Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, July 10, 2020

07/10 Links Pt1: Jews aren’t indigenous to Israel? According to whom?; Do We Really Have to Read Beinart Again?; Danon: Obama’s Decision to ‘Abandon’ Israel Was Lowest Moment of UN Tenure

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Jews aren’t indigenous to Israel? According to whom?

In this woke version of reality, humanity is divided into two groups: white oppressors and indigenous people of color straining under the yoke of white atrocities. And in delineating this stark division between the bad and the good, Jews must accept that they are among the former and irredeemably white. The only thing for them to do is to admit guilt and to struggle against the systemic racist system into which they assimilated into in the United States.

As The Forward noted in an article about the controversy stirred up by Rabbi Kahn, Israel’s Consul General to New York Dani Dayan, recently noted that both Jews and Palestinian Arabs are indigenous to Israel, and that peace will only happen when the latter finally recognize this fact rather than insisting that Jews have no sovereign rights in any part of the country. By lending support to the idea that Jews aren’t indigenous, Kahn is actually undermining chances of peace in the Middle East rather than promoting it.

The fact that the Jewish people are indigenous to the land of Israel, to which their ties date back thousands of years and were reaffirmed with continuous settlement, as well as prayers throughout the ages, is irrelevant to the woke. So is the fact that the majority of Israeli Jews are not white or European, but descended from people who were forced to flee their homes in the Arab and Muslim worlds after Israel’s creation in numbers that were greater than those Palestinian Arabs who fled Israel during the War of Independence. Yet as far as the rabbi is concerned, Jews who speak of being indigenous are stealing victim status that belongs only to Arabs and other people of color.

Perhaps Rabbi Kahn thinks the semantics here is important because the assertion of indigenous status distracts us from the sufferings of African-Americans or Palestinians. But his scolding of Jews for having the effrontery to claim ownership of this word has implications that go beyond his repellent pedantry and ideological inflexibility.

That’s because telling Jews they are not indigenous to Israel is akin to branding them imperialist colonizers in their ancient homeland. And once you step down that path you aren’t just virtue signaling your concern for the oppressed; you’re also implicitly declaring that Zionism and the existence of the one Jewish state on the planet are illegitimate.

The redefinition of words with plain meanings in order to weaponize them for ideological purposes is key to the Orwellian process by which the woke suppress not only free speech, but the rights of those they consider white oppressors. In effect, what Rabbi Andy is doing when he lectures us about “white Jewishness” and who can be considered indigenous is canceling the entire Jewish people.

The only possible response to such despicable wordplay is to refuse to play by woke rules. There can be no compromise with intersectional canceling. It’s time to make it clear to the self-righteous Rabbi Andys of American Jewish life that we won’t accept their lectures or their politicized language lying down. The alternative is to consent to a denial of Jewish rights whose ultimate purpose is the sort of tragedy that ought to horrify a nice young rabbi a lot more than how to define a word.

Melanie Phillips: Both hero and zero Israel's strategic incoherence

While Israelis are increasingly alarmed by the government’s loss of control over the coronavirus crisis, different events suggest that the country may have pulled off a spectacular advance in the battle against another intractable foe.

Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a succession of mysterious explosions in Iran.

At the end of last month, there was a major explosion in the Khojir missile factory near Tehran and at a power plant in Shiraz, which plunged the city into darkness. There has also been an explosion at a Tehran clinic, and other major fires in power plants and a petrochemical factory.

The most significant event, however, was an explosion and fire last week at Iran’s centrifuge assembly plant in Natanz.

According to the former U.N. nuclear inspector David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington D.C., this destroyed nearly three-quarters of Iran’s main centrifuge assembly hall.

No one has claimed responsibility for these events. But the explosions at Khojir and Natanz required the kind of sophisticated intelligence, coordination and operational skill that suggest the involvement of a foreign power. Many experts assume that, in these at least, Israel was a principal actor.

The two sites were important elements in Iran’s infrastructure of warfare against Israel and the west.

Khojir, which is said to have a network of underground tunnels, is suspected of involvement in the production of ballistic missiles. Intelligence experts agree that the explosion there seemed to be the result of an Israeli cyber-attack. The Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida, however, claimed that an airstrike by an Israeli F-35 stealth jet was involved.

The Natanz centrifuge hall, buried deep under concrete and enmeshed steel roof, was inaugurated in 2018 in order to make the advanced centrifuges needed to make an atomic bomb. Albright writes that it was thought to be Iran’s only clean-room operation set up for the mass
assembly of these centrifuges.

Do We Really Have to Read Beinart Again?

Beinart wrote, “The essence of Zionism is not a Jewish state in the land of Israel; it is a Jewish home in the land of Israel, a thriving Jewish society that both offers Jews refuge and enriches the entire Jewish world.”

He is wrong. For most practicing Zionists — who live here and decide what Zionism is — the essence is indeed a Jewish state. In Beinart’s imaginary world, substituting the Jewish State for a far-fetched idea of a Jewish home is not such a big deal. But it is.

Beinart writes that the urgent need for new ideas is based on the moral call to prevent the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians. He wrote, “Today, Israeli leaders find the status quo tolerable. But when Palestinian violence reveals that it is not, those leaders — having made separation impossible — could inch closer to policies of mass expulsion.”

Maybe. Probably not. We’ve managed a long time and with a lot of violence without resorting to ethnic cleansing. But even if you accept the necessity of Beinart’s warning, there is a much simpler way to prevent a catastrophe. Convince the Palestinians to refrain from the “violence” that could trigger “mass expulsion.”

Another problem is that a one-state solution does not preclude the option of ethnic cleansing. See Yugoslavia as an example.

On the plus side, what Beinart says is largely unimportant. He is not the first to propose a one-state solution, and probably won’t be the last. He will try to pitch his latest gimmick to a new generation of Jews (anyone for a book deal?). He will find some takers among radical American left-wingers. But where he gets it wrong again is that one of the main reasons Israeli Jews want a state is because they don’t wish to be the world’s pawns. Israel is armed to the teeth. It is savvy, tough and resilient. And if Beinart or any of his self-righteous friends want to take our state away, they can come for it. Let’s see how far they get.

Given that we are now in the three week period of mourning for the destruction of the Temples and Jerusalem, I was interested in this Arabic article from Egy4News of “the most beautiful poems about Jerusalem.”

I have not been aware of any Arabic poetry about Jerusalem before 1967, so I wanted to know the content of these “beautiful” poems.

Automatic translation does a poor job with poetry, but some bits and pieces of the poems come through:

.. A war that destroys the breath of the Zionists .. Ink will cause important events .. Horror of earthquakes, a fire of volcanoes…

…My family in all of the land has been separated .. And the children of the apes are the basis of my scourge…

…The blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque is his land .. A land purified with all serenity .. And the prostitute desecrates his blessings .. With oppression, demolition…

…The face of his dome was covered with soot .. The Jews of treachery had woven nets… so the families in Jerusalem feared for their pigeons.

Attacking Jewish human rights in the name of morality

The Israel-haters, a category that we must now add Peter Beinart to, use the argument that the imperative of Palestinian human rights demands a one-state solution with a natural Arab majority and Jewish minority.

The basic problem with the thesis that a one-state solution is the only way to give Palestinians the human rights they deserve is that this same “solution” would ensure that Jews lose the human rights they deserve.

The issue isn’t human rights. Everyone supports human rights. The issue is how to balance competing human rights of two different groups. But the Israel haters don’t want you to think about that problem – they want to emphasize the Palestinian human rights issue and they do everything possible to avoid the obvious fact that Jews would not do well under any Arab majority government. They also avoid the equally obvious fact that Palestinians under “occupation” are in far better shape than Jews would be under Arab rule.

Why is this obvious? Just look at how Christians are doing in the Arab world. They are oppressed and fleeing as fast as they can.

Arab Muslims hate Jews much more than they hate Christians.

Sometimes, though, the one-stater Israel-haters are forced to answer the question about Jewish human rights directly. And their response is simply, yeah, that might be a problem, but we hope it won’t be that bad, and anyway it is a small price to pay for their vision of a world without Israel.

Listen to Ali Abunimah, whose book on a single state inspired Beinart, answer this very question in 2009 at Hampshire College:

You can never have an absolute guarantee about what the future will be like. ... You cannot guarantee that if there was a one-state solution it wouldn't, it would be…the best scenario is if it's more in the direction of South Africa and Northern Ireland than Zimbabwe. But we couldn't rule out, you know, some disastrous situation, like Zimbabwe.

Beinart, when asked that same question, is even less honest than Abuinimah. He didn’t even admit to the possibility of pogroms against Jews as the Arab world has had for centuries:

If there’s another round of violence between these two populations, why does that presage a situation in which they can live peacefully?

The evidence suggests that once people gain their freedom, the appeal of violence goes way down. The Irish Republican Army killed more than 1,700 people in terrorist attacks both in Northern Ireland and in the rest of Britain. That didn’t mean that Catholics in Northern Ireland were incapable of living alongside Protestants. It meant that they needed to live alongside Protestants with equal rights.

If there is violence, it’s a testament to the dynamics of oppression. It doesn’t show that Palestinians and Jews can’t live together in equality. It shows that they can’t live together without equality.

See? if Arabs are attacking Jews, that is proof that the Jews are mistreating Arabs!

Because Arab antisemitism is unthinkable.

Beinart doubles down on the same idea here:

To human rights posers like Beinart, Arabs cannot be expected to act morally when they are “oppressed.” This is exactly what Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been saying for years after every terror attack: it is a “natural reaction” to Israel’s oppression.

To them, Jews can only be moral by voluntarily putting their lives in the hands of those who have made it clear that they want the entire land to be free of Jews.

The hypocrisy gets worse: Beinart and his friends say that the Palestinians not having the right to vote in Israeli elections is part of the reason that Jews don’t deserve their own state. But Lebanese and Iraqi and Egyptian and a couple of hundred thousand Jordanian Palestinians cannot vote in the limited elections in their own countries either! Palestinians not getting full citizenship in Israel is unconscionable, but Palestinians not having the option of citizenship – by law – throughout the Arab world?

These people who care so damn much about Palestinian human rights that the Jewish state must be destroyed are curiously silent about Palestinian human rights in literally every Arab country.

And one definition of antisemitism is treating Israel with double standards.

In the real world, one tries to balance the competing rights of different people. Whether Peter likes it or not, there is only one Jewish state, and eliminating it is far more immoral than maintaining it while trying to minimize any human rights problems that result. I’m sure Israel can do better, and it should. But destroying Israel would destroy the human rights of Jews – and it would degrade the human rights of nearly two million Israeli Arabs as well.

(h/t kweansmom)

“Peace Now” embracing one-stater Beinart

The Americans for Peace Now webpage describes the group this way:

APN is the sister organization of Shalom Achshav, Israel's preeminent peace movement. APN's mission is to educate and persuade the American public and its leadership to support and adopt policies that will lead to comprehensive, durable, Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab peace, based on a two-state solution, guaranteeing both peoples' security, and consistent with U.S. national interests. We also work to ensure Israel's future and the viability of Israel's democracy and Jewish character through education, activism and advocacy in the United States, and by mobilizing American support for Shalom Achshav.

Like J-Street, they say they are Zionist and pro-Israel and support Israel as a Jewish state.

Like J-Street, they are far less pro-Israel than they claim.

Today, they are hosting Peter Beinart, who is on a self-promotional blitz this week to gain support for his vision of the destruction of the Jewish state:

You cannot claim to be pro-Israel while supporting the end of Israel and the likely slaughter of Jews that would follow.

APN justifies this webinar by saying “APN maintains our strong support for a two-state solution. We also believe that open conversation and critical thinking is crucial to growing a vibrant peace movement.”

If that is true, they would have hosted representatives of the Trump administration, to have an open mind about his two-state vision. If they care about open conversation, they would host Jews who live in Judea and Samaria once in a while.

They don’t. But they are eager to promote a one-stater that is officially against everything they claim to stand for.

Amazing how flexible the supposedly loving critics of Israel are in celebrating opinions to their left and slamming opinions to their right.

Apparently some in the Jewish Left have been itching for a reason to abandon even the pretense of supporting Israel as a Jewish state. Peter Beinart has given them the excuse they have been looking for.

07/09 Links Pt2: Is Wokeness Awakening Antisemitism?; Josh Malina Asks Why ‘Cancel Culture’ Ignores Antisemitism; Al Jazeera Violating U.S. Law by Operating as Undisclosed Qatari Agent

From Ian:

Is Wokeness Awakening Antisemitism?

Is the Media A Toothless Watchdog?

When social media outlets are used to disseminate hatred, they enable bad actors to promote their lies. The good new is that Facebook, YouTube , and Twitter have occasionally deleted accounts that violated their policies against the promotion of violence or incitement to hatred.

But all too often they seem to be playing catch up. As Mark Twain said: “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.” That’s the reason that antisemitism cloaked in wokeness is a problem. Society has a long history of bigotry, sexism, racism, discrimination, homophobia, and related ills. Being woke is thus a virtue, since it implies a deep concern about and dedication to social justice. But when known antisemites cynically seize upon this most noble of impulses, the media must act. But how?
Defining Antisemitism: The Time Is Now

According to the Anti-Defamation League, there’s been a significant increase in antisemitic social media posts over the last few months. And the danger of not acknowledging the growth of online antisemitism is that it often doesn’t stay online. That’s why it’s crucial to develop a clear definition of what constitutes anti-Jewish hatred and intolerance.

In recent years, one definition of antisemitism has gained traction. Drawn up by the Berlin-based International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, this definition has been adopted and endorsed by a growing number of governments.

By working towards a consensus definition of antisemitism, the world’s oldest hatred will finally come with a clear label. For years, many people felt that smoking was unhealthy. However, this suspicion only became a widely accepted fact once smoking companies were compelled to clearly label their products, describing the potential consequences of inhaling nicotine.

Going forward, defining antisemitism will empower lawmakers, colleges, professional sports franchises, and social media platforms to devise more effective policies against the dissemination of antisemitism.

If not now, when?

Jewish Actor Josh Malina Asks Why ‘Cancel Culture’ Ignores Antisemitism

Jewish actor and “West Wing” star Josh Malina advocated on Tuesday for the withdrawal of support for public figures who exhibited antisemitic behavior.

“Why’s it so hard to get cancel culture on the line when the problem is antisemitism?” Malina asked on Twitter.

“Cancel culture” calls for the “cancelling” or boycotting of individuals who share controversial opinions or display behavior on social media deemed to be offensive. The “cancelling” results in them being shunned by friends and supporters and turned down in regards to career opportunities.

Malina’s question has already received 2,600 likes. It sparked a conversation on Twitter and even garnered a response from Jewish comedian Elon Gold, who remarked, “Nobody gets cancelled for hating Jews. From Goebbels to [Mel] Gibson.”

Gibson — who has a history of making antisemitic remarks — was recently in the news because Jewish actress Winona Ryder mentioned in an interview that he had called her an “oven dodger,” a clear reference to the crematoria at Nazi death camps during the Holocaust.

Malina’s Twitter post came after a number of recent reports highlighting antisemitic social media posts by well-known figures, including NFL player DeSean Jackson, rapper and entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs, rapper Ice Cube and real estate mogul Mohammad Hadid, among others.

This part in particular is really important: "You're trying to defend something you don't understand is antisemitic, just as people try to defend things that they don't understand are racist against black people."

Yes. And we need more journalists showing this sensitivity.
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 9, 2020

Public Campaign Launched to Remove Three-Hour Antisemitic Speech by Louis Farrakhan From YouTube

A public campaign has been launched to persuade YouTube to remove a video of the notoriously antisemitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s July 4 address, in which he referred to Jews as “Satan” who should have their brains knocked out by the “stone of truth.”

Farrakhan’s three-hour rant, titled “The Criterion,” was streamed live on YouTube and has so far garnered over 850,000 views.

In the speech, Farrakhan called the head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Jonathan Greenblatt, “Satan.”

He said, “Mr. Greenblatt, you are Satan. Those of you that say that you’re Jews, I will not even give you the honor of calling you a Jew. You are not a Jew… you are Satan and it is my job now to pull the cover off of Satan so that every Muslim when he sees Satan, pick up a stone, as we do in Mecca.”

“When you know who Satan is, you don’t have to kill him, [but] the stone of truth, that’s what you throw. We cast truth at falsehood till we knock out its brains,” Farrakhan continued.

He also called Jewish legal scholar Alan Dershowitz “a skillful deceiver” and “Satan masquerading as a lawyer.”

Furthermore, Farrakhan repeated the blood libel that Israel was responsible for police brutality against minorities in the US.

“That’s why you gotta come at us like a coward,” he said of the police. “Like snakes trying to wrap yourself around us so you could give us the treatment that you were taught in Israel. You may, as you gonna stop your police from going to Israel to learn how to kill better. … Your days of killing us without consequence are over.”

Israel’s Consul General in New York Dani Dayan tweeted:

Tomorrow, Jews will start 3 weeks of commemoration of the breach of the walls of their Capital by an Empire, the destruction of the city, the subjugation of their country and the forced exile of its population, their ancestors. Tell me more about not being indigenous.
— Dani Dayan (@AmbDaniDayan) July 9, 2020

A lot of people argue about what “indigenous” means, and even the UN says there is no standard definition. It seems that too often the people defining the term are more interested in the color of the skin of the people claiming indigeneity than the actual circumstances.

But these same people are often the ones who want to downplay the very real Jewish connection to the Land of Israel. They don’t want to hear that Jews pray to have Jerusalem rebuilt three times a day (not just the Passover Seder’s “next year in Jerusalem!”) They don’t want to hear about the undeniable fact that during the 2000 years of Jewish exile, practically no country that hosted the Jews ever considered them to be truly equal citizens. Everyone throughout history knew that their home was in Israel, and if you look at old books the words “Hebrew” and “Israelite” are used as often as the word “Jew,” emphasizing the Jewish nation in exile.

In exile from where? Everyone knows the answer.

Jews have maintained psychological and physical ties to Israel ever since the current diaspora began. They have no other homeland.

And the current three week period where we mourn the destruction of the two Temples is all the proof you need that Jews have only had one real home.

If that isn’t the definition of indigenous, then you are twisting the word specifically to exclude Jews.

Church Wonders How Many Liberal Jews Would Convert If Christ Recast As 'Anti-Zionism' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Sistine fingers Rome, July 9 - Leaders of the world's largest Christian denomination have commissioned a study to determine whether the body's ages-old ambition to convince adherents of the Mosaic faith to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God and as their savior from Original Sin might meet more success with Jesus not in the role of the divine incarnate - a notion anathema to longstanding Hebraic sensibilities - but in a form of proven palatability to prominent, if not large, swaths of progressive Jews: opposition to Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland.

Pope Francis appointed a committee this week to explore the possibilities of rebranding Jesus Christ as anti-Zionism in efforts to proselytize to leftist Jews, Vatican insiders reported Thursday. The commission will focus on the potential effectiveness of such a change in semantics based on the realization that Jews who seek entree to elite cultural circles have always faced the demand that they renounce core aspects of Jewish identity and fidelity - but that over the last two centuries, shifts in Western culture have in turn shifted which core aspects of Jewish identity and fidelity they must renounce.

For more than 1500 years the dominant Christian culture insisted that access to elite circles required Jews to violate fundamental principles of Jewish faith by accepting, for example, the divinity of a human, when core Jewish tenets preclude the corporeality of God; now however, following centuries of decline in the influence of Church power and cultural hegemony, elite cultural circles now demand that Jews renounce allegiance to more secular aspects of Jewish identity and belonging - Jewish nationhood, for example, Jewish indigenous status in the one place Jews have ever had a sovereign home, or any collective right Jews might have to reestablish themselves as an independent political entity. That cultural shift has prompted the senior figures within the Roman Catholic Church to consider adapting their ancient compulsion to "prove" the legitimacy of their replacement theology - whereby Christians are the new Israel and the Jews, by rejecting Christ, must disappear - to suit the more modern sensibilities of anti-Zionism.

"If we can dress up the Christ as anti-Zionism that should appeal to all sorts of progressive Jews," explained Cardinal Pedro Beinardo, who heads the commission. "Some Protestant denominations already invoke Jesus in railing against Israel, which is fine, and in fact the reemergence of Jewish sovereignty poses a serious theological challenge to Christians, who still, by and large, insist the the New Testament renders the Old non-applicable. But we think to succeed, the approach needs to take things a step or two further, because there's been an erosion of the spiritual, as classically conceived, in the West, and we need to roll with that. Political ideology is the new religion, and we better understand that."

07/09 Links Pt1: Understanding the collapse of liberal Zionism; Nothing will happen if sovereignty is applied to 30% of Area C; 3/4 of Natanz Centrifuge Assembly Hall Destroyed

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Understanding the collapse of liberal Zionism

There’s a reason why most Israelis find it difficult to listen patiently to lectures from liberal American Jews. For Israelis, their country is a real place filled with real people and perplexing dilemmas that have no easy solutions. But for all too many American Jews, Israel is a dreamland—a place for intellectual tourism where we can project our own insecurities and anxieties on the Jewish state while expressing our moral superiority over the lesser beings who live there and lack our wisdom.

Which brings us to the problem of Peter Beinart.

Beinart, the former editor of The New Republic and columnist for The Atlantic, sought to carve out a place for himself as the leading liberal critic of Israel with his 2012 book The Crisis of Zionism. The book was as spectacularly ignorant as it was arrogant in its refusal to acknowledge the reality of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

The conceit of the work was that Israelis needed to rise above their fears and recognize that a two-state solution was within easy reach. Anything that contradicted his assumptions—like the nature of Palestinian political culture or the continued rejectionism and obsession with the fantasy of Israel’s destruction—was either rationalized or ignored. Too immersed in their unseemly quest for security and profit, Israelis could only overcome the “crisis” of the title by listening to the wisdom of Beinart, a righteous American pilgrim, whose manifest good intentions should have generated respect and deference from his recalcitrant Israeli pupils.

Much to Beinart’s chagrin, rather than take the advice of a leading American public intellectual to heart, Israelis ignored it. In the eight years since then, Israel has endured more violence and political controversy while the Palestinians have continued to reject peace, whether along the lines laid out by President Barack Obama (whose alleged bona fides as a friend of the Jewish people was discussed at length in his book) or the less generous terms offered by President Donald Trump.

Instead of moving closer to moral and physical collapse as Beinart has been prophesying, Israel has only gotten stronger. Much of the Arab world has tired of Palestinian intransigence and largely abandoned advocacy for their cause, as many now perceive the Israelis as a vital ally in the struggle against Iran, as well as a needed resource in the areas of technology, agriculture and clean water. Peace with the Palestinians is not in sight. But until it becomes possible, the Jews of Israel will hold on and continue to thrive.

Daniel Gordis: End the Jewish State? Let’s try some honesty, first

Israel has had a long and complex history, stained time and again by many moral failings. Israelis have almost always responded by demanding that we be better, not by suggesting that we end the project. Israelis’ frustration with the peace process, our government’s now catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic, our medieval and misogynist, homophobic rabbinate, Israel’s now massive unemployment, the “Price Tag” racists whom the government refuses to punish, the poverty in which Holocaust survivors live, the inequality that Israeli Arabs face daily and much more has not given rise to anything akin to America’s desire to destroy itself.

The unfettered quest for self-immolation, the intellectual thinness of cancel culture, the rage that pulls down statues of Christopher Columbus and advocates abandoning capitalism for socialism without any regard for how Marx’s and Lenin’s theories unfolded in the Soviet Union, in China, in Cuba or elsewhere – all that is a distinctly American response. Israelis, for all their many faults, show little sign of the cultural fatigue, intellectual sloppiness or willed oblivion-to-consequences that are now emblematic of America’s youth. What Beinart has done is to essentially take America’s desire for self-destruction and ask Israelis to adopt it.

No thanks.

We Israelis, like Americans, have had no perfect leaders. David Ben-Gurion was a racist who had utter disdain for darker-skinned Mizrachi Jews and their culture. Menachem Begin got innocent people killed in the King David bombing and decades later, launched the disastrous Lebanon War. Golda Meir famously asked, “What Palestinian people?” Ariel Sharon allowed the massacre at Sabra and Shatila.

Yet we also know that David Ben-Gurion built a Jewish state against all odds and kept it alive when that seemed impossible. Menachem Begin was instrumental in getting the British to leave Palestine, fought against military rule over Israeli Arabs, made peace with Egypt, returned the Sinai and destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor. Golda Meir launched Israel’s long tradition of reaching out to African countries, out of a belief that if we had independence and hope, they should, too. It was Ariel Sharon who got Israel out of Gaza.

That is why we’re not tearing down statues (not that we erect that many, by the way, which is also interesting). We prefer to recognize that life is complicated, that great human beings are invariably also deeply flawed. The same is true of countries. Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is exhausting and depressing and surfaces much of Israel’s ugliness. No one should “prove” their love for Israel by denying that.

But Israel was created not to be perfect, but to restore the Jewish people to its ancestral homeland, and thus to allow the Jewish people and its culture to thrive and flourish as it can nowhere else on earth. Looked at that way, Israel is not only miraculous, it is an extraordinary success. We Israelis can see our terrible mistakes and still take pride in what we’ve accomplished; many of us are horrified by what it still not right here, but we have no interest in Beinart’s suggestion that we therefore commit national suicide.

Peter Beinart believes that because we cannot get the Palestinians to recognize our right to a state, we should knock over our proverbial king and give up the project. We believe that while we wait for the Palestinians to want a future more than they want revenge, we should build this society and the Jewish cultural, intellectual, religious and historical revival it makes possible. My bet is that Israelis will continue to build the society that is the largest, culturally richest, most intellectually dynamic Jewish community anywhere in the world, and that we’ll still be at it long after Peter Beinart has been entirely forgotten.

Petra Marquardt-Bigman: The Increasing Radicalism of Peter Beinart Must Be Confronted

Yet according to Beinart, Israeli Jews should hope that once they give up on their state, Palestinians would feel they have all the “freedom” they ever wanted and violence would “decline.” Beinart is at least honest enough not to promise that violence would stop, and in any case, he could calmly watch from the comfort of his home in the US if this “Isratine” experiment pans out.

Fantasizing about the elimination of the world’s only entirely Jewish state by eventually transforming it into yet another Arab-Muslim majority state in order to please — and hopefully appease — the Palestinians is of course a fairly popular pastime in some “progressive” circles. But while most progressives won’t be eager to acknowledge that they could once count on the support of the late Libyan dictator Qaddafi, Beinart is apparently not particularly picky about the company he keeps.

When he shared on Twitter “some of the writing that has shaped my thinking,” his list included “Ali Abunimah’s book, One Country,” which Beinart praised as “both trenchantly argued and deeply generous in spirit. I wish I could assign it in every Jewish school.”

It apparently doesn’t bother Beinart that — starting during the murderous Al-Aqsa intifada almost two decades ago — Ali Abunimah has been single-mindedly devoted to demonizing Israel. At his Electronic Intifada site, the Jewish state is constantly presented as a monstrous evil that must be eliminated, and that if Islamist terror groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad help to achieve that goal, they should obviously be cheered on.

Needless to say, Abunimah is certain that advocating the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state while whitewashing and promoting Islamist terrorism can never ever be antisemitic, and he thinks he should therefore be entitled to his own truly Orwellian definition of antisemitism. Preposterously enough, Abunimah sees himself as a fighter against antisemitism, because as far as he is concerned, “Zionism is one of the worst forms of antisemitism in existence today” and “supporting Zionism is not atonement for the Holocaust, but its continuation in spirit.”

The fact that Beinart believes that anything Abunimah writes is “deeply generous in spirit” tells us all we need to know about his judgement.

But whether it’s Ali Abunimah or Muammar Qaddafi or Peter Beinart, the people who advocate the elimination of the Jewish state will always insist that their motives are pure and noble. Their cynical disregard for the lives and aspirations of millions of Israeli Jews reveal the hollowness of that claim.

Dude @PeterBeinart just endorsed an antisemitic book by a raging antisemite in Chicago who supports Assad's mass murder of over 500,000 people in Syria and various Palestinian terrorist entities. What a topsy-turvy world! https://t.co/cFkjy7WHPy
— Benjamin Weinthal (@BenWeinthal) July 9, 2020

Cancel culture has a lot in common with antisemitism/anti-Zionism

Actor Josh Malina asks a very reasonable question:

Why’s it so hard to get cancel culture on the line when the problem is antisemitism?
— (((Josh Malina))) (@JoshMalina) July 7, 2020

The likely answer is because cancel culture and antisemitism overlap.

Both the current cancel culture and anti-Zionism is based on a self-righteous, virtue-signaling worldview where the advocates are motivated not by any sense of justice but by appearing to care about justice.

The “Black Lives Matter” – based cancel culture is not led by Black people but by whites who are falling over themselves to tell the world how much they care about Black lives. The anti-Zionists of Jewish Voice for Peace are similarly not led by Palestinians but by Jews who are eager to show how much they care about Palestinians.

Cancel culture’s care for Black lives does not extend to Blacks killed by other Blacks. Anti-Zionists don’t care about Palestinians oppressed by fellow Arabs.

Both cancel culture and anti-Zionists have a one-dimensional view of the world. Real Blacks and real Arabs have much more complex and conciliatory views of whites and Jews, but these two cultures work hard to silence the reality in order to push their virtue-signaling agenda of evil whites and evil Jews.

Cancel cultures look at whites as inherently racist. Anti-Zionists look at Israeli Jews as being racist by definition.

And anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Anti-Zionists are against Jewish national rights; antisemites hate Israel. But beyond that, traditional antisemites almost always couch their hate as positive – they are protecting innocent people, they are warning the world about the dangers of Jews/Israel.

Both are meant to push a political agenda while pretending to be humanitarian.

Both of these ideas are toxic.

So, yes, don’t expect cancel culture to give a damn about Jews. To their members, everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed, and Jews are oppressors because they are Zionist and they are white. The cancel culture members who are both white and Jewish need to distance themselves from both unforgivable crimes, and their penance is to loudly denounce other whites and Jews.

It’s the woke equivalent of blackface.

How would Palestinians act under Peter Beinart’s “one-state” solution?

Peter Beinart has gotten a lot of press this week over his essays in the far-Left Jewish Currents and the increasingly far-Left New York Times opinion pages for his proposal that instead of a two-state solution, the preferred outcome is a Jewish “homeland” in a single state that would presumably be called “Palestine.”

This is of course not a new idea. In 1947, when Arabs faced the possibility that the UN would vote for partitioning the land and creating a Jewish state, they suddenly declared that they were interested in a “bi-national” state with the Jews – predicated on the idea that Jewish immigration must end first, which would ensure an Arab majority in any election.

The more modern version of the idea espoused by many English-speaking Arabs also emphasizes to their Western audiences that a one state solution with equal rights is wonderful, as long as millions of Arabs with Palestinian ancestry are first allowed to flood the area and ensure that there is an Arab majority in any election.

Another version of the plan is Iran’s, where only the Jews whose families were in Palestine before 1917 would be allowed to vote.

The New York Times published a similar op-ed in 2009 for a one-state solution. It’s author was that famous peacemaker, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, where he actually pretended to be proposing this plan for Jews’ security:

A two-state solution will create an unacceptable security threat to Israel. An armed Arab state, presumably in the West Bank, would give Israel less than 10 miles of strategic depth at its narrowest point.

Obviously Jews should live next to Arabs who want to kill them rather than across a border. See how much he cared?

These thinkers’ interest in “democracy” is only to ensure that Jews do not have a state, not out of any love of the democratic system. And this is obviously true, because these same people never advocate for democracies in Jordan or Egypt or the UAE; they don’t even demand that Palestinians have elections themselves. They only want a single election meant to dissolve the Jewish state – what happens after that is unimportant.

But let’s look at that very question – what would happen after that?

We just have to ask Palestinians how they would envision sharing the entire area from the river to the sea with a sizable Jewish population.

One indication of their answer can be in polls over recent years about whether Palestinians are willing to share Jerusalem, which is a key part of most two-state plans, and therefore a good proxy for how they feel about sharing all of the country with Jews.

A clear majority of Palestinians demand not only full control over the formerly Jordanian-occupied portions of Jerusalem, but the entire city. 52% of West Bank Palestinians, and 80% of Gazans, agree with the statement “We should demand Palestinian rule over all of Jerusalem, East and West, rather than agree to share or divide any part of it with Israel.” This means that they would immediately ban all Jews from entering the city the way Jordan did from 1948 to 1967. Say goodbye to the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter – Palestinians aren’t quite willing to share anything.

And there is no reason to think that they would consider Tel Aviv to be any more Jewish than Jerusalem is. Their maps make it very clear how willing they are to share the land, although there is no shortage of clueless Westerners who believe the lie that “Arabs and Jews lived in peace and harmony before Zionism.”

Beinart says that a two-state solution is ideal, but Israel has made that impossible. (Palestinians, as always, have no agency or responsibility in his eyes.) But how do Palestinians feel about a two state solution where they can have a state of their own?

Most Palestinians who say they want a two-state solution do not see that as the end of the conflict, but a stage towards the strategic goal of ending any Jewish rule.

And they see the “right of return,” flooding Israel with millions of Arabs, as the ideal way to destroy the Jewish state.

How would Palestinians act towards a significant Jewish minority of Jews in a single state? Again, one needs only to look at the history of Jews in Arab lands, or even in Palestine. Jews were attacked before Zionism. Immediately after the 1947 partition vote, when Arabs solemnly pledged that they would respect Jews as equals in their binational state, they started slaughtering them.

I made a cartoon last night to illustrate the immorality of an American telling Israelis what is best for them:

An Arab-majority state that would treat Jews as equals is nothing short of a fantasy. The reality would be a return to the daily attacks on Jews that were seen in Palestine before 1948.

Beinart’s plan is based on a theory of a peaceful Palestinian Arab population that has absolutely no objective support. Does he seriously believe that Hamas and Islamic Jihad would be disarmed in this fantasy state?

Peter Beinart is supremely concerned over what he sees as Jewish mistreatment of Palestinians yet shows literally zero concern over the certainty – not probability, but certainty - that his plan will result in massive Arab abuse of Jews.

Black Gentiles (and Black Jews) became famous for Jewish cantorial music in the 1920s (UPDATE)

This is Thomas LaRue Jones.

In the book “New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway,” edited by Edna Nahshon, he is described:

Poster for Thomas La-Rue as "Tevya, the Black Cantor," 1920s. The Yiddish text reads: "Tevye, the Black Cantor"; "The World's Greatest Wonder!"; "The famous cantor who has taken America by storm in compositions by Rosenblatt..." Thomas LaRue, who was not Jewish, began his Yiddish career in the successful musical comedy Yente Telebende, produced in 1917 at Boris Thomashefsky's National Theatre. In 1920. LaRue appeared on the cover of sheet music for "Ferlir nur nit dein hofnung reb Yid" ("Do Not Lose Your Hope, Dear Jew"), by Isidor Lash and Sholom Secunda, as "Thomas LaRue Jones,” the song's "exclusive interpreter." It must be around this time that he began to perform cantorial music wearing ceremonial garb. Throughout the 1920s and '30s, LaRue performed across America, and appeared on radio programs, where he was listed as "the colored cantor." The theatrical novelty of a gentile black singer performing cantorial music must be seen within the context of the synergy between the Yiddish stage and synagogue music. It also reflects the show-business star status enjoyed by America's great cantors, who were also recording artists and offered cantorial concerts in secular venues.

Henry Saponzik wrote a most interesting article this week about other black cantors from the 1920s, some of whom considered themselves Jewish and some not. (His Part 2 will be about LaRue Jones.)

Willie “The Lion” Smith had a Jewish father and called himself Der Yiddisher Khazn.

Mendel the Black Cantor was a non-Jew who became an expert in Yiddish singing with a perfect accent. As a Yiddish newspaper wrote at the time, “He sings with a real Yiddish turn, with a real Yiddish moan and sigh. The old time Jewish trope is there and really Jewish....Make no mistake, until now we've only had a Jewish black — Al Jolson — a cantor's son who makes believe he is Black. But here is a Black man who is a cantor who calls himself "Mendel the Black Cantor."

Finally, there was Dovid, di Kalskrite Ha'Cohen der Falash - Dovid, the calligrapher Kohen from Ethiopia.” Dovid HaKohen was Jewish and claimed to know 29 languages.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

UPDATE: A recording of Thomas LaRue was found and uploaded to YouTube. Lyrics in Yiddish and English as well as a link to the "B" side here.

Interesting Times (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

It’s been an interesting week for Israelis, mostly in the bad sense of the word.
The news about the application of civilian law (not “annexation”) to parts of Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley is that there is no news. Whatever Netanyahu is planning, if anything, is a secret. Unlike many “secrets” in this country (e.g., the contents of police investigations of Netanyahu), there are no leaks. Naturally, the European Union, the American Reform Movement, the Palestinian Authority, and others continue to react to what hasn’t happened in ways ranging from alarm to death threats. Meanwhile, nothing is still nothing.

A somewhat bright (and loud) spot is a series of explosions and fires in Iran, almost one a day, some in locations critical to its nuclear and missile programs. Did Israel have anything to do with them? Who knows? There are highly speculative reports from various sources that mention everything from cyberattacks, to local regime opponents, to F-35s. Maybe the US is doing it? Regardless, it’s wonderful to wake up to reports of advanced centrifuges wrecked and missile factories burning.

Also loud but not so wonderful have been the rocket attacks on Israel’s south from the Gaza strip. Nobody was hurt, and the IDF bombed underground rocket launchers belonging to Hamas in retaliation. It could be that Iran-linked factions in the strip were responsible, in retaliation for what Israel did or didn’t do in Iran, or perhaps for a recent IDF strike on a weapons convoy in Syria. The “War Between the Wars” continues with little letup. In fact, right now (Wednesday morning) I’m hearing military aircraft. Training or operational? Yes.

In the “I can’t believe she’s still here” department, Australian sex criminal Malka Leifer, who escaped to Israel in 2008, has now appealed to the Supreme Court to delay her extradition yet again. Her extended saga of court hearings and political interference has caused great embarrassment to Israel and pain to her victims in Australia. When a district court judge recently ruled that she was mentally fit to be extradited, we thought we’d finally seen the last of her. Not yet.

The biggest (and worst) news is the explosive growth of the second wave of Coronavirus infections. Yesterday there were 1,473 new cases, by far the greatest number since the start of the epidemic. New deaths and serious cases are up. And the percentage of positive results from the tests being performed is rising. There are outbreaks in nursing homes and a mental hospital.
Yesterday, the Director of Public Health in the Ministry of Health, Prof. Sigal Sadetzki, resigned. In her letter of resignation, she sharply criticized the government for creating layers of bureaucracy that made a quick response to changing conditions impossible, and for making decisions based on political considerations rather than professional ones. She was especially critical of the way the public schools were reopened after the first wave, in many cases ignoring guidelines for separating students and teachers into small groups, and almost all at once instead of more gradually as her ministry had recommended. She also noted that the government has adopted guidelines for the number of people at weddings and other events that far exceed the ministry’s recommendations. With the new government, we got a new Health Minister, and a new Director-General of the Ministry (Sadetzki’s boss). They are not up to speed yet, and it shows.

Another example of politicization: MK Moshe Gafni of the Haredi United Torah Judaism party threatened to withdraw his party from the coalition if yeshivot – which have experienced a wave of Corona cases – were closed, as the Health Ministry and National Security Council had advised. The yeshivot stayed open, Gafni’s party stayed in the government – and Sadetzki quit.
Naftali Bennett, the former Defense Minister (whose party, Yamina, now sits in the opposition) established his own private “civil corona cabinet” which has already made several very sensible suggestions. Unfortunately, some years ago when he was Netanyahu’s Chief of Staff, he reportedly told Sara Netanyahu that “I work for your husband, not for you.” Netanyahu, following his wife’s instructions, has carried on a vendetta against him ever since, and does his best to prevent Bennett from having influence or getting credit for anything.

Sadetzki’s complaints about the government are on target, but her own ministry is also guilty. The Health Ministry was charged with managing the epidemiological part of the Corona response – researching the people and places with which confirmed patients had contact, tracking down and quarantining those who have been exposed. They couldn’t keep up, and so breaking the chains of infection has been impossible. The Ministry claimed that this work can only be done by qualified public health nurses, and there aren’t enough of them. Bennett suggested that trained and supervised students could do much of this work, and finally they are starting to do this. I am reminded of how Israel won its War of Independence with soldiers that had only months ago been released from internment camps, and before that had been in Nazi concentration camps.
El Al, Israel’s flag airline was privatized in 2003. Known for high prices, excellent security and safety, indifferent service, and very high labor costs, it suffered a massive financial blow as a result of the epidemic. Now it will be bailed out by the government, which will probably result in its re-nationalization. There is simply no alternative, because Israel cannot depend on foreign airlines for its transportation lifeline to the rest of the world.

In short, the economic situation of most Israelis can be described as rotten. Official unemployment numbers after the beginning of the second wave of the epidemic aren’t available yet, but some analysts say it is probably close to 10% now. In January, it was only 3.6%. The restaurant and events (weddings, etc.) sectors are crushed, all retail is suffering, and tourism is close to zero. The increasing Corona numbers imply that things are not going to improve any time soon. Government programs to compensate those without income have been slow in starting and have many gaps. Workers in performing arts have been holding demonstrations and blocking traffic to protest. Even where businesses are operating, customers are scarce – they are worried about exposure to the virus or they just don’t have extra money.

Last week I said that I hoped the overconfidence acquired by our success in dealing with the first wave of Corona would be replaced by intelligence. I don’t see that happening yet. On the other hand, someone is doing a great job blowing up stuff in Iran and Syria.

07/08 Links Pt2: Don’t erase Jesus’s Jewish identity; The Evil of Louis Farrakhan vs. the Morality of Frederick Douglass; How much anti-Semitism does it take to cancel an NFL star?

From Ian:

Since we’re debating labels, stop calling it anti-Semitism. It’s Jew hatred.

Should we capitalize the “b” in Black? Hundreds of publications across the country, including bellwethers like The New York Times and Associated Press, have adjusted their style guides, arguing that capital-B Black reflects a common identity and heritage.

It’s time for a similarly introspective debate about the language we use to describe discrimination against Jews.

Most leading authorities and publications use “anti-Semitism.” I prefer “antisemitism,” the spelling used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. But this debate obscures the core issue: Whether spelled anti-Semitism or antisemitism, we should retire the term entirely and begin calling it what it really is: Jew hatred.

Consider the history of the word. While the phenomenon of Jew hatred is inscribed in ancient texts, the term “anti-Semitism” is actually of relatively recent vintage, about as old as the telephone or the lightbulb. The German journalist Wilhelm Marr coined the term “anti-Semitism” in 1879 to give an air of modernity to long-embraced animosity toward the Jewish people.

Earlier Germans were blunter: They called it “Judenhaas,” literally Jew-hatred. Wilhelm, himself a deeply anti-Jewish political agitator, sought a pseudo-scientific and therefore more palatable word. He knew the term “Semitic” had historically referred to a family of languages that originated in the Middle East. So he refashioned the word to mean prejudice against Jews alone.

In his 1880 bestselling propagandist pamphlet, “The Way to Victory of the Germanic Spirit over the Jewish Spirit,” Wilhelm freely used the German term “antisemitismus.” And in the same year, Wilhelm founded the Antisemitenliga, the League of Antisemites, the first organization committed to combating the alleged Jewish takeover of Germany and German culture.

In other words, the term “anti-Semitism” was coined not to marginalize Jew hatred but to mainstream it.

Don’t erase Jesus’s Jewish identity

It was in this spirit, I think, that the Archbishop of York said, ‘Jesus was a black man, and he was born into a persecuted group in an occupied country.’ The trouble is, it isn’t true. Jesus wasn’t a black man. He wasn’t a northern European either. He was a Jew. A Jew from the Middle East. And that is a scandal. The ‘Scandal of Particularity’, as it is called.

It is a scandal that Jesus was born at a particular time in a particular place among a particular people as a particular sex. It is far easier to believe in a God who never gets tied down by human specifics. If God is nothing, God can be anything: God can be white, God can be black, God can be British (or German or French) and God can cheer us on against our enemies. God can be trans, or straight, or gay.

But when you rip divinity out of its comfortable atemporality and give it – give him – a name (something God stoically refused to tell Moses on Mount Sinai), a family, an education, a station in life, a group of friends, and, of course, a political world with which he interacted… suddenly he cannot be all things to all men.

At its best, art that puts Christ in a different context takes us out of our reality and put us into his scene; we become actors in his drama. At its worst, we end up ripping Christ from his reality and making him an actor in our drama – national, racial, or personal. The gap between good art and bad art is a chasm that is almost as deep as that between good theology and bad theology – and takes us to the same place.

The best art, like the best theology, takes the particular and makes it universal. We should be able to see ourselves (whoever we are) as Thomas putting his finger into the side of Christ, or as Matthew being called from his counting house, or as one of the soldiers pushing the crown of thorns onto Christ’s bleeding head.

The worst, however, cancels historical fact and replaces it with whichever passing particularity suits your narrative at the time. It leaves us without an historical Christ in whom we can (or can’t) believe on his own terms, and gives us an ever-flexible puppet of our own creation – in which it isn’t worth believing whatever the terms. Having removed the Jewish identity of their Saviour, it’s unsurprising that so many Christians are indifferent to that of their Jewish neighbours. Having abandoned the Middle East, you can see why the plight of their Christians can no longer interest us.

Now is not the time to erase the Middle Eastern Jew from the Christian story.

A Textbook Case of Discrimination as Palestinian Authority Schools Edit out Christians — and Jews

Seventy-six percent of Palestinian Christians gave the Palestinian Authority (PA) failing marks for how schools teach the history of Christians, according to a recent survey commissioned by The Philos Project.

“Palestine has a long, rich history of Palestinian Christians,” said Khalil Sayegh, a Christian from Gaza and Philos Advocacy Fellow. “The Palestinian textbooks and curriculum, however, just choose to deny all of that.”

Sayegh shared his insights during a June 17 online discussion with Robert Nicholson, executive director of The Philos Project, and Dr. Khalil Shikaki of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), who conducted the survey.

Christians are a dwindling minority, accounting for a mere 1 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the comprehensive survey examines challenges this religious minority faces, including Israeli settlements and the PA educational system. The survey has a sample size of 995 with a margin of error of +/- 3 percent.

“The history that we learn [in school] starts with the Islamic conquest of the land,” Sayegh said. “Anything before will focus on the pre-Israelite era. I understand that. It’s trying to deny the narrative of the Torah and biblical history because this, to a certain extent, is used to justify the existence of Israel. However, this leads to Palestinian Christians looking like foreigners.”

Crusader, infidel, and foreigner are all epithets Sayegh experienced in grade school. And the survey revealed he was not the only Christian in the Palestinian Territories who had the same experience. Twenty-seven percent said that they have been exposed to racist curses or epithets, and 43 percent said that they feel most Muslims do not want them in the land.

Taught by his secular-minded father that Christians have little that distinguishes them from Muslims, Sayegh learned in school that they do. One teacher warned him of hellfire if he did not convert to Islam. While only 23 percent of those surveyed admitted to being asked to convert to Islam, 70 percent said they had at one time heard a Muslim state that Christians will go to hellfire.

Bloggers, compared to journalists, can say more about antisemitism. That’s because the two disciplines—blogging and journalism—are different. In journalism, one has to adhere to journalistic standards and avoid bias. But the blogosphere offers possibilities beyond those standards.

In a blog I can say what I like—things you just can’t say in a straight news piece. As a blogger I write the things I think my readers should know—things that may not be politically correct. My responsibility as a blogger lies only in remaining faithful to my standards and sensibilities and those of my host. The reader’s responsibility, on the other hand, lies in accepting or rejecting my words, or skipping past them altogether.

This was the basis for The Comprehensive List of Antisemitic Celebrities. The freedom of being able to say what a journalist cannot. As a blogger, I don’t have to pussy-foot around a topic and stay within narrow journalistic confines. I can say more about a subject, more about antisemitism. I can say what I think. I can go out on a limb and say, “This too, is antisemitism.”

A List Was Born

I had wished for a reference like my list for a long time and when I mentioned it to others, they said that they too, would like to have such a list. The idea percolated for at least a couple of years. I was afraid that it would be a herculean task; that making such a list would be biting off more than I could chew.

But a couple of weeks ago, I decided to research the topic and see where it went. I started with the most recent news piece, the now-infamous Chelsea Handler Instagram post of Farrakhan speaking about racism that so many of her celebrity buddies liked. The Instagram post is gone, and Handler has apologized.

A journalist would have reported only the facts of the incident, without labeling the behavior of Handler and the others. But a blogger is allowed to express an opinion. And in my opinion, Handler, and all the meek little celebrities who liked her post, aligned themselves with a known antisemite. As supposedly “woke” people, I deemed it appropriate to include their names in my list.

Adhering To IHRA

This brings me to CAMERA-UK and Adam Levick’s Editors’ Note On Cancel Culture And Misuse Of The Term “Antisemitism.” The piece speaks of the importance of journalists adhering to journalistic standards, and in particular, adhering to the IHRA working definition of antisemitism when reporting on any possible expression of antisemitism. I agree.

Levick says we should be careful about what we label antisemitism. That we shouldn’t throw slings and arrows at people and media outlets, but at their behavior. Because we don’t want to mimic the current cancel culture zeitgeist in which a misbehaving celebrity loses his/her job and is shunned within both professional and personal spheres based on spurious charges and slander.

IHRA Is Subjective

It makes sense. But as a blogger, and possibly even as a journalist, it’s my right to say that the IHRA definition is subject to interpretation. This is perhaps why IHRA saw fit to follow the definition with a list of examples covered by the definition. The examples are prefaced by this introductory text (emphasis mine):

“Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:”

In other words, the contemporary examples of antisemitism listed on IHRA’s own page are not comprehensive, not final. The page suggests that we may have to always be watching things to see if what we see is or isn’t antisemitism according to the IHRA definition. And that leaves the process in the public’s hands, to some degree. Which makes the process of determining what does and doesn’t fit IHRA, at least somewhat subjective.

Strictest Sense

Now, as a journalist, I would have to interpret behavior as antisemitic only according to the strictest, most narrow sense of the IHRA definition. I would have to give benefit of the doubt and try to think if there’s something in the behavior that I can use as an out, a way to say “This is not necessarily antisemitic,” before casting aspersions.

And as a media consumer, I wouldn’t want it any other way. Don’t interpret my news. Let me read the facts and decide on my own.

But as a blogger, I can go broader. I can go all Potter Stewart and say I know antisemitism when I see it. And my readers expect that of me, as long as I make my case. I can say “This is what happened. I think it fits the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Here’s why.”

As long as I’m using the IHRA definition as my guide, I’m within my rights to expand on the examples given on the IHRA page, to interpret behavior according to my understanding of the IHRA definition. Which is why, as a blogger, I can say more about antisemitism.

Labeling Behavior, Not People

In terms of pointing out antisemitic behavior, rather than naming and shaming, I see Levick’s point. It’s Parenting 101. You don’t label the kid. You say the behavior is bad. You don’t say, “Bad boy!” but “It is bad to throw your food on the floor.”

But I think this misses the point of my list. “The Comprehensive List of Antisemitic Celebrities” is not meant to name and shame celebrities, but to offer information to the reader. It’s my way of saying, “Here’s something you may want to know about. If this is interesting or useful, fine. If not, next week I’m writing about ~~squirrels~~ sovereignty.”

In cancel culture, a call to action goes out. Fire him/her. Boycott this/that. Protest. Loot a store. But there was no call to action in the “comprehensive list.” I didn’t tell the reader what to do with the information or whether to do anything at all. That is the reader’s own business. Which is very different than the #metoo hashtag campaigns or the aggressive tactics of, for instance, BDS or BLM.

The fact is, the “Comprehensive List” includes no instructions on how my readers should relate to the information it contains. I didn’t suggest a boycott of Handler, Aniston, Portman, or Silverman. I suggested no action at all. I didn’t even mention how I personally intend to use this information, if at all. It’s just something to know.

Follow Your Conscience

A person’s private behavior is their own matter. When I found out Alice Walker was an antisemite, for instance, I decided never to give her royalties, again. That I would not watch “The Color Purple” or read the book. But I never suggested to anyone that they should follow suit.

The same is true of how I see a certain unnamed media outlet. Once I decide a particular outlet is anti-Israel, I don’t write for them. I don’t read their articles, but always look for an alternative source for the information. But that doesn’t mean others must do the same. My advice? Follow your conscience.

Blogging is da bomb. I can say that because I have done lots of writing in my time. All kinds of writing. Straight news pieces, blogs, marketing content, op-eds, classroom resources, and more. But I am content in my spare time to blog. Because only in a blog can I share the truth that is in my heart.

It’s Something—Take Note!

It’s where I can go beyond the strictest, most narrow sense of a definition to say: “There’s something here, something a journalist might not want to touch. But it’s something, so take note!”

That is the freedom that comes with being a blogger. I can say what a journalist cannot. But what you do with the information is your own business.

Believe it. Don’t believe it. Agree or disagree.

It's completely up to you.

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Ma’an reports:

Israeli occupation forces cut the electricity to 13 villages, in addition to eight Palestinian communities in the Jenin Governorate for a period of three hours, threatening to escalate the cutting of electricity, if these municipalities do not deal with the [Israeli] "Civil Administration" directly.

The Chairman of the Electricity Authority Yabad, Engineer Muhammad Adnan Abu Bakr, said: "The Israeli occupation forces cut off the electricity for three hours today in a warning signal, knowing that the Yabad Electricity Authority, which was established in 2012, is supplying 13 villages in addition to eight Palestinian communities in Jenin Governorate. And its population is more than 55,000Palestinian citizens. "

Abu Bakr added, “We paid the last three months of bills, which amounted to more than 2,400,000 shekels, to the Palestinian Ministry of Finance duly, because they cut off security coordination with the occupation, it seems that the money did not transfer and the Israeli government did not make a monthly clearance and deducted the amounts from the authority.”

Abu Bakr added, "The officers of the Israeli Civil Administration tried to communicate with the councils and municipalities in Jenin, to deal directly with them, but everyone refused to communicate and informed the occupation officers that the only address is Palestinian legitimacy and the Palestinian National Authority.”

Who needs electricity when you have a bizarre sense of pride that prioritizes your principles of not dealing with Jews above everything else?