Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 02, 2020

Iran holds a conference on how to use sports to hurt Israel

The level of obsession that Iran has about Israel is mind-boggling. They held an entire conference on how to politicize sports in order to delegitimize Israel.

Yet the more you read, the more you see that Iran is the one on the defensive, as more sports federations are penalizing Iran for refusing to compete against Israel and this conference was more about Irans' response to that than to the possibility of Iran influencing other countries against Israel.

The 16th pre-session on studies on the Zionist regime titled “The Use of Sports by the Zionist Regime for Normalization” was held at Tehran International Studies and Research Institute (TISRI).

The senior expert of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mojtaba Amini, noted that topics such as the Zionist regime’s racism can be highlighted by creating an anti-Zionist axis in sports and citing compelling reasons.

Head of the Athletes' Basij Organization, Dr. Mir-Jalili, also said that the Zionist regime is seeking normalization by using sports as a tool and the ways in which this could be countered included the setup of workgroups and regular meetings, using the potentials of the Olympic Charter, advertising and public opinion, using the potentials of international organizations such as UNESCO, and creating motivational topics for athletes.

He continued by saying that synergy between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Sports, and the international branch of Basij was necessary and highlighted the need to build dialogue and award the international medal of resistance to athletes who do not participate in games against the Zionist regime.

A faculty member of Allameh Tabataba’i University, Dr. Heybatollah Najandi, also had a speech and said that the abstinence of Iranian athletes from playing with the athletes of the Zionist regime was in fact a protest against the illegitimacy of this regime and the widespread violation of human rights against the oppressed people of Palestine. He said our athletes turning up for games with the Zionist regime only reduced the ugliness of the regime’s illegitimate existence.

Also at the pre-session meeting, Hojjat al-Islam Seyed Mohammad-Reza Mir-Tajedini highlighted the need for a multilateral struggle in all sectors against the Zionist regime and stressed that this must be relevant and transparent. He added that sport is not separate from the economy, it also cannot be separate from politics, and the sports sector must be freed from neutrality and move towards areas of value. He finished by emphasizing the need for increased cooperation between the diplomacy apparatus and the Ministry of Sport and considered the legal vacuum in this field a serious shortfall.

I hope that the various sports federations are taking note that Iran has no interest in sportsmanship. This conference proves it.

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PLO leader Yasir Arafat was infamous for saying peaceful messages in English and pivoting to pro-terror messages in Arabic.

Hamas has learned that lesson well.

On Hamas' Arabic webpage, there is a press release and an article about the 103rd anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.

In both those cases, Hamas emphasizes that "armed resistance" (i.e., terrorism) is a valid option: "Resistance in all its forms, from popular to armed, will remain a legitimate and proven option, and it will not be withdrawn to restore the stolen right of our people and sweep the occupation."

But in its English language website, there are no articles on Balfour. The only article about "resistance" is a copy of a Mondoweiss piece about hunger striking as a form of resistance.

Even terror groups try to pretend to be peaceful when appealing to their Western fans.

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Were the Arab immigrants to Palestine "colonialists?" "Settler colonialists"? "Illegal immigrants?" Or "Palestinians"?

From the Palestine Post, November 22, 1933:

There is no doubt that there was significant Arab immigration to British Mandate Palestine in the 1920s and 30s. Yet unlike the Jewish immigrants at the time, the Arabs are never referred to as "colonialists" or "settler colonialists" as the Jews are.

In fact, in a true irony, today they are considered to be "Palestinians" - even though most of them lived in British Mandate Palestine for only 20 years or so. And they took the name of the people who were called Palestinians at the time.

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Is the PLO going to embrace Iran?

If more Arab countries normalize relations with Israel, what will the PLO leadership do?

They angrily denounced the UAE and Bahrain agreements, trying to marginalize those countries from the Arab League and failing miserably.

They seemed a little more circumspect about Sudan, but also a little more shocked.

However, in general their media is not looking at this as a wake-up call. It is still a reason for them to dig in their heels and say that they have principles that they will not give in on, even when their Arab benefactors are urging flexibility.

Part of the reason is that the PLO leadership is waiting for the US elections. They are hoping that Joe Biden rolls back Trump's pro-Israel moves and returns to a posture of pressuring Israel, coddling Palestinians and linking world peace to Palestinian acceptance of an offer.

But if they miscalculate - if either Trump wins, or if the other moderate Arab states decide to recognize Israel without US sponsorship (very possible if Biden embraces Iran and pushes Arab states towards Israel,) or if Biden recognizes that the Middle East is not the same as it was four years ago - then what?

The PLO has two options. One is to listen to its friends and accept a solution that Israel can live with. The other is to remain intransigent and seek new friends - namely, Iran.

Right now, under US sanctions, Iran is not in a position to financially aid the PLO. And unless the PLO changes its current stated policy of avoiding terror attacks, it is unlikely that Iran would fund it. But if Biden wins the presidency, and he lifts sanctions against Iran and puts Sunni Arab states in the same uncomfortable position that Obama did, it seems possible that the PLO will embrace Iran as its new benefactor.

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11/01 Links: Trump Is the Candidate for the Middle East; French cartoon row: Islamic leaders push Holocaust denial in response; Should Jews celebrate Balfour Day?

From Ian:

Trump Is the Candidate for the Middle East

Here, too, Iran is the exception to the rule. Most Middle East countries want to see Trump remain in the White House; the fact that Iran fears him so much is considered a bonus. One can argue about his style, but no one can deny Trump credit for the fact that his regional policies have made friends and foes alike take notice. He has restored the United States’ standing as a major power-player in the Middle East.

There is also no doubt that his crowning achievement is making actual breakthroughs in the moribund Middle East peace process. His decision to go over the Palestinian Authority’s head was proven right, and regardless of what the future might bring, Trump will go down in history as the US president who brokered three peace agreements between Muslim nations — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan — and the Jewish state, and presided over the Israel-Lebanon maritime border talks. And more is sure to come.

Effective progress in peacemaking in the Middle East alongside the very effective deterrence gained vis-à-vis Iran has restored stability to the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring, and therefore has been welcomed by the region’s rulers. Trump has proven he has a better understanding of regional realities than his predecessor, and unlike President Barack Obama didn’t create an Islamist backlash by trying to push Western democracy or preach morals.

The results of the November 3 elections are for American voters to decide, but Trump’s legacy will be felt in the Middle East long after he leaves the White House, be it in 2020 or in 2024. His will be a legacy of power and determination, of resorting stability to the region, and of proving that the United States stands by its allies.

Dov Lipman: Israel & Sudan: From Bloody Enemies to Prospective Peace Partners

Support for Normalization: Sudan National Dialogue

All of this came on the backdrop of the so-called Sudan National Dialogue, a summit attended by all of the country’s political parties and factions, during which many of them expressed support for normalizing relations with Israel, especially due to the economic benefits that such a move would entail.

Under-the-radar discussions between Sudan and Israel were launched and continued into February 2020, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Uganda with Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of Khartoum’s Sovereignty Council. The two held a two-hour tete-a-tete that resulted in a loose agreement to start forging ties.

Saeb Erekat, Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization, “aggressively” condemned the move, saying that it constituted “a stab in the back of the Palestinian nation.” Massive Country, Massive Achievement

Despite objections from Ramallah, the encounter bore immediate fruit as Israeli commercial planes were later that month given permission to use Sudanese airspace. This, in turn, decreased the flight time from Israel to South America by three hours.

The fact that Sudan, which has a population four times larger than the UAE and Bahrain combined, and whose geographical size is 22 times bigger than those two countries together, appears to be choosing a path of engagement with Israel is a remarkable twist.

A historic development of this magnitude between former enemies simply cannot be downplayed or ignored.

Joe Biden, FDR, and the Nazis

Regardless of the outcome of next week’s election, former Vice President Joe Biden will have the distinction of being the first American presidential candidate to draw attention to the US government’s shameful record of friendly relations with Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

During the final presidential debate on October 22, President Donald Trump claimed that he has “a good relationship” with North Korea and argued that “having a good relationship with leaders of other countries is a good thing.” Former Vice President Biden retorted that “we had a good relationship with Hitler before he in fact invaded Europe.”

Biden’s assertion must have surprised many viewers of the debate, who likely assumed that because President Franklin D. Roosevelt led America in a war against Nazi Germany, he must have always been hostile to the Hitler regime. In fact, from the time FDR first took office in 1933 until America entered World War II in December 1941, the Roosevelt administration’s policy was to pursue cordial, sometimes even friendly relations with the Nazi regime.

Many Americans boycotted products from Nazi Germany. But the Roosevelt administration helped Nazi Germany evade the boycott in the 1930s by permitting goods from Germany to bear labels that misled consumers as to their country of origin. The administration halted this disgraceful practice only when threatened with a lawsuit by boycott activists.

FDR also sent Secretary of Commerce Daniel Roper to address a pro-Nazi rally in New York City in 1933. At that rally, Nazi Germany’s ambassador to the United States was the keynote speaker and the podium and hall were decorated with swastika flags. In 1937, the administration sent one of its senior diplomats to represent the United States at the annual Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg.

In some instances, the Roosevelt administration actually apologized for U.S. citizens’ anti-Nazi sentiment. In 1935, the administration publicly apologized to Adolf Hitler after a New York City judge released protesters who tore a swastika flag off a visiting German ship. Then, in 1937, when New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia called Hitler a “brown-shirted fanatic who is threatening the peace of the world,” Roosevelt’s secretary of state expressed the US government’s “regret” over “utterances calculated to be offensive to a foreign government.

From the Washington Post:

When he hosted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House in May 2017, President Trump boasted of the ease with which he would achieve the Israeli-Palestinian peace that had eluded his predecessors in office.

“We will get it done,” Trump told reporters, saying that the task was “not as difficult as people have thought over the years.”

Three and a half years later, the promised peace seems further away than ever. Trump’s plan, crafted by son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, landed with a thud in February and all but disappeared.

Instead, Trump moved the goal posts, last week claiming to have succeeded with a deal that others “were unable to make . . . for 40 years.”

The writers, Karen DeYoung and Steve Hendrix, are skipping over some crucial parts of what happened between May 2017 and now.

Trump always said that he wasn't going to force any agreement - that Israel and the Palestinians both have to want to make an agreement, and only then is peace possible.

When Trump announced that the US recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017, he specifically said that this was simply a reflection of reality, not a position of the final status of Jerusalem. It was ending the idiotic and unconscionable US position that Jerusalem might still become an international city. The option for east Jerusalem being capital of a Palestinian state was not changed at all.

But the Palestinian reaction was fierce and insulting to the US.

As a result, Trump in February 2018 said he is "taking Jerusalem off the table." But even when he said that, he criticized both the Palestinians and Israelis as not being truly interested in peace:

“Right now, I would say the Palestinians are not looking to make peace, they are not looking to make peace...And I am not necessarily sure that Israel is looking to make peace,” he said.

The PLO continued to lash out at the US. And the US, instead of coddling them as was done in the past, reacted in kind - by shutting down the PLO office in Washington in September 2018:

"We have permitted the PLO office to conduct operations that support the objective of achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between Israelis and the Palestinians," State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement Monday.
"However, the PLO has not taken steps to advance the start of direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel," she added.

The PLO reactions to both the economic peace plan presented in Bahrain in June 2019 and then the January 2020 Peace to Prosperity plan - which pushed a path to a contiguous Palestinian state that again realistically dealt with Israeli communities - were similarly and summarily rejected with insults and no counter-offers.

Whether one agrees with the US administration's positions, one cannot ignore the incitement and intransigence of the PLO which prompted the White House to move away from considering the PLO a serious peace partner. The Trump administration is transactional, and it treats other nations the way that they treat the US as opposed to the traditional way of begging for acceptance.

The PLO chose the path of making itself irrelevant, and the entire history of the Trump team's interactions with them shows that everything they did was a reaction to PLO decisions. This includes facilitating peace directly between Israel and Arab states.

It is not much different from George W. Bush's reaction to finding out that Yasir Arafat lied to his face about the Karine A weapons ship, denying anything to do with it when Israel showed Bush Arafat's signature was on the paperwork. Bush stopped talking to Arafat after that, later writing "Arafat had lied to me. I never trusted him again. In fact, I never spoke to him again. By the spring of 2002, I had concluded that peace would not be possible with Arafat in power."

So, no, Trump didn't move the goalposts. He is optimizing peace in the Middle East given a PLO that wants to be the roadblock to peace. No one could have done any better, and the WaPo criticism is based on hate of Trump rather than any objective analysis.

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I have never heard of this JaFaJ site before, but it looks like a sober intelligence site and doesn't have any crazy conspiracy theory stories that I can find.

Iraqi Officials Have Already Visited Jerusalem

JaFaJ Intelligence has confirmed that senior Iraqi officials have been engaged in peace talks with their Israeli counterparts for over a month. The talks, from the Iraqi side, involved senior official from the Prime Minister’s office, and are being facilitated under direct supervision of Jared Kushner, the President’s Middle East Advisor.

Iraqi sources have also confirmed that peace with Israel was one of the key reasons behind the Iraqi Prime Minister’s visit to Washington DC and his meeting with President Trump in August 2020.

JaFaJ Intelligence sources have also confirmed that the Iraqis have exhibited a sincere desire to reach a peace deal with Israel. The talks have been held between the parties in Jerusalem and the United States, with one Iraqi delegation visiting Israel last September under a shroud of total secrecy to meet with officials from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office.

This is important because the intelligence community knows that the Iranian government controls the jobs of most senior Iraqi government officials, and that they are members of the Shiite sect. Therefore, it is well reasoned that the Iraqi government would have never made such a move without full Iranian consent.

What is most surprising about this development is that JaFaJ Intelligence sources in Iraq have confirmed that “Iran is supportive of the negotiations”.

Facially, this statement may seem outlandish to an outsider looking in, but nonetheless, President Trump himself mentioned something about Iran when he spoke about the Sudan-Israel peace deal during a recent rally. During that speech, he implied that the deal was so good, that Iran may eventually join in.

Plagued by ruthless economic distress and unforgiving American economic sanctions that are crushing the country, Iran found itself under immense pressure from inside and outside the country, in a nation where riots have become regular happenings since 2019. Bankrupt, weakened, crushed and losing ground, the Iranian regime may not survive unless it gets a break from these sanctions.

With the elections in mind, Iran has had hopes that Trump would not win re-election and would restore the Iran Deal, giving it a break. Nonetheless, the Iranians have been forced to take this position when they received confirmation from Chinese officials that “Unfortunately, Trump is going to win, because he has the American Middle Class behind him”.

Since then, Iran has been trying to minimize its damages by helping to “broker a peace deal between Iraq and Israel”. The Iranians have gone as far as to assure the Americans (through a third party), that they could not only secure support for the peace deal from Iraqi’s Shiite religious leaders, but even have them issue Fatwas legitimizing it.

This does not seem so far fetched as I have been documenting Iraqi media showing interest in peace with Israel, and it seems unlikely that such articles would be written without an Iraqi government green light.

(h/t Yoel)

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Whatever happened to those Palestinian elections that are supposedly scheduled for February or March?

Whatever happened to unity between Hamas and Fatah that they were talking about in Istanbul in September?

Apparently, Fatah has been putting everything on hold - until the US elections. This is consensus from Palestinian media and the analysts they are interviewing.

Fatah is not interested in reconciliation with Hamas nor in elections. They don't want to risk losing the power they have; they don't want Hamas in the PLO and they are under pressure from moderate Arab states who hate the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Hamas.

Most importantly, though, is that Fatah wants to wait until after the US presidential elections. They are betting that if Biden wins, he will turn the clock back to the Obama era when the US publicly pressured Israel for concessions and left the Palestinians alone. Biden would also likely restore funding to the Palestinian Authority, which means more money for Fatah.

If Trump wins, then Fatah will feel they are backed into a corner and will have no choice but to unify with Hamas and/or hold elections to strengthen at least their on internal unity.

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10/31 Links: Caroline B. Glick: The real Netanyahu (and Trump) dilemma; Top Fatah militant killed during clash with PA officers; Sean Connery dies aged 90

From Ian:

Caroline B. Glick: The real Netanyahu (and Trump) dilemma

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee's decision to award the prize to the World Food Program this year assuaged the fears of elitists from New York to Paris and Berlin. The Abraham Accords, which include bilateral peace treaties between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and most recently Sudan, and Israel have fundamentally changed the Middle East. They have upended fifty years of failed peace processing on the part of Western foreign policy elites who seem to fall into deeper and deeper funks with word of each new peace deal.

Newsweek's cover story on Oct. 2 nicely encapsulated the distress. The cover featured a leering black and white photo of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a red and white headline, The Netanyahu Dilemma: Can The Nobel Prize Say No to Bibi?

By giving the prize to the World Health Organization, the committee kicked the can down the road. Maybe President Donald Trump will be defeated next week. Maybe Netanyahu will be ousted from power. And then things can return to normal, they console themselves. They will be able to forget all about the unpleasantness.

What is it about the Abraham Accords that makes the foreign policy "experts" so upset?

Three aspects of the deals really get their goat. The first is their authors. For the likes of the British Foreign Office and the Council on Foreign Relations, few are held in greater contempt than Netanyahu and Trump. The Newsweek article, which dealt with Netanyahu specifically, called him "widely loathed." And of course, there hasn't been a US President as despised by "the smart set" as Trump since Andrew Jackson.

The second aspect of the Abraham Accords that drives the peace processors to distraction is the fact that they were done at all. The Arab-Israel conflict isn't supposed to end this way. For 50 years, the "experts" have all agreed that the road to peace goes through Ramallah. So long as Israel doesn't make peace with the Palestinians, it cannot make peace with the Arabs. And in the two instances where Israel was able to sidestep the Palestinians – its 1979 peace treaty with Egypt and its 1994 peace treaty with Jordan – both the Jordanians and the Egyptians refused to implement the normalization clauses of the deals so long as Israel didn't make peace with the Palestinians.

The absence of normalization reduced the deals from actual peace to little more than long-term ceasefires. The same hostility and anti-Semitism that fueled the Arab wars against Israel which Egypt and Jordan led, remained and even grew within their societies in the years and decades after they signed the peace agreements.

As Newsweek put it, with barely disguised fury, "The agreements that Netanyahu has wrangled with Arab states of the Persian Gulf fail to resolve, or even address the situation of the Palestinians – a cause with passionate supporters in Europe, on US college campuses and with many US liberals."

Israelis are fretting. What nonsense! | “a Trump victory offers Israel no guarantees. A second-term President Trump, unfettered of his need to please pro-Israel evangelical voters, might rush into an overly forgiving new deal w/Iran, many Israelis fret.” https://t.co/Y3Kagv68sV
— Mike “10ForTheBigGuy” (@Doranimated) October 31, 2020

Allegations that @realDonaldTrump, the best friend the Jewish people have ever had in the White House, is in any way anti-Semitic are utter nonsense. They are an attempt as well to divert attention away from the Democrat Party's growing anti-Jewish bigotry. https://t.co/8DYjjOHoEm
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) October 30, 2020

ADL slams conservative PAC for calling prominent Democrats ‘antisemites’

The Anti-Defamation League slammed a conservative political action committee for calling prominent New York Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum an “antisemite.”

The ad, paid for by the American Liberty Fund and appearing on Facebook, begins: “Are you Jewish? Are you even thinking about voting Democrat? Have you ever heard the phrase ‘never again?'”

The ad then runs through an array of figures it describes as “antisemites” who spoke at the Democratic National Convention this summer, two of whom were Jewish: Kleinbaum and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Others on the list include Tamika Mallory, a Black activist who has spoken admirably about Louis Farrakhan, and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has been accused by mainstream Jewish organizations of making statements seen as crossing into anti-Semitism.

“Anti-Israel Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum and Bernie Sanders were on the program,” the ad says. “She sits on the board of radical NIF, which accuses Israel of war crimes.”

In a tweet on Friday, the ADL said: “The video distributed by Super PAC American Liberty Fund disrespects the memory of the Holocaust and smears a respected rabbi, @Skleinbaum. This is just another shameless attempt to use Jews as a political football.”

10/30 Links Pt2: Corbyn is one man. Left-Wing Antisemitism is a Tradition; Britain's Labour Party will struggle to erase its moral stain; The Narcissism of The NYTs’ Foreign Coverage

From Ian:

Alan Johnson: Corbyn is one man. Left-Wing Antisemitism is a Tradition

Antisemitic forms of anti-Zionism have roots in the UK far left going back decades. Before Corbyn’s victory in 2015 the UK far left tried in the mid 1980s to ban Jewish Student Societies on campuses because they were ‘Zionist’. Sunderland Polytechnic did so. A group Corbyn sponsored ran a piece titled ‘Why we support Sunderland Polytechnic’ and said the ban was not ‘in any way antisemitic’.

Move on a few decades and look at this cartoon. It circulated on the radical left and is a kind of summa of how the old socialism of fools has been blended with the new anti-imperialism of idiots and has then gone viral on social media. And you can be sure that those who created it and circulated it thought it ‘in no way antisemitic’.

The left needs to learn that antisemitism is the most protean and changeable of hatreds and it has shape-shifted yet again. Yes, Labour was poisoned in part by the flourishing of ‘classic’ anti-Jewish stereotypes and slurs in the party, as my 2019 report recorded. (There were even a few ‘Hitler was right’ types, believe it or not.) But the heart of the problem was ‘anti-Zionism’ of such an obsessive, conspiracist and demonising kind that it long ago left the terrain of ‘legitimate criticism of Israeli policy’ and merged itself with an older set of classical antisemitic tropes, images and assumptions to create antisemitic anti-Zionism.

There are legitimate criticisms to be made of Israel, as there are of every nation-state. Ringing up a Jewish Labour MP and calling her a ‘Zionist C***’ is not one of them. Nor is tweeting that Israel creating ISIS.

In short, that which the demonised Jew once was in older forms of antisemitism, demonised Israel now is in contemporary antisemitic anti-Zionism: all-controlling, the hidden hand, tricksy, always acting in bad faith, the obstacle to a better, purer, more spiritual world, uniquely malevolent, full of blood lust, uniquely deserving of punishment, and so on.’

Yes, disciplinary action should now follow. It is right that Corbyn has been suspended. But it will be even more important to wage a battle of ideas against antisemitic anti-Zionism. But the useful left-wing idiots who protected Corbyn for four years are legion. They infest a bio-degraded UK left and UK academia. So here is an idea: the party should turn for help to those of us on the left who have spent a good part of our professional and political lives understanding, fighting and defeating left-wing antisemitism. We just might know something.

David Collier: Yes, the EHRC is out – be ready to fight again at dawn

The EHRC fallout – Jezza – your part in his downfall

I was reporting on antisemitism in the party long before most. In Autumn 2015, after Corbyn’s leadership victory, it felt like a lonely and uphill struggle. Few wanted to see the truth. We are diaspora Jews – we do not like to be seen to be rocking any boats.

It took far too long for some in the community to wake up and realise the dangers that antisemitism on the left poses. The problems that pro-Corbyn elements presented for us as Jews in the UK. There was ignorance about how antisemitism has masked itself and naivety over how quickly it spreads. Until spring 2018 a sense of ‘it will pass’ or ‘can’t happen here’ was still the order of the day.

For now, lots of people are climbing to the top of the hill, metaphorically holding the head of Corbyn aloft and crowing about how they (or their organisation) are heroes. It is my hope that this pause in fighting to chest-beat and celebrate is a brief one. Does our community possess both the understanding to realise the battle is not done and the courage to accept the boat must be rocked even further? I am not sure it does.

We must turn our attention to campus. The unions must also be fought. And on the political front, Jezza’s army – that sees the EHRC only as the establishment protecting itself – is still out there – and it is far larger than it was in 2015. Many local Labour Party groups remain toxic and hostile. Does anyone really believe that the antisemitic Palestine Solidarity Campaign – which actively spreads Jew hatred – will be unwelcome at the next Labour Party Conference?

Celebrate if you must, but make sure you are ready to fight again when dawn comes.

Melanie Phillips: Britain's Labour Party will struggle to erase its moral stain

On both sides of the Atlantic, the major drivers of Israel demonization and delegitimization are the universities. The United States took action to address this last year when President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning anti-Semitic behavior and actions at colleges and universities that receive federal funding.

Further key promoters of this infamy are some of the giant international NGOs such as Amnesty International, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and others. People assume these to be run by people of conscience committed to relieving poverty and oppression.

At a time of unprecedented loss of trust in politicians and other authority figures, NGOs such as these therefore have a massive influence. They have become, in effect, a secular church. In fact, they often peddle pure poison about Israel, singling it out for wildly unfair and twisted condemnation while sanitizing or ignoring the Palestinians' murderous targeting of Israeli civilians.

Once again, it's the Trump administration that is leading the world in trying to tackle this, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushing to brand several of them anti-Semitic and withdraw federal funding from them.

Of course, it's naive to think that the world's oldest hatred can ever be eradicated. The best we can hope for is to push it back under its stone. To do that, however, it has to be correctly called out and its proponents treated as social pariahs.

But to do that on the left means progressively minded people must acknowledge that, in this instance, their anti-racism is actually racism, and they are not on the side of the angels at all.

The problem is that the left can never accept that they are not always on the side of virtue. And that's why the anti-Semitism within the Labour Party, as more generally in progressive circles, is a moral stain that won't go away.

David Hirsh: The ‘Livingstone formula’ is dead

The EHRC has crystallised a new legal precedent that the ‘Livingstone Formulation’ is antisemitic. It has added to the IHRA definition of antisemitism a new archetype of antisemitic behaviour.

I first named the Livingstone Formulation in 2006 after Livingstone’s bizarre spat with a Jewish journalist, whom he accused of being like a Nazi. Instead of apologising, Livingstone came back with an aggressive counter-accusation against those who said his late night ranting had been antisemitic. “For far too long the accusation of antisemitism has been used against anyone who is critical of the policies of the Israeli government, as I have been.”

The Macpherson principle says that if a black person says they have experienced racism you should begin by assuming that they are right. The Livingstone principle says: if Jews complain about antisemitism on the left then you should begin by assuming that they are making it up to silence criticism of Israel or to smear the left.

It is antisemitic conspiracy fantasy because it doesn’t just say that Jews sometimes get it wrong, but that they know full well they’re wrong and they say it anyway, to increase their power.

The Livingstone Formulation is the key mode of antisemitic bullying mobilised against Jews on the left. It treats Jews as alien to the left and as treasonous. Pete Willsman accused the 60 rabbis of being Trump fanatics. Such an accusation is a way, rhetorically, of deporting Jews from their political home and making them homeless.

Livingstone himself was thrown overboard by the Corbynites in an effort to save their own skins and he has now been singled out in the EHRC report as a key example of Labour antisemitism. But Corbyn has now been thrown overboard too and is reunited with his old comrade Livingstone. There is justice in that, since they have always shared the same antisemitic politics.

A Spanish diplomat saved hundreds of Jews trapped in Egypt in 1967-68

I just found this in the JTA archives from September 5, 1968:

Since the Six-Day War, secret negotiations conducted by Spain have resulted in freeing several hundred Jewish families from Egypt, the Washington Post said Wednesday. “Possibly 500 families–Egyptian citizens as well as aliens–have been helped out of Egypt and have been dispersed” to Western countries. “Many stateless Jews,” the Post said, “have been given Spanish passports.” It said the International Red Cross and United States Jewish organizations have aided the effort.

“Some estimates are that 1,000 Egyptian Jews, most of them permitted to take only their personal belongings, have been helped to resettle abroad,” the newspaper reported. The Post noted, however, that “an estimated 250 Jews remain in confinement, principally in the Al-Thawra prison near Cairo. Other Jews freed previously have alleged that they were forced by prison officers to submit to sexual perversion and other indignities and were beaten and tortured.”

Last December the exodus was reduced to a trickle, and since July, the Post said, the Jewish exodus has apparently stopped.

Credited with the largest role in arranging the release of many of the Jews is the Spanish Ambassador in Cairo, Angel Sagaz. Mr. Sagaz, the Post noted, “played an important role in getting Jews out of Nazi Germany during World War II.” The Post quoted one Jew rescued from an Egyptian prison as saying that Ambassador Sagaz “went back as far as the inquisition in order to construe for the Sephardic Jews a Spanish origin and give them a passport.”

Ambassador Angel Sagaz was a hero who was not recognized during his lifetime. (His NYT obituary did not mention this episode.)

This account notes that when Sagaz found out that Jews could not even take their jewels with them from Egypt, he told them to deposit them in the Spanish Embassy in Cairo and they were later delivered by diplomatic pouch to them in Spain. He also saved some synagogue ceremonial objects.

One of the reasons that Sagaz was successful. according to this account, was that Spain at the time did not recognize Israel and was friendly with Arab states, so it couldn't be accused of "Zionist" leanings. Sagaz lobbied the police, Egypt's ministries and Nasser himself, claiming that the Jews were Spanish citizens based on a 1924 edict from Spain's leader Primo de Rivera that Sephardic Jews could become citizens. (Spanish diplomats used that same ruling to save 5000 Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.)

Angel Sagaz' story needs to be better known. Here's the only photo I could find of him, along with his wife, who helped him in his heroism.

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.

10/30 Links Pt1: Israel-Arab accords an earthquake for Palestinians, who pin their hopes on Biden; We can't let Erdogan get away with his incendiary behaviour

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: The significance of back-to-back pro-Israel policies ahead of elections

Explanations given by the US in the past for an unwillingness to connect Jerusalem – any part of Jerusalem – to Israel in passports revolved primarily around the idea that the status of Jerusalem in the eyes of most countries, is still pending, and that this is a hot-button issue that needs to be determined in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The US, according to this argument, did not want to prejudice the outcome of future negotiations by taking a stand on the issue. But that argument was disingenuous, because what about Jerusalem before 1967, before Israel repelled the Jordanian attack during the Six Day War and gained control of the entire city, east and west.

Why could Israel not be Jerusalem’s designated state in US passports before the Six Day War, when Israel only had control of the western part of the city?

The reason: because the US never formally relinquished its support for UN resolutions dating to the Partition Plan in 1947 calling for the city to be designated as a “corpus separatum’’ – a city with a special status to be placed under an international regime. Washington’s clinging on, at least formally, to the “corpus separatum” idea only really ended in 2018 when Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem, in accordance with a 1995 US law.

The long-standing American refusal to acknowledge in passports that any part of Jerusalem was an integral part of Israel spoke of a belief, or even a hope, that it was not. This reinforced the pernicious notion – an idea propagated by Palestinian propaganda and which gained traction in recent years, and was even incorporated in the resolutions of various UN bodies – that Israel had no valid historical tie or claim to the Holy City. It was high time to put that idea to rest.

The US Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so in 2015, when it ruled on a case brought by Ari Zivotofsky to force the State Department to list “Jerusalem, Israel” as the place of birth for his son, Menachem, in conformity with a 2002 law passed by Congress. But the court missed the opportunity, ruling that the president, not Congress, has the sole authority to make these types of foreign policy decisions and the court struck down the law.

That being the case, once Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the US embassy there in 2018, it should have been just a matter of time for the State Department to change its procedures on this matter as well. These types of ingrained policies, apparently, are not easy to reverse, and it took over two years for this to happen.

To which we can only say: It’s about time.

Seth J. Frantzman: Cementing Israel's New Ties in Arab World Is Essential for Future

If you conduct foreign policy as a transaction, then there is always a chance that if some part of the transaction doesn't hold up, or if the person in the White House changes, that the foreign state will renege. That means that to cement Israel's relationships with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and potentially other deals with Oman, Saudi Arabia or several other countries, the U.S. needs to continue to be a stakeholder—or Israel and its new friends need to move quickly to cement the deals.

Israel has had pragmatic relationships in the past. It reached out to Iran and Turkey in the 1950s, when Arab states were hostile, and then it signed peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan while never cultivating a particularly close relationship with either. Iran's regime is today the most hostile country to Israel and Turkey—and Turkey, which still has relations with Israel, has vowed to "liberate" Muslim areas of Jerusalem from the Jewish state. This shows how Israel's relationships in the region tend to be precarious.

How can relations with the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan learn from the challenges of the pas?

First, Israel and the UAE already share a worldview on the region, and can be part of an emerging U.S. alliance with India and Greece that would create a nexus of power from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. This is predicated upon a strategic partnership with Washington built on F-35s for Israel, Greece and the UAE, and a close partnership between Israel and India that already exists. People-to-people relationships are also essential to developing ties between Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem. The business hubs in Tel Aviv and Dubai offer excellent opportunities. Already, there is cooperation on the medical front against COVID-19. The first ship has arrived in Israel from the Emirates, as well as the first flights.

The foundation for Israel's new friendships are being built. Now, the countries need to fill the new edifice with economic, cultural and, eventually, defense ties. Some of those ties are being pushed by Washington, but in the wake of the U.S. election, it is important that these new friendships grow on their own accord. Collective focus from Israeli, Emirati and other regional leaders, businessmen and civil society organizations can help make that happen.

Avi Issacharoff: Israel-Arab accords an earthquake for Palestinians, who pin their hopes on Biden

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has long been considered an anti-Israel institute, to put it mildly.

It was established following an Australian tourist’s attempt to burn down Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque in 1969. Its members are the representatives of 57 Islamic states, including Turkey and Iran, and for the past four years the organization has been headed by Secretary-General Yousef Al-Othaimeen, a Saudi politician. In February, the organization rejected US President Donald Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative, calling on its members not to cooperate with it.

On Monday, however, Al-Othaimeen sounded a very different tone.

In an interview to Sky News in Arabic, Al-Othaimeen said: “We need to think outside the box… This [Palestinian] issue has been going on for over 70 years. We have tried wars and throwing the Israelis into the sea; we have tried a lot. The new generation of our Palestinian brothers needs to try ideas that will lead to a solution to this problem, which is of interest to us all, but in new ways, ways that have not yet been tried, in order to reach a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of this state.”

Al-Othaimeen then asked: “Why insist on the path of resistance and boycott and distancing? What should be distanced are the traditional and familiar ideas.”

A few months ago such statements would have been inconceivable. That they were uttered this week, by the head of this organization, shows how the Israeli normalization agreement with Sudan, and the earlier agreements with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, have generated nothing short of a Middle East earthquake.

The world view of generations of Arabs in the region, in both Sunni and Shiite states, was shaped around the Palestinian issue and the conflict with Israel. Yet here before the astonished eyes of hundreds of millions of Muslim and Christian Arabs — and especially the Palestinians’ shocked gaze — that foundational worldview has collapsed. Suddenly, the Palestinians – who would wave the prospect of normalized relations with the Arab world as the carrot to try to convince Israel to resolve the conflict with them — now find themselves irrelevant. They woke up one morning to find that the presumed consensus, the very premise, the whole concept of Palestinian nationality is in real danger.

When The Media Extols Evil: Hitler, Farrakhan and Ahlam Tamimi (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

On October 17, Natalie Hopkinson -- an associate professor at Howard University -- wrote a glowing opinion piece in The New York Times on antisemite Louis Farrakhan. Entitled The Women Behind the Million Man March, the article recounts the role played by Cora Masters Barry, wife of then DC Mayor Marion Barry, in mobilizing the women who played a significant role in the success of the march.

Hopkinson notes that

A key supporter of the event was Marion Barry, who had just returned to the Washington mayor’s office after a stint in federal prison. [emphasis added]

Nothing, however, is mentioned of Farrakhan's Jew-hatred and homophobia.

As Bari Weiss put it

If you read the oped and knew nothing about Farrakhan, you would think he was a gentleman.

When criticism was made of this whitewash of Farrakhan, Hopkinson responded by reminding her critics that she is a 'scholar':

But Hopkinson was just warming up, falling back on Black oppression and negating the oppression of others:

Rafael Medoff, the founding director of The David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, compares Hopkinson's depiction of Farrakhan with the New York Times interview that Anne O'Hare McCormick did in 1933, Hitler Seeks Jobs for All Germans.

Medoff points out that Hitler did not waste any time persecuting Germany's Jews once he took office:

During Hitler’s first months in power, there was extensive coverage in the American press of his anti-Jewish policies, such as the mass firing of Jews from their jobs, public burnings of books by Jewish authors, and sporadic anti-Semitic mob violence. To counter this negative attention, Hitler in July 1933 granted Anne O’Hare McCormick of the New York Times his first exclusive interview with an American reporter since becoming chancellor of Germany.

To her credit, McCormick did in fact take the opportunity to ask about Germany's treatment of its Jews -- but did not follow up when her subject replied:

"It is true we have made discriminatory laws, but they are directed not so much against the Jews as for the German people, to give equal economic opportunity to the majority.

"You say the Jews suffer, but so do millions of others. Why should not the Jews share the privations which burden the entire nation?

According to Medoff, unlike Hopkinson's devotion to Farrakhan, there is no indication that McCormick was actually sympathetic to her subject and his views.

But the fact remains that in both cases, favorable pieces in The New York Times contributed to positive images for their subjects -- and only McCormick bothered to attempt a balanced article.

These days, whitewashing hate -- especially hatred of Jews -- seems to be in style.

This month, Jordan deported terrorist Nizar Tamimi, husband of Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, the mastermind of the Sbarro massacre. He is now in Qatar. Meanwhile, Ahlam Tamimi, whom Jordan has refused to extradite to the US despite their extradition treaty, risks the possibility of being apprehended and being turned over to the US if she leaves to join her husband.

What is a terrorist to do?

You turn to the media -- in this case, the always obliging BBC, whose program 'Trending' featured a whitewashing of the terrorist couple by BBC Arabic’s Rania ‘Attar:

Not once during the entire 6 minutes of broadcast could one detect the slightest hint of criticism towards either of the two from BBC Arabic. The social media solidarity campaign supporting them was uncritically portrayed as a matter of freedom of speech for the weak and persecuted. No less notable were the selective omissions from the couple’s violent history: the programme referred to Ahlam as though she was merely “accused of involvement” in the Jerusalem bombing (despite her own public admission of the crime) and failed to mention the reason for Nizar’s imprisonment at all.

The programme, entitled “#Jordan: Ahlam_Tamimi_Your_Voice_is_Loud_and_Clear”, was hosted by BBC Arabic’s Rania ‘Attar; one of Trending’s regular presenters. Describing the Tamimis as “freed detainees from Israeli prisons”, ‘Attar told her audience how the two met in the halls of an Israeli military court, got engaged while in prison and married once they were both released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, against a background of sentimental pictures of their newfound life in Amman, Jordan.

The BBC host continued with the latest developments in the couple’s story, explaining that Jordan had not renewed “detainee” Nizar’s permit to reside in the kingdom with his wife (herself a Jordanian citizen), resulting in his expulsion to Qatar earlier this month. She then quoted Nizar’s brother Mahmoud who claimed that the decision to expel the husband was related to the American extradition request currently pending against his wife and that the family considers it an indirect Jordanian acquiescence to American dictates.

Next it was explained what had triggered the social media campaign which gave the programme its hashtag-style name. Last Tuesday a radio host was supposedly documented censoring Tamimi as she was on air, making her plea to King ‘Abdullah II to let her husband back into Jordan. The Jordanian-Palestinian solidarity campaign which followed used the hashtag “#Ahlam_Tamimi_Your_Voice_is_Loud_and_Clear”. Among the many comments shown, ‘Attar featured those that praised Tamimi as a woman “of great value” and “honour”, whose story should be heard by “everyone”.

The host concluded the programme with a full, uncensored video of Ahlam Tamimi addressing the King for a second time. Only afterwards were viewers made aware of what ‘Attar referred to as “the main landmarks of Ahlam’s life”, with the following statements being used to elaborate on her terrorist activity:
“First woman to join al-Qassam battalions, Hamas’s military wing […]

“She was accused of involvement in the ‘Sbarro’ restaurant bombing in Jerusalem […]

“In 2013, American Department of Justice ranked her on the list of ‘most dangerous wanted terrorists’, under the accusation of conspiring to kill Americans in the ‘Sbarro’ restaurant bombing in Jerusalem”

While the program was first broadcast on October 8th, protests against the program finally led to its being removed from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on October 16th and from the BBC Arabic website itself on October 19th.

A BBC spokesperson later told The Jewish News:

Following an editorial review we found that this segment was in breach of our editorial guidelines and we removed the clip from our digital platforms last week. We accept that the segment should not have been shown and apologise for the offence caused.

This example of BBC moral deafness is matched only by Sarah Montague, the presenter of BBC’s Radio 4 Today program. Back on August 12, 2001, Montague called Arnold Roth -- whose daughter was one of Tamimi's victims. The family was sitting Shiva.

Montague asked whether Roth would be willing to come onto Radio 4 Today by phone the following morning to be in a two-sided interview with a man called al-Masri, the father of the human bomb [who carried out the Sbarro massacre]. This would enable the audience to hear “the two sides” of the atrocity. [emphasis added]

Two sides?

Only if you believe that a terrorist who targets children in a pizzeria is another man's freedom fighter.

But how about if you just hijack airplanes?

On August 29, 1969, Leila Khaled was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the terrorist group that hijacked TWA Flight 840 from Rome to Tel Aviv, diverting it to Damascus.

On September 6, 1970, Leila Khaled and an accomplice, attempted to hijack El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York City as part of a series of almost simultaneous hijackings carried out by the PFLP:

Soon after takeoff, [pilot Uri] Bar-Lev and his co-pilot got word that two terrorists were hijacking the plane. They had shot and gravely wounded an El Al flight attendant and had put a gun to the head of another, demanding to be let into the cockpit, which Bar-Lev had immediately locked.

Bar-Lev saved the passengers by putting the plane into a steep dive. Khaled was captured -- and later released by Great Britain in a hostage exchange.

Fast-forward to 2020.

On September 23, Leila Khaled was scheduled to give a talk at San Francisco State University, entitled “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, & Resistance.” Khaled was helpfully described as a "Palestinian feminist, militant and leader."

In the end, the talk was stopped by Zoom and Facebook, right at the point where Khaled said "people have the right to fight those who occupy their land by any means possible, including weapons," and despite multiple attempts to hold the talk online since then, so far it has continued to be (mostly) blocked.

Associate professor Rabab Abdulhadi, director of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED) was to be the moderator -- and at this point, Abdulhadi's comments defending having a terrorist speak to the students is predictable:

Abdulhadi claimed the outrage over her invitation to Khaled was manufactured by the "Israel Lobby Industry," and said opposition to her was "catering to donors, catering to the right-wing agenda and catering to Islamophobia." Abdulhadi doubled down on her comments later on in the video, stating that the university president "only talked to Zionists, only talked to one brand."

"The university is participating in a very discriminatory, racist, defamatory, smearing campaign by the Zionist bullies and their right-wing, neoliberal and wealthy allies," Abdulhadi said. She also claimed the talk with Khaled was only canceled because of the university's desire to retain wealthy Jewish donors, alleging the school's president told donors she would "crush the Palestinians" and "crush AMED studies."

The reason for the opposition to giving a podium to a terrorist is stated in a September 17 letter from 86 organizations, a letter Abdulhadi avoids addressing:

We fully acknowledge that faculty members like Prof. Abdulhadi have every right, as private citizens, to express anti-Zionist views and engage in anti-Zionist activism. However, we believe Abdulhadi's continuous and intentional use of her SFSU position and the name and resources of the University to indoctrinate students with her own personal animus towards the Jewish state and its supporters and to promote anti-Israel activism, does not constitute a legitimate use of academic freedom, but an abuse of it.

The full letter points to a few of Abdulhadi's AMED activities, such as:

In 2013, AMED co-sponsored an on-campus event that involved students using stencils to create placards and T-shirts with the image of a keffiyeh-clad Leila Khaled holding an AK-47 rifle accompanied by the message, “Resistance is Not Terrorism,” and other stencils with the message, “My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers.” In the wake of public outrage over the event’s unambiguous lionizing of a convicted terrorist and promotion of terrorism against Israel, Prof. Abdulhadi defended the event as a legitimate use of academic freedom. [emphasis added]

The BBC's fawning coverage of Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi and Abdulhadi's manipulation of terrorist hijacker Leila Khaled as a resistant icon is reminiscent of the episode of Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted in 1970 and imprisoned in Israel for 10 years for the supermarket bombing in Jerusalem which killed 2 Hebrew University students -- Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner.

Odeh later lied about her conviction when she entered the US and was eventually convicted of immigration fraud and deported from the US -- but not before she became a cause celebre and described by The Rasmea Defense Committee as an “icon of the Palestine liberation movement.”

It is one thing to give Hitler a pass, or to whitewash Farrakhan -- but in the case of Ahlam Tamimi, BBC Arabic deliberately hid facts from its audience, such as Tamimi's pride when she actually admitted to the murder of innocent schoolchildren.

And in the cases of Leila Khaled and Rasmea Odeh, there is an attempt to go a step further and to not only use terrorists to energize protest against Israel but also use their public appearances to encourage outright hatred.

Taken in the context of the increase in antisemitic rhetoric from within the progressive wing of the Democratic party and the rise in the number of antisemitic attacks by radicals on both the right and the left, Jews will continue to be a target in the US.

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.

The Global Imams Council is an Iraq-based NGO of Shiite and Sunni clerics.

In 2014 when ISIS invaded Iraq, the government invited Shia and Sunni Imams to be a religious-based counterbalance to ISIS extremist Islamism. After ISIS collapsed, the imams invited other councils of imams around the world to join, and the Global Imams Council was launched in 2018. It now has over 1,300 imams as members, all of whose mosques and organizations are expected to adhere to the rulings of the GIC.

This week, the Global Imams Council adopted the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, without any caveats, including its examples. This definition includes considering criticism of Israel that goes beyond normal criticisms of other countries to be antisemitic.

From the Global Imams Council press release:

On Monday the 26's of October 2020, The Global Imams Council's Governing Board, Senior Imams Committee and Advisory Committee passed a unanimous vote to adopt the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. This was followed by an overwhelming majority vote by the general council of Imams and our members worldwide. The adoption of the following definition of Antisemitism:
"Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."
and all examples underneath it, by The Global Imams Council, will come into effect on Thursday the 29. of October 2020.
This definition will be binding on all current and future members of The Global Imams Council; including all affiliate Mosques, Centers, Institutes and Organizations operated by the Imams of this council worldwide.
We ask the Almighty to bring together the hearts of the Children of Abraham and to strengthen the bridges of peace, harmony, understanding and mutual respect. Indeed, He is the All-Hearing.

The decision is another huge victory for Elan Carr, the Office of The U.S. Department of State’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, who spearheaded this effort.

This would simply never have happened under the Obama or any potential Biden administration.

Israel haters are incensed at the IHRA Working Definition, falsely claiming that it muzzles their ability to advocate for Palestinian rights. This is only true if one's idea of Palestinian rights necessitates the destruction of the Jewish state, which is in fact their real goal - they show very little concern for Palestinian rights in Lebanon, Jordan or Syria.

When Muslim groups like the GIC or Muslim nations like Albania and Bahrain adopt the IHRA Working Definition, they are showing that they are the ones who truly support equal rights for all. None of them are anti-Palestinian, they support a Palestinian state, they support peace. Muslim acceptance of the IHRA exposes the socialist Left opponents of the definition as being modern antisemites who oppose the human and national rights of the Jewish people.

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Two opposing Arab-American candidates for Congress clash over which is MORE pro-Israel

This is a bit unusual.

Ammar Campa-Najjar is a 31 year old American of Palestinian ancestry who is running for Congress as a Democrat against 66-year old Lebanese-American Republican Darrell Issa, in the 50th District.

Both of them are campaigning on themselves being pro-Israel, and both of them are accusing the other of being anti-Israel.

Issa paid for an ad using Trump's words denouncing Campa-Najjar as an anti-Israel activist:

Campa-Najjar responded by saying that he definitely is pro-Israel, showing a photo of him shaking hands with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak - the man who led the assassination of Campa-Najjar's paternal grandparents in Beirut in 1973. His grandfather, Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar, was reportedly a senior member of the Black September group that killed 11 Israeli athletes as the 1972 Munich Olympics. Campa-Najjar looked at his meeting with Barak as a supreme act of reconciliation.

Not only that, but Campa-Najjar then posted two videos from conservative groups claiming that Issa is the one who is anti-Israel:

In reality, both of them hold similar positions on Israel, wanting a two-state solution, although Issa is against the Iran deal while Campa-Najjar wants to bring it back with modifications. Otherwise, Campa-Najjar is a relative foreign policy hawk for a Democrat, even supporting the US assassination of Iranian general Qassim Soleimani.

At a time when the most vocal Democratic voices are distancing themselves from pro-Israel positions, this is unusual.

The 50th District is historically heavily Republican.

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