Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 08, 2020

Top Iranian sports official says he disagrees with not competing against Israel

This is really something. From Iran Wire:

The international relations chief at Iran’s Ministry of Sports has waded into the debate on Iranian athletes being blocked from competing with Israelis.
"The Iranian people do not have a view in line with the government and the ruling system on the Israeli issue," Farshid Tahmasebi told Radio Varzesh, in a startling but truthful admission. He went on to decry deep-rooted “cultural issues” in Iranian sports that he said were holding the country back – and even had a bearing on the economy.
For a figure as influential as Farshid Tahmasebi to publicly decry Iran’s foreign policy in sports came as a surprise for some. Tahmasebi’s remarks came without prompting from the interviewer and came after he had already criticized the self-centred management style at the top echelons of Iranian sports. "To this day,” he said, “I have never seen any manager help another manager who replaces him.”
He went on: “Has it ever been the case that the president of Iran has been present at the opening or closing of the Olympic Games? Before the outbreak of coronavirus and the postponement of the Olympics, I suggested that Mr. Rouhani attend the Tokyo games. But they said the president's schedule was full.”
Tahmasebi also made a curious comparison between countries’ sporting records and their economic prowess. "If China is first in the [global] economy, it is also first in the Olympics. So is America. Take a look at the first to fourth ranking of countries in Olympics; they are all at the top of the world economies."
Integrity in politics and integrity in sports, Tahmasebi insisted, were “an ensemble”. “Excuse me, let me be clear,” he said. “In the case of Israel, our people do not agree with the government. If you take the government and leave out diplomacy, you will not get results; it’s impossible. Unless our parliament and our foreign ministry address the problems in Iranian sports diplomacy, nothing positive will happen."

Although this is not unprecedented as the full article shows, the last time that an Iranian sports official tried to change this policy he was forced to resign.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

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Goliath Polling +24% After Verbal Exchange With Israelites (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Israeli ballot Elah Valley, Philistine-Israelite border region, October 8 - A rhetorical confrontation between a Philistine warrior champion and his opponents, led by Saul, king of Israel, concluded this morning with the former emerging as the clear favorite in the eyes of potential voters, a series of surveys has found.

Goliath, a giant who has taunted the Israelites for several days, continued his jibes against the Hebrews and their God today, with the Israelites barely able to muster a retort. The Philistine warrior dared his foes to send a single combatant to face him instead of settling the conflict with a full-scale battle, a challenge that Saul and his military commanders have so far not accepted. Polls showed the Philistine warrior leading the Israelites by and average of 11% two days ago, and the gap has only increased in the interim, growing to 24.3% as of the unanswered challenge this morning.

Analysts expect a landslide Philistine victory. "Voters know a strong candidate when they see one," explained Doe Egg, an electoral statistician. "The Israelites' inability so far to mount an effective response to counter Goliath's arguments has only hurt them. Some experts believed that ignoring his barbs might make them seem above the fray and the Philistines uncultured and immature, but those analyses failed to account for the visceral resonance Goliath's talk produces. If the numbers hold when voters go to the polls officially, were looking at the Israelites being lucky to garner even forty percent of the votes. That's landslide territory. It's hard to see how Saul and his camp will recover from this development at this stage, let alone close the gap that already existed before the debate."

The Israelite king has struggled to maintain morale among his constituents and loyalists as Goliath has landed rhetorical punch after rhetorical punch. Saul has had to allocate manpower and resources to stem the hemorrhaging of voters, instead of to rebutting Philistine talking points or criticizing Goliath's record or policy proposals, let alone putting forth a positive vision of the future he seeks to create.

As spokesman for the Israelite campaign sought to downplay the significance of the debate. "There are plenty of hours until that actual contest, and a lot can change in that time, and besides, people overstate the impact of debates on these things, since the vast majority of voters have made up their minds," insisted Abner ben-Ner of the royal Chiefs of Staff.

A last-minute write-in campaign in Israelite ranks seeks to name David, a shepherd from Hebron and the youngest of eight brothers, as champion. Experts consider the effort a long shot.

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10/08 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: It's Time for Trump to Soberly Confront the Rising Turkish Threat; Noah Rothman: Biden’s Repudiation of Obama’s Foreign Policy; Israel and Jordan sign historic airspace agreement

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: Biden’s Repudiation of Obama’s Foreign Policy

In 2013, Obama invited Moscow to play peacemaker in the Syrian conflict, and his administration insisted—all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding—that Russia had successfully negotiated the liquidation of Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpile. The fateful move preserved the Assad regime, set the stage for Russian military intervention in the conflict in 2015, and preserved the conditions that eventually gave rise to the Islamic State. Only after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 did the Obama administration reluctantly impose targeted economic sanctions. But Obama dismissed the invasion and annexation of sovereign European territory as a sign that Russia was a mere “regional power” exerting “less influence” on the global stage. The extent of Russia’s geopolitical ambitions would not become clear to the president until Moscow brazenly interfered with the 2016 election cycle—too late.

By contrast, and despite President Trump’s sordid compulsion to praise Vladimir Putin, this administration preserved Obama-era sanctions on Moscow and tightened the screws. This White House imposed Magnitsky Act sanctions on Russia’s Putin-linked elite—sanctions that the Obama administration lobbied Congress against. The Trump administration provided lethal arms to the Ukrainian government, expelled Russian diplomatic personnel, and seized Russian consular property. The U.S. military under Trump has engaged in set-piece land battles with Russian mercenaries in Syria. This administration oversaw the expansion of the NATO alliance, despite covert Russian action intended to derail that effort, and abandoned the defunct 1987 intermediate-range nuclear-forces treaty, a compact to which even the Obama administration conceded only the United States was beholden.

If Joe Biden has determined that it is in America’s interest to get tougher on the rogue regimes that govern these two states, that’s great. There is, however, precious little evidence to suggest that Biden has had a genuine change of heart.

The former vice president has, in fact, pledged to end Cuba’s economic and diplomatic isolation, which he claims stifles Cuban entrepreneurs and strengthens the regime in Havana. His vague but detectable hostility toward fracking would relieve the economic pressure America’s virtual energy independence has imposed on the Kremlin. He has tacitly endorsed a de facto partition of Syria, pockets of which would be administered by Russia and the Western coalition—a move that would legitimize Russia’s troop presence in the Levant and commit the U.S. to an open-ended conflict in defense of no well-defined interest.

Though he didn’t do much to prove his thesis, Diehl is right: Joe Biden does seem to have learned from past mistakes. In the case of these two pariah regimes, those mistakes were Barack Obama’s, not Donald Trump’s.

In Phone Call, Israel’s Netanyahu and Russia’s Putin Discuss Iranian ‘Aggression’ in Middle East

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone on Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to a statement put out by Netanyahu’s office, the two leaders talked about “regional security issues, the Iranian aggression and the situation in Syria.”

“They also discussed advancing bilateral cooperation in the fight against the coronavirus,” it added.

A Kremlin statement listed Netanyahu as one of a dozen world leaders who called Putin on Wednesday to wish him a happy 68th birthday.

“In every conversation, the leaders touched upon the development of bilateral relations as well as topical regional problems,” the Kremlin said.

Caroline Glick: It's Time for Trump to Soberly Confront the Rising Turkish Threat

All of these aspects of Trump's foreign policies are vital for developing and maintaining a successful U.S. policy toward Erdogan's Turkey, as Erdogan exposes himself as a foe interested in pitting all sides against one another to enable his efforts to construct a new Ottoman Empire. Many commentators advocate expelling Turkey from NATO. But it isn't clear that a head-on confrontation with Erdogan would neutralize him. It could well empower him by helping him to rally the Turkish public behind him at a time when Turkey's economy stands on the brink of collapse.

Given Erdogan's multipronged aggression, the first goal of a realistic policy would be to diminish his power by severely weakening Turkey economically. This may mean imposing economic sanctions on Turkey for its aggression against Greece and Cyprus. Or it may mean simply giving Turkey a gentle push over the economic cliff.

Without raising the issue of removing Turkey from NATO, the U.S. can simply not sell Turkey advanced platforms while demonstrating its support for Greece and Cyprus, as well as Israel and its Arab partners.

True, China is already seeking to supplant the U.S. in sponsoring the Turkish economy and selling Turkey arms—but by keeping Turkey in NATO, the U.S. still has more leverage over Turkey than China.

A passive-aggressive policy for diminishing Erdogan's power and the threat he can mount is right up Trump's alley. Trump doesn't often directly attack his opponents. He embraced North Korean leader Kim Jong-un even as he imposed the harshest economic sanctions ever on North Korea and redesignated it a state sponsor of terrorism. He has acted similarly with Putin and with Erdogan himself.

Erdogan's belief that he can rebuild the Ottoman Empire while attacking EU and NATO members, the U.S., its key allies in the Middle East as well as Russia, owes to his narcissism that Obama and Biden did so much to feed.

With Erdogan now openly threatening multiple U.S. allies, it is increasingly apparent that the largest and fastest rising threat to stability and peace in the Middle East is Turkey—and the victor in next month's U.S. presidential election will have no lead time to deal with it.

Trump's reality-based foreign policy, his preference for indirect confrontations and empowerment of U.S. partners to defend themselves from aggression, rather than dictating their actions or fighting their battles for them, give the president the flexibility to diminish Erdogan's maneuver room, his economic independence and his popularity at home—while also empowering U.S. allies directly affected by the strongman's aggression to stand up to him effectively, with or without direct U.S. involvement.

Tarek Fatah: Expel Turkey from NATO

Turkey's Erdogan denounced the call for a ceasefire and, according to reports, has lent its US-supplied F-16s to Azerbaijan's forces along with drones that are equipped with Canadian technology.

This forced Ottawa to act. On Oct. 5, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne halted all military export permits to Turkey.

The reaction by Turkey was swift. The foreign ministry in Ankara accused Ottawa of "double standards" arguing: "There is no explanation for blocking defence equipment exports to a NATO ally while."

NATO ally? That's quite rich for Turkey's pan-Islamists to invoke NATO as their defence.

The only role Turkey has played in NATO since the collapse of the USSR is that of a Fifth Column. A country that has been a conduit for ISIS jihadis, the Muslim Brotherhood. A country that deploys refugees to threaten Europe and Greece while occupying Cyprus and festering war in Libya, is no NATO ally.

Time has come for Canada to ask for Turkey's expulsion from NATO. Turkey is a menace to Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Syria and Libya. It has eyes on Bulgaria, Rumania and the Balkans, which it had to relinquish in the Lausanne Treaty that is approaching its centennial.

Don't be surprised if Erdogan annuls the century-old treaty to re-establish the Ottoman Caliphate that will make Central Asia its Turkic backyard after Armenia, the only obstacle, is eliminated.

"Palestinian Feminist Working Group" shows no interest in women's rights for Palestinians

A recent Mondoweiss article by the "Palestinian Feminist Working Group" sheds some light on how hate for Israel is often disguised using liberal buzzwords that have nothing to do with the actual agenda of these groups.

The article is typically ridiculous - it pretends that Zoom, YouTube and Facebook's pulling the plug on a conference featuring a proud terrorist Leila Khaled was about censorship and a silencing of Palestinian feminist voices when it was simply adhering to existing US anti-terrorist and sanctions laws.

It goes on to justify Palestinian terror as "resistance" and defining everything Israel does as terror.

This is the first appearance of this group, which is what makes it interesting. The group has no website. It describes itself this way:

The Palestine Feminist Working Group is a U.S. based network of Palestinian and Arab feminists who are committed to ending all forms of Zionist colonial and gendered violence and oppression. We believe that social liberation is a critical component of Palestinian national liberation. The working group was founded by the Palestinian Youth Movement’s (PYM) Women’s Committee. To learn more about our work and/or to join our efforts contact us at Palestinianfeminists@gmail.com

Note that it doesn't say a word about feminist issues in the Palestinian controlled territories at all. The supposed feminism of this group begins and ends with attacking Israel.

Many of the people signing this article are academics at US universities:

Noura Erakat, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies, Rutgers University
Dr. Sarah Ihmoud, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, The College of the Holy Cross
Dr. Hana Masri, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Maisa Morrar, Physician Assistant and member, Palestinian Youth Movement
Dr. Loubna Qutami, Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies, UCLA
Basima Sisemore, Researcher, Othering & Belonging Institute, UC Berkeley
Randa M. Wahbe, Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology, Harvard University
Yazan Zahzah, MA in Women and Gender Studies, San Diego State University
Leena Odeh, J.D., The Decolonizing Race Project

Isn't it strange that these "Palestinian feminists" have so little interest in feminist issues in Palestine?

The United Nations Development Programme published a comprehensive guide to gender laws under the PA and Hamas in late 2018. It uncovered state-sponsored discrimination against women, which I have summarized before:

Domestic violence: Palestine has no domestic violence legislation.
Marital rape: Marital rape is not criminalized.
Abortion for rape survivors: Abortion is prohibited in the West Bank by the Jordan Penal Code (Articles 321–325) and in Gaza by the Criminal Code of 1936 (Articles 175–177).
Sexual harassment in the workplace: Sexual harassment is not criminalized by the Labour Code.
Honour crimes: Mitigation of penalty Laws allowing mitigation of penalties for ‘honour’ crimes were repealed in 2011 and 2018 in the West Bank. However, the government in Gaza has not applied the reforms.
Adultery: Adultery is an offence in Gaza and the West Bank. In the West Bank, Article 282 of the Penal Code criminalizes adultery
Human trafficking: Palestine does not have comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation. Some provisions of the Penal Code of Jordan apply to trafficking in the West Bank.
Sex work and anti-prostitution laws: Prostitution is prohibited by Articles 309–318 of the Penal Code in the West Bank and Articles 161–166 of the Criminal Code of 1936 in Gaza.
Marriage and divorce: The personal status laws for Muslims require the husband to maintain the wife. A wife owes obedience to her husband. A husband can divorce by repudiation (talaq). A wife has the right to divorce on specified grounds. She can also apply for a khul’a divorce without grounds if she forgoes financial rights.
Male guardianship over women: Muslim women require consent of a wali (male guardian) to marry. There are some weak legal protections for women under guardianship. Women can seek permission from the court to marry if the guardian withholds consent without a legitimate reason.
Guardianship of children: Fathers are the sole guardians of children.
Custody of children: After divorce the mother has custody up to a certain age, but automatically loses custody of her children if she remarries. Inheritance Sharia rules of inheritance apply to Muslims. Women have a right to inheritance, but in many cases receive less than men. Daughters receive half the share that sons receive.
Polygamy: Polygamy is permitted.
Legal restrictions on women’s work: Some legal restrictions exist on women’s employment in certain industries that do not apply to men, such as mining.

The report seemingly went into a black hole. There are very few references to it online. Yet it is probably the most comprehensive report on women's rights in the Palestinian territories that exists.

Real Palestinian feminists would be screaming from the rooftops about this. But not the members of the "Palestinian Feminist Working Group."

The fact that Leila Khaled's PFLP actually murdered an Israeli girl last year doesn't diminish her "feminist" bona fides for some reason. None of these "feminists" condemned the murder of a Jewish girl.

These people aren't feminists. They are Jew-haters who use feminism as a justification for their bigotry and hate.

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For six months, the Palestinian Authority has refused to accept tax revenues that Israel owes them under existing agreements, ever since Israel said it would extend sovereignty over areas of Judea and Samaria. The amount being held by Israel is now up to $750 million.

Since then, the PA has been under severe financial pressure, paying workers a percentage of their salaries. But Abbas has been insisting that he doesn't want to cooperate with Israel including to accept money owed.

In order to make ends meet, Abbas has been asking the EU for loans to fund his budget.

Finally, after doing everything the PA has demanded of them for years, the EU has had enough.

From Axios:

The EU, France, Germany, the U.K. and Norway made clear that they consider annexation to now be off the table, and thus the Palestinians should accept the $750 million in revenues now held by the Israeli Ministry of Finance.

After lower-level pressure on the Palestinians didn’t bear fruit, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called Abbas last Wednesday.

He repeated the same message in the call, European diplomats say: Until the Palestinians resume the acceptance of tax revenues from Israel, the EU will not provide new loans or other financial assistance.

Borrell also urged Abbas to relaunch security and civilian coordination with Israel, but Abbas was noncommittal, the diplomats say.

Some Palestinian officials around Abbas think his decision to suspend all ties with Israel and the U.S. is self-defeating.

But Abbas has so far fended off that pressure. He's betting that Joe Biden will win in November and bring with him a much different set of policies toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

This is another game changer. After the Arab world has shown willingness to criticize the Palestinian leadership publicly, the EU is starting to move in the same direction.

Mahmoud Abbas is acting like he always has. He's demanding money he doesn't deserve and he is waiting for a more palatable political environment to help him out.

Meanwhile, the PLO is getting chummy with terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the interests of "unity." Abbas, missing the way the wind is blowing, remains tone deaf and making the wrong decisions.

For the first time, Europe is telling the Palestinians that they have to take responsibility for their decisions.

This is absolutely amazing to see.

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From Maha Nassar at +972 Magazine:

As a Palestinian-American historian, professor, and opinion writer, I know from my work and my personal experience that Palestinian viewpoints rarely appear in mainstream U.S. media outlets; I especially remember my frustration at the lack of Palestinian voices in U.S. publications during the Oslo years. But to what extent is this the case? How many opinion pieces in major media outlets have actively discussed Palestinians? How many of those pieces have been written by Palestinians? How has this trend changed over time?

I decided to crunch some numbers to find out more.

So, how are American news readers encouraged to think about Palestinians? Using several news databases (Proquest, Gale, and Nexis Uni), I searched for the keyword “Palestinian,” limiting my results to editorials (written by the editorial board), columns (written by staff columnists), and guest opinion pieces.

This trend was especially striking in the daily press. In the New York Times, less than 2 percent of the nearly 2,500 opinion pieces that discussed Palestinians since 1970 were actually written by Palestinians. In the Washington Post, the average was just 1 percent.

This historian and professor is either a very good propagandist or a very bad statistician. I tend to think the former.

The statistic of very few Palestinian authors is meaningless in a vacuum. To be meaningful, we would need to know how many editorials were written by Israelis. That is the only way to compare apples to apples.

If the number of Israelis writing these articles is, say 4% - which is probably a decent guess - then the disparity is not nearly as bad as Nassar is implying.

Beyond that, the newspapers would specifically recruit Israelis who are critical of Israel - but they will practically never publish Palestinians critical of their own leadership.

Her methodology is meant to stack the deck to minimize the percentage. She is including all newspaper editorials - which are 100% non-Palestinian (and non-Israeli.) She is including newspaper columnists - which are 100% non-Palestinian (and non-Israeli.) The hundred or so Thomas Friedman columns that mention Palestinians are all counted. All of these bring the percentage of Palestinian voices (and British, and Israeli, and French) voices down.

Her methodology implies that if less than 2% of editorial pieces are written by Palestinians, then 98% of them are anti-Palestinian. This is emphatically not true. When I used to follow the statistics, the number of anti-Israel op-eds in the New York Times outweighed the number of pro-Israel op-eds by at least 4-1. Which is why this entire article is deceptive from the start - it implies the exact opposite of the truth.

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10/07 Links Pt2: To the Palestinians and My Fellow Arabs: Your Hatred for Israel Achieves Nothing; Ami Horowitz: The Danger of the Progressive Hate Group, If Not Now

From Ian:

Khalaf Al Habtoor: To the Palestinians and My Fellow Arabs: Your Hatred for Israel Achieves Nothing

There is a valid argument that says the Israelis have been intransigent. But the same can also be said for the Palestinians who still insist on the right of return for refugees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and elsewhere. Never going to happen, and they know that full well.

They would be better off asking the host nations to tear down the camps and allow the refugees the right to work and own their own home. Refugees pass on false hopes to their children along with the keys to the former homes of their fathers or grandfathers and keep a visceral hatred for Israelis alive down the generations. I believe this is unfair for both generations.

There are two million Palestinians, the descendants of Palestinians who stayed in 1948, who have Israeli nationality. Most take pride in their Arab heritage whether Muslims or Christians, yet are content to call themselves Arab Israelis.

It is beyond time for the Palestinians to quit blaming everyone else for their situation today. Instead of condemning long-standing Arab allies, who have stood by them to the tune of billions of dollars, and in the case of Egypt and Syria, waged war with Israel on their behalf, they should first quit feuding with each other.

Hamas and other militant groups must turn their backs on violence that rebounds onto the poor residents of Gaza and is the main reason for the crippling blockade. Arabs should not support a Hamas that is 100 percent Palestinian yet cosies up to Iran.

The beauty of the Abraham Accords is that it greatly benefits all signatories in terms of trade, commerce, tourism, technology and security. Moreover, it cements a united front against Iran, a common enemy working towards manufacturing nuclear weapons with which to hold its neighbors hostage.

Provided this new détente is successful, Israel will want to preserve the agreement, and thus we will gain the ability to push for Palestinian rights from a position of strength. This is basic common sense.

Compromise only occurs when both sides have something important to lose. The more Arab states that join Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and Bahrain that have peace treaties with Israel, the more influential our bloc will become within the U.S. and on the world’s stage.

Ami Horowitz: The Danger of the Progressive Hate Group, If Not Now

They are a radical Leftist Anti-Israel hate group that supports terrorists and partners with antisemites.

Ruthie Blum: The 'chemistry' of anti-Israel propaganda

This is not the first time that Ariel University – whose 16,000 students and 450 senior faculty members include all sectors of Israeli society, including many Arabs and Druze – has been targeted by left-wing academics who toe the Palestinian line.

As the Palestinian news agency WAFA proudly reported on Monday: "In 2018, more than half of the invited speakers withdrew from a scientific workshop at Ariel University following appeals from Palestinian and international scholars. Prominent scientists published a letter in The Guardian stating that science should not be used 'to normalize [Israel's] occupation of the Palestinian territories.'

"The Israeli Sociological Society, the Israeli Anthropological Association, the European Association of Social Anthropology and the Exeter, Leeds, Open, Aberdeen, Brunel and Brighton University and College Union branches have all pledged not to collaborate with Ariel University."

It is no wonder, then, that the Nobel Prize-winning Smith – a professor at the University of Missouri and a board member of the Palestinian initiative, "No Academic Business as Usual with Ariel University" – was delighted by his latest achievement.

"Sadly, [Levine] has refused, effectively choosing pro-occupation propaganda over her own academic freedom and the larger interest of the global science community in unfettered publication of scientific ideas and results," he told his Palestinian buddies. "The editors of Molecules are to be commended for taking the only responsible course of action in the circumstances."

Perhaps Smith should spend more time learning psychology than lapping up Palestinian efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state. Doing so might help him realize the transparency of his projection.

Ditto for Levitt, his partner in crime against academic freedom, who called the move by Molecules "wise and excellent" while expressing hope that "many other academic journals will follow suit."

Indeed, it is Smith, Levitt and the editors of Molecules – not Levine – who are putting propaganda over academic freedom in the "larger interest of the global science community in unfettered publication of scientific ideas and results."

Shame on them for using their probing minds to prove a hypothesis based on a political slant.

Good news: @Molecules_MDPI makes clear that it will not discriminate against profs from @arieluniversity, will list "Ariel, Israel" as their address. https://t.co/kxM05uU8aw cc @LahavHarkov @GreenblattJD #BDSFail https://t.co/cESvmFFtHs
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) October 7, 2020

Bethany Mandel: Jews should condemn attacks against Amy Coney Barrett based on her faith

The practical consequences of this line of reasoning could be devastating: The next time someone like Joe Lieberman runs for office, do Jews really want critiques of Judaism and the Orthodox community to be fair game?

Jews have honorably served in every branch in government. But we also must harbor concerns that someone will express concern that our “dogma” lives too loudly within them to do our jobs effectively. As it is, those Jews with strong connections to Israel face deeper scrutiny in the national security realm, facing more hurdles for security clearance and jobs in national intelligence. Do we really want to stand by as religion is made into even more of a cudgel with which to criticize individual members?

Accusations of dual loyalty have plagued Jewish Americans for decades, and that suspicion that one cannot be loyal to one’s faith and one’s country simultaneously is part of what drives the continued suspicion of Jews in government. Jews and Catholics in America have a great deal in common, and one of the strongest ties between the two faiths is the animus we have faced throughout American history and politics.

This is, of course, a charge that Jewish Americans of all levels of observance should be on the lookout for and rally against. Writing for Haaretz, my friend Jonathan Tobin, editor in chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, challenged the Jewish community to soul-search about its role in the debate over Barrett and her nomination. He wrote in support of religious freedom, explaining, “Religious freedom for me but not for thee is not a sentiment that is consistent with the constitution or with the long-term interest of Jewish Americans. Liberal Jews may not support Barrett, but if they don’t criticize attempts to impose religious tests or counter contempt for her faith, they will be undermining the case for their rights, too.”

In a sane world, denouncing this kind of religious bias would be within the wheelhouse of mainstream organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and rabbinic groups, and yet, they have to date been silent. But we don’t need to wait for Jewish organizations to combat anti-religious bias in order to condemn it as a community or as individuals.

So as the confirmation fight heats up, the Jewish community needs to be clear about what modes of questioning and attack are and are not fair game. These lines of attack are setting what would be a dangerous precedent for anti-Semitic avenues of criticism for any future Jews seeking confirmation to any position before Congress. It isn’t just good karma to stand up for our Catholic countrymen — it serves as a bulwark against the same weapons being used against us.

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

Time to take a break from giving and receiving abuse on Twitter and do some work.

Last night we watched the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma.” It’s about the big tech companies and how their systems manipulate us into giving them what they want, which is our time and attention.

About 25 years ago I was stuck in the airport in Reno, Nevada, where there were slot machines available for waiting passengers to entertain themselves. I recall watching a woman play one, rhythmically swaying back and forth to the musical accompaniment from the machine as she pulled the lever over, and over, and over. I could see from her glazed eyes that she was in a trance, one with the machine. I wondered if she would succeed to pull herself away in time when her flight was announced, or if indeed she would even hear the announcement. Later, I recognized the same look in the eyes of someone scrolling through Facebook or Twitter on their phone.

These systems, which although they have been developed by humans, work autonomously and learn from experience how to control the behavior of their subjects. Their developers only care about getting us to sit still and eat the ads we are “served” (I love that locution), but of course it has destructive side effects. The creation of ideological bubbles, the dispersion of fake news, and the encouragement of extremism are some of them, but there are other, deeper changes that are not obvious, like the contraction of the subject’s attention span, the forced withdrawal from normal social activities, the decline in risk-taking, and the abysmal waste of time.

The abuses of political correctness, cancel culture, and the wide popularity of absurd, self-contradictory theories and ideologies are all epiphenomena of the ubiquity of social media. They would not be possible without the ability to disseminate emotion-loaded stimuli widely and instantaneously to groups of like-minded people, people who are often in the receptive trance-like state engendered by the medium.

How, for example, did the Israeli-Palestinian conflict come to take over the mind-space of the Western world? Almost none of my Twitter abuse comes from actual Arabs or Palestinians. Most of the folks accusing me of supporting “land theft,” apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of Palestinians live in the US or Europe, places which have their own problems. And yet they care so much about the Palestinians!

The Palestinization of the Western mind is a long story. It started with the KGB, who wanted to find a lever to get support for its Arab clients in the Middle East. It continued via the massive inputs of Arab oil money into Western educational institutions and “human rights” groups. It got a big boost from 2001’s Durban Conference on Racism, where the popular theme of anti-racism was successfully applied to Israel – a remarkable feat of reality inversion, since the Arab rejectionism that underlies the conflict is at bottom a particular rejection of Jewish sovereignty, and a desire to ethnically cleanse the region of Jews.

But the advent of the Internet multiplied – exponentiated – everything. It first became available in universities in the 1980s with email and Usenet newsgroups (like mailing lists) facilitating the democratization of the distribution of information. The first rudimentary social networks like Compuserve and America Online arrived in the 1990s. The dam burst with the creation of Facebook and others in the early 2000s.

The universities have always been repositories of misoziony, extreme and irrational Israel-hatred. This is because of the general leftward tilt of university faculties, who were fertile soil for the Soviet anti-Israel propaganda that began in the late 1960s and continued through the dissolution of the USSR. There was also the effect of the aforementioned Arab oil money donated to create departments of Mideast studies that were little more than indoctrination units. Students and faculty, early adopters of new technology, used it to organize and propagandize for all of their causes, including the increasingly popular Palestinian one.

Some important characteristics of social media that particularly affect cognitive warfare in this conflict are the immediacy of transmission of information, its bias toward emotional content, its tendency to create opinion bubbles, its encouragement of extremism, and the effect of numerical superiority of one side or another in a dispute. Let’s see how this works.

One of the propaganda techniques used against Israel is the “spaghetti test,” in which false accusations are rapidly thrown against the public in the hope that they will stick. By the time the information to refute them has been collected, the damage has been done and new accusations have been launched. The ability of social media to plant an idea in numerous receptive minds instantaneously with no filtering (such as is at least supposed to occur in traditional media) greatly increases the effectiveness of this.

It is well known that emotional content makes a story memorable, as well as serving as a motivation for action in a way that factual information cannot. Social media tends to be biased toward the transmission of emotionally affecting content, since that is what drives a person to share or retweet an item. Emotionally moving items (“IDF soldiers shoot Palestinian children for fun”) tend to dominate the timelines of its targets, arriving faster and more frequently than factual, but boring, corrections (“nobody was shot”).

The opinion bubbles prominent on social media, in which a person tends to collect “friends” and followers with similar political opinions means that propaganda will be repeated and amplified by the echo chambers formed by the bubbles. As it bounces around in an eagerly accepting environment, it creates anger and indignation, as well as accumulating greater authority (everyone is talking about the murder of Muhammad al-Dura, so the story must be true).

A participant in a social media opinion bubble is a player in a social game in which points are won by being first with the most shocking information. The “alphas” in the group are the ones whose opinions are the most exciting, which usually means that their positions are the most extreme. This forces the window of discourse in the direction of extremism, which is why it seems so shocking when it escapes from the bubble. The group “Canary Mission” often exposes social media posts in which students and academics express themselves against Jews or Israel in a way which is acceptable within their group but appears (and is) appallingly vicious to an outsider.

Jews and Israelis are a small minority compared to their enemies, and defenders of Israel are an equally small minority on social networks. The numerical advantage on one side makes it possible to “pile on” to a person and overwhelm them with verbal abuse. It seems that the Palestinians and their supporters are using social media much more effectively than those on the Israeli side. I am not sure if this is simply a consequence of their numerical advantage, or something else.

Technology of this kind has made everyday life much more convenient. Can you imagine life without Google? As the documentary points out, social media has reunited families and made it possible to become acquainted with people that one would otherwise never know. It can provide a lifeline for shut-ins, especially in this time of pandemic.

But – as its effects in facilitating cognitive warfare in our own sphere show – it has changed the world in ways we are just beginning to understand, and have made no effort to control. It has increased political polarization in general, fostered extremism, and seriously damaged traditional journalism.

No, I don’t want to be without Google (I think). But I wouldn’t cry if Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. disappeared.

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Saudi Arabia is less antisemitic than the @NYTimes

From The New York Times:

In a surprising televised monologue, a senior member of the Saudi royal family and former ambassador to Washington accused Palestinian leaders of betraying their people, signaling an erosion of Saudi support for an issue long considered sacrosanct.

... Prince Bandar offered a rambling and selective history of the Palestinian struggle, saying that the Palestinians “always bet on the losing side.”

His survey, interspersed with archival images and footage, cited the contacts between Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and an early Palestinian nationalist leader, and the Nazis in the 1930s, adding, “we all know what happened to Hitler and Germany.”

While there is broad agreement that Mr. al-Husseini collaborated with the Nazis against Zionism, historians differ on the significance of his relationship with Nazi leaders.

First of all, the Mufti's contacts with the Nazis were during the Holocaust in the 1940s, not in the 1930s. Even the photo of Hitler and the Mufti that the NYT published was from a 1941 meeting.

Secondly, the Mufti was a rabid antisemite for his entire life. He wasn't against "Zionism," he was against Jews - just like the Nazis he collaborated with.

The New York Times is engaging in Holocaust minimization.

The US Holocaust Museum summarizes the Mufti's antisemitic statements on Nazi radio:

Al-Husayni spoke often of a "worldwide Jewish conspiracy" that controlled the British and US governments and sponsored Soviet Communism. He argued that "world Jewry" aimed to infiltrate and subjugate Palestine, a sacred religious and cultural center of the Arab and Muslim world, as a staging ground for the seizure of all Arab lands. In his vision of the world, the Jews intended to enslave and exploit Arabs, to seize their land, to expropriate their wealth, undermine their Muslim faith and corrupt the moral fabric of their society. He labeled the Jews as the enemy of Islam, and used crude racist terminology to depict Jews and Jewish behavior, particularly as he forged a closer relationship with the SS in 1943 and 1944. He described Jews as having immutable characteristics and behaviors. On occasion, he would compare Jewishness to infectious disease and Jews to microbes or bacilli. In at least one speech attributed to him, he advocated killing Jews wherever Arabs found them. He consistently advocated "removing" the Jewish homeland from Palestine and, on occasion, driving every Jew out of Palestine and other Arab lands.

Even during that meeting with Hitler the word "Zionist" was never used - just "Jews."

[Mufti:] The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely the English, the Jews and the Communists....The Arabs could be more useful to Germany as allies than might be apparent at first glance, both for geographical reasons and because of the suffering inflicted upon them by the English and the Jews.

The Fuhrer replied that Germany’s fundamental attitude on these questions, as the Mufti himself had already stated, was clear. Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests. Germany was also aware that the assertion that the Jews were carrying out the functions of economic pioneers in Palestine was a lie. The work there was done only by the Arabs, not by the Jews. Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time to direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well.

Hitler's opposition to a Jewish state came directly from his hate of Jews - exactly like the Mufti.

The Mufti is a hero to Palestinians and considered their first leader.

The tie between antisemitism and anti-Zionism has never been clearer than these words from Adolf Hitler.

The Saudi royal accurately noted the mistakes of Palestinians including allying with Hitler. The New York Times then tries to minimize those ties as being merely "anti-Zionist."

What a joke the New York Times has become.

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10/07 Links Pt1: Yom Kippur War: Through The Eyes of a Soldier; The PA's most dangerous enemy is archaeology; Olympics refuses to discuss Iranian regime’s murder of wrestler

From Ian:

Yom Kippur War: Through The Eyes of a Soldier

On Yom Kippur, 47 years ago, Israel was attacked by a coalition of Arab states, and was catapulted into war. For three weeks, Israeli soldiers fought tirelessly to defend their country from invading forces. Lt. Col. (Res.) Avi Gur was a young officer at the time, fighting in the 401st Armored Brigade on the southern front. The following photos were taken by Lt. Col. (Res.) Avi Gur during the Yom Kippur War. He explains what took place, in his own words:

“When the war began, I was on the front line. I was the deputy commander of a company in the Suez Canal and our goal was to hold back the Egyptian forces and keep them from carrying out acts of war against Israel. A few hours later, my commander was killed and I became the company commander.”

"This is a picture of my battalion commander, Lt. Col. Emanuel Sakal, from the first week of the war. The image reflects the IDF’s doctrine, according to which the commander is in the field side-by-side with the forces. This motivates the troops. Once I hit an enemy’s tank and he saw it in real time and complimented me on the radio."

"During the war, he asked me to mislead the Egyptian forces by getting them to think that we were going to attack from the south even though we were going to attack from the north. This was very hard for me because being successful meant getting them to fire at me. So what I did was drive in a zigzag motion in the sand, forming a huge cloud of dust. How did we survive? I don’t know. Some call it divine protection and others call it luck. After they started firing at us he said ‘we have achieved our goal’, and we quietly and carefully drove back."

The Yom Kippur War began on October 6, 1973. Thinking that the IDF would not be prepared to defend Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish year, a coalition of enemy forces led by Egypt and Syria coordinated surprise attacks, invading the Golan Heights in northern Israel, and the Suez Canal in the south. The Israel Defense Forces was significantly outnumbered. It had far less equipment than the attacking countries, and little time to quickly develop a battle strategy.

"This picture shows the strength of one tank that could hit a target from more than a kilometer away. In the picture, you can see my tank cannon, and the black smoke in the background is the target we hit."

"When we ran to the tanks, I had a camera hanging around my neck. It was an unusual sight, because not many people had cameras at all back then. We started moving and there were Egyptian planes attacking us from above. Tanks were firing at us from the ground and Egyptian commando forces crossed the canal and fired anti-tank missiles. It was like the wild west – whoever shoots first, stays alive."

Egyptian TV airs Israeli FM’s speech on peace — on Yom Kippur War anniversary

An Egyptian television channel on Tuesday aired Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi’s remarks on regional peace, as he met in Berlin with his Emirati counterpart.

A spokesperson for Ashkenazi noted that the remarks were aired on Extra News on October 6, the 47th anniversary of the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, fought between Israel and its neighboring nations, including Egypt.

The spokesperson calls the broadcast “most extraordinary.”

Though the Egyptian government has close contacts with Israel, media in the country is known to generally be highly hostile toward the Jewish state.

In September, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi said that the Israel-United Arab Emirates normalization accord represents a step toward regional peace by preserving Palestinian rights and Israeli security.

The foreign ministers of the UAE and Israel met in Berlin on Tuesday for talks that Germany hoped will strengthen the nascent official ties between the two nations and bolster broader Middle East peace efforts, in a summit that German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said was a “great honor” to host.

Ashkenazi and Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan met, along with Maas, behind closed doors at a secluded government guesthouse on the outskirts of the German capital.

ISIS monsters linked to beheadings of American aid workers and journalists brought to US and indicted

Two British Islamic State terror suspects known as the “Beatles” were indicted in the torturing and beheading of American aid workers and journalists among others once held hostage in Syria, according to court documents made public Wednesday. placeholder

El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey are two of four men dubbed “the Beatles” by the hostages they held captive, because of their British accents. They previously had been in military custody in Iraq and are expected to make their first appearance in the afternoon in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.

The pair had been linked to the kidnapping and torturous killings of American aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller and journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley.

In a statement, relatives of Mueller, Foley, Sotloff, and Kassig said the transfer “will be the first step in the pursuit of justice for the alleged horrific human rights crimes against these four young Americans.”

The Justice Department announced the charges on Wednesday morning. They include conspiracy to commit hostage-taking, resulting in death; four counts of hostage-taking resulting in death for Foley, Mueller, Sotloff, and Kassig; conspiracy to murder United States citizens outside of the United States; conspiracy to provide material support or resources to terrorists – hostage-taking and murder – resulting in death; and conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, resulting in death.

“Many around the world are familiar with the barbaric circumstances of their deaths – but we will not remember these Americans for the way they died, we will remember them for the way they lived their good and decent lives,” said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

The indictment details how the pair “were leading participants in a brutal hostage-killing scheme targeting American and European citizens, and others, from 2012 to 2015.” They “engaged in a prolonged pattern of physical and psychological violence against the hostage,” the document further states.

I can understand why Egypt celebrates the October 1973/Yom Kippur War. In the end, it was the spark that resulted in Israel returning the Sinai to Egypt.

But Syria also celebrates the war. There were numerous articles and videos in the official Syrian SANA news agency on October 6, the anniversary of the start of the war.

This article assured readers that Arabs in the Golan Heights were eager for Syria to take over the area again. (This is emphatically not true.)

This article talks with Syrian soldiers who are near the border with Israel.

This article talks with veterans of the war and celebrates their "victory," convinced that it was chapter one in a story that will end one day with a glorious Syrian victory.

This article tries to explain why the war was considered a victory - because it was not a clear defeat:

The October War of Liberation led by the founding leader Hafez al-Assad formed the compass of the struggle to liberate the usurped land and restore Arab rights. It was a clear declaration of the beginning of the era of victories and the end of the era of defeats. The October War of Liberation was the first war in the Arab-Israeli conflict that broke the wall of despair after the June setback in 1967 and consecrated the fact that Syria is the fortress of the steadfast Arab nation that defends its existence and future.

They don't mention that by the end of the war, Israel had pushed way past the 1967 Purple Line and was shelling the outskirts of Damascus.

Some victory!

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A Palestinian delegation met the Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister, Faisal Al-Miqdad, on Tuesday in Damascus, while in the city to have more talks with Hamas.

The delegation was headed by Jibril Rajoub, secretary of the Fatah Central Committee, and the director general of the PLO’s political department, Anwar Abdel-Hadi.

During the meeting, which was held at the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Damascus, Rajoub expressed his appreciation for the Syrian government's ability to achieve security and stability.

While Palestinian leaders say that the worst thing for Arab governments to do is to talk with Israel, they honor the Syrian regime that slaughters hundreds of thousands of their own people.

I wonder what other Arab countries think about these chummy relations between the Syrian thugs and their Palestinian admirers.

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Maariv reports that France is changing its official position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and no longer rules out the possibility of a different solution than the traditional two-state orthodoxy, according to diplomatic sources in Paris.

In a discussion initiated by a pro-Israel lobby organization in Europe, French Ambassador to Israel Eric Danon said: "We will not negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians. This is a bilateral question and we say that the new situation that has arisen must be taken into account and returned to the negotiating table."

"No one knows what will be in the end - one state, two states, with or without Jerusalem. What we prefer and think is best is a two state solution. Does that mean we can not agree on something else? Not at all. We can accept any solution that the Palestinians and Israelis will agree on. "

Ma'an adds that Danon also said, "Six months ago, no one would have imagined that Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain would sign a peace agreement. The Middle East has changed completely because of the position of the United States, Iran and Turkey, because Israel has become a new regional power. The Palestinians must take into account their weak position on the international and Arab arenas."

Danon had said similar things in the past, but it was classified in Paris as a "personal position." This seems to have changed.

This is yet another thunderbolt that is becoming a daily occurrence. Western European countries have been the last reliable support for the maximal and fantasy Palestinian positions, even as the US and the Arab world has been distancing themselves from the PLO. Mahmoud Abbas has been relying on the EU to do its negotiating for him and to pressure Israel for him - exactly what Danon said France will no longer do.

Up until two months ago it would have been unthinkable for a EU country to say out loud that maybe Palestinians won't get a capital in Jerusalem, let alone their own state.

All of this is a direct result of the Israel/UAE agreement brokered by the Trump administration. It is the culmination of three years of injecting reality into the Arab/Israeli conflict, and now that the "Palestine on 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital and return of refugees" bubble has been broken, the world is free to think of alternative ways to bring peace.

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10/06 Links Pt2: Cuomo, de Blasio Scapegoat Exasperated Jewish Communities in Brooklyn for Coronavirus Spike; YouTube Removes Nation of Islam Channel

From Ian:

Cuomo, de Blasio Scapegoat Exasperated Jewish Communities in Brooklyn for Coronavirus Spike

New York City has announced plans to close all schools and possibly all nonessential businesses in nine ZIP codes, most of them in areas with large Jewish populations. In Hasidic neighborhoods, such a shutdown would cripple the local economy, send schoolchildren back to crowded apartments, and effectively ban the large tisches—or festive sukkah gatherings with major rabbinic figures—that are one of the highlights of the holiday of Sukkot. Outdoor holiday festivities that would normally take over 13th Avenue in Borough Park for Sukkot and Simchat Torah have already been canceled, as have similar events in Crown Heights.

Other disruptions to normal life lie ahead. In an Oct. 5 press conference, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blamed many of the state’s new hot spots on illicit mass gatherings of Orthodox Jews. “Orthodox Jewish gatherings often are very, very large and we’ve seen what one person can do in a group,” Cuomo said. As proof of recent Jewish rule-breaking, the governor displayed a picture of a Satmar funeral from 2006. The consequences of the spike would begin immediately. “We’re gonna close the schools in those areas tomorrow. And that’s that,” said Cuomo.

The governor also claimed he would immediately begin the process of closing synagogues, something that his downstate foil, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, apparently lacked the courage to do himself. “The city’s proposal does not close religious institutions. We know religious institutions have been a problem. We know mass gatherings are the superspreader events. We know there have been mass gatherings going on in concert with religious institutions in these communities for weeks—for weeks.” Cuomo declared that in order to remain open, Orthodox leaders, who he said he would meet with the next day, would have to agree that their shuls would adhere to social distancing rules and then cooperate with a new state-level enforcement task force which would deputize local-level health and law enforcement personnel. His timeline for the creation of the task force, and for the state issuing permission for synagogues in hot spot ZIP codes to operate, was notably vague.

The closure threat has been a gift to local demagogues. “The spike at 11219 and 11204 ZIP codes are a fake spike” claimed Heshy Tischler, an increasingly popular former City Council candidate, last seen bolt-cutting open locked parks during the tail end of New York’s initial “pause.” “The Jews have been very complacent” added Tischler, shortly after he issued a condemnation of “Fuhrer de Blasio” during an interview last week. “We’re easy targets,” he said of Borough Park’s Jews. “Our leaders are mice. They’re people that are scared of actually leading.”

There are other, less abrasive attempts underway at addressing the shutdown threat. Last Wednesday, a Yiddish-language notice from the Aaron faction of the Satmar Hasidic movement in Williamsburg urged: “We very much ask that anyone who feels ‘100% healthy and strong’ should, for God’s sake, come to take a test and thereby save the situation. The test takes only a second, it is only a short swab in the nose, and you can thereby save the institutions and study houses, as well as Jewish livelihoods.” Similar messages circulated on multiple Bobover Hasidic WhatsApp groups in Borough Park.

Cuomo used 14-year-old photo to show mass Orthodox gatherings during pandemic

What a shanda.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo put New York’s Jewish Orthodox community on blast Monday for hosting mass gatherings amid the pandemic — but used a nearly two-decade old photo to illustrate his point.

“We know there have been mass gatherings going on in concert with religious institutions in these communities for weeks,” Cuomo said during a news briefing addressing COVID-19 outbreaks in certain areas of the Empire State.

On display beside the gov was a slideshow with images purporting to be of recent packed events in the Orthodox community, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Orange County.

“These pictures are just from the past couple of weeks,” Cuomo declared.

In fact, one of the photos was taken 14 years ago — at the 2006 funeral of revered Hassidic rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum in the Orange County village of Kiryas Joel.

Apparently the picture @NYGovCuomo put up in his presentation today of a “recent” large gathering in Satmar Kiryas Joel is from 2006 — the funeral of Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum in Kiryas Joel! pic.twitter.com/CxGtHhyZUj
— Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) October 5, 2020

Orthodox Jews bristle at NYC’s selective response to virus surge

Amid a new surge of COVID-19 in New York’s Orthodox Jewish communities, many members are reviving health measures that some had abandoned over the summer — social distancing, wearing masks. For many, there’s also a return of anger: They feel the city is singling them out for criticism.

The latest blow: an order Monday from Gov. Andrew Cuomo temporarily closing public and private schools in several areas with large Orthodox populations. It will take effect Tuesday.

“People are very turned off and very burned out,” said Yosef Hershkop, a Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn who works for a chain of urgent-care centers. “It’s not like we’re the only people in New York getting COVID.”

Over the past few weeks, top government officials, including Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, have sounded the alarm about localized upticks in COVID-19 after several months in which the state had one of the nation’s lowest infection rates. Officials say the worst-hit ZIP codes overlap with large Orthodox Jewish communities in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens and in a couple of nearby counties.

The goal is to head off a feared second wave of infections months after the city beat back an outbreak that killed more than 24,000 New Yorkers.

Under the shutdown plan submitted to Cuomo by the mayor, 100 public schools and 200 private ones would be closed in nine areas that are home to close to 500,000 people. Those areas represent 7% of the city’s population but have been responsible for about 1,850 new cases in the past four weeks — more than 20% of all new infections in the city during that span.

De Blasio had proposed the shutdown on Sunday, the second day of the Jewish holiday Sukkot, when Orthodox Jews would not be using telephones or computers and thus wouldn’t have heard the news until sundown.

“Announcing this in the middle of a Jewish holiday shows City Hall’s incompetence and lack of sensitivity towards the Jewish Community,” tweeted Daniel Rosenthal, a state Assembly member from Queens.

De Blasio said he was aware of the holiday but felt obligated to announce the plan as soon as it was developed.

Nas Daily is a hugely popular Facebook video producer who is turning into a video content trainer. He is famous for doing a one minute video a day for 1000 days.

His real name is Nuseir Yassin and he is an Arab Israeli - he calls himself a Palestinian Israeli.

He has lots of charisma and charm, and many of his videos have more than a million views.

But last month BDS targeted him:

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has called for a boycott of Palestinian-Israeli blogger Nas Daily and his search for 80 new Arab content creators, claiming that the influencer's training programme is a cover for normalisation with Israel.

Nuseir Yassin, better known by his Facebook name Nas Daily, has amassed nearly eight million followers on Facebook, over two million on Instagram and 1.6 million on YouTube since he started creating one-minute video clips in 2016.

Last month, he launched The Next Nas Daily, a paid opportunity for 80 Arabic language content creators to take part in a six-month training programme run by the Nas Academy, which offers classroom and online courses teaching skills such as shooting video, editing and storytelling.

“We want to make the Middle East more accessible and understood by the world and we need YOU to make that happen,” the website states.

On Monday, the BDS movement posted a statement calling on “content creators and influencers in the Arab region to boycott the upcoming Nas Daily programme, which aims to implicate them in normalising relations with Israel and cover up its crime”.

Nas is not political at all. Here is has an uncharacteristically anguished video where Haredi Jews in Jerusalem say that all Arabs are terrorists, but then he speaks with some religious Jewish girls who are fans of his.

He wants Jews and Arabs to be treated like human beings - and that is the reason BDS doesn't like him. The idea that an Arab Israeli looks at Israeli Jews as anything but subhuman makes them crazy.

Here are the specific things Nuseir said that enrages the BDSers:

In a one-minute explanation of the creation of Israel in 1948, he said: “Some Palestinians left, some got killed and some stayed in their land. My people stayed.”

That is pretty accurate.

He went on to explain that he had chosen to accept the borders of Israel and Palestine and “move on”, because “in life there are better and bigger things to focus on than the name of a piece of land”.

That is fairly sane.

In a separate video, posted a day after 58 Palestinian protesters were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, Yassin stated: “If you stand with one side and one side only, you are wrong, because it's not black or white.”

That is self-evident.

“I can name a hundred things we as Palestinians (and Arabs like in Egypt and Jordan) did wrong in the past 70 years, and the same goes to Israel. Once you realize every side is to blame, you really can't take sides.”

This is what BDS is deranged over.

Strategically, this is incredibly stupid on BDS' part. If someone is a fan, they aren't going to stop being a fan because of what BDS says. A charismatic Arab who wants peace with Jews is certainly more appealing than terror-supporting BDSers who prefer unending war.

It seems like the UAE accords has really damaged the fragile BDS brains.

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