antisemitism by the American Jewish Committee

Things were much simpler then.

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.

06/12 Links Pt1: Terror victim's family sues PA for NIS 100 million; Trump increases his support for Israel to unprecedented levels

From Ian:

Terror victim's family sues Palestinian Authority for NIS 100 million

The family of 13-year-old Hallel Ariel, killed in a violent terror attack in 2016, is suing the Palestinian Authority for NIS 100 million.

Since the incident of the terror attack, Hallel's parents, Rina and Amichai Ariel, have been involved in inter-state legal battles against the Palestinian Authority (PA). The NIS 100 million is the same amount the PA is paying the terrorist's family, in the form of monthly payments, for having carried out the attacks, and is the basis of the Ariel family's legal pursuit.

Prior to Hallel's murder, the terrorist who carried out the attack, Muhammad Tarayrah, 17 at the time of the incident, shared multiple posts on Facebook in which he praised terror attacks and stated his intentions to be a martyr. Carrying out his intentions, the terrorist infiltrated the West Bank Settlement of Kiryat Araba, located next to Hebron, snuck into Hallel's bedroom and stabbed her multiple times.

Following the attack the PA has paid the terrorist's family a monthly amount of NIS 12,000, according to Shurat HaDin, the legal body helping the Ariel family with their case.

Hallel was a dancer, and had performed in Jerusalem the night before the incident. Her family had allowed her to sleep in while they left to carry out the day's activities. Tarayrah had managed to infiltrate the settlement, and though alarms were set off, managed to sneak into the girl's bedroom, stabbing her to death, before the settlement's security team, of which her father was a part of, captured the terrorist, shot and killed him.

Lawsuit Alleges Qatar Secretly Financed Terror Attacks that Killed Americans

Qatar secretly provided funding for several terror attacks that killed Americans and Israelis, according to allegations leveled in an unprecedented new lawsuit filed in New York City on Wednesday that seeks compensation for the families of those killed.

Multiple Qatari financial institutions, largely controlled by the country’s ruling monarch, provided millions of dollars to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), two U.S.-designated terrorist organizations that waged multiple successful attacks on American citizens, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. As part of this alleged funding scheme, Qatari charities allegedly used the U.S. banking system to illegally funnel these groups the money necessary to orchestrate and conduct the attacks.

As Hamas’s most prolific funder, "Qatar coopted several institutions that it dominates and controls to funnel coveted U.S. dollars (the chosen currency of Middle East terrorist networks) to Hamas and PIJ under the false guise of charitable donations," according to the lawsuit, which was filed under the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act and has been in the works for the last two years.

Revelations of Qatar’s alleged involvement in these terror plots is likely to fuel ongoing congressional investigations into Qatar’s support for terror factions and other anti-U.S. militia groups. Qatar’s involvement with these groups has also been a source of tension with its regional neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt—all of which cut ties with the regime in 2017 due to its support for terrorism.

The lawsuit was filed by American attorney Steven Perles, who has prosecuted several notable terrorism cases filed on behalf of the families and victims of these terror attacks. The current case includes among its plaintiffs the family of Taylor Force, an American military veteran killed by Hamas in 2016.

"In addition to holding those who have financed terrorism accountable, this case should serve as a strong deterrent to others who might consider similar activities," Perles told the Free Beacon.

JPost Editorial: The Palestinian Authority's intransigence in the face of annexation

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh was firm in his resolve on Tuesday. Speaking to members of the Foreign Press Association in Ramallah in an effort to disseminate the Palestinian point of view to the world on Israel’s upcoming plans to declare sovereignty over undisclosed areas of the West Bank, he announced that “annexation is the erosion of a future Palestinian state,” and called Israeli annexation “an existential threat to our future.”

It’s the same, predictable message that the Palestinians have been parroting since the concept of a unilateral annexation by Israel emerged with the publication of the Trump peace plan in January, which followed years of protracted stasis between Israel and the PA surrounding a negotiated settlement to the disputed territories that have been in Israel’s hands since 1967.

His statements came days after crowds of Israelis and Palestinians gathered in Tel Aviv and Ramallah, respectively, to rally against the Israeli plans, which could vary anywhere from annexing large settlement blocs in Area C like Ma’aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion or strategic areas like the Jordan Valley, to a more sweeping annexation of all settlements and surrounding areas in the West Bank.

Many of those who gathered in Tel Aviv were likely not demonstrating against the national consensus that those heavy Jewish population areas of Area C will become part of Israel in a negotiated deal on two states with the Palestinians – they were protesting the unilateral aspect of the prospective move, which will create facts on the ground, create a stateless category for thousands of Palestinians surrounding those annexed areas and make the already remote likelihood that Israel and the PA can come to terms over a two-state solution that much more difficult.

However, the Palestinian protesters and the government in Ramallah aren’t concerning themselves with nuances and terms like “unilateral” or “negotiated.” There has never been a serious indication from the Palestinian side that it is willing to accept anything beyond a return to the pre-1967 war lines, meaning the nonstarter premise for Israel of dismantling dozens of cities, towns and settlements and relocating hundreds of thousands of Israelis.

The Palestinians’ insistence at choosing to ignore the last 53 years of reality, which for better or worse, has seen massive Israeli settlement in the disputed areas that it won in the Six Day War, is the crux of the problem that the region faces and which has led to the unfortunate scenario of unilateral annexation.

International Law and Israeli Sovereignty in Judea and Samaria

There has been a cascade of dire warnings about the consequences should Israel's elected government follow through on Prime Minister Netanyahu's campaign promise to apply Israeli law in parts of Judea and Samaria.

The Jewish people are the only people in fact who have a recognized legal right over Judea and Samaria. This was enshrined in the mandate drafted and approved by 51 members of the League of Nations guaranteeing the "right of Jewish people to reconstitute their national home" in the Land of Israel (1922). Judea and Samaria have never been under the sovereignty of any other country than the State of Israel. Jordan's invasion of the territory in 1948 and its attempt to annex it in 1950 was widely opposed internationally.

The prohibition against the forcible transfer of civilians to territory of an occupied state under the Fourth Geneva Convention has no relevance. It was never intended to relate to circumstances of voluntary Jewish settlement on legitimately acquired land which did not belong to a previous lawful sovereign and which was designated as part of the Jewish state under the League of Nations Mandate.

New libel: “Zionists killed Jews rather than allow them to live outside Israel”

Every once in a while I see a new libel against Israel and Zionism. This one is particularly vile:

Based on a Counterpunch article, the claim that Jews were willing to kill other Jews rather than have them find asylum outside Israel is disgustingly false.

The SS Patria (which had nothing to do with Leon Uris’ Exodus story) was a ship that the British filled with 1800 Jewish refugees who had “illegally” immigrated to Israel in 1940, with the intent to send them to camps in Mauritania. The Jewish leadership did everything they could to convince the British to allow the Jews to stay, but the British refused.

The full story of what happened didn’t get publicized until 1957, but the Haganah decided to disable the ship by attaching a small explosive to the side, to buy time to try to convince the British to let the Jews stay. The bomb itself fit into a leather lunch bag. But because the ship was not nearly as sturdy as it appeared, the bomb blew a six square meter hole in the side of the ship, and the SS Patria sank within 15 minutes. About 200 Jews were killed. (The British counted over 270, but many managed to slip onto land without being detected.)

The person who set the bomb in place was Monya Mardor, who emphasizes in his account that “there was never any intent to cause the ship to sink. The British would have used this against the Jewish population and show it as an act of sabotage against the war effort." They certainly did not intend for there to be any casualties.

The idea that Zionists preferred that Jews die to being saved from the Holocaust is a most sickening and repulsive lie.

Latest loony Left lunacy: It is antisemitic to call Jews indigenous to Israel

Yesterday, the Zioness Movement released a very nice pamphlet on how progressive Jews can participate in the current protests while remaining unapologetically Zionist, along with how to answer a number of socialist Left lies about Israel.

Here’s an example:

The loony Left is freaking out, because they can’t stand the fact that supporting Israel is a truly progressive cause. So they are trying very hard to smear the pamphlet, which just makes them look even crazier to anyone besides those who are already divorced from reality:

But calling Israel “racist” and “apartheid” is old and thoroughly discredited. New accusations are interesting. And I saw one – that Jews are not indigenous to Israel, because indigenous doesn’t mean what indigenous means – and using the word properly is close to antisemitic, somehow.

Jacob Ari Labendz is the Clayman Assistant Professor of Judaic and Holocaust Studies and the Director of the Center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies at Youngstown State University.

Later we learn that Ashkenaz Jews are indigenous – to Europe.

Labendz' argument is that "indigeneity is a relational concept in the context of colonialism. It’s not an essential characteristic."

Wikipedia’s definition of indigenous is as good as any (there is no universally accepted definition: )

Indigenous peoples, also known in some regions as First peoples, First Nations, Aboriginal peoples or Native peoples or autochthonous peoples, are ethnic groups who are the original or earliest known inhabitants of an area, in contrast to groups that have settled, occupied or colonized the area more recently. Groups are usually described as indigenous when they maintain traditions or other aspects of an early culture that is associated with a given region.

The UN's definition is similar:

Practicing unique traditions, they retain social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live. ...They are the descendants - according to a common definition - of those who inhabited a country or a geographical region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived. The new arrivals later became dominant through conquest, occupation, settlement or other means.

Since there are no Canaanites or Jebusites or Nabatean peoples around, that means that Jews are the earliest extant inhabitants of Israel. And the Romans, Byzantines, and Muslims who invaded and settled there hundreds or thousands of years later were the colonialists.

While Jewish traditions have changed since then, Jewish laws and customs have remained remarkably stable - prayer in synagogue, regular Torah readings, eating kosher, wearing tefillin, putting up mezuzot, mikveh, holiday observances such as sukkah and matzoh, circumcision. And a large number of Jewish laws are dependent specifically on the land of Israel, such as the sabbatical year and terumat hamaaser.

Jews have kept their traditions over 2000 years at least as much as today's native Americans have kept theirs since the 17th century.

Labendz, however, apparently believes that Jews returning to Zion are the colonialists (or perhaps "settler colonialists.") Even more bizarrely, he thinks that somehow Jews are indigenous to the shtetl and Jewish ghettoes of Europe.

Noting the actual history of Jews and Judah in the Middle East and how they have kept their emotional and religious ties to the Land for 2000 years is, somehow, “verging on antisemitism.” According to modern intellectual bigots, Ashkenaz Jews should embrace the continent that has a history of demeaning them, oppressing them, "otherizing" them and sometimes murdering them as their homeland. The implication is that this is where they belong, in permanent diaspora, as a permanent minority, and any desire they have for self-determination is racist. (This is also Judith Butler's position.)

That sure sounds much closer to antisemitism to me.

EoZTV: Joshua Washington, Institute of Black Solidarity with Israel

This was an enjoyable interview.

When Joshua gets back to me with the information about ways to help, I’ll post it here.

06/11 Links Pt2: How calling people ‘White Jews’ became an insidious slander; If Jews took down symbols of their oppression; European court rules against France in Israel boycott activist case

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: How calling people ‘White Jews’ became an insidious slander - Comment

The use of the term “white Jews” is used by those who feel uncomfortably with the knowledge that Jews are a historic ethnic and religious minority. The increasing use of the term “white Jews” is also used to deny the complex and diverse history of Jews. It negates the reality of the Jewish experience in Yemen, Iraq, Greece or the Pale of Settlement. It prefers to see Jews solely through an American lens of racializing groups. In this way Jews are twice victims, first of antisemitism and then of being reclassified as “white” so a to castigate them for being part of a “white” power structure.

This use of the term "white Jews" also appears to be a term of abuse that is sometimes linked to the Nation of Islam or other groups that blame Jews for the slave trade in an antisemitic re-writing of history. In this narrative there are "white Jews" who are called "fake Jews" and black Jews are seen as authentic. Sometimes those who use the term "white Jews" innocently do not realize they are playing into this bifurcation that has also created categories such as "Black Muslims" to differentiate a uniquely US experience from the global experience of Jews and Muslims.

US history is full of stories of people forced to navigate the US focus on the black-white divide to racialize themselves in the US context. In
The Senator and the Socialite, a history of an African-American dynasty, the author tells of a black man named Barrington Guy who changed his name to “Sharma” to pretend to be Indian. The author says this was done to “pass as white or Indian.” Jews also changed their names when immigration to America. One article notes that they were told their names were “too long, too foreign and too Jewish.” If Jews were indeed “white” then they wouldn’t have needed to change their “Jewish” names, and they wouldn’t have suffered discrimination at clubs and universities.

It appears that in popular debate in the US when it was considered bad to be non-white, Jews were perceived as non-white, and now that the overwhelming conversation has shifted to oppose white supremacy, Jews have been reclassified as being “white” to make them on the wrong side of the equation again. The term “white Jews” in increasing a term of abuse or a term used to try to set Jews apart from other minorities, such as Muslims or Arabs. With increasing numbers of Jews living in the US who are more recently from the Middle East or who are of mixed ancestry, it appears the term is being pushed more today to try to force Jews into a category at the very time when they are more diverse than in recent history in the US.

Melanie Phillips: 'Taking a knee' to the destroyers of worlds

Channelling Mao, the Taleban and the French revolutionary terror, Mayor Khan can surely leave no-one in any doubt that this committee will reduce diversity by aiming selectively to erase those bits of British history of which it disapproves. In Khan’s words: “…our statues, road names and public spaces reflect a bygone era. It is an uncomfortable truth that our nation and city owes a large part of its wealth to its role in the slave trade…”

So the Mayor of London now stands revealed as someone who hates his nation. For if it was indeed created, as he so misleadingly claims, by a great evil then how can it be anything other than evil itself? Feeling at last the wind in his sails supplied by the rage and contempt of the mob on the streets, he intends to abolish the nation’s birthright to the evidence of its own past and construct its future in the image he will determine.

So will this commission erase memorials to all historic British figures with an obnoxious side to their achievements? Will its destroy the statues of the Labour politicians Keir Hardie or Ernest Bevin, or Karl Marx, who were all antisemites?

Or the playwright George Bernard Shaw who promoted eugenics? Or the parliamentary titan Oliver Cromwell who massacred the Irish? Or Britain’s greatest Liberal prime minister, William Gladstone, whose family, like so many prominent people in previous, very different era was involved in slavery?

That last question already has an answer. Liverpool university has agreed yesterday to rename its Gladstone Hall, which houses student accommodation. Bim Afolami, the Tory MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, tweeted in response: “This is all going completely nuts. When will this stop??”

When indeed. As George Orwell wrote in 1984 about a state under totalitarian tyranny: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

Or as the future US president Ronald Reagan said even more pertinently in 1975: ‘If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism”.

Well, here it is, on both sides of the pond.

Bad things happen not just because bad people do them but because otherwise decent people lack the courage to stop them; or because they indulge in fantasies that the agenda is basically good but has been “hijacked” by a few thugs; or that they agree with the ends but purse their lips at the violent means; or because of a myriad other excuses that the spineless and the misguided always provide for “taking a knee” to the destroyers of worlds.

Israel Advocacy Movement: If Jews took down symbols of their oppression

Palestinians are apathetic–and some supportive!–of “annexation” (Daled Amos)

It is not completely clear that Netanyahu in fact will be extending Israeli law over sections of Judea and Samaria come July 1st. The voices coming out against the idea are coming out louder and in increasing numbers. Some of those opposed are from the right-wing in Israel as well. But what about the Palestinian Arabs? Are all of them opposed to the idea? The Algemeiner reports that Some Palestinians Voice Enthusiasm About Potential West Bank Annexation by Israel

While Palestinian Authority (PA) officials are warning of a wave of violence in response to the possible annexation of parts of the West Bank by Israel, at least a few Palestinians on the ground appear to be unconcerned.

The article itself is based on a report by Channel 13 (Hebrew). The report notes that unlike the days of Arafat, when the Arabs followed what Arafat declared to be the will of the people -- willingly or unwillingly -- things are very different with Abbas in charge:

When the Palestinian Authority wanted to clear the area, the citizens wanted work permits in Israel. When the United States moved the embassy to Jerusalem, the Palestinians promised a wave of violence and the public chose not to take to the streets. Now, for annexation, this abyss is as wide and big as it never has been. [Google Translate]

The quotes in the Channel 13 article epitomize this abyss.

"I am from the village of Jeba. I want the villagers to be happy. They are subject to the authority today and they want Netanyahu and no one else, they want an Israeli identity card." "It is better than a million times for Israel to be responsible for the entire territory. We are prepared to be under Israel's military shoes and not under Abu Mazen's head." "I do not want a state - I want money. Money is better than a state. All the Palestinian people want it. The authority has looted us and destroyed us."

This account, of a minimal reaction to the extension of Israeli sovereignty, is echoed in an article in Haaretz earlier this week, Palestinian Leadership Struggling to Rally Public Against Israeli Annexation:

On Monday, at the height of the blitz of interviews, Palestinian factions organized a demonstration in Manara Square in Ramallah against Israel’s plans to annex territories of the West Bank. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and the Palestinian security forces had been asked to recruit people to attend the demonstration, but even these two powerful organizations were unable to whip up public enthusiasm to turn out. Barely 200 people showed up at the square. [emphasis added]

Even the usual spots where the media can usually rely on for getting a story on conflicts between Israel and the Arabs are disappointing:

On Tuesday, news photographers who had their fill of two hours of speeches at Manara Square turned their attention to the nearby Beit El checkpoint, which is known to be an area of friction where clashes can quickly develop between young Palestinians and Israeli soldiers, but no one cared to show up there either. “There isn’t even one picture to take,” one photographer groused. [emphasis added]

Times really are tough. Whether the lack of reaction is in response to the growing dissatisfaction with Abbas, lack of interest in Israel's proposed policy or even acceptance of the proposal -- the signs are there that the expected anger from the "Arab street" in the "West Bank" just is not there:

“It’s not that Palestinians have forgone their dream of self-determination, independence and liberation and the end of the occupation. It’s just that Palestinians have gotten to a situation in which they no longer believe in anyone,” a longtime Fatah member remarked. “The disconnect between the leadership and the public is worsening, and what happened at Manara is a symptom of it.” [emphasis added]

That is according to Fatah. But go ahead and combine the quotes from the Channel 13 article, with a recent poll indicating the shrinking identification of Arabs in the territories as "Palestinian," where the percentage of Arabs identifying as "Palestinian" has gone down:

o 14.6% in 2017 (Shaharit) o 14% in 2019 (972 Magazine) o 7% in 2020 (Jewish People Policy Institute)

Do that, and it may be that the claims made by Abbas and the Palestinian Authority in their fear of 'normalization' are reflective of an increasingly minority view.

06/11 Links Pt1: Col. Kemp: A British mandate to recognize Israeli sovereignty; Do Arab States Support a Palestinian State? Don’t Bet on It; Trump okays sanctions against ICC employees investigating US troops

From Ian:

What Bibi wants to do in the West Bank is not annexation

Fifty-three years ago today, Israel was fighting for its survival. In a larger sense, that doesn’t make it all that different from any day in the preceding 19 years or the 53 that have followed. The Six-Day War was different, however, because it not only saw the tiny nation’s improbable victory over three Arab powers bent on its destruction, it returned vast swathes of the Land of Israel to Jewish custodianship. Two thousand years of history had been overturned in less than a week.

The legacy of this war is still debated today, because, in the words of Yossi Klein Halevi, victory ‘turned Israel into… history’s most improbable occupier’. Now we are told Israel is becoming an apartheid state — we’ve been told this for decades — because Benjamin Netanyahu is preparing to ‘annex the West Bank’. The UK’s Middle East Minister James Cleverly has denounced ‘annexation which we have consistently said we oppose — and which could be detrimental to a two-state solution’. Prominent British Jews have expressed ‘concern and alarm at the policy proposal to unilaterally annex areas of the West Bank’.

One problem: Israel isn’t preparing to annex the West Bank. I don’t mean in the sense that Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer has been warning: that Bibi has no intention of fulfilling his election promise. Bibi may well opt to keep the relative peace seen in the territories in recent years, but that’s not the issue. I’m not even pettifogging about the fact that the correct terminology is not ‘West Bank’ but Judea and Samaria. Though it is.

What Netanyahu has pledged to do is change the legal status of Israeli settlements as well as the Jordan Valley, a topographical buffer zone between Israel and Jordan. All in all, 30 per cent of Judea and Samaria would be governed in the same manner as the rest of Israel, leaving the remainder under a mixture of Israeli military administration and Palestinian civilian control.

This is not annexation. Under international law, annexation describes ‘the forcible acquisition of territory by one state at the expense of another’, and a) there is only one state involved in this dispute, b) since Israel already exercises a form of sovereignty over the territory in question, there would be no fresh acquisition, and c) the proposed changes would see the settlements and the Jordan Valley transfer from military to civilian law, the very opposite of the belligerence implicit in ‘forcible’.

Amb. Alan Baker: The U.S. Peace Plan, Political Wisdom and Double Standards

The Palestinian leadership's refusal to even consider the U.S. peace plan, despite the considerable political, economic and financial benefits that it offered them, threatens to undermine any possible return to genuine negotiations.

Their refusal undermines the commitment by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in the name of the Palestinian people, in his September 9, 1993, letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, according to which: "The PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process, and to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides, and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations."

The Palestinian refusal should logically have generated considerable international condemnation of the Palestinian leadership. Yet the UN, the EU, international leaders and the international media have refrained from criticizing or condemning the Palestinian refusal to cooperate in a plan intended to restore peace negotiations. To the contrary, they encouraged the Palestinian leadership in its determination to undermine the plan.

The international community and specifically the European states, after having turned a blind eye to the Palestinian boycott of the peace plan, are not really in the position to criticize and condemn Israel for considering ways to realize those components of the plan that are ultimately intended to apply to Israel.

The Palestinian leadership cannot exercise an indefinite right of veto over peace negotiations. Had they used political wisdom from the start and welcomed the plan as a basis for negotiation, then the issue of the unilateral application of sovereignty by Israel over parts of the West Bank would most likely not have arisen.

Do Arab States Support a Palestinian State? Don’t Bet on It

Why is the red carpet that welcomes Palestinian leaders to Western capitals exchanged for a shabby rug when they land in most Arab capitals?

In 2020, the widely-disseminated Arabic hashtag “Palestine is not my cause” reflects a growing Arab disdain toward Palestinian activism. It is consistent with the policy of key Arab leaders, which facilitated the successful conclusion of the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace negotiations by avoiding the myth of Palestinian centrality.

For example, Morocco’s King Hassan, who provided an essential tailwind to the initial stage of the peace negotiations, proclaimed: “The PLO is a cancer in the Arab body.” It is also compatible with a statement made by Egypt’s former President Anwar Sadat, a co-signer of the peace treaty: “Why would I want a Palestinian state? A Palestinian state would enhance the Soviet standing in the region and would join the radical Arab camp.”

This position was echoed by Hosni Mubarak, Sadat’s deputy, who succeeded him as president: “Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are not concerned about the Palestinians, and Jordan does not want a Palestinian state either … nor does Israel” (No More War, E. Ben Elissar, 1995, pp 106, 209, 207).

The tangible Arab walk — rather than the placating Arab talk — on the Palestinian issue reflects Arab contempt for the Palestinian track record, as well as the peripheral role played by the Palestinian issue in shaping the Middle East reality.

In 2020, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and all other pro-US Arab regimes are preoccupied with domestic and regional epicenters of subversion, terrorism, and conventional, ballistic, and nuclear threats, which significantly transcend the Palestinian issue.

70 years ago: Chicago Tribune publishes a front page story “exposing” a “secret US government” led by three Jews

On May 29, 1950, this story was on the front page of the Chicago Tribune:

…

JTA reported:

The assertion that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Senator Harbert H. Lehman, and Henry Morgenthau, Jr. constitute “the secret government of the United States” is made by the Chicago Tribune here in a two-column dispatch from its Washington correspondent. The correspondent attributes this assertion to “a person with the highest State Department connections.”

Justice Frankfurter is termed as “the most powerful man in the government, reaching into the White House with his proteges.” Sen. Lehman is pictured as “a powerful Wall Street force,” while Mr. Morgenthau was named by the alleged “State Department authority” as “the spokesman of the powerful Zionist groups.”

Declaring that “the names of all three figures were woven into the case of Alger Hiss” who was convicted of perjury, the Chicago Tribune says: “None of the three has been named as a fellow traveler, or has ever fallen under any suspicion of taint of Communism. All have been pro-Soviet to a degree, but only when the Russian position advanced the British or Zionist causes, or worked toward the fall of Nazi Germany.”

More here.

A couple of weeks later, the Tribune apologized to Jewish organizations, but it denied that the article was antisemitic and it never apologized in the newspaper:

The Chicago Tribune today apologized to Jewish organizations for a front-page article asserting that Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Henry Morgenthau Jr., and Sen. Herbert H. Lehman constituted a “secret government of the United States.” The article appeared May 29 under a Washington dateline.

The apology was made in the form of a letter addressed by J. Loy Maloney, managing editor of the paper, to the Chicago chapters of the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Jewish Labor Committee and Anti-Defamation Leagus of B’nai B’rith. However, the letter was not published in the Chicago Tribune.

Declaring that the article to which the Jewish organizations took exception “was an isolated news report and not the start of a series,” Mr. Maloney’s letter says that the Washington correspondent dealt with Justice Frankfurter, Mr. Morgenthau and Sen. Lehman as public men, regardless of their religious beliefs. “The story was not meant to imply any association or parallelism between Zionism and Communism,” the editor said.

“The Tribune is not anti-Semitic,” Mr. Maloney continued. “Its record has been that of a defender of minorities when they were right, however unpopular their cause.” Emphasizing that in printing the article, the Tribune “did not foresee the interpretations which have been put upon it in Jewish circles,” the letter concludes by saying that “these implications were not intended by the Tribune, which has no desire to create ill-feeling or to furnish ammunition to anti-Semites.”

In 1968, the Congressional Record included a speech with an attached article against George Ball becoming the UN ambassador, claiming that he was working for “international bankers” and referring to this article.

Trohan didn’t seem to like Israel much, as he highlighted an obscure opinion by a law professor denying any Jewish legal claim to Israel in 1964:

Marc Lamont Hill is against conspiracy theories–unless they are Zionist conspiracies

In an exchange on Twitter, Marc Lamont Hill sadly admitted that rapper Ice Cube had posted some antisemitism, gently denouncing them as conspiracy theories that he, of course, never engages in:

Hill’s record indicates otherwise.

In 2018, Hill said that Israel “poisons the water” of Palestinians, echoing the antisemitic conspiracy theory of Jews poisoning water that has been hurled since the Black Death of 1348.

Last year he said that the entire State of Israel created a category of Mizrahi Jew out of thin air for as part of a “racial and political project that transformed Palestinian Jews (who lived peacefully with other Palestinians) into the 20th century identity category of ‘Mizrahi’ as a means of detaching them from Palestinian identity.”

While one can argue that Mizrahi Jews from Morocco, Jerusalem, Syria and Yemen have different customs, they have far more in common with each other, and accept the same interpretations of Jewish law as each other compared to Jews who lived in Europe. For all of Israel’s failures in integrating the Mizrahi Jews properly in the 1950s, putting them in the same category had zero to do with any “Palestinian identity” that they wanted to “detach” them from.

That is a conspiracy theory, and worse, it is an attempt to erase the identity of Jews who identify as Mizrahi.

Hill’s love of conspiracy theories about “Zionists” doesn’t end there.

Last year Hill participated in a conference with other prominent anti-Israel activists, whose criticisms of Israel are published as op-eds in the most influential media outlets, claiming that they are being “silenced” by Zionists. Being fired from CNN has not slowed down Hill’s anti-Israel activism – in fact, it probably accelerated it – and there is no “silencing” going on.

That is a conspiracy theory.

An example of how Hill has not been “silenced” is his bizarre comments at the Netroots Summit also last year, where he said that news outlets like CNN, ABC and NBC are “Zionist organizations.” He described a Zionist conspiracy behind the news that he then quickly denied was a conspiracy:

“They’re like, I want to work for Fox, or I want to work for ABC or NBC or whoever. I want to tell these stories. You have to make choices about where you want to work. And if you work for a Zionist organization, you’re going to get Zionist content. And no matter how vigorous you are in the newsroom, there are going to be two, three, four, 17, or maybe one powerful person — not going to suggest a conspiracy — all news outlets have a point of a view. And if your point of view competes with the point of view of the institution, you’re going to have challenges.”

When you say that Jews control the media, you are peddling an antisemitic conspiracy theory. But when you say Zionists control the media, you are celebrated as an anti-racist fighter.

At that same summit, fellow panelist Noura Erekat invented a new conspiracy theory about an “explicit project” led by Ashkenazi Jews in Israel to avoid “sully[ing] the blood line with becoming dark and oriental” by marrying Mizrahi Jews. Hill didn’t say a word against that. (Her theory is complete fiction – today, some 20% of children in Israel are born to parents of marriages between Ashkenaz and Mizrahi Jews.)

Finally, Marc Lamont Hill still proudly associates with Louis Farrakhan, and while he has expressed discomfort with Farrakhan’s anti-LGBTQ preachings, he has never said a word against his antisemitism – including his rabid antisemitic conspiracy theories such as that Jews were behind the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

There is no difference between saying Jews poison the wells or Israelis poison the wells, between saying Jews control the media or Zionists control the media, between claiming Jews have supernatural powers to silence critics or that Zionist have that power. The fact is that in order to believe in an Israel of unparalleled evil, one must believe in the same kinds of conspiracy theories that traditional antisemites have believed about Jews over the centuries. And Marc Lamont Hill is an enthusiastic purveyor of these conspiracy theories.

Malik Athamena, writing in Al-Hurra, is disdainful of Arabs who are jumping on the George Floyd bandwagon while they remain racist and sexist in their own countries.

Among the hypocrites he calls out are:

- Palestinians, who discriminate against Christians
- Egyptians, who oppress Copts – and women
- Lebanon, where African domestic workers are treated like slaves
- Gulf countries, where domestic workers from India, the Philippines and elsewhere are treated like dirt
- The entire Muslim world where Shiites and Sunnis hate each other
- North Africa where the Berbers are oppressed, and there is still actual slavery – and some 19 Arab countries have some form of slavery or human trafficking, today
- All Arabs, who live in police states but pretend to care about US police brutality

He admits that the US has a racism problem, but at least it discusses it openly and makes efforts to change it, unlike Arab states.

Being an Ally Works Both Ways (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

In a recent column, Hen Mazzig takes some Jews to task for failing to support “Black Lives Matter.” Just because a few “fringe activists” have tried to inject the Palestinian issue into the justified cause of black people being disproportionately the targets of police violence, he thinks, is not a reason for us to become unsympathetic to it:

The black community in America needs and deserves our voice and support. We must not allow the few activists trying to turn this important cause into an anti-Israel campaign to succeed. The way to do this is simple. Our ancestors already did it. When he saw the injustice the black community faced, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. He put his life on the line for the cause, and in turn, King became an unapologetic advocate against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Instead of worrying about minority groups turning against Jews, we should be asking how can we show we haven’t turned our backs on them.

Hen Mazzig doesn’t have to prove that he’s a Zionist who has dedicated himself to the Jewish people and the Jewish state. He is an effective voice, especially to young people. But I think he misses the mark here.

I feel compelled to say that BLM’s primary cause is just. I don’t know if proportionately more blacks are killed by law enforcement than whites, because there are persuasive statistical arguments made on both sides. But every black American that I’ve ever talked to about this – and they have been primarily well-educated, middle-class black people – can recount numerous anecdotes about harassment, humiliation, and fear at the hands of police officers.

I grew up in a lower middle-class white family which improved its status to middle-middle by the time I left. Only once in my life did I fear the police, and that was in 1970 when I participated in an antiwar demonstration, and the club-swinging Pittsburgh police tac squad charged the demonstrators. Much later, two of my own kids were stopped by police for “engaging in a speed contest” on a public street. The cop brought them home and was more worried that my wife would kill them than anything else. This is more or less the experience of most members of the white middle class. The black experience is different.

But these aren’t the days of Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel. These days visibly Jewish pedestrians in New York City are beaten for looking Jewish, primarily by blacks. And there aren’t just a few “fringe activists” that are responsible for adding the Palestinian issue to the mix of intersectional issues that all progressives are required to sign onto. Sure, the people who added accusations of Israeli apartheid and genocide to the BLM platform were anti-Israel activists, but who else would they pick to write that section of the document? The whole document was approved by the leadership. And for a long time, this view of Israel has been prevalent among the rank and file of the broader Left. It isn’t just BLM. Remember the “Occupy” movement?

The black Left is, if possible, even more extreme. Anti-Zionism became part of the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and 70s, as militants distinguished themselves from more moderate (and pro-Israel) leaders like King, seeing themselves as part of a worldwide revolutionary struggle against colonialism and imperialism. Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) was strongly anti-Zionist and considered Arab terrorism against what he called a “settler colony” justified. Huey Newton of the Black Panther Party met with Arafat in 1972, and wrote an essay “On the Middle East” in which he argued that Israel was an outpost of American imperialism that persecuted Palestinians. Angela Davis also met Arafat, has always taken the Palestinian side, and today supports BDS. Now we have Marc Lamont Hill and Cornel West, the “intellectual” voices of Israel-hatred. All this is added to the antisemitism that has been rife in the black community since the 60s, and which is fed by those like Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, and others.

As was famously said about a different group, the black Left “imbibed Jew-hatred with their mothers’ milk.” It’s not accidental that accusations of Israeli apartheid and genocide were included in the BLM platform; it is essential.

So how are we to respond? Mazzig thinks that we must support BLM despite its anti-Israel position:

Attacking Black Lives Matter only fuels anti-Semitism, making it easier to paint Jews as racists willing to reject the modern civil rights movement just to defend Israel.

“Just to defend Israel?” Did he actually write that? I would argue that a Jew is obligated to defend our homeland, and that takes priority over concern for other peoples. Even if it were necessary to “reject the modern civil rights movement” to do it, it would be so. But of course nobody is rejecting it. An overwhelming majority of Jews strongly oppose anti-black racism.

What we are rejecting – what we must reject – is the hijacking of every social justice cause on behalf of some of the least just people on the planet, the misogynist, homophobic, antidemocratic, terrorist-paying, murder-inciting, child-soldier-abusing, corrupt leaders of the PLO and Hamas. You’d think social justice activists would have noticed.

Worrying that our antisemitic enemies might call us “racists” is a symptom of severe Oslo Syndrome. Nothing is more Sisyphean than to try to obtain the approval of those who hate us for being Jewish by modifying our behavior. Indeed, the more abject our apologies, the more we kneel in recognition of our guilt over white and/or Jewish privilege, the more we will be held in contempt. It’s not what we do, it’s who we are that they have a problem with.

What we are required to do as Jews is to stand unequivocally against those that libel the Jewish state. It doesn’t matter how good the rest of their cause is, they deserve zero support from us if part of their program is the destruction of our homeland and the death or dispersal of its Jewish population. That is precisely what supporting BDS and the “liberation movements” in “Palestine” means.

The sight of Jews abasing themselves before a movement that wishes to return them to the time that there was no Jewish state is embarrassing, but more importantly, demonstrates that there is no downside to joining the anti-Israel parade.

“If you want to change Black Lives Matter Israel agenda, you need to show up for them,” says Mazzig. He has it backwards. If they want our help, they need to stop supporting those who want to kill us. We understand that American blacks have a legitimate problem with racism. They want “allies.” But being an ally works both ways.

PLAIN TALK ABOUT HATRED AND VIOLENCE by John W. Gardner (Reader’s Digest, 1968)

This article, written during the worst part of the 1960s racial tensions, is very interesting to read today. I could not find it online in text format (it was entered in the Congressional Record) so I am publishing it here.

____________________________

Most white people are neither haters nor practitioners of violence. Nor are most Negroes. The majority of each race earnestly wishes that constructive, non-violent solutions could be found to the racial problems that rack—and may yet wreck—the nation.

But there are whites that hate, and whites who advocate violence. There are Negroes who do the same. And, unfortunately, the whites and Negroes who do not hate and destroy too often quietly tolerate those who do.

Those who hate and those who resort to violence—whether they are white or black— cannot resolve the problems that divide this nation. They can only intensify the senseless spasms of emotion and savage action.

There are many levels at which we must seek solutions to the problems which are tearing the nation apart. We must attack hard-core poverty with renewed vigor— through education, job-training, employment, housing and other measures. We must attack discrimination in every form. We must take steps to ensure civil order.

But, at the same time that we are working on such basic problems, we must cope with the upward spiral of mutual fear and corrosive hostility between white and Negro communities.

Hatred and violence used to be chiefly the stock-in-trade of the white racist. Then they became the stock-in-trade of the Negro extremist. Both justified their malevolence with cogent arguments.

But today there is a curious contrast between the two. Negro hatred of whites is often expressed openly. It is frankly defended and widely discussed. In contrast, white hatred of Negroes has gone underground. It is rarely discussed publicly, rarely debated candidly. Indeed, when the President's Commission on Civil Disorders spoke of it openly, many people thought the authors of the report had done an unseemly thing.

Yet the white hatred is there. And everyone who reads this article knows it. The long tradition of white brutality and mistreatment of the Negro has diminished but has not come to an end.

It still excludes Negroes from white neighborhoods, and bars them from many job opportunities. No Negro reaches adulthood without having been through many experiences with whites that bruise his self-respect and diminish his confidence. That is hard for him to understand, living as he does in a society that bases its moral claims on the worth and dignity of the individual.

Such attitudes on the part of whites must come to an end if this nation is to survive as a free society. Each one who adds his bit to the storm of hatred does his share to move us toward a final reckoning that no free American will like.

Negro extremists who advocate violence assert that non-violence did not work. It is untrue. The greatest gains for the American Negro came in response to the non-violent campaigns of Martin Luther King, Jr., and (before it turned violent) the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

It is the fashion now to belittle those gains, but they were great and undeniable. They were registered in historic civil-rights legislation and even more emphatically in social practice. Compare Negro voting patterns today with those prevailing as little as three years ago; or southern school desegregation today with practices of four years ago; or patterns of restaurant and hotel desegregation over the same period; or employment opportunities now and then.

The gains are not enough. They cannot satisfy our conscience. But they were substantial. And they came in response to non-violence.

The violent tactics of the past two years have brought nothing but deepened hostility between the two races and a slowing down of progress in the necessary drive toward social justice.

Many white liberals have now allied themselves with the Negro extremists in the sanctioning of violence. They speak approvingly of past riots as having “dramatized” the problem. They never speak of the negative consequences of the riots, but everyone who observed the session of Congress that followed the riots of 1967 knows that the negative reactions were reality, and diminished the possibility of constructive solutions.

Nor do those who condone violence ever speak of the legacy of bitterness and division that will be left by increasingly harsh outbursts of destructive interaction. What good will it do to dramatize the problem if, in the process, hatreds burn themselves so deep that the wounds permanently cripple our society? Nor do those who condone violence ever face up to the likelihood that the paroxysms of public disorder will lead ultimately to authoritarian countermeasures.

One of the difficulties in halting the interplay of fear and violence is the tendency toward indiscriminate indictment of one race or the Other. One man killed Martin Luther King—and Stokely Carmichael indicts the whole white race. A small minority of Negroes loot and burn, and many whites indict the whole Negro race.

Where will it lead? Negro extremists shout slogans of hate. White racists whisper their rage. Each justifies himself by pointing to acts of members of the other race. Hatred triggers violence, violence stirs further hatred, savage acts bring savage responses, hostility begets hostility, and the storm rages on. At some point, the terrifying interplay must have an end.

We must break through the terrible symmetry of action and reaction, assault and counterassault, hatred and responsive hatred. And the only way to do that is to ask the moderates on each side to cope with the haters and the doers of violence within their own ranks.

There is no way for the Negro moderate to curb the white extremist, or the white moderate to curb the Negro extremist. If they try, they just give further impetus to the interplay of hostility. That is why moderate Whites must curb the haters within their own ranks, and moderate Negroes must curb their own extremists.

To date, the moderates—both Negro and white—have been all too silent. It was predictable. Moderates are alike, whatever their race. They don't want to become involved. They don't want to appear controversial. They don't like trouble.

But, increasingly, the extremists of both races are giving them trouble, whether they like it or not. And it will get worse before it gets better. It's time for the moderates to speak up and assert their strength.

This “revolt of the moderates” must go on day in and day out—in offices, factories, homes and clubs. Those who promote hatred must be called to account. Those who commit or condone destructive acts must feel the full weight of disapproval by their friends and neighbors. Each contributes his little bit to the destruction of this society.

In a curious way, the whites who hate and destroy and the Negroes who hate and destroy are allies moving the rest of us toward a terrible climax. Martin Luther King understood that, and fought against both all his life, by word and deed. And so must all of us who care about the future of this society.

06/10 Links Pt2: Co-opting Black Lives Matter to target Israel; Where there's Antifa there is antisemitism; 'Post' inquiry leads to closure of French BDS terrorism group's PayPal

From Ian:

Co-opting Black Lives Matter to target Israel

Groups on the far-Right and far-Left, including pro-Palestinian organizations with links to terrorism, have been engaged in a campaign to co-opt the Black Lives Matter movement to target and delegitimize Israel.

"The cynical use of the Black Lives Matter by groups backed and controlled by foreign terror movements is nothing less than a repeat of the many other times that terror groups have used human shields to push their violence and hate," Mark Greendorfer, president of the Zachor Legal Group, told JNS.

A "civil-rights movement (Black Lives Matter) has been hijacked by extremists to push an agenda focused on promoting hate, in the form of anti-Semitism, rather than seeking justice," he said.

Last week, it was widely reported when several Jewish institutions were targeted during protests in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, which included vandalism to Jewish businesses and synagogues, such as Congregation Beth El, which was vandalized with graffiti stating "Free Palestine" and "F*** Israel."
While these incidents drew headlines and condemnations, several far-Left anti-Israel groups have been engaged in a campaign on social media and in protests blaming Israel for police violence and linking the Black Lives Matter movement to Palestinian uprisings.

In particular, anti-Israel groups have been using the protests over the public murder of 46-year-old George Floyd in Minnesota by a police officer to target the Jewish state over past training programs set up between the United States and Israeli police departments.

"This is where the Minneapolis Police Department learned their police brutality tactics from. Israeli occupation terrorist soldiers (on the Left) murder Palestinians on a daily basis. We must stop training our American police officers to be gestapo units. #GeorgeFloyd #Palestine." tweeted Abbas Hamideh of the group Al-Awda, a pro-Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions group.

Similarly, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and a student leader in Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) also blamed Israel for the police tactics.

The anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which in 2017 launched its "Deadly Exchange" campaign, has long blamed Israel for helping to train U.S. police in "extrajudicial executions, shoot-to-kill, police murders, racial profiling, massive spying and surveillance, deportation and detention."

Over the past week, JVP's campaign has spread and become a popular conspiracy theory among anti-Israel activists, according to the Canary Mission, an anti-Semitism watchdog group.

"Anti-Israel activists have claimed that Israel and American Jewish organizations are responsible for police brutality resulting in the deaths of black people, such as George Floyd," said the Canary Mission. "They state that US police forces are trained by Israel to deliberately use brutal methods of policing. They further claim that this training is organized and sponsored by the American Jewish community."

Where there's Antifa there is antisemitism

Several demonstrations in Germany against restrictions of freedom due to the Corona pandemic included antisemitic incidents. The infiltration of Jew-hatred not related to anything Jewish or Israeli has been a frequent occurrence in Western mass protests in past decades. Now, an even worse illustration of this phenomenon has emerged: the violent expression of antisemitism during the anti-racist protests in the United States after the murder of George Floyd by a policeman in Minneapolis.

Many of these were not demonstrations but sprees of lawless burning and looting. Some of the worst violence took place in Los Angeles. Various Jewish shops were destroyed in the Fairfax district. A variety of Jewish institutions were damaged including synagogues and a school. A statue of Raoul Wallenberg was smeared with anti-Semitic slogans. In Richmond, Virginia a Reform congregation, Beit Ahaba, had its windows smashed by rioters. Attacking synagogues is an act of antisemitism.

Commentators highlighted aspects of antisemitism in the demonstrations. In the British daily, Telegraph, Zoe Strimpel wrote: “Yet alongside those peacefully protesting are those criminally marauding in the name of social justice. Some of these do it in the name of anti-racism – as seen above – and some in the name of anti-fascism. The ring-leaders of the anti-fascists are the loathsome group, Antifa.

"While Antifa goes beyond Jews it seems that people purporting to be 'antifascist or antiracist' will sooner or later begin to behave like the lowest of criminals and bullies using a cause as an excuse for vandalism and destruction.…It is a notable irony that where there's Antifa there is antisemitism.”

Melanie Phillips pointed out the strange attitude of many Jewish organizations. She wrote that in a statement by the Jewish Council of Public Affairs, 130 organizations said that they were "outraged by the killing of Floyd, declared 'solidarity' with the Black community and called for 'an end' to 'systemic racism.'" Phillips remarked: "They make no protest against the specifically targeted attacks on synagogues and Jewish businesses." Phillips called Black Lives Matter, an "anti-white, anti-capitalist and anti-Jewish hate group."

The American Black Lives Matter movement aims to rectify the wrongs perpetrated against African American citizens in the past and present. Its 40,000 word manifesto accuses Israel of perpetrating genocide against Palestinians, labels Israel as an ‘apartheid state’ and joined with the BDS movement in calling for the total academic, cultural and economic boycott of the country. No such demands are made for any other state.

In a blog posted by the Zionist Organization of America, Daniel Greenfield also addressed the attitude of the Jewish organizations writing: “One would think that the hateful vandalism of 8 Jewish institutions and a mob screaming slurs after trashing Jewish businesses would lead to some sort of meaningful response. But, that would be the optimistic perspective of people who haven’t experienced the unmitigated level of cowardice and appeasement that comprises Jewish institutional life at virtually every level.

Israel Advocacy Movement: Is Ice Cube antisemitic?

We Must Re-Think Identity, Privilege and Oppression in the Middle East

Conversations on identity in the U.S. are strongly connected to the notion of privilege, which is understandably based on history, imperialism, conquest and oppression. MENA Jews, because of their wider regional and historic experience, sometimes see an Arab Muslim privilege in a somewhat similar way that a person of color might see a white person in the U.S.

This is what possibly shapes the fact that on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, MENA Jews remain on average more hawkish than their European Jewish counterparts. The Arab culture, language and mentality is instantly more familiar to them because it was one forced on their community for the last 1,300 years.

However, the culture, language and tradition of MENA Jews is sadly less familiar to people in the U.S., who judge Israel according to what they see through the lens of a supposed European semi-colonial implant—thus erasing Israel's indigenous identity and culture.

In fact, there are arguably even hints of racism when some figures in the U.S., predominantly among those highly critical of Israel, simply do not see or recognize what Israel is or has become. Frequently, their conception of Israel is through a Westernized prism that just erases MENA Jews.

They want to see Israel as a European invention and extension—as a privileged nation in a sea of local and indigenous people. The presence of a majoritarian MENA Jewish culture disturbs this worldview and its privilege. Which is all the more reason that there needs to be a greater understanding and respect for what it means to be a MENA Jew.

Unfortunately, we see debates, conferences and commentators on the Israel-Palestinian conflict ultimately using narrow prisms of understanding that reflect the debate they seek—rarely including any MENA Jews, and certainly not taking their community's position and historic narrative into account. Including MENA Jews would disrupt this distorted reflection, even if it would be morally and intellectually more honest to include them.

This blind spot, whether intentional or because of ignorance, must be ended once and for all.

The current debate in the U.S. is an opportune time to talk about identity, oppression, colonization and privilege in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Understanding the historical context of Israel and the Jewish people in the region would break the racist and false paradigm surrounding the conflict's current narrative—and allow for the possibility for a realistic peaceful solution, based on historic justice.