Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 18, 2021

02/18 Links Pt1: Iran's Soleimani set up centers to monitor Jews for Zionism; Time for a Palestinian Reckoning; Gantz Responds to Hezbollah Threats, Says in Case of War ‘Lebanon Will Shake’

From Ian:

Iran's Soleimani set up centers to monitor Jews for Zionism - report

The Iranian regime Islamic scholar Ahmed Abedi declared in a bombshell report in early February on Noor TV that the late IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani created centers to spy on Jews in the Islamic Republic.

"Regarding the Jews in this country who spy for Israel, [Soleimani] established centers for monitoring the Zionist spies. He established many such centers,” said Abedi, according to a transcription of the Iranian Noor TV broadcast by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an independent, nonpartisan press-monitoring organization.

The US military killed Soleimani in a January 2020 drone attack. Soleimani was the commander of the Quds force for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The US government accused Soleimani of being the architect of the murders of over 600 Americans in the Middle East. There is estimated to be less than 10,000 Persian Jews in Iran. Iran has a population of nearly 83 million.

JCPA: “The Yemeni Maneuver” – Biden Administration Gives a Free Pass to Iran

Iran has an interest in continuing the fighting in Yemen, which, since the Saudi-led Arab coalition forces were sent to the country has not led to any substantial change in the situation on the ground. The Houthis continue to control most of the territory they have captured, including the important Red Sea port city of Al-Hudaydah and the capital Sanaa. Beyond testing various weapons, the fighting allows Iran to continuously exhaust and attrite Saudi Arabia, its sworn Sunni rival.

The U.S. decision to remove the Houthis from the terror list and halt some Saudi military aid used to attack Houthi targets in Yemen with U.S.-made precision-guided munitions plays into Iran’s hands at the sensitive timing of the possibility of the United States rejoining the nuclear agreement. The decision raises doubt about the seriousness of the United States’ policy statements to “expand and strengthen” the Iran deal to address the issues of ballistic missiles and Iran’s “destabilizing actions in country after country” – two key issues in which Iran “specializes” and which it “exports” Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

A Test for the Biden Administration in Iraq as Well
To illustrate the depth of Iran’s dilemma for American reintroduced policy in the region, pro-Iranian Iraqi Shi’ite militia linked to Hizbullah-Iraq – Saraya Awlia al-Dam – claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on the Erbil Airport and the adjacent U.S. military base on February 16, 2021. Fragments at the target indicate that 24 Fajr-1 (107 mm) Iranian made rockets were fired. The U.S. Secretary of State denounced the “outrageous attack”10 in which a civilian contractor was killed, and a U.S. service member and five more contractors have been injured. Secretary Blinken acknowledged that in the past, Shiite militias under Iran’s control carried out similar attacks in Iraq, “but for now it is too early to determine who is behind the attack” and that “the incident is under investigation.”11

It is possible that the action is another part of the pressure being exerted by Iran on the United States in the region, and it puts the American administration to its first serious test regarding its willingness to use force against Iran and its allies in the area, alongside its intention to return to the framework of the nuclear agreement.

JINSA PodCast: Crisis in Yemen: Analysis of an Ongoing Civil War

There’s an ongoing crisis in Yemen, financed and fueled by Iran. The Houthi movement, formed around Yemen’s Zaidi Shia Muslim minority, has seen an opening to try to take control of the country amidst the disorganized Hadi government. Why did the Trump Administration designate the Houthis to be a terrorist organization, and why did the Biden Administration reverse this policy? What does Yemen’s civil war have to do with the Iran nuclear deal? All of these questions—and more—are answered in this week’s episode. Erielle interviews Mohammed Alyahya, the current Editor-in-Chief of Al Arabiya in English.

The Tikvah Podcast: Shany Mor on What Makes America’s Peace Processors Tick

The peace process between Israel and the Palestinians has in the last several decades sucked up more American attention, time, and resources than nearly any other conflict in the world. Presidents, cabinet secretaries, national-security officials, and diplomats have poured themselves into solving the problem. These resources have been expended not only because of how Americans perceived the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s strategic importance to the United States, but perhaps more so because it is a conflict that engages and symbolizes the way Americans see themselves acting in the world.

Despite that huge effort, Americans haven’t succeeded in bringing the Israelis and the Palestinians to any kind of settled arrangement. Furthermore, as the Israeli researcher Shany Mor wrote in this month’s essay in Mosaic, American policymakers seem insistent on returning to the same frameworks of analysis and strategy that have failed systematically time and again. Now Mor joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to explain what’s gone wrong, and to talk about why so many American peace processors think the way they do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Mohammed expelled Jewish Zionists from Medina because of their hypocrisy, deceit, miserliness and treachery"

Sudanese people have been far more ambivalent about peace with Israel than other recent Muslim nations, and their media has articles that are all over the place both pro and con.

This one is definitely con.

Al Intibaha is one of Sudan's most popular newspapers. It has an article by Nasr Madwan that starts off this way:

Hypocrisy, deceit, miserliness, treachery, and breach of vows are the characteristics of the Jewish Zionists, which caused Muhammad bin Abdullah, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, to expel them from Medina and swear by God that they will not share it with us Muslims.

He isn't antisemitic - he says that it was only the Jewish Zionists who Mohammed expelled from Medina!

Why are some of the disobedient who say that they are liberal and secular Muslims so eager to normalize relations with Israel with malice, cunning and deceiving the people?

...Why does this small group [of Sudanese leaders] invite the countries of the world to interfere in our affairs and blackmail us? The "international community" is the deceptive name of the terrorist Zionist society led by America that struck Japan with the atom bomb, then Vietnam with napalm, then Afghanistan with phosphorous, then Iraq and Syria with chemicals and dirty bombs... Hillary Clinton admitted that the US intelligence is the Antichrist at the end of time to kill all Muslims in the war of Armageddon to save the world from the Muslims and keep the Zionists alone happy on the earth. This is the belief in which the Rothschilds and their cohorts from the wealthy of America and the owners of large American companies have. ... America itself is the one that deports the poor of Europe to Palestine and convinces them that they are Jewish Zionists and that this is their land and they must live in it, and their living conditions improve and divide them into residents of first class Ashkenazim and second class Sephardim and Falasha blacks.

He goes on to say that the goal of forcing Sudan to make peace with Israel is to steal Sudanese natural resources (especially Port Sudan), and resources of the Arab world altogether, for the use of rich American Jews.

He also rails against the Israel/UAE plan to have UAE oil transported from Eilat to Ashdod and from there to Europe as a means to destroy the (Arab) Suez Canal. Eventually, Israel can build a pipeline through Saudi Arabia itself to make it even easier to transport oil to Europe, which would enrich the Jews at the expense of Arabs.

We believe that what is beneficial for us is the establishment of an Arab-Islamic coalition to confront the global Zionist alliance called the New World Order and the so-called international community, and we believe in the right of Islamic and Arab countries to possess weapons to deter the balance of weapons that Israel possesses.

These sorts of articles have become more rare in the Arab world since MEMRI and others have been shaming Arabs by publicizing their gross antisemitism. Sudan hasn't been shamed as much up until now, so this is a reminder of how many Arabs still think. People who claim that Arabs are only against Zionism and not Jews willfully ignore these facts and articles like this.

Traditional Arab antipathy towards Israel is because of antisemitism, not the other way around. And that goes for nearly all of the anti-Zionist rhetoric worldwide.

Palestinian vaccine hypocrisy continues

This week there was more of a circus when it came to COVID-19 vaccines to the Palestinians.

The Palestinians sent a truck with supposedly 1000 double-dose vaccines to the Beitunia crossing on Monday to go to Gaza. They didn't coordinate this with Israel and Israel didn't do anything.

So the Palestinians and the haters started the story that Israel was refusing to send vaccines to Gaza.

The Israeli government did indeed debate whether to allow the vaccines to enter Gaza, knowing that it would go to terrorists and knowing that Hamas still held Israelis and the bodies of soldiers. The haters spent all day Tuesday tweeting about how terrible it was that Gaza had to wait to get the vaccines.

But on Wednesday, Israel allowed the vaccines to go to Gaza. The delay was only a little more than a day.

Now that the vaccines are in Gaza, when will they be distributed?

According to Hamas officials, not until Sunday.

There were dozens of articles and hundreds of tweets complaining about a one day delay for vaccines to Gaza, but a four day delay to actually distribute them? No one says a word.

Because Israel cannot be blamed.

One would think that Gaza is the worst possible place to be for the coronavirus given the amount of media attention. Yet is has suffered only about 270 deaths per million, which is better than 64 countries. (The US is at 1460 deaths per million.)

Meanwhile, in another COVID-19 story that the Western media ignores, Palestinians in the West Bank are complaining about the favoritism surrounding who received the first shots distributed there. Besides the 200 doses that were sent over to Jordan seemingly to relatives of Palestinian officials, there were complaints that vaccines went to highly placed Palestinian officials, tribal leaders, clerics and media professionals ahead of health workers.

The "pro-Palestinian" crowd is curiously silent about this.

Another development today is that Israel announced it intends to vaccinate 120,000 Palestinian workers, which will also be twisted into something evil in about an hour or two.

Hezbollah threatens to strike Israeli cities, pointing to military offices as targets

Yesterday, a Houthi official in Yemen Muhammad Ali Al-Houthi congratulated Hezbollah for a video published last summer that purportedly shows "Zionist military headquarters and factories from inside occupied Palestine, with coordinates."

This was after the video was re-broadcast on Hezbollah's Al Mayadeen channel yesterday. Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened to strike Israeli cities, saying that the military facilities there make the entire cities fair game.

Al Houthi congratulated Hezbollah's intelligence, saying that Arab Israelis or friendly Russians must have infiltrated near those positions.

It is actually pretty easy to figure out where likely Israeli military facilities are. You just have to look to see where Google does not show the street view, which is almost certainly by Israel's request.

Here's one example Hezbollah gave, saying that a Haifa military base was near the Rambam Hospital:

If you Google the location, you see it says "Military base" there. And the blue lines that indicate Google Streetview are not visible in the area.

It's not even a secret to visitors to Bat Galim Beach, with TripAdvisor saying "Military base down the block."

This is hardly the intelligence coup that Hezbollah and its friends are claiming.

Hezbollah is trying to say that Israel deliberately built the military base next to the hospital, the way Hamas and Hezbollah does, to make civilians human shields. Of course, Hezbollah and Hamas do this quite deliberately, with military facilities inside hospitals and rocket launchers inside people's houses, while both this military facility and the hospital have been there since before terrorists had rockets that could reach those spots.

The Bedouins and the Jewish State (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

Bedouins are tribal, nomadic Arabs, tracing their ancestry to the Arabian peninsula, who today live all over the Middle East and North Africa. Today there are at least 200,000 Bedouins in Israel, and the population is growing rapidly. They are Israeli citizens with full political and civil rights.

Historically they fed themselves primarily by herding animals and other forms of nomadic agriculture and fishing. Some were bandits, raiding the caravans that passed through their region, and taxing non-Bedouin tribes in the vicinity. Over the years they have become more settled, with many of them living in towns and cities. But there still are some who follow traditional nomadic ways.

Bedouins are mostly Muslim Arabs, but most do not see themselves as “Palestinians.” Their political identification is with their (large) extended families and tribes. Tribes have supported whichever side in the conflict benefits them. Some volunteer for the IDF. There is a Bedouin (Ismail Khaldi) who served as Israeli Consul in San Francisco, and who has been chosen to become Ambassador to Eritrea.

Recently there has been a disturbing trend in which some Bedouins have returned to banditry as a way to make a living.

Everything that is not nailed down in IDF bases like Tze’elim in the Negev, including large quantities of weapons, ammunition, night vision equipment, vehicles, uniforms, and even soldiers’ kitbags is stolen by Bedouin thieves. The loot finds its way into the hands of Jewish and Arab criminals in Israel and in the territories, as well as terrorists. Rules of engagement only permit soldiers to use their weapons (even to fire in the air as part of the “procedure to apprehend a suspect”) if they think there may be immediate danger to life. Theft, even of weapons and ammunition, is not an acceptable reason.

This has been going on for decades, although the scale of it has recently expanded to a massive degree. When I did reserve duty guarding southern airbases during the 1980s, it was already a problem. When my son was part of a large training exercise ten years ago, Bedouins stuck close to IDF soldiers during live fire exercises, sweeping up shell casings and stealing anything they could. Over time it has taken on an ideological character. In an interview (Hebrew) with an Israeli website, one thief said “…all the firing ranges of Tze’elim belong to us. The state stole our land, expelled us. We are stealing back what belongs to us.”

The criminals are becoming bolder all the time, stealing cars in broad daylight and breaking into homes. Recently a 70-year old man, Aryeh Schiff of the Negev town of Arad, was indicted for manslaughter after shooting a thief who was driving away in his car. According to his family, Schiff had already had several cars stolen. In a particularly horrible episode, three Bedouin burglars broke into a home and raped a 10-year old girl while her parents slept. They have been arrested, but the punishment will not fit the crime. It rarely does.

These incidents are not part of the organized Palestinian war against the Jewish state. But they are not just apolitical crime either. The unrelenting propaganda from the Palestinian Authority and Israeli Left, which accuses Israel of stealing “Palestinian land,” oppressing and murdering Palestinians, even to the point of genocide, finds its mark among Bedouins and other Arab citizens of Israel. One man’s crime is another man’s jihad.

There are also cultural differences that are difficult to overcome. Bedouins practice polygamy, for example, which is illegal in Israel, although the state has almost always ignored it. It is usually bad for the women (the men tend to live with their newest, youngest, wife and leave the older ones to take care of their children), and there is pressure to enforce the law.

The Palestinians and their sponsors, the European Union, have found it possible to make use of Bedouins to create incidents in which Israel plays the role assigned to it, the powerful colonialist oppressor of third-world people. For example, there is Khirbet Humsah, a shepherding encampment squatting (even the left-leaning Israeli Supreme Court agrees) on an IDF firing range, which has been dismantled several times and rebuilt as many, thanks to the assistance of the EU.

Of course the most celebrated Bedouin settlement is Khan al-Ahmar, built illegally at a strategic location next to main roads in Area C (the part of Judea/Samaria that is supposed to be under full Israeli security and civil control according to the Oslo Accords). Here is how Regavim, an organization dedicated to Israeli sovereignty, describes it:

Khan al-Ahmar is one of more than 170 illegal outposts created by the P.A. and funded by the European Union for the sole purpose of establishing a corridor of P.A.-controlled territory disconnecting Jerusalem from the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea. These outposts are populated by the most vulnerable, disadvantaged and easily manipulated Bedouin families, stateless pawns in the P.A.’s power play, and follow a very simple, very predictable pattern of development.

First, the P.A. places water tankers at strategic points: along major Israeli highways, on land belonging to or abutting existing Jewish communities, or along lines that create territorial contiguity between major Arab population clusters in Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria. Knowing that Bedouin require little more than a steady supply of water to congregate and remain in any particular spot in this arid region, the P.A. thus attracts the tribes to strategic locations, even when those locations pose serious hazards to the health and livelihood of the Bedouin.

The next step is the construction of a school. This, too, attracts population—and makes for devastating publicity if Israel’s Civil Administration knocks it down. From this point, the battle of narratives begins. The “village” quickly rises up, constructed almost entirely of prefab housing units bearing the symbol of the European Union. It is given a name and equipped with a fictitious history. An army of internationally financed “do-gooders” takes up the cause of the unfortunate Bedouin who are “threatened” with relocation by the Israeli authorities—to new, modern neighborhoods on Israeli state-owned land, along with cash payouts and other forms of compensation.

The P.A., the European Union and a host of “humanitarian aid” groups take to the High Court of Justice to block any and all compromise solutions, forcing the helpless Bedouin to remain in unbearable conditions in the illegal outposts, in the service of the P.A.’s geopolitical machinations.

Bedouins, like Jews (and unlike most Palestinians), are an indigenous people in parts of Eretz Yisrael. Will it be possible for us to coexist? And if not, then what?

02/17 Links Pt2: Clifford May: Despots dominate UN agencies; BBC admits it was wrong to suggest Israel had responsibility to vaccinate Palestinians; Superman Was There When Jews Needed Him Most

From Ian:

Clifford May: Despots dominate UN agencies

He [Blinken] added: "When it works well, the Human Rights Council shines a spotlight on countries with the worst human rights records and can serve as an important forum for those fighting injustice and tyranny."

But when has the UNHCR ever worked well? Can you think of one country whose record on human rights has improved thanks to the UNHRC? Does anyone believe that the UNHCR's occasional resolutions on North Korea keep Kim Jong-un awake at night? Here's a clue: At a UNHRC session last month, the North Korean envoy took the stage to accuse Australia of "deep-rooted racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia."

Blinken said he believes that "the best way to improve the Council is to engage." But the Obama administration, in which he served, spent eight years engaging with the UNHRC to no effect.

And, again, why not at least demand a few fundamental reforms in exchange for American participation?

For example, why not insist that the UNHRC stop treating Israel as its whipping boy, year after year issuing more condemnatory resolutions against the Jewish state than any other country? The UNHRC aims to de-legitimize Israel, even as Iran's rulers threaten and incite genocide against that nation – a violation of international law about which the UNHRC is silent.

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I understand President Biden's desire to shore up the international order which, not so long ago, could be characterized as liberal and based on equitable rules. But a growing number of the organizations that give the international order structure and substance are now dominated by despots.

That has increased the peril to the world's health, while both distorting and eroding the very concept of human rights. You think most people around the world see through the lies? I'd be pleased to see evidence to suggest that.

Must we continue funding these organizations? Should we consider establishing alternatives? Are we not at least able to disabuse ourselves of the quaint notion that American engagement alone will – as if by wizardry – transform them?

Ruthie Blum: When abundance breeds contempt

In a recent phone call, a friend complained about the pressure that the Israeli government, media and much of the public have been applying to citizens who refuse to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

As someone who felt that she had been virtually "bullied" into getting inoculated, she was protesting, in particular, the latest carrot-and-stick element of the campaign to rid the country of coronavirus: a proposal to grant certain privileges to those possessing the Health Ministry double-dose certificate.

Among the epidemiological benefits being discussed – aside from the existing exemption from quarantine after exposure to infection – are unhindered entrance into malls, theaters, stadiums and other venues when they reopen.

"Why does it matter whether everyone complies?" she asked, pointing to the warning by officialdom that even after full vaccination, the virus can still strike and be spread. As a result, we've been told, mask-wearing and social distancing will continue to be required for a long time.

She clearly hadn't heard the more encouraging research revealing a serious drop in viral load after a single shot – indicating not only a less severe reaction to infection but a lower chance of transmitting the virus to others. Nevertheless, she is not alone in her resentment on behalf of the anti-coronavirus-vaxxers.

This might seem odd to foreigners envious of the fact that more than half Israel's 9-million-strong population has already received the first dose of the vaccine, and about a quarter has gotten both shots, which means that the country is moving steadily towards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's stated goal of inoculating everyone over the age of 16 by the end of March.

Superman Was There When Jews Needed Him Most

In the Spring of 1938, Cleveland was abuzz with talk of “The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.” He was never apprehended, although Cleveland’s Public Safety Director — Eliot Ness, of Untouchables fame for nabbing Al Capone — tried his best.

Instead, the date became famous when two teenagers from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who had worked together on their high school newspaper, saw the first publication of their comic strip — subsequently named “Superman.”

Siegel had never quite recovered from seeing his father die of a heart attack after being beaten up in the family store. Shuster earned nickels delivering newspapers.

Their hero, newspaperman Clark Kent — otherwise known as Superman from planet Krypton — was the creation of two Depression-era Jews, the children of poor immigrant parents.

Jerry Siegel later described his motivation for creating the character as, “Hearing and reading of the oppression and slaughter of helpless, oppressed Jews in Nazi Germany … [and] seeing movies depicting the horrors of the downtrodden.”

But did his unconscious inspiration reach further back to the avenger of Jews, the Golem of Prague? And like Moses’ parents, Superman’s parents had launched him, alone on a perilous journey, to escape doom. Superman’s birth name on Krypton was Kal El — in Hebrew, “Voice of God!”

Biden has yet to phone Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though it has been a full 4 weeks since Biden assumed office as president of the United States. The more time goes by, the more speculation by the media on what, exactly, the lack of a phone call to the Israeli premier signifies, or whether it means anything at all. Is the lack of a phone call a snub, a slight? Or is Biden holding back until the results of the upcoming Israeli election are clear?

My host for this column, Elder of Ziyon, is on record as saying the no phone call to Israel is no big deal:

Some think that the symbolism of Biden not calling Netanyahu is important. I don't. Unless he calls Abbas first, this is not something to waste time on.

It’s true, as far as we know, that Biden has not yet called Mahmoud Abbas. Biden did, however, have Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr reach out to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh. So claimed Shtayyeh during an interview on France 24 Arabic TV on February 7, 2021, that was documented by MEMRI TV:

Interviewer: "Have you opened a channel of communication with the new Biden administration?"

Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh: "Yes, there has been a phone call between myself and Mr. Hady Amr – Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian affairs. Mr. Amr reaffirmed what this administration declared during the election campaign: It will restore the aid, it will reopen the PLO office in Washington, and it will open a U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem. This is an important political message. In addition, the administration intends to restore aid to UNRWA and aid to the Palestinian people. These issues, as far as we are concerned, fall under the definition of confidence-building measures between this administration and us.”

[...]

"We requested that this administration reverse all the decisions that were made by the Trump administration, including the decision [to move the] U.S. embassy [to Jerusalem]. However, we know that the new administration, might not go this way, and instead choose an alternative option, which is opening a U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem in order to deal with the Palestinians directly. I believe that it sends a [clear] political message."

How important is this exchange? It’s hard to gauge, because first of all, it’s anecdotal. We weren’t there, and we don’t know if Shtayyeh’s account is faithful to the truth. But we do need to acknowledge that while Biden hasn’t spoken to Netanyahu, there have been contacts between the Biden administration and Israel. Haaretz, in fact, said that the first official contact between the two administrations took place on January 23, when U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke with Israeli counterpart, Meir Ben-Shabbat.

The exchange with Ben-Shabbat, oddly enough, took place on a Saturday, when Israeli officials generally refrain from official business out of respect for the Jewish Sabbath, “Shabbat.” This phone call, like the lack of a phone call from Biden to Netanyahu, could, in theory, be seen as a slight by the Biden administration to Israel. Having his guy call Bibi’s guy on Shabbos? It’s certainly an affront to Israeli sensibilities.*

But I may be reading too much into this—it is likely that there are meetings and phone calls with Israeli officials on Shabbat all the time, they just aren’t advertised for fear of public backlash. As a result, when such meetings or phone calls take place on a Saturday, they tend to fall below the radar, and go unmentioned by the media. In this case, it may very well be that Israel wanted the media to put out the word that the phone call, in fact, took place, in order to take the sting out of the fact that Biden has yet to call Bibi.

Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, notes that Biden is the first president in 40 years to delay contact with an Israeli prime minister on taking office:

He called Xi. He called Putin. But three weeks into his presidency, Old Joe has pointedly refrained from calling the head of the government of our most reliable ally in the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And so it’s clear now: Biden’s handlers intend to put immense strain on the U.S.-Israel alliance over the next four years, at a time when Israel and the rest of the free world are threatened by Iranian mullahs who are newly emboldened amid all the signs that Biden’s handlers plan to readopt Obama’s appeasement policies toward them.

Of the phone call between Hady Amr and Mohammad Shtayyeh, Spencer says:

The import of that call was as clear as the import of the snub of Netanyahu: the money will flow again, the jihad will be enabled again, the Israelis will be treated with contempt again, the peace accords that Trump enabled will be put on the back burner, if not repudiated outright. Everything is back on track now after a four-year speed bump.

The Washington Free Beacon, meanwhile, describes the lack of a phone call from President Biden to Prime Minister Netanyahu as a “diplomatic slight” and says that “congressional Republicans are piling on the White House for not speaking with Netanyahu, with multiple members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee telling the Free Beacon it is a slight that endangers the close U.S.-Israel alliance at a time when the world’s only Jewish state is facing down multiple terrorist threats.”

The Free Beacon lists a number of prominent Republicans who have spoken out against the slight:

· Rep. Michael McCaul (Texas), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee

· Rep. Lee Zeldin (N.Y.), a top HFAC Republican

· Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee

· Rep. Ronny Jackson (R., Texas), another member of HFAC member

· Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), who sits on both the HFAC and the House Judiciary Committee

· Rep. Mark Green (R., Tenn.)

· Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R., Fla.), also on the HFAC

· Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.), ranking member of the House's Middle East Subcommittee

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon also spoke out against Biden’s snub in this tweet of February 10th, tacking on Netanyahu’s phone number at the end for a bit of snarky emphasis:

@POTUS Joe Biden, you have called world leaders from#Canada #Mexico #UK #India #France #Germany #Japan #Australia #SouthKorea #Russia
Might it now be time to call the leader of #Israel, the closest ally of the #US?
The PM's number is: 972-2-6705555 pic.twitter.com/OYgPvVga6F
— Ambassador Danny Danon | דני דנון (@dannydanon) February 10, 2021

In an earlier piece, the Free Beacon enumerated the history of US presidents contacting Israeli leaders over the past four decades:

Upon assuming office in January 1981, Reagan made overtures to Israel, vowing to protect its interests, and sent Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to meet with Israel’s leaders to build "Israeli confidence in the administration of President-elect Ronald Reagan," according to an Associated Press report from the time.

President George H.W. Bush followed this trend. He called then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir on Jan. 25, 1989, five days after he entered the White House.

President Bill Clinton reached out to Israel even sooner. He called then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin on Jan. 23, 1993, three days after being sworn in.

President George W. Bush phoned former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak on Jan. 27, 2001, a week after taking the White House, to express his support for the U.S.-Israel alliance.

President Barack Obama, who faced criticism from Republicans for policies they branded anti-Israel, called the Jewish state’s leaders on his first day in office. Obama also called Palestinian leaders that day, laying the groundwork for that administration’s failed bid to foster peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

President Donald Trump not only called Netanyahu but made the historic decision to invite him to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 22, 2017, two days after he took the oath of office.

From Biden, however? Crickets. Of more concern to some, however, is the inability of White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s inability to confirm Israel as a US ally. Elder of Ziyon covered this story in White House press secretary cannot say that Israel is a US ally. This is very bad.

WOW: @PressSec refuses to say that Israel is an American ally.

There is literally no excuse for this. And might explain why Biden hasn't called Netanyahu yet. pic.twitter.com/EfMJNN9Ssh
— John Cooper (@thejcoop) February 12, 2021

Here too, Elder once again opines that the failure of Biden to call Bibi is no big deal. He does, however, see the failure of the White House press secretary to clearly state that Israel is a close US ally as an ominous and significant harbinger of doom:

I don't think that it is a big deal that Biden hasn't called Netanyahu, but the inability to say that Israel is an ally is mind-boggling. Even if she didn't want to answer the same question about Saudi Arabia so she avoided answering about Israel, it is a big deal, because this points to Biden as being the third term of Obama, and the idea that the White House believes that a tilt towards Iran and away from US allies is a good idea is a very bad harbinger for the next four years.

Note also that even President Obama had no problem saying that the US was a strong ally of Israel.

Perhaps, as Elder suggests, the absence of a phone call, in and of itself, is not very important. Or maybe that was true, up to a point. Now, however, it points to a deliberate diss, as time goes by—an entire month in which a certain phone in Israel just doesn’t ring.

People are talking about it, leaders are speaking out, calling the lack of a phone call from Biden to Bibi an insult. It means something that the phone call hasn’t happened. The delay is a statement of malignant intent.

Taking a step back and looking at the big picture only makes things look worse. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican, is stripped from her committee roles as a result of airing her despicable conspiracy theories among them some that are antisemitic. Far left antisemite Ilhan Omar, on the other hand, is elevated in status, having been appointed vice chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Global Human Rights.

Should someone like Ilhan Omar have a say on foreign affairs? Someone who applauds Biden for stripping the Houthis of their designation as a terrorist organization?

U.S. Congresswoman Rep. Ilhan Omar: Biden Restores Normalcy to Terror List by Removing Houthis; U.S. Should Hold Chinse Gov Accountable for Uyghur Genocide, Like It Did Regarding Bosnia, Rwanda, and the Holocaust @IlhanMN @Ilhan #Uyghurs #China pic.twitter.com/ozuNck5ExE
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) February 15, 2021

Someone who tweets: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and let them see the evil doings of Israel.” Someone who publicly expresses hunger for the ICC to prosecute American ally Israel for imaginary war crimes?

U.S. Congresswoman Rep. Ilhan Omar: Biden Administration Should Support Referral of Israeli Officials to the ICC; the U.S. Must Not Delegitimize the ICC @IlhanMN @Ilhan #Israel #ICC pic.twitter.com/4bcU29EVnK
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) February 15, 2021

But then again, Jen Psaki can’t say that Israel is a US ally. And that is the new reality: Israel, apparently, is no longer America's greatest ally in the Middle East. Which just goes to show that with Jobama in office, you can lead Netanyahu to wait and wait by the phone, but you can’t make it ring.

*On reviewing this piece, Elder pointed out the time difference between Israel and the US. It would have been Shabbos in Israel only if Sullivan called Ben-Shabbat before 11 am EST.

UPDATE: Biden finally called Netanyahu just as this piece was coming out. But the point was made. It took Biden an entire month to call, as the whole world was watching, and talking. We got the message: this will not be an Israel-friendly administration.

02/17 Links Pt1: Israel negotiating release of Israeli woman held in Syria; NYT Op-Ed Pushes Utopic, Unrealistic Israel/Palestine Vision; Elliott Abrams: The Deterrent Message Iran Needs to Hear

From Ian:

Israel negotiating release of Israeli woman held in Syria

Israel and Syria are intensively negotiating a prisoner exchange deal with Russian mediation, in which two incarcerated residents of the Israeli Golan could reportedly be released in exchange for a young Israeli woman who entered Syrian territory by mistake.

The woman has not been identified. According to Channel 12, she is a 25-year-old formerly Haredi woman from Modi’in Ilit who left the ultra-Orthodox community. It is not clear why she crossed into Syrian territory.

Syrian state media announced on Wednesday: “The exchange is taking place through Russian mediation to liberate the Syrians Nihal Al-Maqt and Dhiyab Qahmuz, the Syrian prisoner from the occupied Syrian Golan, in an exchange during which a young Israeli woman who entered the Syrian territories by mistake will be released. She entered the Quneitra region by mistake and was arrested by the Syrian authorities.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an interview with Army Radio, declined to comment on the negotiations but said: “We are working to save lives. I can just say I’m using my personal connections” with Russian President Vladimir Putin to secure her release.

Israel is “at the height of sensitive negotiations” on the issue, he said. “I believe we will resolve it.”

National Security Adviser Meir Ben Shabbat and hostage coordinator Yaron Bloom left Wednesday morning for Moscow to negotiate the release of the Israeli woman, according to Hebrew media reports.

The two prisoners Israel has reportedly been asked to release are residents of the Golan Heights. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 during the Six Day War and annexed it in 1981. Many residents of the region retain Syrian citizenships and identify as Syrian.

Not Again: NYT Op-Ed Pushes Utopic, Unrealistic Israel/Palestine Vision

It’s unbelievable how often the very concept of Israel as a regular sovereign state comes under attack in the New York Times, and indeed across the media.

A recent article, titled “Want Israeli-Palestinian Peace? Try Confederation“ by Bernard Avishai and Sam Bahour encourages readers to toy with the concept of Israel as a state like any other and view it as a theoretical plaything that can afford to, “share a capital city, a transportation and urban infrastructure, and a business ecosystem.” Before proceeding with an analysis of this piece, it’s vital to note one fundamental fact: this view is not so much a minority opinion amongst Israelis and Palestinians as practically non-existent.

That the New York Times affords such a perspective means it gains prominence amongst the influential. But while the idea of doing away with Israel as a sovereign state with control over its population and a capital city like any other nation gain currency amongst outsiders, back in the Middle East – where people have to grapple with reality – such impractical ideas are laughed at by Arabs and Jews alike.

The New York Times’ Distortions and Impractical Ideas
Back to the New York Times’ piece. Among the impractical ideas and distortions of reality that the op-ed promotes are:
A “dotted-line border in Jerusalem”

The suggestion that Jerusalem can be split is something many Israelis and Zionists – as well as Palestinians, by the way – have extreme difficulty accepting. For millennia, Jerusalem was a single city. For precisely 19 years, it was divided by an ugly barrier, the frontier between Israel and Jordan. Since 1967, the city has been reunited, and while life is far from perfect, it has become immeasurably better for citizens of both sides. Not least because there are no more no-mans-land zones that citizens cannot approach out of fear of being fired upon by soldiers on the other side.

Nevertheless, Avishai and Bahour suggest that “Confederal institutions would permit dividing sovereignty in Jerusalem with a dotted-line border, actually keeping the city open to all.” As if the presence of armed Palestinian police in Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, with no real border separating them from Israeli citizens, is something Israel could tolerate. Even more so when considering the reality that over 25% of Jerusalem’s Jewish population live in the neighborhoods of Gilo, Pisgat Ze’ev, and Ramot, all of which are on what would be on the Palestinian side.

All told, over a third of Jerusalem’s Jewish population live in such neighborhoods. Trusting the Palestinian security administration with the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews, or effectively creating Israeli enclaves surrounded by Palestinians with the means of attacking them, and hoping for the best is no more than a wild fantasy.

Bahraini Political Analyst Saeed Al-Hamad: Iran’s Enterprise Is Hitlerian in Nature; I No Longer Trust the Democrats, the American Left of the Wealthy #Iran #Hitler #khamenei pic.twitter.com/jhsSFz2tF1
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) February 17, 2021

Seth Frantzman: NYT accused of whitewashing Turkey’s Afrin occupation

The New York Times has been accused of whitewashing Turkey’s military occupation of Afrin and the ethnic cleansing of Kurdish people. This surprised many, given that the newspaper has covered other conflicts by giving both sides a voice but when reporting in Afrin it appeared to only give Turkish military occupation officials and pro-Ankara voices a place.

An illegal military occupation. Stolen olives shipped to the occupying power for resale. Far-right settlers rampaging and attacking indigenous communities. Religious persecution. Locals kidnapped in extrajudicial raids, imprisoned in secret military detention centers. Ethnic-cleansing. All of this has happened in Afrin in northwest Syria, an area that was once Kurdish and was invaded and occupied by Turkey and Turkish-backed extremist militias in 2018. Since then, it has been ethnically-cleansed of Kurds, and minority graveyards and religious sites have been ransacked and destroyed. The New York Times is now accused of whitewashing Turkey’s occupation of Afrin in an article on Tuesday.

Experts, activists, former residents and commentators expressed shock at the article online noting that it failed to mention human rights abuses and the displaced people forced out of Afrin. Some compared the article to state-run Turkish media propaganda. For a US press that prided itself on confronting the far-right in the US and critiquing an authoritarian leader, or “speaking truth to power,” the article was slammed for not including any critical or dissenting voices.

Titled “In Turkey’s Safe Zone in Syria security and misery go hand in hand,” the article claims that while Turkey’s invasion three years ago was widely criticized, “today, the Syrians they protect are glad the Turks are there.” The article hints at the fact that 160,000 Kurds were ethnically cleansed. “Thousands of Kurdish families fled the Turkish invasion, along with the Kurdish fighters. In their place came hundreds of thousands of Syrians from other areas, who have swollen the population, taking homes.” Usually, when the indigenous population is expelled and other populations are moved in, it is called ethnic cleansing. In this case, Kurds were removed by Turkey and far-right religious extremist militias it controls, and Sunni Arabs and Turkmen were moved into Afrin.

During those eight years [of President Bush], there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.
Obama, July 13, 2009

With each passing day, speculation is mounting as to what to make of Biden's failure to call Netanyahu.

Lahav Harkov of the Jerusalem Post quotes sources that there is not really a big deal going on here and no snub of Netanyahu, per se.

She quotes sources that claim Biden simply does not want to be seen as interfering with Israel's upcoming March 23rd elections by allowing Netanyahu to make political hay out of a phone call from the president of the United States -- this according to 2 Israeli political parties who have been in contact with the Biden administration.

That explanation might be taking for granted the respect that Israelis are supposed to have for Biden.

But take into account that Israelis favored Trump over Biden in last year's election and it is just as likely that the impression will be that Biden is specifically trying to interfere and influence the upcoming election against Netanyahu by refusing to make that phone call.

The fact that Biden has not contacted any other leaders in the Middle East is supposed to support the claim that there is nothing personal in that phone call not being made.

And in addition to the phone call, Biden's putting his selection of an ambassador to Israel on hold until after the Israeli elections -- because some of the people being considered, such as former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, have a poor relationship with Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Schanzer of The Foundation for Defense of Democracies points out that there is still plenty of communication going on between the US and Isr ael -- Secretary of State Blinken is speaking with Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is speaking with Meir Ben Shabbat.

With talk of returning to the Iran Deal, it's all very well for Biden to indicate a return to Obama's foreign policy, but those days are not the kind that Israel is eager to return to.

Those 2 sources Lahav quotes both claim that Biden wants to convey the message that “there is no special relationship with Bibi.” That may be, but in the process, Biden is also conveying the message that there is no special relationship with Israel either.

And that is something that conflicts with the readiness of past presidents to quickly connect with Israel's leaders.

Schanzer gives a short history lesson, pointing out that

o Clinton called Prime Minister Rabin on January 23 and met with him 2 months later.

o  Bush called Prime Minister Sharon on February 6.

o  Obama spoke with Olmert on January 2 (before his own inauguration) and then called Netanyahu on April 1, the day after Netanyahu was sworn in.

o  Trump spoke with Netanyahu on January 22, and hosted him the following month.

Abbas is no doubt relieved to see Biden push off making that phone call -- imagine what kind of message Hamas might see in this.

But there is more going on than just a delay in making a phone call.

Last Friday, during a White House press briefing, press secretary Jen Psaki was asked what seemed to be a straightforward question:

Can you please just give a broad sense of what the administration is trying to achieve in the Middle East? For example, does the administration still consider the Saudis and the Israelis important allies?

Her response was a painful attempt to avoid giving an answer:

Well, you know, again, I think, we, there are ongoing processes and internal interagency processes, one that we, I think confirmed an interagency meeting just last week to discuss a range of issues in the Middle East where we've only been here three and a half weeks.

And I think I'm going to let those policy processes see themselves through before we give kind of a complete lay down of what our national security approaches will be to a range of issues.

If the Biden administration cannot even call Israel an ally when Biden is barely a month into his presidency, then we really are going to a very contentious 4 years.

And then there is the issue of some of the staff Biden has chosen for influential posts in his administration -- people about whom Mort Klein of ZOA has warned:

The new secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, has ‘publicly said the IRGC, the Iranian terror group, should never have been put on [the State Department’s] terror list, because that would “provoke” Iran’. Robert Malley, the chief negotiator of the Iran Deal, is a ‘public, unabashed supporter of the mullahs, an unabashed supporter of Hamas’.

Not forgetting lesser luminaries like Maher Bitar, who used to be on the board of the racist Students for Justice in Palestine and is now the NSC’s senior director for intelligence programs. Or Hady Amr, who used to be national coordinator of the anti-Israel Middle East Justice Network, has written of being ‘inspired’ by the Palestinian intifada, and threatened vengeance after Israel assassinated a Hamas leader. Amr is now deputy assistant secretary of state for Israel-Palestine.

The choice of Malley, Bitar and Amr are concerning.

But Israel is not the only country on edge.

Walter Russell Mead of The Wall Street Journal writes about Biden’s Rough Start With the World, claiming that "this has been one of the shortest and coldest diplomatic honeymoons on record," referring to Biden's boast that "America is back" not being welcomed by US allies quite as enthusiastically as Democrats may have expected. In Europe, American "wokeness" is being rejected by France while Russia and China are being viewed as attractive trading partners by Europe, ignoring Biden's talk of human rights.

And in the Middle East:

Iran is showing no eagerness to ease the administration’s path back into the 2015 nuclear deal. And both Israel and the conservative Arab states resent the American shift in that direction.

After just 4 years of Trump, Biden might just discover that this is no longer Obama's Middle East.
Or world.

Peter Beinart yukking it up with Israel-hater Ben Rhodes (video)

Peter Beinart recently started a webcast at his position at the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

It doesn't seem to have gotten too many fans.

Last week, his guest was Ben Rhodes (40 YouTube views). Rhodes, of course, was a Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama and helped architect that administration's pro-Iran,. anti-Israel policies.

Here are three clips from the interview.

In this one, Rhodes claims that the US media is "pro-Likud." Really.

Here we see Rhodes say (to Beinart's delight) how sick he was to hear about Palestinian intransigence, because to his mind no one ever gave them a chance to accept a peace deal. Except maybe once.

Really.

He flatly says that the Obama administration never gave them an opportunity for peace either, when in fact the Palestinians ignored a framework that John Kerry gave them that would have given them far more than anyone else offered including a capital in Jerusalem.

Finally, here is Rhodes trying to get into Netanyahu's head, and the best he can guess is that since Jews have been persecuted throughout history, they justify being cruel as well. This is a watered down version of the antisemitic Jews as Nazis theme so popular amongst the Left.

Rhodes has literally no clue of what he is talking about - yet he is a contributor to NBC News.

(h/t Brad)

There was a cryptic press release from Canadian Friends of Sabeel:

As announced previously by CFOS, CFOS commenced a defamation action against B’nai Brith Canada arising out of an April 2018 article published by B’nai Brith in which B’nai Brith alleged that CFOS had promoted an anti-Semitic book tour. This defamation action has now been settled. As part of the settlement, B’nai Brith has agreed to delete the article in question as well as all of its related social media posts and publications. CFOS has likewise agreed to delete its Press Release announcing the litigation.

It appears to be referring to an incident in 2018 when Bnai Brith Canada accused Sabeel's founder, Rev. Naim Ateek, of antisemitism ahead of a book tour.

Since the nature of settlements like this obscure more than they illuminate, the question remains: is Naim Ateek an antisemite?

Sabeel famously espouses a "liberation theology" in which Jesus, a Jew, is portrayed as a Palestinian living under occupation.

Ateek has gone further than that, directly saying that Jesus is suffering with today's Palestinians under Jewish rule:

[T]he suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of evil political and religious powers two thousand years ago is lived out again in Palestine. The number of innocent Palestinians and Israelis that have fallen victim to Israeli state policy is increasing. Here in Palestine Jesus is again walking the via dolorosa. Jesus is the powerless Palestinian humiliated at a checkpoint, the woman trying to get through to the hospital for treatment, the young man whose dignity is trampled, the young student who cannot get to the university to study, the unemployed father who needs to find bread to feed his family; the list is tragically getting longer, and Jesus is there in their midst suffering with them. He is with them when their homes are shelled by tanks and helicopter gunships. He is with them in their towns and villages, in their pains and sorrows. In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge Golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.

Ateek denies it, but the imagery of Jesus/Palestinians here being crucified by the Jews is overwhelming - and it is one of the most enduring antisemitic themes there has ever been. He pretends that he is not explicitly referring to Jews as the "evil religious power" of two thousand years ago - but who else could it be? If this isn't a direct charge of deicide, it is damned close.

The antisemitic imagery does not end there. Ateek wrote "Many of us find [the burning of children during the Holocaust] comparable to what the government of Israel has done to the people of Gaza today." Comparing Israeli actions to the Holocaust is antisemitism, full stop.

Ateek wrote a long essay about Palestinian suicide bombings. He spends no less than five pages showing "understanding" and trying to teach readers what would make Palestinians want to blow up Jews.

The militants go on to argue that what they are doing is precisely like a soldier in battle who carries a heroic act by storming a club within a military camp and blowing himself up killing soldiers as well as women and children who happen to be enjoying a party. If one looks at it in this context of warfare, then it happens all the time. No war has been free from such acts and its actors were labeled heroes and were awarded medals posthumously. They were not called terrorists. In the West such acts are deemed heroic, but in Islam, due to the close ties between God and country, they are given a religious character and the people involved are considered “shuhada” (martyrs); their act is martyrdom and its prize is paradise rather than a human military medal. When one considers it from this angle, then being engaged in war and the defense of one’s homeland, these militants would argue, the suicide bombings could be a legitimate way of resistance.

Not a word is written trying to explain why Israelis might want to live in their own homeland in peace. So even though he condemns suicide bombings, the amount of sympathy he shows for the terrorists nearly overwhelms the condemnation itself.

Even worse, Ateek has described Hamas as an Islamic "liberation theology movement," which drew applause from an audience near Detroit in 2008. His pretense of being against violence rings a bit hollow.

Theologically, Sabeel is a supersessionist movement, that denies all of Jewish thought and belief by saying that Christians have taken over any covenant God had with Jews and Jews have no national rights. One example of Sabeel's erasure of Jewish covenantal rights: "The twelve names of the twelve sons of Jacob, who gave rise to the twelve tribes of Israel, represent God’s people according to the self-understanding of the Jews, who at a particular moment in their history started to see themselves as God’s only people. The twelve names of the twelve apostles here represent God’s people restored after the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is God’s people in an inclusive sense."

As a result, Ateek and Sabeel denigrate Jews and Judaism, using terms such as "primitive" and "tribal" to describe Judaism and saying that the "heart of the Torah" says to destroy all non-Jews in Israel (many examples here.)

Supersessionism has been used for 2000 years as a reason to persecute Jews.

Put it all together and it is difficult to say that Ateek is not an antisemite.

02/16 Links Pt2: Why are Jewish groups fighting the IHRA antisemitism definition?; Peter Beinart’s Latest: a Call to Ease Sanctions on Iran; Bari Weiss: Gina Carano and Crowd-Sourced McCarthyism

From Ian:

‘Dehumanizing’ Murder of Ilan Halimi Solemnly Remembered Amid Continued Threat of Antisemitism in France

A modest crowd of around 100 people gathered in Paris on Sunday afternoon to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the kidnapping, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, a young French Jew, at the hands of an antisemitic criminal gang in 2006.

The emotional ceremony took place at the Jardin Ilan Halimi in the 12th arrondissement of the French capital — a public park where a simple memorial to Halimi that describes him as a “victim of antisemitism” is located. Sunday’s event began with those in attendance observing a minute’s silence in his memory.

The 23-year-old Halimi was kidnapped on Jan. 20, 2006, by a mainly Muslim gang calling themselves “The Barbarians.” Lured into the gang’s hands by a young woman who flirted with him in the cellphone store where he worked as a salesman, Halimi subsequently spent three weeks in captivity, during which he was constantly beaten and burned with cigarettes while tied to a radiator.

Throughout the ordeal, the gang attempted to extort 450,000 Euros in ransom money from Halimi’s relatives, believing them to be wealthy because — as one of the gang members later explained to French police — “Jews have money.”

On February 13, 2006, Halimi was dumped, barely alive and with burns on 80 percent of his body, near a railway track on the outskirts of Paris. Discovered by a passerby who called for an ambulance, Halimi died on his way to the hospital.

After a harrowing three-month trial in 2009, 27 members of the gang were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their roles in Halimi’s murder. The Barbarians leader, Youssef Fofana, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Some of those attending Sunday’s ceremony were young children at the time of Halimi’s death and grew up in the shadow of his story.

Why are Jewish groups fighting the IHRA antisemitism definition? - opinion

Over the last year, significant progress has been made in pushing back against online antisemitism.

One of the most notable initiatives, which I began campaigning for in January 2020, is for social media companies to adopt the International Holocaust Memorial Association definition of antisemitism – a widely accepted educational framework which explains classical and modern antisemitism.

From a successful social media campaign (#AdoptIHRA) to a newly announced set of policy recommendations from the Israeli government, the pressure continues to mount on digital platforms to deal with hate speech against Jews.

But instead of getting on board in the fight against bigotry, fringe Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), IfNotNow, and the New Israel Fund are using the discussion to politicize antisemitism.

Social media companies have thus far refused to adopt the IHRA definition in full, but through discussions at the nongovernmental and governmental level, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok have all modified their approach to antisemitism and are engaging in open dialogue. While hate speech against Jews was always forbidden (though not enforced) across platforms, only this year was Holocaust denial banned explicitly on Twitter and Facebook. It’s not enough, but it is a step in the right direction.

Dealing with antisemitism today requires acknowledging that anti-Zionism can be used as an excuse to justify hate speech (and hate crimes), something Facebook has stated it now takes into consideration in its community standards.

Stop Politicizing IHRA.

"Jewish" organizations lobbying against the #IHRA definition of antisemitism are endangering Jewish communities and enabling #antisemitism in the name of anti-Zionism. pic.twitter.com/9DruVOfknO
— Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר (@emilykschrader) February 15, 2021

Guardian continues its crusade against the IHRA antisemitism definition

For the third time in the last ten weeks, the Guardian has published an attack on the widely accepted IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.

The latest is an op-ed (“Facebook might censor criticism of Zionists. That’s dangerous”, Feb. 11) by , the deputy director of ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ (JVP). JVP is a marginal US based anti-Zionist, pro-BDS group that achieved notoriety by partnering with terrorists, as well as launching an antisemitic campaign called ‘Deadly Exchange’, which suggested that American Jews play a key role in perpetuating “racist policing in the U.S.”

Following two introductory paragraph where Wise outlines the problem of far-right and white supremacist antisemitism in the US, she applauds the “broad coalition of progressive organizations, activists, and faith communities are working to dismantle antisemitism along with all other forms of racism and oppression”. If you open the link above, it takes you to a site called United Against Hate, which describes itself as a coalition of groups advocating for “Black and immigrant liberation, Muslim and Latinx freedom, Indigenous power, AAPI security, and Jewish safety”.

However, one of the other member groups of United Against Hate is Mpower Change, led by Linda Sarsour, whose history of employing antisemitic tropes we’ve documented previously. The group, which calls itself “the largest Muslim-led social and racial justice organization in the U.S.”, was widely criticised for encouraging its followers to attend a Juneteenth rally last year that, the group stressed, was open to everyone “minus cops and Zionists.”

Despite the antisemitic baggage of groups she’s affiliated with, Wise then opines that “not everyone claiming to work against antisemitism has Jewish safety at heart”.

We're going to make history, again

This week, we continue making history in terms of developing the sport of judo in Israel and internationally. We, Israel, are hosting the Tel Aviv Grand Slam 2021 – a competition where scoring and prestige alike are of utmost importance ahead of the Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer.

In such a trying year, under the shadow of the coronavirus, with severe restrictions and protocols in place that cannot be deviated from even an inch, the Israel Judo Association under the helm of President Moshe Ponte, has been able to contend with all of the challenges in the way and put us on the world map of Grand Slam tournaments. Tel Aviv, as of today, is like Paris, Abu Dhabi, Tokyo and other prominent cities across the globe – as it opens its doors to one of the most important competitions on the judo circuit along with hundreds of judokas from over 50 countries. The logistical operation is complicated but it's happening, big time!

This year, the tournament carries additional significance due to the arrival of Iranian judoka and dissident Saeid Mollaei, who will compete in the same weight category as my friend, world champion Sagi Muki. It's an agonizing thing to leave your family behind and compete against an Israeli, but the hope is to see them both in the finals. Sport has to be above politics.

I'm entering this tournament as the reigning European champion and after winning a bronze medal at the 2021 World Judo Masters in Doha, Qatar. I'm in peak condition after a successful training camp this past month. On Tuesday, I will enter the COVID capsule in the hotel, where we will train, eat and sleep without being able to go outside or come into contact with people outside the capsule until the competition ends on Saturday. I'm excited and proud to represent Israel here, in my home, the place where I was raised.