The first batch of Pfizer Corona-virus vaccine landed in Israel today. PM Netanyahu announced that he will be the first to get it, live on television, in order to build public confidence. Although it’s impossible to get Covid from it, there is still a possibility of other side effects, and many people would prefer to let others be the pioneers with the arrows in their backs. Even the Israeli Doctors’ Union has insisted on reviewing the research data (Hebrew link) on the vaccines before medical staffs receive it. “We don’t want to be guinea pigs,” said a spokesperson (literally, “experimental rabbits”). The plan is – assuming the doctors are satisfied – is to immunize them first, followed by older citizens. I suggested that bus and taxi drivers, who are both at risk to catch the disease and to infect others, should be included, but apparently they didn’t listen to me.
This first shipment is small, only about 3,000 – 4,000 doses, intended to test the methods of shipment and distribution. Later this month there will be a larger shipments, up to 4 million doses. By the Spring, there should be enough for all of Israel’s population. The Health Ministry was waiting for the American FDA to approve it before giving the final go-ahead, and that occurred yesterday.
Meanwhile, people are still getting sick, some are dying, and the dysfunctional government is still flailing ineffectually as we approach our third wave. A nighttime lockdown was supposed to go into effect today, but at the last moment the Justice Ministry announced that such a lockdown would have “legal problems” because it would “limit the motion of citizens.”
This encapsulates the absurd situation perfectly: a nighttime lockdown would have minimal effect on the epidemic, because people have nowhere to go at night anyway, with restaurants and bars closed. But it would be an obstacle to the continued anti-Netanyahu demonstrations in front of his residences in Jerusalem and Caesarea, so Bibi’s government wants it. On the other hand, the Minister of Justice, who is the former head of the Histadrut labor federation and a bitter foe of Netanyahu, wants the demonstrations to continue. No lockdown. Such dedication on both sides!
I wasn’t going to write about politics, but I should note that the process of dissolving the Knesset and calling new elections is proceeding apace. A preliminary motion to do so passed last week, and a Knesset Committee set the next vote (there need to be three more) for this coming Monday. At the same time, Netanyahu’s biggest rival in the Likud, Gideon Sa’ar, announced yesterday that he is quitting the Likud and starting a new center-right party, which has already attracted several heavy hitters from the opposition. A snap poll showed that Sa’ar’s party would get the third greatest number of seats if the election were today. Most of his support would come from Netanyahu’s party.
A sidelight: the party may be named “New Hope,” which immediately brought up comparisons to Star Wars and the appropriate campaign music (video) for the new party.
This has completely upended everyone’s calculations, since that kind of performance in the election would mean that Netanyahu and the Haredi parties would not come close to the 61 seats needed to form a government. There will now be a huge amount of maneuvering and dealing both before and after the election, which will make it even less likely that the parasites government ministers will be able to spend time on their actual jobs, for which they are very well paid by the citizens. It’s too early to predict, but I am hoping that this will break the deadlock and we will get a real government, instead of this “unity” government in which the various members are more interested in cutting each other’s throats and not being jailed than governing.
In other news, an Emirati billionaire has bought 50% of the Beitar Jerusalem Football [soccer] Club, which has a fan base that includes a sometimes violent anti-Arab group called “La Familia” which insults Arab players on opposing teams and has made it impossible for Arabs to play on the team (even non-Arab Muslims didn’t last). I’m making no predictions here, either.
Finally, speaking of Star Wars, a well-respected Israeli scientist who was head of Israel’s space security program for many years has published a book in which he says that aliens have a contract with the US government and an underground base on Mars, where they are working with American astronauts. According to Prof. Haim Eshed, they have not revealed themselves to us yet because “humanity is not ready.”
He got that part right.
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Mako reports about Ahmad Abu Halima, a 4 year old boy from Gaza whose life was saved by doctors at Schneider Hospital in Petah Tikva,
Ahmed originally came to the Israeli hospital with what appeared to be a tumor in his abdomen that was too large to remove, so he was prepared for chemotherapy. However, within a few days the child became very ill and it was found that the tumor was massively bleeding. In a series of complex operations, surgeons catheterized the many blood vessels that were connected to it while Ahmed was on a heart bypass.
Now his parents need to pay for the Ahmed's hospitalization - but the Palestinian Authority refuses to pay for any medical procedures that happen in Israel.
So the hospital set up an account for Israelis to help pay for Ahmad's medical expenses.
One would think that with all the supposed pride that Palestinians have, they would be embarrassed that Jews are paying for the medical expenses of a Palestinian. But honor is a weird thing - to Palestinian leaders, the bigger shame is to pay Israelis to help cure Palestinian kids.
It is a perverted culture.
One must wonder, though, how come none of the tens of millions of dollars that pour from European countries and NGOs to fund anti-Israel organizations can be used to help people like Ahmad Abu Halima.
Being pro-Palestinian seems to have little to do with actually caring about Palestinian lives.
(Donations can be wired to Bank Leumi Bank 10, Branch 812, Account 31789/72, Account holder: Wiesenberg in trust for Ahmad Abu Halima.)
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.
I originally wrote this for publication in a major media site, but they do not publish from pseudonyms, so here it is.
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On December 4, Time magazine published an article partially entitled "Here’s What You Need to Know About BDS" by Sanya Mansoor.
BDS stands for the demand to Boycott, Divest from and Sanction Israel. The Time piece pretends to be an objective look at the controversial movement to treat Israel as a pariah state, but it is a one-sided and inaccurate, reading more like a press release for the BDS movement than an informative article.
It turns out that "all you need to know" leaves out a lot of important information.
Here is an accurate description of BDS' history, goals and philosophy.
How did BDS start?
BDS advocates claim that it was started in 2005 by a group of Palestinian civil society organizations and that it is a Palestinian-led movement.
In fact, the strategy was created in 2001 during the NGO Forum of the infamous Durban Conference, the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance - an event that was so anti-Israel and antisemitic that even the conference secretary-general, Mary Robinson, said included "horrible anti-Semitism."
The NGO Forum published a lengthy statement, of which paragraphs 424 and 425 are the blueprint for the BDS movement that would be declared four years later:
424. Call for the launch of an international anti Israeli Apartheid movement as implemented against South African Apartheid through a global solidarity campaign network of international civil society, UN bodies and agencies, business communities...
425. Call upon the international community to impose a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state as in the case of South Africa which means the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargoes, the full cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic, social, aid, military cooperation and training) between all states and Israel.
However, even this was preceded and inspired by the League of Arab States boycott of Jewish-owned businesses in the Middle East that started in 1945 and is actually still in force today in Syria and Lebanon.
What are BDS' goals?
The movement claims not to care as to whether there is one state or two states in the area of what used to be British Mandate Palestine.
However, it demands the so-called "right to return" of the descendants of Palestinians displaced in the 1948 war, a right that simply doesn't exist anywhere else - there were between 10 and 20 million people displaced after World War II and no one seriously claims their descendants have the right to return to their ancestors' homes.
The so-called "right to return" has been used to keep Palestinians stateless and without protection for over seven decades. The reason, as Arab leaders have admitted candidly, is to use them as cannon fodder against Israel. It is one unyielding demand by the Palestinians - not to have the Palestinian diaspora come to build a Palestinian state but to have them "return" to Israel by the millions and ensure an Arab majority there.
In short, BDS does not and cannot accept the concept of a Jewish state. It would accept one Arab majority state or two Arab majority states, but it vehemently opposes the existence of any Jewish state - even as there are plenty of states that identify themselves as Arab states (and Muslim states) without anyone accusing them of apartheid or racism.
Is BDS antisemitic?
BDS leaders insist that they are not antisemitic. However, their demand for "return" and their refusal to accept Jewish self-determination while insisting on Palestinian self-determination shows that they are the ones who are discriminating against Jews.
Beyond that, the BDS movement and their allies in the far Left insist that Jews are held to standards that no one else is held to. Jews who wish to become leaders in feminist, LGBTQ or other causes must renounce Zionism - the right of Jews to a homeland of their own. Jews who want to become student leaders are examined to see if they support Israel's existence, and saying they do makes them suspect at best, disqualified at worst. Israeli Jews who want to speak on campus are likewise subjected to litmus tests to have the simple right to speak.
BDS says that they want the world to boycott Israeli businesses, but in fact the entire list of businesses listed by BDS groups are owned by Jews. Even though there are Arab owned businesses in Israel and in the disputed territories, only Jewish businesses are targeted.
For all practical purposes, BDS is an ant-Jewish movement. Even the German parliament recognizes this fact, and they know a thing or two about what boycotting Jewish businesses looks like.
Is BDS pro-Palestinian?
The BDS Movement claims that it follows the will of the Palestinian people, listing some 170 "civil society" organizations - many of which had only one or two people - that signed on.
Ilan Pappe, a prominent BDS supporter and critic of Israel, has suggested that the international anti-Israel NGOs created BDS and part of the fiction was to pretend that it was a Palestinian-led movement - and it is important to maintain that fiction.
The BDS movement and its leaders have very little to say about improving Palestinian lives, whether in the territories or in places like Lebanon and Syria.
It goes without saying that most Palestinians do not boycott Israeli goods themselves, including luxuries like chocolates and ice cream.
The highest-paying Palestinians work for Israelis, with an average income of double what they can make domestically according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. A significant part of the Palestinian economy is dependent on workers in Israel. BDS wants all of these people to lose their jobs with no plan on how new jobs could replace them.
In fact, when BDS pressure succeeded in getting Sodastream to move its factory from the West Bank to the Negev, hundreds of Palestinians lost their well-paying jobs. BDS leaders were happy at this "victory."
Given the assumption that Israel is not going to be destroyed in the foreseeable future, BDS advocates have a choice: work towards helping Palestinians within this reality, or working towards the destruction of Israel anyway, to the detriment of the people they claim to represent.
Invariably, BDS chooses the latter.
The BDS apathy towards actual Palestinian lives goes well beyond Israel and the territories. Palestinians in Lebanon who have lived there since the 1950s are banned, by law, from many jobs. They cannot buy land. They cannot build new housing even in overcrowded camps. Yet you would be hard pressed to find a BDS advocate that demands that Lebanon offer basic human rights protections to their Palestinian residents. On the contrary, Lebanese bigotry against Palestinians is ignored and silenced, since the BDS narrative is that Israel is the only evil that may be discussed.
Even more horribly, during the first months of the Syria civil war, Israel offered to allow Syrians of Palestinian heritage to move to the West Bank to save their lives, if only they would sign a paper saying that they forego the "right to return" to Israel proper. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas angrily rejected the offer, saying that it was better for the Syrian Palestinians to die in Syria. He didn't offer the Palestinians of Syria a choice of their own, but made their choice for them. No BDS group objected to this decision that may have contributed to the deaths of thousands.
Does BDS support peace?
BDS advocates are emphatically against any peace initiatives that treat Israeli Jews as human beings. They denounce anyone who participates in peace initiatives, whether it is bereaved Israeli and Palestinian mothers speaking to each other or sports programs for Palestinian and Israeli youth.
The Muslim Leadership Initiative, which allows Muslims to learn Israel's point of view, had its participants boycotted by the BDS leaders.
Their intransigence extends even beyond that. When popular artists decide to perform in Israel, while the official BDS movement doesn't support threats, the effect is the same - some artists are bullied into canceling their shows, and the BDS movement celebrates these as victories.
Do American Jews support BDS?
BDS advocates claim that they have dozens of Jewish progressive organizations on their side, and use them as proof that they are not antisemitic. Yet every poll shows that the number of anti-Zionist Jews is minuscule in the US.
A 2018 Mellman poll of Jewish voters found that while plenty of Jewish Americans had plenty of criticisms of Israel, only 3% of them self-identified as "generally not pro-Israel." Although the question wasn't asked of that minority, but many or most of that 3% would not identify as an actively anti-Zionist subset. It can be assumed that only those very few who self-identify as anti-Zionist would wholeheartedly support BDS.
So while anti-Zionist Jewish groups like "Jewish Voice for Peace" and "IfNotNow" manage to get a large amount of press relative to their actual numbers, they are on the fringes of US Jewish life today, and their influence among Jews is similar to the all-but-forgotten anti-Zionist "American Council for Judaism," an anti-Zionist group that likewise gained publicity but very few adherents in the 1950s.
Is BDS successful?
By the standards of actually harming Israel economically or diplomatically, the answer it clearly no. Israel's economic growth is the envy of the world and it has relations with more nations than ever before. Only in the UN is Israel still somewhat of a pariah.
Yet using the yardstick of whether BDS has managed to demonize Israel in the eyes of the world since 2001, the answer is certainly yes. After all, this very Time magazine article quoted BDS leaders, without comment, saying flatly that Israel is a racist and apartheid state - an absurd statement given that some 20% of Israeli citizens are non-Jews, mostly Arabs, and they have equal rights under the law and enjoy more freedom than anyone living under Arab rule. When major media parrots false or contested BDS claims as facts not worth checking, it shows huge inroads in BDS attempts to brainwash the world to hate Israel, especially youth.
Ironically, it is the same Arab world which started the idea of boycotting Jews in Israel to begin with that is the biggest threat to BDS today. Israel's treaties with the UAE and Bahrain, along with unofficial ties with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states, has hurt BDS and its claims of being the only solution. Emiratis walking around Tel Aviv and enjoying the company of Zionist Jews - while still working to help Palestinians - reveal a model of peace and prosperity that is transforming the Middle East, a model where BDS is not only irrelevant but positively backwards.
BDS is not progressive, it does not support peace, and it is increasingly aligned only with Iran and its allies. This is the truth about BDS that its adherents don't want the world to know.
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The repulsive "Jewish Voice for Peace" tweeted this celebration of the anniversary of the first intifada:
The poster, proudly made by a JVP member, equates Jewish heroes during the Holocaust with bloodthirsty terrorists who killed 277 Israelis during that time - and has the unmitigated gall to call the murderous riots the "L'Chaim Intifada."
There are no words for how disgusting these so-called Jews are. They are spitting on the graves on Holocaust victims while praising those who want to complete the Nazi genocide.
Beyond that, during the first intifada nearly a thousand Palestinians were killed by other Palestinians - often after being accused of "collaboration." In fact, less than half of them had any contact with Israel, meaning that Palestinians would label their own enemies as "collaborators" to get them executed.
So not only does Jewish Voice for Peace not care about Jewish lives, but they don't give a damn about Palestinian lives either. They are an immoral organization. Anyone who gives them the slightest bit of respect is giving credit to those who celebrate murder and terrorism.
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A group of 122 Palestinian academics, journalists, writers and filmmakers signed a letter last month taking issue with the widespread adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA)’s definition of anti-Semitism. Their statement has gotten a lot of attention and been rightly criticized as both disingenuous and illegitimate since it is absurd for a group that is the object of prejudice, as is the case with the Jews, to be denied the right to define the hatred that is directed at them.
But as much as the Palestinian protest against the IHRA declaration is deserving of scorn, it should not be our primary focus of concern in this controversy. The real problem is not the unsurprising fact that a cause that has become the main engine driving anti-Semitism would seek to redefine it so as to make their hate seem more legitimate. Rather, it is the willingness of so many Jews, including those who have labeled themselves as “liberal Zionists,” to support their objections and to undermine the growing international support for the IHRA definition.
Groups like Americans for Peace Now and the New Israel Fund are now weighing in against adoption of the definition. That has made it clear that the line between groups that were heretofore deeply critical of Israel but still avowedly Zionist and those that are open about their opposition to Israel’s existence and, as in the case of Jewish Voice for Peace, guilty of themselves spreading anti-Semitism has become completely blurred. In doing so, these groups aren’t merely expressing criticism of Israeli policies or society, but materially aiding an anti-Semitic cause that targets the sole Jewish state on the planet for elimination, in addition to subjecting Jews who speak up for Zionism to anti-Semitic slanders and attacks.
The IHRA’s definition has become a rallying point in the effort to roll back the rising tide of Jew-hatred that has swept across the globe in recent years. The definition has been a useful tool to combat anti-Semitism because it focuses the discussion on actual examples of prejudicial conduct and discourse. In doing so, it allows communities to avoid being sidetracked by the attempts of anti-Semites to distract from what they are doing by uttering meaningless platitudes about the subject, whose only purpose is to allow them to continue propagating hate while not being held responsible for their conduct. Simply put, the IHRA definition correctly labels those who want to discriminate against Jews in a way that they would never think of treating anyone else—as is true of all anti-Zionists—as anti-Semites. That the United States and many other governments have officially adopted it is an encouraging sign that a coalition of decent people of all faiths will stand up against this hate.
As the exhibition describes, Jewish resistance also reached deep into the heart of the Reich itself. It recounts the tragic story of the Baum group. Founded by Herbert Baum along with his wife and friends in the 1930s, it eventually grew to over 100 members in 1940; many, like Baum himself, were young Jewish forced laborers.
The group’s activities — which included distributing leaflets highlighting the atrocities committed by their fellow Germans in the East — were perilous. But an arson attack on May 18, 1942, which targeted “Soviet Paradise,” an anti-Semitic and anti-communist exhibition staged by the Nazis in Berlin, led to the arrest of many of the group’s members. Baum was murdered in prison in June 1942 and other members of the organization were executed that summer.
But, for the organizers of “Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust,” remembering the heroism and sacrifice of Baum and his comrades — together with the countless other Jews who resisted the Nazis — is not simply about finally telling a story which has remained untold for too long. It is also a matter of setting straight the historical record.
“It’s important to challenge this myth about Jews not resisting, which perhaps was an attitude that was held quite widely [at one time] and maybe some people still have that view today,” says Warnock.
“There were so many examples of resistance in the most extreme and difficult circumstances, and this research and exhibition show that whenever they had the chance to, people resisted in some way or another,” she says.
Rabinovich recounts how innovative Israeli naval officers developed the concept of the missile boat with approval from the Ministry of Defense (primarily Shimon Peres) and harnessed modest resources to complete the project. Israel's defense establishment helped the navy procure the necessary equipment from abroad, and finally, smuggled the boats from Cherbourg to Israel despite a French embargo.
In 1960, opposing larger and better equipped navies, including Soviet destroyers and missile boats, Israel's naval command faced immense challenges. Neither the required missiles nor suitable boats existed in Western arsenals. So the Israelis developed a weapons system indigenously. The German government feared repercussions from Arab governments and refused to build a revised version of the Jaguar fast-attack craft for the Israelis. Instead, Israeli naval engineers modified the German design and moved construction to a French shipyard in Cherbourg. The Gabriel missile was developed for use with these boats.
Rabinovich describes how once the technological challenges were met, Israel's naval officers developed battle tactics to accommodate the new weapons system and trained for a variety of scenarios. They achieved optimal readiness only a few months before the 1973 war. Syrian and Egyptian boats outnumbered their Israeli counterparts by more than two to one, and their missiles had more than twice the range of the Gabriel. Nevertheless, the Israeli missile boat flotilla came through the war with no losses while sinking almost every Arab ship it encountered.
The knowledge gained building the Saar class Cherbourg boats was essential for construction of the Haifa shipyards, which later produced larger vessels. Similarly, the flourishing Israeli radar industry benefited from the Saar project.
Despite several sections not relevant to the boat-missile project, this is a fascinating and accessible book most suitable for lay readers and analysts interested in how military innovation occurs, as well as for followers of the doctrinal and technological evolution of the Israel Defense Forces.
Shibley Telhami of the Brookings Institution wrote an article there that attempts to explain "Pay for Slay." All it really does it attempt to obfuscate the issue that a significant part of the Palestinian budget goes to pay prisoners and families of those killed while trying to kill Jews.
But, what obfuscation!
Let’s start with the facts. Whatever one says about the PA and its president, Mahmoud Abbas — including its governance shortcomings, divisions, and political paralysis — Palestinian policing and security coordination with Israel have been an essential and highly successful element of Israeli security for years.
Irrelevant.
Abbas himself has consistently opposed violent resistance, including opposing the Palestinian embrace of the second intifada, the uprising that followed the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2000.
Hmm.
Pay for Slay shows how important the concept of violent, armed resistance is to Palestinian honor, even if it is not officially supported for tactical reasons today.
Punishment aside, one would have to assume that Palestinians are unlike other people in being able to ignore not only the personal risk of being killed or jailed, but also the emotional devastation and disruption that [home demolitions] would cause to the lives of their loved ones, simply for the promise of monetary stipends for the family.
It isn't that hard: knowing that they would not need a breadwinner if they get killed is a pretty clear incentive that overrides the chance of losing a home - temporarily, since the Palestinians build new homes for them quickly.
The context for the broad support among Palestinians for those imprisoned by Israel is that they see most of those jailed as victims and resisters of an illegal occupation.
How does that justify the practice?
Thus, Palestinian attitudes toward the prisoner family payment system have to be understood through the lens of their lived experiences. Under occupation, Palestinians have few protections from violence carried out by Israeli settlers or soldiers. According to the Israeli group Yesh Din, between 2005 and 2019 over 90% of cases of crimes against Palestinians were closed without any indictments.
How does that justify the practice?
In this context — with universal mistrust of the Israeli occupation system — there is strong public support among Palestinians for prisoners and their families.
How does that justify the practice?
The PA has also argued that if innocent families of those imprisoned or killed are left without support, more would be radicalized, increasing rather than decreasing the likelihood of violence.
An argument with no merit whatsoever, no studies to back it up.
In the end, Telhami gives not one reason why the PA should pay terrorist families outside of it being a popular program.
And its popularity is in fact the problem.
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James Zogby writes a truly insidious piece that was published in Responsible Statecraft where he claims that Palestinian voices are being "canceled" by Zionists.
While it is shameful for the US State Department to consistently ignore Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian human rights, it is beyond shameful to now seek to call Palestinians and their supporters anti-Semites for speaking out against these violations or calling for a non-violent boycott.
This is a violation of Palestinian human rights – the right to freely speak out and to act against injustice. But then, if the US officials in question can only see Israeli humanity and do not see Palestinians or Arabs as full human beings, then it follows that Palestinian rights should be subordinated to the concern that Israel be protected from criticism.
Who is being silenced? Somehow Zogby got this piece published without anyone "silencing" him.
No one is saying that one cannot advocate for Palestinian rights, as Zogby shamefully claims. Absolutely no one says that being pro-Palestinian is antisemitic.
The issue is when that advocacy crosses into antisemitism. When Israel and Zionism is demonized beyond any possible crimes, when Israel is the only nation whose very existence is called into question, when the Jewish people are called a mere religion and not a nation, when the concept of a Jewish state is considered "racist" but not an Arab state - that is when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism.
No one is trying to silence pro-Palestinian voices. But articles like this are meant to silence Jews who are calling out antisemitism.
When Baruch Goldstein, an extremist Israeli settler, massacred 29 Palestinian worshipers in a mosque in Hebron, the Washington Post carried a feature article asking the question – “What happened to drive this Jewish doctor to do what he did?” There was no mention of the Palestinian victims. Nor were there interviews with the victims’ families or those who survived the mass murder. Goldstein, a troubled man, was the subject of the story. His victims were mere objects – an abstract body count, a number to be noted and then dismissed.
But when a 20-year-old Palestinian American attempted to understand why a young Palestinian would be in such despair that he would commit suicide in an act of terror, she is condemned today. She was no more justifying the Palestinian’s act than the Washington Post was justifying Goldstein’s. Her’s was an effort to understand what could have led any young person to commit such an atrocity. That this involved speaking about a Palestinian as a person, albeit one who was deeply disturbed, was deemed unpardonable.
This is sick. Goldstein was condemned across the board by Israelis and Jews worldwide, while a majority of Palestinians support specific terror attacks against Jews. Goldstein was an outlier - a doctor - which is what made his actions so hard to understand, while there have been hundreds of Palestinian attacks against Jews and the terrorists are celebrated. Finally, the woman he is referring to was indeed justifying terror, and the Washington Post was not.
To go from this to seeing all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic not only strains logic, it distorts the meaning of the word. It is also a crude effort to shield Israel from criticism, while at the same time rendering people powerless to oppose the crimes Israel commits daily against the Palestinian people.
No one says all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. And Zogby knows it, as he shows:
To rebut this charge, advocates of this expansion of the definition of anti-Semitism say that they will allow for “legitimate criticism.” What concerns them, they say, are critics who focus exclusively on Israel or those whose criticism is “excessive.”
He made this up. The IHRA definition doesn't use the imprecise word "excessive." It says that "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. " Zogby knows this and ignores it to make his argument:
Using that same logic, would we say that human rights advocates should be seen as Sinophobes because they criticize China’s oppression of Uighurs or its oppressive behavior in Hong Kong? Or does one become a Russophobe because they oppose Russian aggression in Ukraine or its threatening behavior toward its Western neighbors? Or is it anti-Arab if someone criticizes the domestic or foreign policies of Arab governments?
Zogby makes up a straw man of "excessive criticism" and then says that criticism of Israel that is called antisemitic is exactly like criticism of Russia, China or Arab nations. But that is completely false - such criticism is not antisemitic by anyone's definition.
Zogby is knowingly lying about the IHRA definition in order to silence Jews who call out antisemitism from the Left and from Arabs - exactly what he accuses Jews of doing.
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Around twenty years ago, there were few experts in Israel on the Gulf and a paucity of knowledge about the monarchies and the countries that stretch from Oman to Kuwait. Israel had spent most of its formative years in conflict with powerful states like Egypt in the 1950s, and the Jewish state had relations with countries like Iran and Turkey.
Now things are a bit reversed: Iran is a major threat, Turkey is hostile and the Gulf states offer the promise of peace and prosperity.
Among Israel’s leading experts on these states is Yoel Guzansky, a senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies. Twenty years ago, he felt the need to concentrate on the Gulf, he says in an interview. There were just a handful of researchers then, mostly gathered around Yossi Kostiner at Tel Aviv University.
“I fell in love with the Arabian Gulf. And I was fortunate enough when I left the [Prime Minister’s] Office that I could start going to the Gulf. I was invited many times with my Israeli passport and it wasn’t a problem – and for a decade I went back and forth, and I met Gulfies in the US and Europe,” he says.
According to Guzansky it’s important to make a distinction between diplomatic and security ties. Israel has had connections in these countries going back many years, but most of this was not public.
For instance, he recounts a story relating to Oman where Omanis thanked him for Israel’s support. “I said what are you talking about? I knew about some of the connections,” but not the depth of the ties. “Israel helped Sultan Qaboos and others, and even the Saudis in the war in Yemen, so the connections are long term,” he says. After the Oslo Accords, a new era began and Israel had limited open ties in the 1990s.
Ahead of the three-year anniversary of US President Donald Trump recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, more than three-dozen Republican members of Congress have called for language in an upcoming must-pass appropriations bill that would prohibit American funding from being used to move the US embassy in Israel from Jerusalem.
In a Dec. 4 letter, a group of 43 Republicans in the US House of Representatives called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to ensure that the 2021 State, Foreign Operations and Related Agencies bill, primarily funding the US State Department, which oversees embassies, includes language that prohibits funding from “being used to move the United States’ embassy out of Jerusalem.”
Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Dec. 6, 2017, and moved the US embassy to there from Tel Aviv five months later.
“In a time when we are seeing the increasing normalization of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, we must ensure that the United States does not take a step backward by moving the US embassy out of Jerusalem, which is why we seek the prohibition of any FY21 funding in the State, Foreign Operations and Related Agencies bill being used to move the United States’ embassy out of Jerusalem,” wrote the GOP congressional members.
The United Nations General Assembly called on Israel to “renounce possession of nuclear weapons” in a 153-6 vote on Monday, with 25 abstentions.
Israel was asked “not to develop, produce, test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons.”
The UNGA further called on the Jewish state “to renounce possession of nuclear weapons and to place all its un-safeguarded nuclear facilities under full-scope Agency safeguards as an important confidence-building measure among all States of the region and as a step towards enhancing peace and security.”
Israel is presumed to be one of the world’s nine nuclear powers, but it has never admitted to the possession of nuclear weapons.
There are eight countries acknowledged to be nuclear powers, five of which having signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The five signatories are: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Three additional countries, which are not signatories to the treaty, have admitted to testing and possession nuclear weapons: India, North Korea and Pakistan.
Overall, 191 countries are party to the treaty, including Iran but not Israel.
In New York on Monday, 153 countries called exclusively on Israel to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and renounce its weapons in the resolution titled, “The Risk of Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East.”
Sheikh Naim Qassem, Deputy Secretary General of the Lebanese Hezbollah
The Secretary General of the Islamic Jihad, Ziyad Al-Nakhalah
Member of the political bureau of Hamas, Mahmoud al-Zahhar
Mufti of Syria
Sheikh Jawad Riad from Al-Azhar Al-Sharif from Egypt
Head of the Sunni Endowment in Iraq
The keynote speaker was the President of the International Federation of Resistance Scholars, Sheikh Maher Hammoud, He said, "We must condemn all forms of normalization, since normalization was produced by sick souls, stupid minds, and client regimes."
The head of Islamic Jihad railed against the Arabs who are normalizing relations with Israel, saying that this is the culmination of a Western plot since World War I to embed Jews in the region, attacking fFrom Palestine to Yemen, to Iraq and Syria, to Afghanistan, with American-Zionist weapons."
Qassem from Hezbollah said, "Israel is an obstacle to the development and stability of the region, carrying a history and present full of crimes, murder, chaos and sabotage; the region and the world can not stabilize ass long as Israel exists. We are getting stronger and better equipped in Lebanon, Palestine and the region to achieve a balance of deterrence , which believes in defense and victory, We will work with all our strength to be stronger militarily, materially, politically and in the media."
Hamas' Zahar said, "There are clear indications for the liberation battle ... that we are on a date with a new revolution and the fall of the Zionist entity."
They seem very concerned over losing the unanimous support of the Arab world. In the end, only Iran and its satellites will be fully supportive of them - for the price of becoming Iranian proxies. Islamic Jihad is almost there, Hamas a little further, but the way things are going, the Palestinian Authority could go in that direction as well.
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An anti-Israel Canadian group, "Independent Jewish Voices," published a series of memes to "prove" that "Israel is a racist endeavor," in an attempt to disprove the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism which uses that phrase as an example of antisemitism.
Their examples are ridiculous, but instead of arguing and putting ourselves on the defensive, I decided to use their own rules as to what "proves" that Zionism is racism to prove that Palestinian nationalism, or Palestinianism, has been suffused with antisemitism since it began.
I very quickly found 16 examples, and I'm sure I can find hundreds more. But these should make the point.
Feel free to tweet these and use them liberally.
To be clear, I am not saying that all supporters of Palestine are antisemites. I am using the rules that IJV came up with to show that by their own logic, Palestinian nationalism is antisemitism.
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There were lots of articles about the blunt (and bizarre) criticism that Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud hurled at Israel at the IISS Manama Dialogues over the weekend:. Here's AP's:
A prominent Saudi prince harshly criticized Israel on Sunday at a Bahrain security summit that was remotely attended by Israel’s foreign minister, showing the challenges any further deals between Arab states and Israel face in the absence of an independent Palestinian state.
The fiery remarks by Prince Turki al-Faisal at the Manama Dialogue appeared to catch Israel’s foreign minister off guard, particularly as Israelis receive warm welcomes from officials in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates following agreements to normalize ties.
Prince Turki opened his remarks by contrasting what he described as Israel’s perception of being “peace-loving upholders of high moral principles” versus what he described as a far-darker Palestinian reality of living under a “Western colonizing” power.
Israel has “incarcerated (Palestinians) in concentration camps under the flimsiest of security accusations — young and old, women and men, who are rotting there without recourse to justice,” Prince Turki said. “They are demolishing homes as they wish and they assassinate whomever they want.”
The prince also criticized Israel’s undeclared arsenal of nuclear weapons and Israeli governments “unleashing their political minions and their media outlets from other countries to denigrate and demonize Saudi Arabia.”
There are two important points that the media is ignoring.
One is the blatant antisemitism in Prince Turki's remarks.
Saying that Israel is incarcerating Palestinians in concentration camps is directly comparing Israel to Nazis, and the only reason to use that language is to deliberately hurt the feelings of Jews.
And what concentration camps is he talking about? The only camps in the Middle East are the ones set up by Arab nations to keep Palestine "refugees" in misery. Lebanon has one large one that is literally surrounded by a wall with watchtowers.
Yet his antisemitism doesn't end there: he is implying that Jews control the media and the politics of other countries besides Israel, "unleashing their political minions and their media outlets from other countries to denigrate and demonize Saudi Arabia."
What is even stranger is that Saudi Arabia's most strident critics are generally Israel's biggest critics, too. There is plenty to criticize in Saudi Arabia - its human rights record is horrendous - but the criticism comes from NGOs like Human Rights Watch. So not only are Turki's charges about "concentration camps" and Israeli control of the media antisemitic, they are fictional.
I have not seen any media outlet point this out, which seems like a basic journalistic task.
The second point that no one is making about the conference is that even with the Saudi barbs, here was a conference attended by countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan - with Israel.
As far as I can tell, Israel didn't attend last year's conference, because many Arab nations would have walked out if it did. This year saw not only an Israeli delegation but a speaker as well, Gabi Ashkenazi.
If Saudi Arabia can verbally attack Israel at a conference like this without resorting to antisemitic tropes, that's fine. At least Israel is now considered a part of the Middle East. Friends can and do argue. The bigger story is not Saudi criticism of Israel but that Saudi Arabia and Israel were talking with each other, publicly - something that not long ago would have been unthinkable.
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Settler companies that produce wine, tahini, olive oil and honey have signed a deal with the Dubai distribution company FAM Holding, to export their products to the United Arab Emirates, the Samaria Regional Council announced on Monday.
Israeli companies have signed agreements with the Emirates even before a normalization deal was signed between their two governments in September and ratified in October.
But Monday’s agreements mark the first such agreement to export settler goods to the UAE.
FAM Holding is in talks with other Israeli companies and is excited to sign deals to expand the business cooperation between the two countries, he said.
Among the wineries that signed deals to export to the UAE are Tura Winery, the Har Bracha Winery and the Arnon Winery, as well as Paradise Honey.
This is like a dream.
And it isn't like the UAE hates Palestinians. As I noted earlier, the UAE was working with Israel to import the Russian COVID-19 vaccine into the PA-controlled areas.
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The author, Sarah Prager, explains that she celebrated Chanukah as a child because her father was Jewish. “Each of those eight nights we’d recite the Hebrew prayer about God while lighting the menorah. We memorized the syllables and repeated them, but they had no meaning to us and my parents didn’t expect, or want, us to believe what we were reciting.”
The Times article goes on “I married a woman who was raised Catholic but who, like my parents, had left her family religion as an adult. She and I are part of America’s ever-growing ‘nones’ with no religious affiliation at all. Before we had kids, we imagined we’d choose a religion to raise them in, maybe Unitarian Universalism or even Reform Judaism. But when our first child was born four years ago, we realized that going to any house of worship and following a religion just for our children to feel a connection to something wouldn’t be authentic. We couldn’t teach them to believe in anything we didn’t believe in ourselves.”
Though she claims she is “none,” her family actually slides into the Christian dominant culture: “our two daughters will celebrate Christmas and Easter because that’s what my extended family still celebrates.”
The article says the author respects tradition. “I respect the incredible value of keeping traditions alive, especially those that centuries of persecution have sought to erase. But while I have more of a connection to Judaism than some, I am not Jewish and it doesn’t feel authentic to celebrate a Jewish holiday religiously. My kids may end up playing dreidel sometimes, but they won’t learn the prayer that begins Baruch atah Adonai, sacred words that are nonetheless empty to them,” the Times article says. “Discontinuing my family’s Hanukkah celebration fits right in with our family’s tradition of bucking tradition.”
The article was met with scorn by Jewish readers. “Oh, is it NYT publishes thin, uninformed, somewhat self-hating article on Chanukah o’clock again? I can’t even look,” tweeted Rabbi Jill Jacobs.
Rabbi Marisa Elana James tweeted, “It is an INTERESTING choice for the NYT to publish a piece ostensibly about Hanukkah where 2/3 of the way in the author writes ‘I’m not Jewish.’ Just one piece on Hanukkah by someone who is Jewish and *likes* being Jewish would be great!”
Arsen Ostrovsky wrote, “Of all the essays @nytimes could publish for #Chanukah, they chose this by @Sarah_Prager , who does not even identify as Jewish, about why she’s choosing not to celebrate this beautiful holiday. Could the NYT have any more contempt for the Jewish people?”
Where openly anti-Israel rhetoric is aired by woke politicians, media elites all too often are close behind to follow up and justify their words.
Instead of criticizing the invocation of a notorious dog-whistle calling for the destruction of Israel, CNN pundit and New York Times contributing opinion writer Peter Beinart last week defended it.
The call “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” has long been understood as a euphemism for the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state. So when Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) retweeted a social media post, those words were met with strong opposition from many Jews and Israelis.
The Democratic Majority tweeted, “@RashidaTlaib is not just opposed to Israeli control of the West Bank — this slogan means she sees the entire State of Israel as illegitimate and wants it eliminated. That’s an immoral and reprehensible position.”
In response, Beinart used his public position to espouse the spurious perspective that this call for the destruction of Israel actually means something else entirely: the establishment of a state in which Jews and Palestinians would live equally.
“@RashidaTlaib supports 1 state where Jews + Palestinians live equally, under the same law. Why is that less moral that the current 1 state: Where millions of Palestinians lack citizenship, due process, free movement + the right to vote for the govt that controls their lives?” Beinart opined.
Logic by Rashida Tlaib 👉🏻 RT a blood libel against Jews without doing any research on the subject.
Again this is a sitting U.S. Congresswoman throwing Jews under the bus AT EVERY TURN. pic.twitter.com/6Fld533n28
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The New Arab quotes anonymous sources that Hanan Ashrawi , a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, submitted her resignation a few days ago to President Mahmoud Abbas .
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, "President Mahmoud Abbas has not yet responded to the resignation by rejecting or accepting it."
According to the report, Ashrawi is angry that the Palestinian Authority has restored its relations with Israel last month..
There was no comment from Ashrawi.
This seems to be the same sort of resignation theatre that Mahmoud Abbas likes to do, and that Saeb Erekat had engaged in himself, to make a dramatic threat which in the end does not happen.
But isn't it interesting that the "moderate" Ashrawi, darling of international news networks, is against the idea of the PA even talking to Israel?
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Wednesday, December 09, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
