Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 11, 2021

Israel haters keep the vaccine libel going

The Guardian has yet another article accusing Israel of not providing COVID vaccines to the Palestinian Authority.

Not surprisingly, the author's analysis highlights a barely-36 hour delay of a couple of thousand vaccines by Israel, yet ignores that:

Israel vaccinated hundreds of Palestinian college students at Tel Aviv University and probably elsewhere
Israel has vaccinated all Arab residents of Jerusalem who wanted to be inoculated - most of them not Israeli citizens
Israel has vaccinated thousands of Palestinian prisoners
Israel has facilitated the delivery of hundreds of thousands of vaccines that the Palestinian Authority negotiated on its own
Israel is setting up facilities for thousands of Gaza merchants to receive vaccines so they can travel to the West Bank
Every time the Palestinian Authority asked Israel for help with vaccines, Israel did everything they asked

Both the Oslo Accords and the Geneva Conventions say that the primary responsibility for vaccinations comes from the Palestinian Authority

As far as the last point goes, the Oslo Accords 1995 Interim Agreement explicitly states that the Palestinian Authority is responsible for acquiring vaccines in case of an epidemic. Annex III, Article 17:

1. Powers and responsibilities in the sphere of Health in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will be transferred to the Palestinian side, including the health insurance system.

2. The Palestinian side shall continue to apply the present standards of vaccination of Palestinians and shall improve them according to internationally accepted standards in the field, taking into account WHO recommendations.

6. Israel and the Palestinian side shall exchange information regarding epidemics and contagious diseases, shall cooperate in combating them and shall develop methods for exchange of medical files and documents.

The idea that Oslo contradicts the Geneva Accords is absurd - the Geneva Conventions and its authoritative interpretation say the exact same thing!

[T]here can be no question of making the Occupying Power alone responsible for the whole burden of organizing hospitals and health services and taking measures to control epidemics. The task is above all one for the competent services of the occupied country itself.

Israel has and continues to work with the Palestinian Authority on fighting COVID-19 as it has since the first cases appeared in the region, in line (and beyond) its obligations under international law.

There are no articles in official Palestinian media demanding that Israel provide vaccines to Palestinians. These articles are only in Western media. Palestinian leaders have said from the beginning that they want to be responsible for procuring vaccines, and they have negotiated with all the major vaccine manufacturers as well as with the international COVAX system to obtain them.

On the contrary - Palestinian media is filled with stories about how well the PA is dealing with the pandemic. 140,000 people have received vaccines so far (not counting the ones that Israel inoculated.) The Palestinian media and government blame literally everything on Israel, but not a word blaming Israel for withholding or delaying vaccines to them.

Despite this article being pure propaganda, the libel was retweeted by Human Rights Watch's Ken Roth, that famous "leftist Zionist."

Iranian media upset that Bahrain and UAE commemorated Yom HaShoah, implies Holocaust was exaggerated, says Israel/US/UAE guilty of "holocausts"

Iran's Al Alam TV is upset that the UAE and Bahrain commemorated Yom HaShoah:

In the series of shame and scandals of the humiliated Arabs of normalization, the UAE embassy in occupied Palestine, two days ago, sent its "condolences to Israel" for the victims of the Holocaust. Concurrently, Jewish groups in the UAE and Bahrain commemorated the Holocaust remembrance of the Nazis within the framework of a program hosted by the "Gulf Jewish Communities Association," an association that includes all Jewish groups in the Persian Gulf, and includes various programs. The commemoration included the participation of Muslim youth from Bahrain and the UAE who visited the Yad Vashem museum, which commemorates the Holocaust in occupied Jerusalem, and this is the first time that Arab countries hosted activities to commemorate the Holocaust.

It tries to case doubt on the Holocaust itself:

Regardless of our opinion of the Holocaust and the number of victims of this Holocaust, however, ...the UAE and Bahrain act as if they are in a complete alliance with the Israeli entity....

And, of course, Iran's enemies are the ones who are responsible for real holocausts:

[One should remind] the "new normalizers" of the holocausts that Zionism has carried out and is carrying out against the Palestinian people for decades and still are, or the holocausts that the UAE and Saudi Arabia have carried out against more than 20 million Yemenis for more than 6 years, or of the holocausts that America carried out against the Iraqi and Syrian, Afghani and the rest of the world’s peoples....They fight political Islam, while allying with Judaism and political Christianity.

04/10 Links: Will This be the Last Anti-Israel Generation?; Israel’s Iron Dome: Ten Years In Action and 2,500 Rockets Destroyed; Biden brings out Obama's echo chamber, puts Israel on defense

From Ian:

Seth J. Frantzman: Will This be the Last Anti-Israel Generation?

For the past several decades discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been driven by full-time anti-Israel researchers and writers. This coterie of academics and authors, from Noam Chomsky to Peter Beinart, constantly popped up on panels and had their ideas amplified. Today's Middle East realities, with new peace agreements and concerns about China's emerging role, has less time to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Consequently we are likely seeing the last generation of professional Israel critics.

Anyone who grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s, the period of the Oslo Accords and Second Intifada, got used to the idea that Israel's existence was up for debate. It was taken for granted that there was something called "opposition to Israel" and no shortage of ink was spilled on the question of Israel's "right to exist." Only those stuck in the era of the Oslo Accords and earlier, when harsh conflict between Israel and the Arab states was the norm, could suggest that the whole country of Israel might not exist one day. Now, with 70 years' hindsight, it is clear that Israel does exist like some 200 other countries and it isn't going to be fundamentally changed.

Nevertheless, in the U.S. and some other Western countries there are still academic and activist panel discussions about the "one-state solution," usually involving only non-Palestinians who sit and discuss whether Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank can be shoehorned into some kind of Frankenstein-like state that combines Israel with the autonomous Palestinian Authority and Hamas-run Gaza. Why do people even discuss this? They don't discuss turning India, Pakistan and Bangladesh into "one state" or combining Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo back into "one state." Only with Israel is one-state solution activism given credence, though primarily in Western academic and far-left journalistic circles.

The reason this discussion—which would be laughable if a bunch of Western academics sat in a room and talked about combining Japan and China into one state, without asking Japanese and Chinese residents what they think—has received any acceptability in discussions on Israel is because of the network of professional Israel critics that emerged in the last decades. But these activists, who we got used to seeing at the anti-Israel Durban conference in 2001 and again in the "boycott, divestment and sanctions" movement, are growing older and becoming less relevant.

Richard Kemp: Can We Win in the 'Gray Zone'?

The gray zone is the space between peace and war involving coercive actions that fall outside normal geopolitical competition between states but do not reach the level of armed conflict.... They usually seek to avoid a significant military response, though are often designed to intimidate and deter a target state by threatening further escalation.

[B]ut do liberal democracies in the 21st Century have the political will to do the dirty work that is necessary to win?

Western nations have multiple pre-emptive and reactive options to respond to gray zone actions directed against them or their allies, most effectively involving multilateral coordination. The objective should be to frustrate or deter, avoiding escalation that might lead to all-out conflict. Broadly, options fall into four categories: diplomatic, informational, economic and military.

Democracies' fear of escalation is a significant deterrent against the use of violent military options in the gray zone, and that is exactly the fear that authoritarian states like Iran wish to instil.....[F]ear of escalation is not the greatest obstacle to the use of a military option — transparency is.

Deterrence is not down to the military option alone. Where possible, diplomatic, informational and economic actions are preferable in providing the necessary punishments. But gray zone opponents who are willing to use military action must also be confronted with a credible military jeopardy to them, and not just a paper capability which will quickly be seen for what it is.

How confident can we be that liberal democracies mean business in the gray zone? When British troops were being killed and maimed in large numbers in Iraq by Iranian proxies... more than a decade ago, the UK government would not even consider any form of gray zone military action, even non-lethal, against Iran, despite a clear capability to do so. Instead they relied on diplomatic démarches -- and the killings continued. The consequences of such weakness are still being played out in Iran's widespread gray zone aggression. If back then — in the face of the slaughter of dozens of their own troops — political leaders' fear of escalation and political fallout caused such paralysis, how likely is it that they will seriously contemplate violent gray zone operations today...

35 years after El Al bomb plot, security staff recount stopping unwitting bomber

On April 17, 1986, an El Al flight from London to Tel Aviv was almost the target of a bombing attack that could have killed everyone on board, including the unsuspecting pregnant woman carrying the explosives. Thirty-five years later, two of the security officers that foiled the attack spoke of their experience in a television interview that aired Friday.

On the date of the bombing attempt, El Al Flight 016, originating in New York, had stopped at London’s Heathrow Airport before a final planned leg to Israel.

Yossi Orbach, then a security officer with El Al in London, told Channel 13 that “it was a normal day in April in London,” describing the warming weather and thoughts of a quiet day ahead at work. “We had no intel warnings and no preparation for what was about to happen.”

Security officers, like Orbach, began the check-in process, questioning the new travelers boarding the flight to Israel.

Anne-Marie Murphy, a 32-year-old Irish woman in her 6th month of pregnancy, arrived at the check-in area.

“She arrived fairly early, relatively speaking, for the flight. The check-in [area] as far as I remember was almost empty,” said Ofer Argov, another security official at the time.

04/09 Links Pt2: The future of Holocaust remembrance; Holocaust survivors use social media to show how words ‘stoke the fires of hate’; 'May Prince Philip's memory be a blessing' - Israel expresses condolences

From Ian:

The future of Holocaust remembrance

One way to enhance Holocaust knowledge is to provide a personal connection. In Holocaust education, this is often accomplished through firsthand testimonies of survivors who experienced persecution, roundups, ghettos, deportations and concentration camps. Seeing and hearing Holocaust survivors share their stories of survival creates a personal connection to those events for students, making the information easier to identify with.

Sadly, we are losing the last generation of survivors. And for this generation of students, simply learning about the camps, crematoria and death trains may not be enough to conceptualize such overwhelming horrors. In truth, survivors do not visit schools and relive the darkest moment of their lives simply to provide a history lesson. Rather, they are insistent on sharing their testimony with students so that something even remotely like the Holocaust does not happen again. Their goal in visiting with students and teachers is to show them how the thoughts and words impact the world around them. Ideas and words lead to actions, which can have unimaginable and devastating effects.

This week, a survivor-led, digital campaign was launched by the Claims Conference. #ItStartedWithWords was created to show through survivor testimony that the horrific events of the Holocaust didn’t come out of nowhere; it started with words. The campaign will post weekly videos of survivors from across the world reflecting on those moments that led up to the Holocaust—a period of time when racist ideology, transmitted in person and through the media, turned longtime neighbors, teachers, classmates and colleagues into dangerous foes when words of hate were transformed into acts of unprecedented violence.

The importance of this campaign is how it highlights not the actual roundups, deportations and mass murders, but rather, the words of an extreme xenophobic ideology, utterances of hate, racism and intolerance that preceded the Holocaust.

It is difficult to conceive how one would react if forced to flee one’s home and community with just the clothes on one’s back, running to escape murderous predators. It may be hard to imagine the rounding up of tens of thousands of people in the town centers to have them systematically sent to their deaths. It is nigh on impossible to visualize a gas chamber with a line of people going in and a stack of bodies coming out. But it is certainly our present-day reality seeing people hurling odious epithets at others and treating them as sub-human, unworthy of basic human rights, due only to their culture, religion, sexual preference or color of their skin.

These moments—moments of hate, xenophobia and racism—could be the beginnings of larger atrocities we just cannot imagine. Teaching tolerance and acceptance in our schools, and how the words we use matter greatly, will help pave the way to a better history that we have not yet created. This is the Holocaust education that must be the future of our remembrance.

He killed a Nazi guard, fled ghetto with fake identities and joined the UK army

It was the moment that undoubtedly saved Chaim Herszman’s life. In February 1940, the 13-year-old stabbed and fatally wounded a Nazi guard in the Lodz Ghetto who he believed was about to shoot his younger brother.

Herszman fled the ghetto, leaving behind a family he would never see again — and commenced an epic three-year-journey across Nazi-occupied Europe which eventually took him to the safety of Britain. Over its course, he assumed multiple identities, stowed away on a German troop train and, while being sheltered in the heart of the Third Reich by a member of the Wehrmacht, wandered the streets of Berlin dressed in a Hitler Youth uniform.

After the war, Herszman, who changed his name to Henry Carr shortly before the British army dispatched him to take part in the liberation of Europe, married an Irish Catholic. But, in an extraordinary twist, Herszman was secretly baptized and hid that he was Jewish for nearly a decade. The deception began to unravel in 1958 when his only surviving brother traveled from Israel to visit the family in their home in Leeds in the north of England.

Herszman’s incredible escape from the Nazis has been revealed for the first time in “Escape From the Ghetto,” a recently-published book by his son John Carr.

“It is a remarkable story,” Carr writes. “A story of tenacious, quick-witted determination to live, of defeating enormous odds, often in novel ways. But then any and every story of a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust borders on the miraculous.”

Herszman died in 1995, but the book is “based entirely on my dad’s recollections of what happened to him,” Carr told The Times of Israel in an interview. “Over the years he told me and my wife the same story pretty much consistently.”

The Forger From Berne

In their massive effort, Ładoś, Eiss, Rokicki, Silberschein and others often rescued or tried to save people they did not even know, like Yehiel Feiner, the writer better known as Yehiel De-Nur or Ka-Tsetnik 135633; Itzhak Katzenelson, the Polish Jewish poet; Hanna “Hanneli” Goslar, the best friend of Anne Frank; and the latter’s Polish counterpart, teenage diarist Rutka Laskier. Among those who survived, one may find the future chief rabbi of Amsterdam, Aron Schuster, and the Bluzhover Rebbe, Yisroel Spira. At least one survivor died in the Israeli War of Independence, and at least two in the Polish guerrilla war against the Communist regime.

Passports were also forged for Lelio Valobra and Enrico Luzzato, Jewish Holocaust rescuers from Italy, as well as for Fanny Schwab and other leaders of the French Œuvre de secours aux enfants. Frumka Płotnicka and the brothers Kożuch decided not to rescue themselves with their papers, but died in the short-lived uprising in the Będzin Ghetto. Yitzchak Zuckermann, Cywia Lubetkin, and Tosia Altmann, fighters in the Jewish Combat Organization in Poland, probably never learned about the existence of their documents.

Initially the Polish diplomats involved in the scheme believed Jews bearing foreign passports would be spared and interned instead of murdered. But when, by 1944, it was clear that the Nazis did not always honor the documents, Ładoś then supported Vaad Hatzalah in its attempts to bribe Heinrich Himmler and obtain the liberation of the 300,000 Jews still alive in the Reich. We have found several cables documenting the details of the subsequent attempt to bribe the Nazis, as Ładoś permitted the Sternbuchs to freely use the Polish diplomatic pouch.

Ładoś rarely spoke about his lifesaving operation. He promised to tell the whole story in his memoirs, but passed away in December 1963 without finishing them. His subordinates were equally silent. During the war, Agudath wrote a letter to the Polish government in London thanking its Bernese diplomats for having saved many hundreds of people. For the Polish government-in-exile, the existence of the scheme was not a big secret, as two consecutive foreign ministers and at least one prime minister demanded that Ładoś “organize” passports for individual Jewish figures, and the entire network of Polish embassies and consulates intervened both in many Latin American capitals and in Washington to obtain recognition of the Ładoś forgeries.

Yet the Agudath letter was immediately classified—it was January 1945, the operation was still ongoing, and the lives of passport holders were still in danger. We found this paper, attesting to the partnership between the Polish Legation and Jewish organizations, only after 72 years.

In 2019, Rokicki was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem; recognition for Ładoś and Ryniewicz remains undecided. All six members of the Ładoś group were posthumously decorated by the president of Poland two years ago. The gravestone of Konstanty Rokicki was restored in 2018.

Heinz Lichtenstern passed away in 1992 in Switzerland after having lived in Brazil, the United States, and the Netherlands. He never knew that he had been saved by the Polish government, which nurtured a secretive and lifesaving collaboration between Jews and Poles. (h/t MtTB)

04/09 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: Israel: The necessary superpower; David Singer: Israel’s voting system needs urgent reform; Ruthie Blum: Abbas’s snubs work like a charm on Biden

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Israel: The necessary superpower

Appeasement is a symptom of profound cultural demoralization, caused by a loss of national self-belief and faith in the future. That process has been going on in the West ever since the Holocaust delivered the devastating message that there was something rotten at the very heart of Western high culture.

The most important proof of this demoralization is the birthrate in America and Europe, which is either below or barely the rate at which the indigenous population can reproduce itself. In other words, the West is literally dying out.

By contrast, Israel is emerging from the pandemic at a world-beating rate – its economy strong and resilient, and crucially, its birthrate healthy and high.

This is because Israel actually believes in itself. Sure, it has a ludicrously dysfunctional political culture, currently illustrated once again by its post-election gridlock and absence of a functioning government. It is also disfigured by deep social divisions between secular and religious communities, and subversive elements who regard the very idea of a Jewish state as anathema.

But the vast majority of Israel's public understands that its core value is the preservation of life and liberty and doing good in the world. It is a society built on redemption and hope, and in dramatic contrast to the death-spiral gripping America and Europe, it is relentlessly focused on its survival.

The Arab world has come to understand that all this is of priceless value – not just for Israel but for itself, too. It sees that Israel actually takes out its enemies. It is increasingly realizing that the country most likely to defend Arab interests against Iran is not America but Israel, the Arabs' new and unlikely ally.

As America falters and Western societies break apart, might this become Israel's century?

The Tikvah Podcast: Mohammed Alyahya on Two Competing Visions of Power in the Middle East

This week, the Biden administration officially began multilateral negotiations with Iran, in hopes of re-entering some form of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the so-called Iran nuclear deal.

The debate over the deal is one of the most contentious in contemporary American foreign policy, and reveals a genuine conflict of visions. Supporters of the deal, including prominent officials in the Biden administration, tend to view the Middle East as consumed by an eternal conflict between the Sunni states of the Gulf, led by Saudi Arabia, and the Shia allies led by Iran. Opponents of the deal tend to think that the central regional faultline is not Shia Iran vs. Sunni Saudi Arabia, but instead the American-led alliance structure—including Saudi Arabia and Israel—against Iran and its regional proxies.

That’s the view of this week’s podcast guest, Mohammed Alyahya, the editor of Al Arabiya‘s English edition. He, who is based in Dubai and grew up in Saudi Arabia, explains the central paradigms at the heart of Middle East politics, and he outlines what the Biden administration should and shouldn’t do when confronting Iran and the threat it poses to America and the regional order.

David Singer: Israel’s voting system needs urgent reform

A million or more Israelis did not vote in each of the four indecisive elections held in the last two years – costing Israel an estimated $4.24 billion - whilst causing political upheaval and electoral instability as a result.

The Central Elections Committee (CEC) sets out how Israel’s electoral system works:
“Israel has an electoral system based on nation-wide proportional representation. In other words, the number of seats that each list receives in the Knesset - the House of Representatives - is proportional to the number of votes it received…the only limitation placed on a list which participated in the elections that can keep it from being elected is that it must pass the qualifying threshold, which is currently 3.25%.”

The CEC explains the historical background for this unique voting system:
“The State of Israel inherited the rigid system of proportional representation from the political system of the yishuv (the organized Jewish community) in mandatory times. This system was based on the zeal with which the various political parties - in which ideology and personalities played a major role - fought to preserve their independence. The justification given for the large number of parties resulting from the system was, that in a period in which major, far-reaching and rapid changes were still taking place in the population make-up as a result of immigration, it was important to enable maximal representation for various groups and opinions.”

What was appropriate during the Mandate for Palestine (1920 – 1948) is clearly not working now.

The following highlights why Israel’s electoral system needs urgent reform:

Ruthie Blum: Abbas’s snubs work like a charm on Biden

Abbas’s gall is not new and has served the P.A. ruler well with the international community, which has elevated him to ill-deserved heights. This is due to an unfounded, knee-jerk opposition to Israel, not to the way in which he rules his own people, who view him with disdain and outrage.

Nor is American appeasement of petty tyrants a novelty; certainly not among those, like Biden and many of his appointees, who served under former President Barack Obama. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s verbal abuse of former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during nuclear negotiations—so loud and disrespectful that even Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered him to tone it down—comes to mind in this context.

Trump put a temporary stop to such supplication. Ramallah, like Tehran, responded by spewing rhetoric, but feared suffering the consequences of Washington’s wrath. One key basis for the trepidation was financial.

True, sanctions didn’t stop the P.A. from paying terrorists’ hefty salaries or prevent Iran from keeping its centrifuges spinning. The withholding of cash has, however, made life more difficult for both regimes.

Emboldened by the old sheriff’s posse being back in town, each has been testing Washington’s limits. So far, there don’t seem to be too many.

In fact, the Biden administration’s allocation of $90 million in aid to the P.A. ($15 million in “coronavirus relief” and another $75 million for the Palestinians to regain “trust” in the United States) comes weeks after Abbas rejected Blinken’s telephone overture. Talk about a return to Obama’s proud “leadership from behind.”

Whether Abbas and his governing Fatah faction survive the fast-approaching elections—slated for the Palestinian Legislative Council on May 22, for the P.A. presidency on July 31 and for the Palestinian National Council on Aug. 31—remains to be seen. Still, what’s already clear to him and any potential successor is the path to Uncle Sam’s purse and heart strings.

Here's an amusing story from Iran's PressTV:

A group of dozens of international human rights activists has warned against the promotion of the left-wing Zionism, which seeks to colonize popular solidarity with the Palestinian people through presenting them as a helpless nation and attacking the resistance front against the Tel Aviv regime.

The campaigners, in an open letter addressed to the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), warned the non-governmental organization against the decision to opt former Australian journalist and television presenter Sophie McNeill as the keynote speaker during its upcoming event, scheduled for May 23.

The activists highlighted that McNeill has encouraged the “Palestinians as victims” line at the same time as she has ferociously been attacking the anti-Israel resistance front.

They went on to describe her as a Western apologist, who attacks the resistance bloc in order to defend Washington’s divide and rule strategy, US-led military invasions, and attempts to either destroy or balkanize Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

The activists said McNeill now works as a researcher for the so-called Human Rights Watch (HRW), whose executive director is a prominent liberal Zionist and he frantically tries to conceal the apartheid nature of the Israeli regime by a humane mask.

Human Rights Watch regularly makes moral equivalence between Israeli massacres and resistance mounted by Palestinian groups in the face of the Tel Aviv regime’s acts of aggression, they argued.

They further noted that McNeill repeatedly made US-HRW-crafted allegations about the use of barrel bomb and chemical warfare in Syria in order to incriminate the Damascus government as well as Syrian government troops, and prolong the Syrian conflict.

Calling Sophie McNeill and the head of HRW Ken Roth "Zionists" is pretty funny. Both have been in the forefront of demonizing Israel.

Of course the names of these "activists" aren't mentioned, and I couldn't find this open letter anywhere, which means that these "international human rights activists" are Iran, which is angry that both of them criticize Iran and Syria. (The full article makes that clearer, with praise from these "activists" for Hezbollah and Iranian terrorists.)

Merriam Webster says Israel was a "kingdom in ancient Palestine"

The World History Encyclopedia gives a brief account of how the region in the eastern Mediterranean became known as Palestine:

By the time Rome appeared in the land it was long known as Judea, a term taken from the ancient Kingdom of Judah which had been destroyed by the Babylonians. It was also referred to, however, as Palestine and, after the Bar-Kochba Revolt of 132-136 CE, the Roman emperor Hadrian renamed the region Syria-Palaestina to punish the Jewish people for their insurrection (by naming it after their two traditional enemies, the Syrians and the Philistines).

The very term "Palestine" is meant to be an insult to Jews.

This is why it is offensive to see the word used today as a generic term.

The Merriam Webster dictionary uses the term "ancient Palestine" often, referring to topics that pre-dated the word Palestine.

From Merriam Webster's online dictionary:

This is jarring and anachronistic.

Here, the three examples used could all have used the word "Israel" or "Judea:"

Sometimes it appears that the dictionary is going out of its way to avoid the words "Israel" or "Judea:"

Of course, the people who brought the first fruits would have looked blankly at you if you asked them what Palestine was. This definition is almost purposely vague when it could have far more clearly said "ancient Judea" or "ancient Israel."

This is offensive.

I don't believe that this usage of Palestine is meant to be offensive. The term "Palestine" before the 20th century was almost invariably associated with the areas controlled by the Jewish people in Biblical times, which means that the offensive Roman term stuck and lost much of its repugnance. It was just another word for ancient Israel, as these maps from 1741 and 1897 show:

But lexicographers will be the first ones to tell you that languages change and acceptable usages change. The way modern antisemites use "Palestine" is intended, as with the Romans, to be a way to erase the Jewish nation from the map.

The way the word "Palestine" was used before the 20th century was clearly not meant to be offensive even if that was the original intent of the term. Today, however, enemies of Israel have been co-opting that word as if it refers to an ancient Arab political entity, and not to the areas of biblical Jewish rule, hence the constant use of the misnomer "historic Palestine" to refer to the modern borders created for the British Mandate less than a century ago. There is no map of Palestine before 1920 that adheres to those borders, as the maps above show.

And this is where Merriam-Webster makes its biggest mistakes:

If Palestine is a "region," then the population is about 11 million - because Israel would be included. That first sentence conflates the so-called "state of Palestine" with its historic use, and is flat out wrong.

The boundaries it mentions are essentially the British Mandate borders, which as I've shown are not even close to what was considered Palestine before 1920. No map included the Negev, all the maps included parts of the east bank of the Jordan and Lebanon, you cannot find one that used the Jordan River as a boundary.

Merriam Webster has re-written the definition to adhere to politically correct thinking of a relationship between the modern concept of an Arab Palestinian political entity and how the term has been used for 1800 years - as a (poor) synonym for Judea.

Modern antisemites have renewed what the Romans did: use the word "Palestine" to destroy the concept of a Jewish political entity. It is the responsibility of dictionaries to understand this subtext and not to compound the offense.

(h/t Susan Z)

The Al Talaqi Association, which works to promote diversity and tolerance in Tunisia, has issued a statement of solidarity with Tunisia Jews who have been the subject of recent antisemitic attacks.

According to the press release, some Jews were subjected to attacks and violations of their dignity. It kept track of many incidents.

They include the almost-fatal beating of a ten-year-old child, an attempted murder of a 16-year-old girl, and a Jewish man who was assaulted inside his house by another man who screamed at him, "Get out ffrom our country!"

Also, a Jewish merchant was beaten near a highway by an assailant, who pulled off his pants and taunted him, asking onlookers "Do you want to see a Jew?"

The organization said that all Tunisians must reject all forms of discrimination against minorities, defend a culture of tolerance, and reject the culture of extremism, violence, racism and hatred.

I had never seen any of these incidents mentioned in Arabic media.

04/08 Links Pt2: Holocaust Remembrance Day: We can't let our past be our children's future; Holocaust truths left out of the history texts; Monsey Chanukah Machete Attacker Declared Unfit for Trial

From Ian:

Torchlighters on Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2021

Each year, six Holocaust survivors are chosen to light torches at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which began Wednesday evening, in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust.

- Manya Bigunov was born in 1927 in the Ukrainian city of Teplyk. In July 1941, the Germans occupied Teplyk and sent residents to forced labor. She escaped from one of the labor camps and survived in the Bershad ghetto in Transnistria. After the war, Manya filled dozens of Yad Vashem's Pages of Testimony commemorating the people of Teplyk. In 1992, she immigrated to Israel.

- Yossi Chen was born in 1936 in Lachwa, Poland (now Belarus). On Passover eve 1942, all the town's Jews were ordered to move into the ghetto. In August 1942, the Jews learned that the ghetto residents were about to be murdered and an uprising broke out in full cooperation with the ghetto Jewish council, the Judenrat. While the majority of the Jews who tried to flee were shot and killed, six-year-old Yossi fled to the forests. Yossi and his father hid in haystacks, swamps and forests, drank water from swamps and ate berries until they found the partisans. In July 1947, the two boarded the Exodus illegal immigrant ship.

- Sara Fishman was born in 1927 in what is today Neresnytsya, Ukraine. When Sara and her sisters arrived in Auschwitz, one of the prisoners threw a stone at them with a note attached. The note read that the smoke they saw from the chimney was their parents. Later she was sent to forced labor outside Auschwitz and then to Bergen-Belsen. In 1949 she immigrated to Israel and served in the IDF during the War of Independence.

- Halina Friedman was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1933. In the Warsaw ghetto, her parents worked in a factory that repaired uniforms for the German Army, and Halina was placed in a kindergarten for the workers' children. In 1942, the children were taken out and shot by machine gun. Halina fell, but was not injured. She lay among the dozens of dead children, covered in their blood. Only at night did she return home. She escaped when the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising broke out in 1943 and for 18 months was hidden in a bunker at the home of two Polish people, Jerzy Kozminski and his stepmother Teresa Kozminska, who were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in 1965.

- Zehava Gealel was born in 1935 in The Hague, Netherlands. Dutch police accompanied by Germans arrived to take the family members into custody, but thanks to documents sent by Zehava's grandfather in the U.S., the family members were granted Romanian citizenship and were defined as political prisoners. She was later sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany and then to Bergen-Belsen. For the past 50 years, Zehava has been a nurse at Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer in Israel.

- Shmuel Naar was born in 1924 in Thessaloniki, Greece. In March 1943 the city's Jews were deported, mostly to Auschwitz. In January 1945, Shmuel was forced on a death march to Bergen-Belsen. In November 1945, he boarded the Berl Katzenelson illegal immigrant ship bound for Israel. When the ship was discovered by a British destroyer, Shmuel jumped into the icy water and swam to shore. Shmuel fought in the War of Independence and in all the wars of Israel including the Yom Kippur War as a combat medic.

Ronald Lauder: Holocaust Remembrance Day: We can't let our past be our children's future

“We cannot let our past become our children’s future.” These words were spoken by Roman Kent, an Auschwitz survivor on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp. These words are still ringing in my ears. I think about them all the time and they have guided me over the past six years, since I stood at the those terrible gates – gates that saw over one-million Jewish mothers, fathers and so, so many children pass through them. They went into the camp, but they never came out.

Five years after Roman Kent spoke those words, I brought 120 survivors and their families to the same gates for the 75th anniversary of the liberation by the Red Army. For many of them, it was their first time back since those terrible days. For many, it will probably be their last visit.

I was astounded to see their strength as we walked through the camp with their families. I also saw the pain in the faces of their children and grandchildren, who finally understood what they had experienced.

In my keynote address to them at those infamous gates, I talked about what it meant to have these survivors with us and what it meant to me personally. But also present were European leaders and dignitaries from more than 50 countries and I told them directly that they must do everything in their power to make sure that the rise in hatred that we are seeing, must be stopped in their countries. The continent of Europe owes this to the Jewish people.

Since that day, now more than a year and two months ago, I have stayed in touch with them. Sadly, we have already lost ten of them. This past Pesach, we held a Zoom meeting and they told me something that touched me to my core. They said they understood the Pesach story better than most people, because they were slaves themselves. And, perhaps most importantly, they were delivered to freedom.

JPost Editorial: Holocaust Remembrance Day: Remember, appreciate Israel

Holocaust Remembrance Day is a day to remember the alternative, to remember what happened to the Jews in Europe in the previous century, and through that simple act of remembering to better appreciate our lives now in the Jewish state in this century.

President Reuven Rivlin articulated this sentiment well during comments he made Tuesday when giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the mandate to form the next government.

Rivlin related how last week former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak came to the President’s Residence and told his tale of survival as a young boy living behind the wall in the home of a Lithuanian farmer.

Barak, Rivlin said, kept his composure throughout the telling of this harrowing tale, which included the “most terrible and dreadful moments of the selection of children in the ghetto.”

Barak’s voice only wavered, Rivlin recounted, when he described meeting soldiers of the Jewish Brigade wearing a badge of the blue and white flag.

“The State of Israel is not to be taken for granted,” Rivlin said. “We hold – you the citizens of Israel hold – [in hand] the greatest treasure of the Jewish people.”

That the Jewish people should not take the existence of the State of Israel for granted is an obvious sentiment. But, as Menachem Begin once famously quipped, even the obvious needs to be restated from time to time.

It is human nature not to fully appreciate everyday wonders until they are gone: being able to walk, until you can’t; being able to see, until you go blind; being able to bend, until your back goes out.

So, too, it is difficult to appreciate the wonder and miracle of the Jewish state unless you step back and remember what things looked like without it. Holocaust Remembrance Day, among its other messages, commands us to do just that.

Group Holding Soccer Games, Parkour On Temple Mount Worried About Jews Desecrating Place By Praying There (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

soccer ball Jerusalem, April 8 - The Islamic council that administers the plateau they call the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, and which endorses the use of the holy site for sports competitions, day camps, and other non-holy pursuits, aims to preserve the sanctity of the compound by preventing members of the Hebraic faith from engaging in devotional rituals when visiting.

Israel ceded administration of the Temple Mount, site of two ancient Jewish shrines, to the Waqf soon after gaining control of the location from Jordanian hands in June 1967. The Waqf has reciprocated by denying Jews the right to pray, or even look like they are praying, while atop the Mount, lest the venue for almost-daily soccer games, parkour demonstrations, races, dance parties, and other such activities have its holiness compromised by Jews uttering liturgical passages. The threat of violent riots underlies enforcement of those restrictions.

"It's very simple," explained Afr Tayid, a Waqf spokesman. "Jews can't just come here and perform their Talmudic rituals where our own publications boast is the location of two Jewish Temples, and expect us, the guardians of Islamic holiness, not to react by throwing rocks or firebombs, or otherwise trying to hurt Jews for being so presumptuous as to think they can not be under Islamic domination."

"Allah sees Muslims playing soccer as sacred," he continued. "In fact Allah sees anything Muslims do as sacred, which is why it matters not in the least what we do here in the Haram al-Sharif - whereas it matters intensely what Jews do, because Jews. I hope that makes everything clear."

Religious scholars noted that Mr. Tayid's explication of the theological principles in operation dovetails with a broader trend in which Muslims' actions that in other circumstances would qualify as barbaric, murderous, unjust, repressive, or rapacious instead become positive because Muslims are the ones performing those actions. "We see the same thing with, for example, mass rape, mass murder, and enslavement of non-Muslims across territory under control of the Islamic State," observed Wihaf Tawziye. "All the arguments about Islam being a liberating force, especially for women and minorities, go out the window when those women and minorities happen to be on the side that Islamic forces oppose in battle, but that's OK, religiously, because jihad is the Get Out of Prohibitions Free card. It's not just the Sunnis. Look at how Shiite Iran bankrolls and arms the perpetrators of some of the most heinous policies, but hey, it's in the name of Allah, so all's good."

"In the case of Jews," he added, "that just makes it worse. I mean, it's Jews."

04/08 Links Pt1: Israel slams Biden's resumption of UNRWA funding for Palestinians; Eli Lake: Biden Cannot Allow Iran to Keep Its Weapons Program; Israel responds to ICC, says it lacks jurisdiction

From Ian:

Israel slams Biden's resumption of UNRWA funding for Palestinians

US restoration of funding does not included direct financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority. The US Taylor Force Act of 2018 prohibits such direct funding until such time as the PA halts it monthly payments to terrorists and their families. Funding for Palestinian security forces was excluded from that legislation.

The Anti-Terror Clarification Act passed that same year had also created stumbling blocks to the provision of humanitarian assistance, but amendments to the legislation remove such impediments.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price clarified for reporters that all funding was legal under American law. “I just want to underscore that all of this aid is absolutely consistent with relevant US law, including those two statutes,” Price said.

Israel, however, took issue with US funding to UNRWA, which Trump had halted because he believes that the organized was flawed and a stumbling bloc to peace.

“The renewal of UNRWA assistance,” the Foreign Ministry said, “must be accompanied by substantial and necessary changes in the nature, goals and conduct of the organization.”

It added that the issue of UNRAW funding had come up in conversation between Israeli and American officials.

Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said he had also warned the State Department of the danger of such activity, particularly without ensuring that “incitement” and “anti-Semitic content” are removed from its educational curriculum.

“Israel is strongly opposed to the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity happening in UNRWA’s facilities,” Erdan said.

"We believe that this UN agency for so-called “refugees” should not exist in its current format. UNRWA schools regularly use materials that incite against Israel and the twisted definition used by the agency to determine who is a “refugee” only perpetuates the conflict.

Blinken, however, specifically mentioned support for UNRWA's education program.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York he hoped the US restoration of funding would sway other countries to do likewise.

“There were a number of countries that had greatly reduced or halted contributions to UNRWA. We hope that the American decision will lead others to rejoin... as UNRWA donors,” Dujarric said.

JCPA: The Palestinian Authority Tries to Bully Israel on the Jerusalem Issue

The PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas ordered the opening of an international campaign regarding the right of east Jerusalem residents to participate in Palestinian parliamentary elections despite the recommendation of senior Fatah figures to postpone the elections.

Mahmoud Abbas went to Germany for medical treatment, and his trip may be intended to prepare public opinion for the possibility of the elections’ postponement.

The PA launched an international campaign against Israel to bully and force it to agree to the participation of east Jerusalem residents in parliamentary elections on May 22, 2021.

At a meeting of the Palestinian government, Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh revealed that the Palestinian Authority had sent letters on the issue to the UN, the European Union, the United States, and Russia, explaining that from their perspective, there was no impediment to allowing east Jerusalem residents to participate in the elections as they did in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections.

Wasel Abu Yousuf, a member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, said that the participation of east Jerusalem residents in the parliamentary elections was of great importance when Israel was trying to make the city its unified capital.

Senior PA officials say that the PA wants to use the campaign for the participation of east Jerusalem residents to quash and erase the Trump administration’s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Eli Lake: Biden Cannot Allow Iran to Keep Its Weapons Program

Because of a last-minute U.S. concession in 2015, Iran never had to disclose the sites in question or other possible military dimensions of its program to the IAEA as a condition for the economic benefits promised in the JCPOA. As a result, the stringent inspection regime imposed by the agreement did not apply to the sites in this weapons program. Iran’s declared nuclear program was monitored, but its undeclared sites were not.

David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a co-author of an upcoming book on the Iranian archive, estimates there are nine sites revealed by the archive. These include facilities designed to build the nuclear core for a weapon and to conduct tests.

“Iran is not building nuclear weapons today,” Albright told me. “But it is preparing to do so. The program is designed to produce nuclear weapons on demand. And it will be able to make those weapons relatively quickly when a decision is made.”

At the very least, this is a major failure of the JCPOA. That deal was supposed to give the world confidence that Iran could not and would not produce a nuclear weapon. That it missed a huge weapons program is a sign of incompetence on the part of the Western countries that negotiated the pact.

More important, this weapons program is a sign of Iran’s duplicity. Even as it negotiated the JCPOA, Iran was not only holding blueprints for a nuclear weapon, but also maintaining a constellation of physical sites where it could eventually build one.

This is what’s wrong with the current talks in Vienna: The best the Biden administration can hope for from these negotiations is Iranian compliance with a flawed bargain. In exchange for that compliance, Araghchi is demanding the U.S. lift the very sanctions that are its best leverage to get Iran to come clean to the IAEA. That’s not a deal any U.S. president should make.

Jewishness is whatever you want it to be - except Jewish nationalism

I tweeted this the other day:

"I express my Jewishness through tikkun olam!"
   "Wonderful!"
"I express mine through old Yiddish plays"
   "Fantastic!"
"Jewish cuisine here!"
   "Amazing!"
"Mine is through Zionism!"
   "How dare you conflate Zionism with Judaism!"

My point is that the anti-Israel crowd loves to talk about their Jewish heritage, which can be anything from eating bagels to researching the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. This is all part of the tapestry of Judaism to them.

But for people who consider Jewish nationalism to be an integral part of their Judaism, suddenly their expansive definition of what Jewishness means hits a brick wall.

They would consider anyone attacking any aspect of their Jewishness to be antisemitic, but attacking the Jewish state or Jewish nationalism isn't antisemitic - on the contrary, they consider it praiseworthy.

As much as they try to pretend that somehow Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism, they cannot seem to explain exactly what their boundaries are for what is Jewish. And for people who accuse others of marginalizing them as Jews, this is more than a little hypocritical.

Pearson textbook fixes anti-Israel bias; Israel haters complain the fixes were all "pro-Israel" - and publisher caves to them

A UK-based textbook publisher has paused the distribution of two Middle East high school books after a report that showed that the books - which were filled with anti-Israel bias - had been changed in a "pro-Israel" direction.

Conflict in the Middle East, c1945-1995 and The Middle East: Conflict, Crisis and Change, 1917-2012, both written by Hilary Brash, were shown to be highly biased against Israel. David Collier wrote a report on just chapter 1 of the second book showing clear bias, and he mentioned some other examples:

• P. 29 refers to terrorists, or Fedayeen, as freedom fighters “depending on one’s point of view.” It is internationally accepted that those who randomly target civilians are terrorists regardless of the cause they are fighting for. Palestinian terrorists and terror groups – like Hamas – wage such attacks against Israeli civilians to this day.
• P. 56 has a reference of PFLP as a “guerrilla group”. In reality, PFLP is an internationally proscribed terror organisation, having been designated as such by the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, and the European Union. It does not recognise Israel and openly calls for its annihilation and is well known for pioneering armed aircraft-hijackings in the late 1960s (one of its most infamous militants being Leila Khaled).
• P. 78 refers to the Coastal Road Massacre and says that Israeli civilians “died” during the shootout. In reality, the Israelis kidnapped by the Palestinian terrorists were murdered by them and not caught in the crossfire, as the book aims to portray; 13 of the victims were children. Furthermore, the passage does not once refer to the Palestinians as terrorists, preferring to call them “militants”.

A timeline on events in the region from that book that is still online shows the pattern of bias against Jews and Zionism.

Not one mention of Arab aggression against Jews before 1972. The only attack mentioned is the King David Hotel attack - not one mention of the 1929 massacres, the 1936 uprising, the attacks on Jews throughout the period. Nothing about Jews fleeing Europe for their lives before the Holocaust, or the Holocaust itself. Conflicts and wars "break out" - they aren't initiated by Arabs. The PLO is not involved in any terror attacks at all - the only two attacks mentioned are from the PFLP and Black September, which students aren't told was the PLO. It says Arafat renounces terrorism and doesn't mention the terrorism that he directed in the years that followed. And, of course, history only begins in 1917, with no mention of the Jewish presence on and love of the land for three thousand years.

To correct this bias, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and UK Lawyers for Israel met with Pearson in 2019 and worked with them to eliminate this bias. Revised textbooks were released in 2020.

Now, the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, a virulently anti-Israel group, issued their own report written by professors John Chalcraft and James Dickins complaining about the revisions.

In assessing the changes that we found there was one dimension on which almost all of the changes could be arrayed, namely from which perspective the history of Israel/Palestine should be told. In assessing the direction of change we used a simple scheme, based on whether a reasonable, broadly informed person would understand a change to be pro Israeli, pro-Palestinian or neutral between those positions. The terms ‘pro-Israeli’ and ‘pro Palestinian’ are defined in their most generally accepted sense – as characterizing an account which exonerates Israelis or Palestinians from blame, fault or wrongdoing. On this basis we found (a) a small number of changes that are broadly neutral, (b) around half a dozen changes that may be described as mildly pro-Palestinian, and (c) the remainder, the vast majority, that are pro-Israeli. The net effect is that the content and substance of the textbooks has been significantly altered. The RVs are emphatically more pro-Israeli than the OVs.

Obviously, if the books were heavily slanted against Israel, changes to correct the books would be regarded as "pro-Israeli!" That isn't bias - that is a correction to anti-Israel bias.

The authors did not release the full list of changes, but only some cherry-picked ones, with no images of the pages where the changes can be evaluated in context. So when they complain that the word "atrocity" was removed in reference to Deir Yassin, we cannot see whether that word was used in reference to the Hadassah Hospital convoy massacre - or even if that massacre was mentioned at all. Without that context, they make it look like the book is now completely pro-Israel, which seems highly unlikely.

Yet as a result of this biased report, Pearson has again paused the distribution of the book!

Chalcraft and Dickins present themselves in the report as "senior academics in Middle East Studies," yet two minutes of research shows that they are anti-Israel activists who support boycotting Israel. Here is Dickins (right) at an anti-Israel rally:

Dickins also recently promoted a video by airplane hijacker Leila Khaled.

Chalcraft is likewise a proponent of boycotting Israeli universities.

The opinions of those who want to see the Jewish state destroyed can hardly be trusted to be unbiased in their review of textbooks!

And yet Pearson is giving these haters' opinions enough respect as to pause distribution of a book that was painstakingly edited to eliminate the exact sort of bias that these professors have.