Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 02, 2021

Professor resigns from U of MN Center for Jewish Studies over its anti-Zionism and silence on antisemitism

Oren Gross is a professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School since 2002. He is an expert on international law and has published extensively.

On Tuesday, he resigned from that university's Center for Jewish Studies over its atmosphere of pervasive anti-Zionism and its indifference to the new wave of antisemitism.

"I see no place for me to remain affiliated with CJS which has turned into an echo chamber of silence and in which those, such as myself, who are unapologetic Zionists feel increasingly isolated," Dr. Gross wrote in his resignation letter.

Gross was unsparing in his critique of his progressive colleagues refusing to support Israel when it was being bombarded by thousands of rockets, or, worse, siding with Hamas. "Most of you stayed silent when Israel was attacked (again!). Some of you thought it opportune to shine your golden entry ticket to progressive circles by actually condemning the Jewish state," he charged.

Worse, he accuses his colleagues at CJS of silence in the face of new attacks against Jews worldwide. "Most of you stayed silent even when anti-Semitism and physical violence against Jews in the United States increased, this time not by individuals wearing red MAGA hats but rather the colors of the Palestinian flag," Gross continued.

Exposing how unwilling the CJS is in allowing any opinions to be stated that reject the prevailing anti-Israel orthodoxy, Gross writes, "If anything, CJS has turned into a space that rejects, institutionally, any principled position-taking in support of Israel. It is 'safe' as long as one shies away from engaging with vicious, hurtful attacks especially from within the University. "

"It is thus, with a heavy heart, that I inform you all of the decision to resign my affiliation with CJS effective immediately."

This is not only a problem at the University of Minnesota. As Professor Andrew Pessin recently wrote here, over 200 Jewish Studies academics signed a letter condemning Israel for defending itself in May.

However, Gross says that he will still be involved in Jewish studies - just not at CJS. "I shall thus seek to establish new and vigorous fora for the pursuit of Jewish and Israel studies at the University of Minnesota as well as outside its academic walls," his letter concludes.

Perhaps he is already working on establishing a inter-university Jewish Studies forum that will allow true freedom of expression, something that is increasingly rare in academia.

(h/t MtTB)

New head of Palestinian gay rights group lives in Haifa

June is Pride Month, and anti-Israel activists are trying to use gay rights to attack Israel as a "pinkwasher."

As usual, they aren't saying a word about gay rights under PA or Hamas rule.

In 2016, Hamas executed a leader Mahmoud Ishtiwi for being gay.

In 2019 the PA announced that LGBTQ groups may not meet in the West Bank because they are "harmful to the higher values and ideals of Palestinian society".

The PA police blackmails gay men to be spies.

The main organization that fights for gay rights in the West Bank is AlQaws. Their annual report is obsessed with - Israel. Here was one of their online events last year.

They were also very upset when a Palestinian food manufacturer Al Arz Tahin made a substantial donation to an Israeli LGBT organization to establish a support hotline for LGBT Palestinians. Yes, they were against this, saying "The Al Arz donation controversy offered a unique opportunity to foreground our critique of capitalism and its intersections with colonialism and patriarchy."

Oh, of course.

The new director of AlQaws is Haneen Sader. You might think it is surprising that she reveals her name, given how anti-gay Palestinian society is, but she is an Israeli Arab who lives in Haifa.

Yes, the main person attacking Israel for its supposed persecution of Palestinian gays is living a free and openly gay life in Israel.

And she works for Apple. Her anti-capitalist stance does not extend to her refusing to work for a multi-billion dollar international company.

There is no doubt that AlQaws actually does quietly fight t help gay people in the West Bank, a thankless task given how anti-gay Palestinian society is. Nevertheless, their public stances tend to criticize Israel and not the political leaders of the Palestinians, because any and every Palestinian organization and platform knows the rules - they must be united in their stance that Israel is the worst country on Earth.

Hamas Al Qassam Brigades terrorists asking for donations

Hamas terrorists want your money.

The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the "military wing" of Hamas, put out a call for donations though Bitcoin.

They posted a Quranic verse on social media about the importance of charity, and added, "Reserve yourself a share in support of the resistance through the Bitcoin donation link."

At the link they have an animated video describing how to donate with Bitcoin.

I assume that Israel has hacked the site and can see the "progressives" who are clicking to donate.

06/01 Links Pt2: International Legal Forum: “Recognizing Anti-Zionist Antisemitism”; The Pursuit of Human Rights and the Myth of Israeli ‘Pinkwashing’

From Ian:

International Legal Forum releases landmark report amid unprecedented explosion in global anti-Semitism

The International Legal Forum, an Israel-based legal network of over 3,000 lawyers and activists in 30 countries, committed to fighting anti-Semitism, terror and delegitimization of Israel in the international legal arena, has released a groundbreaking report titled: “Recognizing Anti-Zionist Antisemitism” The report, authored by ILF lawyer Russell Shalev, is the first in-depth study of its kind, to comprehensively examine and summarize recent policy-statements, legislation and case-law on anti-Zionist anti-Semitism.

This report comes in the wake of unprecedented explosion in global antisemitism and violence against Jews in Europe and North America, following the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas. In the UK alone, according to the Communal Security Trust, there was a staggering 500% increase in anti-Semitic incidents since hostilities between Hamas and Israel began, with jarring scenes of a convoy of cars with Palestinian protesters driving through central London, screaming “f*ck the Jews, rape their daughters.” At another rally in London, protesters could be heard chanting “we want the Zionists, we want their blood”, while elsewhere, Jews have been assaulted in broad daylight.

In Germany, Austria, France and elsewhere across Europe, there have been similar scenes of virulent antisemitism, incitement and violence, amplified and exacerbated by social media. Likewise, across the United States and Canada, there have been shocking and sickening scenes of Jews viciously attacked, harassed and beaten in the streets, with the ADL noting there was 75% increase in anti-Semitic attacks since the conflict between Hamas and Israel broke out.

In response, President Biden declared “such attacks on the Jewish community are despicable, and they must stop. I condemn this hateful behavior at home and abroad – it’s up to all of us to give hate no safe harbor.”

It is time, once and for all, to dispense with the notion that these acts of wanton intimidation, harassment and violence are anything but Jew hatred and antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism, with a direct correlation between the vilification of Israel and violence against Jews.

US antisemitism far worse than reported, say Conference of Presidents leaders

Antisemitism in the United States is even more pervasive than it appears, Malcolm Hoenlein, vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said Monday.

“It’s worse because the majority of incidents are not reported,” Hoenlein told The Times of Israel at a meeting with staff in Jerusalem alongside the Conference’s chair Dianne Lob and CEO William Daroff.

“We get reports all the time of it. I see it not only in my own community but from rabbis who call me and others. And often the police will not classify it as a hate crime because then the FBI has to come in, and the FBI doesn’t necessarily want to because it’s a lot of paperwork et cetera… But they’re encountering more hostility and the vast majority of incidents don’t go reported even though the number of reports is increasing sharply.”

There has been a drastic spike in antisemitism across the US surrounding the recent conflict in Israel and Gaza.

In New York City, amid dueling pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian rallies earlier in May, Jews were assaulted in the street. In the days following, Jews across New York posted on social media about being threatened, harassed or otherwise attacked for being Jewish. Synagogues in Florida, Illinois and Arizona were targeted. Two antisemitic incidents were caught on video in Los Angeles.

The antisemitic incidents have led some to refrain from wearing Jewish symbols publicly out of fear of being attacked.

What Do Messrs. Marx, Sanders and Blanter Have in Common?

The Middle East conflict is really a series of successive conflicts. At first, it had been only a religious conflict, which grew into a territorial one with Israel's revival. In turn, the territorial conflict, due to the Sisyphean labor of Soviet communists, was transformed into an ideological conflict through the injection of Marxist rhetoric.

President Trump tried to finish off the ideological phase of the conflict in the Middle East and put it on a rational economic track. Trump made an offer that could not be refused in exchange for ending the multi-billion dollar financing of terrorism franchise wars, Arab countries would receive multi-billion dollar American investments. The benefit is twofold. The Arab countries generally agreed because the Palestinian problem, purely economically, is very disadvantageous to them.

Trump tried to end what began long before him but had touched a raw nerve. The termination of the ideological phase of the conflict turned out to be unprofitable for the American Left, and the Biden administration returned the conflict to square one. In fact, Joe Biden uses taxpayer dollars to assist Palestinian Arabs in buying Iranian missiles to attack Israel. In addition, Biden appointed an Islamic activist to "cleanse" the US military of "extremism." Without a doubt, Iran, Russia, and Hamas still cannot believe their luck with the current occupant of the White House. As a result, in 2021, Jews are welcomed in the United Arab Emirates and other Arab countries, but not in America.

Anti-Semitism has been around for several thousand years, although this term has officially existed only since 1879. The overwhelming majority of more or less reasonable people perfectly understood that this nefarious phenomenon is irrational. There is not and cannot be a rational explanation for it. However, the Left decided to take the next step, and in America, under the leadership of the Floydenized Democrats, the process of normalizing anti-Semitism has begun. If before, in a decent society, anti-Semitism was a taboo, now the taboo has been lifted. The new American norm will not be the complete absence of anti-Semitism but the establishment of some level of anti-Semitism acceptable in a decent society.

Normalizing what was previously considered impossible or unacceptable is the hallmark of the Left. At the beginning of the 21st century, leftists normalized the attribution of the red color (the color of enemies) for conservatives and republicans. Previously, this color was associated only with the Left. In the twentieth century, the term "Palestinians" was normalized and redefined by the Left. The term "Palestinian" had meant Jews exclusively, but since 1967, at the suggestion of the KGB, they began to call "Palestinians" exclusively Arabs. Symptoms of this normalization of anti-Semitism were the simultaneous and well-coordinated attacks on Jews in Israel, New York, and California.

A ceasefire has now been declared in Israel. However, there is never a ceasefire in the struggle between Good and Evil, even a temporary one. Especially when Good and Evil are on opposite sides of ideological barricades.

Jewish tokens/currency in Ottoman-era Palestine were used by all

Encyclopedia Judaica says:

The special conditions under which Jews lived in the Diaspora before Emancipation and in Ereẓ Israel especially up to World War i led to a kind of community similar to a miniature state. To preserve the character of the community, whose members did not enjoy the privileges of other citizens, Jews were obliged to create and provide for their own institutions, such as synagogues, rabbinic courts, schools, hospitals, homes for the aged, soup kitchens for the poor, etc. All these institutions were administered by the community and financed by its members through ordinary and extraordinary contributions. In order to cope with these tasks, the communal leaders at times resorted to issuing tokens of their own, with an internal value only and not generally acceptable outside the community. To not raise the suspicion of the authorities, they were often cast in a style that distinguished them from legal tender. Many communities issued tokens in metal or paper, and much information about them has been lost.

Under Turkish rule in the 19th and 20th centuries, the communities in Ereẓ Israel issued a considerable number of tokens. A brass Ẓedakah token was issued in Jerusalem by the Torat Ḥayyim yeshivah, which also put out a small stamp-shaped paper token of ½ para and different kinds of paper currency in denominations of 1, 5, and 10 gold Napoleons. Other communities in Jerusalem, such as the various kolelim, also issued their own paper currency, as did Hebron yeshivah (in Jerusalem) during the British Mandate. There were other brass tokens, such as a square one bearing the legend שְׂכַר שְׁחִיטָה דַקָּה ("fee for the
slaughter of a sheep or goat"), a rectangular one inscribed צְדָקָה תַּצִּיל מִמָּוֶת ("charity saves from death"), a round one with the legend קרש ("grush" = piaster = 40 para), and another round one with the abbreviation צְדָקָה לַעֲנִיִּים) צל״ע "charity for the poor"). Turkish copper coins were also issued, countermarked with the same abbreviation. In the 1880s the colony of Zikhron Ya'akov and the agricultural school of Mikveh Israel issued brass tokens of 1, ½, and ¼ (presumably piaster), which, however, were declared illegal by the Turkish authorities. Another more primitive brass token was issued by the colony of Reḥovot, which also issued paper tokens inscribed in Hebrew and French in denominations of ½, 1, 3, 6, 13, and 26 piasters. ...To overcome the lack of currency from 1914 to 1916, the Anglo-Palestine Co., the forerunner of the Anglo-Palestine Bank and today's Bank Leumi, issued checks in denominations of 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 francs which were accepted by the yishuv as legal tender.

Jews had been doing this for centuries in their communities, and it is a fascinating topic. But it appears that at least some of these tokens became accepted currency in Ottoman Palestine even for non-Jews!

According to a November 1889 report in the Deseret News:

06/01 Links Pt1: How Hamas and the PA started the 'TikTok intifada'; Are US Jewish groups ashamed to support Israel?; 20 years on, Dolphinarium bombing victims still struggle

From Ian:

Biden Administration Rewards Terrorists: Abbas and Hamas

Ironically, the same Abbas who told Blinken that he (Abbas) is committed to a peace process with Israel is the same Abbas who also wants to see his Israeli "peace partners" put on trial at the ICC.

Now comes Blinken and announces that the reopening of the consulate in the city. Here is how the Palestinians understand his gestures: If you fire 4,000 rockets and missiles at Israel, you get a US embassy in Jerusalem and millions of dollars of US taxpayer money. It works! The solution, then, is to keep on doing it!

By reopening the consulate, Blinken is telling both Hamas and Abbas that the US does not recognize Jerusalem as the united and undivided capital of Israel.

Blinken has also sent a message to Abbas and Hamas that former US President Donald Trump's formula of "peace for peace" in the Middle East is off the table; they no longer need to worry.

Abbas and Hamas are rubbing their hands because, the way they see it, the Biden administration has just achieved their goal of scrapping Trump's peace plan, "Peace to Prosperity: A vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People."

By rewarding Abbas, Hamas and the anti-normalization camp in the Arab world, the Biden administration has bludgeoned its declared objective of reviving a peace process in the Middle East. It has demonstrated decisively that corruption and dictatorship pay. It has shown that terrorism pays – to the tune of millions of dollars. Palestinian incitement and violence against Israel are unlikely to recede in the context of such an encouraging outcome.

How Hamas and the PA started the 'TikTok intifada'

It’s far easier to portray Israel as a criminal land thief than it is to acknowledge that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex and rife with disinformation, with one side preaching peaceful coexistence and another wanting the land of Israel to be Judenrein.

This ceasefire is not a peace agreement, nor is it an acknowledgement of error by Hamas. In fact, quite the opposite. Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas leader, crowed that the violence achieved one key goal: preventing peace with the Jewish state. “We have destroyed the project of coexistence with Israel, of normalization with Israel,” Haniyeh said after the ceasefire took effect.

Haniyeh makes no secret of regularly reiterating Hamas’ ultimate goal, the destruction of Israel, and in the interim, the continued refusal to accept the Jewish state’s right to exist. Sending rockets at Israel and killing civilians in their homes was just a short-term means to that end.

The longer-term goal is to create a moral equivalence between Israel and the Islamist terrorist groups who seek its destruction, ensuring that Israel’s hands are tied in any future conflict, thus preventing it from meaningfully degrading Hamas’ ability to murder Israeli civilians.

This most recent bout of violence, and all the violence preceding it, is driven exclusively by the refusal of Hamas and the PA to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Yet it does not have to be this way.

Israel has, time and time again, made painful concessions for peace and offered generous peace proposals to the Palestinians, who only reciprocated with rejectionism and terrorism. Israel has always extended its hand for peace with the Arab world, which is exemplified by the recently forged peace agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.

The only thing accomplished by acting as if there’s a moral equivalence between Israel and those who seek to destroy it, is to create a feel-good performative exercise that only perpetuates the violent stalemate between Israel and Hamas. This benefits nobody, least of all the Palestinians, whose bloodthirsty and intransigent leadership remains the biggest obstacle to peace.

HonestReporting: Israel Under Attack From Hamas and Media: HonestReporting CEO Interviewed by CUFI

CUFI's Kasim Hafeez and Corina Cater have a heartfelt conversation with HonestReporting CEO Daniel Pomerantz about life in Israel during the recent Gaza conflict with Hamas. Hear directly from Jerusalem about how difficult life under fire was, especially in light of biased and false media coverage.

Shmuley Boteach: Are US Jewish groups ashamed to support Israel? - opinion

WHAT DOES it say about the American Jewish community that we have not yet organized a single rally in DC, where the most important political decisions about Israel are being taken?

My close friend Ron Dermer, the most successful ambassador to the US in the Jewish state’s history, was recently criticized by some for saying in an interview that Christian Evangelicals are more reliable supporters of Israel than American Jews. Some went so far as to even call him a post-Zionist, a particularly disgusting criticism of the man who helped facilitate the moving of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, the funding of Iron Dome, the withdrawal of the United States from the abominable Iran deal, the Obama administration’s increase of foreign aid to Israel, and the plethora of COVID vaccines to Israel.

But to all of Ron’s Jewish critics I would say: If you think he’s misguided, then prove him wrong.

Let’s finally organize a Jewish march on DC for Israel. Let’s do it, God willing, in the next two weeks. Let’s stop with the excuses that we didn’t rally for Israel because we quietly sent rabbis to Israel or had an online rally.

What Israel needs right now is public, loud, and unconditional support from American Jewry. And we need it in the streets!

There’s an unspoken agreement between American Jews and Israeli Jews wherein the latter are prepared to send their sons and daughters to the IDF (our family has proudly had two children serve, with one on the way, God willing), endure terrorist rockets on their cities, and rebuild the Jewish homeland after 2,000 years of exile.

All they ask of us in return is to stand with them when genocidal terrorists try to annihilate them.

Do we pay a price?

Sure we do. Jews are now being beaten in Times Square and American streets in displays of antisemitism that have no precedent in this country. And we’ll also be excoriated on social media for doing so.

But we must, while combating domestic antisemitism, fulfill our side of the bargain, standing up for the safety of Israel’s Jewish, Muslim and Christian citizens and freedom and democracy in the Middle East.

No more excuses. Let’s organize a Washington rally now.

Linda Sarsour Indoctrinates Small Children to Hate Israel (@Kweansmom)

This is a guest post from @Kweansmom.

In a Youtube video uploaded by Noor Kids, Linda Sarsour and host Amin Aaser deliver a lesson in hatred to Muslim children ages 5-12.

Entitled, "David + Goliath: Learning About Palestine", the two promote lies about the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, teaching children that the Jewish people have no history in the Israel and that Israel is a "bad, violent bully" who kills small children. The Noor Kids youtube channel has over 23K subscribers from all over the world. They promote themselves as "Harvard-sponsored" but it seems that the Aaser brothers who created it once received a grant for their business plan from Harvard Business School and there is no ongoing financial relationship between them and Harvard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVRb3u84H-M

The video starts off with Aaser, one of the two founders of Noor kids, retelling the story of David and Goliath, only in this version, Prophet Daoud is a Muslim, as are the Bani Isra'il, which is the Arabic term for Jews in the Quran. In other words, the Muslims are the true Jews. The story is not only historically inaccurate (King David lived around 1000 BCE, 1500 years before Mohammed was born) but deeply offensive to Jews. This erases our very identity.

After finishing the story, Aaser explains to his audience that they may have heard relatives talking about Palestine, and that he will now explain how they can stand up to bullies like Goliath. He goes on to connect the dots: "If you've been watching the news, the Palestinians have been getting bullied for 100 years" and shows the children the erroneous, debunked "Map That Lies" that MSNBC had to apologize for.

Enter Linda Sarsour. With a bright smile, she feeds the young audience a series of falsehoods, such as the myth that before 1948 everyone got along peacefully in Palestine until suddenly foreigners came and decided to kick people out of their homes. She tells them that in Palestine there are so many young beautiful boys and girls just like them who sometimes can't go to school because there are military in their neighborhood who scare them with big guns and throw weapons at them. She claims that Israel doesn't let kids in Gaza go to the beach. She urges them to think about how they would feel if this happened to them. Aaser suggests that it's as if someone came into their homes and declared, "All your toys are mine now". He compares the UN to the adult in the room, and explains that even the UN agrees that Israel is a big bully. Sarsour solemnly explains to the children that Palestinian kids are surrounded by barbed wire because their neighbors don't want to go to the same schools and stores as them. "Palestinians have a right to defend themselves from bullies" she explains, helping the children understand that terrorism is justified. Finally, she drives the point home: "The State of Israel is the bully. They have killed little children. Just in the last ten days, little boys and girls were killed...so this is a really big bad violent bully".

What can the children in audience do to help the poor victimized Palestinians?

-- Keep talking about Palestine to your friends and neighbors

-- Tell your parents to find good organizations and send them money so Palestinian children can have food, clean water and toys (never mind that all money that goes to Gaza passes through Hamas' hands)

-- Tell your parents to call their members of congress to stop giving Israel money to do bad things to Palestine.

All of this rhetoric is familiar to those who have been following Linda Sarsour's career. She is a very vocal and popular propagandist for those who wish to see Israel destroyed, and she's been active in promoting the political careers of those who follow her anti-Israel agenda. What's new here is her attempt to brainwash small children to hate Israel by erasing Jewish history, whitewashing terrorism, and demonizing the Jewish state as baby killers. This is classic antisemitism, disguised as "criticism of the Israeli government". It's especially disturbing that she's using such hateful words to indoctrinate small children.

Sarsour loves to promote her "Jewish friends" at IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace who question the one-sided narratives they were raised with about Israel. But she has no problem promoting a false narrative to Muslim children which erases Jewish history. Where is the IfNotNow for Muslim children, who will later say, "You never told me"? How do the "100 Jewish leaders" who declared in 2017 that they "stand with Linda" feel now? Does Linda stand with them? https://forward.com/fast-forward/373499/prominent-jewish-leaders-issue-letter-in-solidarity-with-linda-sarsour/

Hamas and Fatah jockeying to look like leaders

An interesting subtext during the cease fire is the political maneuverings of Fatah and Hamas to be seen as the leaders of the Palestinians.

In an honor/shame society, appearances are reality, and Hamas appeared as the undisputed leader of Palestinians during the Gaza fighting, as most Palestinians looked at Hamas as an organization that actually does something, as opposed to Fatah.

But now, Hamas needs to rebuild Gaza - and most donors don't want to deal with Hamas directly or exclusively.

Egypt, which brokered the ceasefire, is including the PLO in all negotiations, even bringing PA representatives with them to visit Gaza.

Mahmoud Abbas is trying to ensure that the PLO's role in getting donors for Gaza will allow some of those funds to go to him and his groups.

The PA is also trying to emphasize "defending Jerusalem" as its role, which is exactly what Hamas pretended to do with thousands of rockets.

In addition, the PLO is working closely with the ICC to try to get it to accuse Israel of war crimes in Gaza.

Both Hamas and the PLO are trying to make contacts with Arab countries to act as the real representatives of Palestinians. The PLO is leading in that race, but Hamas looks like it will re-establish relations with Syria at Iran's urging; the two split when Hamas criticized Syria for killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Hamas is calling for a "Day of Rage" in the West Bank this Friday, in a move to attract the masses to the idea that Hamas is their real leader. Two weeks ago, Fatah held a general strike in the West Bank for the same purpose.

Hamas is also heavily publicizing its "victory parades" through Gaza, sending a message to West Bank Arabs as the true leaders in fighting Israel.

We aren't even mentioning the international community's attempts to parlay this to their own advantages. The UN, EU, Quartet, Egypt and Qatar are all trying to look like the ones who can broker a deal and appear like world leaders. "Human rights" organizations are rushing to publish anti-Israel reports as quickly as possible.

It's all politics.

No one really cares about actual, ordinary Palestinians and how they can live normal lives without being at the mercy of their immature leaders who are willing to sacrifice them at a moment's notice for their own political gain.

An example of successful Hamas propaganda

On May 11, the Quds News Network posted a video on YouTube showing a young boy crying as he chased the funeral procession of his father who was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The video shows the boy, Baraa Suleiman, wailing as he runs after his father's body.

The YouTube video has over 1.1 million views, and there were millions more views of the mourning child from other media outlets.

What none of the reports said was that the father was Walid Suleiman, a major Hamas leader. The Al Qassam Brigades just released an 18 minute video tribute to Suleiman.

The propaganda victory doesn't end there.

Walid was killed along with another son of his, Mohammed. The New York Times listed Mohammed as one of the children killed in Gaza:

But its research into the background of the children it lists doesn't mention that Suleiman's father was a Hamas leader and military target, and therefore he is responsible for Mohammed's death.

Major media aren't researching how many children were killed because they were near legitimate targets. Instead, the media is more interested in painting Israelis as war criminals, and details like this prove the exact opposite - that Hamas is guilty of war crimes by embedding military targets with civilians.

Hamas understands very well the underlying anti-Israel thinking in major media. It provides the selective information to the journalists, and it knows the journalists are too lazy and anti-Israel to bother to dig any deeper than the stories handed to them on a terrorist platter.

Hamas announced on Monday that it had pulled the body of Walid Shamali, who they describe as a leader and an expert in the military manufacturing unit, out of the rubble under a building in the Shuja’iya neighborhood of Gaza.

The interesting part is that Israel announced that they killed him on May 12, along with other major Hamas targets. They described him as Hamas' commander of the Industrial Equipment Directorate of the Production System.

Hamas already had admitted that many leaders were killed in that airstrike, but didn't announce most of their names. It is possible that his body really was pulled out Monday, but it seems more likely that Hamas withheld the news of his death until well after the fighting so it could claim that most of the dead were civilians.

At any rate, it shows that Israel's intelligence in Gaza is excellent - to know that their airstrike successfully killed him before any official announcement.

In other news - see above that Hamas uses Caterpillar equipment, even though BDS wants to boycott Caterpillar.

05/31 Links Pt2: NYT Collaborates With Terror-linked Palestinian NGO to Push Antisemitic Blood Libel About Children; Proleptic Dhimmitude: Why Diaspora Muslims have a free hand to act out

From Ian:

As Hamas Fired Rockets, the New York Times Joined the Assault on Israel

By publishing one anti-Israel essay after another after another, New York Times editors were taking advantage of a persuasion technique. The “mere-exposure effect” describes how people develop preferences for ideas that they’re more exposed to. By repeating anti-Israel messages, the newspaper also manufactures “social proof” — the persuasive phenomenon in which people tend to drift toward positions or behaviors that they believe many others are also engaged in. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman wrote that “a reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition.” And as a trio of German researchers recently noted, although “information repetitions constitute redundancy and, hence, should not affect the recipient’s decision,” in practice repeating information helps persuade people to change their minds in favor of what’s being repeated.

Beyond trying to steer people toward the Palestinian narrative, though, Times opinion editors are guilty of curating a lack of empathy for Israeli Jews. Even as Israeli families were traumatized by emergency runs to bomb shelters as Hamas strove to kill them, their experiences and emotions were largely missing from the paper’s opinion pages.

In the 12 Guest Essays about the conflict published since the start of the rocket attacks, readers got to know to Refaat Alareer’s wife, Nusayba, and their children, including six-year-old Amal and eight-year-old Lina. They were intimately introduced to Laila al-Arian’s grandfather, Abdul Kareem, and her grandmother, Inaam. They were told of Diana Buttu’s 82-year-old father and her seven-year-old son.

Israelis, on the other hand, had no ages and no faces. No brothers or sisters. No Holocaust-surviving grandparents. They were doctors for a moment. Nameless victims for a paragraph or two. But mostly oppressors, attackers, shooters, racists — and generally heartless. While a Palestinian told readers not to pay attention to Hamas, an Israeli told them (wrongly) that Israelis are adept at coping with rocket fire.

That the newspaper encourages lack of empathy for Israeli Jews is bad enough. Their safety, their children, matter. But the empathy deficit doesn’t stop at Israel’s border. A majority of Jews across the world care about Israel. They are more inclined, then, to care about the Hamas rockets, which readers of the country’s most influential paper learn are “legitimate”; or to support Israel’s efforts to stop that rocket fire, which readers are told isn’t really an effort to stop the attacks, but rather to arbitrarily oppress Palestinians. Their opposition to terrorism by Hamas and other antisemitic groups in Gaza is also being demonized on the pages of the New York Times.

So vocal supporters of Israel are bullied online. And worse. As the New York Times news section noted this week, the recent surge in antisemitic violence in the United States has mostly been at the hands of “perpetrators expressing support for the Palestinian cause.” Opinion editors might consider what their role is in cultivating an atmosphere in which attacks on innocent Israeli Jews, and on innocent American Jews, are viewed as justified.

Here are the sources. Note, DCI-P has ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S. designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. pic.twitter.com/xCp5MG9WXO
— Benjamin Fogel (@BA_Fogel) May 30, 2021

Three days ago the NYT printed his picture on the front page as a child victim of the war. Now it reveals this 17yo was actually a fighter for the jihadist "Mujahideen Brigades". #oops https://t.co/q0NgPUbQxt
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) May 30, 2021

NYT Publishes Infamous Palestinian Propaganda Maps, Defends Image as ‘Art’

The maps are duplicitous in numerous ways, amongst them is the mixing of reality with imagination. Whereas the land really was divided along the lines seen in three out of four of the maps, the terms used serve to create a false impression that a sovereign entity called ‘Palestine’ is being gradually eroded over time. But a closer look reveals that’s not the case at all.

In reality, the set of maps, regularly shared by proponents of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, is a fraud. The land depicted as “Palestinian” was actually first under the British Mandate, then under Jordanian and Egyptian control. Only much later did some of the land ever come under semi-autonomous Palestinian control.

Moreover, the lines drawn dividing the territory never actually existed. In reality, they were only a theoretical outline for fairly dividing the land between Arabs and Jews. The Jews accepted the plan, despite its numerous drawbacks, but the Arabs did not – and ended up with even less land after waging war on their Jewish neighbors.

Back in 2015, MSNBC apologized for using these same deceptive maps following a social media backlash. And in February 2020, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was roundly criticized after appearing before the United Nations Security Council holding up a series of maps that he labeled “The Palestinian Historic Compromise.”

Nevertheless, years after this series of maps has been disproven as misleading propaganda, the New York Times commissioned its own design, thus spreading the lie to a mainstream audience of millions around the world.

David Singer: The NYTimes and Washington Post bash Israel again - but their claims are false

The New York Times should be ashamed of itself for publishing their similarly false and misleading maps.

Brownie points earned by the Washington Post in exposing the New York Times anti-Israel bias were forfeited when Kessler continued “to summarize the two versions of whether there was a historic Palestine for readers who want to hear both sides of the story.”

The Pro-Palestinian version is a complete lie - and according to Kessler maintains:
“In the 18th century, the area saw the emergence of a new Palestine-based autonomous rule, spurred in part by the region’s commercial dynamism, especially its trade in cotton and grain. In effect, between the 1720s and 1775 under the ruler Zahir al-Umar, there was an independent Palestinian state — longer than the British mandate.

Why publish such fabricated nonsense?

Palestine had then been part of the Ottoman Empire for 250 years and remained so until the Allied and Central Powers made their decisions on its future at the 1920 San Remo Conference. Palestine referred to the area and not to any people.

Ending the flow of false information published by “respectable publications” remains a continuing challenge for Israel to combat and finally defeat.

Even the antisemitic Mufti accepted that the Temples were on the Temple Mount

Nowadays, when Palestinian media talks about the Temple Mount, they mention the "alleged" Temple that Jews "claim" to have existed there.

But their founding father, the Nazi-supporting Grand Mufti, Haj Amin Husseini, even admitted that the Jewish Temple was there.

In his testimony before the British commission of inquiry on the 1929 pogroms, the Mufti reiterated his claim that the Jews were planning to rebuild the Temple on top of Al Aqsa. From the New York Times, December 4, 1929:

That answer is revealing. Unlike later Palestinian leaders who denied that the Temple was ever in Jerusalem, the Mufti based his entire libel that Jews planned to destroy Al Aqsa on the fact that the Temple was there and the Jews would want to rebuild it!

Temple denial only started in Jordan after 1948 when guidebooks to the Temple Mount were re0written to take out any references to a Jewish presence in Jerusalem. But the modern version of Temple denial started with Yasir Arafat, who famously insisted to the American negotiators at Camp David that the Jewish Temple was in Nablus. Since then, other Arab officials and media picked up on this revisionist history to the point that it is now accepted much of the Arab world.

But even the Jew-hating Mufti knew the truth.

In that same testimony, the Mufti also fully accepted the truth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and attempted to have it included as evidence. The British decided that they would allow it - as evidence of Arab Jew-hatred.

“Lynch” is a word that most people don’t really comprehend. Although many are familiar with the word “Fauda” from the hit tv series, the term is not understood.

Fauda means chaos - but it is not just any chaos. It is the chaos of the gates of hell opening up, turning individuals into a blood-thirsty, raging, mob that swarms you, intent on ripping you to pieces. Literally.

To escape with your life, you need a miracle.

That is what happened to Elad Barzilai.

May 12^th, 2021. Arabs in Akko were rioting – as were Arabs in Jerusalem, Lod, Haifa and across the Galilee (where there are many Arab villages surrounding the Jewish communities). Israeli Arabs, citizens of Israel were raging against anyone or anything Jewish – individuals, Jewish property, and symbols of the Jewish State.

Elad, 37 years old, a teacher and father of four, went outside to look for his students. He wanted to make sure that his (Jewish) students were not caught up in the violence. He didn’t want them to get hurt and he didn’t want them to try to fight the rioters. He never imagined he wouldn’t come home afterwards. Neither did his wife, Yael.

Elad was attacked and beaten with metal rods and rocks. His skull was smashed in.

By a miracle and by the hands of good doctors, Elad survived. I cannot comprehend how it was possible to piece together the remains of his skull.

The media (as well as other similar lynches) minimized this horrific event. It is nicer to promote stories of “Jewish-Arab co-existence.” People like that narrative. It is easier to tell a “both sides” story of symmetrical violence or simply blame Jews. The truth is unpleasant, painful and in fact, terrifying.

I lack the words to properly convey the full extent of the horror of being Jewish and unsafe in our homeland. Of having neighbors who can live, shop, work etc. with you for years and then, one day, decide to rise up and slaughter Jews for being Jewish and daring to claim the right to live in our ancestral homeland.

There is no symmetry and there is no justification for bashing in the head of an unassuming teacher – even if he is a Jew.

After hearing what happened to Elad, it was impossible to just go on about our daily lives. But what could we do? I’m not a politician or a military official. I don’t make decisions for the country. I can’t protect my people and I can’t heal Elad. But I can’t not do anything.

So, Lenny and I went to the hospital. We don’t know the Barzilai family. But we do know them. They are our family. Our tribe. We didn’t call or ask anyone, we just went. Because that’s what you do when your family is suffering. You stand with them.

We found Yael, Elad’s wife standing outside the ICU, waiting for the doctors to let her in. Elad was in a medically induced coma follow the operation on his head.

“Who are you?” Yael asked.

“Am Yisrael”

Her eyes lit up.

She said that “Am Yisrael,” the people of Israel who care because we are all part of the same tribe, is the only thing that gives her hope in these terrible times.

Elad opened his eyes on Wednesday. On Saturday, a week after our first visit, we found Yael with Elad, in a regular hospital room. He is conscious and able to make very slow, pained gestures. The places where his skull was patched together scream of the horror he endured.

When Yael saw us, her tired face flushed with new life. She turned to Elad and told him: “Look at this couple. I don’t know them. I don’t think you know them, but they came to see how we are.”

Elad’s eyes followed us, and it was obvious he could understand the conversation. He couldn’t speak (he can’t swallow properly so he has a suction tube to make sure he doesn’t choke). Yael told us that he is mouthing words and it was the first day she could understand what he was trying to say.

Elad slowly raised his hand and lifted up one finger after the other. Four. Yael asked him, “You want to tell them about our kids?” A tiny movement of his head, closing and opening his eyes. “Yes.”

She told us of bringing their kids to see their father. I can’t imagine how they must have felt. When I spoke with Elad I smiled and told encouraging stories while swallowing tears of rage. It will take a very long time for him to heal, and his head will forever carry the evidence of Jew hate. Any time his wife or children look at him, every time he looks in the mirror, they will be reminded of that night of horrors. Of the neighbors who want us dead.

This sweet and gentle man experienced the enormity of hate felt for our entire people. The desire to smash us to smithereens. Elad, like the Nation of Israel, is going to do the one thing that most enrages our enemies.

He will live.

With the help of good doctors, Yael, family, friends, Am Yisrael and the few friends we have in the world, Elad will live WELL – and so will the Nation of Israel. We can be smashed, battered, tortured, and burned but we do not give up and we do not give in.

Am Yisrael Chai are perhaps the three most powerful words in the history of mankind.
We are a Nation. We are Israel. We LIVE.

So will Elad son of Julia.

If you pray, pray for his recovery. For his brain to be undamaged. For Yael to find the strength she needs. For their children to get their parents back. Tell Elad’s story, his is the Jewish story. The lynch mob did not attack Elad, they attacked The Jew. By a miracle he survived. Through faith, hope, love and dedication of his family, his tribe, he will live.

Am Yisrael Chai.

05/31 Links Pt1: Israel did everything it could for peace and was rejected; The PA met 80 times with the ICC – mocking and violating conditions for US funding; My mother was born in Sheikh Jarrah in 1921

From Ian:

Israel did everything it could for peace and was rejected - opinion

That brings us to the distortions. First, when in the history of the world was the side that was attacked with more than 4,000 rockets pressured to stop its own military operation, acknowledged as accurately hitting Hamas targets and not so many civilians by no less than the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency, the obsolete and hate-mongering UN Palestinian refugee organization, after just 11 days? How long did the US carry out military operations in Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands, with little pressure from the world to stop, and little or no evidence that anyone there actually attacked the US? Israel appears to be in a whole new category of nations with its own very special set of rules. But we knew that.

And most importantly: What are the Palestinians supposed to contribute to this? After all, they’re getting either a state or a piece of an Arab-majority confederation or unlimited aid. Where, in all these formulas, is the place where the Palestinians actually have to do something? If you have concluded that I am a charter member of the Oslo-disappointed crowd, you’re right. Oslo was not a complete failure – it saved the lives of many Israeli soldiers and civilians – but it didn’t produce peace.

I still believe that, for the sake of Israel as well as the Palestinians, a two-state solution is best. But I have despaired of ever seeing it negotiated. I have written here that one day it might be imposed. Otherwise, we will continue with the current situation, including a flare-up every few years, and that will be our reality. There is no magic formula of Israeli moves to change that.

It’s a bad neighborhood. As an Israeli, I call it part of the price we must pay for the privilege of living in the Holy Land.

PMW: The PA met 80 times with the ICC – mocking and violating conditions for US funding

Whereas the United States has made statements promising renewed financial support to the Palestinian Authority, the PA is ineligible for US funding. According to US law to be eligible for funding from the Economic Support Fund (ESF), the PA must not “initiate” or “actively support” any International Criminal Court investigation “that subjects Israeli nationals to an investigation for alleged crimes against Palestinians.”

Palestinian Media Watch can now report that this week, the Head of the PA Attorney’s Office for International Legal Cooperation Jamil Sajadiyeh admitted that the PA, ignoring the above US condition, is very actively supporting investigations against Israelis at the ICC:
“Around 80 meetings have been held between Palestine and the ICC, of course with the office of [ICC] General Prosecutor [Fatou Bensouda]. There are nearly 60 cases and letters that have been submitted, all of them telling about the Israeli violations. Monthly reports are being submitted to the ICC via the general prosecutor through the [PA] Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, May 25, 2021]

Sajadiyeh also revealed that the PA is doing this under the instructions of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas himself:
“Palestine has submitted all it can [to the ICC] in order to carry out these investigations. We are [working] according to the instructions of His Honor [PA] President [Mahmoud Abbas] and all the relevant parties.”

[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, May 25, 2021]

PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh also openly confirmed this week in an English language interview that the PA has been in contact with the ICC and “submitted files”:
Shtayyeh: “The ICC is a peaceful international court for criminals… and we decided to join… The issue of ICC is something that’s now totally out of our hands, it’s just in the hands of the ICC. Of course, we did join it and we did submit files. The Israelis should know and they should take us serious.”

[Facebook page of PA Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh, May 29, 2021]

United States law is very clear. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014 passed in January 2014 under the Obama administration prohibited Economic Support Fund (ESF) aid if the PA “initiate an International Criminal Court judicially authorized investigation, or actively support such an investigation, that subjects Israeli nationals to an investigation for alleged crimes against Palestinians.” The same provision has been adopted every year since, most recently as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, passed in December 2020.

JINSA PodCast: Israel-Gaza War: Assessing the Legality of the Recent Conflict

The international community continues to erroneously accuse Israel of war crimes in the recent conflict with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, evincing a serious misunderstanding of international law in both the media and policy realm. Despite Israel’s demonstrated and historical compliance with the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC)—and Hamas’ repeated and flagrant violations—the accusations persist. Professor Geoffrey Corn, formerly the U.S. Army’s Senior Law of War expert and current Distinguished Fellow at JINSA, and IDF Colonel (ret.) Eli Bar-On, former Deputy Military Advocate General of the IDF, discuss the legal parameters of the latest conflict between Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces, offering insight into the purpose of LOAC and the importance of respecting it, rather than misconstruing it.