Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

04/21 Links Pt2: Holocaust Memorials Are Monuments Against Civilization’s Enemies; Walter Mondale, a liberal icon who championed Israel; IDF Chief of Staff Salutes Israel's Heroes

From Ian:

Holocaust Memorials Are Monuments Against Civilization’s Enemies

Now, Americans who believe in civil rights, black and white, want to remove Confederate statues, not to dishonor Southern soldiers who died during the Civil War, but because they refuse any longer to accept the white South’s racist mythologizing of its past.

It is important to remember that attacks on Holocaust memorialization are not really about history. Holocaust monuments and museums, as Neiman argues, are “values made visible.”

Holocaust deniers and desecrators are not the only ones who want to destroy these universal values of justice and equality. So too do the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville in 2017 carrying swastiska-emblazoned banners and shouting “Blood and Soil. Jews will not replace us” — and also the violent occupiers of the US Capitol in January 2021, who wore antisemitic insignias while unfurling Confederate flags.

Over a century ago, philosopher William James gave a speech dedicating a monument to Black soldiers and the white officers who died fighting for freedom in 1864. But he also delivered a warning to future generations about where the greatest threats to civilization might come from: “The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes … [From] internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blessed above all is [the nation where] the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day … by speaking, writing, voting reasonably … by good temper between parties.”

The “internal enemies” James was warning against were bigots wearing the masks of false patriotism — a sight that is becoming all too common today in America and across the world.

Who’s Afraid of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism?

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) includes 34 member states and numerous experts who work together to strengthen, advance, and promote Holocaust education, research, and remembrance. To effectively combat the rise in antisemitism world-wide, IHRA experts determined that the definition of antisemitism must be clarified.

The IHRA’s Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial built an unprecedented international consensus around the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, which was formally adopted at a Plenary in Bucharest in May 2016. The definition has since been adopted by numerous countries, government agencies, and organizations around the world, including the US State Department.

The idea embodied in the IHRA definition is that to fight Jew hatred, we must first define it.

Many people recognize antisemitism only in its classical form; i.e., the public portrayal of Jews as greedy, demonic creatures who constantly conspire to control the world. However, in the past few decades, as the memory of the Holocaust has faded and social media became a primary channel of communication and source of news, antisemitism has mutated into a new form — anti-Zionism.

By masking one’s Jew hatred as an allegedly legitimate criticism of the State of Israel, the delegitimization campaign against the State of Israel, led by the terror-linked Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, has openly promoted and fostered the new antisemitism.

Walter Mondale, a liberal icon who championed Israel

Walter Mondale, the former vice president, represented a time in American history when being pro-Israel and progressive were often synonymous.

He passed away Monday at his home in Minneapolis aged 93.

From the launch of his national political career, Mondale was close to the national Jewish and pro-Israel communities. He found in those organizations willing partners in his endeavors to expand civil rights, and they found in him an avid advocate of Israel.

Mondale acted as a buffer between President Jimmy Carter, under whom he served as vice president, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and when the talks that culminated in an Israel-Egypt peace deal turned tense. Begin was said to favor the company of the affable Mondale over Carter, who was standoffish.

Mondale was one of three US lawmakers present at the dedication of Israel’s Knesset building in 1966 — he was a Minnesota senator at the time — and he led a delegation to Israel in 1978 to mark the country’s 30th anniversary.

Vice President Walter Mondale, left foreground, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, right, strain to hear the questions of reporters above the chants of anti-American demonstrators who were nearby in Jerusalem, July 2, 1978. Mondale and Begin had just completed a round of talks in the prime minister’s Jerusalem office. (AP Photo)

Israel policy was one of the few areas where Carter and Mondale differed. (The other was Mondale’s impatience with what he believed was Carter’s tendency to scold the American public.) In 2007, appearing with Carter on CNN in an interview marking 30 years since they assumed office, he gently pushed back at his friend’s book published not long before, “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” in an exchange that was otherwise all mutual admiration.

“I have read the book,” Mondale said. “I think there’s a lot of good materials in there. I do have a few problems with it, but if I might, I’d like to talk to the president about it first.”

Reaching for Comfort: What I Saw, What I Learned, & How I Blew it Training as a Pastoral Counselor, is the third of three books by Sherri Mandell on dealing with the loss of her son Koby Mandell, to terror. But know that Mandell is a writer by profession, and not by circumstance. She writes because that’s her gift: it’s what she does. The fact that she can not only write but has a heartbreaking story to tell, makes it all the more poignant to read her story, and hear her “voice.”

It’s difficult—even gut-wrenching—to read these works, but some would say, necessary. This is a human rights issue. Jews, like all other people, should have the right to live productive lives in peace, in particular in their indigenous territory. Jewish children, like all other children, should have the right to grow up unmolested by terror, no matter where they live.

In this new book, in which Mandell speaks of her experiences training as a pastoral counselor, we hear the voice of a mother who longs for comfort, who is seeking something to give her relief or at least a small respite from the feelings she goes to bed with at night, and wakes up to every morning. It is obvious to all who witness this sort of pain, even from the outside looking in: the pain of losing a child to terror never, ever leaves you. This book helps us see what this might be like, God forbid, even if only to the smallest degree (may we never need to understand it fully).

Mandell takes us along as she begins to visit hospitalized patients as part of her training. This takes place at a time when pastoral counseling is new to the scene of Israeli patient care. Many of the patients fail to understand the purpose of her visits and are reluctant to avail themselves of what she attempts to offer them. One understands that Mandell thought she'd be good at pastoral counseling by dint of her experiences as the mother of a terror victim. Her efforts at comforting patients and their families, on the other hand, tend not to have the desired effect.

Interspersed with Mandell's visits to patients (whom she describes as "fictional composites, drawn broadly from real stories") are her training sessions and meetings with Michael, her mentor and co-teacher of the pastoral counseling course. Michael leads the group through prayers and exercises, during which Mandell always seems to fall short in comparison with her classmates. Mandell's self-described inadequacies as a pastoral counselor are as puzzling to the reader as they are to Mandell. Her descriptions of her visits to patients, meanwhile, are compelling, and we know something they do not: that she is Sherri Mandell, mother of Koby Mandell, who was murdered in a brutal attack when he was only 13.

An Added Dimension

For this writer, there is an added dimension to this story of an effort to comfort others in the midst of grief. Having lived in Gush Etzion for a long time, through both intifadas, I remember when Koby Mandell and Yosef Ishran were murdered. There was a media blackout at first, but we understood that children had been murdered in Tekoa, a settlement in our area. And of course, the Gush was a much smaller community in those days than it is now, and everyone knew everyone in the Gush.

We wanted to know what had happened, so we began making calls to people we knew in Tekoa. We wanted to be there for the parents, to mourn alongside them. We wanted to learn from what happened in order to understand what measures we needed to take in our attempts to protect our own children going forward. It took only two phone calls to learn the identity of the two boys who had been murdered, and the terrible details of the attack. It was, in fact, a child who told me—the child of a friend—what had happened and to whom.

It was Sherri and Seth Mandell’s story. It was Koby’s story, and it was Yosef’s story. And yet, in a sense, it was everyone’s story, in that it affected us all, as residents of the Gush, as Jews. The knowledge of what happened turned me into a hyper-vigilant mother. I told the daycare workers that under no circumstances were they allowed to let my children walk home alone, though it was a very short walk from the daycare center to our caravan. And yet, years later, reading Sherri Mandell’s books, you realize it’s not your story, but her story, and hers alone to tell.

Our responsibility, it seems, is to read every word of her elegant prose.

Koby Mandell (H"YD) with his parents Seth and Sherri, at his bar mitzvah, the last birthday he lived to see.

I spoke with Sherri to learn more about her new book:

Varda Epstein: Your first book, “The Blessings of a Broken Heart,” was the story of what happened to your son and the blessings you recognized in the face of tragedy. Your second book, “The Road to Resilience: From Chaos to Celebration” was about how to find a way forward after tragedy. This third book you’ve “birthed” is more difficult to define. How would you summarize “Reaching for Comfort?”

Sherri Mandell: “Reaching for Comfort” is the story of a year training to be a pastoral counselor, being taught how to be present in the face of suffering.

Varda Epstein: When did you first hear about the pastoral counseling course? What did you imagine you would get out of your training?

Sherri Mandell: A friend told me about the course. I thought that I would learn to be comfortable with prayer and become a more serene, centered person. I thought that I would also confront death and illness and see how people coped. I think my main goal was to find a lamed vavnik [one of the 36 righteous people in every generation who wander among us in secret. V.E.] who would tell me the secret of suffering. Of course, I also wanted to be able to have the therapeutic skills to lead the foundation where we worked with so many bereaved children and families.

Varda Epstein: Your book is about pastoral counseling for those with serious or terminal illness and their families. You’ve lost family in the natural way, to age and illness, and you’ve lost a child to terror. How are these experiences different and how are they the same?

Sherri Mandell: Loss is a common denominator for all people, because everybody dies. But there is a difference when somebody is murdered by terrorists, because the family is left with a need to seek justice. Also trauma leaves scars that the loss of a parent in old age does not.

Koby at his bar mitzvah with his father, Rabbi Seth Mandell

Varda Epstein: What would you like people to understand about what it is like to lose a child to terror?

Sherri Mandell: That the pain never goes away.

Varda Epstein: In “Reaching for Comfort” you offer a vivid description of your grief as a sort of underworld: “Even though you have the ability to exit the underworld, you are not sure you want to. In fact, you no longer no which world you belong in or which world you prefer. The ordinary world is no longer hospitable in some ways: it’s too light, too trivial. The underworld has the gravity, the shock, the darkness, the weight of being you crave.”

Do you think your children feel the same way? Have you tried to keep them out of this “underworld?” Tried to give them normalcy? How do you find the balance between giving them a normal childhood, and letting them grieve?

Sherri Mandell: I think that all children who experience tragedy touch the underworld and are changed by the experience.

Koby, laughing with his younger siblings, long before the brutal murder that robbed them of their big brother.

Varda Epstein: Arnold Roth, father of Malki Roth, murdered in the Sbarro massacre, related that people crossed the street to avoid him and his wife after the tragedy. Did you experience anything like this? Do you sometimes feel like you’re wearing a sign?

Sherri Mandell: No, I did not feel that at all. I think because I live in a Yishuv [settlement, V.E.], everybody was involved and everybody cared. I had a feeling of being cocooned by my neighbors and also supported.

Varda Epstein: The website for Koby Mandell Foundation speaks of healing and rebuilding. Is it really possible to heal and rebuild after losing a family member to a terror attack? How would you define healing and rebuilding in this context?

Sherri Mandell: One must rebuild after a tragedy. I realized that when you undergo a tragedy it’s like your vessel is broken. The way you looked at the world, the way you thought, the things you did. They’re no longer sufficient to keep you afloat. You need to build a new vessel somehow, you need to recreate yourself in the light of what you have suffered.

Like most boys born in the U.S., Koby loved baseball.

Varda Epstein: Pastoral counseling may not have been the right path for you, but what is the right path for us to take in order to comfort the family members of terror victims? Is there anything we can say or do that can help?

Sherri Mandell: Pastoral counseling was the right path for me at the time. I think that anytime anyone remembers Koby, it is a good feeling. I think that others can try to be there at important times like the azkara [annual memorial service, V.E.], for example. Or just leave a message that you’re thinking about the person and you remember and you care. The best is when somebody does something to memorialize Koby.

Varda Epstein: What will you write about next?

Sherri Mandell: Good question. I’m working on a novel!

***

Sherri Mandell won the 2004 National Jewish Book Award for The Blessings of a Broken Heart. Her newest book, Reaching for Comfort, is available at the Ben Yehuda Press and on Amazon.

From The Jewish News:

Dutch government inspectors fined a store for labelling wine made in an Israeli settlement as “a product from an Israeli village in Judea and Samaria.”

The Israel Products Center near Amsterdam received the $2,514 fine last week following its refusal to replace the label with one acceptable to the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, which requires such labels read “Product from the West Bank (Israeli settlement).”

The Israel Products Center, a shop and importer run by the pro-Israel group Christians for Israel, has had legal problems over labelling since 2019. The center’s director, Pieter van Oordt, wrote in a statement that he was “shocked” by the government’s actions, which he said were discriminatory.

At least four Dutch political parties have accused the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority of singling out Israeli products and ignoring controversial labels on products from other disputed areas, including Western Sahara and Northern Cyprus.

Medical Care Minister Tamara van Ark has rejected the claim, saying last year that the policy of enforcing EU regulations on labels is being applied across the board. However, the Center for Information on Documentation on Israel, a Jewish community watchdog, said Wednesday that it had no information on any action taken on country-of-origins labels on products that were not made by Israelis.

If you examine the actual EU regulations, you can see that it is political and inconsistent (autotranslated):

Since the Golan Heights and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) are not part of Israeli territory under international law, the statement 'product from Israel' is considered incorrect under the said legislation. and considered misleading.
If the indication of origin is mandatory, another expression must be used, taking into account the way in which these areas are usually known.
For non-settlement products from Palestine, a possible indication that is not misleading as to geographic origin and in line with international practice is' West Bank product (Palestinian product) ' ' product from Gaza ”or “product from Palestine ”.
For products originating from settlements in the West Bank or the Golan Heights, indications limited to 'Golan Heights product' or 'West Bank product' are not sufficient. Even if the larger area or territory from which the product originates is stated, omitting the additional geographic information that the product originates from Israeli settlements would mislead the consumer as to the true origin of the product. In such cases, the expression “Israeli settlement” or equivalent should be added, for example, in parentheses. Thus expressions such as 'Golan Heights product (Israeli settlement)' or 'West Bank product (Israeli settlement)' could be used.

According to the regulations, one must be accurate in saying where the products come from. There is no nation called "Palestine" - yet Palestinian products may say that, instead of "Palestinian territories."

The areas where Jews live in the territories could be very accurately described as "Judea and Samaria," which is what even the UN called it before Jordan's illegal annexation of the territory. But instead, the Dutch regulations insist on a pejorative term, "Israeli settlement," whose only purpose is to help people boycott the products.

04/21 Links Pt1: Israel blasts French ruling keeping Sarah Halimi’s killer from trial; Biden’s anti-Israel ‘point man’ is behind plan to fund PA

From Ian:

Israel blasts French ruling keeping Sarah Halimi’s killer from trial

Israel blasted on Tuesday the ruling by France’s highest court that the murderer of Sarah Halimi was not criminally responsible because he had smoked marijuana before the crime.

“Sarah Halimi was murdered for clearly anti-Semitic motivations, for the sole reason that she was a Jew, ” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Hayat to the Times of Israel. “This was a despicable murder that harmed not only the victim herself and her family, but also the entire Jewish community’s sense of security.”

“The way to confront anti-Semitism is through education, zero tolerance, and heavy punishment,” Hayat continued. “This is not the message that the court’s ruling conveys.”

Halimi, an Orthodox Jewish woman in her sixties, died in 2017 after being pushed out of the window of her Paris flat by neighbor Kobili Traore, who shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great” in Arabic).

But in a decision last Wednesday, the Court of Cassation’s Supreme Court of Appeals upheld rulings by lower tribunals that Traore cannot stand trial because he was too high on marijuana to be criminally responsible for his actions.

Traore, a heavy pot smoker, has been in psychiatric care since Halimi’s death. The court said he committed the killing after succumbing to a “delirious fit” and was thus not responsible for his actions.

French President Emanuel Macron expressed support on Sunday for the country’s Jewish community and its efforts to bring Halimi’s killer to trial. He said he would seek a change to laws to prevent such a case from happening again.

In a rare and controversial critique of France’s justice system, Macron said that taking drugs and “going crazy” should not take away criminal responsibility.

Anger Outside French Consulate, NY Activists Hold Bigil for #SarahHalimi

Thankful to everyone who came out to send a loud message to the French government:

J’ACCUSE!

We demand #justiceforSarahHalimi pic.twitter.com/E0gVVo6VzI
— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) April 20, 2021

Biden’s anti-Israel ‘point man’ is behind plan to fund Palestinians

“I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” Hady Amr wrote a year after September 11 while working with an anti-Israel group.

A few years later, the Beirut-born Amr had become an adviser on Muslim relations to the World Economic Forum, before heading up Brookings’ Doha Center for Qatar. The tiny Islamic tyranny is allied with Iran, Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s a backer of Hamas.

The Obama administration appointed Amr deputy head of USAID’s Middle East Bureau, which put him in a key position to direct taxpayer money via an organization already notorious for funding pro-terrorist and anti-Israel groups.

A decade after Amr had responded to the death of a Hamas leader by ranting that “there will be thousands who will seek to avenge these brutal murders of innocents,” the Obama administration made him a deputy to its Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Amr decamped back to Brookings during the Trump administration, becoming one of Biden’s big bundlers, joining his transition team and getting picked as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. Within two decades of praising the intifada against Israel and a decade of working for a think-tank deeply compromised by its pro-Hamas regime sponsor, the foreign radical had climbed to a pole position in setting the Biden administration’s policy on Israel.

Politico described Amr as “the key U.S. official dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian issue.” The Times of Israel called him “Biden’s point-man on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Biden’s point man didn’t waste much time.

No, Palestinians don't care about George Floyd

Here is a tweet that is going viral at the moment:

The photo is legit, it came from a wire service last summer.

The implication that Palestinians care about George Floyd or Black Lives Matter is another story.

Today, the day after the verdict in the Derek Chauvin murder trial, I did not see the story mentioned in any of the usual Palestinian news sites I check. I looked at the sites of the three major Palestinian newspapers Al Ayyam, Al Quds and Al Hayat al Jadida, and I didn't see a single story on their front news pages online.

That solidarity that the American far-Left like to tout between oppressed groups is a decidedly one-way street.

On Monday, J-Street honored former president Jimmy Carter with their "Tzedek v'Shalom" award.

Jimmy Carter has a problem with Jews. Not Zionists - Jews.

I'm not talking about his reprehensible comparisons of Israel with apartheid South Africa, or his apologetics for all of Israel's enemies.

No, Jimmy Carter's anti-Zionism is rooted in Jimmy Carter's antisemitism.

When Helen Thomas was forced out of her job for blatantly antisemitic comments that Jews in Israel should go back to Poland and Germany, she was interviewed by Playboy. Here's what she said:

PLAYBOY: What was life like in the immediate aftermath as millions started viewing the video on YouTube?

THOMAS: I went into self-imposed house arrest for two weeks. It was a case of “know thyself.” Isn’t that what Socrates said? I wanted to see if I was remorseful—and I wasn’t.

... I also heard from Jimmy Carter. He called a few weeks later.

PLAYBOY: He did? What did he say?

THOMAS: Basically he was sympathetic. He talked about the Israelis in the Middle East, the violations. It was very nice of him to call, but I don’t want to get him into trouble.

In Carter's book, "Peace Not Apartheid," he made the incredibly odious suggestion that Palestinian terror against Jews should continue until Israel fulfills its supposed obligations:

It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel.

But worst of all was something that happened in 1987, an episode that shows beyond a doubt that Carter's vaunted support for human rights and justice ends when Jews are involved.

Carter received a letter from the daughter of the Waffen SS guard, Martin Bartesch, who was being deported from the US for lying on his immigration application.

Bartesch had volunteered for the Waffen SS and served in the SS Death's Head Division. He was a guard at the Mauthausen, where 38,000 Jews died. German records from the camp record that he personally shot dead Max Oschorn, a French Jew.

Bartesch's family had written to many US senators asking for help. They would contact the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation and ask for details, and the OSI told them that Bartesch was a murderer, and the senators would drop the matter.

Not Jimmy Carter.

Without even asking the OSI to verify what the family claimed (like their claim that Bartesch was forced to serve for the Nazis,) Carter wrote a note at the top of the letter and forwarded it to the OSI:

To Director, O.S.I.
I hope that, in cases like this, that special consideration can be given to affected families for humanitarian reasons. Jimmy Carter.

That's the person that J-Street honors - someone who spits on the graves of Holocaust victims in favor of supporting their murderers, while claiming "humanitarian reasons."

UNRWA commissioner claims the agency is not political. It is nothing BUT political!

Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner General of UNRWA, wrote an article in Al Jazeera with some whopping lies.

The lies start with the headline:

Calling them "refugees" is political! There is only one definition of refugee, and it is that of the Refugee Convention. Saying that Palestinian descendants of those who fled their homes in 1948 are "refugees" is political. Saying that Palestinians who still live in the areas of the British Mandate are "refugees" is political. Saying that nearly two million citizens of Jordan are "refugees" is political.

UNRWA is a purely political organization. It only exists to perpetuate itself.

Mohammad is a seven-year-old boy living in Gaza, which in June will enter its 15th year of a land, air, and sea blockade. Like the nearly 300,000 students in Gaza who attend schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), he has been in and out of in-person and remote learning since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic a year ago. He battles against electricity cuts every day to receive online educational materials prepared by UNRWA teachers who also struggle to get access to electricity and the internet. Mohammad’s right to education remains inalienable even during a pandemic and a humanitarian crisis.

Guess what? Most students on the planet have struggled during the past year! Here's a report on the problems kids in Africa are having. Many kids have suffered, unable to go to school, no access to the Internet for remote learning.

Where is their UNRWA to provide free education? It doesn't exist - because only Palestinians get an UNRWA to educate their kids! It is not the UN's job to provide free education to every child in the world - why is it their job to provide free education to only Palestinians?

As commissioner-general of UNRWA, my responsibility is to ensure that Palestine refugees in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, receive the basic services to which they are entitled. And yet, in the past year, UNRWA has been the subject of attacks of unprecedented ferocity and bias.

Why are they "entitled" to get free schooling on the world's dime? Why don't their host countries give them schooling in the homes they've lived in since their grandparents were born?

As usual, UNRWA officials handwave to stop people from asking these basic questions. Which is what a politician does.

The charge most frequently levied against us is that UNRWA plays a political role. This could not be further from the truth. UNRWA is mandated to provide direct, vital humanitarian assistance to Palestine refugees pending a just and lasting solution to their plight. That is the agency’s priority and focus. It does not engage in politics. UNRWA, like all other United Nations agencies and international NGOs, is bound to the four humanitarian principles (humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence) that are enshrined in two UN General Assembly resolutions.

Here's some school materials from UNRWA - with the UNRWA logo - that has a poem saying “a raging fire awaits the Occupation.”

That is not humane, impartial, or neutral. And it is definitely political.

As is this UNRWA-created material with a map that erases Israel.

The recent attacks on UNRWA – alleging that we teach “jihad” and “terrorism” – are biased attempts to drag a principled humanitarian agency into a highly politicised sphere where it does not belong.

UNRWA explicitly teaches jihad! School materials include sentences to be studied like:

Jihad is one of the doors to Paradise.
The Palestinians have become an example of sacrifice.
(Find the verb) in the sentence “The resistance fighter attacked the Enemy’s position”
The Palestinian died as a martyr to defend his motherland.
We shall defend the motherland with blood.
The scent of musk emanates from the martyr.
To redeem their motherland with their blood, for it is the most precious thing they own.

And this is only a few examples.

UNRWA lies. And it pays no price for lying, because so many people want to believe the lies.

04/20 Links Pt2: Scientists: Israel proves every developed country can subdue COVID with vaccines; Has anti-Israel discourse taken over the United States?; In Student Governments, Jews and Zionists Need Not Apply

From Ian:

Scientists: Israel proves every developed country can subdue COVID with vaccines

Prominent scientists say the transformation of Israel from a COVID-19 hotspot to a vaccination success story underlines that any developed country can subdue the virus.

They estimate that a relatively small number of vaccinations are needed to take a country out of crisis mode. The moment that half of the population aged 60-plus is inoculated, authorities can expect a dramatic drop in cases and hospitals are safe from being overwhelmed, they conclude.

The claims come from authors of a detailed report, published as a peer-reviewed article in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, on just how dire a COVID situation Israel faced in the early weeks of the vaccination campaign, especially as the new, highly infectious British variant was on the rampage.

“Israel was facing a range of factors that made the situation here particularly difficult, and if it succeeded despite all of this, and we could achieve a rapid decline in cases, then any developed country can,” Prof. Dan Yamin of Tel Aviv University told The Times of Israel.

He said that most other Western countries are in a better situation as they embark, or prepare to embark, on their vaccination programs, and therefore can be particularly confident upon seeing Israel’s infection, hospitalization, and death rates hit rock bottom.

His data suggests that vaccines quickly saved “hundreds of lives” in Israel, and his statistical analysis shows that the health service was swiftly protected from meltdown as a critical mass of 60-plus received vaccines.

Israel to Buy Millions of Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Doses

Israel signed a deal to buy millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc through 2022, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

The new vaccinations will be suitable to protect people against different variants of the coronavirus, Netanyahu said in a statement.

He said he hopes to sign a similar deal to purchase the Moderna Inc vaccine.

“This means that very soon we will have more than enough vaccines, both for adults and children,” he said.

Late on Monday, Israel’s Walla news website reported that Israel signed a deal with Moderna as well, although officials were not immediately reachable to confirm the report.

With about 81% of citizens or residents over 16 — the age group eligible for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in Israel — having received both doses, infections and hospitalizations are down sharply.

Israel closes down remaining COVID wards as infection drops

Israel on Monday closed down its two remaining coronavirus wards nearly one year after they were initially opened, as COVID-19 infection rate continues to decline.

The country began closing down its coronavirus wards some weeks ago when Israel's high-speed vaccinations campaign began to bear fruit with declining number of new COVID cases.

COVID wards at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera and Baruch Padeh Medical Center in Tiberias had remained the only two that were still operating. Both were finally shuttered on Monday, with remaining patients being moved for treatment in the internal medicine wards.

At the peak of the pandemic, Hadera's hospital operated three dedicated COVID wards, but over the past few days there have been no more than seven patients - on average - needing treatment.

"I am pleased to announce we are closing down the last active COVID ward," the hospital director, Dr. Mickey Dudkiewicz, said. "We will now be able to allocate staff to deal with the increasing needs of our internal medicine departments, which remained understaffed because of the pandemic," he said.

"If a need arises, we will re-open the wards but hope that there will be no such need," he added.

During the funeral for Mohammad Hejazi, the deputy commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force who died under mysterious circumstances on Sunday, an interesting statement was made by a prominent mourner.

Hejazi's commander, Brigadier General Ismail Qaani, said "the resistance fronts today in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the sons of the resistance elsewhere take a big step every day in confronting enemies, including the United States and Israel, and they will continue to do so until they reach a world government."

A world government? Those are some pretty ambitious plans!

I found a 2013 article in the same news site that said:

Ali Motahari, the deputy in the Islamic Consultative Assembly in Iran, said: "We believe that Islam will rule the world and a single world government will be formed, but this does not mean that Iran wants to extend hegemony and power over all countries of the world by force, because this is illogical and impossible, but the world must understand Iran's message and the Islamic revolution."

Prominent Iranian cleric Ayatollah Hossan Ansarian wrote an entire article on the topic. He explains that the world government of the future will be Shiite, based on the messianic belief of the Mahdi, and it would be a strong central government that is "coherent, effective, capable and complete with efficient administration." Obviously, the only people who can run such a government are Shiite Muslims, which would be the world religion under this system.

One cannot analyze Iran without understanding the role of the Mahdi in its politics, and the desire for reaching this Shiite utopia in its decision-making.

Anything that hastens the return of the Mahdi is by definition desirable - and that might include a nuclear bomb on the major obstacle to this dream.

At first glance, this article at Religion Dispatches at first looks like a parody of wokespeak. It includes paragraphs like this:

The language and, we argue, the conceptual categories in which the discourse on Jewish continuity traffics, even by its critics, remain beholden to essentializing cisheteronormative and binary-gendered frameworks. The discourse continues to reduce and reproduce an uninterrogated reliance on reproductive models that privilege monogamy, marriage, and the state, alongside marginalizing conceptions of “community,” “leadership,” and binary sexgendered divisions of labor, especially reproductive labor.

While it is easy to laugh at this substitution of nonsense for clear writing, the actual arguments of the two authors is much more dangerous.

Their jumping off point is a recent Forward article that says that a tiny number of people are attempting to bring back Steven Cohen into mainstream discourse on Jewish community issues. Cohen was forced to resign from his position at Hebrew Union College after it was revealed that he had engaged in a decades long pattern of sexual harassment.

It is clear that most Jews in Jewish studies are aghast and upset at any hint of rehabilitating Cohen. But the authors, being bigots, generalize the minority to the majority of Jews and accuse anyone who agrees with Cohen that keeping the Jewish people alive is important is complicit not only in his crimes but they are also misogynist, racist, and every other crime one can be.

For example, here is their proof of the racism of people interested in Jewish continuity:

A case in point is the ways in which racism is smuggled into the project of Jewish continuity.

Racism is discernible in the construction of an idea of “Jewishness” as inherently distinct from and preferable to other groups or ethno-religious affiliations. It’s more explicitly visible in Jewish continuity discourses that focus less on Jewish cultural-ritual practices and meaning-making but more on embodied individuals and collectivized populations. Rather than studying how people live Jewish lives, the emphasis is on the numbers of bodies that “count” as Jewish. More disturbing still are the legacies of scientific racism evident in the language of “intermarriage,” “in-marriage,” and “out-marriage.”

Not to invoke Godwin's law, but if you say that Jews marrying Jews is racist, you are saying that Jews are a race. I thought that thinking was considered antisemitic long ago, but what do I know?

(I am quite skeptical about the claim that people who are interested in Jewish continuity studies only care about Jewish "bodies" and nothing about how people live Jewish lives.)

Here's an experiment: Ask 10 of the Jewiest Jews you can find, the ones with black hats and beards, get them drunk, and ask them if they would prefer that their daughter marry a white gentile or a Black Jew.

There are no links to the assertion that Jews who prefer to see the Jewish people survive are racists. The bigots who wrote the article are defining them that way. While there is of course racism among Jews, that hardly makes these lies truthful.

Has anyone ever said that Amish are racist for preferring to marry other Amish? No, only Jews manage to get that label.

The authors seem to be interested in settling scores and pretending to be superior to ordinary scholars who care about things like facts and data, which, they assert, "reconfirms hegemonic norms." By contrast, the authors' work is so amazingly brilliant that most other scholars cannot even understand them:

Consider, for example, that both of us have been pressed to defend the relevance and applicability of our respective work. We’re aware that the intention is not to indict our research per se, but to question the thinking and inquiry that we practice. It’s always difficult for us to answer this query because, like many of our colleagues, our projects are invested in disrupting precisely such knee jerk thinking, including the very presumption of “relevance” that underwrites the question.

In short, these are egomaniacs and bigots who think that they are better than everyone else.

(h/t EBoZ)

04/20 Links Pt1: Minivan Driver Arrested in Hit-and-Run Assault on Brooklyn Hasidim; Sarah Halimi Atrocity — There Is No Law Without Justice; Israeli Military Officials Unite in Opposition to Biden Admin’s Iran Deal

From Ian:

Minivan Driver Arrested After ‘Horrific’ Hit-and-Run Assault on Brooklyn Hasidim

New York police have arrested the driver responsible for a deliberate hit-and-run attack Saturday on five Brooklyn Hasidim, the New York Daily News reported Monday.

The minivan driver was caught on camera intentionally backing up into five pedestrians in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, striking the victims twice and initially lingering on the scene before ultimately speeding away.

“Horrific antisemitic attack in Williamsburg,” tweeted the American Jewish Committee. “A driver pulls over, waits for a group of Jewish men to cross the street, and intentionally hits them twice with his car. We stand in full solidarity with the victims and thank @NYPD90Pct for the swift arrest of a suspect.”

The NYPD reportedly nabbed the suspect — Shokhobiddin Bakhritdinovon, 26 — on Sunday, after his car was spotted by members of Shomrim, a neighborhood watch group.
Update:https://t.co/15k90e6KJo
— WILLIAMSBURG NEWS (@WMSBG) April 18, 2021

The Daily News reporting that the victims were five male relatives ranging in age from 11 to 82, with the oldest individual requiring medical attention for a foot injury.

Sarah Halimi Atrocity — There Is No Law Without Justice

By saying that Sarah Halimi’s willful, hate-filled murderer is not responsible for his crimes, the Cour de Cassation has definitively deprived Sarah’s family of a trial essential to their mourning, but also the People of France of a necessary trial of antisemitism.

To put it simply, murdering Jews is no longer a criminal act in France if the killer can make a certain case to the court system.

By basing its decision on Article 122-1, Paragraph 1 of the Penal Code — which does not make a distinction according to the origin of the mental disorder used as an excuse — the Cour de Cassation has used the law to deprive the French people of justice.

The magistrates of the Cour de Cassation lacked courage and showed cowardice. Rather than take the courageous responsibility of a landmark decision, they passed that task to the legislators.

In addition, expert psychiatrists disagreed about the killer’s mental state, and if he should have escaped accountability. Without unanimity between the different experts, the doubt should have benefited the victim, not the accused.

The verdict, whatever it would have been, would at least have been delivered in the name of the French people. Montesquieu tells us that, “A thing is not right because it is law, but it must be law because it is just.”

The French people have been denied justice at the expense of “the law.”

The author is the President of Crif.

The Murder of Jewish French Woman Sarah Halimi: Brother Reacts to Verdict of Killer

In April 1941, 70 US senators joined in calling for "every possible encouragement to the movement for the restoration of the Jews in Palestine" as being the "declared policy of the United States," and offering support to the re-establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, in an effort spearheaded by Senator Robert F . Wagner, chairman of the American Palestine Committee .

The declaration noted:

280,000 refugees came into Palestine since the advent of the Nazi regime in Germany in 1933. The unprecedented work of rehabilitation of the Holy Land and the restoration of a people has proceeded uninterruptedly and is continuing even now despite war conditions.

Palestine has been recognized and set apart by Great Britain with the approval of the United States and other nations as a haven for the Jewish people, and refugees are streaming to its shores despite restrictive measures recently enforced by the Administration of that country.

The tragic plight of refugees fleeing from persecution and finding no home, a situation brought so dramatically to the attention of the world by the sinking of refugee ships with their human cargo, must compel our attention and strengthen our resolve to extend every possible encouragement to the movement for the restoration of the Jews in Palestine as a great humanitarian effort and in accordance with the spirit of biblical prophecy.

US State Department archives describe the reaction to this declaration by diplomats in Turkey and Britain. They say that letting Jews remain under Nazi rule is the lesser evil compared to upsetting Arabs.

On April 21, A Mr. Butler of the British Embassy, acting on behalf of British ambassador Lord Halifax, met with US Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles. Welles wrote:

Mr. Butler first spoke of the great concern occasioned the Embassy by the announcement of the dinner which was to be held in Washington on April 30 under the aegis of Senator Wagner and some other equally prominent Senators and of Mr. William Green of the American Federation of Labor at which Doctor Weizmann is due to speak in behalf of the Zionist movement in Palestine.
The British Embassy feels that German propaganda is now directed in the Arab world towards making it appear that the British Government is completely under the domination of the United States and that the United States would force Great Britain at the end of the war, if Great Britain is victorious, to open up all of Palestine to Jewish resettlement. The British Government believes that this is an exceedingly dangerous form of propaganda and that if speeches are now made in the United States by prominent persons high in the Government advocating the immediate opening up of Palestine to the Jewish resettlement planners in the event of a British victory, very great unrest will be created in the Arab world, particularly in Iraq, where a highly critical situation already exists. The British Government urged that the Executive branch of this Government do what it could to make this situation clear to the sponsors of the dinner.
I said that I would be very glad to look into the matter and that I would let Mr. Butler know in the immediate future what steps, if any, could be taken in that direction.

On April 22, the Turkish ambassador to the US made a visit to the State Department as well:

While calling today on another matter the Turkish Ambassador said that he had been rather disturbed by a newspaper report to the effect that seventy United States Senators had joined in making a declaration calling for "every possible encouragement to the movement for the restoration of the Jews in Palestine". The Ambassador said that in his opinion such activities were particularly harmful to the British cause in the Near East and might also be expected to have unfavorable repercussions for the Jews themselves.

Ambassador added that his Government had had long experience in dealing with the Arabs and knew their mentality thoroughly. There was not the slightest question in his mind that activities in the United States favoring further Jewish immigration into and control of Palestine were used by the Axis Powers in their propaganda with the Arab countries. Every such activity as that of the American Palestine Committee only further inflamed Arab opinion and increased the difficulties of the British in the vital area of the Near East.
I told the Ambassador that of course the Senators and Members of Congress were quite free to join any committee which they pleased and that obviously the executive branch of the Government had no control over. such activities.
...The Ambassador went on to say that any activities which served to inflame the Arabs in the Near East and to add to the difficulties of the British were naturally. of great interest to his own Government, which was in alliance with Great Britain He added that the question indeed went beyond the Arab countries and affected India as well. He said that he had many close friends among the Indian Moslems and that he could give me his solemn assurance that the Moslem group in India upon, whom Great Britain depended for support in that country could be only adversely affected by statements such as that made by the seventy Senators. He said that it was unnecessary for him to stress the importance to Great Britain of the loyal Moslems of India and the unfortunate repercussions that might ensue if they felt that their coreligionists in Palestine were not being given equitable treatment.

Notice how the diplomat tried to say that it would be better for Jews to stay in Europe to be slaughtered than for it to appear that the US supports their moving to safety.

When given a choice of dead Jews or angry Arabs and Muslims, polite diplomats prefer dead Jews.

Was Quds Force deputy "heart attack" really an assassination by Iran?

As soon as the news was announced that Mohammad Hejazi, the deputy commander of Iran's elite Quds Force died of a heart attack, there was intense skepticism whether that was the true cause of death.

One prominent Iranian tweeted that Hejazi did not die of a heart attack, but his post was removed almost immediately.

Now, Ava Today says that he might have been murdered by Iran - as a suspected Israeli spy!

Two sources inside IRGC told Avatoday that Hejazi’s death is suspicious among his circle as they knew he was being monitored by the regime for the last 10 days.

According to one of the sources, “IRGC was suspicious of several of its members who were close to Hejazi to have a role in last week's explosion in Natanz nuclear site.”

“Also, several members of Lebanese Hezbollah who were Israeli insiders, were close to Hejazi,” the sources said.

I have no idea of any of this is true.

If Israel is recruiting agents at that high a level in Iran, that would be amazing. And if Iran only suspects that so many of its top officials are really Israeli spies, that is a good thing, too.

Hebrew media has been documenting a large increase in attacks by Arabs on religious Jews in Israel - with the videos being uploaded to TikTok with humorous music.

We showed one example earlier this week, where a group of Arabs videoed a premeditated attack on a religions Jew on the light rail. But there have been many more.

Here are three videos of Arabs knocking off the hats from religious Jews.

חשבתם שילמדו לקח בעקבות הסרטון של ההוא שסטר לבחור ישיבה?
הנה שוב תיעוד מאתמול, ערבים בירושלים מבהילים ומעיפים לבחורי ישיבות את הכובע סתם להנאתם. pic.twitter.com/PkdoV0NlVk
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 16, 2021

הנה עוד מטרנד ביזוי היהודים בטיקטוק, ערבים זורקים לחרדי את הכובע בירושלים. pic.twitter.com/y02N9kS1s6
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 17, 2021

Arabs throwing stones at religious Jews in Jerusalem, and then making fun of one of the victims.

ערבים זורקים אבנים על חרדי בליל שבת ומעלים לטיקטוק, דבר שכבר הפך לטרנד בימים האחרונים.
pic.twitter.com/kQdtkIpe0r
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 17, 2021

הבן אדם פשוט מדמם, יכל להיגמר באסון, מטורף. pic.twitter.com/6hl2IbFNfH
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 17, 2021

Attacking a Jew on a bicycle.

שמישהו יעצור את הטירוף הזה כבר שחלילה לא יגמר באסון בסוף.

(קרדיט: @yedidya_epshtei)pic.twitter.com/ugnRYjRKBz
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 19, 2021

Laughing about making a religious man flinch.

עוד מטרור הטיקטוק, מנופאי ערבי מפחיד יהודים בפתח תקווה ומעלה לטיקטוק עם כותרת "הצלחתי להפחיד יהודים". pic.twitter.com/eIvH7Ma56h
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 19, 2021

Chanting "Allahu Akbar" while Jews are praying the silent Amida prayer.

בזמן שהם מתפללים תפילת שמונה עשרה הערבים הולכים ומכבים להם את המנגל וצועקים אללה אכבר, למה? סתם בשביל הכיף.#טרור_הטיקטוק pic.twitter.com/4mWMuEY1e5
— אריאל אלחרר (@ariel_elharar_) April 18, 2021

This is pure antisemitism, Nazi style humiliation of Jews.

It isn't only TikTok. Arabs have been using social media elsewhere to show off their ability to terrorize and humiliate religious Jews. Earlier this year, a pair of Palestinian skateboarders filmed themselves zooming through Jewish neighborhoods in Antwerp with Palestinian flags on the Sabbath, harassing the Jews they passed by.

People who film themselves will do more and more outrageous stunts to gain views - and the built-in Jew-hatred of these TikTok devotees makes the haredim an obvious target.

This won't stop from people complaining about it. It won't stop from articles in the media. The only way it will stop - whether in Jerusalem, Antwerp or Blacks attacking Jews in Brooklyn - is if religious Jews themselves start defending themselves and beating these guys up.

The modern Nazis choose their victims specifically because they are not fighters. It is way past time for them to learn to defend themselves, not only for themselves personally, but because that will stop these Jew-haters before they start escalating to murder videos.

These disgusting events usually happen in heavily haredi Jewish neighborhoods. A small crowd of Jews can do a great deal of damage to their attackers if they wanted, and it would stop the epidemic cold.

Convincing them to act that way will be an uphill battle, but it is necessary.

04/19 Links Pt2: Macron calls for change in law following Sarah Halimi ruling; When did Palestine become Palestine?; Why do Jewish academic centers smear Israel?

From Ian:

France's Macron calls for change in law following Sarah Halimi ruling

French President Emmanuel Macron has called for a change in the law after the highest French court of appeals last week ruled the murderer of Sarah Halimi could not be held criminally accountable for his actions since he took cannabis before he committed the crime.

“Deciding to take drugs and then ‘becoming mad’ should not in my eyes remove your criminal responsibility,” Macron told Le Figaro in an interview published Sunday.

“On this topic, I would like the minister of justice to submit a change to the law as soon as possible,” he said.

“It is not for me to comment on a court decision, but I would like to tell the family, relatives of the victim and all fellow citizens of the Jewish faith who were awaiting this trial of my warm support and the determination of the Republic to protect them,” Macron said.

The French Jewish community was angered by the Court of Cassation’s ruling.

In April 2017, Kobili Traoré, a 27-year-old Muslim man, beat Halimi, his 65-year-old Jewish neighbor, while screaming “Allahu Akhbar” and antisemitic slogans before throwing her out of the window of her third-floor apartment.

A lower court ruled in December 2019 that Traore was not criminally responsible for his actions since his heavy intake of cannabis had compromised his “discernment,” or consciousness.

When it comes to Jews, everyone always has their excuses Kenneth.

For example - if this exact same thing had happened in Israel - you wouldn't call it antisemitism either.

In fact, you probably wouldn't mention it at all.
— David Collier (@mishtal) April 19, 2021

Martin Sherman: When did Palestine become Palestine?

With Joe Biden in the White House, the question of Palestinian statehood is now back on the international agenda, after being largely sidelined under the Trump administration.

For decades, the discourse on the “Palestinian issue” has been dominated by the Palestinian-Arabs contention that Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. “The West Bank”) has long been their ancient homeland.

Preaching Genocide
However, many would probably be interested—and certainly very surprised—to learn just when realization dawned on the Palestinian-Arabs that this territory supposedly comprised their yearned-for motherland.

Indeed, long before Israel held a square inch of “the West Bank”—before there was any “occupation” or “settlements”—the Arabs claimed all the territory of pre-1967 Israel i.e. within the Green Line—as “Palestinian” territory and threatened to reclaim it by force of arms, and annihilate all its Jewish inhabitants.

Thus, in March 1965, over two years prior to the 1967 Six-Day War—after which the “West Bank” came under Israeli administration—Egyptian President, Gamal Abdul Nasser threatened, with chilling genocidal malevolence: "We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand, we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood".

No less blood-curdling were the words of Yassir Arafat’s predecessor as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Ahmed Shukeiry, who on the very eve of the Six-Day War—in a somewhat premature flush of triumph—crowed:

“D Day is approaching. The Arabs have waited 19 years for this and will not flinch from the war of liberation…This is a fight for the homeland – it is either us or the Israelis. There is no middle road. The Jews of Palestine will have to leave.[but] is my impression that none of them will survive...We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants and as for the survivors — if there are any — the boats are ready to deport them.”

“…Jordanians & Palestinians are considered … one people."

Significantly, the first version of the Palestinian National Covenant was formulated three years before the Six-Day War—in May 1964—in East Jerusalem (then under Jordanian control).

In it, the Palestinian-Arabs explicitly foreswear any sovereign claim to the “West Bank” (or to Gaza):

At NY Times, Myth of Edward Said’s Jerusalem Home Is Tenacious

A book review in The New York Times’ print edition yesterday (“The provocative polymath,” page BR17, and online here) repeats an error about Edward Said’s childhood that The New York Times twice previously corrected, most recently on March 25.

Ayten Tartici errs, writing about Said:
At the time [1986], he had not been back to the place of his birth, what was then Mandatory Palestine, since fleeing in December 1947 at the age of 12.

While Said was born in Jerusalem in 1935, his family left for Cairo at a very young age, and that is where he spent his childhood — not in Mandatory Palestine. He did not “flee” Palestine, a falsehood about his life story that he told “as an allegory of the Palestinian people,” as the late scholar Justus Weiner, who uncovered the truth about Said’s biography, said.

As the March 25, 2021 Times correction, about a separate Times review of Timothy Brennan’s book about Said (“Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said”), states:
An earlier version of this review misidentified the city that was Edward Said’s childhood home and misstated details about Jerusalem’s division into Jewish and Arab areas. Although Said was born in Jerusalem, his family’s home was Cairo; they did not move from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was not partitioned into Jewish and Arab halves in 1947. In 1949, control of the city was divided as part of an armistice.

When the digital article was amended March 25, the false claim that “Said’s family moved to Cairo in 1947 after the United Nations divided Jerusalem into Jewish and Arab halves” was replaced with accurate information: “Said grew up in Cairo.”

Previously, on Oct. 1, 2003,The Times published the following correction regarding Said’s obituary:
An obituary on Friday about Edward W. Said, the Columbia University literary scholar and advocate of a Palestinian state, misidentified the city that was his childhood home and misstated the date of Jerusalem’s partition into Jewish and Arab areas. Although Mr. Said was born in Jerusalem, in 1935, his family’s home was Cairo; they did not move from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was partitioned in 1949, not 1947.

According to British Mandate records, Said’s parents neither owned nor rented the Jerusalem dwelling that he at times falsely portrayed as his childhood home.

An Islamist is left speechless after a Zionist educates him about Jewish refugees from the Arab world. pic.twitter.com/txUkvL9MSw
— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) April 18, 2021