Sunday, July 19, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
Regavim is the organization that works to ensure that laws are upheld in land use of Judea and Samaria as well as the rest of Israel. Naomi Linder Kahn spoke about how the PA has been forcing Bedouin to illegally move to ramshackle buildings with no infrastructure to steal land in Area C of Judea and Samaria – and how the EU funds this.
Check it out!
To advance the cause of Black-Jewish relations today, the great challenge is for voices of compassion and mutual respect to rise above the prevailing din of acrimony, misunderstanding and distrust. Such voices should begin with a greater understanding of both Jews' and Blacks' complex, often painful histories -- and how the past has shaped each group's collective identity.
And they would also do well to recall an element of shared history that still offers inspiration, when many Jews and Blacks stood shoulder-to-shoulder — and in some cases gave their lives together — in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. When Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched next to Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama, or Joe Rauh, Arnold Aronson and Marvin Caplan lobbied behind the scenes to help pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, their politics were defined by a persistent experience of Jewish vulnerability. At the same time, they appreciated that their own sense of greater security made it possible to advocate for the rights of others.
Likewise, Jews sometimes saw their own story as charting a path that Blacks were now following. When 19 Conservative rabbis flew to Birmingham in 1963 during a series of violent civil rights protests, they taught Hebrew songs in Black churches — with one declaring, "Our people are your people." Indeed, in this moment, many Blacks and Jews found their commonalities more notable than their differences.
Today that sense of commonality must be renewed. If there are Jews who have found it hard to appreciate the distinctive experiences and pain of Blacks and to join their struggles on the front lines, the reverse is also true for segments of the Black community.
Without wishing to compare the challenges of our daily lives to those of African Americans, Jews need their Black fellow citizens, and particularly supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, to be willing to listen as well to the experiences and community narratives of Jews. By the same token, Blacks have a right to expect more Jews to get off the sidelines and lean into both their own distinctive history and vulnerability on the one hand, and their relative privilege on the other, to become stalwarts once again in the fight for racial justice.
Sec. Mike Pompeo: "Anti-Zionism is indeed anti-Semitism. Period." pic.twitter.com/SDrW0RSPzF
— The Hill (@thehill) July 19, 2020
I was smitten almost instantly with Israel for not emulating the aspects of the United States that made me want to abscond in the first place. Though America too had been built and continued to be cultivated by heroes, its radicals were gnawing away at its fabric.
Today’s “cancel culture” didn’t happen overnight; it’s been in the making for a long time. That its current manifestation seemed to erupt like a volcano on May 25 — when African-American George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer — is incidental. The movement behind it was lying in wait for the right moment to unleash the lava.
Unfortunately, Israel’s uncanny ability to progress in every field at lightning speed means that it is not exempt from the kind of cultural revolution taking place across the ocean. Campuses across the Jewish state are filled with radical professors accusing it of crimes against humanity, while art exhibits, plays, and films portray the Israel Defense Forces as villainous. If not for constant genuine threats from external enemies armed with actual weapons, the nation would have been free to replicate — and perhaps even surpass — American self-destruction.
I spent this Fourth of July in New York, holed up in coronavirus isolation with my parents, observing the once-vibrant metropolis revert to the dangerous and dirty hellhole of my childhood, and reading about similar filth and violence in Chicago, the city where I voted in my first election.
Over the decades, I have been asked whether I love living in Israel. My answer is that it’s no longer a question; it’s simply my life. On this particular anniversary of my aliyah, I would amend that reply to say that if I hadn’t moved to Israel when I did, I would be doing it now.
Sunday, July 19, 2020Elder of ZiyonSeth Frantzman put together a great map of all the mysterious explosions and fires in Iran in recent weeks:
It sure doesn’t look like coincidence!
But some of the “experts” being quoted about these are as clueless as everyone else. Business Insider has a perfect example of building a thesis around literally nothing:
Israel is involved in an extended campaign to pressure or damage Iran before President Donald Trump can be voted out of office in the November election, a former Israeli defense official and a current European Union intelligence official told Insider.
The attacks appear to be part of a campaign of "maximum pressure, minimal strategy," said the EU intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they cannot be named discussing active intelligence matters. Their identity is known to Insider.
The [EU] source said Iran could be considering a rash response after exhibiting relative patience in the wake of the January assassination of top commander Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike.
"It's one thing to ask hard-liners to take the long view on an incident like Soleimani in light of the worldwide COVID crisis and a host of other factors," the official told Insider, referring to the shift in global attention to the coronavirus pandemic. "It's another thing to conduct a rapid series of operations without a strategy, and I fear the Israeli plan here is to provoke an Iranian response that can turn into a military escalation while Trump remains in office."
With a broad belief among America's allies that Trump is unlikely to win reelection, Israel's apparent shift in tactics toward high-pressure "kinetic" operations seem to reflect a belief that under a Biden administration, there would be a move to save the 2015 nuclear deal that had been scuttled by Trump.
"There would be a lot less appetite for adventures and secret missions to blow up nuclear facilities under a Biden administration," said the EU official.
it doesn’t take much parsing to see that this EU official knows absolutely nothing. He is guessing that Israel is behind most of these, he is guessing that Israel has no strategy, he is guessing that the US elections are the catalyst for these events, he “fears” that Israel wants to provoke a response. This is simply anti-Israel bias pretending to be analysis.
Like this EU official, I have no idea how many of these (if any!) are the work of Israel. Iran does have other enemies and plenty of Iranians would happily sabotage their government installations with minimal help from outsiders.
Assuming that Israel is responsible for some of these, the real question is: How is this being done?
Cyber-warfare can do some kinetic damage as we saw from Stuxnet. But to cause things to explode is a whole different ballgame, one that requires computer control over hardware that can be exploited to cause intense heat. Most computer-controlled manufacturing would have safeguards in place, even if the machines could physically be made to overheat to such an extent.
This points to sabotage. Which means that insiders are doing some of this. The psychological impact on Iran must be huge, because it means they cannot trust their own workers – especially around their nuclear research.
Some of the fires are probably accidental, but they add to Iran’s paranoia.
I would like to believe the Israel’s latest spy satellite, launched July 5, has some sort of directed energy weapon that can be used from space with pinpoint precision. As far as I can tell, this is still science fiction: while these are successful directed energy weapons they require an enormous amount of energy to run and the solar energy used on the satellite seems unlikely to be able to generate that.
But who knows? Israel isn’t talking and the “experts” aren’t experts.
Sunday, July 19, 2020Elder of Ziyon
Sunday, July 19, 2020Elder of Ziyon
Peter Beinart
Globally, the Sino-Iran pact will compel new strategic alignments. Europe is likely to split around the choice between the US and China. Some European governments will choose to align themselves with Iran and China. Others will prefer to remain allies of the US.'You will blame Israel but...': Nikki Haley questions UN silence over Uighur genocide by Communist China
With its weak and sputtering economy now largely integrated into the Chinese market, at least in the short-term, Russia will continue to stand on China's side while winking at the US. Things could change though, as time passes.
China's decision to initiate a direct confrontation with the US over Iran was a gamble. It wasn't a crazy move, given China's growing economic and technological power. But betting against America is far from a safe bet. The ultimate outcome of China's Iran gambit Iran will be determined in large part by the shape of the American and Chinese economies in the coming months and years as they emerge from the coronavirus pandemic. And as things now stand, the US is well-positioned to emerge from the pandemic in a sounder economic position than China.
Corporations large and small from countries across the globe are either considering or actively working to relocate their production lines out of China. One of the Trump administration's key efforts today is securing US and allied supply chains from China by moving as many factories as possible either to the US itself or to allied states. Japan's Sony and South Korea's Samsung are both reportedly planning to move their manufacturing bases from China to Vietnam.
The impact of these moves on China's economic growth prospects and global influence are likely to be profound. As things stand, China's only ally in its neighborhood is its client state North Korea.
India, which is now in a border conflict with China, has already taken steps to limit China's technological penetration of its territory. Indian strategists both inside and outside government are taking a hard look at their military dependence on Russian platforms in light of Russia's growing economic dependence on China. The US has not hidden its interest in developing a strategic alliance with India and replacing Russia as India's main supplier of air defense and other platforms. Israel, which is already a major arms supplier and ally to India, could play a positive role in advancing that goal.
How the Arab states respond to China's decision to stand with Iran will be determined both by the economic power balance between China and America and by the status of Iran's nuclear program. If Iran achieves nuclear capability, the Arabs will feel compelled to view China as their shield against Iran. If Iran's nuclear program is dramatically diminished, the Arabs are likely to feel more secure turning their backs on Beijing, siding with the US and strengthening their ties with Israel.
For decades, US warnings notwithstanding, Israel perceived China as a neutral power and a highly attractive market. Unlike the Europeans, the Chinese never tried to use their economic ties with Israel to coerce Israel into making concessions to the Palestinians. The Chinese didn't work with radical Israel fringe groups to subvert government and military decisions. They just seemed interested in economic ties for their own sake.
Now that China has chosen to stand with Iran, Israel must recognize the implications and act accordingly.
Nikki Haley questioned the silence of the United Nations over Uighur genocide by China saying the world would be up in arms if this were any other country but China.From 2008
Adding that while Israel is blamed frequently over Palestine, the former United States Ambassador to the UN said when its China then silence is maintained over its actions questioning “Where is the UN now?”
Haley gave this statement while responding to a tweet by international human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky who shared a video in which Uighurs are blindfolded, shackled and herded on trains for concentration camps dubbed as “re-education camps”.
If this were any other country but China, the world would be up in arms. Where is the UN now? You will blame Israel 10x over but when it’s China....silence. https://t.co/yDmTKS4Nsa
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) July 17, 2020
Where is the outrage?
This is just jarring! Where is the outrage? WHERE?, tweeted Arsen.
Meanwhile, the Uighurs and other Muslim communities in China have asked the UN and other international organisations to apply pressure on China and investigate the acts of genocide perpetrated against the minority community.
A report titled “Genocide in East Turkistan” holds China responsible and says that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government continues its oppression and persecution of Uighur Turks and other Muslim communities for its own political and economic interests.
The report has said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) systematically continues to pressure and torture Uighurs forcing them to assimilate by destroying their culture
Gordis concludes that "many of us are horrified by what is 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."Yishai Fleisher: A Jewish State Beats Peter Beinart's Bi-Nationalism
So far, Palestinian rulers in Gaza and the West Bank have not weighed in. On one hand, it must give them comfort to see an American on the left declare himself a post-Zionist in the pages of an influential newspaper. On the other hand, were Palestinian leaders interested in developing support for a bi-national state of "Israel-Palestine," there are steps they could take to demonstrate its feasibility.
For example, they could support "normalization," meaning increasing Palestinian-Israeli dialogue and cooperation. But the Palestinian Authority (not to mention Hamas) vehemently opposes normalization – "tatbia," in Arabic. Ordinary Palestinians have lost their jobs for inviting Israelis to join them for holidays, celebrations, or even a cup of coffee. Palestinians engaging in commercial relations with Israelis risk arrest.
The PA also could also adopt a more benign view of Jewish "settlements" in the West Bank. They could say: "Just as there are two million Arab Israelis, so we expect there to be Jews living in the West Bank. We can negotiate their status." Instead, of course, the PA insists that any and all lands claimed by Palestinians must be "cleansed" of Jews.
A final point: There's no need to theorize about whether it's possible, at this stage in history, for a Jewish minority to enjoy fundamental rights in a Muslim-majority country. Jews once lived in Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon – throughout the broader Middle East. In some lands, they suffered terrible persecution. In others, they were merely treated as second-class citizens. In the aftermath of World War II, almost all were forced to flee. Many went to Israel where they and their descendants now constitute a majority of Israeli Jews.
Today, 57 states belong to the Organizations of Islamic Cooperation. Jews no longer live in most of them, but it's relevant to ask: In how many of those countries are other ethnic and religious minorities guaranteed human and civil rights?
Beinart knows the answer. He knows how much blood has been shed in Syria and Yemen's civil wars. But as Ferguson recognized a decade ago, nothing, not even the prospect of his one-state solution turning into a final solution could inhibit his insouciant self-promotion.
First, it might be useful to separate the concept of "liberty" from "democracy." Liberty refers to substantive civil rights and freedoms, while democracy is a form of electing political leadership. In the West, the two usually go together, which is why they are often conflated. But in America, for example, liberty and civil rights can exist even for those without voting rights. American "Green Card" holders, about 13 million people, have civil rights but not voting rights—yet no one claims they live under "apartheid." Two million Puerto Ricans are American citizens, but since they live in a U.S. territory and not a state, they are ineligible to vote for the president of the United States and have only one non-voting member in the House of Representatives—but again, no one calls this "apartheid."
That's because apartheid is not the absence of "one man, one vote"; rather, it is a system of oppression, racism and segregation. While Israel is indeed the ethnic-national state of the Jews, it has no system of apartheid—as has been testified to by prominent black South Africans who have visited, such as Kenneth Meshoe, a member of the South African parliament, who was born under apartheid.
Second, as described above, Israel is the ethnic-national state of the Jews, a haven for the Jewish minority in the region. While Israel affords liberties to ethnic minorities living within its borders, that is ancillary to its core mission.
Third, it must be noted that the conversation about the Palestinians largely revolves around their rights, but very little around their obligations. For Israel to absorb the Palestinians, who have been part of an anti-Israel geopolitical axis for the last century, they must solemnly renounce jihadism and accept the laws and obligations of the Jewish state.
Finally, it is important to note that not one of the Arab countries that surround Israel runs a real democracy. Western-style voting is just not in the region's DNA.
Errr ... I don’t know if there was ever a time that @PeterBeinart actually was an ‘Israel supporter.’ But his ‘One State’ solution is just a natural evolution for an anti-Zionist. pic.twitter.com/5h482JE5BV
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 18, 2020
Indeed, the recent surge of anti-Semitic comments from some African-American athletes and celebrities like DeSean Jackson, Nick Cannon and Ice Cube were largely ignored by BLM activists rather than condemned. While there were some blacks who did speak out, like basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabaar and sports commentator Jemele Hill, they were the honorable exceptions who proved the rule and testified to the acceptance of Jew-hatred among many blacks. Jewish groups, some of which are diffident about confronting African-Americans about anti-Semitism, aren’t likely to rally BLM advocates to confront this issue, let alone seek its sources, such as the widespread influence of hatemonger Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam.A Saudi scholar, Muhammed, and the Jews of the Arabian Peninsula
Unfortunately, many liberal Jews are not only failing to see the inherent problems that arise from backing radical BLM ideas like demonizing all police, but they are also buying into the group’s dangerous ideas about the perils of “whiteness,” which represent a particular threat to Jews as well as undermine black aspirations for advancement.
Accepting the ideological constructs behind the idea of White Fragility—the bestselling book that is a modern patent nostrum of foolishness about race—sends well-meaning people down a rabbit hole of rigid racialism that discards Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s hopes for a race-blind society. And yet that is exactly what many Jews are doing in this overheated post-George Floyd atmosphere.
In the past, Jews have played a constructive role in the struggle for civil rights—whether by marching with Dr. King or funding African-American education precisely because their efforts were aimed at raising up African-Americans, not abasing themselves at the altar of race.
That is why rather than jumping on the BLM bandwagon, those who claim to represent Jewish interests should be holding that movement to account for its damaging ideology, as well as its anti-Zionist connections and passivity about the growth of anti-Semitism among African-Americans.
Racism is real. But so is the danger of aligning with a movement whose goals are antithetical to the values that are responsible for the tremendous advances towards a better society that the civil-rights movement supported by blacks and Jews in the past achieved.
Let’s begin by referring to the following excerpts from what appears to be a ground-breaking development:George Soros’s Multi-Front War Against Israel
“…In what is being hailed as an “unprecedented” event, a senior Saudi Arabian researcher has had an article published in an Israeli journal--in Hebrew.
The essay aims to correct what its author, Prof. Mohammed Ibrahim Alghbban, head of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Hebrew Studies at the Department of Modern Languages and Translation at King Saud University in Riyadh, calls 'erroneous misperceptions about the origins of Islam and distorted understanding of manuscripts’ written by the Prophet Muhammad…Alghbban writes that Islam’s founder did not clash with Jews on religious grounds, rather only on politics…”
While it certainly is good news to hear about Arab scholars learning the Hebrew language, teaching it to others (for perhaps good and not-so-good reasons), and more, Alghbban’s assessment appears to be a whitewash of the actual Jihad waged against Medina’s (the second holiest city in Islam) founders--Jews--who fled the earlier Roman wars for their independence in Judea and escaping into the nearby Arabian Peninsula for refuge.
Jews had a long history in the Arabian Peninsula prior to the birth of Muhammad in the 7th century C. E.
Yemen had several Jewish kings in the centuries leading up to Muhammad’s era, and over a thousand years earlier, the Queen of Saba--Sheba--who visited King Solomon, legends say, married him, ruled over southern Arabia and Ethiopia as well.
The Saudi professor claims that Muhammad’s problems with the Medina Jews stemmed only from political concerns.
The problem is that any student of Islam knows, however, that Muhammad was as much a political as a religious leader--and those who opposed him, in either of those categories, often wound up beheaded or enslaved.
The comparison with coverage of Adelson, likewise discussed by Feinreich in the article noted above, also illustrates how much the media enable Soros in his cynical use of accusations of anti-Semitism to silence criticism. They parrot his complaints in this vein even as they themselves use anti-Semitic tropes to attack Adelson.
Among the many examples of such attacks, a number of which are cited by Feinreich, are The Huffington Post’s 2015 headline, “Tonight’s GOP Debate: Sheldon Adelson’s Malignant Tentacles,” and the op-ed under the headline. Author Richard North Patterson asserts in the piece that “...Adelson means not only to pick the party’s nominee, but to dictate his thoughts.” And: “More than anyone else, it is Adelson - not voters, candidates, or experts on the Middle East - who dictates what Republicans dare to think and say about our relationship to Israel, the Palestinians on the West Bank, and the complex government of Iran.” And, “To Adelson’s God, Israel’s solution to the Palestinians is biblically ordained: annexation of the West Bank and subjugation of its peoples.” And, “...he’s ‘the richest Jew in the world’ and, as such, determined to bend the world to his views.” It is not hard to imagine the charges of anti-Semitism that comparable statements about Soros would elicit from him and his circle and the media outlets that support his activities. But such attacks on Adelson apparently fail to merit such a response.
One can cite similar statements about Adelson from, for example, The New York Times. Times columnist Thomas Friedman, for whom attacking Adelson, and Israel, is something of a personal obsession, wrote in 2015, under the title “Is it Sheldon Adelson’s World?” “...it is troubling that one man, with a willingness and ability to give away great sums, can now tilt Israeli and American politics his way at the same time.” And in a 2014 column: “Adelson personifies everything that is poisoning our democracy...” In a more generic invoking of an anti-Semitic trope, Friedman in a 2011 column explained that the standing ovation Benjamin Netanyahu had recently received in Congress was not a reflection of agreement with his views but rather “was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”
While apparently having no problem with the use in its pages of anti-Semitic tropes directed against Adelson or “the Israel lobby,” the Times has run a number of news articles and op-eds on Soros as a victim of anti-Semitism. A Times op-ed by Soros’s son Alexander in October, 2018, asserts that his father’s liberal philanthropic exertions have exposed him to “the poison of anti-Semitism.” He characterizes anti-Semitism in America as coming exclusively from the Right, “white supremacists and nationalists,” regurgitates the absurd but often heard association of the anti-Semitic Right with President Trump, and says nothing of the much more mainstreamed anti-Semitism emanating from the Left, including from groups and individuals supported by him and his father.
The Times has for much of the last century ignored anti-Semitism and has written of it recently only in the service of some political objective, as in its promotion of politics of Soros’s variety. And Soros, again, is no less cynical in his invoking of anti-Semitism, doing so to silence critics even as he deploys it to advance his own agenda.
And, once more, central to that agenda is his hostility to Israel. His jaundiced attitude towards other Jews is not as monochromatic as his anti-Zionism. As indicated in the list of anti-Israel organizations and individuals he supports, there are Jews and Jewish groups among them, the major test being that they share, and act upon, his anti-Israel animus. There is little such nuance, however, in that animus.
It is not hard to comprehend why some Jews would be eager to distance themselves from an identity that has been and continues to be so vilified and that not long ago marked its holders for slaughter on an unprecedented scale. Each individual is free to choose his or her communal affiliations, or at least such freedom ought to be an element of any truly open society. But to move from disassociating oneself from the Jewish quest for national self-determination and its realization in Israel to supporting those who would undermine and ultimately annihilate the Jewish state, and to do so while claiming a higher purpose, to take the path that Soros has forged for himself, is not a course that would be chosen by any truly moral human being but rather the mark of a moral cripple.
Friday, July 17, 2020Elder of ZiyonPeter Beinart
Daniel Paul Rubenstein found an interview that Jeffrey Goldberg had with Peter Beinart when he released his “Crisis of Zionism” book. (I’m sure that a new book is in the works.)
It is interesting to read what Beinart said then – already part of the progressive Zionist Left before he went full blown anti-Israel.
I disagreed with Tony Judt's essay in 2003 arguing for a binational state. That should be evident from my essay, which is all about saving liberal Zionism.
…In general, I think American Jewish leaders and commentators have become far too promiscuous about throwing around words like anti-Israel. In my mind, you're anti-Israel if you want Israel to disappear as a Jewish state. Being a harsh critic is something very different, and even if you believe someone is insufficiently attentive to Israeli security, that merely makes them wrong, not anti-Israel, unless you can prove that they are inattentive because they would not mind if Israel ceased to exist as a Jewish state.
There certainly are leftists (and for that matter) rightists who focus so disproportionately on Israel's failings as to raise questions about their true motives.
Sound familiar?
I'm not asking Israel to be Utopian. I'm not asking it to allow Palestinians who were forced out (or fled) in 1948 to return to their homes. I'm not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state. I'm actually pretty willing to compromise my liberalism for Israel's security and for its status as a Jewish state. What I am asking is that Israel not do things that foreclose the possibility of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, because if it is does that it will become--and I'm quoting Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak here--an "apartheid state."
It is interesting that even then, Beinart believed that Arab Israelis were not equal citizens under the law –of course they are - but he was willing to throw them under the bus to keep Israel as a Jewish state!
And foreclosing the possibility of a Palestinian state is exactly what the current Israeli coalition wants to do. You ask what has changed. First, year after year of settlement growth at triple the rate of the Israeli population…The more the settlements expand, the more settlers--including fanatical settlers--take over parts of the Israeli bureaucracy and become integral to the Israeli army and rabbinate, all of which makes the prospect of removing them without outright civil war more remote.
This was Beinart in 2010. Since then, what has changed? Netanyahu is still prime minister, Abbas is still the PLO head, the amount of land for settlements is virtually identical and the percentage of Israelis living in the territories has gone up only marginally (4.1% to 4.8%.)
However, Hamas still controls Gaza and has more weapons, Hezbollah has more rockets than it did, the Palestinians rejected a peace framework from the most pro-Palestinian president ever, they initiated a new terror spree of cars and knives, and the current president is offering them billions of dollars to accept a contiguous state – admittedly smaller than the previous ones they rejected, but still a state = and they don’t want to talk to him.
And with all that new data, Beinart changed from Zionist to anti-Israel – by his own 2010 definition.
Nothing changed for Israel or for Palestinians. Only Beinart changed. Anything else he says about why suddenly Israel must cease to exist as a Jewish state is not in response to changed circumstances, but his own bizarre slide to the side of Israel’s enemies.
There is nothing moral about it. Just ask 2010 Beinart.
Peter Beinart recently wrote an article of Jewish surrender that was published in Jewish Currents. Falling over itself, the New York Times rushed to publish an abbreviated version to ensure the piece was given a much wider audience.A Eureka moment: Peter Beinart and the One State Solution
Beinart
The thrust of the Beinart argument is simple. Beinart used to believe in a Jewish state – he doesn’t anymore, and as he lives in his comfortable home in the US, he believes Israel should dismantle itself and embark upon a utopian one state existence with the Palestinians. Thus ending 100 years of conflict.
There is nothing new inside the article. It is a silly proposition, a notion that the answer to the conflict between Israel and its neighbours is for the Jews to to put away their guns, remove the walls that protect them, surrender their right of self determination – have faith – and create what would eventually become another Muslim majority state in the Middle East.
Beinart and privilege
The article and Beinart’s position is historically and politically illiterate. Beinart pushes a solution with all the privilege of a person sitting under the umbrella of US citizenship, 1000s of miles away from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Or as Benjamin Kerstein put in his response in the Tablet – “Peter Beinart thinks Jews don’t need Zionism. That’s because he’s never needed it himself.”
Beinart, like many of those who dabble in such utopian theory, pushes immature politics. The secular democratic one state solution is a privileged imperialist western answer to a problem they have with ignorant natives in a far-off land. Nobody on the ground wants it – not the Israelis and not the Palestinians.
The simple truth is that Israel looks the way it does – because it reflects the reality of the Middle East. The 1947 partition plan was not written into the British Mandate, but developed as reality took over. The civil war and regional conflict became inevitable. Israel is a natural product of its people, history and neighbourhood. And this simple fact – that Israel is a Middle Eastern nation, is what lies at the heart of the problem.
For some western Jews, the Israel of reality is not the Israel of their dreams. These people tend to view Israel’s growing religious population with horror, they look down on the ‘arsim‘ of Bat Yam and they are quite derogatory about many aspects of Israeli culture. They don’t like the way many Israelis think or behave and clearly they have no respect for the way Israelis vote.
Perversely they show understanding for Israel’s enemies, including those like Hamas – but as is frequently pointed out – they never have any empathy for Israelis with different opinions to their own.
They openly display that they are fundamentally disappointed with Israeli people. Beinart’s position can be described thus: – Israelis don’t deserve their state because of the way they have developed and behaved.
So I was unsurprised by the article. Every few months we are presented with a similar article written by someone who says that they have supported Israel all their lives but because those pesky Israelis have just gone and ******* (fill in the blank with whatever has just occurred – with Beinart it is the ‘annexation’) they must now publicly state that Zionism is in tatters and doomsday is coming. Immature virtue signalling that sells out the millions of Jews who live in Israel.
But what interested me most about this episode was not another of the liberal Zionists falling off the ideological cliff. It was how our own Jewish fringe groups responded.
Beinart buttresses his argument for a one state solution by citing Yousef Munayyer and Edward Said, who support his view that “Equality could come in the form of one state that includes Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.”
In the November/December 2019 edition of Foreign Affairs, Yousef Munayyer, director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, (USCPR) said the “only alternative with any chance of delivering lasting peace: equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians in a single shared state.” He argues “The Palestinians [are] a population struggling and surviving under decades of Israeli oppression.”
NGO Monitor reports “USCPR is a national coalition of hundreds of groups working to advocate for Palestinian rights and a shift in US policy and is a leader and mobilizer of anti-Israel BDS campaigns.” According to its “Common Principles,” “We oppose U.S. military, diplomatic, financial, corporate, and all other forms of support for Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies toward Palestinians.”
On March 6, 2019, the Jerusalem Post reported Munayyer appeared “to condone the efforts of PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] on his Twitter feed, including retweeting a PFLP announcement of a terror attack in Jerusalem on June 16, 2017.”
The late Edward Said, a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Palestinian Arab activist, postulated that underlying cause of “the conflict between the two peoples has always been about possession of and sovereignty over the land.”
He accused the Zionists of being a “tool of imperialism” who usurped their land, established settler colonies and a sovereign state whose only means of preservation is by aggression and expansion.
In a September 29, 2015interview[an article] in the Washington Post entitled “The one-state solution and the brutal honesty of Edward Said,” he said “… the only feasible alternatives to Zionism… have a majority Arab state in which Jews are, at best, a suppressed minority, or force all six million Jews living in Israel to flee to whatever countries (if any) will accept them, or some combination of the two. "
The idea that giving up on 'Zionism' makes you a 'liberal' is false, unless creating yet another Arab dictatorship in what is now Israel at the cost of six million Jews’ lives and liberty, and of by far the most liberal state in their region, is somehow a “liberal” option.” [originally from a Ha'aretz inteview from 2000, source]
Friday, July 17, 2020Elder of ZiyonNick CannonThe Nick Cannon story is evolving quickly.
I have expressed my doubts that a conspiracy theorist could listen to facts and respond to pain from others, but so far – and it is still very early – Nick Cannon is doing the right things.
On his Instagram, it shows that he brought Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center as a guest on his program – and some of his fans are not happy about it, like the comment shown here where the commenter calls Cooper a member of the “Synagogue of Satan.”
Inviting articulate Jews onto his program is exactly what I asked Cannon to do before he made any apology. I did not expect him to actually do what I asked him on Monday.
Cannon has also said that he is taking off time from his popular radio show in order to process what happened. He sounds genuinely contrite.
Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, Cannon sees how many of his fans are turning against him for his apology and his seeming journey towards understanding – and while it pains him, he is not dissuaded.
But he is frustrated by his fans turning on him when he wants to do the right thing.
I have criticized Nick Cannon quite a bit this week for his unforgivable attacks. But if he has truly changed, if he is really committed to learning, and if he will use his huge platforms to educate his community and help bring down tensions between Jews and Black people, he is a much better person than I am.
I look forward to see what he does in the coming months.
Friday, July 17, 2020Elder of ZiyonBusinesses use “dashboards” as a convenient way to keep track of critical issues, with the top information they need from multiple sources placed on a single screen and with the ability to drill down into the details.
Given that the Left and the Right disagree strongly as to what constitutes a danger to Jews worldwide, I think it would be helpful to create a digital dashboard of threats, with at least an attempt to objectively compare threats based on various criteria.
To use a tiny example, the Left always says that the threat from white nationalists is much higher than any other threat in the US. I have been very concerned over Nation of Islam-inspired antisemitim in recent weeks. Which is a bigger danger?
White nationalists are truly fringe (although the Left wants to paint every Republican as a member.) As I tweeted last night, the combined Twitter following of the biggest names in white nationalism is dwarfed by the fans of Ice Cube, who has tweeted multiple antisemitic memes in recent weeks.
Last week Twitter removed 67 white nationalist accounts totaling 140,000 followers.
— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 17, 2020
David Duke has 54,000 followers.
Richard Spencer has 81,000 followers.
Ice Cube alone has 5.4 MILLION followers.
White Nationalists have a history of extreme violence and direct incitement, NOI itself does not directly encourage violence but its philosophy has inspired murderous attacks and the increasing violence in major cities can become a specific threat to the Jewish community as we saw in Los Angeles and elsewhere during the George Floyd riots.
We need to take all these factors for all the threats and quantify them so they can be compared and ranked. Potential countermeasures should be listed and their expenses calculated. Once all the data and data sources are compiled then we can use modern data mining techniques to dive deep into the information and see where it makes sense to use limited resources to fight these threats.
Here is a very ugly, quick and dirty mock up of some core information; a real dashboard would have interactive maps and links to be able to see the current state of both threats and countermeasures, by type and target country. (By “magnitude” I mean “number of threat actors, but the data isn’t the point, rather the concept.)
Everything on that screen would be clickable to drill down, all columns would be sortable, the level of detail could be set up to be as general or specific as possible.
A reasonably objective dashboard, with its underlying logic publicly available so one can change the assumptions, could be a great tool for funders and major Jewish organizations to get on the same page and prioritize accordingly.
Friday, July 17, 2020Elder of Ziyon
Bari Weiss, the centrist opinion page editor at the New York Times, resigned from her position on Tuesday with a blistering resignation letter that went viral and was damning to the newspaper.
Many people have been writing about the resignation; her critics are cheering and criticizing her letter and her fans doing the opposite. But nearly no one has explained exactly why she had to resign.
Instead, we see accusations like Alex Shephard’s at TNR:
Weiss wants to frame her resignation as a consequence of this supposed hostile takeover—that she’s a free thinker cast out by an intolerant, illiberal regime. But her letter, while long on invective (and just plain long), is short on evidence, and what she’s done instead amounts to auto-cancellation: quitting, then blaming her peers for driving her out. It’s a rhetorical mode that many of her fellow travelers in the “Intellectual Dark Web” are familiar with.
The “short on evidence” accusation is strange; her resignation letter has plenty of examples of why the work environment was difficult but is hardly an appropriate place to show screenshots or name names. However, the accusation of her “quitting and them blaming her peers for driving her out” is worth examining. In order to do that one must understand how the Opinion section works at the New York Times.
At the NYT, there are many opinion editors whose jobs are to find and encourage good opinion pieces, all working under a managing editor. Historically, most of these editors have been blatantly anti-Israel, and it was therefore easy for anti-Israel op-eds to get published – often with little regard to fact checking. Up until a few years ago, most of the pro-Israel pieces would be from far-right Israelis (who could be easily dismissed as lunatics) or Israeli government officials. Those pieces would be assigned by the managing editor who is responsible for the overall tenor of the page and who would feel an obligation to run some unpopular pieces every once in a while to appear even-handed. Before 2017, the ratio of anti- to pro- Israel opinion pieces was typically 5-1. For a decent pro-Israel piece to be published the writer would need to find an editor who was not hostile to Israel to begin with and then the piece would be sent back numerous times for edits – while anti-Israel pieces would sail through the process.
Weiss was hired specifically to add different voices to the Times in the wake of Donald Trump’s unexpected win. While Bret Stephens was hired at the same time, he was hired as a columnist; Weiss was an editor. Both Weiss and Stephens dislike Trump immensely. But Weiss was there to increase the number of thoughtful op-eds from conservative and other voices that would normally not be heard. From all the evidence, she succeeded.
Weiss was always disliked at the Times, mostly because her views – while solidly liberal and centrist – were far to the right of the other opinion editors. Those other editors were also jealous of her success (one of her own columns became a Saturday Night Live sketch, and her book on antisemitism was a best seller as she appeared on numerous TV shows.) Of course, Weiss is also a Zionist and a proud Jew, not shy about calling out antisemitism, and the other editors were unhappy with both of those – she mentioned in her letter that she heard negative comments that she was “writing about the Jews again.”
I am told that even NYT workers who are perceived to be friends with Weiss and Stephens are looked down upon by the intolerant Leftist employees.
Weiss’ letter describes a hostile work environment with very specific, outrageous examples. However, that is not the major reason why she was forced to leave. Weiss had to leave because she literally could not do her job.
After the Tom Cotton op-ed controversy, where there was a virtual revolt at the NYT resulting in managing opinion editor James Bennett’s ouster, a new policy was implemented at the Times called the “red flag” system, which allows even junior editors to “stop or delay the publication of an article containing a controversial view or position.”
This truly stupid policy allows any editor to veto the work of any other editor on the op-ed page.
If a piece is deemed too controversial or microaggressive, it would be stopped or delayed. Editors can now refuse to edit pieces they are assigned, something that would have resulted in being fired not that long ago. The young millennials have essentially taken over the op-ed page and they are so far Left – and have so little regard for tolerating others’ ideas – that the entire op-ed section is a disaster.
There was another side effect of the policy, though: it ensured that unpopular editors like Bari would be censored. Since she wasn’t liked, any of her co-workers could silence her.
Suddenly, every single opinion piece that Weiss would spend hours working on with promising writers would be quashed by her coworkers who disliked her. Anything she would write herself would be rejected by the crowd.
She was drawing a salary but could not do what she was hired to do. And obviously the new woke managing editor who is herself hostile to Zionism was not going to protect the proudly Zionist Weiss from this bullying the way a supervisor in a normal job is supposed to.
Weiss had no choice but to quit if she ever wanted to be heard again.
From all indications, Weiss was an excellent editor, better than most there. This can be seen by this letter that Weiss wrote to Marisa Kabas rejecting her op-ed idea and making constructive suggestions on how she can be published. Kabas, instead of recognizing that most editors wouldn’t spend any time trying to groom a young writer for success, tweeted this very nice letter as if it was a negative!
So many writers responded that the letter makes Weiss look good and Kabas look like a self-centered idiot that Kabas deleted her tweet.
That tweet is the New York Times op-ed department in a nutshell – the young know-it-alls saying they know better than the people with skill and experience. The millennials who have taken over the Times op-ed page cannot distinguish between diversity in hiring and diversity in thought, and they think that their supposedly fresh ideas can replace skill and competence.
Bari Weiss will land on her feet. She is smart and talented. Meanwhile, the inmates have taken over the asylum at the New York Times op-ed department.
International protests over the murder of Minneapolis resident George Floyd while in police custody on May 25, 2020, led by the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM), have generated expressions of sympathy and support from Western prime ministers, legislators, law enforcement officials, and local government.The blatant anti-Semitism of Bill de Blasio
American Jewish leaders unequivocally condemned the Floyd killing. World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder denounced it as a “horrific racist act.”2 The Union for Reform Judaism issued a statement that read, “Black Lives Matter Is a Jewish Value.”3 The Orthodox Jewish Union (OU) declared, “Racism is not a thing of the past or simply a political issue. It is a real and present danger that must be met head-on.”4
Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) organizations have ratcheted up racial tensions and anti-Semitic agitation by accusing Israel of complicity in the Floyd murder.5 The BDS strategy is not new. The Jewish State has, for some years, been recast as an illegitimate “white oppressor” state.
Ongoing demonstrations across the United States have reenergized the intersectional solidarity between those protesting anti-Black racism in America and BDS organizations’ demands to “Free Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea” – a clarion call to dismantle the State of Israel.
The BDS-BLM convergence, then, as it relates to the Palestinian issue, has removed the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from its territorial framework and has recast the Jewish nation-state as a racial issue – “apartheid” and illegitimate by definition.
Israel adversary Linda Sarsour applauded longtime Israel critic Peter Beinart’s recent disavowal of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. She praised Beinart for legitimizing Palestinian rejectionism of Jewish sovereignty, saying, “Maybe Zionists will listen to one of their own. Peter has evolved over the years, and I welcome his evolution.”
This new radical discourse demands that American Jews be neither liberal nor progressive. Those affiliations accept the existence of the Jewish State, yet are deemed unacceptable according to the “virtues” of a more drastic American dialogue.
Those targeting Jews were other minorities, mainly black and Hispanic New Yorkers. De Blasio did not push back against the dangerous new bail-reform law, which essentially gave a slap on the wrist for criminals and those who did end up in jail ended up being released shortly after committing crimes. He did nothing to protect his Jewish residents.Former NYPD commissioner warns US Jews: Protect your communities
When the Iranian-backed, terrorist-in-nature Al-Quds Day event was held last year in Times Square, the anti-Israel groups participating had to get a permit; that was allowed. Not even a few weeks ago, a "Day of Rage" protest/march was held in Brooklyn, these events explicitly target Israel which directly is an attack on Jews and often times leads to anti-Semitic incidents. Yet were there any neo-Nazi marches in New York City? Not that those should ever be encouraged, of course, but de Blasio would not give such an easy permit to white supremacists, as he does to every other Jew-hater.
When New York was in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, only the Hassidic Jewish community was the target of de Blasio's ire. Yet there were overcrowding issues in the Bronx and house parties in Harlem. Being vigilant was all in the name of beating the virus, so most Jews did not say much. However, when a legitimate Chassidic funeral on April 28 was planned not only with the approval of the New York Police Department but with pre-approval of the Mayor's Office, de Blasio showed up, "shocked" at the crowd size, and immediately fired off an anti-Semitic tweet directed at the Jewish community. The Jewish community in New York is not cohesive; dozens of vibrant groups make up the proud fabric of Jewry in New York, so to blame "all Jews" due to one pre-arranged funeral, while ignoring other groups who were gathering in large numbers, was absolutely anti-Semitic.
One would think that letting Hassidic children play in neighborhood playgrounds would be far less a crime than thousands marching, many without face masks, but no. De Blasio ordered the police to fine parents whose children went without masks. This behavior towards the religious Jewish community was an injustice when such hypocrisy was on full display during the height of the BLM protests and interwoven riots.
De Blasio's anti-Semitic culture extends beyond himself. Earlier this year, Democrat Councilman Kalman Yeger pointed out the poison of anti-Semitism permeating within the City Council. And mere days ago, a City of New York tweet reminded residents to fill out the 2020 Census. It included a "Palestinian" flag among other flags representing the homelands of the city's residents, but omitted the Israeli flag, despite nearly 2 million Jews living in New York City. To not call out de Blasio as a dangerous anti-Semite is a farce.
Jewish communities in America should follow the example of those in Europe and put security measures in place in synagogues, Former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has said in an interview, as he warned that “we are in a dangerous place in history.”Hen Mazzig: How Jewish Twitter users and celebrities took down a virtual anti-Semitic mob
Budget cuts due to the coronavirus lockdown and an erosion of respect for police officers are creating a perfect storm that will see safety decline in New York and elsewhere, Kelly told Matthew Bronfman, chair of the International Steering Committee of Limmud FSU during an online interview.
“In the US the Jewish community needs to be more alert about who is entering community premises,” Kelly said, warning that in today's environment, synagogues cannot be fully open environments.
Kelly, who now heads the Anti-Semitism Accountability Project (ASAP), has visited ten European countries to meet with government and faith leaders to examine how antisemitism is being tackled on the Continent in comparison with the US, he said.
“Antisemitism there is not new. Neo-Nazis have never gone away, and populism is helping them flex their muscles,” Kelly noted. He acknowledged that the threat was slightly different in the two areas - in France, for example, antisemitism is driven by the left's support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement and the Muslim community, combined with a government which, thanks to a national culture of secularism, is slow to recognize the religious rights of minorities. Consequently, people can walk around with openly antisemitic messages on their t-shirts without consequence, he said.
When I saw "#JewishPrivilege" was trending on Twitter last week, I cringed. White nationalists had created the hashtag to spread anti-Semitic conspiracies about Jews being "privileged" - that we control the media, the banks and the world. Seemingly progressive Twitter users soon piled on with false claims that Jews don't face any discrimination, while also suggesting they are responsible for the discrimination and other ills many minorities face. This felt like an organized attack - as if everyone was in agreement that Jewish people are to be blamed for all that is wrong in the world.
The virtual mob of anti-Semites sparked flashbacks to my Iraqi grandma retelling stories of surviving the Farhud, a massacre in which a real-life mob of Iraqis murdered all the Jews they could in Baghdad back in 1941. So I urged Jews on Twitter to share their personal stories to refute the #JewishPrivilege falsehood. In a matter of hours, Jews shared their experiences of discrimination, violence, exile and mass murder.
The notion that Jews of any background are the oppressors rather than the oppressed erases our history - including the Holocaust and pogroms of many decades past, as well as more recent chapters, like the plight of the Ethiopian Jews who escaped persecution in Ethiopia by airlifts to Israel in the 1980s and '90s. Seeking to deny the entire Jewish people's generational struggles and erase us from the collective of minority groups denies our humanity and identity, and is thereby an act of deep-seated anti-Semitism.
Thursday, July 16, 2020Elder of Ziyonhumor, PreoccupiedOur weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.
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B'nei B'rak, July 16 - Residents of this entirely-ultra-orthodox city, the second-most-impoverished in the nation according to Central Bureau of Statistics data, possess no knowledge that by dint of their membership in the Jewish people they control global finances, and media, a new study reports.
B'nei B'rak, population just under 200,000, boasts many of the poorest households in Israel, lagging just behind Jerusalem - which only accounts for so many more poor households because of its much larger overall population. Researchers at Bar Ilan University observed that none of the hundreds of random B'nei B'rak residents surveyed displayed any awareness that as Jews they enjoy a share of the cabal that dominates entertainment, news, banking, and other crucial industries all around the world.
"It's a little bizarre," noted lead researcher Adel Sheldenson. "You'd think that as members of a tribe that has sat at the crux of global finance for generations, they might have some clue as to their status, but none seem to. And so many of them live lives of abject poverty."
"Some of that poverty is a function of lifestyle choice," explained researcher Ed Rothschild. "These communities value simplicity and sacrifice for the sake of full-time Torah study. Still, you'd think that, given what everyone out there assumes about the Talmud and the evil stuff it contains, at least some of the folks here might have caught on to its teachings about dominating the subhuman goyim by whatever means, and whatnot. But none of them seem to know about those parts of the Talmud, either."
The same holds true in other poor cities where Haredim form the majority of the population. Jerusalem, as noted, features tens of thousands of poor ultra-orthodox families, though large-scale studies of their involvement in international banking and rootless cosmopolitanism have not taken place. Smaller Haredi population centers, however, such as the towns of El'ad, Kiryat Sefer, and Beitar 'Illit, show identical numbers of Jews who know they and their cohorts have controlled global finance for hundreds of years: zero. That figure surprised researchers as well, given the relative prosperity of those towns compared to the ultra-orthodox in B'nei B'rak and Jerusalem, and thus the greater chance, researchers had assumed, that some might have a hand or tentacle in the vast Jewish-Zionist conspiracy to rule the world.
Researchers intend to follow up the current study with an exploration of how scholars with encyclopedic knowledge of Talmud appear completely unaware of passages in that set of documents that antisemites are fond of quoting.
Thursday, July 16, 2020Elder of Ziyon
From Naharnet:
Maronite Patriarch Beshara el-Rahi again on Tuesday renewed calls for Lebanon’s neutrality towards regional conflicts, stressing that Lebanon has become isolated and is losing its original identity.
“We said nothing new when we demanded Lebanon’s neutrality from regional conflicts. We want back our basic identity, a neutral Lebanon, a civil state, pluralism and coexitence,” said Rahi in a statement from the patriarch's summer residence in the northern town of Dimane.
“Lebanon was open to all countries, east and west, except Israel which occupied our land. Lebanon was Switzerland of the east ... Today, Lebanon has become isolated from the whole world. This is not our identity. Our identity is positive and constructive neutrality, not a warrior Lebanon,” added the Patriarch.
Lebanon wasn’t open to Israel before Israel went into Lebanon and it hasn’t been open to Israel in the two decades since it left. So what is the exact reason el-Rahi says Lebanon doesn’t want to deal with Israel again?
And then he said it again a day later:
Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Wednesday met President Michel Aoun in Baabda, following resounding calls that the spiritual leader voiced in recent days for turning Lebanon into a “neutral” country.
…He explained: “Neutrality is to commit to the joint Arab causes without engaging in political or military conflicts or joining axes. It is to be rather the first defender of justice, peace and understanding in the Arab causes, except for what relates to Israel.”
It must be exhausting to say platitudes all day about how your country wants peace and good relations with everyone, and always have to add “except Israel.”
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
