Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, November 20, 2020

11/20 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: At a diplomatic crossroad, it's time for Israel to act; Pompeo to 'Post': All options still on the table to counter Iran

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: At a diplomatic crossroad, it's time for Israel to act

The leaders of the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are calling for the government to use the next two months to normalize the status of Israel's younger communities in the areas. It certainly makes sense to follow their advice with all due haste. It is similarly important for the government to restore the decision-making power for planning and construction schemes in Judea, Samaria and unified Jerusalem to local planning boards.

As part of the Obama administration's explicit efforts to demonize Jewish life in these areas, Obama coerced Netanyahu into agreeing that every new construction project in them would require the prime minister's signature to move forward. That move, made under duress, should be abrogated immediately.

More to the point, in the face of the open hostility Biden's team is now expressing towards those property rights and towards Israel's sovereign rights in Judea and Samaria more generally, it would be eminently reasonable, and indeed a matter of great urgency, for the Netanyahu government to secure Trump's permission to apply our sovereignty to Israel's communities in Judea and Samaria and to the Jordan Valley in the framework of the Trump peace plan.

A good target date for such a move would be Dec. 23 – the fourth anniversary of the Obama administration's facilitation of the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2234, which libelously defined Israeli communities and neighborhoods in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem as a "flagrant violation of international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace."

The Abraham Accords have ushered in an era of comprehensive peace. The two-state solution, such as it is, can only be viable if Israel has secure borders and if the Palestinians recognize the Jewish people's national rights to our ancestral homeland, which includes unified Jerusalem, the communities in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley. And, as the Pompeo Doctrine made clear, the Israeli communities are not inherently illegal. Israel has sovereign rights to Judea and Samaria under international law.

The events of the last several days demonstrate clearly where we are and where we are heading. It is critical that Israel take advantage of where we are to secure its interests as it enters a new diplomatic reality in January.

Pompeo to JNS: ‘Trump administration will continue to be a force for good’

JNS: Is there a unifying theme between your policies regarding the Abraham Accords, isolating Iran and laying out a new vision for peace between Israelis and Palestinians?

Pompeo: The common theme is that in the United States, we recognize the reality of what’s best for humanity, for the people. And so, whether it’s the Iranian people or the Palestinian people, we want them to live in harmony and peace and be prosperous, not engage in historical feuds that don’t comport with the reality that is 2020.

JNS: Yesterday, you pledged to treat anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and called BDS a “cancer.” You called on the U.S. government to identify and restrict funding to organizations working “to penalize or limit commercial relations with Israel.” And the United States will now require producers in “Area C” to mark their goods as “Made in Israel.”

The New York Times referred to your itinerary yesterday as “scarcely a mere victory lap,” and in a headline called your diplomatic announcements “parting gifts to the Israeli right.” Are these “parting gifts”? Why are these announcements coming now? And who are the beneficiaries?

Pompeo: Oh, these are the right things for the world. Again, our policy in the Middle East has been that we took our founders’ principles, a conservative worldview and a realism that comports with our central understanding and President Trump’s understanding about how American foreign policy should be effectively used.

This decision about how we ought to label products is simply an outcome of this understanding of the region. I’m sure the beneficiaries of this will be legion. I’m sure people will be more prosperous, more free and more capable of living autonomous lives as a result of the decision that we made yesterday. And we’re excited about that.

You know, as for timing, I’m the secretary of state. Every day, I’m the secretary of state. I get up just like I did the first day I was secretary of state and run at problem sets, and try to make President Trump’s foreign policy real and effective. That’s my mission. So long as I’m secretary of state, I’ll continue to do it.

JNS: Should we be expecting further announcements in the days and weeks ahead?

Pompeo: Oh yeah, we’re still working. Yeah. You seem to have a shocked look on your face, as if the secretary of state would stop working at some point in time. No, America’s still engaged and working throughout the world, and we will be.

Trump’s core righteousness shines through Pompeo's speech

While the Muslim Arab world and its sycophants who kowtow to them — throughout gutless, spineless, and penny-pinching skinflint Western Europe and elsewhere — continue to pursue the illusion that Jews ever will be uprooted from the so-called “West Bank,” Trump and Pompeo now have made clear that America recognizes the permanent legality and legitimacy of Jewish communities up and down the Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria. From now on, products made in Judea and Samaria for export to the United States no longer must be labeled, as Obama and His Fraudulency required, “Made in the West Bank” — but instead henceforth are to be labeled as “Made in Israel.” Because Trump and Pompeo now have certified that Judea and Samaria — the so-called “West Bank” — in fact are regions that are part of Israel.

Beyond that, Secretary Pompeo stated that any entity that continues supporting “BDS” — calls to boycott, divest from, or to sanction Israel — will be deemed outright anti-Semitic and will suffer the full ramifications of American financial and other pressure for that hatred banned by our laws.

The thing about “BDS” — a movement founded and created by Arab terrorists and their supporters in Europe and America, and fostered throughout American campuses by Jew-hating Leftist professors and their ignorantly moronic student minions who do not know the difference between the Mideast and the Midwest — is that the same haters and criminals who would boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel never advocate BDS against a China that religiously persecutes and imprisons its Uighyur Muslim minority, suppresses and crushes freedom in Hong Kong and throughout its Communist mainland, and that knowingly criminally exported to the world the worst pandemic of the past hundred years. Imagine that: no BDS against China, but BDS against Israel.

There can be no clearer example of outright virulent Jew-hatred than that: applying one standard — tolerance and gleeful acceptance — for Communist murderers, international criminals, tyrants and dictators who persecute religion and speech . . . and simultaneously applying a completely different standard — zealous hatred and brutal economic warfare — against Jews.

BDS is the anti-Semitism and Jew-hatred of today. Obama and His Fraudulency went along with it and never stood up to it. By contrast, Trump and Pompeo — with no conceivable political benefit to be accrued, only the motivation of common decency — now have placed the force of American law to crush it.

Trump’s and Pompeo’s decency and friendship never will be forgotten. That 83 percent favorability among Orthodox Jews will stand in good measure for the next Trump presidential term, whether it commences by court orders in January 2021 or by popular and electoral vote four years from now. His Fraudulency will be gone before we know it. The Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria — now 800,000 strong and growing by leaps and bounds every day — is eternal.

The Left continues to try to hijack the definition of antisemitism

This almost reads like parody:

But it isn't the first time that modern antisemites who incite hatred of Israel have tried to hijack the very definition of antisemitism to specifically exclude Leftist antisemitism, as this 2017 panel showed.

Besides that, there are two websites I'm aware of that purport to be against antisemitism but are in fact meant to defend modern Leftist antisemitism.

One is from Jewish Voice for Peace, called "OnAntisemitism.com," promoting a book where the only thing that all the contributors have in common is hating the Jewish state.

The other, more sophisticated effort of "HowToFightAntisemitism.com", a slick website that steals the name of Bari Weiss' excellent book - and uses the Tree of Life synagogue that inspired Weiss to write her book as its background image- to pretend that the only antisemitism that exists if from the Right.

This is a concerted, coordinated effort to redefine antisemitism in such a way as to hide half of it. Anti-Israel activists often share old-fashioned antisemitic memes amongst themselves while they pretend to only be anti-Zionist.

These panels and websites are meant to deflect the world from seeing the ugliness in the antisemitic Left.

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It won't be trivial for the Biden administration to walk back Pompeo's positions

On Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made two major statements.

One was that the US will support labeling any goods manufactured or grown by Israeli firms in Judea and Samaria as being "Made in Israel."

The other was to announce that the US will potentially "boycott the boycotters," it will compile a list of organizations that support BDS for the purpose of ensuring that no US funds go to these organizations.

Besides that, he became the first US official to visit Judea and Samaria as well as the Golan Heights in an official capacity.

The @realDonaldTrump Administration’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Golan Heights demonstrates our commitment to a strong Israel. My visit to the Golan Heights made clear that the threat to Israel’s security from Iran and its proxies persists and cannot be ignored. pic.twitter.com/iaBTKBnzoe
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) November 19, 2020

Wonderful to see the work being done to preserve the ancient @City_of_David and the new discoveries by archaeologists working in the area. Thank you to Ze’ev Orenstein for the fascinating tour of the site of three thousand years of ancient history. pic.twitter.com/oA0FFQ3maP
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) November 19, 2020

Some argue that these statements can be easily walked back in a Biden administration, as Lahav Harkov tweeted. She followed up with a more nuanced analysis of which pro-Israel policies can be canceled easily by the new administration and which would be more difficult.

Biden opposes BDS. He has said so, and that opposition was written into his campaign platform. However, stopping funding to entities supporting boycotts of Israel or “any territory controlled by Israel” – in other words, Judea and Samaria – would narrow Biden’s options on another matter of policy: his promise to restore aid to the Palestinians.
Persistent reports say the Palestinian Authority is trying to scale back its policy of paying jailed terrorists and families of terrorists in order to get around the Taylor Force Act that bans US aid to the PA as long as the “pay for slay” program is still in place.
However, the PA has taken an anti-normalization stance towards Israel, and many Palestinian civil society organizations have ties to the BDS movement. Furthermore, stopping funding to groups that call for boycotts of “any territory controlled by Israel” would include many international human rights organizations.

She makes a good point - Biden will prioritize re-establishing relationships with the Palestinian Authority and Pompeo's anti-BDS statement seems to preclude that. However, at the moment Pompeo only required the State Department to identify groups that support BDS, not to automatically cut them off. This is not inconsistent with contacts with the PLO - Pompeo is discouraging such contacts but not forbidding them.

Similarly, with the labeling goods issue, while Biden is very much against Jewish activities in Judea and Samaria, practically speaking there is no downside to labeling those goods to be "made in Israel." These goods are under Israeli regulations, policies and quality control, not Palestinian and not "occupied territories" which have no separate regulations. Consumers would care about those regulations, not the physical origin, unless they are anti-Israel in which case they wouldn't buy them anyway.

The major argument that the Biden administration won't be so keen on immediately canceling these and other Trump policies is that optics is a powerful force in government. Simply put, it looks bad for the US to switch policies back and forth depending on the political party in charge. It looks bad to Americans and it especially looks bad to non-Americans. If the US wants to be a world leader, it cannot be seen as whiplashing between positions every few years, or its allies will stop trusting any agreements made.

Obviously Trump was a disrupter in this regard but there is not likely to be another president any time soon who disregards optics as much as he does. Biden is very sensitive to how things look, and he will not run to negate US policies except for those that he has based his campaign on, like the Iran deal.

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Reviews of two online US government conferences - Foreign Funding and Online Antisemitism (@RealJerusalemStreets)

Here is a review of two US-sponsored video conferences, by RealJerusalemStreets.

__________________________

Oh what a media event it was, the trilateral summit meeting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Financial Affairs Obaid Humaid Al Tayer held in Ben Gurion Airport on October 20, 2020, However, two online conferences from Washington, D.C. got lost on newsfeeds and missed public attention in the lead up to the November 3rd election.

I. Report on Foreign Funding under the U.S. Department of Education
Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal gave money to Georgetown University to establish the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. The Center proclaimed to promote Islam’s image in the United States, publish findings through scholarship, and hold academic events. However, it brewed controversy from its inception. Congressman Frank R. Wolf wrote a letter to Georgetown’s President, Dr. John J. DeGioia, expressing concern that the Center could advance Islamic ideology in a fashion that belittles opposition, threatens academic integrity, and improperly influences future civil servants. It would exercise “soft power” in political science terms.
Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 requires American colleges and universities to publicly disclose, each year, foreign gifts and contracts valuing $250,000 or more. The United States Department of Education on October 20, 2020, reported findings concerning Section 117. During an online webinar conference from Washington, DC, open for public viewing, it was revealed that $6.5 billion of foreign money was previously unreported by leading American universities. Lack of transparency of foreign funding has dangerous consequences for academic integrity, national security, and human rights.
In 1986, Congress first required U.S. institutions of higher education to publicly report their foreign gifts and contracts to the U.S. Department of Education. At the time, donations from Arab countries were building a Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, a project which strongly motivated the drafting of the statute. Post 9/11 donations to Middle Eastern studies centers increased concerns, and a Senate committee directed the Department to ensure “the integrity of the reporting requirements” and confirm “donations are reported and categorized correctly.” Beginning in 2009, the increased flow of foreign money, especially from the governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and China was notable.
During the Department of Education broadcast in the conference, its Chief Investigative Counsel Paul Moore and Senior Counsel for Information and Technology Bucky Methfessel discussed the report and its findings. Dr. Charles Small, Executive Director of ISGAP, who has done extensive research on the link between foreign funding and rising antisemitism and has presented at the Department of Justice on the topic in the past, also participated.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Andrew Lelling, who chairs the Attorney General’s Subcommittee on Cybercrime and Intellectual Property and is on the steering committee for the Department of Justice’s China Initiative, discussed his efforts at the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the vulnerabilities of American universities to nefarious foreign influences. Since 2012, institutions reported anonymous donations from China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Russia totaling more than $1.14 billion. It was reported that less than 300 of the approximately 6,000 U.S. institutions self-report foreign money each year. Most foreign funds flow to a relatively small number of large institutions.
Included in the report in 2018, the Justice Department charged nine Iranians affiliated with a Tehran-based company called the Mabna Institute for hacking into 144 American universities to steal sensitive data and intellectual property on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. First, the Iranians conducted online reconnaissance of university professors. Second, the Iranians sent “spear phishing” emails. Third, the conspirators used stolen account credentials to obtain unauthorized access to victim professor accounts, through which they then exfiltrated intellectual property, research, and other academic data and documents from the systems of compromised universities, including, among other things, academic journals, theses, dissertations, and electronic books. The defendants targeted data across all fields of research and academic disciplines, including science and technology, engineering, social sciences, medical, and other professional fields. At least approximately 31.5 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property from compromised universities were stolen and exfiltrated to servers under Iranian control. (Indictment, United States v. Rafatnejad et al., No. 18-cr-00094 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 7, 2018).
Since June 28, 2019, the Department of Educaion has initiated 12 civil investigations to ensure institutional compliance with Section 117. The named institutions were Georgetown University, Texas A&M University, Rutgers University, Cornell University, University of Maryland, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and most recently, Harvard University, Yale University, University of Texas, Case Western Reserve University, Fordham University, and Stanford University.
The Department’s review shines a spotlight on previously unknown foreign gifts and contributions, their prevalence and magnitude, and the consequences of porous or nonexistent institutional oversight and lax federal enforcement. Stanford University, for example, has reported over $64 million in unidentified, anonymous Chinese donations since May 2010. Demonstrating foreign financial involvement with top U.S. research institutions, Harvard University alone has received over $1 billion of foreign funding since 2012.

2. Conference of Internet Antisemitism: Ancient Hatred, Modern Medium

The following day, the Conference of Internet Antisemitism: Ancient Hatred, Modern Medium, was hosted by Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo. He delivered opening remarks during the first-ever U.S. Government conference focused on combatting online anti-Semitism. Organized by the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, led by Elan S. Carr, the virtual pre-recorded conference aimed to explore the threats posed by anti-Semitism on the internet and social media and to consider practical responses for governments and civil society.
The following summarizes a number of sessions from the October 21 and 22, 2020 conference shown virtually and posted on the State Department website
"An essential part of solving any problem is defining it." stated Sen. James Lankford, Co-chair Senate Bipartisan Taskforce Combatting Antisemitism on the importance of IHRA. "We will examine the absolute sea change in understanding exactly what antisemitism is, and what antisemitism looks like, that has come as a result of the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of anti-Semitism by nations and institutions, known in short as IHRA. The U.S. Department of State has been using the IHRA definition since 2010, and President Donald Trump’s Executive Order Combatting Anti-Semitism of December 2019 adopted the IHRA Definition for all U.S. Executive Agencies as well:"
Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Dan Ariely were among the featured speakers. Notably, in the opening session British MP Michael Gove emphasized "antisemitism is a threat to us all" as he spoke for bringing nations together to call out the hatred of antisemitism.
While antisemitism is viewed as vile and hateful, for some, it can be life-changing.  Called to describe her personal experiences was former Member of Parliament from the British Labour Party Luciana Berger who was harassed and attacked on social media.
As the two-day conference was nearing conclusion Rabbi Abraham Cooper led an interfaith panel with Rev Sam Rodriquez noting social media is a source of information and hate, and Muslim Salim Mansur decrying the perversion of Islam and "closing of American minds."
"We are living in historic times. We recently witnessed the first Middle East peace deal in 26 years brokered by President Trump with Israel and the Kingdom of Bahrain, and between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. We felt that coming so soon after these historic events it is important for all of us to hear from a prominent Arab leader, and indeed we are so proud to be joined by His Excellency Dr.  Ali Al Nuaimi of the United Arab Emirates" and with that Elan Carr closed the conference on antisemitism.
Conclusion - Effective Section 117 enforcement is one part of a collaboration between the Department of Education and other federal agencies. The facts discovered drive home the need for an integrated Federal approach to the national problems posed by the theft of intellectual property, espionage, propaganda, and foreign influence operations on U.S. campuses. U.S. institutions are technological treasure troves of leading and internationally competitive fields, such as nanoscience. For too long, these institutions have provided an unprecedented level of access to foreign governments and their instrumentalities in an environment lacking transparency and oversight by the industry, the Department, and partner agencies.
Rising antisemitism on U.S. college campuses and streets, and on social media has been established as fact. The influence of foreign money and "soft power" is a theory at this time. Whoever heads U.S. Federal Departments would be well advised to follow the money and have major gifts to universities by foreign governments reported as is required by law.
Perhaps worth noting, at the end of the online summary of the conference on modern antisemitism was the statement: "The views expressed in the conference are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the State Department."

Interesting, neither the Department of Education or the Department of State conference received attention in mainstream or Jewish media.

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11/19 Links Pt2: Arnold Roth: Put justice back on the agenda: Sec. Pompeo, it's not too late; CNN’s shameless assault on the memory of the Holocaust; Douglas Murray: The Nobel Peace Prize has become an ignoble joke

From Ian:

Arnold Roth: Put justice back on the agenda: Sec. Pompeo, it's not too late

We did something yesterday that we have never done before.

We ordered a display advertisement to appear on the front-page of a major print newspaper - today's (Thursday’s) Jerusalem Post. Our message is on its front page.

The timing of our ad is intended to coincide with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Israel that began yesterday afternoon (Wednesday November 18).

Our hope is that he will see it at breakfast. And that perhaps he will think about the images we included, as well as the scriptural quote at the top of the text: “Justice, justice thou shalt pursue”.

The words from Deuteronomy (Devarim in Hebrew) will be recited in the annual cycle of Torah reading when we get to Parshat Shoftim, the weekly portion called “Judges”. That happens next in August 2021. By coincidence, the same week will include the twentieth anniversary of the Sbarro pizzeria massacre.

There are two images in our Pompeo advertisement. One shows Malki. The other is of the devastated Sbarro pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem, minutes after a bomb placed by Ahlam Tamimi exploded inside.

Brendan O'Neill: CNN’s shameless assault on the memory of the Holocaust

Such moral instability has been widespread among the anti-Trump elites these past four years. Trump is ‘literally Hitler’, in these people’s eyes. ‘Donald Trump is a fascist’, serious outlets have suggested, denuding that word of all meaning. A British MP spoke of Trump in the same breath as ‘fascist dictators Mussolini and Hitler’.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Trump was running ‘concentration camps’ on the America-Mexico border and, for good measure, she said the phrase ‘Never Again’ has to ‘mean something’. That’s a phrase used about the Holocaust. AOC was suggesting that something akin to the Holocaust happened in the US under the Trump administration. No doubt she and her fawning followers think such Holocaust-talk lands a blow against Trump, but the truth is it lands a far greater blow on the memory of the Holocaust, which once again is reduced to a mundane event, like temporarily placing illegal immigrants in a camp.

Even historians who ought to know better embraced the Trump-as-Hitler meme. Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler, says he was initially reluctant to talk to the media about Trump’s ‘fascistic tendencies’, because however bad Trump might be, ‘he did not seem bent on genocide’. Then he changed his mind and declared that Trump seems to be working from the ‘playbook of Mein Kampf’.

All these people – and this includes the many anti-Trump protesters who waved placards mentioning Hitler and the Holocaust – seem alarmingly unaware of how much damage they have done to historical memory. Holocaust Relativism is a close cousin of Holocaust Denial. As the Open University’s guide to the Holocaust rightly says: ‘Relativising the Holocaust has been one of the classic techniques of some of those engaged in Holocaust Denial.’ Much of the new anti-Semitism is drenched in Holocaust Relativism. From left-wing anti-Semites to radical Islamists, the cry often goes out: ‘Why do we talk about the Holocaust so much? It wasn’t that special. Bad things happen all the time.’ Amanpour and a host of other anti-Trump obsessives in the media and political elites are unwittingly stirring up this cynical and often racist minimisation of the Holocaust with their cheap, ahistorical shots at Trump.

We hear a lot about the political wreckage left by Trump after his four years in the White House. But one of the worst kinds of damage done over the past four years was to the memory of the Holocaust, and it was done by Trump-bashers. Their reduction of the Holocaust to a political plaything, an exclamation mark to emphasise just how much they hate Trump, has been devastating to the cause of truth. Restoring the reality of the Holocaust will be essential if we are to defend truth in the 21st century and challenge the racist minimisation of the new anti-Semites.

Douglas Murray: The Nobel Peace Prize has become an ignoble joke

For those of us who have long been suspicious of the Nobel Peace Prize, there is nothing quite like the sight of the prize committee struggling to rein in one of their former honourees. Last year, the committee gave its award to Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian Prime Minister. In the citation, it especially noted Mr Ahmed’s laudable efforts “to achieve peace and international cooperation”.

That citation might now need to be carefully edited, since Mr Ahmed has declared war on the leaders of the Tigray region and Ethiopia looks like it is sliding into a wider conflagration. Last year’s Peace Prize recipient has this year refused all requests for dialogue and attempts to de-escalate the conflict. Some critics are even making claims of ethnic cleansing.

Yet in some ways Mr Ahmed stands in a long and ignoble Nobel tradition. This is not the first time that the committee would appear to have backed a wrong-un. Aung San Suu Kyi was given the award in 1991. Now she is an international pariah accused of defending genocide in Burma. In 1994, the committee gave the Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat, then probably the most notorious terrorist in the world. True this was a few years after the first “Intifada”. But having collected his gong and his Nobel loot (not the only loot Arafat managed to acquire in his criminal career), he gave it a couple of years before declaring another Intifada. Just having the gong doesn’t appear to bring about peaceful instincts. Surprising that.

A friendly observer might put this down to bad luck on the part of the Nobel committee: an over-eagerness, perhaps even a blind desire to see the best in people. But any reasonable critic would have to admit that there has been something off with the prize for years. It has become a victim of John O’Sullivan’s law: that all institutions that aren’t statedly conservative drift Left-wards as the years go on.

In 2009, the committee famously gave the prize to Barack Obama, when he was not yet one year into office, and when he had still not achieved anything of note. But the Nobel committee seemed to want to congratulate Obama on just being Obama. In the same way that a few years ago almost every award in the world was given to Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner, simply for being stunning and brave. If you are a Left-wing politician like Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize has become just another of those gongs you collect on your endless victory laps of the world.

Scholar Posits Textual Anomalies In Bible The Result Of Autocorrect (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Cambridge, November 19 - An innovative approach to analysis of ancient documents has led at least one researcher to the hypothesis that numerous deviations in Scripture from the expected forms of words stem not from copyist errors, as commonly assumed, but from software similar in function to modern text media that automatically changes words or phrases to match its preconceived idea of the writer's intent, using an algorithm that on occasion results not in the intended words, but a distortion of them.

Oxford University Professor of Semitic Languages Edward Hargreaves suggests in a forthcoming article that various Biblical textual phenomena fit neatly into a framework that parallels the "Autocorrect" function of numerous text-based communication platforms, and that ages of scholarship and polemics on the subject of Biblical textual integrity have therefore largely been a waste of time.

"Our team looked at thousands of so-called textual anomalies in the Hebrew Scriptures," the professor explained in an interview. "The most common of these were the k'ri vs. k'tiv variety, in which the traditional enunciation of a word differs from its spelling in the text; others involve the 'hapax legomenon,' a word or root that appears only once in the entire corpus, and which, quite often, leaves the reader at a loss regarding its true meaning, because of a lack of comparative instances from which to understand it. Still others involve apparent discrepancies between manuscripts of the same text, or between different occurrences of the same phrases or verses in disparate parts of the Bible."

"We've found that upwards of 95% of these occurrences can be explained by Autocorrect," he continued. "The does not mean that many indeed occurred through that phenomenon, but that they are consistent with such a process. Among the exceptions, for example, are terms that various traditions have of specifically reading a word differently from its appearance, for purposes of euphemism, but with acknowledgement that the actual text is different. A good instance of this is the Jewish practice of refraining from the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, one of the most common names for the divinity, instead using a less-common one. That one alone accounts for the bulk of the exceptions to what I've taken to calling the 'Autocorrect Hypothesis.' But for the most part Autocorrect helps to explain anomalies that scholars have debated basically forever."

As for the few cases that do not fit into the hypothesis, Professor Hargreaves insisted he does not give a flying duck.

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A Chanukah menorah is a "war crime" according to Abbas advisor

This week, Jews in Hebron placed a Chanukah menorah on the roof of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, as they have done in recent years before the holiday.

The reaction was predictable.

The director of the Ibrahimi Mosque, Hafzi Abu Sneina, stated that settlers placed the candlestick on the roof of the Temple Mount to mark one of the Jewish holidays, stressing that this act is a blatant assault, a serious transgression, and a provocation to the feelings of Muslims, as the Ibrahimi Mosque is an Islamic mosque for Muslims.

Come on, we can do better than just calling a Chanukiya a "blatant assault."

For his part, the Chief Judge of Palestine, the President's Advisor for Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations, Mahmoud al-Habbash, condemned the fact that groups of Israeli settlers - with protection from the occupation forces - put the so-called Jewish religious "menorah" on the roof of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, describing this step as a new war crime committed by the occupation authority and a blatant attack on our holy sites and mosques.

There we go! If it isn't a "war crime" then it is hardly worth mentioning.

Here's a photo of what the menorah looked like last year:

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Here is the part of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's press release today that got all the attention:

Today, the Department of State is initiating new guidelines to ensure that country of origin markings for Israeli and Palestinian goods are consistent with our reality-based foreign policy approach.  In accordance with this announcement, all producers within areas where Israel exercises the relevant authorities – most notably Area C under the Oslo Accords - will be required to mark goods as “Israel”, “Product of Israel”, or “Made in Israel” when exporting to the United States.  This approach recognizes that Area C producers operate within the economic and administrative framework of Israel and their goods should be treated accordingly. This update will also eliminate confusion by recognizing that producers in other parts of the West Bank are for all practical purposes administratively separate and that their goods should be marked accordingly.

This all makes perfect sense. The purpose of marking country of origin is not the physical location but for consumers to know which national regulations and policies were enforced in the production of the goods.

The next part of Pompeo's press release didn't get noticed as much, but it is just as important:

Goods in areas of the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority maintains relevant authorities shall be marked as products of  “West Bank” and goods produced in Gaza will be marked as products of  “Gaza.”  Under the new approach, we will no longer accept “West Bank/Gaza” or similar markings, in recognition that Gaza and the West Bank are politically and administratively separate and should be treated accordingly.

This is a huge deal. The UN and Europe throw the West Bank and Gaza under the umbrella of "Occupied Palestinian Territories" (even though no one can credibly claim Gaza is occupied) and still pretend that they are one unit, even though they have different leaders, different policies, different geography, even different histories.

Treating them as separate units means that the US could, for example, loosen up rules for the West Bank while keeping stricter policies for Hamas-run Gaza. People could buy West Bank olive oil knowing that the profits probably don't go to Hamas.

This is a major change in policy, and it could lead to other countries doing the same. And if everyone would do that, it would benefit the West Bank Palestinians by not tying them to Hamas decisions and Hamas terror.

(h/t Irene)

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11/19 Links Pt1: ‘It’s a cancer’: Pompeo says US will brand BDS ‘anti-Semitic,’; Arabs Warn Biden: Do Not Embrace Islamists; PA Quietly Return Ambassadors to UAE, Bahrain

From Ian:

‘It’s a cancer’: Pompeo says US will brand BDS ‘anti-Semitic,’ crack down on it

The United States government will formally designate the anti-Israel boycott movement “anti-Semitic” and immediately start cracking down on groups affiliated with it, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Thursday during a visit to Israel, calling BDS a “cancer.”

“Today I want to make one announcement with respect to a decision by the State Department that we will regard the global anti-Israel BDS campaign as anti-Semitic,” he said, standing next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a joint statement to the press.

“I know this may sound simple to you, Mr. Prime Minister, it seems like a statement of fact, but I want you to know that we will immediately take steps to identify organizations that engage in hateful BDS conduct and withdraw US government support for such groups. The time is right,” Pompeo declared.

At that point, Netanyahu interrupted the US top diplomat’s comments, saying, “It doesn’t sound simple, it sounds simply wonderful.”

“Look,” Pompeo went on, “we want to stand with all other nations that recognize the BDS movement for the cancer that it is. And we’re committed to combating it. Our record speaks for itself. During the Trump administration, America stands with Israel like never before.”

BDS, which stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, is not a registered organization but rather a term for a worldwide movement of pro-Palestinian activists who embrace economic sanctions against Israel as the best nonviolent means to fight what they consider unjust policies of the government in Jerusalem.

Leading European politicians have rejected the BDS movement on ideological grounds but have stopped short of banning it due to free speech laws.

Proud to support American policy and stand with our great ally Israel. New guidelines outlined today protect Israeli producers and put the United States, and the world, on track towards recognizing reality. https://t.co/AlMHGPY7WF
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) November 19, 2020

Secretary Mike Pompeo in Israel, Announces US Action Against BDS movement

Pompeo: Products from West Bank to be labelled 'Made in Israel'

The US will allow goods produced in West Bank settlements to be labeled products of Israel as opposed to the West Bank, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Thursday, during the first-ever visit by someone in his position to an Israeli entity in Judea and Samaria.

The new guidelines "ensure that country of origin markings for Israeli and Palestinian good are consistent with our reality-based foreign policy approach," Pompeo said.

He added: "This approach recognizes that Area C producers operate within the economic and administrative framework of Israel and their goods should be treated accordingly. This update will also eliminate confusion by recognizing that producers in other parts of the West Bank are for all practical purposes administratively separate and that their goods should be marked accordingly."

The US will also no longer accept labels that say "West Bank\Gaza" for Palestinian-made goods; they must say either West Bank or Gaza because the areas are "politically and administratively separate."

Pompeo reversed 25 years of policy requiring such products to be labeled as made in the West Bank. The Clinton administration required goods from settlements to be labeled as coming from the West Bank following the Oslo Accords. Those rules were not enforced, but in 2016, the Obama administration warned that labeling settlement goods as products of Israel could carry a fine.

Pompeo in first Golan visit: Israel has right to defend its sovereignty

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo paid the first-ever visit by a US secretary of state to the Golan Heights on Thursday.

Standing on Mount Bental, where the borders of Israel, Lebanon and Syria intersect, Pompeo said he chose to go to there to “tell the world that the US has it right, that Israel has it right, that each nation has the right to defend its sovereignty.

“We will make sure Israel has what it needs to do just that,” he added. “We will honor the right to defend your people.”

Israel extended its law to the Golan Heights in 1981, but the US only recognized it as part of sovereign Israel in 2019 under US President Donald Trump.

The secretary of state said that, from his vantage point atop the mountain, “you cannot stand here and stare out across the border and deny the thing President Trump recognized and other presidents refused to do, that this is part of Israel – and a central part of Israel.”

Pompeo mocked the members of “the salons in Europe and elites in the US” who wanted Israel to concede the Golan to Syria.

“Imagine with [Syrian President Bashar] Assad in charge of this place, the risk to Israel and the people of Israel,” he said.

From the New York Times:

In a bold move to refurbish their sullied image in Washington, the Palestinians are laying the groundwork for an overhaul to one of their most cherished but controversial practices, officials say: compensating those who serve time in Israeli prisons, including for violent attacks.

That policy, which critics call “pay to slay,” has long been denounced by Israel and its supporters as giving an incentive to terrorism because it assures would-be attackers that their dependents will be well cared for. And because payments are based largely on the length of the prison sentence, critics say the most heinous crimes are the most rewarded.

...Palestinian officials eager to make a fresh start with the incoming Biden administration — and to have those punitive measures rolled back — are heeding the advice of sympathetic Democrats who have repeatedly warned that without an end to the payments, it would be impossible for the new administration to do any heavy lifting on their behalf.

The proposal being hammered out in Ramallah would give the families of Palestinian prisoners stipends based on their financial need instead of how long they are behind bars, said Qadri Abu Bakr, the chairman of the Palestinian Authority’s Prisoners Affairs Commission.

“Economic need must serve as the basis,” Mr. Abu Bakr said in a phone interview. “A single man should not be earning the same as someone with a family.”

The details of the proposed changes to the prisoner payment system have not been finalized, Mr. Abu Bakr said, and will require the approval of the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Palestinians have long pushed the fiction that this program was a form of welfare, which was belied by the fact that payments corresponded to the severity of the terror attack, not the need of the family. But it still is a program specifically for prisoners, not the entire population, so this is mostly a fig leaf.

The article says that the payments to the families of "martyrs" and the fake jobs with real salaries for released prisoners are being reconsidered as well.

Officials said they also plan to require released prisoners to take public-sector jobs. Currently, many former prisoners are paid what amount to monthly pensions for sitting idle, Mr. Abu Bakr said.

“We shouldn’t be delivering salaries to people for doing nothing,” he said, noting that his commission had already distributed questionnaires to former prisoners about their job preferences. “They should work for them.”

Officials said they also planned to overhaul payments to families of assailants and others killed by Israelis — another extremely sensitive issue among Palestinians, who refer to them as martyrs. While officials said the Palestinians intended to start strictly tying these payments to financial need, the details of how they would do so remained unclear.

There are the life insurance and pension for anyone who decides to kill Jews.

I expect that there will be vociferous objections from not only Hamas but from Palestinian relatives of terrorists in the West Bank. As of this writing, the story has not yet been picked up in Palestinian media.

This quote in the article says is all:

“This is 100 percent unacceptable and shameful,” said Qassam Barghouti, the son of Marwan Barghouti, who was convicted by Israel of five counts of murder and is serving multiple life sentences.

“The prisoners are not a social welfare issue,” he added. “People are paid more for spending longer periods of time in prison to recognize their sacrifices: The more time you spend behind bars, the greater your value to your society is.”

Now, that is a screwed up viewpoint.

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The antisemitism of Leftist Holocaust inversion

In response to Christiane Amanpour's grossly inappropriate analogy of the Trump presidency with Kristallnacht as well as other analogies by politicians and celebrities of recent events to the Holocaust, the ADL issued a brief report emphasizing the inappropriateness of using the Holocaust this way.

The ADL's leader Jonathan Greenblatt summarized the argument in a tweet: "The Holocaust was among the most horrific events in human history. Whether you are an elected official, news anchor or public personality, let's avoid direct comparisons to the systematic slaughter of 6M Jews & millions of others at the hands of the Nazis. "

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld has come up with a categorization of Holocaust distortion that we see nowadays:

1. Holocaust Promotion

2. Holocaust Denial

3. Holocaust Depreciation

4. Holocaust Deflection

5. Prewar and Wartime Holocaust Equivalence

6. Postwar Holocaust Equivalence

7. Holocaust Inversion

8. Accusations of Jewish Holocaust-Memory Abuse

9. Obliterating the Holocaust Memory

10. Holocaust-Memory Silencing

11. Universalizing/Trivializing the Holocaust

While these manifestations of Holocaust distortion are often antisemitic, they are not necessarily so. In the cases mentioned by the ADL of Amanpour and others such as Alec Baldwin, the rhetorical device used is Holocaust Trivialization Facile Holocaust analogies are so prevalent and banal that they usually reveal that the offender is clueless as to how offensive they are, rather than a conscious attempt to minimize the Holocaust.

The popular far-Left cartoonist Eli Valley responded to Greenblatt's tweet with this grotesque cartoon that has received hundreds of "Likes":

Valley's response isn't mere Holocaust Trivialization - it is Holocaust Inversion.

Holocaust inversion, the portrayal of Israel and Jews as Nazis, is always antisemitic.

There have been a number of papers published on the phenomenon. Wikipedia claims that the assertion that Holocaust inversion is antisemitic is contested among scholars, quoting only one:

Professor David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism argues that Holocaust inversion is often not antisemitic, because it is a commonly used rhetorical device “used in many arguments about many subjects, often light-mindedly, lacking any specifically antisemitic content” such as Israeli politicians who refer to each other as Nazis, and because the inversion (in relation to the 2014 Gaza war) is not motivated by an anti-Jewish subjectivity but by criticism of Israeli policy.[2]

However, Feldman realized that he confused Holocaust inversion and Holocaust trivialization, and updated the paper - removing the parts where he made that mistake:

When I wrote the report I was eager, among other things, to make the point that some discourse about Jews can be factually incorrect and offensive yet not be antisemitic. This remains a useful thought, I believe. However, the way in which the original report applied this idea to analogies made by some writers and activists between Israel’s actions and those of Nazi Germany was flawed: these sentences are now omitted.

I am not aware of any serious scholar that believes that Holocaust inversion is not antisemitic.

Alan Johnson, writing in response to Feldman's original flawed paper, gives three contexts where he says Holocaust inversion is antisemitic. I can see how Leftists would dispute two of them, but the third is unassailable.

The "discursive context," he notes, "renews the core motif of antisemitism, which is that the Jews are not just ‘Other’ but also malign." Leftists would argue that in this case it is not antisemitic, because there are "righteous Jews" like Valley who are not the targets of the Holocaust analogy.

The "political context," Johnson writes, is that "an essential part of the political practice of a global social movement [is] dedicated to the destruction of only one state in the world—the Jewish one." Again, Leftists would argue that they don't conflate the Jewish state with Jews, since there are some anti-Zionist Jews.

However, no one can argue against what Johnson called "The Jewish Context:"

The inversion is obscene; it verges on the demonic in its cruelty as it implicitly demands, as a matter of ethical obligation no less—and this after the rupture in world history that was the Shoah—the destruction of the Jewish homeland as a unique evil in the world no better than the perpetrators of the Shoah. Logically, as Elhanan Yakira puts it, the discourse is ‘annihilationist.’... Iganski, McGlashan, and Sweiry point out that ‘deep wounds are scratched when the Nazi-card is played . . . in discourse against Jews.’ The inversion is ‘not simply abusive,’ they add, but ‘invokes painful collective memories for Jews and for many others’ such that ‘by using those memories against Jews it inflicts profound hurts’ and can lead to violence. In a similar vein, Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust has argued that Holocaust inversion in the United Kingdom in 2014 played on Jewish sensibilities ‘in order to provoke a reaction,’ adding, ‘another word for that is Jew-baiting.’ For the Community Security Trust, ‘incidents equating Israel to Nazi Germany would normally be recorded as antisemitic,’ because the inversion has a ‘visceral capacity to offend Jews on the basis of their Jewishness’ and ‘carries a particular meaning for Jews because of the Holocaust.’ Yakira ... points out, when it is applied to Jews, the inversion actively seeks to ‘suppress memory’ and so ‘can only mean eliminating identity.’

Almost lost in the academic-speak is that Holocaust inversion has a unique motivation: to cause specific pain to Jews. Invoking the idea that Jews are are modern-day Nazis is meant to hurt Jews. Invoking that analogy does not shed light on the Middle East; it has only a single motivation: cruelty. The hate that motivates this kind of attack is indistinguishable from the hate that motivates attacks on Blacks or gays or women. It is irrational, it is psychotic, and the perpetrators always have some sort of justification as to why their bigotry is righteous.

Valley's cartoon is meant to say that Jews - not Israelis but Jews specifically - have turned into the most monstrous people in history.

Of course, the cartoon works on multiple levels that makes it even worse. It subverts the phrase "never again" from its context of Jews no longer being helpless - the raison d'etre of Israel - into an attack on Israel. It implies that Holocaust victims themselves would agree with his monstrous idea that a state meant to protect Jews from future Holocausts is morally indistinguishable from a regime that dedicated a significant portion of its resources to murder millions of people because they were Jews.

Yet it is the Holocaust inversion itself that is definitionally antisemitic.

For the Leftists that argue that there is no such thing as Leftist antisemitism, this is proof that it exists, it is undeniable and it is widespread.

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Short-lived Istanbul agreement between Hamas and the PA

Now that the PLO has caved and returned to security coordination with Israel, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are angry and upset.

The Islamic Jihad spokesperson in Lebanon (who has been very visible lately in PIJ media), Ihssan Ataya, called the announcement of the restoration of relations and security coordination between the Palestinian Authority and Israel "a disregard for the Palestinian people" and "a stab in the heart of national unity, consolidating the hegemony of the Zionist enemy over the Palestinian lands, and reviving the annexation plan in light of the increase in settlement projects."

Hamas stopped their reconciliation talks in Cairo with the PLO.

All of this puts the PLO's Catch-22 situation in focus, and it is also the reason that peace is impossible.

For there to be a chance at peace, the PLO - which would sign the accords - must represent the entire Palestinian people and it must oppose terror.

The PLO doesn't rule Gaza, so there can be no peace with a group too weak to control its own lands. If it unifies with Hamas, then it cannot pretend to be against terror.

There is no realistic solution to this at this time. No Palestinian wants to separate Gaza from the West Bank. Israel is not interested in a long, bloody war that would destroy Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. The PLO is too weak to govern Gaza. Neither the PLO nor Hamas would accept the results of elections that they lose and give up their power base.

The entire world knows this - it has been the situation for 12 years. Which is why those pushing for more negotiations are not thinking rationally: Israel cannot negotiate on final status issues with leaders who are too weak to govern their own people, and Israel cannot negotiate with terrorists.

One major reason peace is impossible is because of this dysfunctional relationship between the PLO's West Bank and Hamas' Gaza.

If you want to laugh, here is a solution: when Palestinians learn how to be as practical and accepting of Israel as a permanent part of the Middle East and Jews as natives - the way that Emiratis are - they can have a state by the week after.

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The Clock Ticks on the Iranian Nuclear Project (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

A recent IAEA report showed that Iran has considerably more low-enriched uranium than was permitted by the JCPOA and is installing advanced centrifuges at Natanz, also in contravention of the agreement, to further increase production. In addition, the uranium is being enriched to a higher degree than before. If they want to, the Iranians could have nuclear weapons sometime in 2021.

Apparently in response to the report, President Trump reportedly asked advisors for options to take action against Iran’s nuclear program. Those options could include anything from increased economic pressure, to cyber-attacks, and even military action. The NY Times said he had been “dissuaded” by advisors from a military strike because it “could easily escalate into a broader conflict in the last weeks of Mr. Trump’s presidency.” But Trump is nothing if not independent.

When Donald Trump took over from Barack Obama, one of the first things he did was reverse Obama’s disastrous Iran policy (I highly recommend this link), which was one of appeasement and acquiescence to extortion, motivated in part by Obama’s desire to see the end of the sovereign Jewish state. I’m convinced that Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy on Iran is the only approach short of war that might have any chance of modifying the behavior of the Iranian regime, which sees its nuclear program as a top priority. While the Iranian regime has responded to the pressure with increased aggressiveness, the US has – or would have, if the policy were to be continued – far more staying power.

The Iranian regime’s strategy has been to keep a low profile. It didn’t retaliate after the American killing of its most valuable terror operative, Qassem Soleimani. It didn’t construct a nuclear weapon. It has contented itself with strengthening its assets in Iraq and Syria, and gradually ramping up its nuclear program without taking any major visible steps. Despite its claims that the US is weak, the regime knows that it would be no match for what is still the world’s greatest military power. And it fears Trump because of his unpredictability.

Unsurprisingly, the major media are full of claims that “maximum pressure has failed.” That is not precisely true: it simply needs more time.

It may not get it. All the evidence seems to point to a Biden Administration returning to the Obama policy in some form, although the particular animus of Obama toward Israel seems to be lacking in Biden himself. The history of negotiations with the regime over its nuclear program shows that it will not give up anything that it is not forced to, and it will demand the relaxation of sanctions as a condition for negotiations. The regime has already indicated that it is happy with the (apparent) result of the American election, and is looking forward to dealing with a Biden Administration.

Whatever happens, Israel will be deeply involved. Part of Iran’s response to an attack, whether by Israel or the US, would be to unleash Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel’s home front. It would also attack US assets in Iraq, and American warships (and maybe commercial shipping) in the Gulf. It would probably hit Saudi Arabia too. These points were certainly made to Trump by his advisors.

While one conclusion could be that it is best not to act, there is another interpretation: rather than a minimalist operation to take out specific nuclear facilities, a larger operation that would also destroy Iran’s overall military capability is indicated. Probably an American attack on Iran would be accompanied by Israeli preemptive strikes against Hezbollah, in order to prevent the damage that would be done to Israel by the massive rocket barrage that would follow a blow against Iran.

PM Netanyahu has been averse to preemptive action against Hezbollah, partly because he wants to avoid the international condemnation that would follow. And because life is unpredictable, he will delay until the last moment; who knows what might happen to make war unnecessary? Finally, he may believe that an ultra-fast response to a Hezbollah attack plus Israel’s anti-missile systems would mitigate the disadvantages of allowing them to strike first.

On the other hand, he is a strong proponent of the Begin Doctrine, which says that Israel will not – must not – allow hostile states in the region to obtain nuclear weapons, especially Iran, which he views as having an antisemitic and genocidal regime. He knows that if Iran gets nuclear weapons, they will serve as an umbrella to protect Hezbollah, greatly multiplying the danger to Israel. I’m convinced he would go along with an American plan.

If Trump wants to achieve his original objective of precluding a nuclear-armed revolutionary Islamic regime in Iran, he has only about two months to act – and his ability to do so will weaken as the lame duck period progresses.

The clock is ticking.

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11/18 Links Pt2: Nuremberg, 75 Years After; The Radicalism of Raphael Warnock; David Collier: The Labour Party are playing a very dangerous game

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: Nuremberg, 75 Years After

The world will doubtless mark the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials, which began in November 1945, as a model of international law. For the first Nazi executed at Nuremberg, however, the trial embodied not multilateralism but rather the revenge of the Jews. This was made clear in an eerie moment 11 months later, one whose historical and theological lessons reverberate to this day.

On October 16, 1946, Julius Streicher—the Nazi’s Nazi, publisher of Der Stürmer, the man who personally ordered the destruction of the Great Synagogue of Nuremberg on Kristallnacht—was taken to be hanged. As Newsweek reported, Streicher did not die with dignity: “He had to be pushed across the floor, wild-eyed and screaming ‘Heil Hitler!’ Mounting the steps he cried out: ‘And now I go to God.’ He stared at the witnesses facing the gallows and shouted: ‘Purimfest 1946.’”

That is a reference to the Jewish holiday of Purim, which marks the tale told in the book of Esther: the rise of Haman as vizier of Persia and his attempt to wipe out the Jews. In the end, Haman himself is hanged on the gallows, and later, following a war against his allies, Haman’s 10 sons are hanged as well. In invoking Purim, Streicher drew on an anti-Semitic trope with a long German lineage. Purim, for Martin Luther, reflected the bloodthirsty nature of the Jews, as he noted in a text called On the Jews and Their Lies:

They are real liars and bloodhounds who have not only continually perverted and falsified all of Scripture with their mendacious glosses from the beginning until the present day. Their heart’s most ardent sighing and yearning and hoping is set on the day on which they can deal with us Gentiles as they did with the Gentiles in Persia at the time of Esther. Oh, how fond they are of the book of Esther, which is so beautifully attuned to their bloodthirsty, vengeful, murderous yearning and hope.

That Streicher went to his death echoing Luther’s anti-Semitism was appropriate, for he had lived his life following Luther’s advice: “First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them…I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.”

The Real History of the Mennonites and the Holocaust

A great gulf looms between the image of Mennonites as a peaceful Christian denomination engaged in humanitarianism and peace building around the world, including in the Middle East, and what historians have begun to reveal about the entanglement of a substantial minority of Mennonites with National Socialism during the 1930s and ’40s. So, who hid the Mennonite involvement with Nazism and how?

After World War II, the primary narrative that Mennonite leaders in Europe and North America crafted about their churches’ activities in the Third Reich emphasized repression and hardship. The denomination’s leading aid organization, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), worked during the late 1940s and early 1950s to help resettle thousands of European Mennonites who were displaced as a result of the war. MCC relied on financial and legal assistance from larger refugee agencies affiliated with the United Nations. In dealing with their United Nations colleagues, MCC officials insisted most of their wards “were brutally treated by the German occupation authorities” and “did not receive favored treatment.”

One of Mennonite Central Committee’s star witnesses was a refugee named Heinrich Hamm. Like tens of thousands of other Mennonites who had experienced the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe, Hamm was from Soviet Ukraine, and had retreated westward with German troops in 1943 to avoid again coming under communist rule. Five years later, Hamm was an MCC employee, helping to run a large refugee camp in occupied Germany. MCC’s special commissioner in Europe passed to United Nations officials Hamm’s story of evacuating from Ukraine to more western areas:

It is quite an erroneous idea to think that all Mennonites were brought to Poland to be settled on farms. I and my family came to a camp Preussisch-Stargard in the Danzig area. Immediately representatives of various works and concerns came to fetch cheap labour. I had to work in a machine factory where I remained until the end of the war. Besides the four Mennonite families many Ukrainians, Frenchmen and Poles worked there also. There was no difference in the way these various national groups were treated.

The efforts after the war by Mennonite Central Committee to portray refugees like Heinrich Hamm as victims of Nazism were largely successful. Based on statements from MCC officers and many migrants themselves, refugee agents affiliated with the United Nations believed that “the majority of those [Mennonites] who found themselves in Germany at the end of the war had not come voluntarily to that country. They were deported alongside other Russians to be used as slave labourers.” As another evaluation concluded, Mennonites were fundamentally “an un-Nazi and un-nationalistic group.” MCC ultimately succeeded in relocating most of the refugees under its care with United Nations assistance to new homes in West Germany or overseas, mostly in Canada and Paraguay.

Hamm and his colleagues at Mennonite Central Committee wanted United Nations-affiliated refugee organizations and other interested parties to think that any collaboration by members of the denomination with National Socialism was exceptional and insignificant. They implied that if some young men had perhaps gotten carried away, surely this was because they had been drawn away from their faith under Soviet rule. But wartime records do not corroborate this story.