Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, December 18, 2020

12/18 Links Pt2: Columbia professor : Israel 'fabricated' Jewish refugees; Why the cultural elite truly despises Hanukkah; What Raphael Warnock Believes About Israel

From Ian:

Columbia professor : Israel 'fabricated' Jewish refugees

To mark the 30 November Day of Commemoration of the exodus of Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran, Gilad Erdan, Israel's UN ambassador, pledged to press for a UN resolution for the recognition and compensation of Jewish refugees.

Enter Joseph Massad into the fray to call out 'Israel's outrageous fabrications'. Massad is Associate Professor of Arab Politics at Columbia University. Erdan's campaign, he alleges in Middle East Eye, is designed to exonerate Israel from the 'original sin' of expelling the Palestinians and other 'criminal actions'.

Dismissing all the ''push' factors, he argues that Jews coming to the Jewish homeland cannot possibly be refugees. They can't be said to have been expelled either, because Yemen defied an Arab League ban and 'allowed' the Jews to leave. Israel 'removed' 'Arab Jews', as he calls them, to face institutionalised Ashkenazi discrimination in Israel' and the abduction of hundreds of children'. Massad obviously knows better than three Israeli Commissions of Inquiry, who could find no evidence of an abduction racket.

Ignoring the mass violence and state-sanctioned persecution confronting 'Arab Jews', Massad resurrects the old chestnuts favoured by Palestinian propagandists of the 1950 'Mossad' bombs in Iraq and the 1954 Lavon Affair bombings in Egypt to infer that Jews had to be made to leave 'the paradise 'of Arab countries by the Zionists. Then comes a curious inference : because most Jews in Egypt did not have Egyptian nationality, one could not blame Egypt for expelling them as foreigners. In other words, Jews in Egypt were a mini-settler colony. It does not cross Massad's mind that Jews in Egypt could have been denied Egyptian nationality by racist laws. Of 1,000 Jews detained by Nasser after the Suez crisis of 1956, only half were of Egyptian nationality. (A negligible number, so that's alright then.)

Calling mainly on sources such as Tom Segev's The First Israelis, articles in Haaretz, Joel Beinin's The dispersion of tEgyptian Jewry and writings by Ella Shohat, Massad passes over massive evidence that Jews were stripped of their rights as Jews . He claims that there was no population swap between Jewish refugees and Palestinians, as Israel argues : while Jews were given Palestinian homes and land, Palestinians were not given Jewish property in return (Not true: some Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq were housed in Jewish property, and it was Arab League policy neither to complete the exchange, nor resettle the refugees - ed). Massad inflates Palestinian losses to $300 bn, so that they dwarf Jewish losses.

Melanie Phillips: The "antisemitism" of John le Carré

In Britain, a number of people who eulogised le Carré after his death praised him for the moral sense they claimed illuminated his fiction. They did not mean by that his contempt for Soviet communism. They meant instead his contempt for the west.

For they were reflecting the cultural orthodoxy of moral relativism, the doctrine under which there can be no objective moral distinctions between behaviour.

That leads them straight into despising western culture while inflating the moral worth of the developing world. And this loss of moral compass leads them, in turn, straight into the detestation of Israel — the new antisemitism that is a fig leaf for the older kind.

Le Carré was clearly very upset at being accused of antisemitism. That’s a reaction shared by many in progressive, Israel-bashing circles.

Such people often valorise the victims of the Holocaust, sentimentalise certain Jewish characteristics and boast of having Jewish friends. They therefore dismiss as outrageous the suggestion that they may harbour some form of anti-Jewish prejudice.

But antisemitism doesn’t always wear jackboots. Like le Carré’s spies, it hides behind multiple disguises, including western liberalism.

John le Carré was a wonderful writer whose works gave pleasure to millions. His early spy fiction was superlative, and his semi-autobiographical novel A Perfect Spy was a masterpiece.

English literature, however, is full of writers of enduring quality and importance but who had antisemitic views. From Chaucer to Dickens to TS Eliot to Roald Dahl, we continue to read and appreciate writers of genius while being uncomfortably aware of their anti-Jewish prejudice.

This doesn’t just tell us something about these authors, but also about the culture that produced them. Le Carré was the product of an era in which rampant antisemitism has been facilitated by precisely the same moral bankruptcy posing as conscience that is reflected in his fiction.

Ultimately, though, he himself remains an enigma. Was he on the side of the Jewish people — or their enemies? Even George Smiley might fail to resolve that one.

Why the cultural elite truly despises Hanukkah

Our cultural elites’ least favorite Jewish holiday has arrived: Hanukkah, of course.

Why did Hanukkah irk everyone from the late Christopher Hitchens, who memorably derided it as a “celebration of tribal Jewish backwardness,” to author Sarah Prager, who took to the pages of The New York Times recently to explain that she won’t be teaching her kids about it?

Well, because Hanukkah is about as out of step with the contemporary elite consensus as any religious tradition can be.

If you haven’t reviewed the story in a while, here’s how it goes. One fine day in 167 BC, a crowd of Jews was gathered in the town square of Modi’in, a suburb of Jerusalem.

They were there because the Seleucid Empire — the successors of Alexander the Great’s expansive dynasty — had recently moved into town. The conquerors believed that their Greek culture was the only path to enlightenment. The Seleucids had resolved to Hellenize this peculiarly stubborn people, the Jews, and they sought out the right kind of Jewish collaborator — you know, those who weren’t too bearded or too weird — to persuade the rest of the locals to abandon their backward mountain God and primitive laws.

And then, just as one of those Hellenizing Jews stepped up to sacrifice to almighty Zeus, out came a priest named Mattathias. Having precisely zero patience for idolatry, the fiery-eyed zealot killed not only the Jewish collaborator but the Seleucid governor, as well. Mattathias thus launched a war — partly an internal Jewish conflict, partly a rebellion against Greek imperial power — that would end with that well-publicized victory of the priest and his sons, the Maccabees, aided by one miraculous vat of oil.

So what’s Hanukkah truly about?

12/18 Links Pt1: Kontorovich: The Israel-Morocco peace deal underscores a double standard on the West Bank versus Western Sahara; UN’s Virtual Palestinian Exhibit Distorts Facts

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: The Israel-Morocco peace deal underscores a double standard on the West Bank versus Western Sahara

The basic, universal rule for determining a new country’s borders is to look to the borders of the preceding political entity in the territory, be it a colony, administrative district or Soviet republic. In Israel’s case, it was Mandatory Palestine, which included all of the West Bank. Concerns that the Trump administration’s actions could be used to justify Russia’s takeover of Crimea are baseless. Crimea was indisputably part of Ukraine, a sovereign country.

The Polisario demands a country of its own. Yet only a few countries have recognized the purported Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic. Self-determination in international law doesn’t typically mean the right of a people to have its own country. It can be satisfied by some degree of self-governance, and autonomy in internal matters such as language and culture. This is why the U.S. recognition was coupled with an endorsement of an “autonomy plan” for Western Sahara.

The Palestinians today have vastly more autonomy than the Saharawi would have in the Moroccan plan, which makes Rabat the final arbiter of Saharawi law. Ramallah, by contrast, has the last word on its own legislation. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas, for better or worse, govern the daily lives of their people.

The Obama administration also supported Moroccan sovereignty with Saharwai autonomy, as did other countries such as Spain and France—and even the Palestinian Authority. Morocco’s position has bipartisan support in Congress, and thus the U.S. will likely maintain the recognition policy.

There is a huge gap between many countries’ stances on Western Sahara and the West Bank that can’t be explained by legal differences. It will be a bad look for a Biden administration to harp on Israeli “occupation” and “settlers” while maintaining recognition of Morocco’s 1975 takeover. The U.S. recognition makes eventually doing the same for Israel in the West Bank much easier, and indeed a matter of consistency.

Rights Abusers at UN Oppose ‘Country-Specific’ Resolutions – Unless They Target Israel

Having supported more than a dozen U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel in the past two weeks, the representatives of some of the world’s most egregious rights-abusing regimes complained on Wednesday about “country-specific” resolutions targeting some among their own ranks – Iran, Russia, North Korea, and the Assad regime – saying they violate the cherished U.N. principles of “objectivity, non-selectivity, and impartiality.”

Among the most outspoken critics during Wednesday’s plenary session in New York were the delegates from China and Cuba, governments whose widely-documented human rights abuses at home have attracted not a single General Assembly resolution this year.

At the meeting, the assembly considered texts from its Third Committee – which deals with social, cultural, and humanitarian issues – including country-specific resolutions relating to the human rights situations in Iran, Syria, North Korea, and the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula of Ukraine.

All four passed, but with sizeable numbers of “no” votes, and large numbers of abstentions: -- The Iran resolution passed by 82 votes to 30, with 64 abstentions -- The Syria resolution passed by 101 votes to 13, with 62 abstentions -- The Crimea resolution passed by 64 votes to 23, with 86 abstentions -- The North Korea resolution passed without a recorded vote (although several countries – including China, Iran and Cuba – then disassociated themselves from the “consensus.”)

Will Biden break the pattern of how US presidents approach Israel?

Patterns are everywhere: in nature, in art, in human behavior, in interpersonal relationships. They also exist in diplomacy. And for students of diplomacy, or more specifically those who carefully watch the ebb and flow of US-Israel relations, there is one particular pattern that may appear somewhat disconcerting as US President-elect Joe Biden is poised to take office in just over three weeks.

Veteran US Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross identified this pattern in Doomed to Succeed, his 2015 book on the history of US-Israel relations from presidents Harry Truman to Barack Obama.

“When an administration is judged by its successors to be too close to Israel, we [the US] distance ourselves from the Jewish state,” he wrote. And then Ross gave numerous examples.

“[Dwight D.] Eisenhower believed that Truman was too supportive of Israel, so he felt an imperative to demonstrate that we were not partial to Israel, that we were in fact willing to seek closer ties to our real friends in the region – the Arabs

“President [Richard] Nixon, likewise, felt that Lyndon Johnson was too pro-Israel. In his first two years, he, too, distanced us from Israel and showed sensitivity to Arab concerns. President George H.W. Bush believed his former boss, Ronald Reagan, suffered from the same impulse of being too close to Israel. He, too, saw virtue in fostering distance.”

And finally, Ross continued, “President Obama, at the outset of his administration, certainly saw George W. Bush as having cost us in the Arab and Muslim world at least in part because he was unwilling to allow any gap to emerge between the United States and Israel.”

Screaming about antisemitism while leaving Jews behind (cartoon/poster)

Here is a recent cartoon and poster I made.

it just seems that too many people are hurling accusations of "antisemitism" to their political enemies and thinking that this is how one fights antisemitism. In the end, it makes Jews feel less secure than they did before.

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.

Peter Beinart’s master class in anti-Israel propaganda–in one tweet

(Based on a Twitter thread.)

The socialist Left is attacking the mainstream Democrats who support Israel like Democratic Majority for Israel @DemMaj4Israel. It's interesting to watch, and it exposes the false themes and anti-fact methods of the Israel haters.

In November, some members of Congress wrote a letter to Mike Pompeo expressing concern over Israel demolishing a group of illegal structures in Khirbet Humsa which were deliberately built in an IDF practice firing zone over the past few years.

DMFI responded with its own letter explaining the facts.

This caught the attention of Alex Kane who wrote about it in +972, emphasizing that DMFI’s letter used information from the pro-Israel NGO Regavim. The article doesn’t bother to actually disprove anything that DMFI wrote – it just accuses it of parroting both Israeli and Regavim talking points, as it proud Zionist Jews couldn’t possibly be telling the truth.

This conversation was picked up on Twitter, where DMFI and its many Israeli-hating critics argued.

Notice how they cannot argue with DMFI's facts, most of which came from Israeli High Court rulings. As always, the facts don't favor the Israel haters, so instead they say that DMFI used information from which they tar as "far right" and "anti-Palestinian" sources as if the source invalidates facts.

I have spoken to Regavim and they do care about the Palestinians and Arab residents of Israel. But they also care about Jewish and Israeli rights. They properly try to balance both sets of rights within the framework of the law, just as Israel's High Court does. That is not extremist. That is noble.

Which brings up Peter Beinart’s tweet.

Beinart is brighter than most anti-Israel activists, and he knows that arguing facts is a losing battle. He wants to use more effective propaganda methods.

Beinart doesn't want to accurately frame the conflict as two groups with competing rights. He wants to frame it as only Palestinians having rights, and Israel having none.

And when Jewish nationalists want to assert their rights, Beinart wants to call that “denying basic rights to millions of people.”

Any time you have competing rights, one party’s assertion of rights will diminish the other party’s claims. That is what a conflict is. Solving the conflict means compromise and accepting at least part of the other party’s position, even if you don’t agree.

Beinart doesn’t want you to think of this as a conflict. He wants to frame Israel asserting its own legal rights as denial of Palestinian rights. Standing up for your rights is a good thing, and denying others’ rights is a bad thing, so Beinart wants to ensure you never even consider that Israel has any rights in Judea and Samaria in order for him to demonize Israel.

This is why framing an argument is so important. When you frame it you can cut off the other side’s arguments before they have a chance to say anything. For example, Israel haters like to start the history in the 1890s or 1917 – framing history as if Jews are invaders to the land of their forefathers. Admitting that Jews have been indigenous to the land for thousands of years undercuts their arguments so they don't that to be part of the framework. Setting the framework wins the argument before it starts.

Beinart sees that the arguments of the New Israel Fund and +972 and their allies were in danger of being lost because DMFI actually had facts on their side. So look at his tweet as a master class in propaganda:

“DemMaj4Israel can spin, rant and rave all it wants.”

First. delegitimize the careful and reasoned arguments of DMFI and try to ensure no one takes them seriously by insulting their points – backed up with facts - as “spin, rant and rave.”

“But, ultimately, it comes down to this.”

Second, reframe the argument in a way where the facts cannot even be admitted into the discussion.

“An organization that defends Israel's denial of basic rights to millions of people…”

This is framing DMFI as something it is not, but it is not a direct accusation. It is written as an assumption to set up the punch line. Assumptions are harder to argue against than direct accusations because they are interpreted by readers as being something that is accepted by all - including the readers themselves.

“… can't represent a party that claims to hate bigotry and love justice.”

Beinart and his anti-Israel cohorts are more threatened by pro-Israel Democrats than by the Right. They see themselves as fighting for the soul of the Democratic Party. Beinart wants to demolish any sympathy for Israel in that party, and DMFI is an effective roadblock. For Beinart, it is imperative to create a wedge between the two, and here he uses effective propaganda methods to claim that DMFI is bigoted and hates justice, against the supposed principles of the party.

Crucially, Beinart here is not only accusing DMFI but all Zionists of being bigoted and against justice. Again, this isn’t a direct accusation, but framed as something that everyone knows. Casual readers do not realize how he is manipulating them to think that they always accepted his premise as truth.

Because of how Beinart framed his tweet, it is difficult for DMFI to respond without looking defensive. Beinart just defined supporting Jewish rights as bigotry and the only way to respond is to attack the framework, not the message, which is something most people cannot do. An example might be, "Unlike Peter Beinart, we support both Palestinian rights and Jewish rights. Perhaps he can respond to our arguments instead of calling us bigots.....Or perhaps, he can't."

The propaganda in his tweet doesn’t end there. Beinart defines the Democratic Party as hating bigotry and loving justice to make members uncomfortable with Israel and DMFI because of the implication that they are against those things. The party platform’s use of both of those terms are centered on racial justice and being against racist bigotry. Beinart is trying not to only paint Zionists as bigoted against Palestinians but he is framing a political conflict as Jewish racism – against Muslims or against people of color, the victims don’t really matter as long as the reader views the Jews as racist oppressors.

Also, Beinart deliberately uses the word “justice” here, implying that “justice in Palestine” is a major Democratic tenet. It isn’t. That word has been hijacked by Palestinians and their supporters to mean that unless Palestinians are given all they want, there is no “justice.” Palestinians themselves are the judge and jury. While real peace requires compromise, insisting on “justice” in this context means that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state.

Beinart is not using this word by accident.

And here’s the irony. Beinart’s entire purpose with this tweet is not to promote Palestinian rights but to deny that Israel or Jews have any national rights. Instead of accurately describing a conflict, Beinart is saying here that anything Jews do to assert their own national rights is racist, illegitimate and bigoted and therefore one should not even listen to a word they say.

He is guilty of exactly what he is accusing Zionists of.

Attorney Ibrahim Shaban writes a regular column for Al Quds and often publishes about Palestinian issues in other media.

Today he wrote an antisemitic piece for Al Quds which was picked up by other Arab media in which he takes it for granted that American Jews have dual loyalty to Israel.

The phenomenon of American Jews who occupy high positions in successive American administrations raises questions about their loyalty to the American state or the Israeli state.

The matter is not a rare phenomenon that occurs occasionally, but rather a rampant phenomenon that occurs frequently, but this phenomenon is rarely addressed, for fear of being accused of anti-Semitism, mainly, and the striking Jewish force.

A simple look at the new American administration explicitly [shows this issue.] Here is the proposed new US Secretary of State (Anthony Blinken) of Jewish descent, and he will take over the Middle East issue and the Palestinian issue mainly. And here is Mr. Ron Klein, the Jew, who has been proposed to take over the position of chief of staff of the White House, which has wide powers. And here is the husband of US Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Douglas Craig Imhoff, of similar origins. And here is Alejandro Majoras as a proposal for the US Department of Homeland Security. On the proposed list is Janet Yellen, incoming Treasury Secretary, and many more.

This administration followed the path of successive US administrations that preceded it, as if the American nation had not given birth and the American womb was sterile. As if the new and old American administration had not escaped the issue of dual loyalty to American Jews, it decided to ignore it and sweep it under the rug.

This article will not be expanded to refer to all American Jews who held high positions in successive American administrations after World War II to the present day, as this indicates an inventory. The talk of Jared Kushner, Greenblatt, the Zionist Friedman and other aides of Donald Trump, is still buzzing in my ears. Before them was Dennis Ross' Jewish staff who served the days of Clinton and Obama in the late 1990s and the Camp David negotiations during the days of the late Abu Ammar and his famous position regarding the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

And here is Henry Kissinger, the American academic, deceitful Jew in the seventies, who manipulated Sadat and served Zionism with all his power in the 1973 war. There are many ambassadors, Jewish experts, and even doctors, who were recruited to serve Zionism under the banner of Judaism. Loyalty mixed, mingled, and American interest lost in the midst of dual loyalty.

Someone might say, the Jews are a cultured, liberal, educated and democratic group, so why is this strange, envy and jealousy of their appointment in the American administrations? Or do Muslims, Catholics, Hindus and Brahmins not enjoy such opportunities, and no one is surprised? Didn't Ilhan Omar of Somali origin and Rashida Talib of Palestinian origin succeed in the US congressional elections? Didn't people of Asian roots succeed in the US Congress? Wasn't Rima Dudin appointed to the legislative department in the White House in the incoming Biden administration? Absolutely, it is true, but the two matters are completely different.

There is no dispute that the Jewish community, regardless of its political leanings, holds high positions in the American community, in European society and outside official administrations. Many of the most prominent American lawyers are Jews, and among the most prominent American jurists are Jews, and law school graduates are Jews. Many of the owners of capital are Jews, and many of the print, audiovisual media are Jewish, and many university professors in the various colleges are Jews. But the Jews are not the same, some of them are liberal, some of them socialist, some of them are communists, and some of them are religious extremists, and some of them are secular and so on. Consequently, their positions are different on the issues at hand, but they converge greatly if the issue relates to Israel, its policies, and the Palestinians. Here emerges the issue of dual loyalty to America and Israel, and the extent of the attraction of the conflict around it.

The Jews occupy high positions and even participate in the American decision-making. As for the [Muslim] names mentioned, they do not play a role at all in American politics, neither from near or far, in addition to the absence of a Palestinian Arab lobby that affects American policy. Even the Palestinian daughter of Dudin, whose work is secondary and far from creating American policy, and so is the Palestinian Rashida Tlaib. Add to that the fact the Jew has a state whose interests intersect with the interests of the United States of America and thus creates for him a problem of conflict of interests. Perhaps the case of the American spy Jonathan Pollard is still fresh in minds.

This happened in the recent past during the Camp David meeting at the end of the term of Democratic US President Clinton. Dennis Ross, the American Jew, vehemently objected to the position of the late Saeb Erekat regarding the alleged Temple. And President Clinton began to complain and incite against this basic Palestinian doctrinal, realistic, historical, and religious position and support Dennis Ross and the Protestant Christian mentality in general. Ross even asked Clinton to reference a book from the White House library that supported the details of the alleged temple. It is as though the American Jew will support the Israeli proposal in the end, even if it contradicts the American interest; rather he will prevail over it, even though he must basically prevail over the American interest and achieve international peace and security.

....Can we protest against the appointment of an American Jewish cabinet member, refuse to meet with him, or boycott him, because of conflict of interest and double allegiance? An American Jew, whose Jewishness means he holds Israeli citizenship completely under Israeli law, also holds an American passport at the same time. Is this not only a contradiction, but a contradiction that must be avoided?

Neutrality, objectivity, and independence are conditions that must be met in every honest broker, so how can these conditions be fulfilled in a Jewish-American diplomat who is Israeli by default, even if he is a liberal or leftist? Or do these conditions apply to all peoples of the world except the Jews ?!

This is not anti-Semitism, but rather sheds light on the issue of conflict of interest, and the supposed dual loyalty of American Jews, regardless of their inclinations, and turning a blind eye to conflicts of interest.

One cannot serve two masters nor gather two swords in one sheath !!

One thing is certain: No Palestinian will publicly object to this antisemitism.

And it is articles like these that motivate anti-Zionist American Jews - leftists that Shaban throws into the same dual loyalty bucket - to redouble their efforts to prove that they aren't like those other Jews, that Palestinians should love them because they are moral and pro-Palestinian and support terrorists like Leila Khaled and Rasmea Odeh and boycott Israel even more than Palestinians do.

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.

Cancel culture (The Real Jerusalem Streets)

Here we go again. Another day and another example of the new censorship spreading due to progressive thought police.

The publisher of a book about cancel culture by Julie Burchill has cancelled it after the writer was accused of Islamophobia on Twitter. Little, Brown said that Burchill comments were "not defensible from a moral or intellectual standpoint" and "crossed a line with regard to race and religion."

Cancel culture and mob rule of the politically correct woke are taking over. Intolerance to ideas by progressive ideology coupled with a desire to seek retribution by ostracizing those not sharing those views has become a threat to democracy and freedom of speech. According to Robert King, presently serving as the United States Department of Education assistant secretary of postsecondary education, cancel culture is "dangerous to our democracy when administrators cave to the mob." The tradition of vigorous debate and discussion, at the core of American values is being silenced by those who do not agree with you and is stifling freedom of speech.

"Those who cancel ideas, and burn books, end up canceling people and burning them as well" stated Reed Rubinstein, Lead General Counsel for the US Department of Education in his introductory remarks in an online Dept of Ed event titled "What is to Be Done? Confronting a Culture of Censorship on Campus."

Academic freedom based on the Bill of Rights which provides for freedom of speech is being challenged. The emerging prominence of social progressives shuts out not only conservative voices but an academic's ability to express his or her opinions.

Kristina Arriaga, Commissioner to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom showed how laws become inefficient and useless if not culturally supported. We are told being a dissenter is actually a threat to the tribe, a threat to our way of life. It was reported that 63% of Americans are afraid to speak their mind. Polarization is growing stronger. It is a vital human right to speak out. No one can take what is in our minds and hearts away from us. "Silencing is not good" emphasized Arriaga, the human rights expert.

The first night of Hanukkah Ivanka Trump posted a family photo to say "Happy Chanukah from our family to yours!" In response, the tweet received hundreds of vicious, threatening comments.

The hateful comments on the Hanukkah tweet are one recent example of the vitriol, Ivanka has received from strangers on social media.

A Tennessee lawyer was forced from his position by a state board because a lawyer he was investigating called him an "anti-Muslim bigot."

A meme against Joe Biden roused a complaint against a veteran elementary principal who was then removed by the school board. Postings on her private social media, including support for the police and Republican candidates were reasons given to force her resignation.

A former Supervisor of Special Education in Pennsylvania said she was forced to resign after reposting criticism of Black Lives Matter on Facebook for ignoring black conservatives, black unborn babies, and black police officers.

"The animosity against ‘Israel’ on campus, used to mask animosity against Jewishness did not cease, even as the classroom was replaced with the Zoom call," wrote Blake Flayton in "The Hate that Can't Be Contained" for Tablet. His article contains a long list of incidents against Jewish students in leading universities from the East Coast to the West.

In response to US university professors and students' harassment, the US Department of Education recently initiated a hotline to report abuse and seek assistance. The new hotline freespeech@ed.gov is open to emails for reporting abuse on campus.

Cancel culture mobs have taken down statues of Southern Civil War leaders along Monument Avenue and vandalized General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, VA. In Boston, Abraham Lincoln was a victim of the politically correct ideology.

Rewriting history by removing "offending" books from library shelves and scrubbing names from buildings has already occurred. Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again" is no longer available in a Massachusetts library. Flannery O'Connor, Mark Twain, and others are being banned. American literature is being lost to political correctness.

In 1949, English novelist George Orwell published 1984, as a dystopian social science fiction novel. Orwell developed in his work the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, repression in society, and the role of truth and fact in politics.

The Ministry of Truth in 1984 controls information - news, education, entertainment, and the arts. By correcting historical records to agree with Big Brother's pronouncements the Party is able to manipulate what is seen to be true.

Barricade the streets. Defund the police. Let mobs rule and governments cave under pressure.

Daily it appears we are taking another step towards 1984 being a prophetic vision and not a work of fiction.

Will the media and social media manipulate what we are allowed to see and say?

Will the new US administration hold off threats to free speech and democracy?

12/17 Links Pt2: Stop pretending that anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitis; Chief Rabbi launches scathing attack on China’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Stop pretending that anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism

One reason is that these anti-Zionists are, as Beinart claimed, speaking the language of the progressives who dominate the political and social culture of much of the American Jewish world. The other is that, as we have recently seen with respect to critical race theory and cancel culture, marginal ideas and movements that succeed first in academia are likely to eventually make inroads, if not to dominate the media and popular culture.

Among the infuriating aspects of this debate is the pretense on the part of groups like JVP and their fellow travelers that was aired at their Dec. 15 panel was that they are merely “critiquing” Israel. Mere criticism of Israel’s government isn’t anti-Semitism. What the BDS movement and anti-Zionists want is not a different Israeli government or changed policies. It wants to eliminate Israel and replace it with a binational state in which Jews will lose both sovereignty and their ability to defend themselves against hostile neighbors and Islamist terror groups that believe Jews have no right to a state in their ancient homeland, no matter where its borders are drawn.

Beinart, who only a few years ago was posing as the leading light of “liberal Zionism,” now advocates for just such an outcome and says those like Tlaib, who share his new goal, seek human rights for everyone. He says that when Tlaib and Hill advocate for “Palestine from the river to the sea,” they mean the Israeli Jews who live in between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea no harm—or at least no harm as long as they surrender without a struggle.

Put that way, the harm, as well as the denial of Jewish rights and history that are part of their agenda, is clear. But when you state your case, no matter how awful its goal, in the language of progressives, you are on the same wavelength of a Jewish community that prioritizes the universalist element of Jewish identity over its parochial elements. Speaking up for a Jewish state can sound vaguely racist to young progressive ears, especially when they are—as is the case with so many American Jews—ignorant about the conflict and most of Jewish history except for basic knowledge about the Holocaust. In a largely assimilated community, the sense of Jewish peoplehood that previous generations took for granted is now very much up for grabs.

Equally important is the need for us not to underestimate the way academia can influence other sectors of society. Not long ago, the sort of “cancel culture” in which those who questioned critical race theory and radical notions about history were silenced was only something that happened on college campuses. But as we’ve learned this year, the leap from such outrages being solely a way to protect hypersensitive and intolerant college students from hearing opposing views has gone mainstream.

Similarly, hatred for Israel and anti-Zionism used to be a marginal phenomenon that was rarely heard in mainstream media. But Beinart now preaches Israel’s elimination on the opinion pages of the Times and on CNN. He’s far from alone in that respect. And people like Tlaib and her colleague Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who might have been canceled and shunned by respectable media outlets for their trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes about the dual loyalty of American Jews and buying American legislators in Congress to lobby for Israel, as well as support for BDS, are welcomed everywhere and treated as their party’s rock stars rather than the hatemongers they are.

Human Rights Icon Natan Sharansky Calls Out Progressives Who View Jews as ‘Oppressors’

Renowned human rights activist Natan Sharansky called out on Wednesday progressives who viewed Jews as “oppressors,” saying such an outlook contradicted the concept of individual justice.

The former Soviet refusenik was a featured speaker at the “Dismantling Antisemitism: Jews Talk Justice” online event hosted by the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement (CAM), In collaboration with the Tel Aviv Institute.

The forum was organized as a response to a controversial Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) webinar on antisemitism held a day earlier that featured several participants, including US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Professor Marc Lamont Hill, who have themselves perpetuated Jew-hatred.

“Today, there is an attempt to hijack the cause of human rights from Jews by so-called progressives,” Sharanksy remarked. “For the so-called progressives, all the world is the fight between ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed.’”

“’Oppressors; are always wrong and ‘oppressed’ are always right,” he continued. “There is no such thing as individual justice, it has to be for the group.”

Sharansky elaborated, “Jews are guilty of belonging to the wrong state, the State of Israel, the wrong group. Jews are accused as a group and Israel is accused as a Jewish State.”

“It is not the struggle for human rights, it is not the struggle for individual freedom,” he declared.

Also taking part in Wednesday’s event was US Assistant Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Ellie Cohanim, who highlighted a “pernicious new form of anti-Semitism” that sought to negate the history of Jews from Arab countries and Iran.

“This erasure of history allows the accusation that Jews enjoy white privilege and are neo-colonialists,” she noted.

Antisemitism Webinar Features Pro-Palestinian Activists Railing Against Jews and Israel

Lamont Hill and Tlaib both previously expressed support for Palestinian freedom “from the river to the sea,” which is commonly used as a call to destroy Israel. As the last panelist to speak, Tlaib, who supports the BDS movement, cried on-screen when talking about how she has been “demonized” and accused of being antisemitic.

“Tell everybody, I don’t hate you. I absolutely love you,” she said. “If anybody comes through my doors or through any forum to try to push antisemitism forward, you will hear me being loud with my bullhorn to tell them to get the hell out.”

She added, “I hope all our Jewish neighbors know we’re in this together.”

The night’s moderator, JVP’s deputy director Rabbi Alissa Wise, told viewers that she is “instinctively repulsed” by the idea that Jews need Israel “as somewhere to go” when they are next at risk of genocide. She also said that a “free Palestine is required if we want a free world for everyone, including Jews.”

She later stated that those who want to call solidarity with Palestinians anti-Israel are “using antisemitism to manufacture hate.”

“People who want to maintain Israeli government control over Palestinian lives and land play a very dangerous game when they call solidarity with Palestinians a form of anti-Jewish hatred. It’s not antisemitism to see that Israel has its boot on Palestinians,” she stated. “Antisemitism is a tool used to manufacture fear and division.”

Roytman-Dratwa said “this event was an attempt to turn reality on its head. It is nothing short of dangerous hypocrisy by those who have stoked antisemitism to claim that they themselves are serious voices in tackling Jew-hatred. Nobody, including self-styled progressives such as Representative Tlaib and Professor Hill, should be allowed to dictate to Jews what constitutes antisemitism. They simply would not treat any other minority group in the same way.”

Chief Rabbi launches scathing attack on China’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims

The Chief Rabbi has launched a scathing attack on China’s persecution of its Uyghur Muslim minority, in an intervention that will add further pressure on governments, companies and consumers to take action.

Writing in The Guardian on Tuesday, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said that, having heard several accounts from Uyghurs who had escaped, “and reflecting upon the deep pain of Jewish persecution throughout the ages, I feel compelled to speak out”.

He said speaking out was a duty, particularly at Chanukah, “when we recall attempts ‘to cause the Jewish faith to be forgotten and to prevent Jews from keeping their traditions’… These words refer back to the cruel oppression of Jews”.

Mirvis said the “weight of evidence” of persecution was “overwhelming,” with Uyghurs “beaten if they refuse to renounce their faith, women forced to abort their unborn children then sterilised to prevent them from becoming pregnant again”.

Lamenting “forced imprisonment, the separation of children from their parents and a culture of intimidation and fear,” he said in his discussions with senior figures he had “been left feeling that any improvement in the desperate situation is impossible”.

He added that, growing up in Apartheid South Africa, and ministering in Ireland during the Troubles, ‘impossible’ was a word he often heard – and in both cases, wrongdoing and conflict came to an end.

“Last week marked the 72nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… That same year, the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was also adopted,” he wrote.

Chanukah Music Video Night 8: Last Night of Hanukkah (Duck the Piano Wire) plus 8 Days and Nights (David Chester)

I found this melancholy song on YouTube. Even though it has hardly any views, but it is original and fits in well with this year of Covid.

And here is something more upbeat:

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"Israel racing against time to liquidate Jerusalem"

Egyptian news site Masr al-Arabiya has an interesting headline: "Under Arab sponsorship, the occupation is racing against time to liquidate Jerusalem."

It gives two examples of how Israel is doing this.

The first is that Israeli police used loudspeakers that they installed near the Temple Mount for the first time last Friday. What did they say? They encouraged worshipers to socially distance and use masks.

But, you see, that is only the beginning. Muslims are convinced that soon they will use the loudspeakers "to transmit instructions in Hebrew to the [Jewish] intruders and to conduct Talmudic prayers."

The second example of how Israel is supposedly liquidating Jerusalem?

Jews supposedly brought Chanukah menorahs to the Lions Gate of the Old City, and the Majlis (Council) Gate on the northwest end outside the Temple Mount, and a UAE/Bahraini delegation helped light the menorah at the Kotel.

"For the first time in modern history, we find that some Arab countries and regimes help the occupation to have a foothold within the borders of Al-Aqsa," whined a spokesperson.

The article also claims that a woman who brought her child to the Temple Mount allowed him to relieve himself under a tree since there are no restroom facilities for Jews there.

It appears that liquidating Jerusalem is much easier than one would think.

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Audience Can't Believe 2020 Writers Think They Find Another Last-Minute Israel Election Drama Believable (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Israeli ballot Tel Aviv, December 17 - Observers expecting something original out of the ongoing Israeli political morass voiced their disapproval this week over yet another predictable twist in the narrative, noting that talk of an eleventh-hour deal to thwart early elections could be spotted months away in the story arc, and that the writers have rested on their laurels of late, relying on hackneyed devices instead of genuine creativity.

Likud and Blue and White representatives met again Thursday to hammer out a deal that would obviate a new parliamentary contest in March, less than a year after the previous elections and the fourth such contest in two years. Audiences groaned at the development, with the dominant sentiment among them that whether or not elections occur soon, the writers of 2020 have apparently run out of ideas and have fallen back on recycling tired tropes that surprise exactly no one.

"This is the least shocking thing to happen since the last Trump Twitter diatribe," lamented Ramat Gan viewer and vocal critic Yariv Ben-Yakir. "It's tiresome at this point. Unfortunately we're a captive audience, and we don't really have a choice if we're going to pay attention to politics. The writing team needs to either buckle down and do serious work or just quit. Not a single original idea since like 2012."

"Having Naftali Bennet performing strongly in polls a couple of months ago could have been a promising plot element," acknowledged Ashdod resident Alex Dobrov. "No one on the left, or even in the center, could make a credible challenge to Netanyahu for claim of the Knesset's largest faction and the right to try forming a government first. Bennett, from the right, with Ayelet Shaked at his back, could have mounted a believable campaign to unseat Bibi from the right. But then the writers went absolutely nowhere with that. It had so much dramatic potential, and lent an element of unpredictability that audiences would have oved, but then the writers' cowardice must have taken over, because that plot line disappeared in a hurry. It's too bad."

Viewers have also refused to take seriously the Likud splinter faction now slated to run on an independent list under longtime Netanyahu rival Gid'on Sa'ar. The New Hope Party has performed well in public opinion polls, but most viewers harbor no illusions that after the next elections the party would not quietly reabsorb into Likud, with our without Netanyahu at the helm.

12/17 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Trump's Legacy of Peace; Iran's Plan to Topple Arab Leaders; With arms embargo lifted, Iran races to upgrade its arsenal

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Trump's Legacy of Peace

For 72 years, U.S. presidents sought to achieve peace between Israel and the Arab world. For 72 years, they largely failed.

What for so long eluded presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama seems to have come effortlessly to President Donald Trump. In the space of just four months, together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has achieved four peace deals between Israel and Arab states—twice the number achieved by all his predecessors combined. Last Thursday, Trump announced Morocco has joined the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Sudan in the Abraham Accords normalization agreements with Israel. Three or four more Arab states are likely to join the circle of peace in Trump's final weeks in office.

Not only has Trump brought more peace to the Middle East, more comprehensively and faster than all of his predecessors combined, but he made it look easy. Israel's ties with its Abraham Accords partners are expanding massively by the day. Tourists from the UAE are streaming into the country. And with one in seven Israeli Jews descended from the Moroccan diaspora, the potential for business and cultural ties between Israel and Morocco is almost limitless.

Trump's sundry Middle East peace deals are humiliating for his predecessors. Not only did they fail where Trump has succeeded, but they insisted that his achievements were impossible.

For instance, John Kerry, who as Barack Obama's secretary of state oversaw the administration's failed Middle East peace efforts, insisted back in 2016: "There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world."

Speaking at the Brookings Institution, Kerry continued emphatically: "I want to make that very clear with all of you. I've heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying, 'Well, the Arab world is a different place now. We just have to reach out to them. We can work some things with the Arab world and we'll deal with the Palestinians.' No. No, no, no and no. ...There will be no advanced and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace. Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality."

The "several prominent politicians in Israel" certainly included Netanyahu. It was during the Obama administration that Netanyahu began developing close strategic ties with a number of Arab states—particularly Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The sides came together due to mutual distress over the negative impact of Obama's Middle East policies.

What was it about Obama's policies that brought them together?

Jonathan S. Tobin: In praise of diplomatic quid pro quos

The ability of the Trump foreign-policy team to succeed in doing something its predecessors failed to do was based on two factors. One was that its members were not blinded by ideology when it came to Israel and the Palestinians, as were the Obama, Clinton and both Bush administrations. The other was that they took a more openly transactional approach to diplomacy.

The foreign-policy establishment likes to dress up agreements based on mutual interests in high-sounding language about principles. But the Trump team, which was composed to a large extent of people like White House senior adviser/presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner with a background in real estate, didn't get bogged down in such meaningless and ultimately counterproductive exercises, and stuck to dealing with the world as it is rather than as they'd like it to be. They strove to make deals that made sense for both sides. And as a result of what some consider a crass rather than a principled approach, they advanced the cause of peace far more than any of the experts who mocked them as shallow amateurs.

With American foreign policy about to fall back into the hands of Obama alumni, some are lamenting the Trump administration's achievements in expanding the circle of governments with normal relations with Israel as boxing them and ignoring their obsession with forcing a two-state solution that the Palestinians don't want. Instead, the Biden team should learn from their predecessors. More Trump-style quid pro quos – and less magical thinking and expert ideological condescension from Washington – will make the world a safer place.

What Happens to Israel When Democrats Are in the White House?

Biden and his team have been harshly critical of Trump’s symbolic efforts to tilt U.S. policy toward the Jewish state, such as moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and allowing the word “Jerusalem” to appear on the passports of Jews born in that city. But symbolic actions can have tangible effects. The muted reaction to the embassy move throughout the Middle East revealed the hollowness of the long-standing threat that the “Arab street” would greet any thaw with Israel with violence and revolution. Given how low the cost was, and the fact that the embassy move was directed by U.S. law, it is hard to imagine that a President Biden would expend any political capital on an effort to return the embassy to Tel Aviv. And indeed, Biden has indicated he does not plan to do so.

Another traditional lever used against Israel is U.S. military aid. Biden has both supported aid and threatened cutting it to Israel in the past, but aid to Israel is a bipartisan policy. The current levels are set out in a Memorandum of Understanding established under the Obama administration, and the Biden team has said it does not plan to make that aid conditional. Even more telling, U.S. aid is no longer the existential necessity for Israel that it once was—so threatening to limit it no longer provides the leverage over Israeli decision-making that it once did.

But it is very likely that the Biden administration will put more rhetorical pressure on Israel to strike a deal with the Palestinians. It’s not clear, however, what policy leverage the U.S. has to push Israel in this regard while the Middle East landscape is changing—or whether the Palestinians will even consider some kind of a deal in any case. Still, Biden could, as Obama did, support UN resolutions critical of Israel. He could also sternly lecture Israeli officials, as he has intermittently throughout his career. Biden is on the record unambiguously about restoring the U.S.–Iran nuclear deal.

Looking at all of this, one can discern the outlines of a policy framework toward Israel—call it Bidenism. It will be supportive of continued aid to Israel and unlikely to publicly question the wisdom of such aid. Rhetorically, Biden will repeatedly present himself as a friend of Israel and of Prime Minister Netanyahu, even as he questions whether Netanyahu is too far to the right and as he exerts private pressure for concessions with the Palestinians.

Bidenism will seek a return to the problematic Iran deal in some form but will continue to profess its concerns about Iran getting nuclear weapons and will be unlikely to try to stop Israel from allying with Sunni Gulf states as a counterweight to Iran. Bidenism will not seek to move the U.S. Embassy from Jerusalem—but it won’t encourage other nations to move their embassies from Tel Aviv. And Bidenism will likely be muddled when it comes to the woke left’s intersectional hostility toward Israel—willing to condemn certain outrageous and anti-Semitic statements but ever careful not to offend and, on occasion, will even apologize if its condemnations produce too much blowback.

Israel’s relationship with the outgoing administration was extraordinary. We shall not see its like again. The question going forward is whether the Biden administration will take the recent successes into account as it makes its own way in the Middle East—or whether the powerful urge to restore the status quo ante of the Obama administration will set the course for the next four years.

The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) is a neutral and independent third party whose mission it is to track, expose, and combat misinformation, deception, manipulation, and hate across social media channels.

The NCRI just released a report on online antisemitic conspiracy theories that has the best methodology I've yet seen in quantifying trends on social media, including graphics:

In order to reveal the coded language and double meanings of anti-Jewish conspiracy memes across four online platforms, we used a mixture of open source (manual) social media investigation, machine learning/natural language processing, algorithms for facial recognition, optical character recognition, timeline analysis, and a hashtag frequency and ranking analysis. For our dataset, we collected over 237 million comments, from three extremist communities:4chan, Gab, Reddit’s The_Donald, as well as from Twitter, and 10 million meme-images from these communities. Our Twitter sample of memes was collected only from Russian trolls.

The report is very fair in identifying right- and left-wing antisemitism, and it describes when criticism of Israel veers into antisemitic territory. It includes this brilliant description of antisemitism, and how its popular memes can be traced back to Biblical Pharaoh in Egypt:

Antisemitism is the most enduring, intact and widely circulated conspiracy theory of all time. It can also be viewed as a collection of conspiracy theories that are always adaptable to any group’s fears and moral concerns. Beginning with the biblical narrative and continuing throughout history, up to and including today, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories comprise a set of themes including (but not limited to) deception and pretense; global dominance; dual loyalty; greed; betrayal; genocidal bloodlust; supernatural evil; appropriation of land, identity, and privilege; and the replacement of those in power with Jews and other immigrants and minorities. Our opening epigraph lays out an ancient blueprint for antisemitic themes—themes that our computational analysis finds on social media today.

From Exodus 1:8, for example:

A new king [political leadership] arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph [the Jewish alien who became a powerful and influential government insider]. And he said to his people [spreading antisemitic disinformation], “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us [fear of a Jewish conspiracy to control Egypt]. Let us [leadership and populace] deal shrewdly with them, so that they [Jewish outsiders living among us] may not increase [fear of replacement]; otherwise in the event of war [us versus them] they [outsiders] may join our enemies [fear of Jews colluding with foreigners] in fighting against us [fear of genocide] and rise from the ground [displeasure at the idea of Jews rising above their marginalized and oppressed status.]

The authors then map these conspiracy theory memes across different antisemitic groups, in the best charts I've ever seen on this topic:

This chart shows the (total) overlap of these conspiracy theories between the Right and the Left as well as with Islamists:

The paper is filled with cogent observations.

Here is a brief, excellent description of why calling Israel an apartheid state is antisemitism:

An analysis of hashtags associated with “apartheid” on Twitter from November 4th–November18th found Israel/Palestine to be single largest association for the term for Twitter overall during this time period. Apartheid is defined as the systematic deprivation by the state of the rights and protections from its resident citizens based on ethnic features. The status of the West Bank is under dispute and the Palestinians who reside there are not citizens of Israel—the label of apartheid is thus, at best, controversial and contested in this circumstance. At worst, it is plausibly viewed as the rhetoric of demonization and denunciation.

However, while accusations of apartheid are not necessarily evidence of antisemitic discrimination, millions of Roma who are citizens in Western industrialized countries suffer from systemic discrimination in education and housing and suffer in refugee camps across Europe—a condition the Open Society Foundation’s director of Roma affairs terms an “undeclared apartheid.” Similarly, the Muslim Rohingya in Mayanmar suffer recognizable conditions of apartheid and currently investigations into genocide are under way. Yet in connection to apartheid, these groups don’t even merit honorable mention on Twitter. This suggests that the use of apartheid finds a ready, political market—not for those concerned with apartheid, but for feeding what Jeffery Goldberg terms a “pornographic interest”in Jewish moral failure.

Here is the beginning of the paper's conclusion:

Both “Soros” and “Israel” appear to be signals that emerge during transitions of power to delineate ingroups and outgroups. To extremists on the far right, Soros is an exemplar of the evils of globalism, international corruption, and Jewish corporate influence, and represents a moral threat. Invoking the Soros conspiracy theory signals moral virtue to white supremacists and members of other like-minded groups. To extremists on the far left, Israel is an exemplar of oppression, racism, white supremacy, and colonialism, and represents a moral threat. Invoking the Israeli conspiracy theory signals moral virtue to social justice advocates and members of other like-minded groups.

People can have reasonable disagreements with the ways in which George Soros has used his vast wealth to advance politically progressive causes, and can legitimately criticize the ways in which the government of Israel has managed its relationships with and treatment of the Palestinian population. Nonetheless, by capitalizing on these reasonable and legitimate criticisms and disagreements, propagandists paint Jews as players in conspiracy theories that disseminate anti-Jewish disinformation and spread antisemitism online. The best propaganda often is based on distortions of truths thereby giving it a facade of credibility. The Jew, whether represented as a person or nation, is the exemplar of moral pollution and is used to both embody moral threat, and through the choice of Jewish individual or State, signal the ingroup to which a person belongs.

It also includes recommendations that include this very important point about the potential pitfalls of how ethnic studies curricula can unwittingly be used to promote antisemitic conspiracy theories:

Our current environment is one in which many school systems are developing ethnic studiescurricula. It is essential that, at a minimum, lessons about Jews do not disseminate antisemitic themes of Jewish privilege and power. Instead, lesson plans must help students recognize antisemitic disinformation and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories around “privilege.” The Jewish intersection is the intersection for which the discussion of privilege itself heralds catastrophic and genocidal historical outcomes. Understanding the long history of these themes in undermining not just the acceptance of Jews as equal members of society, but the acceptance of differences in general, can enrich the conversation about privilege and the virtues and values of a liberal, pluralist democracy.

This is a very important work of scholarship on antisemitism in only 25 pages, including appendices. It is a must-read.

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EU upholds right of states to effectively ban Jewish ritual slaughter - sanctioning discrimination using the law. (But hunting is perfectly OK.)

A Belgian law that prohibits slaughter of animals without stunning - which renders any slaughter afterwards to be meaningless from the perspective of Jewish law -was upheld by the Court of Justice of the European Union today.

Its legal reasoning is a textbook example of how to be biased while using the law to justify it.

The opinion frames the tension between animal and religious rights correctly:

This question leads the Court, for the third time, 2 to seek a balance between freedom of religion, guaranteed by Article 10 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (‘the Charter’), and animal welfare, as set out in Article 13 TFEU and given specific expression to in Regulation No 1099/2009.

Then is describes the logic of the ruling:

As regards, specifically, the question whether the decree respects those fundamental rights, the Court points out that ritual slaughter falls within the scope of the freedom to manifest religion, guaranteed in Article 10(1) of the Charter. By requiring, in the context of ritual slaughter, reversible stunning, contrary to the religious precepts of Jewish and Muslim believers, the decree thus entails a limitation on the exercise of the right of those believers to the freedom to manifest their religion. In order to assess whether such a limitation is permissible, the Court finds, first of all, that the interference with the freedom to manifest religion resulting from the decree is indeed provided for by law and, moreover, respects the essence of Article 10 of the Charter, since it is limited to one aspect of the specific ritual act of slaughter, and that act of slaughter is not, by contrast, prohibited as such.

This is blatant doubletalk. It is like saying, "We aren't prohibiting Jews from going to synagogue on their Sabbath - we just require them to drive there. So we really aren't violating freedom of religion."

In its examination of the proportionality of the limitation, the Court concludes that the measures contained in the decree allow a fair balance to be struck between the importance attached to animal welfare and the freedom of Jewish and Muslim believers to manifest their religion. In that regard, it states, first, that the obligation to use reversible stunning is appropriate for achieving the objective of promoting animal welfare. Secondly, as regards the necessity of the interference, the Court emphasises that the EU legislature intended to give each Member State a broad discretion in the context of the need to reconcile the protection of the welfare of animals when they are killed and respect for the freedom to manifest religion. As it is, a scientific consensus has emerged that prior stunning is the optimal means of reducing the animal’s suffering at the time of killing. Thirdly, as regards the proportionality of that interference, the Court observes, first of all, that the Flemish legislature relied on scientific research and that it sought to give preference to the most up-to-date method of killing that is authorised. It points out, next, that that legislature forms part of an evolving societal and legislative context, which is characterised by an increasing awareness of the issue of animal welfare.

Quick question: if animal welfare is of such paramount importance, then shouldn't all animal slaughter be banned? Isn't raising animals specifically for being slaughtered, no matter how humanely, a violation of the so-moral European sensitivity to animal welfare?

In short, why is it OK to limit the ability of Jews and Muslims to eat meat and not all Belgians?

The ruling is implicitly drawing the line that the way Christians raise and eat animals is moral, and the way Jews and Muslims do the same thing is immoral, based on a "science" that says that one method is somewhat more humane. How much more - 10%? 40%? It doesn't matter, as long as European Christians can continue to enjoy their Christmas ham. Banning that is unthinkable.

And it is not as if Belgian slaughterhouses that use stunning are humane. This article and video shows one that is horrific - and legal, of course, under moral Belgian laws. (The screenshot on the right shows a pig getting repeatedly stunned because the first time didn't actually cause unconsciousness.)

That proves as much as anything that animal rights are not at all what animates these restrictions on ritual slaughter.

The hypocrisy doesn't end there.

The court ruling states that animal welfare is of paramount importance - there's science behind the use of stunning as being the best method for slaughtering. We must minimize animal pain, and it is worth inconveniencing Jews and Muslims to uphold that moral imperative!

But then the last part of the ruling shows that animal welfare is suddenly not nearly as important as the previous paragraph implies:

In addition, the Court upholds the validity of Regulation No 1099/2009 in the light of the principles of equality, non-discrimination and cultural, religious and linguistic diversity, as guaranteed by the Charter. The fact that Regulation No 1099/2009 authorises Member States to take measures such as compulsory stunning in the context of ritual slaughter, but contains no similar provision governing the killing of animals in the context of hunting and recreational fishing activities or during cultural or sporting events, is not contrary to those principles.

In that regard, the Court points out that cultural and sporting events result at most in a marginal production of meat which is not economically significant. Consequently, such events cannot reasonably be understood as a food production activity, which justifies their being treated differently from slaughtering. The Court draws the same conclusion with regard to hunting and recreational fishing activities. Those activities take place in a context where conditions for killing are very different from those employed for farmed animals.

Hunting is different - it isn't food production, so European Christians can torture animals all they want as long as they call it recreational.

Suddenly, science and morality and animal rights don't matter. There are technical reasons that humanely slaughtering an animal with a knife sharp enough to cut a hair lengthwise is proscribed, while shooting an animal in the leg and letting it bleed out for hours is perfectly OK.

Perhaps the solution is for Belgian Jews to turn ritual slaughter into a sport, where teams of shochtim compete to see which one can slaughter the most animals in an hour and families can cheer them on. After all, killing animals is fine for recreational purposes, right? The entrance fee would be high but the meat would be given to the audience for free afterwards.

Would the EU allow that activity, or would it come up with a technical distinction allowing killing animals with bullets and disallowing anything the Jews could eat? This ruling already shows the answer - Jewish and Muslim rights are less important than the rights of good, white Europeans to enjoy their hunting and their meat.

Whether the excuses given for discrimination are based on pseudo-science or on "law," in the end they are all nothing but excuses for what is fundamentally bigotry.

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Al Manar, a Hezbollah mouthpiece in Lebanon, writes:

Netanyahu Blackmails Lebanon, Warns Int’l Oil Firms against Investing in Lebanese Seashore before Border Talks Reach Solution: Haaretz
The Zionist newspaper Haaretz reported that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned the international oil firms against signing any investment contracts with the Lebanese authorities to excavate the seashore gas resources before the indirect UN-sponsored talks between Lebanon and the Zionist entity reach an agreement on the marine demarcation.

Netanyahu tried to blackmail the Lebanese authorities by saying that it is illogical for Lebanon to keep tens of billion dollars unused amid its economic crisis.

Lebanon needs money. It cannot get any energy revenue from sites that are in dispute because no energy company will spend millions to drill in an area where they might not have permission.

All of this is obvious, but Hezbollah calls it "blackmail."

And why can they not agree? The next paragraph explains it all:

Five rounds of indirect UN-sponsored talks between Lebanon and the Zionist enemy have been held in order to reach a final marine demarcation; however, the Israeli insistence on depriving Lebanon of around 2300 square kilometers of its territorial waters pushed the Lebanese delegation to reject any solution that denies the national rights.

When negotiations began, the disputed are was 860 square kilometers. Now, after several rounds of talks, Lebanon - instead of working towards compromise - changed its mind and decided to claim an additional 1440 km sq from Israel!

The Lebanese are attempting to claim some areas where Israel is already drilling, to help their bargaining position. They are the ones engaging in blackmail!

As always, Arab claims against Israel are projections of what the Arabs are doing themselves. And as has been the case with Israel enemies, their hate is so pathological that they happily would hurt themselves for the small chance of hurting Israel.

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Are Israeli Jews “Betraying” Americans by Liking Trump? (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

Here we go again. Another yawning gulf between Israelis and American Jews, “a rupture that threatens Jews everywhere, the trust between Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, and in the long run, Israel,” say Evan Morris and Dennis Jett.
It’s not bad enough that the Israeli religious establishment does not show respect for Reform “Judaism,” or that we can’t appreciate how much Barack Obama really “[had] our back,” or that we keep electing “right-wing” governments with Bibi Netanyahu as PM, or that we keep failing to understand how an enemy state in mortar range of our center of population and our single international airport would actually be good for us.
It’s much worse than any of that. In fact, we are “going off the rails” and have “betrayed our American cousins.”
We did this by preferring Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
Oh sure, Trump did what no American president cared to do, carried out the will of the Congress and moved the embassy to the capital of the Jewish state. Clinton, Bush, and Obama loved to talk about our “unbreakable relationship,” but when it came down to the legitimacy of our presence in Jerusalem, they religiously signed that waiver every six months. Trump even instructed the oft-antisemitic State Department to allow those born in Jerusalem to have “Jerusalem, Israel” on their passports. Compare that to the Obama Administration’s refusal to say what country Jerusalem was in – they even scrubbed “Jerusalem, Israel” from official websites.
No big deal, Morris and Jett said. “Trump is not a reliable ally and could never be … Given the right circumstance or perceived slight, Trump would turn on Israel.” So then Trump went and recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and sponsored the development of a peace plan that was for the first time based on reality, rather than Henry Kissinger’s 1974 promise to the Arabs to reverse the result of the 1967 war.
Trump did even more. He spurned the view that the Palestinians should be given unlimited aid regardless of their behavior, and enforced the Taylor Force act that demanded aid be reduced when it was used to pay terrorists. He ended the perpetual support for the descendants of the Arab refugees of 1948, and disproved the idea – expressed by John Kerry (ironic video) in 2016 – that appeasement of the Palestinians was a precondition for normalization with the larger Arab world.
And now, although already a lame duck, Trump continues to promote normalization between Israel and multiple Arab and Muslim countries. We’re still waiting for him to “turn on us.” Are you surprised that Israelis overwhelmingly prefer Trump to Biden, who promises to re-enter the Iran deal and go back to giving the Palestinians a free pass in an interminable “peace process?” How could it be otherwise?
Nevertheless Morris and Jett insist that Trump is Bad For The Jews. They say he represents “emerging Fascism.” And how do we know this? Because Trump “alternately excused and encouraged” “the white supremacists that marched in Charlottesville.” In fact, he did no such thing. The accusation is a perfect example of the Big Lie technique: it has been repeated countless times, and has now entered the realm of conventional wisdom. But it still isn’t true.
Morris and Jett say Trump supporters “promulgate conspiracy theories based on antisemitic lies.” Maybe some do, just like some of the remarkably vicious members of the American Left who are on the other side. Israelis are not in touch with the details of American politics, nor do we follow the swirling winds of accusations thrown at each other by the two sides. But I have yet to hear anything antisemitic from Trump himself.
Antisemitism is clearly burgeoning in America, and that is rightly a serious concern for American Jews. But the attempt to blame Trump for it – while ignoring the anti-Trump extremists like the Pittsburgh shooter, the Farrakhanists, the Black Hebrews, and the misozionist Left – is dangerously mistaken, despite its wholesale adoption by the Trump-hostile media.
Apparently Morris and Jett think as little of Netanyahu as they do of Trump, calling our PM “boorish” for waiting about 12 hours after other foreign leaders to congratulate Biden on the election. This is the cheapest shot imaginable, considering that the official announcement came on Shabbat, 7 November, and Netanyahu tweeted his congratulations on Sunday.
The piece concludes with an accusation that Israelis are “willing to ignore the very real threat to our democracy, to our way of life and safety, just to help advance [their] own parochial needs.” I admit to being struck almost dumb by this. The Iran deal and the conflict with the Palestinians could have existential consequences for Israel. America has enormous power and influence, which its presidents often wield in our region, sometimes to our great disadvantage, as in the case of President Obama. Israel, on the other hand, has little power to influence America; PM Netanyahu pulled out all the stops to derail the pernicious Iran deal, without success. Perhaps our concerns are “parochial,” but they are quite serious. And I remind them that Donald Trump received more votes than any previous American presidential candidate, even if he did not win the election.* So the vileness of Trump is not a forgone conclusion.
The entire article has an unfriendly, even threatening tone, as if to suggest that if we don’t fall in line with the 77% of American Jews who voted for Biden, we’ll be sorry.
The two authors are not just a pair of idiots, as the content of the article suggests. Morris is a specialist in biomedical engineering and radiology and a psychiatrist who teaches at Yale. Jett is a former ambassador who had a long career with the US State Department, and now teaches International Affairs at Penn State. Both were Fulbright scholars who worked in Israel.
But they share the arrogance of Americans who don’t understand the interests and apprehensions of Israelis, and who would prefer that we play our role as a banana republic that is an American satellite, quietly.
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* No, I’m not going to comment on whether the election was fair.