How to manipulate a poll to make it look like Americans oppose Israel

Anti-Israel activists are upset that the Democratic platform does not include anti-Israel language. They point to a poll last year that, they claim, says that  a plurality of Americans and 2/3 of Democrats support cutting aid to Israel.

A look at the poll shows how pollsters can easily manipulate the people to say what they want.

Data for Progress (whose very name shows that they intend to manipulate data for their political purposes)  asked two questions:

In the past, the US has cut military aid to foreign governments accused of human rights violations. Supporters of the cuts say the US shouldn’t be involved in human rights abuses and it’s a waste of taxpayer money. Opponents say that even if some governments have imperfect records, we need to do what is necessary to fight terrorism and to counter foreign powers like Russia and China. Do you [support or oppose] the US government reducing foreign and military aid to governments engaged in human rights abuses?

First, the stage is set where the person is told that the US has a track record of cutting aid to human rights abusers. Then the two sides of the issue are described in a deliberately slanted and simplistic way. Finally, the question is asked whether they support existing US policy on reducing aid to human rights abusers.

Of course, most people will oppose it.

Then comes the trap:

Israel is one of the largest recipients of US military aid. Some legislators in the United States say that aid should be reduced because Israel often violates the human rights of Palestinians by using lethal military force against unarmed Palestinian civilians, including children. Other legislators in the United States say aid should not be reduced; Israel does what it needs to do to protect itself from terrorism and hostile foreign powers, who deliberately provoke Israel with violence. Do you [support or oppose] the US government reducing foreign and military aid to Israel based on human rights violations?

Israel is defined as a human rights abuser, deliberately and often attacking innocent Palestinian children with lethal force. The “pro-Israel” side of the question ignores everything Israel does to minimize casualties and the history of deadly Palestinian terrorism against civilians.

The person being polled already has put himself on the record as supporting reducing aid for human rights abusers. The question does not leave room for anyone to say that Israel is not a human rights abuser on par with the worst dictatorships in history. No one wants to look like or feel like a hypocrite. So many people, especially those who are not informed of the facts around Israel, will allow themselves to be steered to answer the way that the “progressive” pollster wants.

 

Anti-Israel organizations like J-Street commission polls like this all the time and then trumpet the results as if they reflect actual opinions of people rather than naked manipulation of their emotions. I wish that Zionist organizations would do similar polls with different wording, for example:

Israelis have been incessantly attacked by Palestinian terrorists for over seventy years. Hamas and other terror groups regularly vow to destroy Israel and plot further attacks. Some people think that Israel is too aggressive in defending its citizens and the US should cut aid to Israel that pays for defense against Hamas rockets and other attacks. Others say that Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself and has a robust judicial system to ensure that there are no abuses of power against innocent Palestinians. Do you support or oppose cutting US aid to Israel?

See how easy it is to ask the same question in a different way – and how easy it is to lead the people being surveyed into taking the position that the pollster wants?

Polls assume that most people are ignorant of the topic they are asking about – which is often true. When the pollsters pretend that it is their job to “educate” those being polled, they are engaging in advertising, not surveying. Instead of pretending to present both sides of the argument, a truly objective survey would simply ask “Do you support cutting US aid to Israel?” without any explanations and without other precursor questions meant to prime the answer (like questions about the budget or taxes, or on the other hand about US allies and enemies.)

If most people answer “I’m not sure” then that is the reality.

Surveys commissioned by partisan organizations are worthless. This is something that should be covered in basic high school civics classes and by the media. Unfortunately, the media are often the ones who commission these same polls so they will not criticize a major source of their own “scoops.”

As far as I can tell, there are no watchdog organizations that rate the objectivity of surveys. There should be.

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No, antisemitism is not rooted in white supremacy

At JTA, a Rabbi Emily Cohen makes a muddled case against boycotting Twitter for 48 hours to protest its acceptance of antisemitism.

Her arguments are all over the place, but a couple of them are worth dismantling:

First, there’s the issue of this boycott catalyzing around a Black man. Anti-Semitism comes from everywhere. While perhaps it’s chance, and celebrity, that led to Wiley’s particular thread being the tweet that broke the bird’s beak, I can’t help but worry that white Jews and their allies were more ready to speak out against Wiley than against anti-Semitic white people.

She is not the first person to see racism by Jews who go after Black antisemites. She must have some proof, right?

In the United Kingdom, white people — including prominent politicians like Jeremy Corbyn — have been spouting anti-Semitism for some years. While these statements have hardly gone unnoticed — responses have included a film about Labour Party anti-Semitism and suits for libel resulting in formal apologies — to my knowledge there has not been a public call for a comparable social media boycott. Not for Corbyn, not for the many George Soros conspiracy tweets and not for any of the countless instances of anti-Semitism that show up on my feed every day.

Did Corbyn ever spend an entire day with many posts directly attacking Jews? His antisemitism was not primarily on social media but behind closed doors in the Labour Party – and the justified attacks on him were properly centered on his political position, not his social media accounts. . To say that no one demanded a Twitter ban on Corbyn – and that this is somehow proof that the people demanding such a ban on Wiley are racists – is bizarre and insulting.

It is also racist. To add more obstacles before calling out antisemitism for a Black man than for a white man is pretty much racism, as if the Black man cannot be held responsible for his actions as much as a White man should.

Cohen then contradicts herself:

I believe that we must stand against anti-Semitism in all its forms, but I also know that anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in white supremacy. Fixating upon anti-Semitism expressed by Black people more than that expressed by white people hurts all marginalized peoples.

But she just said above that “anti-Semitism comes from everywhere.” Now she says it is “deeply rooted in white supremacy.” If the second statement is true, then black antisemitism or Arab antisemitism are virtually impossible.

No, Emily, antisemitism is not rooted in white supremacy. White supremacy is rooted in antisemitism.

For a rabbi, Cohen is surprisingly ignorant about Jew-hatred. Was Martin Luther’s antisemitism based on white supremacy? How about that of Voltaire?  Marx? The Spanish inquisitors? The Mufti of Jerusalem? Louis Farrakhan? Ice Cube?

Jew-hatred is independent of philosophy, logic, politics or skin color. Anyone who tries to tie it to any of those is likely to be condoning some types of antisemitism as somehow more justified and less objectionable than others. And it is a disgrace when this comes from someone who calls herself a rabbi.

Too many on the Left want so desperately to say that white supremacy is the primary kind of antisemitism and want to soft-pedal all other kinds. These are the people who want to weaponize antisemitism against their political enemies – and in so doing, they are enabling antisemitism from the likes of Wiley or Professor Griff or Mahmoud Abbas. Plenty of antisemites are not white, just as plenty of them are.

To look at antisemitism primarily through the lens of race means that you don’t really care about antisemitism.

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07/27 Links Pt2: UK chief rabbi accuses social media platforms of ‘complicity’ in anti-Semitism; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's slam dunk against anti-Semitism; Col. Kemp: Why I Speak Up For Israel

From Ian:

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UK chief rabbi accuses social media platforms of ‘complicity’ in anti-Semitism

British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis accused Twitter and Facebook of “complicity” in online anti-Semitism on Sunday, charging that the two social media giants’ “inaction” had allowed hate to flourish on their platforms.

“For too long, social media has been a safe space for those who peddle hatred and prejudice,” Mirvis wrote in letters sent to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is Jewish.

“Free speech is an essential cornerstone of any civilized society, but when it is used to incite hatred and violence against others, social media companies have a responsibility to act and must do so without delay,” he wrote.

“Over the next two days, many people around the world, including myself, will be suspending their social media activity in protest against the woeful lack of responsible leadership from companies including Twitter and Facebook,” Mirvis continued.

“This cannot be allowed to stand. Your inaction amounts to complicity.”
The Chief Rabbi writes to @Jack and Mark Zuckerberg to demand #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate pic.twitter.com/s0AFO4HPSx

— Chief Rabbi Mirvis (@chiefrabbi) July 26, 2020

“This cannot be allowed to stand. Your inaction amounts to complicity. I urge you to take swift action to challenge the hatred that currently thrives on your platform.”

Thousands join 48-hour Twitter ‘walkout’ to protest anti-Semitism on platform

A host of British politicians, celebrities, high-profile figures and other users said they were signing off of Twitter for two days starting Monday morning to protest anti-Semitic hate on the social media platform.

The protest, promoted under the hashtag #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate, was sparked by Twitter’s handling of a recent anti-Semitic rant by UK rap artist Wiley, and came as anti-hate groups have stepped up pressure for social media platforms to clamp down on rampant hate speech.

Wiley, 41, whose real name is Richard Cowie, posted a stream of anti-Semitic tweets Friday, claiming connections between the Jewish community and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as repeated tropes about Jews and money.

The tweets were up for 12 hours before Twitter finally deleted some of them under its “hateful conduct policy,” though others remain. He also posted anti-Semitic content on Instagram, which appeared not to have been deleted.

The grime musician, who has half a million Twitter followers, was given a seven-day suspension from the platform. Amid a wave of backlash his management company said it had cut all ties with him. He is also facing a police investigation.

Among the people and organizations going silent until Wednesday are British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and his predecessor Jonathan Sacks, members of Parliament, Israeli elected officials and leading Jewish organizations in Canada and the United States.

Before going dark, Mirvis posted a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey calling for action against anti-Semitism on the platform he co-founded more than a decade ago. “Your inaction amounts to complicity,” Mirvis wrote.

The protest took root after Jewish actress Tracy-Ann Oberman, who became famous for her role on “EastEnders,” tweeted on Friday night that she was considering abandoning Twitter over Wiley’s two-day spree of aggressively anti-Semitic posts.

HonestReporting Joins Blackout After Barrage of Twitter Antisemitism

HonestReporting is joining a widespread 48-hour Twitter ‘blackout’ after the musician known as Wiley was allowed to tweet incitement against Jews for hours unimpeded. We stand together with the demands of other Jewish organizations that are calling on Twitter to act more quickly to prevent the spread of dangerous hate speech to large audiences.

Rapper Richard Kylea Cowie Jr., better known by his stage name Wiley, spent hours on Friday mounting a relentless attack against Jews, including calls for black people to go to “war” against Jews. Wiley claimed in these tweets that Jews had usurped black people as the Hebrews, a conspiracy theory that has led to acts of terrorism against Jews, such as the stabbing attack in Monsey in New York in December 2019. Wiley also called for Jews to be shot.

Wiley’s extended rant on Twitter saw him repeatedly invoking conspiracy theories positing that Jews were responsible for the international slave trade, claiming that Jews had cheated him and were “snakes”, comparing Jews to the Ku Klux Klan, and suggesting that Jews should “hold some corn” – a colloquialism meaning that the subjects be shot.

Over the course of several hours, Wiley issued dozens of offensive tweets to his audience of over 493k followers. Twitter’s reaction was to delete a handful of his tweets and briefly suspend his account – a woefully inadequate response.

Yet despite Wiley’s large online following, his protracted rant was initially met with little coverage in the traditional media.

For years, HonestReporting has been urging the broadcast media to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism. More recently, HonestReporting has taken the step of urging social media giants such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to adopt the same standard, on the understanding that social media networks are now as influential as traditional media outlets – if not more.

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Cartoon of the Day–The Leftist do-gooders

They are so altruistic, endowing Israelis with their wisdom from the Upper East Side!

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Pure Soviet antisemitism in Arab newspaper

 

Jordan’s Ad Dustour newspaper columnist Marwan Soudah writes about the Jewish Zionist plan to for world domination– a plan that he happily credits his Soviet Union-era scholars for teaching him.

During my academic studies in the Soviet Union and beyond, I became acquainted with scores of scholars, specialists, researchers, orientalists, writers, and journalists from Russia, both civilians and military. They devoted most of their time and their entire efforts to denuding the expansionist Zionist thought and practice in Palestine and the Arab world, and to concentrate efforts to curb the global and racist-slavery goals of Zionism that set their sights on infringing on the peoples of Russia and the globe, and dividing people into two parts, two camps, two worlds facing and contradicting, neither valid nor free. They are: the Jews of Zionism "born full and civilized"; And .. Goyim; gentiles who are meant to be servants and inferior slaves.

Among these distinguished scholars wereYuri Ivanov; Vladimir Begon; Yevgeny Yvesev. Galina Nikitina; Vladimir Kiseleyov; Professor Gedanov; F. P. Pulshakov and the two magnificent internationalist generals: Yevgeny Shikatikhin and Professor Alexander Romanenko. The latter fought in Chinese military uniforms to confront the Zionist war pilots in the airspace of Korea and the People's Republic of China, and the foundations of the global front against Zionism and others. During the successive decades of their difficult struggles, they warned a lot about the hideous Zionist goals that "will not stop in and around Palestine", and some of them paid with their lives, dying was the price of their faith, the necessity of stopping the imperialist Zionist expansion of thought and practice on the ground…

They warned, according to their analyses and private information available to them, that: Signing a peace treaty or agreement with "Israel" will only mean one thing: a new stage of rest for Zionism during which it is preparing to implement a renewed aggression in the Palestinian territories, and to prepare for another outside it, in the Arab world.

They said that Zionism …does not believe in agreements and peace, because it is voraciously looking for their oil wells, water and wealth. In their studies, they indicated that peace agreements with the Zionists openly implied: a renewed geographical expansion, a new displacement of Arabs from their homelands, and Zionist plans to create new, more acute internal problems in the Arab countries.

Those patriotic scholars who support us say that Zionism aims, through its pure Jewish state, to distract Jews from its hidden economic-political goal of world domination. They mouth statements of their devotion to the Jewish ideals and the so-called "liberation of persecuted Jews in their societies." In this way, the Zionists established the so-called "movements for national liberation", in order to enable them to mobilize fabricated and politically domesticated fighters capable of fighting and dying to accomplish the Zionist cosmic mission as war and terror, to continuously expand  capital and industries, to convert the Arab "goyim" into "Black labor" that has no rights.

Soudah is an unabashed fan of Communist China and North Korea, and he is – get this – he heads the “Qalamiyin League, Putin and Russia’s lovers in Jordan and the Arab world.”

Anyone who doubts the links between antisemitism and modern “progressive’ socialism should try to explain this article where “Zionists’ regard the rest of the world as “goyim” meant to serve them and their plans to take over the world.

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07/27 Links Pt1: Should There Be a Price for Rejectionism and Terror?; Hamas head: We refused $15 billion in aid conditioned on disarming; IDF thwarts Hezbollah terror cell infiltration

From Ian:

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Should There Be a Price for Rejectionism and Terror?

Decades of peace-processing have been premised on the assumption that Palestinian leaders are ready in principle to end the conflict and live with Israel. But Palestinian leaders have never actually been willing to renounce, once and for all, their claims over any of the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. President George W. Bush learned this lesson. He wooed Arafat by giving official U.S. endorsement, for the first time, to a Palestinian state, but Arafat rebuffed his overture and, in violation of formal promises, bought a huge arsenal of Iranian weapons and then lied about it.

For decades, Palestinian leaders have refused peace offers that were seen as reasonable by top U.S. officials. What is innovative about the new U.S. peace plan is that it favors imposing consequences if the Palestinians unreasonably perpetuate the conflict. If they continue to support terrorism and reject peace, their cause will suffer. Palestinians are now being told that, if they remain violent and uncompromising, the U.S. will not block Israel from advancing its own claims to areas that, in the administration's view, realistic peace talks would leave to Israel.

The sensible question for the Palestinians is not whether the deal provides everything they think they are entitled to, but whether it is the best deal available - now and in the foreseeable future. The plan's goal is to change the diplomatic circumstances that have perversely incentivized the Palestinian side to keep the conflict going.

Hamas head: We refused $15 billion in aid conditioned on disarming

Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh said that his terror group had turned down as much as $15 billion in development aid to Gaza two months ago which he claimed had been conditioned on demilitarizing the Gaza-based terror group.

Haniyeh told Qatari newspaper al-Lusail that the offer had been made in the context of US President Donald Trump’s controversial peace plan, which would allocate $13.38 billion to the Gaza Strip for development if implemented.

“There were parties that came to us two months ago, who we know had been paid off by major powers. They offered us new projects in the Gaza Strip worth about $15 billion. Of course, we said this is excellent, we want to establish an airport, port, and economic development projects in the Gaza Strip,” Haniyeh said.

Both Hamas and its rival Fatah have opposed Trump’s peace plan — often referred to in the region as “the deal of the century” — since it was first published.

Haniyeh, who lives in the Qatari capital of Doha, told al-Lusail that the offer included an end of the blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt, which began after Hamas took over in the strip in 2007. Israel says the blockade prevents Hamas from importing weapons which it would use to threaten the Jewish state. The blockade has devastating effects on the Gazan economy, however, where unemployment is now over 60 percent.

Haniyeh said that the most recent offer was conditioned on Hamas relinquishing its military capabilities. The Trump peace plan stipulates Hamas’ disarmament as a precondition for negotiations on Palestinian statehood, although it seems unlikely that the Gaza-based terror group would agree to do so unilaterally.

“We learned that, in exchange, we would have to dissolve our military factions and integrate them into the police and retire our weaponry, especially heavy weapons, the rockets that hit Tel Aviv and beyond, and dissolve the capability of Gaza for self-rule,” Haniyeh said.

David Singer: David Singer: Jordan Moves to Resolve West Bank Sovereignty Problem it Created

Jordan’s Prime Minister Omar Razzaz has made a welcome intervention to resolve the issue of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (aka West Bank).

Razzaz’s offer comes as Israel readies to restore Jewish sovereignty in 30% of Judea and Samaria after an absence of 3000 years – as promulgated by the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter – and detailed in President Trump’s deal of the century.

Razzaz has raised the possibility of a “one-state solution” to replace the “two-state solution”:
“We are against unilateral actions. We are against annexation. We are against any steps that are not within an overall scheme that leads to a two-state solution. Short of that, if we’re not going towards a two-state solution, let us know what we’re going towards, what kind of one-state solution we’re going towards.”

The “two-state solution” favoured by the international community for the last 40 years – creating an independent State of Palestine between Israel and Jordan – has long passed its anticipated birth date. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) refusal to sit down with Israel to negotiate creating such a State in Gaza and 70% of Judea and Samaria – as detailed in Trump’s Plan – is the final nail in the coffin for an unattainable solution first aired by the 1980 Venice Declaration.

Razzaz should consider going towards the “Jordan one-state solution” that existed between 1948
and 1967 – after Transjordan:
• invaded and conquered Judea and Samaria in 1948 – ethnically cleansing all Jews then living there
• changed its name in 1949
• unified “the two banks of the Jordan, the Eastern and Western, and their amalgamation in one single state: The Hashemite Kingdom of the Jordan” in 1950
• granted Jordanian citizenship to the West Bank Arab residents between 1950 and 1988

Razzaz lays down three conditions for any “one-state solution”:
“Jordan will not absorb transfers of Palestinians. Jordan will not become ‘the’ Palestine, as the Israeli extreme right wishes. And Jordan will not give up its custodianship over [holy Muslim and Christian sites in] Jerusalem. These three are clear for us.”

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“Jews carrying out raids on Al Aqsa”

 

Of course during the week of Tisha B’Av, Muslim antisemites are doubling down on Temple denial.

Felesteen “reports” that “Temple groups begin carrying out raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Dozens of settlers continued their incursions into the courtyards of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, with close protection from the occupation forces that deployed in the area to facilitate the storming operation.

Local sources reported that a number of settlers, accompanied by rabbis, stormed Al-Aqsa courtyards and performed Talmudic rituals in its courtyards.

The preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Ikrima Al-Maqdisi warned against the great danger that settlers ’storms carry on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, through which the occupation seeks to impose a new reality on it.

The Al-Aqsa preacher said that the occupation takes many religious occasions among the Jews as an excuse to intensify the storming of the mosque and impose Israeli sovereignty on it.

Sheikh Sabri affirmed that the Zionists are celebrating what is called the “ruin of the Temple,” and they do not know where it is, but they use the holiday as  an excuse to Judaize Al-Aqsa Mosque with false pretenses.

Sheikh Ikrima has been going on a tear lately  to incite Muslims to jihad against any Jews who want to visit Judaism’s holiest place that Muslims took over, much like we just saw happen to Hagia Sophia in Turkey.

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A brief debunking of the “Blacks are the real Jews” theory

Many Black antisemites insist that they are the real Jews and Jews are imposters, and they claim that they have science and history on their side.

So let’s look at their evidence.

This article in Medium by “Black Simba” is fairly typical in its list of proofs.

1.

Tacitus a Roman historian, even states his thoughts on the origins of the Jews to be descended from Africans:

“Others assert that in the reign of Isis the overflowing population of Egypt, led by Hierosolymus and Judas, discharged itself into the neighbouring countries. Many, again, say that they were a race of Ethiopian origin..”

-Tacitus (Roman historian, History V: Theories of Jewish Origins, written circa 105 AD)

If you look up Tacitus Histories, he also says three other theories of the origin of Jews, each with as little proof as the others.

It is said that the Jews were originally exiles from the island of Crete who settled in the farthest parts of Libya at the time when Saturn had been deposed and expelled by Jove….Still others report that they were Assyrian refugees, a landless people, who first got control of a part of Egypt, then later they had their own cities and lived in the Hebrew territory and the nearer parts of Syria. Still others say that the Jews are of illustrious origin, being the Solymi, a people celebrated in Homer's poems,5 who founded a city and gave it the name Hierosolyma, formed from their own.

This cherry picking of the words of an unreliable historian reporting rumors is proof of nothing.

2.  From a similar article in Medium by Addison:

In 2001, Dr. Ariella Oppenheim and her team at Tel Aviv University released their study which found that the European Jew-ish people were mainly from Khazaria, a Caucasus country which is now called Kazakhstan, Georgia, and other names. The Khazarians converted from pagan religions to talmudic Judaism after the 8th century.

Here’s what the paper actually says:

It is believed that the majority of contemporary Jews descended from the ancient Israelites that had lived in the historic land of Israel until ∼2000 years ago. Many of the Jewish diaspora communities were separated from each other for hundreds of years. Therefore, some divergence due to genetic drift and/or admixture could be expected. However, although Ashkenazi Jews were found to differ slightly from Sephardic and Kurdish Jews, it is noteworthy that there is, overall, a high degree of genetic affinity among the three Jewish communities. Moreover, neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic Jews cluster adjacent to their former host populations, a finding that argues against substantial admixture of males.

This is the exact opposite of the claim.

3. From Addison:

In 70 AD the Romans invaded Israel causing millions of Israelites to escape to Africa. “In his book ,The Great Roman-Jewish War: 66–70, the Roman historian, Flavius Josephus, stated over thousands of years ago,that the Israelites migrated into Africa. He writes:

“General Vaspasian and his son Caesar Titus fought against the Jews. Millions of Jews fled into Africa, among other places, fleeing from Roman persecution and starvation during the siege.”

Millions of Jews streaming into Africa would be a very compelling proof from an eyewitness. However, I could not find this passage in Josephus, assuming that  the book being referred to is “The Wars of the Jews.” I likewise cannot find any scholar who quotes this. It appears to have been fabricated.

4. From Simba:

These maps, drawn/written by different cartographers all show Judah on the African West coast in the 1700s. Some of which show the Kingdom of Judah right on the Slave Coast itself!

 

The Kingdom of Whydah  in today’s Benin was also spelled Hueda, Whidah, Ajuda, Ouidah, Whidaw, Juida, and Juda  by various European mapmakers.  The natives pronounced it Owidah, not close to Yehudah. The name is coincidental. Absolutely no one before recently tried to claim that Jews lived there. The people of the kingdom did not have any rituals that could be considered Jewish in the slightest.

5. From Simba:

If you look at the original names of those African slaves that were captured (before Europeans changed their names after getting to the Americas..), many of them had Hebrew names. Searching slavevoyages.org (a database of those that boarded slave ships during the trans-atlantic slave trade) just for names with “yah” (a short for the name of God, example: hallelujah, kumbaya..etc) in them returned over 800 matches, the term “jah” had over 400.

The database he refers to has over 91,000 names. His assertion that any names with “yah” or “jah” are meaningful falls short when you realize that it is only 1.3% of all the names. Moreover, if you choose other consonants besides “j” and “y you get more impressive results: 2400 for “bah,” 1100 for “dah,” 700 for “kah,” 2400 for “lah,” 2450 for “mah,” 900 for “rah,” 700 for “sah,” 800 for “tah.” Meaning that “yah” and “jah” have no relationship whatsoever with anything Jewish.

6. Addison:

Black people of the Diaspora, unlike other Africans, trace their DNA ancestry back to the Land of Israel.

Unfortunately he fails to say anything further about this study. The closest he gets is discussing the Lemba:

In the 1990’s, a black Hebrew tribe called the Lemba, that resides in Zimbabwe, had their DNA tested in a study done by The Center for Genetic Anthropology at University College London. The DNA test confirmed, that the Lemba, had the same DNA sequences as the Israelite priests, that many believe to be the descendants of Aaron, the older brother of Moses. The results from the study means that the Lemba tribe share the same DNA as the ancient Israelites.

That study, and more recent studies, do not support the conclusion that the Lemba descended from the ancient Israelites, rather all that could be proven was that they patrilineally  originated in the Middle East, because other tribes had the Cohen haplotype. 

Addison makes a similar claim about the Igbo tibe of Nigeria which has a similarly tenuous claim on having Jewish origins.

It is possible that a  few African tribes have some Jewish origin. Jews have spread far and wide. Plus, of course there are Jews who settled in Ethiopia and Tunisia and elsewhere in Africa. But the claim that the majority of Africans who were sold as slaves are descended from Jews has no basis in reality.

Add to this the fact that both these articles knowingly distorted facts and selectively chose others while ignoring the overwhelming evidence that contradicted their proofs, and we see that the idea that most Black descendants of slaves are the original Jews is fiction.

And in at least some cases, it is a thin thread to hold a large basket of Jew-hatred.

 

7. Slightly off topic but to a similar accusation that Jews were instrumental in the slave trade in North America, here are the facts: There were far more Black slave-owners in the Americas than Jewish slave-owners.

To keep matters in perspective, we should note that in the American South, in 1830, there were only 120 Jews among the 45,000 slaveholders owning twenty or more slaves and only twenty Jews among the 12,000 slaveholders owning fifty or more slaves. Even if each member of this Jewish slaveholding elite had owned 714 slaves—a ridiculously high figure in the American South—the total number would only equal the 100,000 slaves owned by black and colored planters in St. Domingue in 1789, on the eve of the Haitian Revolution.

In actuality, so far as ownership of slaves is concerned, the free people of color in the Caribbean greatly surpassed the much smaller number of Jews. Even in Charleston, South Carolina, the percentage of free African Americans who owned slaves increased from one half to three quarters as one moved up the socio-economic scale as indicated by the ownership of real estate. The thousands of Southern black slave owners included freedpeople who had simply purchased family members or relatives. But there were also colored planters, especially in Louisiana, who owned more than fifty or even one hundred slaves. The allure of profits and power transcended all distinctions of race, ethnicity, and religion.

And the most important point:

No one should defend the small number of Jews who bought and sold slaves, or who forced slaves to cut cane on the estates of Joden Savanne. No one should defend the infinitely larger number of Catholics and Protestants who built the Atlantic slave system, or defend the Muslims who initiated the process of shipping black African slaves to distant markets, or defend the Africans who captured and enslaved perhaps twenty million other Africans in order to sell them to European traders for valuable and empowering goods. But while posterity has the right and even duty to judge the past, we must emphatically renounce the dangerous though often seductive belief in a collective guilt that descends through time to every present and future generation.

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Hamas claims it rejected $15 billion aid to Gaza in exchange for dismantling its terror wing

 

Ismail Haniyeh, head of the “political wing” of Hamas, claims that he rejected a a proposal that was submitted to Hamas two months ago which would have included $15 billion in infrastructure projects in Gaza, including an airport, seaport, and other major projects.

The proposal, which presumably came from a moderate Arab country in cooperation with the Trump administration, was for Hamas to integrate its terror wing into the Palestinian police force and to end the division between Hamas and Fatah in exchange for the cash.

Haniyeh said that he especially rejected the idea that Hamas would give up its “heavy weapon” of missiles that can reach Tel Aviv and beyond, whose entire purpose is the war crime of targeting civilians.

It would be interesting to see a poll of Gazans themselves to see whether they would prefer Qassam rockets or cash and an airport.

Palestinian leaders have a habit of making decisions that use their people as pawns, and if this offer was in fact made, this is no exception.

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#NoSafeSpaceForJewHate–boycotting Twitter for 48 hours

 

JPost reports:

Prominent Twitter users are calling for a 48 hour boycott of the social media platform starting Monday, July 27 at 9 a.m. GMT following the site's refusal to take satisfactory action against antisemitism.

Using the hashtag #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate and backed by a number of prominent users including writers, politicians and other celebrities, the new campaign is fueled by frustration felt by many Twitter users over the lack of action taken against antisemitism on the site, despite the platform's claims of being against racism.

The campaign was sparked over the lack of action taken against British rapper Wiley, who made several antisemitic comments on the platform.

“If you work for a company owned by 2 Jewish men and you challenge the Jewish community in anyway of course you will get fired,” Wiley wrote and then added, “Infact [sic] there are 2 sets of people who nobody has really wanted to challenge #Jewish & #KKK but being in business for 20 years you start to undestand [sic] why.”

In several other tweets, Wiley claimed that Jews control "the Law," and made several claims about Israel not being a Jewish country, "Listen to me Jewish community Israel is not your country I'm sorry."

He later doubled down on the comments, stating after being confronted: "Anti Semetic? What's it called the way you rip us off in business then? What's that called when you tell us there is 1 rule for us and another rule for you lot? What's that called?" He added "Anti Semetic? Are u stupid? Do you know what these people do to the world?"

Wiley is only the tip of the iceberg as many Black celebrities have been posting Jew-hatred on social media in recent weeks. Some have huge followings.  Twitter is complicit in Jew-hate worldwide.

I will not be posting anything to Twitter for 48 hours (I hope I managed to shut down all my automated posts.)

 

Please check out my posts directly on my blog, or go to Facebook to see my most recent posts. If I have the urge to tweet, I’ll write everything on Facebook instead. (Not that Facebook is that much better than Twitter…)

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My “I have a joke” memes

Over the weekend Twitter was overrun with “I have a joke…” memes. So I made a few of my own.

I have a joke about @ErakatSaeb but you'd never believe it.

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 26, 2020

I have a joke about @IfNotNowOrg but it will have to wait until their Wednesday afternoon havdalah ceremony

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 26, 2020

I tried to make a joke about Jewish Voice for Peace but couldn't possibly top their name itself.

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 26, 2020

I have a joke about Mahmoud Abbas but it is way past its expiration date.

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 26, 2020

I have a joke about Hassan Nasrallah but I have to run it by the Ayatollah first.

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 26, 2020

I HAVE A JOKE ABOUT ARIEL GOLD
I HAVE A JOKE ABOUT ARIEL GOLD
I HAVE A JOKE ABOUT ARIEL GOLD
I HAVE A JOKE ABOUT ARIEL GOLD
I HAVE A JOKE ABOUT ARIEL GOLD
I HAVE A JOKE ABOUT ARIEL GOLD
I HAVE A JOKE ABOUT ARIEL GOLD
I HAVE A JOKE ABOUT ARIEL GOLD
I HAVE A JOKE ABOUT ARIEL GOLD

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 26, 2020

I have a joke about Neturei Karta, but they say they are the only REAL jokes.

— Elder of Ziyon (@elderofziyon) July 26, 2020

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07/26 Links: Time for social media to change its ways; #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate; Islamists co-opted the George Floyd protests

From Ian:

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Time for social media to change its ways

On June 30, 2016, 17-year-old Mohammad Tra'ayra from the West Bank village of Bani Naim infiltrated a home in nearby Kiryat Arba and stabbed 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel to death as she slept in her bed. It was later discovered that his Facebook feed was rife with messages of hate and incitement and that he boasted on his own page that he wished to die as a "shahid" – a martyr – writing, "Death is a right and I demand that right."

The complaints lodged with Facebook over his posts, as well as the demand later to remove posts praising the killing and the murderer were, as always, ignored.

Social media platforms enjoy absolute immunity from any liability over the user-generated content they feature. They can remove controversial content without being perceived as responsible for its nature. Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms have an internal mechanism for dealing with "content that violates the community's rules," and they remove posts according to their sole discretion.

The broad immunity afforded to them by law often translates into selective enforcement.

There have been dozens of cases when right-wing activists and journalists has their Facebook accounts suspended for allegedly violating the community's rules with their posts, all while someone sitting in Facebook headquarters in Ireland has no problem allowing posts inciting the murder of Jews to stand.

Facebook's own interpretation of the limits of freedom of expression has had a clear impact on the waves of stabbing and ramming attacks in Israel and around the world. This has been clearly shown in examples of inciting social media posts included as evidence of motive and intent in many cases of mayhem and murder.

The evidence proves that the killers were often inspired by and drew ideological justification for their actions from posts by extremist religious leaders. It also proves that they received "training" from videos posted by terrorist groups on their websites as well as on social media.

High profile Twitter users call for boycott of site over antisemitism

A group of high-profile Twitter users, backed by leading community figures, writers, celebrities and politicians have launched a campaign for a 48 hour 'walkout' from the site from Monday, in protest at Twitter's refusal to take proportionate action against rapper Wiley.

The grime star - who has nearly 500,000 followers - published a series of antisemitic posts on Twitter and Instagram on Friday and Saturday

But Twitter merely imposed a 'suspension', leaving almost all the posts still on the site.

Wiley is the latest in a long line of accounts with large numbers of followers who have posted antisemitic tweets.

A spokesman for the group said: “The action we are announcing today is to show that the Jewish community and its allies have had enough of platforms like Twitter acting as loudspeakers for antisemitism, amplifying the hatred of Jews to millions of other social media users.

"As soon as Wiley began posting his antisemitic tweets on Friday Twitter was flooded with requests to have his account taken down. In response Twitter deleted a couple of his tweets and gave the grime star a brief suspension. It was a completely inadequate response.

"Unless there is an immediate change in how Twitter operates then there will be further action, including legal action, against the organisation.”

The walkout is being promoted using the hashtag #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate

Twitter is guilty of violating Twitter rules against abusive behaviour.

Twitter continually refuses to take #Antisemitism seriously.

From tomorrow at 9am UK time, people from all over the world are suspending @twitter for 48 hours.#NoSafeSpaceForJewHate pic.twitter.com/2JEmFM6LlL

— David Collier - - walking out for 48 hours (@mishtal) July 26, 2020

CST will be supporting the boycott of Twitter and Instagram to protest their weak action on Wiley's disgusting antisemitism. Here's our statement #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate pic.twitter.com/5M8uzFowKi

— CST (@CST_UK) July 25, 2020

Home secretary demands social media giants act faster on antisemitism

The home secretary has called on social media companies to act faster in removing “appalling hatred” from their platforms following outrage over anti-Semitic posts made by grime artist Wiley.

Police are investigating a series of comments made on the musician’s Instagram and Twitter accounts on Friday that led to him being banned from both for seven days.

In a tweet on Sunday, Priti Patel said: “The antisemitic posts from Wiley are abhorrent.

“They should not have been able to remain on Twitter and Instagram for so long, and I have asked them for a full explanation.

“Social media companies must act much faster to remove such appalling hatred from their platforms.”Following Wiley’s posts, Twitter was accused of “ignoring anti-Semitism” as his tweets were still visible 12 hours after they were first posted.

A number of tweets have now been removed and he has been given a seven-day ban by the site.

On Sunday, a spokesperson for Facebook, which owns Instagram, said the platform had also issued the rapper with a seven-day block on his account.

The antisemitic posts from Wiley are abhorrent.

They should not have been able to remain on Twitter and Instagram for so long and I have asked them for a full explanation.

Social media companies must act much faster to remove such appalling hatred from their platforms.

— Priti Patel (@pritipatel) July 26, 2020

You have an appoitment with the Colonel. Streaming live today!@COLRICHARDKEMP https://t.co/SUiHt00r1S

— Michael Dickson (@michaeldickson) July 26, 2020

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Cartoon of the Day: Reading material

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Metropolitan Museum of Art calls tefillin “an Egyptian amulet”

 

This is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art webpage showing its collections:

 

 

This object is obviously tefillin shel rosh, called “phylacteries” in the New Testament, that Jewish men wear for prayer every day (and in the times of the Talmud, all day.)

It is sort of amazing that tefillin could be categorized in the museum as Islamic era amulet since 1962 with no one recognizing it.

This tefillin shel rosh  looks startlingly modern with even the four-branched Shin on the side.

While tefillin shel rosh seem to have been cube shaped since at least the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are conical tefillin shel yad in the Cairo Geniza and cylindrical tefillin shel yad as late as a 1725 engraving by a French/Dutch artist Bernard Picart, as well as tefillin shel yad shaped like an arch in (seemingly) the 19th century.

 

 

 

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz says that the Talmudic prescription that tefillin shel yad must be square only refers to the base, not the box, as is the case with all of these.

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Today’s Peter Beinart lie: “Palestinians have been excluded from mainstream US media”

 

Peter Beinart continues with his push to destroy Israel with another whopper of a lie.

“For decades, Palestinians have been largely excluded from the mainstream US media conversation about Israel-Palestine. That exclusion continues today, and represents one more form of Palestinian dispossession,” he tweeted.

Really?

Judging from the New York Times op-ed page since Arafat rejected Oslo, I see articles by

Marwan Barghouti
Saeb Erekat
Diana Buttu
Ahmed Abu Artema
Mahmoud Abbas
Hanan Ashrawi
Ali Abunimah
Ayman Odeh
Raja Shehadeh
Zena Agha
Daoud Kuttab
Yasir Arafat
Ali Jarbawi
Yousef Munayyer
Rashid Khalidi
Khalil Shikaki
Linda Sarsour
Zahi Khoury

I’m probably missing some. Most of these were in the past decade. Many of these have written articles more than once. (If you include the years before 2000, there are even more, like Edward Said and Mamdouh Aker. )

Not to mention that Rashida Tlaib has been all over the media since her election. Hanan Ashrawi and Saeb Erekat have been staples on TV news shows for decades.

Now, how many countries can claim to have had more citizens writing in US media? Israel, probably the UK, maybe Canada. Are there more articles by Germans or the French or Mexicans or Japanese than Palestinians? I doubt it highly.

Even this doesn’t tell the whole story. For while the US newspapers are eager to publish Israelis who oppose Israel’s policies, one would be hard pressed to find Palestinians who are against the Palestinian leadership or who are pro-Israel in the media. Voices like Khaled Abu Tomaeh or Bassem Eid are rarely found in the New York Times nowadays (Bassem Eid was published in 2001 and 1996, not since.)  Throughout the 2010s, the ratio of anti-Israel to pro-Israel op-eds in the NYT was about 4-1, meaning that the Palestinian perspectives were well represented even if not from Palestinians  - which is not unusual, as there were more Americans who wrote op-eds and columns about the conflict than Israelis and Palestinians combined.

In short, Peter couldn’t name more than  a handful of actual countries that have had more representation in US media than Palestinians. The truth is the exact opposite of his claim.

But when someone is seeking attention for his immoral ideas, making things up is not unexpected.

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