Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 10, 2020

08/10 Links Pt2: Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism; Judea Pearl: A Lesson for Seth Rogen (and All Jews) on Early Zionists and Arabs; The NAACP’s Failure to Deal With Rodney Muhammad’s Antisemitism

From Ian:

This past Thursday, I saw a disturbing email in my inbox from the President of USC, Carol Folt. In her message to the USC community, Ms. Folt addressed the resignation of Vice President of Undergraduate Student Government, Rose Ritch, from her position in student government. Ms. Ritch, who is Jewish, was subjected to months of antisemitic attacks and cyber-bullying due to her support for Israel’s existence and her identification as a Zionist. Impeachment proceedings were initiated against Ms. Ritch by students who felt “unsafe” on campus by the idea that a Zionist Jew would head their student government. Never mind that Ms. Ritch is a strong advocate for social justice.

In a July 7, 2020 letter to the USC administration, The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law gave heart wrenching examples of the abuse, harassment and pure hatred Ms. Ritch had been subjected to. In asking the administration to stop the impeachment proceedings because they clearly violate Ms. Ritch’s Civil Rights, the Brandeis Center pointed out that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism provides “guidance for understanding when anti-Israel and anti-Zionist expression becomes targeted, intentional, discriminatory harassment and intimidation of Jewish students.”

In other words, the USC administration was reminded that it is not enough to pay lip service to the evils of of Antisemitism so long as you are not killing Jews and taking their property, while giving tacit and sometimes overt support to Jew hatred in the form of anti-Zionism.

In her resignation letter, Ms. Ritch called out USC for not doing enough to protect her from scathing attacks for identifying as a Zionist. “I am grateful that the University administration suspended my impeachment proceedings, but am disappointed that the university has not recognized the need to publicly protect Jewish students from the type of antisemitic harassment I endured.”

I am proud of Ms. Ritch for her courage in publicly outing anti-Semites who hide behind the cloak of anti-Zionism. Ms. Ritch is highlighting an issue that unfortunately is not unique. “The sad reality is that my story is not uncommon on college campuses. Across the country, Zionist students are being asked to disavow their identities or beliefs to enter many spaces on their campuses.”

Bari Weiss, Rose Ritch resign after harassed over their Jewish identities

THE ATTACKS on Ritch are part of the broader corrosive influence of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that has permeated the mainstream of progressive consciousness. By suggesting that Ritch’s support for a Jewish homeland would somehow render her “unfit for office or justify her impeachment” in effect resurrects the oldest of Dreyfus Affair level antisemitic tropes that call into question the primary loyalties of Jews who hold public office and “holding Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.”

Political disagreements have always fueled the fabric of intellectual debate and especially on a college campus. Yet in Ritch’s case, labeling her Zionism as racism effectively silenced her voice in the debate and rendered her fair game to be canceled under the guise of political correctness, which bends far toward the side of the anti-Israel narrative.

What we are witnessing is a collective silencing of those who do not hold these toxic antisemitic views by those who do, ironically similar to the voices of moderate Islam squelched by the voices of extremism. Throughout modern history, intellectual curiosity and a sense of civic responsibility to repair what was broken in society were pursuits identified with both the college campus (think Berkeley of the ‘60’) and the printing press (thing Enlightenment). Yet, what we are seeing on college campuses and in the press is a narrowing of the acceptable definition
of “woke” consciousness, where membership is qualified by an asterisk that Jews need not apply.

Our nation is at a crossroads with an upending of long-held beliefs, practices and even social institutions being questioned and redefined to fit the zeitgeist of the current political climate. We are not exempt from these vital conversations, nor should we shirk from necessary inward introspection as we strive to repair a world so broken by racism, elitism and discrimination.

However, it is incumbent upon us to root out the misguided and misinformed ideology that has led to the resignation of these two powerful and important voices, and to decry all antisemitic rhetoric at every occurrence with a zero-tolerance policy. After all, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?” (Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14)

Israel’s finger-prick blood test startup Sight nabs $71 million to expand scope

Israel’s Sight Diagnostics, the startup that has received a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) nod for its finger-prick blood test device, said it has raised $71 million in funding from investors to expand global operations and detect a greater array of diseases, including COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.

Investors in the Series D funding include Koch Disruptive Technologies, the venture arm of US multinational Koch Industries, Inc; Longliv Ventures, an arm of the Hong Kong based CK Hutchison Holdings and Israeli VC fund OurCrowd, the company said in a statement last week.

The new round brings Sight’s total funding to more than $124 million, the company said.

The company’s Sight OLO blood analyzer device uses machine vision to analyze blood and to provide results for a complete blood count test (CBC) from just a drop of blood in minutes, the company says. A complete blood count test — which counts red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets in a patient’s sample — is one of the most basic, informative tests a doctor can conduct.

To use Sight’s product, the physician or nurse pricks the patient’s finger or draws blood through the vein, and places a drop of blood into a disposable plastic cartridge that is inserted into the OLO, which looks like a small home printer. The machine, equipped with a camera, takes thousands of images of the millions of cells within the sample and measures 19 different blood parameters in minutes. Software developed by the firm based on the machine learning algorithms analyzes the images and provides lab-grade results in a printout or via email.

How techies used Bluetooth’s most annoying trait to build Israel’s new COVID app

Ronen and Pinkas told The Times of Israel they developed a system for Bluetooth messages to be sent between users’ phones, which can be used to generate quarantine alerts if relevant — but without the government getting anyone’s personal data.

At the crux of the design is the biggest complaint of people who use Bluetooth headphones, namely that the signal fades when you are more than a few steps away from your device.

Pinkas said that if people are close enough to a carrier for their phones to exchange Bluetooth signals of the highest quality, they are within proximity that epidemiologists want them to know about, while if the distance is greater, epidemiologists don’t care.

He said that relying on Bluetooth, rather than the tracking methods that the Shin Bet uses, can keep many people out of unnecessary quarantine.

“The problem with tracking currently done by Shin Bet is that it uses cellphone signal data that isn’t precise in terms of location and doesn’t know what floor you’re on in a building, so if there’s a carrier in a mall, it can lead to many people who were nowhere near him or her being quarantined,” he said.

With their app, every user sends out a special Bluetooth signal every five minutes that is logged by any other HaMagen users who are within two meters. The phone keeps a record of these messages — without any information to identify the user who transmitted them.

If an Israeli citizen tests positive for coronavirus, they have no legal requirement to reveal that they use the app. But if they choose, they can ask the Health Ministry for a code that will upload all the Bluetooth messages they transmitted — without information to identify them — to the ministry server.

Why do they lie about IHRA? Because they WANT to treat Israel differently than any other state.

From PR Newswire:

On Friday, August 7, 2020, a coalition of more than 120 NGOs submitted a letter to Facebook, urging the social media company to implement a comprehensive hate speech policy on anti-Semitism that incorporates the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.

The objections to using the IHRA definition are all the same: critics say it would stop legitimate criticism of Israel. As Lara Friedman tweets, the IHRA definition is “a means to deplatform/quash criticism of Israel.”

It is a lie and they know it.

IHRA is explicit:

“Criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. “

The exact opposite of their oft-repeated claim.

And when you call them on it, they run away and say the same lies again some other day.

There is only one explanation that makes sense: they want to criticize Israel in ways that no other nation is ever criticized. They need to. it is the basis of their activism.It is their

raison d'être. Because by any sane measure, Israel is no worse and much better than the vast majority of nations in any metric of ethics or morality you can come up with, given Israel’s situation of being surrounded by people who hate Jews and the Jewish state since way before “occupation” or even before Israel was reborn.

And the only possible reason for such a desire to paint Israel as uniquely evil – as a Nazi, racist, apartheid, baby-killing state – is old fashioned antisemitism.

These modern antisemites pretend to be against all forms of bigotry, giving them the moral high ground to accuse Israeli Jews of being racists.

So of course they don’t accept the truth, that their crazed hate and obsession with Israel is a form of antisemitism. They want to accuse others of bigotry, not look at their own pure selves. They use their self-righteousness to blind themselves from their own hate. And they really hate being shown what hypocrites they are.

Which is why every time a smug socialist says that the IHRA definition quashes legitimate criticism, insist that they explain exactly how. They will spout absurdities like “being pro-Palestinian is a violation of IHRA” – which it doesn’t.

In the end, they want the right to call Israeli Jews Nazis. And that is why they hate IHRA.

Israel is criticized for allowing Palestinians to go to the beach. Then it is criticized for NOT allowing Palestinians to go to the beach.

From Haaretz:

Anyone coming to the beach over the weekend couldn’t miss the Palestinian families, especially in Jaffa but in Herzliya, Haifa and other beaches as well.

The average Israeli wouldn’t be able to tell whether an Arab family came from Nablus or Tul Karm in the West Bank or Umm al-Fahm or Kafr Qasem in Israel, but a sharp eye could tell that the Palestinians were different, people for whom going to the beach is a rare treat and getting there involved some difficulty. “We came to Kafr Biddu and we crossed the barrier at an opening – not at a checkpoint or anything, just an opening in the [separation] fence like many others,” said Inas, a mother of three who came to Jaffa. “On the Israeli side there was a bus waiting for us – I paid 30 shekels (nearly $9) and we went to Jaffa. There was nothing threatening. I was surprised when I saw the Jews [soldiers] looking at us without bothering us at all.

…The PA did not come out against these visits but some saw it as Israel poking a finger in the PA’s eye. “They want to prove to us that with or without coordination, they are letting in civilians, even at the risk of a coronavirus outbreak, even though they knew in advance that the Palestinians wouldn’t mix with the Israelis,” a senior Palestinian official said. “What’s more, instead of Palestinians taking their leisure in the West Bank and spending their money there, they preferred having the money to spend in Israel and not the West Bank, even if we aren’t talking about large sums.”

The army allowing Palestinians to go to the beach is just proof of how evil Israel is.

And you know what else is? Blocking Palestinians from going to the beach.

Israeli policy may be inconsistent, but one thing that is always consistent is the hate that people have for Israel, no matter what it does.

08/10 Links Pt1: Dismantle UNRWA and there may be a chance for peace; The UN “Blacklist” of Israeli Companies: Should It Be Taken Seriously?; Entire Lebanese government to step down amid growing anger over Beirut blast

From Ian:

Dismantle UNRWA and there may be a chance for peace

UNRWA has instituted two policies which, when considered together, acts as a formidable obstacle to resolving the conflict. Unlike all other refugee assistance programs, UNRWA grants refugee status to the descendants of any registered Palestinian Arab. This essentially means that even if the great grandchild of a registered refugee is born and raised in New York, they will still be deemed a "refugee". As expected, the number of registered refugees has skyrocketed - from 726,000 in 1949, to over 5,000,000 today.

Secondly, UNRWA strongly supports the Palestinian Arab demand to have a "right of return" to the entire land of Israel. With an estimated population of 9,000,000 Israeli citizens, consisting of less than 7,000,000 Jews, if Israel were to ever agree to this demand the Jewish State would cease to exist. This demand for a "right of return", combined with the skyrocketing number of "refugees", has been a major roadblock on the pathway to establishing peace.

Finally, while UNRWA publicly declares itself to be dedicated to improving the lives of the Palestinian "refugees", it privately maintains close ties to Hamas, a known terrorist organization. Both Suhail al-Hindi, a one-time leader of UNRWA, and Muhammad al-Jamassi, an UNRWA staffer, have been elected to leadership positions within this terror group.

According to UN Watch, a leading watchdog group, terror tunnels were discovered below UNRWA schools, and, in Gaza, schools have a representative designated to recruiting students into Hamas. Furthermore, terror groups have used these buildings to store rockets, thereby forcing each child to act as a human shield and to live in perpetual danger. Rather than acting for the betterment of the Palestinian Arabs under its aegis, UNRWA has allowed terrorist organizations to manipulate innocent children in an endless war against the State of Israel.

UNRWA continues to receive funding, even while actively working to prevent any form of peace. After almost seventy years in existence, it is time that we do our part in bringing an end to this conflict.

UNRWA must be dismantled for the sake of preventing the loss of any more innocent lives and to protect Palestinian Arab children from receiving a hate filled, anti-Semitic education. Without the continuous interference of UNRWA, all Israelis and Palestinians will have a greater chance of one day living side by side, in peace.

JCPA: The UN “Blacklist” of Israeli Commercial Enterprises: Should It Be Taken Seriously?

The UN blacklist of commercial enterprises involved in business activities in the West Bank territories of Judea and Samaria emanates from the highly politicized and discredited UN Human Rights Council as an overtly and politically hostile attempt to harm such enterprises, and through them, to harm Israel.

The blacklist is nothing more than a recommendatory measure. It is specifically not legally binding on states or companies.

In publishing the blacklist, the UN Human Rights Council has, in fact, undermined the authority of the UN Security Council, which, pursuant to Chapter VII, article 41 of the UN Charter, is the only international body authorized to impose commercial sanctions on states. This provision has no authority regarding commercial enterprises.

The publication of the blacklist runs against prevailing legal viewpoints and jurisprudence that sees nothing illegal in the involvement of private commercial enterprises in business activities in occupied or administered territories. International law cannot be activated vis-à-vis private commercial enterprises.

By publishing the blacklist, the UN Human Rights Council is interfering in the commitments set out in the Middle East peace negotiation process, and specifically, provisions of the internationally endorsed Oslo Accords regarding economic development and cooperation between the parties.

Moreover, the approval and publication of the blacklist, and any attempt to implement it, undermine the status of both the United Nations and the European Union, both signatories as witnesses to the Oslo Accords, and as such, prejudices the integrity and credibility of both organizations.

Prof. Daniel Pipes: Islamism and Syria Update

Mohammad Hassan Goodarzi of Iran's International Quran News Agency solicited this written interview only to have it rejected by his editors because they "disagreed" with it. So, I make it available here, precisely as prepared on July 9, 2020.

What is the main cause of Islamism in the Middle East?
Frustration: Islamic self-image and Muslim historical experience both lead Muslims to believe they should be the richest, most educated, and most powerful of peoples. But reality since at least 1800 has found Muslims the poorest, least educated, and weakest of peoples. Islamism promises to repair that problem.

Do Western countries promote Islamism?
In general, no, with two important exceptions. (1) Internationally, Westerners at times have seen Islamists as a lesser enemy and have tactically supported them, for example, in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union or in Gaza against the PLO. (2) Domestically, non-violent Islamists are seen as a better alternative to jihadism.

How is Islamism in the Middle East best fought?
Negatively and positively. Negatively by battling it on every front, from the military to the ideological. Positively by offering an alternative, namely reform Islam, an Islam compatible with modern life, especially with regard to non-Muslims, women, and jihad.

How do you evaluate the argument that the Syrian civil war that began in March 2011 seems to be ending?
The Assad government controls about 60 percent of the country's territory, with Turkish- and American-allied forces controlling the rest. That suggests to me that Syria's civil wars are far from over.

The U.S. Government recently passed sanctions (the Caesar Act), against the Syrian regime. What effect will it have?
The goal is to pressure the Assad regime to stop making war on its own people. Even before coming into effect on June 17, the act already contributed to the collapse of the Syrian currency. Looking ahead, it appears the most direct impact will be on the oil and gas industry and on reconstruction efforts.

The Caesar Act, named after a pseudonymous military photographer who fled Syria in 2013 with 55,000 images from the country's jails, targets both Asma and Bashar al-Assad.

What is Zaytuna College trying to hide?

Zaytuna College is a Sunni Muslim institution in Berkeley, California. It is accredited for a degree program in Islamic Law and Theology, which appears to be the only major student can choose.

As an Islamic college, some of its rules seem strange to Western eyes. Horseback riding and archery are requirements. Students cannot date each other or anyone else on or off campus. Young men and women are not allowed to study together one on one, and anyone who witnesses that must report the violation. Drinking and gambling are prohibited. Baseball caps or clothing with corporate logos are forbidden. Students may not go to bears or casinos even off campus. Student’s mothers cannot visit the men’s dorms and their fathers cannot visit the women’s dorms. Teacher’s judgments may not be questioned.

I have no problem with their draconian rules for students – it is a private college and can make up whatever rules it wants.

But this policy rankles:

Media and Public Relations Policy

All Zaytuna College communications with representatives of the media should be coordinated and approved by the Director of Publications. With rare exceptions, the College prohibits media representatives from interviewing, photographing, or filming on campus.

If they are proud of their school, why don’t they allow the media to check out the campus?

Keep in mind that one of the co-founders of the school is Hatem Bazian, who has engaged in antisemitism for quite a while now, as Canary Mission and others document, including retweeting this:

He once led a protest at UC Berkeley and said, “Look at the Jewish names on the school buildings…Take a look at the type of names on the buildings around campus — Haas, Zellerbach — and decide who controls this university."

Perhaps reporters who visit the campus would find lots of examples of antisemitism that its cofounder pushes to students. Perhaps this is one reason why Zaytuna College wants to tightly control its public image.

(h/t Irene)

Will Lebanese aid be diverted to Hezbollah terror? Do Democratic members of Congress care?

Last week, three Democratic members of Congress who hope to replace Rep. Eliot Engel as chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee all said that they would condition aid to Israel to ensure that it doesn’t go towards “annexation.”

All three of the Democratic congressmen running to chair the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee support either restricting or leveraging American aid to Israel as a form of opposing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to annex parts of the West Bank.

In separate statements to The Times of Israel this week, California Rep. Brad Sherman, Texas Rep. Joaquín Castro, and New York Rep. Gregory Meeks each indicated that US military aid should not be used on Israeli annexation moves.

This is all political posturing. As I have shown, all aid to Israel is audited and none of it is spent in the territories – it is all earmarked for specific projects.

To even imply that some of the US aid to Israel is being diverted for purposes other than what is intended is slanderous and anti-Israel, no matter how much these members of Congress or J-Street pretend that they support Israel.

But American political leaders are interested in sending lots of aid to Israel’s northern neighbor, Lebanon. That country is known to be thoroughly corrupt and it is known to be literally controlled by a terror group, Hezbollah.

The international aid conference held Sunday and chaired by France’s President Emmanuel Macron said that "Assistance should be timely, sufficient and consistent with the needs of the Lebanese people," adding that help must be "directly delivered to the Lebanese population, with utmost efficiency and transparency".

But not a word about Hezbollah.

We’ve seen how Hamas has stolen aid meant for Gazans. We know that Iran and Hezbollah are cash strapped and will want a piece of the billions that could flow into Lebanon to rebuild. the time to address these issues is now, not after an aid mechanism is already set up.

The Israeli think tank Alma has documented 28 Hezbollah weapons cache or launch sites in Beirut. These sites are powder kegs that exist, today, right next to schools and apartments. what good is rebuilding Beirut when it has more highly explosive materials right in the middle of the city?

(Also troubling was that the American Jewish Committee tweeted that aid to Lebanon should be conditioned on adherence to UN resolutions to disarm Hezbollah, but it took that tweet down without explanation.)

The world should send medical equipment, shelters, blankets, doctors and other aid to the people of Beirut. But when it comes to cash, strict controls must be put in place because the Lebanese people know better than anyone how corrupt their leaders are and how tempting it is for them to steal the funds meant to help. And they know how Hezbollah has hijacked their country.

Why wouldn’t every Western and Sunni Arab state insist on strict conditions for aid?

And why are we not hearing from these candidates for the House Foreign Affairs Committee on whether they insist that aid to Lebanon should have the oversight that aid to Israel already has?

University of Manchester tries to placate BDS–and will pay dearly

The University of Manchester has made the classic mistake of how to deal with BDS – and it will regret this.

Last year, students crashed a UM board meeting, demanding that they divest from Caterpillar. The board members tried to be polite during the invasion and the self-righteous speech where the activists threaten that they will continue to harass the board members, “year after year after year, and it will get more intense.”

Apparently, the university decided to accede to some of the BDS demands to make them go away. Electronic Intifada reports that they have sold nearly $5 million of shares in Caterpillar and Booking.com.

But when activists bragged about their victory, the university released a statement saying that “The decisions taken on our specific equity holdings are made by our investment managers with the aim of delivering our overall investment goals” and had nothing to do with BDS. They are naively hoping that by addressing some of BDS concerns, they will make them go away and stop harassing UM leaders, while at the same time pretending that they are not willing to be bullied.

It never works. The Israel haters now smell blood, and this makes them redouble their efforts against the institutions that show the tiniest bit of wavering in their position.

In a statement on Monday activists from Apartheid off Campus, a new student network, said that “The divestment victory at Manchester, the largest university in Europe, is expected to be a watershed moment for the BDS movement on campuses in the UK.”

But activists said they would continue to target Manchester university for BDS campaigns.

According to Apartheid off Campus the university “still has many ties with Israel’s apartheid regime, including its exchange program with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem which sends students to study on occupied and stolen Palestinian land.”

(Hebrew University is on Mount Scopus, which was considered part of Israel since 1948, showing that the BDS movement is not at all about “occupation” and all about destroying Israel. )

As Asher Fredman documents in his recently released book on BDS, this was predictable – BDS concentrates on institutions that waver and that take them seriously and it gives up on those that ignore it. Their demands are never ending on the unfortunate companies, universities and groups that try to accommodate them, and even the groups that capitulate completely to BDS demands are then told they must pay “reparations” for their “crimes.”

The University of Manchester thought they can make BDS go away. Instead, they have ensured that the harassment will increase “year after year after year.”

Emily Schrader on EoZTV

Emily Schrader is a social media expert and has been fighting online antisemitism for much of her adult life. We discuss online antisemitism, her questions to Twitter and Facebook at the Knesset (and Twitter’s shocking answer,) and more.

Check it out!

08/09 Links: Phyllis Chesler: How I got canceled; Lebanon protests, Macron visit highlight absurd EU policy on Hezbollah; The Sbarro Massacre: When the media turns a terrorist into a heroine

From Ian:

Phyllis Chesler: How I got canceled

Perhaps contemporary ‘cancel culture’ officially began in 1989, when Khomeini issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie for having ‘defamed’ Islam in The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was ushered into hiding and the Islamist assault on truth-speech in the West was on. But here’s what I also think.

The day after Israel won its 1967 war of self-defense, the propaganda began in deadly earnest against both Israel and the West. Within two decades, perhaps less, Western universities were intellectually and politically ‘occupied’ by Stalinist and Islamist narratives. Balkanized social identities and victimology ruled.

Academics, including feminists (my people), became more obsessed with the alleged occupation of Palestine, a country that had never existed, than with real genocides or the occupation of women’s bodies.

By the 1980s and 1990s, the intelligentsia passionately agreed that ‘Islamophobia’ really existed.

They were only a decade away from believing that men can be women; that only the West, not the Rest, has ever engaged in slavery, imperialism and colonialism; and that victims always trump victimizers, even when the victim is actually the aggressor.

Disagree with any of this, and you’re Out. History itself has been found guilty by this crowd and every effort is now underway, not only to judge it, but to disappear as much of it as possible.

Perhaps I’m something of a pioneer because I was first ‘canceled’ in 2002-03.

Please understand: I do not view myself as a victim for refusing to submit to politically correct speech codes or groupthink. I’m one of the lucky ones. Despite adversities, I’ve been writing for more than 50 years and I’m still at it.

Having chosen a life of ideas, I expected enlightened debate.

Cancel culture - and the Jewish experience

Another variant of cancel culture detailed in my book happened in the Netherlands. Professor Pieter van der Horst, a gentile, is an internationally known scholar specializing in early Christian and Jewish studies. On June 16, 2006, as he was concluding his academic teaching career at Utrecht University, he delivered a farewell lecture on the topic “The Myths of Jewish Cannibalism.” In the lecture he drew a line connecting the more than two millennia of classic pre-Christian Greek antisemitism to the anti-Jewish blood libel now popular in the Arab world.

On the day he gave the lecture, the Dutch Jewish weekly NIW claimed that his text had been severely censored by the university’s rector. Van der Horst later elaborated on this in an article entitled “Tying Down Academic Freedom” in the Wall Street Journal. In the piece, he said the Rector Magnificus of Utrecht University, a pharmacologist, had summoned him to appear before a committee that included three other professors. The committee and the rector told him along with others that his lecture damaged the university’s ability to build bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The committee also claimed that the scholarly level of Van der Horst’s lecture was poor. This was a bizarre claim as he was a member of the Dutch Royal Academy, the pinnacle of Dutch scholarship. Later, his uncensored lecture was published as a book. It is a well-conceived text. What Van der Horst had wanted to say before the university’s censorship action was entirely true. If all Utrecht University’s lectures were on the same level, the institution could be proud.

In the last paragraph of the Harper’s letter, it says: “As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk-taking and even mistakes.” This statement is old hat for defenders of Israel at the large number of universities where cancel culture has appeared. In light of the Jewish experience in this century, the Harper’s letter is an innocuous, inconclusive text.

Had the signatories of the letter thought more deeply about the issue they were writing about, they might have arrived at an operational conclusion. The text of the First Amendment of the US Constitution in its present form is obsolete. It should be reformulated to make incitement and hate speech punishable by law, as is the case in several other countries. Then, for instance, America’s leading antisemite, Louis Farrakhan, would be in jail rather than be flattered and quoted by people who don’t mind his anti-Jewish hate speech. If that amendment were changed, life might also become a little more comfortable for the signatories of the Harper’s letter.

How Iran illustrates the fallacy of social-media censorship

The problem with more censorship is that Twitter’s efforts, as well as the first steps down that road by Google and Facebook, show that it isn’t possible to ask these companies to merely do the decent thing and take down the likes of Louis Farrakhan and the genocidal theocrats running Iran.

Twitter has no more interest in addressing anti-Semitism than does Facebook. But what it is interested in doing is wielding its enormous power to advance the political agendas of its leaders and staff.

Trump tweets things that are off-base and sometimes not true. But the same can be said for many politicians. Trump is different in that he understood quicker than most that Twitter provided him with a way to reach voters without the filter that the media has employed in its traditional role as information gatekeeper. So it’s understandable if hardly justified that his media critics want to reassert their power. That’s why they have targeted Trump, whose policies and persona are despised by the left-leaning staff and ownership of social-media companies.

That pattern has characterized the actions of Google and Facebook in the past, which have targeted conservative publications and writers for the sort of treatment that has made them harder to find or read.

Should they choose more censorship, people like Khamenei have little to worry about. Twitter, and no doubt Facebook, will find a way to rationalize continuing to publish hate from oppressive governments lest they are shut out of large and potentially lucrative markets. Instead, they will not only do more to silence Trump and his supporters, but likely extend their scrutiny to Israel and its friends.

A company that thinks there’s an inimitable threat to civilization from a political opponent in the White House making comments that are merely controversial but finds Iran’s genocidal threats unexceptionable is simply incapable—regardless of what sorts of measures it puts in place to deal with the problem—of making rational or moral choices about whose voice to silence. And if they are going to play censor, then Trump and other Republicans are right to demand the abolition of Section 230 so they can have the same liability problems as other publishers instead of being simply cash machines with no accountability.

That should remind us why free people should always be wary of any idea that sets us off down a slippery slope towards censorship, especially when it relates to political ideas.

If there’s one thing we should have learned in recent months, it is that most people value their safety far more than their freedom. When it comes to giving up some of our autonomy to ensure public safety during a pandemic, that can be defensible. But when it comes to shutting up unpopular or even hateful ideas, then that’s a threat to everyone’s liberty. Given more encouragement to censor, Twitter and other such giants are more likely to target defenders of Israel than those who want to annihilate it. People generally only miss their freedom when it’s taken away from them. But if you think social-media companies can be trusted to do that to bad guys but leave the rest of us alone, then you haven’t been paying attention.

Lebanon protests, Macron visit highlight absurd EU policy on Hezbollah

Watching the protests in Lebanon that rose after the massive explosion in Beirut last week, and seeing videos posted on social media by anguished and frustrated Lebanese people, a clear theme emerges: People are angry, and many of them are pointing fingers at Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shi’ite terrorist group, has held a firm grip over Lebanon’s governing coalition for years, even selecting Hassan Diab as prime minister in January. And as former ambassador to the UN Danny Danon told the Security Council last year, “the port of Beirut” – where last week’s deadly blast took place – “has become Hezbollah’s port,” used to transfer weapons and financially support the terrorist group as it develops advanced missiles.

Over the weekend, Lebanese demonstrators hung effigies of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, along with the political leaders who enable him, such as President Michel Aoun and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri.

When French President Emmanuel Macron visited the site of the blast in Beirut’s port on Thursday – even as many of Lebanon’s political leaders avoided doing so – he was met with large crowds shouting “revolution” and “the people want the fall of the regime.” As he walked through a Christian district of Beirut, some shouted: “Mr. Macron, free us from Hezbollah.”

On the one hand, Hezbollah surely feels the heat from people who clearly have had enough of the destructive, creeping Iranian-backed takeover of their country. It’s not hard to connect these dots and view Hezbollah as a prime suspect at this point, if not of an intentional bombing, then of deadly negligence.

Nasrallah felt the need to make the laughable claim that Hezbollah “did not intervene in Lebanese affairs.”

In the same televised speech on Friday night, Nasrallah denied that Hezbollah controls the port, despite strong evidence to the contrary, or that it kept any explosives there. Hezbollah also kept large stockpiles of ammonium nitrate, the explosive responsible for the huge second blast in the Beirut port, in numerous locales in Europe until the Mossad helped the UK, Germany and Cyprus uncover them in recent years.

From a fundraising email from UNRWA-USA:

On Tuesday, a massive explosion in Lebanon tragically destroyed or damaged nearly half the capital city of Beirut, left at least 137 dead, thousands injured, and reportedly 300,000 homeless.
Before the blast, this tiny, famously-resilient country, which hosts more refugees per capita than any country worldwide, has been in the midst of a severe economic and financial crisis, while facing a growing number of COVID-19 cases, and an ongoing political deadlock.
Our hearts are with everyone living in Lebanon and with the support of UNRWA USA donors, like you, will provide relief for the population the Agency is mandated to serve -- nearly half a million Palestine refugees who, like their Lebanese hosts, are living day by day under very difficult and worsening conditions.
Will you help provide refugees in Lebanon with immediate relief?

The closest UNRWA Palestinian camp (Shatila) is not near where any of the damage from the blasts were.

So if you want to help the Lebanese victims of the blast, UNRWA is not where you should send your money.

UNRWA-USA prefers that you don’t realize that. It is using the explosion as a means to raise money for their own purposes.

Worse, they continue to lie about “nearly half a million Palestine refugees” in Lebanon when there are in fact less than 175,000 living there according to a 2017 census.

A real charity doesn’t need to mislead potential donors. But UNRWA-USA relies on antisemitism, hate and lies to get donations.

The startling symmetry of the Beirut mushroom cloud

Outside of nuclear blasts, where else can one see an explosion creating a symmetric mushroom cloud like we saw in Beirut?

Last December, footage was released of a blast that was said to be somewhere in Syria, but there were no details of exactly where or when, nor of what blew up.

It is eerily similar to the Beirut mushroom cloud. But the provenance of the video is suspect, and it is suspicious that the footage begins exactly at the moment of the explosion. At the time there were rumors that this was a Russian ODAB-500 thermobaric bomb.

The closest I can find to a documented fast moving, quickly dissipating mushroom cloud is this video of a Russian ammunition depot explosion last August:

An accident at a Russian Army ammunition depot turned catastrophic today as a series of explosions killed one soldier and hurled shrapnel more than nine miles. At least eight others are reported wounded with windows in a nearby town blown out by the shockwave. The incident, still ongoing, is located outside the Siberian city of Achinsk.
The explosion generated a mushroom cloud over the blast site and sent shrapnel flying as far as 9.3 miles away.

How about fertilizer explosions? While I cannot find such a cloud in video of most of them, the closest I could find is this angle of a West, Texas fertilizer depot explosion from 2013 at 0:10 here:

You can briefly see a spherical blast pattern.

It is possible that the pattern is so much more apparent in Beirut because of the proximity to the sea, which could increase the amount of water vapor in the explosion, as opposed to drier Texas.

Still, the allegedly Syrian footage is the closest to Beirut, as it hugs the ground unlike the Russian and Texas explosions.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

One of the Jewish families that was forced to leave Yemen by the Houthis was exiled to the UAE, where the government there reunited them with relatives who moved to the UK some 15 years ago.

The story is heartwarming – but the UAE is using it for propaganda, as family members are quoted by the official Emirates News Agency:

"It was nothing short of a miracle and the realisation of an impossible dream. We thank the UAE for their great support in arranging the reunion. This is an example of the UAE’s humanitarian approach, as well as of its noble values of tolerance and coexistence," they stressed, adding that it is a model for the whole world to emulate.

The father of the family said after meeting his children: "I feel as if I were reborn today. I am so happy to have met all my children and grandchildren. I am also overjoyed to be in the UAE, the land of tolerance, coexistence and goodness."

Nobody talks that way.

The UAE also started a hashtag for the occasion, #UAEH omeOfHumanity, with its embassies throughout the world tweeting about this.

Is this meant to prime UAE residents for peace with Israel, or just to make the UAE look tolerant? At the same time as this reunion, a synagogue in the UAE officially opened for Shabbat services.

بكرة سوف تقام أول صلاة سبت في جزيرة العرب بعد إنقطاع طويل منذ تهجير اليهود في أربعينيات القرن الماضي من الخليج و ذلك في إفتتاح كنيس دبي اليهودي الكبير .. هللويا ✡️ pic.twitter.com/X3F56STQdb
— إيدي كوهين אדי כהן (@EdyCohen) August 7, 2020

Whether or not this was staged to promote the UAE’s tolerance, it is still remarkable that an Arab country is openly embracing Jews.

(h/t Yoel)

08/08 Links: Israel’s Outgoing UN Envoy Danny Danon Says He Aimed to ‘Dilute the Hatred’ at Global Body; Report: Hezbollah apparently wanted Beirut’s ammonium nitrate for Israel war

From Ian:

Israel’s Outgoing UN Envoy Danny Danon Says He Aimed to ‘Dilute the Hatred’ at Global Body

The Jewish state’s outgoing ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, is even more optimistic about the country’s prospects at Turtle Bay than he was when he started in the role nearly five years ago. This despite the long-time consensus that the UN presents one of the toughest challenges for Israeli diplomacy.

Lacking the rhetorical flourish of his predecessor, Ron Prosor, the progress made by Danon has come as a product of good-old fashioned grit, creativity and the inner confidence in the justness of the Jewish state’s cause that Danon projects.

In a departing interview with The Algemeiner, the last of his tenure, Danon said he discovered that it was “almost impossible” to erase existing resolutions at the UN, even “ridiculous resolutions.” Instead, he focused his efforts on “diluting the hatred against Israel by adding resolutions” and calendar events.

“So at the end of the day yes, we still had the regular twenty anti-Israel resolutions every year in the General Assembly,” he said. “But when you see the amount of activity that we put into the whole in terms of Jewish culture, trips to Israel and techno-diplomacy, at the end of the day, we diluted the hatred.”

One example of this came in 2018, when a US-introduced resolution condemning Hamas received a historic plurality of votes in the General Assembly. Last April, the General Assembly also approved a resolution condemning antisemitism among other hate crimes, following a diplomatic battle led by Danon.

Danon also made history when, in 2016, he was appointed head of the United Nations Legal Committee, becoming the first Israeli ever to be picked to lead a permanent UN committee. In 2017, Danon was elected as vice president of the General Assembly as the representative of the Western states. In 2019, he was appointed by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to co-chair the Science, Technology and Innovation Forum, alongside Ghana’s ambassador, Martha Pobee.

“I fought that Israel will be almost in every place we can,” he said. “My motto was to get there and be there and change the atmosphere in the room, and it worked.”

Danon: We should all demand that Lebanon oust Hezbollah

The cause of the explosion has yet to be determined, but Danon told B’nai B’rith that while he was UN ambassador he warned the UN Security Council that Hezbollah was storing weapons at the port.

“Last year when I spoke in the security council, I said very clearly that the port of Beirut had become the port of Hezbollah,” Danon said.
His words, he said, were base on intelligence reports.

“We got the intelligence and I spoke about it publicly, that [Hezbollah is] actually using the airports and the ports to transport the weapons and other things that are dangerous,” Danon said.

“We all respect the Lebanese people. We know that they are suffering… We send our condolences to the people there,” Danon said.

“But we do criticize not only Hezbollah, but also the Lebanese government, because they allow Hezbllah to do those activities,” Danon said.

But he also leveled criticize against Western countries, including the United States and France, for providing financial assistance to the Lebanese government and its army while not doing enough to ensure that action was taken against Hezbollah.

“I tell them that it’s okay to support the Lebanese government, the Lebanese military, but you have to demand more,” Danon said.

“When we see cooperation between Hezbollah and the Lebanese army, you ask yourself why the US or other countries should give any funding to this army that has allowed Hezbollah to take over,” Danon said.

Israel TV: Hezbollah apparently wanted Beirut’s ammonium nitrate for Israel war

Hezbollah apparently planned to use the ammonium nitrate stockpile that caused a massive bast at Beirut’s port this week against Israel in a “Third Lebanon War,” according to an unsourced assessment publicized on Israel’s Channel 13 Friday night.

The report was broadcast hours after Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, gave a speech “categorically” denying that his group had stored any weapons or explosives at Beirut’s port, following the massive explosion there Tuesday that has claimed over 157 lives and wounded thousands. “I would like to absolutely, categorically rule out anything belonging to us at the port. No weapons, no missiles, or bombs or rifles or even a bullet or ammonium nitrate,” Nasrallah said. “No cache, no nothing. Not now, not ever.”

Israel has not formally alleged that Hezbollah was connected to the Tuesday blast.

Ammonium nitrate is used in the manufacture of explosives and is also an ingredient in making fertilizer. It has been blamed for massive industrial accidents in the past, and was also a main ingredient in a bomb that destroyed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Last year, reports in Israel claimed that the Mossad had tipped off European intelligence agencies about Hezbollah storing caches of ammonium nitrate for use in bombs in London, Cyprus and elsewhere.

The Channel 13 report noted that “the material that exploded in the port is not new to Nasrallah and Hezbollah.”

It detailed Hezbollah’s previous connections to ammonium nitrate, including incidents in Germany and the UK, both widely reported at the time, in which its agents were reportedly found with substantial quantities of the material. In London in 2015, following a Mossad tip off, British intelligence found four Hezbollah operatives with 3 tons of ammonium nitrate held in flour sacks, the TV report said, citing foreign reports. A similar process led to the discovery in Germany of Hezbollah operatives with enough ammonium nitrate “to blow up a city,” the report said. Germany subsequently banned Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

No Beirut Blast Inquiry Request, Says UN After Macron Call for Probe

The United Nations has not received any requests to investigate the deadly explosion in Beirut’s port, a UN spokesman said on Friday after French President Emmanuel Macron called for an international inquiry.

Dozens are still missing after Tuesday’s blast in the Lebanese capital that killed at least 154 people, injured 5,000 and left up to 250,000 without habitable homes, hammering a nation already staggering from economic meltdown and a surge in coronavirus cases.

Initial Lebanese probes have pointed to an ammonium nitrate cargo, which was abandoned in Beirut, as the source of the blast. During a visit to Beirut on Thursday, Macron said that a transparent international inquiry was needed.

“We would be willing to consider such a request if we were to receive one. Nothing like that has been received, however,” UN spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres could also establish an inquiry if mandated by a UN legislative body such as the 193-member General Assembly or the 15-member Security Council.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Friday that a Lebanese investigation into the blast would examine whether it was caused by a bomb or other external interference or if it was due to negligence or an accident.

08/07 Links Pt2: The Farrakhan Paradox: He admires Hitler, white celebrities and black athletes admire him; StandWithUs Condemns Antisemitism That Led to USC Student Leader's Resignation

From Ian:

The Farrakhan Paradox: He admires Hitler, white celebrities and black athletes admire him

The Paradox of Farrakhan is that, while mas of sense in one area, he is a very sick, Hitler-like, Jew-hater. It is what it is. It is not going to chanking lotge It is built into his very Muslim ideology. There is no point in trying to change his mind because that would be like trying to change Hitler’s mind. And, frankly, he never has been and never will be anything in America other than a circus act. So let him compare Jews to termites, and let him just be careful when he stands on wood stages.

But how shall we explain his followers among professional Black athletes, rappers, entertainers? Are they really that hateful towards Jews?

In some cases, presumably yes. After all, if there are some White neo-Nazis, there are going to be some Black Nazis. In that regard, all people are created equal. But to posit something radical, the deeper shame is something more fundamental:

Along their way to excelling in sports or rapping or entertaining, although they are nobly self-made in their one area of excellence by virtue of their own hard work, these Black American success stories who quote and defend and retweet Farrakhan seem never to have learned the high school or college subject of actual history.

Not only do highly rated and recruited football and basketball athletes in college typically side-step getting an academic education, but nowadays even regular college students in America manage to walk out of four undergraduate years of 120 credit hours without knowing any real history, not American history and not world history.

When they tear down monuments, they do not even know who those people were. So they even tear down statues of Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and even abolitionists who died fighting slavery, even a monument in Los Angeles of Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden who gave his life opposing Hitler, because they have absolutely no education in basic history to show for their $160,000 in taxpayer-funded college loans.

Here is the thing: They also do not have a clue who Hitler is or was. Two-thirds of American millennials never even have heard of Auschwitz. This is documented. For all the obsessive spending of tens of millions of dollars by American secular Jews to build Holocaust museums instead of to fund Torah education, the bottom line is that the vast majority of the past two generations of American college “graduates” would not know the difference between Adolph Hitler, Bette Midler, Batman’s Riddler, and Tevye’s Fiddler.

And that is why so many successful Black athletes love Farrakhan’s message of self-reliance and re-tweet his quotes of Hitler without understanding who Hitler was.

So, for now, I offer a very quick one-minute history lesson to DeSean Jackson, Stephen Jackson, Nick Cannon, and Ice Cube: On page 430 of my 1962 paperback Sentry Publishing edition of the 1943 copyrighted Houghton Mifflin edition of Mein Kampf by Mr. Adolf Hitler, the author describes all Black people as “born half apes.”

Look it up. Just look up in the index the ten references to “Negroes” in Mr. Hitler’s book that you and Minister Farrakhan like to quote and retweet. You are quoting from a book that says that each of you — Minister Farrakhan, too — was born genetically a “half ape,” and Mr. Hitler says that is all you ever can be because you are Black, so it is in your blood when you are born. He writes that, even if you learn German and vote for a German party, it still is in your blood, so you remain a “half ape.” Id. at 388-89.

On page 188, Mr. Hitler writes of his WWI experience: “In these months, I felt for the first time the whole malice of Destiny which kept me at the front in a position where every ni - - - r might accidentally shoot me to bits . . . .” (You will have to look it up yourself, Messrs. Jackson, Mr. Cannon, and Mr. Cube to see the full word. It is spelled out fully by Mr. Hitler.)

So if you want to quote Hitler as an authority, be aware that in the same breath and on the same pages he likewise presented himself as an authority that all Black people — and that means you — are genetically “half apes.” Look it up. Any questions?

Time to rediscover KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov

In 1984 Yuri Bezmenov bravely warned us of communist subversion, as we were (and still are) in a state of war with this failed ideology that has killed more than 100 million people in the 20th century alone.

While many of us are at work, America’s children and young adults are being targeted by the new wave of anti-American communist propaganda, funded by:
- Russia, in the form of slick social media videos; details here
- China’s Communist Party, in the form of “Confucius Institutes” set up on hundreds of U.S. college campuses; details here

Here is just one example of the Russian government-funded “SoapBox” (part of “InTheNow”) — in which the host, Rania Khalek whitewashes the violent domestic anarchists and communists who are tearing apart U.S. cities and attacking federal facilities — while vilifying, and justifying the violent attacks on the federal law enforcement officers who have been risking their lives to protect those facilities (and themselves). More here.

How successful have the communists been at subverting American freedom — thanks to the “useful idiots” at all levels of our government, “educational” institutions, “news” industry and arts?

Consider — as documented in STW editor Jon Sutz’s independent report, “America At The Precipice”:
- “The Communist Manifesto” is the most-assigned economics textbook in U.S. colleges, assigned more than twice as frequently as any other economics book
- 70% of U.S. Millennials say that they would vote for a socialist for elective office
- 36% of U.S. Millennials “approve of communism” (up from from 28% in 2018)
- 83% of U.S. college graduates and 68% of elected officials cannot identify the functional differences between the free market and a command (totalitarian) economy
- 64% of Americans overall (across political parties) now agree with Marx’s core doctrine, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

We didn’t listen to Yuri Bezmenov in 1984....

In Defense of Privilege: Those Who Have It Need Not Suffer in The Name of ‘Fairness’

New York magazine published on Tuesday an impassioned defense of Urooj Rahman and Colinford Mattis, the New York City "public interest" lawyers awaiting trial on charges of firebombing an empty police car, among other felonies.

"There is a version of the Rahman and Mattis story in which they are civil-rights heroes, even martyrs, instead of professionals who crossed a line," writes New York contributing editor Lisa Miller, who spoke to friends of the accused who argued that the prosecution "is far more extreme than the crime itself" and "reflects a broader right-wing crusade against people of color and the progressive left."

The author empathizes with the accused, who each face possible sentences of 45 years to life if convicted, noting that in the age of Trump, it's understandable if "some lawyers may want to embrace a more flexible definition of ‘lawless.'" As Rahman said on camera before the incident, "This is the way that people show their anger and frustration. Because nothing else works."

Miller also attempts to humanize the alleged arsonists by sharing some personal details. Mattis was "a social guy, a positive force, always available to give friends a ride, always reading a book on the bus, a fashion agnostic who carried the same gray backpack he used in middle school." Rahman was "unfailingly kind, gentle, and decent" and once "gave a piece of her apartment floor in Athens, Greece … to a queer Syrian refugee in an abusive relationship." Friends recalled a time when the environmentally obsessed Rahman "was about to come over but first sat alone in a restaurant eating sushi, rather than contribute to the convenient waste created by takeout containers."

That's all well and good, but at the end of the day, who cares? Miller is making the right argument—in favor of leniency for the accused attorneys—for all the wrong reasons. In an egregious example of lede-burying, the reader is forced to wade deep into the text before learning that Colinford Mattis "played football at boarding school, joined two eating clubs and a jockish fraternity at Princeton, and, after NYU Law, worked at Holland & Knight and Pryor Cashman, firms where first-year associates earn upwards of $150,000 a year." In case that wasn't enough, he also has a goldendoodle named "Lorde Hampton."

Rahman, meanwhile, is a lawyer who graduated from Fordham. More importantly, she has friends in high places. Salmah Rizvi, a D.C. lawyer and former intelligence officer in the Obama administration, helped secure Rahman's release by telling a U.S. district judge the accused arsonist was her "best friend" and agreed to act as a suretor for Rahman's $250,000 bail, meaning that she would be personally liable for the cost if Rahman fails to abide by the court's orders.