Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 06, 2021

How Far Can The Abraham Accords Extend To Counter Israel's Critics? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

The goodwill and cooperation generated by the Abraham Accords continue. Just last month, Israel and the UAE signed an agreement for the two countries to collaborate on healthcare and healthcare technology. But more than that, there have been public expressions of goodwill on holidays and condolences on other occasions.

How far can this spirit of goodwill go?

Last December, I suggested this could extend inwardly as well as outwardly and the Abraham Accords could even affect Israeli relations between Arabs and Jews. Mansour Abbas, an Israeli Arab politician and head of the United Arab List (Ra'am), has openly spoken about working with and from within the Israeli government. More importantly, this approach is supported by a majority of Arab Israelis. Yousef Makladeh of the consulting company StatNet, reported that "over 60% of the [Israeli] Arab population supports MK Mansour Abbas’ approach, that they can work with the [Jewish] right.”

Makladeh sees the Abraham Accords as a part of this:

“The [Arab Israeli] public wants peace, it does not matter with whom, because it will bring them economic advantages,” he said. More trade with the UAE, more UAE investors coming to Israel, and Israeli companies going to the UAE, will mean more opportunities for Arab-Israelis, who will be seen as the logical middlemen. [emphasis added]

So just how far can the effects of the Abraham Accord go?

Writing in Newsweek, Seth Frantzman -- Executive Director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis -- believes the accords may play a part in diminished criticism of Israel:

Today's Middle East realities, with [1] new peace agreements and [2] 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.

In addition to the global events that draw some of the attention away from the Middle East, Frantzman believes that we are past the point where "being an Israel critic once offered an entrée to fame and a feeling of instant expertise," leading potential critics to go into other areas and conflicts. The coronavirus has played a part too, cutting down on the number of anti-Israel publicity stunts.

And then there are the Abraham Accords:

There is less hunger in the Middle East for input from Western activists who propose new "solutions." And in the West, there is less readiness to see Israel as a major issue in the world when there are so many others happening. Anti-Israel activism gained fuel from regimes in the Middle East and even the Soviet Union in the decades before Oslo. These factors have all since shifted, moving the West toward a more reasonable discussion about Israel's policies and how Israel can play a positive, stabilizing role in the Middle East. The conversation now is about interfaith dialogue, coexistence and reducing tensions. [emphasis added]

It is early yet to say so definitively, but as more and more positive news appears on social media -- not only about economic ties and military agreements, but about tourism and friendly exchanges -- a gradual shift in the narrative of the Middle East in general and Israel, in particular, may appear.

But it won't be easy.

Frantzman comments

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.

He wrote these words a month ago, before the HRW report claiming that Israel is an apartheid state. So how does that report fit in with Frantzman's thesis?

On that point, consider Herb Keinon's article last month in the Jerusalem Post, The HRW apartheid report: Does it matter? He responds that it does...and does not.

It doesn’t matter that much anymore in the corridors of power in Western democracies. Evidence of this is that few if any government will issue a statement or communiqué on the basis of this report.

Even though the State Department spokesperson may well be asked what Washington thinks of the report at a daily press briefing, it is highly unlikely that the White House or the State Department will deem it necessary to respond of its own volition. Not only Washington, but also in other capitals around the world.

A State Department spokesperson did in fact make a statement that "It is not the view of this administration that Israel’s actions constitute apartheid" -- while at the same time saying it would not “offer public evaluations of reports by outside groups.”

Keinon goes on to quote an Israeli official that another factor mitigating against the impact of the HRW report is that the "golden age" of such human rights organizations is over. One reason is that many countries are more nationalist and less globalist. Another factor is growing skepticism about these organizations, based on revelations such as the HRW trip to Saudi Arabia in 2009 when it used its work against Israel as part of its sales pitch to get money from wealthy donors.

This is separate from the obvious influence the report will have on those with a limited grasp of the facts.

Last October, Luke Akehurst, Director of We Believe in Israel, was already claiming that undercutting the apartheid claim was one of Four ways the Abraham Accords dismantle the anti-Israel camp’s narrative:

[T]he Abraham Accords demolish the narrative that Israel is engaged in a race-based and hence racist oppression of the Palestinians, and hence the apartheid smear and the BDS policies that flow from the false comparison with apartheid South Africa. Emiratis and Bahrainis are the same ethnicity as the Palestinians: Arab. If Israel is able to have normalised and mutually beneficial relations with other Arab states it stands to reason that the occupation is down to a political impasse with the Palestinians, not a race-based desire to subjugate them.

Maybe.

But reason has little to do with the accusations of apartheid coming from groups like HRW and B'tzelem.

Akehurst believes that the accords also undercut the BDS movement as well:

[T]he Abraham Accords sound the death knell for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. BDS was built on the foundations and legacy of the Arab Boycott of Israel, initiated as a boycott of the pre-state Yishuv by the Arab League in 1945. With key Arab states now formally embracing trade and diplomatic deals with Israel, it looks ridiculous and out of touch with the reality of the region or Arab opinion for radicals in Europe and North America to continue to pursue a boycott policy.

But again, if the accords are going to have any such effect on changing the narrative, it will be gradual and over time. It will depend on continued, positive developments between Israel and Arab countries on the one hand and regular, reliable posting of these developments on social media on the other.

Most importantly, a lot depends on the support for the Abraham Accords by the US. And if Saudi support for the accords were key in getting the UAE and other Arab countries on board, anything that appears to diminish that support may undercut what is now being accomplished.

For that reason, Biden's measures against the Saudis are worrying -- 3 in February alone.

o February 4, the White House announced the Pentagon would no longer support the Saudis against the Iran-backed Houthis that have been terrorizing both the Yemenis and the Saudis for the past 10 years.
o February 16, the State Department rescinded the designation of the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization
o February 26, Biden had the Office of the Director of National Intelligence release a report confirming Saudi responsibility for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi at their consulate in Turkey

And now the Saudis are talking with Iran.

An article in Haaretz examines the prospect of the Abraham Accords falling apart in light of these secret negotiations:

The Saudis appreciate Israel's attempts to sabotage Iranian nuclear ambitions, but do not believe these efforts can entirely halt Iran's converging paths to a nuclear weapon, nor rein in its takeover of neighboring countries.

Despite the Trump administration's inelegant attempts to have Israel and the Arab states play nice in order to join forces to counterbalance Iran, co-operation to that end is still limited.

If, as may be the case, Netanyahu is replaced as Prime Minister, the question of the future of the Abraham Accords becomes sharper.

But for now, Israel is benefitting from the remarkable friendship and goodwill of multiple Arab countries, with potential far beyond economic and military ties.

Palestinians who demand 675,000 Jews be evicted because they are Jewish are complaining about "ethnic cleansing" in Sheikh Jarrah

The headlines from Sheikh Jarrah almost all ignore the basic facts of the issue: The buildings in question are owned by Jews and the Arab residents have refused to pay rent - even though they had agreed in a 1982 court case.

As NGO Monitor summarizes:

According to the Supreme Court, the land in question “was owned by Chief Rabbi (Hacham Bashi) Avraham Ashkenazi and Chief Rabbi Meir Orbach until the War of Independence [1948], after they purchased it in 1875 from its Arab owners.”
Subsequently, two Jewish organizations, Va’ad Eidat HaSfaradim and Va’ad HaKlali L’Knesset Yisrael, worked to register the land with British Mandatory government in 1946.
The properties were registered with Israeli authorities under these two organizations in 1973.
These organizations sold the properties to the Nahalat Shimon organization in 2003.

According to a 1979 High Court decision, and re-affirmed repeatedly in subsequent cases, as in the case of any tenant living on someone else’s property, residents living on the land owned by these organizations were required to pay rent to the organizations that owned the properties. Their failure to do so, along with instances of illegal building and illegally renting properties to others, resulted in the current legal proceedings against them, culminating in the District Court decision.

Crucially, in 1982, a number of residents- including those whose descendants appealed to the District Court- agreed in Magistrate Court that the 2 Israeli non-profits were the legal land owners.

The Arab claims that they are the legal owners have been proven to be false in court many times over the years.

Israel-haters, however, are calling evicting a few dozen illegal squatters "ethnic cleansing."

Today, the Palestinian National Council sent letters to the heads of parliaments around the world and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, demanding support to stop the "ethnic cleansing of Jerusalemites" in Sheikh Jarrah.

Ethnic cleansing? The properties in dispute are only a small percentage of the area of Sheikh Jarrah. This UN map shows the areas that are claimed by Jews:

The same people who are screaming about "ethnic cleansing" of a small number of people are very clear as to their own goals: the eviction not of dozens but of 675,000 Jews from Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.

A large part of the world insists that the kicking out Jews - and only Jews, not Israeli Arabs - from their historic homeland, where many of them have lived all their lives, is "justice" - while evicting a few illegal squatters who refuse to pay rent is what they call "ethnic cleansing."

On Wednesday, both Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib linked to articles in Middle East Eye in their tweets.

Tlaib, saying Israel was guilty of apartheid, linked to an article quoting a Palestinian who claims his lands were torched by Jews the previous night.

Omar linked to a completely different article about Sheikh Jarrah.

This is notable because Middle East Eye is not exactly an objective news source. It is a pro-terrorist site.

And it is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

Michael Rubin wrote in 2017:

Delving into the details of MEE, however, show that it acts far less as a traditional journalistic outlet and far more as an English-language front for Qatari-supported groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. British corporate records, for example, show that Jamal Awn Jamal Bessasso, a former official for both Al Jazeera in Qatar and the Hamas-affiliated al-Quds TV in Lebanon, owns and operates MEE through M.E.E. Ltd.

... The Hamas links run as deep. A former official of Interpal, a United Kingdom-based charity designated by the US Treasury Department as a financial supporter of Hamas, registered the Middle East Eye website. Prior to joining MEE, [news editor Rory] Donaghy worked for organizations founded by Hamas (such as the House of Wisdom in Gaza) and the Muslim Brotherhood (Emirates Center for Human Rights, which was set up with financing and assistance from the Cordoba Foundation, a Muslim Brotherhood entity).

Bessasso, meanwhile, has openly supported radical groups. In 2012, he shared a Facebook post praising Hamas. The following year, he shared a quote from Muslim Brotherhood theologian Yusuf Qaradawi encouraging followers to utilize “violence against those who deserve it.” Over the years, the MEE has bolstered its content with “exclusive” access to Hamas, seemingly acting as the terrorist group’s preferred outlet to the English-speaking world. Hearst has penned editorials praising and defending the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam.

The National (UAE) had an extensive investigation with similar conclusions in 2014.

Beyond those ties, there is no question that MEE is a pro-Hamas website and mouthpiece. Hamas is, of course, a US-designated terrorist group.

Two members of Congress trust and amplify articles from a pro-Hamas and pro-terror site that may in fact be owned and run by enemies of the United States.

The Meron Tragedy and Israel’s Autonomous Communities (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal

Forty-five people attending a festival to celebrate the holiday of Lag b’Omer at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai on Mt. Meron were crushed to death last weekend, in a catastrophic but totally predictable stampede which – one official of a first-responders group said – had only been prevented by annual miracles. This year there was no miracle. The facilities at the site were woefully inadequate to support even a tenth of the 100,000 people that showed up, an agreement to limit the number was ignored due to political pressure, and what had been predicted occurred.
The site had not been improved over the years despite many reports from various bodies including the police and the mevaker hamedina, an independent official who oversees the operations of the government and reports to the Knesset, which is required by law to respond and if needed, act on them.

Why has nothing been done? Because the site, which is officially under control of the government, in practice “belongs” to several Haredi [“ultra-Orthodox”] sects, who object to changes proposed by any of the others, and even more to outsiders telling them what they can do. They have depended on the protection of Hashem, based on the principle that nothing bad can happen to someone who is in the process of performing a mitzvah, an idea which ignores the fact that Hashem gave his human creations brains and expects them to be used.

The authorities, who recently forced an acquaintance of mine to stop using his tiny (and licensed) ham radio transceiver on a deserted beach for “safety reasons,” do not dare interfere with Haredi events. This is a particular case of the partly unwritten principle of Haredi autonomy: although they live in the State of Israel, Haredi communities are not in practice subject to the same laws or expectations as secular, traditional, or national-religious Jews.
At the time of the founding of the State of Israel, in order to obtain the support of the observant community, Ben Gurion and other secular Zionists found it necessary to promise them certain things, such as rabbinical control of family law, observance of Shabbat and Kashrut in all official functions, and freedom to determine the content of their school curricula, as long as certain secular subjects were included.

As time passed, the official “status quo” between secular and observant Israelis grew to include draft exemptions for Torah students, and government funding for educational systems outside of the state system. At the same time, there developed an unofficial hands-off attitude toward the Haredim. Haredi schools reduced or eliminated instruction in secular subjects such as English and Mathematics, in violation of the status quo. Laws to limit exemptions from military or other national service could not be enforced. Tax evasion is common in Haredi communities. During the Covid epidemic, Haredi schools and yeshivot were opened in defiance of the regulations when other schools were closed. Rules established by the Ministry of Health were widely flouted, with high-profile weddings and funerals attended by thousands of tightly-packed people.
Video of such events, while police were harassing non-Haredim for walking maskless in the park, created a great deal of animosity toward Haredim, especially among those whose memories of massive traffic jams caused by Haredi anti-draft demonstrations were fresh. The political interference with the extradition of Malka Leifer to face sex abuse charges in Australia was another flashpoint. It doesn’t matter that the small extremist faction that blocked traffic, or the particular Hasidic group that counts both Malka Leifer and perennial government minister Ya’akov Litzman as a member, do not represent all Haredim; anti-Haredi feeling is widespread.
The other side of the coin is that Haredi communities distrust and disrespect the state. Some are explicitly anti-Zionist, but even those that aren’t believe that “Torah law” – which is whatever their rabbi says it is – overrides the laws of the State of Israel. They believe that secular and non-Haredi religious Jews have no right to criticize them in any way, and in some cases consider such criticism “antisemitic.” They relate to the State of Israel the way their great-grandfathers related to the Tsar or the Porte.

The problem is that the “status quo” has developed into a complete autonomy, a mini-state into which the organs of the larger state don’t reach. The Haredi political parties have been in almost every Israeli government, and they often hold the balance of power. Police and other officials don’t even try to enforce laws when they know they will be countermanded (and possibly punished) by the political connections of the communities.

Haredi leaders have demanded more and more autonomy, and have received it, both officially and in practice. But this disaster has illustrated that it has gone too far. After the deaths, many blamed the police. But it’s clear that the police cannot be blamed for failing to protect people when there are laws for that very purpose that they are prevented from enforcing. Some Haredi rabbis and politicians are beginning to understand this.

The Haredi autonomy is not the only one in the country. Arab citizens of Israel also live in an autonomy that is in many ways similar. They have been granted an exemption from the draft and national service. There is rampant tax evasion in Arab towns. During the epidemic, they persisted in holding large weddings. Today they are suffering from a wave of violent organized crime which has placed law-abiding citizens in fear for their lives. Every week sees new murders. They too, blame the police, which is ironic since – like the Haredim – they previously preferred to keep the police as far away as possible.

There is yet another autonomous group in Israel, and that is the Bedouin tribes of southern Israel. They too have experienced an increase in criminal behavior which has been ignored by the state; but unlike the Arab villages of the North, their banditry victimizes the Jewish residents of the area.

These problems have been shoved under the rug by successive governments, for various reasons. In the case of the Haredim, it’s a combination of factors. The most important, of course, is the political power wielded by this community, which represents about 12% of the population; as well as the mistrust, and dare I say it, dislike on both sides.

The Arab and Bedouin communities have never fully cooperated with the Jewish authorities, and law enforcement is difficult without cooperation. As long as the crime stays within the community, it’s tempting for police officials to concentrate their effort elsewhere. That, however, is wrong, as well as stupid, because the crime will not stay in the communities where it starts.

Israel is not a large country and it can’t afford have several autonomous enclaves that don’t consider themselves part of the state. The lack of respect for the laws made by the national government is corrosive. It wouldn’t hurt to pay more attention to the reports of the mevaker hamedina, and ensure that problems in law enforcement as well as in the allocation of all kinds of resources are dealt with in a reasonable time.

To some extent, Israel is like Russia, a country where everything is illegal but laws are enforced selectively. The psychological and political issues, for both Arabs and Haredim, are difficult. I don’t know how to change their deeply alienated mindsets, or if it’s possible. But I think the first thing that has to change is that the laws must be enforced, fairly, on all citizens.

05/05 Links Pt2: Why Human Rights Watch is Attacking Israel’s Law of Return; Anti-Israel propaganda on two wheels – Cycling Weekly turns toxic

From Ian:

Clifford D. May: Human Rights Watch crosses the line with latest attack on Israel

HRW appears to believe that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have a right to demand citizenship from a state whose destruction they seek. No such right exists anywhere on earth, and for Israelis to grant it would be suicidal.

The Kohelet Policy Forum, an Israeli think tank, has issued a detailed response to HRW. It deserves to be read in its entirety. I have space here to highlight only a few points.

Apartheid, it points out, is not “a grab bag of policies that HRW happens to disagree with.” Apartheid implies “the physical separation — apartness — of people based on a legislated racial hierarchy.” As noted above, that’s not the situation in Israel. There are no racial distinctions in Israeli law. Nor are Jews and Palestinians two distinct racial groups. Israelis are, in fact, multiracial, with more than half coming from families who are indigenous to the Middle East and never left the Middle East.

Can one find instances of bias, bigotry or discrimination in Israel? In which nations is that not the case? The answer is none which is why “no country since the end of South African apartheid has ever received the distinction.”

Not China, where Uighurs and Tibetans face egregious persecution; not the Islamic Republic of Iran which severely oppresses Bahais; not Pakistan, which has for decades been driving out Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Ahmadis and other minorities.

HRW claims that Israelis stepped over the “threshold” to apartheid with their “Nation State Law.” Kohelet responds: “While the wisdom of the Nation State law can be criticized, it does nothing like what any of the apartheid laws did, and instead closely resembles numerous European democratic constitutional provisions. Indeed, it is almost entirely declarative; its one substantive provision guarantees rather than denies Palestinian Arab rights (it guarantees Arabic language rights).”

What’s more, states throughout the broader Middle East proudly proclaim themselves Arab and/or Muslim. It is only Jewish identity and self-determination that HRM deems a “crime against humanity.”

Credit where it’s due: The Biden administration last week stated explicitly that it does not consider “that Israel’s actions constitute apartheid.”

As noted above, evidence of HRW’s animosity toward Israel comes as no surprise. More than a decade ago, Robert Bernstein, the founder of HRW and its chairman from 1978 to 1998, accused the organization of “helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.”

But now it is HRW, not Israel, that has crossed a threshold. Its latest attempt to defame and delegitimize the Jewish state provides aid and comfort to those — including Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s rulers — who incite and vow genocide. The definition of genocide is plain, and it is unequivocally a crime under international law.

Defenders of HRW might say: “I’m sure that’s not their intention!” Critics of HRW might respond: “Trust me, they know exactly what they’re doing.”

Why Human Rights Watch is Attacking Israel’s Law of Return

If you’re Jewish and live in the Diaspora, chances are there’s been some event in the news or in politics that at some point has made you say to yourself, “Well, if things really go south here, I can always go to Israel.”

I’m sure many American Jews had those thoughts after the murders in Pittsburgh, Poway, Jersey City and Monsey. In the United States in 2019, the most recent year for which FBI data is available, there were 953 hate crimes committed against Jews, or more than 60 percent of religiously based hate crimes.

Many French Jews are probably having such thoughts now, since France’s highest court has ruled, functionally, that there is no criminal responsibility for killing a Jew if the killer was high on marijuana. Indeed, in the aftermath of the 2006 kidnapping, torture and murder of 23-year old Ilan Halimi, the 2012 murders of three Jewish children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse, and the 2015 shooting at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket, French Jews acted on that sentiment in record numbers.

But Human Rights Watch has targeted the Israeli law that ensures that Jews have just such a refuge. Among other things, HRW’s latest anti-Israel propaganda report takes aim at Israel’s Law of Return. HRW invokes the historical racial segregation in the U.S., complaining that “a two-track citizenship … effectively regards Jews and Palestinians separately and unequally.”

The report characterizes Israel’s Law of Return as part of its “Discriminatory Restrictions on Residency and Nationality.” Later in the same report, the law is characterized primarily as motivated by demographic concerns.

But, as NGO Monitor explains, “HRW deviously erases the context: the Law of Return was enacted in the shadow of the Holocaust, to provide a safe haven for Jews who for centuries suffered persecution around the world. The sharp rise in physical violence and other forms of anti-Semitism around the world in recent years only highlights the need for Israel as a safe refuge from persecution.”

The fact that many Jews who attempted to flee the Holocaust were turned away by the U.S. and other countries seems to be of no concern to HRW. One might wonder, as well, without the Law of Return, what HRW would have liked to see happen to more than half a million Jews who settled in Israel between 1948 and 1972, after fleeing or being expelled from Arab countries.

This was same ‘declaration’ that also basically said calling for Israel’s genocide is not Antisemitic. So, of course @KenRoth is using them as cover! https://t.co/yZP1s3qaxA
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) May 5, 2021

Michael Danby: Palestine recognition ‘invalid’

FORMER federal Labor MP Michael Danby has claimed the party broke its own rules by not giving him an opportunity to speak against the recent change in its platform on recognising a Palestinian state.

A 2018 conference motion “calling on the next Labor government to recognise a Palestinian state” was elevated at the party’s platform conference in March. Danby said he was denied the right to speak against it.

“I requested to speak against the reception of the report ‘Australia and the World’ as was my right as a delegate under Standing Order 6A for this conference,” he wrote to Labor national secretary Paul Erickson last week.

“Yet despite repeated phone calls on the morning of the conference, I found when the debate was called on that I was unfairly excluded from the speaking list and blocked from entering the speakers’ green room.

“I hereby request that you refer this matter to the next National Executive meeting as it is my belief that this report was accepted in clear breach of the ALP’s own rules and is therefore invalid.”

A Labor insider told The AJN this week that Danby “may have a point”.

Bob Carr out of control

Zionist Council of New South Wales Israel affairs director Arsen Ostrovsky said Carr “seems to have a rather unhealthy obsession with Israel, dominated by his irrational hatred of the Jewish State and willingness to be a pawn of the Palestinian propaganda machine”.

“It is high time that the Labor Party, both federal and state, rein Carr in,” he said.

Macnamara MP Josh Burns said Carr’s accusations and those of Human Rights Watch “do not reflect the views of the Australian Labor Party and does not advance the cause of peace”.

His predecessor, former Melbourne Ports MP Michael Danby called it “Corbyn-style Labor”.

“Add the twist of Beijing’s most odious advocate in Australia attempting to divert attention from China’s concentration camps in Xinjiang and its aggression against Hong Kong and Taiwan,” he said, adding it was “ironic that Carr whinges about the Palestinians not having a vote on the day PA boss Abbas cancels the Palestinian elections”.

Asked for a comment at a Victorian Parliamentary Yom Ha’atzmaut function, former federal Labor leader Bill Shorten said he had made it a practice not to comment about Carr’s comments, “Because you can be here all day.”

A one-time co-founder of Labor Friends of Israel, Carr’s Israel agitation has steadily increased over recent years.

Financial Times editor embraces HRW's apartheid lie

The charge of “irredentism” – a policy of advocating the restoration to a country of any territory formerly belonging to it – needs to put in perspective, particularly since Gardner compared Israel to Russia, China, Turkey and India.

Russia has 17.13 million square km of land. China has 9.597 million km. India has 3.287 million km. And, Turkey has 783,562 square km.

Israel has 22,145 square km – representing a meager 0.2 percent of the landmass of the Arab world. The entire West Bank – only a third of which was designated to Israel by the Peace to Prosperity Peace Plan – is 5,628 square km. To compare Israeli ‘expansionism’ (that is, Israeli claims over disputed territory) in the same political universe as that of Russia, China, Turkey and India is grossly misleading.

Gardner ends by noting, hopefully and in the context of the HRW report, that “the price for Israel disdaining [Palestinian] rights…may be rising”.

So, what did Gardner write about Palestinian political responsibilities and moral obligations in the context of the quest for peace? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. As is almost always the case with such pieces, Gardner completely robbed Palestinians of their agency, casting them as passive victims of Israeli malevolence. Decades of bad Palestinian decisions, particularly their choice to pursue violence and embrace antisemitism, was erased by the Financial Times editor.

Forget about the ‘bigotry of LOW expectations’, Gardner appears to have NO expectations of Palestinians or their leaders.

It all began with a private message: “Arabs are passing out sweets on Twitter to celebrate the death of Jews in Meron.” There was a link to a tweet.

More than 20 settlers were killed and more than 200 injured in an accident in northern occupied Palestine pic.twitter.com/RrPjixqb1n
— 🇵🇸 Ali 🇱🇧 (@allushiii_new) April 29, 2021

Screenshot, because as we bloggers like to say: "If you don't take a screenshot it didn't happen."

I went to Twitter to take a closer look. I didn’t want to engage the guy, so I decided to retweet with a comment. It was my way of making a statement: Let the world see how these evil people rejoice when Jews are killed. Let the world see how even those Jews who live in cities inside the green line are reviled as “settlers.” And let the world see the way even Hassidic Jews who do not typically consider themselves “Zionist” are lumped together with the others.

To them, even Hassidim who live in cities are "settlers." They celebrate the death of Jews, irrespective of where they live. https://t.co/SnpAfPGw8u
— (((Varda Epstein))) (@VardaEpstein) April 30, 2021

Screenshot, or it didn't happen.

Because it’s not about Zionists or occupation or even settlers. It’s about JEWS.

Frankly, they hate us.

But of course, just because I stood on the sidelines and commented only to my followers, doesn’t mean I stayed out of the fray. Someone with vague associations to both Hezbollah and anime (@HezBallerMisaka) attempted to draw me into a debate on the topic.

“Even in a garbage can in occupied Palestine they would still be a settler.”

So I asked him, “What are the borders of ‘occupied Palestine?’”

And he tweeted back a photo of all of Israel, draped in the colors of the Palestinian flag.

pic.twitter.com/4ouJHKRRPn
— A Certain Anti-Zionist Railgun ❤️🇵🇰🖕🇮🇱🇪🇺 (@HezBallerMisaka) April 30, 2021

I kept going back and forth with the guy until he made some comments sufficiently antisemitic that I felt it within my rights to fill out a report. And so he stopped. But then another one of his antisemitic ilk came out of the woodwork. And maybe it was a good thing, because he drew my attention to a Wikipedia page called “Zionism” which contains the stunning lie that the link between the Jews and Israel is based only on “memory, emotion, and myth.”

I decided to go in and make an edit to reflect the truth: Jews are indigenous to Israel, linked by history and religious precepts such as the return to Zion as a precondition for the arrival of the Messiah, and the Torah commandment to dwell in the Land of Israel. It had been awhile since I had done a Wikipedia edit, but I thought I could figure it out. How hard could it be?

As it turned out, damned hard.

The first stumbling block in my way was that this particular page had been designated “extended confirmed protected,” which made me think of a certain movie.

via GIPHY

But what it really meant was that the page was locked for editing. And as it turns out, there are only three pages in all of Wikipedia with this designation and (surprise!) two of them are about Israel.

Just three pages make the grade.

I was almost ready to throw in the towel, but I looked a little further and found that it was still possible to request an edit, which turned out to be many, MANY hoops to jump through. For one thing, you have to learn wiki-speak. There’s all this Wikipedia-specific code you have to use. But I was determined to try.

Sample I of what I call "Wiki code"

Sample 2 of my feeble attempt at mastering what I call "Wiki code."

I gathered all my sources, googled all the codes I needed, and got to work. I botched my first attempt because there’s a learning curve. But I heard back from an honest-to-goodness live editor person who said my edit request was unintelligible. I was still encouraged, because s/he hadn’t outright refused the request. I did some more editing, and am waiting to see if this edit met with the editor’s approval.

There’s always hope. And maybe I’ll be able to update this piece so that this story has a favorable outcome. You know what they say: “Hope dies last.” But let’s face it, Wikipedia is not really a fair marketplace of ideas when it comes to the Jewish people. In fact, this very same week, David Collier wrote a piece called Wikipedia – the most active spreader of antisemitism on the planet (emphasis added):

It has probably held true for a number of years that more people have their opinion shaped by Wikipedia on a daily basis – than by any other information source. I do not believe that most people fully understand the damage that Wikipedia is doing, nor the fact that action must be taken to challenge it.

When I write about Wikipedia, I always face the same three arguments:

Firstly the idea that everyone can edit Wikipedia. It is simply not true. Everyone can go onto a mundane page and make an edit – but the more important pages on Wikipedia are protected – which means only certain editors can make a change. These protections do not just stop abuse – they prevent challenges to the bias of the editors.

Collier also mentions the fact that too many people use Wikipedia as if it were a credible source, even though they know better (emphasis added):

Secondly, is the notion that because most people know Wikipedia is not a reliable source it mitigates the damage. This is a deflection. Even many of those that know Wiki is tainted, still recommend using it as a starting point – especially teachers and academics. Google, the world’s leading search engine, literally treats Wiki as the best source in the world. All those seeking information by starting on Wikipedia are still guided by the additional links that are on Wiki’s pages – and are left blind to those facts and arguments that have been airbrushed out.

This leads back to why I discovered the blatant lie on Wikipedia’s “Zionism” page in the first place. @HezBallerMisaka tweeted a screenshot (since deleted) of that Wikipedia lie as soon as I suggested that Jews are indigenous to Israel.

Screenshot of deleted tweet citing the Wikipedia claim that the Jewish connection to Israel is a "myth."

So it's our decision, and in reality, no one will force us to leave, and we will be safe if we decide to stay? What about Jews who can document that their descendants have lived there continuously for centuries?
— (((Varda Epstein))) (@VardaEpstein) April 30, 2021

At any rate, here is my edit request, for which I cited four sources (I could have found more, but I was thinking “overkill”):

please change "However, other Zionists emphasized the memory, emotion and myth linking Jews to the Land of Israel." to "However, other early Zionist leaders emphasized that Jewish history; the Torah tenet that calls on the Jewish people to return to Zion; and the commandment to dwell in the Land of Israel, all irrevocably link Jews to the Land of Israel."

Will my suggested edit make the grade?

Stay tuned. Oh--and keep in mind that whatever happens, change consists of ordinary people standing up and at least making the attempt to make a difference. I believe that, or I wouldn't be here writing this blog.

UPDATE: While the editor didn't use my (very long) suggested edit, I achieved some partial success. The sentence now reads (emphasis added): "However, other Zionists emphasized the memory, emotion and tradition linking Jews to the Land of Israel."

During World War II, a tiny organization called the “League of American-Arab Committees for Democracy” started a letter writing campaign to members of Congress to demand that they don't back a Jewish state.

The letter deplored the persecution of Jews in Europe, bu the idea of them moving to safety in the Land of Israel was apparently worse to their moral sensitivities. “[We] can never countenance such a miscarriage of justice as the rape of Palestine by a group of people claiming that their ancestors once occupied the country some thousands of years ago,” it said.

The letter added, "It is decidedly contrary to the best interest of the United States to deliberately antagonize some sixty million Arabs and two hundred and fifty million Moslems by permitting political Zionism to consummate its audacious ambition in Palestine.”

In a bizarre revision of history, the letter concluded by saying the Palestinian Arabs have “contributed far more than their share towards the rehabilitation of Jewish refugees from Europe, since they have already accepted more than half a million of them in a country about the size of Vermont.”

No, they opposed every single Jew fleeing persecution and pressured England to sentence millions to death.

The League had a motto: “The Arab countries for the Arabs.” I wonder if their political descendants would have a problem with "The Jewish State for the Jews."

05/05 Links Pt1: Biden to UAE crown prince: Israel normalization of ‘strategic importance’; PMW caused the closure of 35,000 bank accounts of terrorists; The Lebanese Jew Working for Israeli Intelligence

From Ian:

Biden to UAE crown prince: Israel normalization of ‘strategic importance’

US President Joe Biden spoke by phone with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed al Nahyan on Tuesday, in his first call with the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates since entering the White House in January.

During the call, Biden hailed the Trump-era normalization of ties between Israel and the United Aarab Emirates, according to a White House statement.

“They discussed regional and global challenges, including Afghanistan, the nuclear and regional dimensions of the threat posed by Iran, as well as the common quest for de-escalation and peace in the Middle Peace,” the statement said.

“In that regard, the president underlined the strategic importance of the normalization of relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel. He expressed his full support for strengthening and expanding these arrangements,” the White House said.

The Biden administration has told Congress it will move ahead with a massive arms deal to the UAE, including advanced F-35 aircraft, that was signed in the wake of Israel’s normalization deal with the Gulf nation, congressional aides told Reuters last month.

In January, the new administration put a temporary hold on several major foreign arms sales initiated by former US president Donald Trump, including the deal to provide 50 F-35 advanced fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates, which was fast-tracked by Washington after Abu Dhabi agreed to normalize relations with Israel.

A State Department spokesperson told Reuters that estimated delivery dates to the UAE were for after 2025.

In addition to the massive $23 billion transfer of stealth F-35 fighters to the United Arab Emirates, another deal being paused is a planned major sale of munitions to Saudi Arabia. Both sales were harshly criticized by Democrats in Congress.

Jared Kushner launches peace institute to advance Abraham Accords

Jared Kushner has launched an institute to promote his major accomplishment when he advised his father-in-law, former US President Donald Trump: the normalization agreements between Israel and a number of Sunni Arab countries.

Kushner founded the Abraham Accords Institute for Peace with Avi Berkowitz, a friend who Kushner brought in to be the chief Middle East peace negotiator in the latter part of his father-in-law’s single presidential term, Axios reported on Wednesday.

Berkowitz helped broker the accords last year that brought normalization agreements between Israel and Sudan, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

The institute will promote trade, tourism and people-to-people exchanges between Israel and the Arab countries.

The other founders include Haim Saban, an Israeli American entertainment mogul who also is a major donor to the Democratic Party. Axios said that Kushner wants to bring more Democrats on board. The Abraham Accords is one of the few diplomatic initiatives launched by Trump that President Joe Biden has fully embraced.

Kushner has laid low since his father-in-law left office and has not pronounced on the false claims Trump peddles that Joe Biden’s election was fraudulent. Kushner, who led Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, is reportedly no longer among his father-in-law’s political advisers.

US pulls out of Durban anti-racism meet up, is Australia next?

As countries prepare to officially mark the 20th anniversary of a 2001 United Nations conference notorious for its extreme antisemitism, the United States has made the principled decision not to participate.

It is anticipated that other countries, Australia included, may consider following suit.

Held in the South African coastal city of Durban, the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance produced a conference declaration that singled out Israel alone for criticism, out of all the world’s nations. It was preceded by an NGO sideshow event where virulent antisemitic behaviour was widespread, facilitated by the organisers. The situation became so dire that Jewish participants had to be accompanied by additional security to ensure their personal safety at the conference.

The overall event, which became colloquially known as Durban I, was a watershed in the long and dishonourable history of the UN being manipulated to discredit Israel, the world’s sole Jewish state.

According to a report in the Jerusalem Post, the United States has decided it will not participate in the 20th anniversary event planned for September 22, 2021. A spokesperson told the Israeli publication: “the United States stands with Israel and has always shared its concerns over the Durban process’s anti-Israel sentiment, use as a forum for antisemitism and freedom of expression issues.”

Since 2001, there have been two follow up conferences, in 2009 and 2011. In both instances, there were few attempts to right the wrongs of Durban I. In both instances, the United States, Australia, and a small group of similarly minded truly anti-racist countries, boycotted.

At the conclusion of Durban I, Australia’s then-foreign minister Alexander Downer noted there was language in the conference declaration “with which we could not be associated”.

Australia did not send a delegation in 2009, when then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a welcomed speaker, despite having called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and denying the Holocaust.

In 2011, the Australian Government participated in early discussions, but soon withdrew. Then-prime minister Julia Gillard noted she had “not been convinced that the high-level meeting will avoid unbalanced criticism of Israel and the airing of anti-Semitic views.”

The Australian Government under Prime Minister Scott Morrison has already flagged its concern with the 20th anniversary event.

Jewish Leaders Commend US Refusal to Participate in Durban IV pic.twitter.com/eftfGUrr7F
— Conf Of Presidents (@Conf_of_Pres) May 5, 2021

At first, this story in NG Misr looked like it was a rare Arabic language story that is sympathetic about the Holocaust, describing the amazing Irena Sendler, the Polish woman who saved many Jewish children during the Holocaust (and who is supposed to be the subject of a movie starring Gal Gadot.)

However, the author, Moawia Elzahaby, finishes the article with Holocaust denial.

In the story he wrote sentences like, “She was able to save the lives of thousands of Jews from Hitler’s alleged Holocaust.” and "According to what the Jews and those who sympathize with them propagate, Irena put children in suitcases and took them out of the besieged Jewish quarters/neighborhoods.”

His true colors really come out at the end, though:

At the end of the war and the fall of Nazism, the Jews began to search for proof and evidence that the Nazi Holocaust happened to them. The story of the Polish nurse was one of those stories that they began to propagate and revere. Today Hollywood produces a huge film that tells a story the events of which are closer to fiction than to reality. The film does not need many artistic touches. The question surrounding these type of stories - and whether the Holocaust itself actually took place – remains open. The Jews claim that millions of them were killed, while voices – that are accused of antisemitism – say that the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis is nothing but an exaggeration, and the number of their dead is not more than a few thousand.

Nothing to see here, just another Egyptian who considers Jews liars and the Holocaust a myth.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Iranian media shows its Jew-hatred ahead of Quds Day

This year, Iran's annual hatefest called Quds Day this Friday is only online because of the pandemic.

Ahead of that holiday, which was created as a response to Jerusalem Day, Iranian media - which is all government approved - is proving quite definitively that its problem isn't with Zionism, but with Jews.

The headline of this Al Alam TV article says that the Arabs in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem are threatened by "the fangs of jungle monsters" - their woke term for Jews.

A lengthy article at PressTV (English) goes over a twisted history of Israel and features an interview with Lebanese academic Denijal Jegic, a frequent contributor to Al Jazeera. This expert confidently tells us that Jewish history is a lie:

This whole Zionist narrative is really just based on myths and ways to construct the history and the connection to the land that was not there before the settler colonial movement...I'm not surprised to hear that the Zionist regime is having their own [Jerusalem] day because it's also a way for them to inscribe themselves into Palestine and to construct the connection to the land that wasn't there before.

Jegic once wrote a chapter to a book whose abstract reads, "This chapter explores the inclusion of Palestine within Transnational American Studies and discusses how intersectional and transnational understandings of the Palestinian intifada can be applied for the analysis of subaltern forms of expression. While the impossibility to effectively differentiate between US and Israeli hegemony has transformed Palestinians into a contemporarily transnationally colonized people, discussions on settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing, while formerly absent from American Studies, were articulated by Black activists and artists, who voiced a transnationalization of the Palestinian intifada as a revolutionary intervention into hegemonic concepts. In order grasp the potential of artist-activist work, and in order to expand the decolonial discourse, Transnational American Studies needs to combine the analysis of political, economic, and military components of transnational hegemony with the highlighting of counter-hegemonic articulations of resistance."

Good to know his antisemitism is well-grounded in the latest intersectional motifs and transnationalist narratives.

Meanwhile, Iranian figurehead president Hasan Rouhani said Zionists are the worst people on Earth:

Rouhnai [sic] termed the Zionists as the enemies of the region and its security, the enemies of the Palestinian nation, the murders [sic] who displaced millions of civilians.

He went on to say that during the past decades, nobody has been such criminal [sic] as the Zionists are.

Millions of civilians displaced!

More civilians were killed by Iran in the Iran-Iraq war than were killed in the past hundred years of conflict in Israel.

Arabs set fire to Jewish fields. They claim Jews set fire to Arab fields. B'Tselem, Peace Now believe the Arabs.

B'Tselem tweeted that Jews had set Arab fields on fire last night.

The tweet received thousands of "Likes" with respondents calling the arsonists terrorists.

Which they are.

Except they are Arab, setting fields from the neighboring Jewish community of Givat Ronen on fire.

Residents spent hours fighting the blazes.

An IDF spokesperson confirmed that security cameras detected three separate fires were set by Arabs at Givat Ronen.

Arabs setting fires to Jewish fields is hardly unusual - it happens every year, and it has happened since before the State of Israel was established.

But B'Tselem, Peace Now and others immediately believed the lies that these fires were set by "settlers" and spread the slander to thousands of people already primed to believe any lies about Jews.

To be sure, there has been arson done by Jewish settlers, and it should be condemned. But it is the responsibility of NGOs to check stories before spreading them, and the track record of Arab media that they mindlessly parrot is not very good in cases like these.

Similarly, no one seems to report things like Arabs shooting fireworks directly at Jewish-owned houses in Jerusalem, while the converse would have been front page news. (This happened last month.)

05/04 Links Pt2: Matti Friedman: Eight Tips for Reading About Israel; Jews are increasingly welcome in the Islamic world; A Review 'Jews Don't Count' by David Baddiel

From Ian:

Matti Friedman: Eight Tips for Reading About Israel

From my position as a journalist in Israel, perched on the fault line between Western preoccupations and the country where I live, I’m confronted with a growing perception gap. The gap becomes apparent in conversations with visitors flying in for a brief visit (at least when “flying in” was something that happened) or with those who take an interest in this place from far away. These observers have formed a picture of Israel based on stories — stories that might come from home, from college friends or professors, from a Jewish summer camp or day school, or from journalism.

Some of these stories are positive and others negative, but what they generally share is being only tenuously linked to reality. Observers thus find themselves struggling to reconcile the State of Israel as it really is to the narratives in their head — an effort that often ends with either retreat into the imaginary landscape they had in the first place, or frustration with reality’s failure to cooperate. It’s possible that visitors to any country have a similar problem, but I suspect that Westerners landing in, say, Burundi (to name a country whose population is about the same size as Israel’s) arrive with less preexisting information and emotion, making the perception gap less of a challenge.

People who live in the liberal worlds of Western Europe and North America more often seem to approach Israel with a shared narrative about the place and shared sources of information, chiefly the international press. That’s an industry I know well, having spent formative years of my journalism career as a correspondent and editor for the Associated Press, one of the world’s biggest news organizations, in the Jerusalem bureau.

2 | why are you telling me this?
Is your source of information an observer whose job is to explain things, or an activist with a political plan? Being an activist is fine, but it’s important to understand who’s who. An activist doesn’t need to tell you everything, just the things that will draw you to his point of view. To take examples from the Israeli context, groups such as Breaking the Silence or B’Tselem are activist groups, and so, on the other side of the spectrum, are groups like StandWithUs. Their material isn’t meant primarily to explain what’s going on, but to induce you to support a particular position. Contradictory information won’t be included. Their role is like that of an attorney at a divorce trial: If you’re representing the wife, your job isn’t to offer a fair assessment of the husband. Your job is to savage his character in your client’s interest and to get the judge on your side.

What makes sorting journalists from activists more and more difficult is that many journalists have become activists — that is, they see their job not as helping you understand events, but as pushing you toward their conclusions. They engineer their reporting to that end. Many Western reporters here in Israel, supported by the world of activist NGOs and international organizations (which is the same social and professional world inhabited by reporters, with much movement between them), believe that Israel is the problem. It follows, if you’re an activist, that what’s needed is not an understanding of Israel’s concerns, but a character assassination that will stoke anger and punish the guilty party. The goal is less to inform than to enrage. That’s why bloodshed during a Hamas attempt to penetrate the Gaza border (to cite one example from 2018) isn’t described as the result of actions, however imperfectly pursued, by Israeli soldiers to protect their citizens. Such a description would be true, but as activism it’s ineffective. Instead, the event must be presented as a kind of murder, even a massacre.

As soon as the press becomes activist, it becomes impossible to understand what’s going on. Anyone hoping to understand should be looking for knowledgeable observers capable of understanding different points of view.

Justice, justice shall you pursue: The crisis for American and French justice

France, as I have previously written, is in a state of cultural decline and loss of confidence by its intellectuals. What we see plainly in the Halimi case is an example of when righteousness is absent and the “robot” judges, only can see the surface of the law and cannot interpret the law to reflect righteousness.

“Justice, Justice shall thou pursue", then we are told to do more than mindlessly applying precedent, but to interpret the law where possible from a position of righteousness.

The failure to understand the ideological antisemitism and state of denial in France was made even clearer a year after the Halimi murder: Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old French Jewish woman and Holocaust survivor was murdered in her Paris apartment on 23 March 2018.

The two suspects, one of whom had known her since he was a child, entered the apartment and reportedly stabbed Knoll eleven times before setting her on fire. The older suspect told investigators that the younger suspect asserted “She’s a Jew. She must have money.” The two suspects have accused each other of the stabbing, one of them claiming that the other shouted Allahu Akbar as he stabbed her.

In this case, finally, the murder has been officially described by French authorities as antisemitic hate crime. Those who understand the need for judges and legislators all to be righteous, understand what must be done in both France and America.

And what we Jews learn is that no ideology should ever be used to thwart or overturn justice. Our Torah by repeating the word “Tsedek” makes it clear that righteousness not ideology is the foundation of justice.

Jews are increasingly welcome in the Islamic world

One message is coming through loud and clear in all this activity: Islamic countries want to nurture and grow their Jewish communities. But equally heartening is how Jewish communities in these countries are reaching out in friendship to their Muslim fellow citizens. Rabbis and Jewish community leaders are breaking bread at Ramadan iftars around the Islamic world and distributing food packages filled with Ramadan staples like dates, tea, lentils, chickpeas and other essentials to their Muslim neighbours, including many people in need.

These improvements in Muslim-Jewish interaction have occurred at a time when the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan have established new relations with Israel. But the religious rapprochement runs deeper than politics, as signified by the communities that have moved closer to one another elsewhere. In the end, what we are seeing on a personal level is the result much more of Muslim-Jewish entente than Arab-Israeli diplomacy.

In this new reality, Muslims and Jews are becoming trusted partners and friends, relegating the longstanding hostility between Israel and the Islamic and Arab worlds to an anachronism. This transformation should offer hope for reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians.

There is more work to do. The Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, created only a few years ago, now boasts rabbinic members serving Jewish communities and residing in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Nigeria, Turkey, Tunisia, Uganda and Uzbekistan. Not all these places are as embracing of Jews yet as the UAE has been.

But never have I been more optimistic that a true and universal Muslim-Jewish partnership may be achievable. The efficacy and durability of such a relationship is being demonstrated every day by the Muslims and Jews who live together in mutual affection and peace, and the Jews in Muslim lands who are not merely tolerated but very much integral to the countries they call home.

In the Middle East and elsewhere, Muslim-Jewish friendship and solidarity unlocks the combined ability of our faith communities to defeat Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry.

Together, we can collaborate on medical, scientific and development breakthroughs that benefit each of us, and all of humankind. And certainly, while numbers may still be modest, the emergence of vibrant and sustainable Jewish communities in Muslim lands should be seen as an indisputable advance in building a more tolerant and co-operative world.