Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Reuters’ World Refugee Day story from Gaza is a masterpiece of propaganda without technically lying

Reuters published a story ahead of World Refugee Day last Friday about Palestinian “refugees” in Gaza.

It is a typical mainstream news story – meaning it is an outrageous story that makes no attempt to put any context around the anti-Israel points it wants to make.

On the United Nations’ World Refugee Day on Saturday, Marwan Kuwaik, a 70-year-old Palestinian in Gaza, will be focused on trying to eke out a living by selling snack food on the street.

In Gaza, Kuwaik earns about 30 shekels ($8.50) a day selling lupin beans from his bicycle. He is among 1.4 million Palestinians U.N.-registered refugees in the impoverished and crowded enclave, whose economy has suffered from years of Israeli and Egyptian blockades.

Because Hamas and other terror groups have used Gaza as a literal launching pad for rockets and other terror attacks. Reuters doesn’t mention this.

Kuwaik’s parents were among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were forced to leave their homes in what is now Israel during the fighting that surrounded its founding in 1948.

He was born two years later in Gaza and lives in the outskirts of its Beach refugee camp. The U.N. registers as refugees the descendants of those Palestinians displaced more than 70 years ago.

By the official UN definition of “refugee,” Kuwaik is not a refugee for two reasons: one because it doesn’t apply to descendants, and two because he still lives in “Palestine” and refugees are by definition those who are outside their country. Reuters doesn’t mention this.

“We will return,” Kuwaik vowed in his house as he filled small plastic bags with lupin beans. “If we die our sons will rise, and if they die then our grandchildren will do it.”

There are no other “refugees” from the 1940s in the world. Everyone settles someplace. But Palestinians are the only people who are considered “refugees” in perpetuity. Reuters doesn’t mention this.

Hamas controls Gaza. There is no reason for there to be any “refugee camps” in Gaza. The people should have been moved into regular housing long ago, and Israel attempted to do this in the 1980s – and the UN condemned Israel for that. Reuters doesn’t mention this.

UNRWA doesn’t try to resettle refugees or make them independent of handouts from the world. On the contrary, UNRWA’s existence is dependent on keeping the fake ”refugee” issue alive. Reuters doesn’t mention this.

When Kuwaik speaks of “return,” he is parroting a Palestinian propaganda that keeps “refugees” in misery in order to eventually destroy Israel by flooding it with Arabs. That is the entire purpose of “return” as Arabs have admitted for decades. Reuters doesn’t mention this.

For World Refugee Day, Reuters decided to use its platform to create anti-Israel propaganda with highly selective facts that conveniently are all exactly the same as the narrative that Hamas and the PLO tells the world.

Reuters can point to the story and swear there is nothing incorrect, but there is a huge difference between being not lying and being accurate. This story is not even close to accurate.

The Left turns on the only member who admits Roger Waters is an antisemite

As I write this on Monday night, I have seen only one anti-Zionist Leftist explicitly call out Roger Waters’ blatant antisemitism and lies, Mairav Zonszein.

Leftist Jewish groups mostly retweeted a very generic tweet that sort of implied distaste at his words without mentioning Waters’ name, so their readers could easily have thought that they were talking about the far Right.

This way they could claim to be against antisemitism without actually criticizing Waters.

The crazed responses to Zonszein from her fellow anti-Zionists, however, are something to behold.

This one has some practical advice: Waters might be an antisemitic jerk, but criticizing him is worse:

There are the predictable denialists, hand wavers and subject changers:

Some are flabbergasted that an anti-Zionist can have an original thought that is not in lock-goose-step with the masses:

My favorite:

“They.”

And, inevitably, those who get so angry at basic facts that they attack the person who was their heroine five minutes beforehand:

I disagree with practically everything Zonszein writes, but she is the only anti-Israel Leftist I see who actually called out this perfect example of Left antisemitism. All the others are cowards or sycophants.

06/22 Links Pt2: When Everyone Kneels, Who Will Stand Up for Western History and Culture?; Biden blasts BDS: Why it matters; How goats have become fire fighters in Israel

From Ian:

Selective Outrage

I have written before about the case of Rutgers professor Jasbir Puar, lionized by academics on the left despite or because of her anti-Semitic attacks on Israel.

Recently, the most egregious of Puar’s claims resurfaced in an incident at Florida State University. The Student Senate President, Ahmad Daraldik, reportedly built a website that, among other things, accuses Israel of organ harvesting. But she adds a twist: Just as “the Nazis conducted many different types of experiments on the inmates of the concentration camps,” so, too, do the Israelis harvest organs.

In Puar’s case, the charge goes back to unsourced rumors concerning Israel’s activities during the “knife intifada” of 2015-16. In our student’s case, the charge goes back to the 1990s and concerns a single facility in which corneas, heart valves, and skin grafts were taken, sometimes without family permission, from approximately 150 cadavers. Among those bodies were, as Daraldik’s web site tells you, Palestinians. Also among them, as it does not tell you, Israeli soldiers and civilians.

To compare this incident, in which a pathologist broke a law and thereby harmed Jewish and non-Jewish families, to Nazi experimentation is gross Holocaust minimization and inversion. As Miriam Elman of the Academic Engagement Network says, the comparison is “unequivocally anti-Semitic.” Yet a Student Senate that quite recently, in an overwhelming vote, removed its president over remarks he’d made in an online group chat—he’d stressed the incompatibility between his Catholicism and queer and transgender politics on the other—voted to keep Daraldik in office. Perhaps they were motivated to do so by a letter, signed by numerous purportedly progressive organizations, that mentions Daraldik’s First Amendment rights, doesn’t mention the website, and pretends that Daraldik is the victim of a “smear campaign” to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel.

In fact, critics are instead perpetuating the view that Daraldik can be held to account for noxious views that—though it is unclear when exactly the website went up—he has not disowned.

Biden blasts BDS: Why it matters

In a policy paper posted on his campaign website in May, Biden, referring to the boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign, vowed that his administration will “firmly reject the BDS movement – which singles out Israel and too often veers into antisemitism – and fight other efforts to delegitimize Israel on the global stage.” Biden also said that if elected president he will “sustain our unbreakable commitment to Israel’s security,” including “the guarantee that Israel will always maintain its qualitative military edge.”

Biden reportedly made similar comments online at a May 19 virtual event. And on other occasions, he has referred to the US’s “longstanding, moral commitment” to Israel, declaring that “the only way to ensure” that the Holocaust “could never happen again was the establishment and the existence of a secure, Jewish State of Israel.”

BIDEN’S FIRM rejection of BDS contrasts with the views of several members of Congress led by Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), both of whom have explicitly endorsed BDS. In July 2019, the House passed by a 398 to 17 vote a resolution stating the House’s opposition to BDS. While those opposing the resolution accounted for less than 10% of the 234 Democratic House members, they worryingly included many of the Democratic Party’s most voluble legislators.

Much is at stake: Disagreements between allies are bound to occur. If Biden were president, how would he address disagreements over annexation and BDS? How would he lead in the face of challenges from within his party? These policy statements signal how a President Biden would govern.

NEW VIDEO! Florida pastor and @TruNews host Rick Wiles' Craziest Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories. Watch and SHARE! pic.twitter.com/x703F1TjV4
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) June 22, 2020

Salient cases of antisemitism in Germany in the past decade

This incident highlighted the ongoing efforts to demonize Israel by a group of extreme anti-Israel MPs led by Inge Höger and Annette Groth. Both of these parliamentarians were on board the controversial 2010 Mavi Marmara Gaza flotilla that carried armed passengers who intended to break the so-called "blockade" of Gaza, and upon their return to Berlin were hailed by many of their party’s MPs.

The SWC wrote that Groth, Höger and Left party official Claudia Haydt and MP Heike Hänsel - as organizers and participants - played a crucial role in stoking hatred of Israel during the “Toiletgate” scandal. All were present at the Blumenthal/Sheen talk. They are a part of a sizable group of hardcore anti-Israel Left party MPs.

In response to the “Toiletgate” scandal, a petition signed by the reform wing of The Left party MPs, regional politicians and members stated: “By stoking obsessive hatred of and demonizing Israel, members of our party in positions of responsibility are promoting antisemitic patterns of argument and a relativization of the Holocaust and the German responsibility for the extermination of millions of European Jews.”

The 2016 SWC report details how Leaders of the local German Teacher’s Union (GEW) in Oldenburg called for a total boycott of Israel. In September, the Oldenburg GEW local published a pro-BDS article by Christoph Glanz, a public school teacher and fanatic opponent of the Jewish State. Glanz, who has tried posing as a Jew to avoid charges of antisemitism called for the eradication of the State of Israel and relocation of its Jews to southwestern Germany.

In 2019, the most extreme antisemitic event was the failed attack on the synagogue in the German city Halle. Tens of Jews praying in that synagogue on Yom Kippur - Judaism’s holiest day - miraculously escaped certain injury or death at the hands of a neo-Nazi as the attacker failed to break down a security door outside a synagogue in the city. After failing to enter the synagogue, Stephan Balliet, 27, armed with a sub-machine gun and explosives, killed 2 civilians nearby and injured 2 others. Balliet admitted that he was motivated by his hatred of Jews. In his manifesto, he stated, “Kill as many anti-Whites as possible, Jews preferred.”

From the 2019 report: Germany is in the midst of an 18-month stint on the UN Security Council. Its UN Ambassador, Christoph Heusgen made the SWC Top ten list in 2019. He created an uproar after word spread regarding the number of anti-Israel votes he has cast, but above all by his equating 130 rockets fired by terrorist organization Hamas at Israeli civilians in one week in March, with the Jewish state’s demolition of terrorists’ homes.

Heusgen declared: “We believe that international law is the best way to protect civilians and allow them to live in peace and security and without fear of Israeli bulldozers or ‘Hamas rockets.’ Bild, Germany’s best-selling daily, accused Heusgen in an editorial, of “pure malice” against the Jewish State. Heusgen cast 16 anti-Israel votes at the UN in 2018, abstaining once. In 2019, he voted for nine anti-Israel resolutions, including one labelling Jerusalem’s holiest sites as “Palestinian Occupied Territory,” while abstaining three times and opposing only one anti-Israel resolution.

This is much less than one percent of my notes on antisemitism in Germany. Yet it very succinctly shows that the country is far from succeeding in eradicating antisemitism. The publication of Augstein’s article by Der Spiegel, the boycott-promoting teachers union and Heusgen’s comparison of Israel and Hamas reflect how this hatred has permeated and is alive in the German mainstream.

Fatah's "anti-annexation" rally was not impressive

Earlier today I mentioned that Fatah and other PLO factions were setting up an "anti-annexation" rally in Jericho, with government workers being bused in from all parts of the West Bank.

I was curious how large the crowd would be. A large crowd would mean that this is a topic that is affecting Palestinian Arabs enough to make them want to spend several hours attending; a smaller crowd means they really don't care.

In the end, the crowd was in the thousands - but not the tens of thousands. It looks like just the government workers and a few others, but this is not a groundswell. This is tiny compared to the rallies regularly seen in Gaza for Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

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Who is the liar: Human Rights Watch’s Ken Roth, or the Trump administration? (UPDATE)

This tweet from Human Rights Watch chief Ken Roth is typical, and still incredible:

Let’s parse this:

“The United Nations Human Rights Council, which if you listen to Trump only criticizes Israel”

Is this true? No, quite the opposite. When the US pulled out of the UNHRC it said it was partially because of its relentless and disproportionate criticism of Israel, but no one ever said that it “only” criticizes Israel. This is Ken Roth’s bizarre recollection of what happened. But the facts show that the Trump administration was accurate, and Roth is a liar.

“just condemned Iran (yet again) …”

“Yet again”? Roth, whose entire job is supposed to defend human rights, is implying that the UNHRC is spending too much time attacking the human rights record of Iran. But he is quite happy with the daily criticism of Israel at the UNHRC.
Am I exaggerating? No. On Thursday, the UNHRC passed a resolution condemning Israel yet again.
On Wednesday, during a debate about police brutality in the US, “speakers stated that Israel’s systematic shoot-to-kill policy of Palestinians amounted to apartheid.” There is, of course, no systemic “shoot to kill” policy for Palestinians who are not actively engaged in a life-threatening attack.
But the UNHRC lies, just like Ken Roth. This is why they are so simpatico.

“by a vote of 22 for, 8 against, and 15 abstaining.”

Meaning that the UN’s human rights body could not muster a majority of votes to condemn Iran’s human rights violations – 23 countries decided not to vote to condemn Iran versus 22 that did.
Which goes to show how morally corrupt the UNHRC is – but to Roth, this condemnation was overkill.

UPDATE: Ken Roth lied about the Iran resolution too! It never condemned Iran!

My good friend @KenRoth lies again.

Today's UNHRC resolution on Iran does NOT condemn the regime. And not a single human rights abuse is mentioned.

On the contrary: Listen to resolution sponsor Sweden call it a "short, procedural text," then praise Iran's "positive engagement." https://t.co/cAOiNTpFxS pic.twitter.com/1vFpjSVwL3
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 22, 2020

06/22 Links Pt1: Palestinians and Israelis Will Both Gain From Israeli Sovereignty Over West Bank; Jordan Backs PLO in Rejecting Trump Deal of the Century

From Ian:

Palestinians and Israelis Will Both Gain From Israeli Sovereignty Over West Bank

Palestinians and Israelis will both gain from what is wrongly being labeled West Bank "annexation." Soon after July 1, Israel is expected to apply its civilian law to roughly half of "Area C" of Judea and Samaria (i.e., the West Bank), which it governs under a power-sharing agreement made with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) 25 years ago. Area C is where almost half-a-million Israelis reside alongside a much smaller number of Palestinians. Naysayers from Israel and abroad have labeled the move an "illegal annexation" that would be responded to with regional violence. The more mundane reality is that applying Israeli law to the disputed area will have two main salutary effects that will benefit all the residents of the area, Israeli and Palestinian alike.

First, after 53 years, military administration of the affected areas will end. Military rule is far from ideal, and residents' needs will be better met under ordinary civilian governance provided by officials who have to answer for their actions at the ballot box.

Second, residents will no longer be subject to the antiquated mix of Ottoman, Mandatory British, Jordanian and military rules that confound even the simplest transactions. Area C's law is full of anomalies, from the absence of environmental law to a ban on the purchase of land by non-Jordanians. Non-Israeli residents of Area C have no access to Israel's unemployment insurance, subsidized national health care and other welfare programs. Israel's Supreme Court has essentially blocked piece-by-piece legislation to clean up the mess. Applying Israeli law as a whole will grant citizens the benefits of a modern liberal democratic legal codex.

Despite the obvious benefits of applying Israeli civilian law, opponents have decried the proposal on what they describe as legal and practical grounds.

The legal objection is easily summarized and easily refuted. Opponents note that international law forbids annexation justified by conquest of sovereign territory of another state during an unlawful war (or perhaps any war at all). They then attempt to characterize Israel's action as an example of such an unlawful annexation by connecting the rule to a string of falsehoods. They assume the PLO is a state, though it meets none of the conditions of international law, erase the history of the League of Nations designating the West Bank for a Jewish homeland (as it did in 1922), deny the international doctrine of uti possidetis juris that granted Israel sovereignty over Judea and Samaria upon its independence in 1948, pretend the PLO received sovereign title of the West Bank from Jordan's illegal conquest and annexation of the territory during its 1948 attempt to destroy Israel, imply the illegality of Israel defending itself from Jordan's aggression in 1967 and therefore misinterpret Israel's application of its civilian law to part of Area C as an attempt to gain sovereignty over another country's territory.

Sadly, those who wrongly claim that Israel's proposal is unlawful are rarely challenged to articulate their assumptions—let alone to justify their mendacity. Yet the truth remains that Israel's application of its law to parts of Area C is lawful and beneficial, and has nothing to do with annexing another state's sovereign territory. Israel already has a valid claim to territorial sovereignty, whether it applies its civilian law to the area or not.

The practical objections are more difficult to summarize, because they are, in large part, contradictory as well as illogical.

On the Left, opponents of the proposal claim it will destabilize the Palestinian Authority, lead to violence, foil the creation of a Palestinian state and destroy the chances of a peace agreement. On the Right, opponents claim the proposal will strengthen the Palestinian Authority and inevitably lead to a peace agreement and the creation of a Palestinian state on those parts of the West Bank where Israeli law is not applied. They view this as an unacceptable security threat and inimical to a true peace.

Netanyahu: Applying Israeli Law in Parts of West Bank Will Not Affect a Single Palestinian Neighborhood

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday explained his plan to apply Israeli law in parts of the West Bank in a memo to Knesset members from his Likud party.

"There can be no realistic Israeli-Palestinian peace accord in which the Judea and Samaria Jewish communities are evacuated. These are established communities in which hundreds of thousands of Israelis live. Relinquishing these territories would not only constitute a historic injustice; such a move would create an immediate existential threat to the Jewish state since Judea and Samaria border central Israeli cities."

The planned measure would replace the current military government "with Israeli law and civil administration in already existing Israeli communities in the territories so that those living there can be treated equally under the law like all Israelis."

The move should not be called an annexation, as this word "connotes the forcible acquisition of one state's territory by another state. Israel is doing no such thing. Israel has valid legal claims to the territories while no other state claims the area." Applying Israeli law would not change the status of the Palestinian Authority "in a single Palestinian neighborhood."

UN envoy tells Palestinians rallying against annexation not to give up on statehood dream

United Nations envoy Nikolay Mladenov tells Palestinians never to give up on their dream of statehood, emphasizing that Israel’s planned annexation of the West Bank was not only illegal but “would kill the dream of peace.”

“You’re not renting a house here, this is your home. You do not throw away the keys to something that you have been building for 25 years. You protect it and you invest in the future, a future that is built on shared values of democracy, accountability and prosperity for everyone,” Mladenov says.

“People of Palestine — never give up, never give up, never give up,” Mladenov concludes, “because peace is what we’re all for.”

During his speech, Mladenov also leads a moment of silence for Iyad Hallak, a young Palestinian with special needs killed by Israeli police earlier this month.

David Singer: Jordan Backs PLO in Rejecting Trump Deal of the Century

Jordan has backed the PLO in rejecting President Trump’s deal of the century – as Israel readies to regain sovereignty after 3000 years in 30% of Judea and Samaria (aka West Bank) – the biblical heartland of the Jewish people.

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi met with PLO President Mahmoud Abbas this week to confirm that Jordan stood in solidarity with the PLO against the Trump plan to create a Palestinian State in the remaining 70%:
“The stance that I have carried today is the Kingdom’s historical position: Attaining the rights of our brothers in Palestine to freedom and a full Palestinian state with occupied Jerusalem as its capital on the June 4, 1967 lines is the only means to realise a just and comprehensive peace”.

Safadi’s statement of Jordan’s historical position was false.

No Palestinian State – “full” or otherwise – was ever contemplated during Jordan’s illegal annexation of the West Bank between 1948 and 1967. To the contrary Jordan extended Jordanian citizenship to all the Arab residents of the West Bank from 1954 to 1988.

Jordan’s rejection of the Trump Plan could see Trump dealing with Jordan similarly to the way he dealt with the PLO’s rejection of Trump’s Plan – sight unseen – two years before its release on 28 January 2020:
“’We told Trump we will not accept his project, the ‘deal of the century,’ which has become the ‘slap of the century’. But we will slap back.
“We do not take instructions from anyone, and say ‘no’ to anyone if it is about our destiny, our cause, our country and our people… 1,000 times no'”

Trump answered the PLO by progressively:
· Recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the US Embassy there
· Recognising Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights
· Cutting off funding for Palestinian refugee programs
· Closing down the PLO diplomatic office in Washington
· Confirming that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank did not contravene international law

Responses to Jordan’s defiant stance could see Trump:
· Agreeing to Israel extending its sovereignty beyond the 30% of the West Bank currently contemplated in Trump’s Plan. This proposed area is in fact only 50% of Area C - already under Israel’s complete security and administrative control pursuant to the Oslo Accords – so there is plenty of scope for enlarging the area of Israeli sovereignty.
· Reviewing existing US-Jordan security and financial agreements
· Calling on Jordan to replace the PLO in negotiations with Israel to allocate sovereignty in the remaining 70% of the West Bank between their two respective states.

Jordan’s King Abdullah would find Trump’s offer to regain a major part of “The West Bank of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan 1950-1967” difficult to reject.

Abdullah’s father the late King Hussein wrote in "Uneasy Lies The Head" (page 118):
"Palestine and Jordan were both under the British Mandate, but as my grandfather pointed out in his memoirs, they were hardly separate countries. Trans-Jordan being to the east of the River Jordan, it formed in a sense, the interior of Palestine"

The Changing Face of Black Antisemitism (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

When you have the Internet, who needs encyclopedias?

If nothing else, encyclopedias do offer a snapshot of the times in which they were published and the attitudes that were prevalent at the time.

Take the Encyclopedia Judaica, for example -- published in 1971.

The article on Anti-Semitism, describes the post-WWII period in the US, when there were relatively few openly antisemitic conflicts. However:

Some social anti-Semitism does remain, for, as repeated studies have shown, the Jews are the only white group in the United States for whom social rank is consistently lower than economic status. [3:136]

According to the article, tensions existed between the Jewish and Black communities. At the time, Jews -- being generally the last occupants in Black neighborhoods at the time -- were visible as landlords and storekeepers, giving rise to tensions. On the other hand, Jews were among the leading proponents of integration and were a major source of the money and power behind the movement for equal rights for Black Americans, which itself was a cause of resentment for those who wanted to see the revolution as their own.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (with beard) in front row of civil rights march with Martin Luther King Jr. (Fair Use)

Nevertheless,

Whatever the future may hold for anti-Semitism in America, its present temper is such that it is generally regarded as a minor problem.

Oh for the good old days.

That piece was contributed to the encyclopedia by Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, who at the time was the Associate Adjunct Professor of History at Columbia University. Two years earlier, in 1969, he wrote his popular book, The Zionist Idea, so it is not surprising that he also contributed to the EJ article on Zionism.

What is interesting is that there too he mentions the developing tensions between the Jewish and Black communities, leading to "confrontation in the name of group identity and group interests." Hertzberg writes that

Within such an atmosphere many Jews were pushed toward identification with the specific interests of the Jewish community and its own peculiar destiny. The alternative for some of the young who had cut their teeth politically in the black movement, was to come to Israel. [16:1063]

There is a certain irony that today, this time around, Jewish identity is weakening and along with that there is a growing division between American Jews and Israel. In contrast to the 1970's, today there are fringe groups identifying themselves as Jewish, who openly attack Israel.

The tension between the Black and Jewish communities was serious enough to warrant a separate entry in the EJ under "Negro-Jewish Relations in the U.S.," explaining that

It was argued that black anti-Semitism was essentially anti-whitism, based on real situations in which a Jew often was the only white in the black neighborhood -- as shop owner, landlord, social worker, teacher.

But these days, Jew-hatred has moved beyond "anti-whitism," as Jews are apparently deserving of attack all on their own -- with flyers being passed around such as this one:

and this one

In the first flyer, some of the data is misquoted from the Jerusalem Post article, while some of it does not come from the article at all.

And why doesn't the flyer just come right out and say they want to institute racial quotas in colleges instead of basing college acceptance on qualifications?

In the second flyer, the reference to usury is gratuitous and clearly intended to stoke Jew-hatred, considering that money lending has nothing to do with how these billionaires made their fortunes.

In addition, the suggestion that at the time -- in 2013 -- half of all billionaires were Jewish is debunked by later articles by Forbes, which in 2016 listed 540 billionaires in the US and in a separate article in 2018 listed 106 US billionaires as being Jewish -- which comes out to 19.6% instead of 48%.

There was a time that the tension between the Black and Jewish communities could be attributed to Jews being the 'face' of "white Americans" in the Black neighborhoods themselves.

Today, under the banner of "Black Lives Matter," there is an attempt to single out Jews who have achieved success either academically or financially beyond what BLM deems acceptable.

These days, intersectionality is in, but the Black community -- at least as far as Black Lives Matter is concerned -- has no interest this time around in allying itself with the Jewish community.

At a time that the 'cancel culture' has not only caused statues to be torn down but people to lose their jobs, the attacks on Jews being carried out in the name of "Black Lives Matter" are a serious threat that adds to the already rising tide of antisemitism and the physical attacks on Jews living in the US.

Today, the PLO is calling on the “masses” to protest Israeli plans to extend sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria.

Fatah, the PFLP and other PLO factions are calling for Palestinians to converge on Jericho for a rally at 5 PM.

Featured speakers include UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov as well as the EU representative, the British consul, the Chinese ambassador and other diplomats.

The PLO is providing buses from all governates under its control.

In addition, they are calling for Palestinians in Europe and around the world to protest in front of Israeli and American embassies.

The Palestinian Federation of Trade Unions is urging people to attend. The Teachers’ Union said this is a “national duty.”

Undoubtedly there will be a large number of government workers who come because they will be forced to, and the Palestinian Authority is the biggest employer in the West Bank.

In a few hours we will see how many other people bothered to show up.

Here is the full interview of antisemitic, washed up rock star Roger Waters at Hamas-linked Shehab News.

Some lowlights that were not covered in the portions excerpted by MEMRI:

2:30 he says that BDS was started by "Palestinian civil society," a lie.

Around 7:15 he says "Israelis pay huge amounts of money to artists to whitewash their apartheid racist regime." So now Israeli concert promoters aren't interested in making money?

Around 10:00 he invokes Menachem Begin while talking about Oslo, and says that Begin managed to hoodwink the world. Given that he gave up a great deal of territory for peace with Egypt, it sounds like Waters is anti-peace.

Around 15:10 he claims that Israel is against human rights.

Around 15:40 he makes the absurd claim that for 72 years, most of Palestinian "resistance" has been "largely non-violent."

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.80

Any Leftist (or media outlet) that doesn’t immediately denounce Roger Waters for antisemitism is a disgusting hypocrite

After the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the media took note of the shooter’s love of conspiracy theories where George Soros was the “puppetmaster” in running the world. Everyone accepted that the idea of a Jewish puppetmaster was a pernicious, centuries-old antisemitic trope.

From Vox soon after the attack:

Anti-Semitic pamphlets and imagery throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries visually portrayed the Jew as something between a corporate fat cat and a shadowy overlord; someone “cosmopolitan,” urbane (and urban), and dangerous.

This rhetoric reveals the extent to which Jews were seen as scapegoats, responsible for somehow manipulating the current world order in order to destabilize white Christian identity. It’s the exact same story we see today in narratives around Soros: that of the scheming Jewish billionaire, without any real (i.e., blood) loyalty to the country that allows him to be a citizen, actively seeking to undermine white Christian unity.

…Last weekend’s attacks on the Tree of Life synagogue — the deadliest ever attack on Jews on American soil according to the Anti-Defamation League — reveal just how noxious the “Jewish puppet master” trope can be, and just how long it can survive.

Similarly, a cartoon by Ben Garrison that showed Soros as a puppetmaster of US government officials along with the Rothschilds, was vilified across the board as an unquestionably antisemitic, and the Left was correctly incensed that the artist was invited to the White House (an invitation later rescinded: )

Other media were unanimous that calling Soros a “puppet-master” is antisemitic.

The trope is quite old.

Now listen to Roger Waters, in a section of the interview on Hamas-linked Shehab News, where he describes Jewish Sheldon Adelson as literally a “puppetmaster” of the US working together with Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli right. (This was not the section transcribed by MEMRI on Sunday, which included other antisemitism from Waters.)

If the accusation of Soros – who all but rejects his Judaism - controlling the world is antisemitic, then by any yardstick the accusation of a proudly Jewish billionaire as being in cahoots with the leaders of the Jewish state as the puppet-master is even more antisemitic. Especially when you combine it with Waters' characterization of Adelson as believing that all non-Jews are subhuman, another Nazi-era antisemitic trope.

Yet there has been no criticism of Waters from the media or from the Jewish Left at this time. Nothing from Jewish Voice for Peace, nothing from IfNotNow, nothing from Mondoweiss, nothing from Electronic Intifada, nothing from J-Street, nothing from Robert Mackey, and nothing yet from the ADL. The people who screamed about the antisemitism of the Soros puppetmaster meme seem quite forgiving of a washed-up rock star calling Adelson the exact same thing.

Any credibility the Left has in pretending it is against antisemitism is shredded. Anyone who condemned the Soros accusations who remains silent about Roger Waters doesn’t give a damn about antisemitism, and only uses the issue to attack their political enemies.

And using Jews as pawns to attack your enemies while not giving a damn about antisemitism on your own side really is antisemitic.

EoZTV: Jonathan Neumann on “Tikkun Olam”

My latest EoZTV interview is with Jonathan Neumann, author of To Heal the World?: How the Jewish Left Corrupts Judaism and Endangers Israel.

I read it a couple of weeks ago and was very impressed. Neumann here gives a good overview of how “Tikkun Olam” became considered a major Jewish precept, when it is nothing of the sort, and in fact is simply another term for “social justice.”

06/21 Links: Why Black Lives Matter protests are a catalyst for anti-Semitism; So, Luxembourg thinks it can give Israel a Torah lesson; Who’s Afraid of Israeli Food?

From Ian:

Why Black Lives Matter protests are a catalyst for anti-Semitism

A few weeks ago, rioting in Los Angeles following the murder of George Floyd saw a number of Jewish shops destroyed, synagogues vandalised with “Free Palestine” grafitti, and a statue of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews being murdered by the Nazis, daubed in anti-semitic slogans.

It goes on. Last week, at an anti-racism rally in Paris inspired by Black Lives Matter, placards and stickers read such jewels as “Israel, laboratory of police violence”, “Who is the terrorist?”, “Palestine to the Palestinians! Boycott Israel!’’, and “Stop collaboration with Israeli State terrorism.” Protesters wore T-shirts reading “Justice for Palestine” and waved Palestinian flags.

Fair enough, you say. Except to go with the slogans, the Place de la République was soon ringing with mass chants of “dirty Jews” – howls that the leader of the French far-Left, member of parliament Jean-Luc Mélenchon, managed to deny were anti-semitic.

Back in America, Ice Cube, the iconic rapper, chose to advance the cause of George Floyd by posting a caricature of Jewish figures with the caption: “All we have to do is stand up [against them] and their little game is over.” The image was nearly identical to one used by Nazis in the 1930s to incite hatred and violence against Jews.

Ice Cube also praised Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan, one of the world’s most rabid anti-semites. All in the name of racial justice, naturally.

One is reminded of the Gilets Jaunes movement of 2019 – another far-Left cause with a mass following (this time for “economic justice”). At one rally in Paris, in February 2019, the Franco-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut was set upon by demonstrators yelling “dirty Zionist’’ and “filthy race” at him.

Anti-semitism became a major feature of the protests. The far Right has traditionally fostered vile racism and anti-semitism, while the Left has always staked its soul on being better, kinder, fairer. But now – as its outer reaches gather mainstream force – it can be hard to tell the difference between them.

After a backlash, the U.N.'s European headquarters here in Geneva has deleted its tweet defending Antifa. https://t.co/ApMd6RW0iC

Meanwhile, the U.N. has yet to defend Churchill, the man who saved the world from fascist tyranny, and co-founded the United Nations. pic.twitter.com/dqd64USBL1
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 21, 2020

You locked up 1 million Muslims in camps & got 50 ignominious U.N. Human Rights Council ambassadors to praise you for it https://t.co/OyBmoFYu9Z https://t.co/ldbPtKd3PE
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 20, 2020

Who’s Afraid of Israeli Food?

n February, the Washington Post published a broadside attack on Israeli food by the Palestinian food writer Reem Kassis. Kassis did not object to the flavors, textures, or aromas of Israeli food but to the very idea that it exists at all. Her piece might be the most visible example of this bizarre food fight targeting Israel. But it’s hardly the first one.

A few years ago, for example, after television food-show host Rachel Ray wrote about her “Israeli nite” dinner of hummus, eggplant, and other Middle Eastern dips, pollster James Zogby responded on Twitter with hashtags of fury: “Damn it @rachaelray. This is cultural #genocide. It’s not #Israeli food.”

Likewise, in 2017, when Conan O’Brien made the mistake of describing shakshuka as “Israeli,” he was accosted on camera by anti-Israel activists who insisted that the eggs-and-tomato dish is really Palestinian. (It isn’t. As Libyan food writer Sara Elmusrati has explained, Sephardic Jews brought the dish from its original home in North Africa to Israel, where it’s been “showcased in a way it has never been in the Maghreb states.”)

Kassis’s piece in the Washington Post uses more measured tones in an attempt to explain the angry reactions to a straightforward phrase. “As it is for many Palestinians, the term ‘Israeli cuisine’ is hard for me to swallow,” she writes.

After being introduced to an Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia that serves Levantine food, she explains, her eyes were opened to the gravity of the problem:

It’s not that I am opposed to the idea or can’t tolerate cultural diversity and fusion. To the contrary, I know full well that our Palestinian cuisine, like every other, is a byproduct of evolution and diffusion. In fact, the concept of national cuisine is a relatively recent construct, appearing in the late 18th and early 19th centuries following the rise of the nation-state.

But cultural diffusion is different from cultural appropriation. Diffusion is the result of people from different cultures living in close quarters and interacting with or learning from one another. Cultural appropriation, on the other hand, relies on exploitation and consequent erasure, followed by the willful denying of those actions. Food, after all, is an expression of history, culture, and tradition. By this token, presenting dishes of Palestinian provenance as “Israeli” not only denies the Palestinian contribution to Israeli cuisine, but it erases our very history and existence.

Israeli food is bad, in other words, because Israelis are bad. Those who talk about, celebrate, and serve the cuisine aim to exploit and erase Palestinians. And to suggest otherwise isn’t just disagreement, it is “willful denial.” The evidence of all this bad faith? Well, Kassis just knows it.

This insane, hate filled rant by former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters proves beyond any doubt his rabid antisemitism.

He was interviewed by the Shehab News Agency, a Hamas-leaning news outlet. But this interview went way beyond Waters’ supporting a terrorist group.

Musician Roger Waters on Hamas-Affiliated News Agency: Crazy Puppet Master Adelson Has Donald Trump’s Tiny Little Pr*ck in His Pocket; Israelis Teach U.S. Police How to Murder Blacks pic.twitter.com/0JUQuwsvhB
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) June 21, 2020

It went way beyond his insane theory that Israel somehow invented the idea of choking a person to death by putting pressure on someone’s neck. (I am not aware of a single Arab killed that way by any Israeli security force, ever.)

It went way beyond his insane assertion that US police import Israeli experts to teach them how to kill black people.

It went way beyond his characterization of Zionism as an “ugly stain” that must be removed.

No, Waters’ characterization of Sheldon Adelson as the “puppet master” behind the US government is what proves his Jew-hatred. This is classic antisemitism. But there is one detail that shows that Waters is a Jew-hater extraordinaire:

Sheldon Adelson believes that only Jews – only Jewish people – are completely human. That they are attached in some way…and that everybody else on Earth is there to serve them.

There aren’t any websites or books that say that Adelson believes this. But there are hundreds that say that Jews believe this, or that the Talmud says this.

This means that Roger Waters, in his spare time, surfs around the most antisemitic websites on Earth and believes what they way about Jews and the Talmud!

So, yes, this is proof positive that Roger Waters is an enthusiastic antisemite who gets his ideas about Jews and Judaism from fellow antisemites.

Architect of Israel-US police shreds “Deadly Exchange” lies

Steven L. Pomerantz, one of the architects of the programs to have US police train with Israeli police, puts to rest the lies by Jewish Voice for Peace and Amnesty International that claim that Israel somehow trains US police to be brutal towards minorities.

The argument falsely posits that counterterrorism trips and conferences organized by American Jewish organizations like the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), where I work, facilitate a “deadly exchange” of worst practices between U.S. and Israeli forces. In recent years, this charge has been promoted by extremist organizations that oppose Israel’s right to exist, and amplified by institutionally anti-Semitic regimes like Iran’s.

He doesn’t mention that Amnesty International is one of the extremist anti-Israel organizations promoting the lie.

What is the truth?

The truth is, JINSA’s Homeland Security Program was launched in the wake of the September 11th attacks in order to address the well-recognized counterterrorism needs of local law enforcement in the U.S….

Despite suggestions to the contrary, there is no field training involved in either the conferences or trips, and no training on holds or arrest mechanics. The exchanges, which are hosted by the Israel National Police, focus on effective counterterrorism techniques.

Participants learn how Israeli law enforcement deters, disrupts, and responds to terrorist attacks. They explore the ideology of suicide bombers and other attackers, ways to de-escalate an ongoing incident, and the intelligence-gathering and -sharing process.

Trip participants have discussed efforts to build trust with minority communities, visited hospital trauma units and crime scenes, and spoken with terrorists serving life sentences for murder. One year, JINSA organized a specialized trip for American bomb squad commanders which focused on topics such as post-blast forensics and the materials used in explosive devices.

As I have documented, more recent trainings have focused on community policing, respecting minorities and the importance of diversity in police forces. The Jewish Voice for Peace report that supposedly documents links between US police brutality and Israel is filled with links that prove the opposite, with police (many of color) praising the program for how it taught them to use force more sparingly.

An example I haven’t mentioned before from a trip in 2018:

Assistant DeKalb Police Chief Sonya Porter headed the delegation. “It was an awesome experience and I’m thankful I got to go,” Porter said of her first visit to the country.

Like she learned from Israel, she said she also would try harder to recruit from other religions that might not be represented well in the police force. “Our diversity is by races,“ Porter said. “We have to have diversity of religions to connect more to the community.”

The delegation visited the newly established administration for services to the Arab Sector, where Maj. Gen. Jamal Hakroosh—the first Arab Muslim major general in the Israel Police—briefed them. They met with Arab cadets in the police academy, who after graduation will become commissioned officers, and saw community policing in action in the northern city of Akko, where police bridges potential and real tensions between various religious groups. The delegation also participated in an emergency drill at Rambam hospital that prepares the hospital for times of massive missile attacks.

Here’s another photo from that trip.

I suppose that the Israel haters think that female black American police officials are liars and really are learning to attack members of their own communities in Israel.

The “Deadly Exchange” lie is a libel,one that takes only a couple of minutes of thought to destroy. But some people are so filled with hate that they will fight against evidence, logic and facts.

World Refugees report indirectly damns UNRWA

Although the UN Refugee Agency and UNRWA are both UN agencies, the annual UNHCR report seems most reluctant to include the fake “Palestine” refugees in its statistics.

For the main statistics, it includes them as a separate category:

The report is sprinkled with footnotes excluding the 5.6 million UNRWA “refugees.”

UNHCR could easily work with UNRWA to create a combined report, but the UNHCR knows that UNRWA’s definitions of refugee are a joke that would cheapen the plight of real refugees if they were included. For example:

Even UNRWA admits that there aren’t anything close to 476,000 Palestinians in Lebanon – the number is closer to one third of that amount, and their registration system is a joke. And the vast majority of Palestinians in Jordan are citizens – people UNHCR would remove from the rolls of refugees and count as a success story. (The same applies to “refugees” who live in the West Bank and Gaza, who live in the areas of British Mandate Palestine.)

The most damning part of the report to UNRWA doesn’t mention UNRWA:

UNHCR tries to resettle refugees. UNRWA doesn’t. UNHCR tries to reduce the number of refugees, UNRWA tries to increase them. UNHCR has rigid requirements for people to remain classified as refugees, UNRWA includes hundreds of thousands whose ancestors weren’t ever refugees to begin with, let alone their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. UNHCR refugees can apply for asylum in most countries as refugees, UNRWA “refugees” cannot – because they aren’t refugees, and everyone knows it.

UNHCR takes refugees seriously, UNRWA uses them as a means to stay in business.