Saturday, June 26, 2021

06/26 Links: Israel sending IDF team to Florida to assist with tower collapse rescue efforts; Let’s get long-buried report on BBC anti-Israel bias published

From Ian:

Israel sending IDF team to Florida to assist with tower collapse rescue efforts
The Israel Defense Forces will send a search and rescue delegation to Florida to assist with rescue efforts following the Surfside residential building collapse that left at least four dead and nearly 160 still missing.

The team of Home Front Command soldiers will head to Florida following a series of talks over the weekend between Israeli defense officials and officials in Miami, the Defense Ministry said in a statement on Saturday night.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the move was approved in coordination with the Foreign Ministry.

“As with any national mission, the IDF and the defense establishment are ready to respond, act and assist. Every effort will be made to save lives, support the Jewish community and our friend the United States,” Gantz said.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said the sending of the delegation demonstrated the depth of friendship between the two nations.

“The State of Israel has no better friend than the United States, and the United States has no better friend than Israel. In such difficult moments, we stand with our American friends and the Jewish community in Florida,” Lapid said, according to the statement.

Golan Vach, a senior officer in the IDF’s Homefront Command, will head the delegation, which will be comprised of around ten reservists — experts in search and rescue efforts and in engineering, as well as in social care, the military said in a statement.

The team of soldiers that is part of the “Helping Hand” operation will fly out in the early hours of Sunday, the IDF announced.

“The mission of the delegation is to assist in the life-saving efforts by mapping the challenges at the site of the destruction, assisting the Jewish community and supporting the local rescue forces,” the IDF said.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke with Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis on Saturday night to express his condolences, and said Israel would assist in any way needed.

“The United States is our greatest friend, and we stand by your side during this difficult time. We all pray for the safety of the wounded. I instructed all authorities in the Israeli government to assist in any way that may be required,” Bennett told DeSantis, according to a readout from the Prime Minister’s Office.

Nearly 160 people are still unaccounted for after the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside came down on Thursday.
United Hatzalah of Israel Sends Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit to Miami, El Al Sponsors Airfare
United Hatzalah of Israel, Israel’s largest all-volunteer EMS organization, working in conjunction with El Al Airlines, sent a team from its Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit to provide psychological support and stabilization to the families and neighbors of those injured, killed, or affected by the tragedy that occurred in Surfside Florida. The team’s mission will be to assist the community in Surfside and those affected by the collapse of a residential condo that has claimed the life of at least one person and left nearly 100 missing. The team flew out from Israel on Saturday night.

The team of psychological first aid experts is composed of top members of the organization’s Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit (PCRU) and will assist the families of those who were killed, injured, and missing, in the collapse. They will also make themselves available to members of the Miami community by providing psychological and emotional stabilization and treatment to those who need it in the wake of the incident.
Let’s get long-buried report on BBC anti-Israel bias published
Balen amalgamated his findings into a 20,000-word document. The results were apparently so damning that the BBC fought to keep the report from seeing the light of day. But tidbits leaked out, and the claims of anti-Israel bias were apparently confirmed.

In response, BBC executives ordered Balen’s report to be locked away. The corporation subsequently spent £333,000 ($500,000) to cover up Balen’s conclusions. The battle for full disclosure continued until 2012, when the British High Court unanimously dismissed the appeal of solicitor Steven Sugar, who had challenged the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act.

To date, Tim Davie has taken several steps to combat bias at the BBC.

For example, BBC World Service apologized for a “lapse of standards” after the broadcast of an uncritical interview with Palestinian terrorist Ahlam al-Tamimi, the mastermind of the 2001 suicide bombing of a pizzeria in the heart of Jerusalem that killed 15 people.

However, Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter Malki was murdered in the attack, said that the BBC’s apology for inviting Tamimi was “empty, cruel and pointless.” He said he was “stunned by the coldness of the BBC’s formalistic, paint-by-numbers reaction to the torrent of criticism they received from an enraged public.”

Roth also accused the BBC of having “misplaced its moral compass.”

Meanwhile, a record number of antisemitic incidents were recorded in the United Kingdom for the fourth year in a row. And on May 15, thousands of people in London participated in a protest, where many ‘pro-Palestinian’ demonstrators chanted about massacring Jews.

On May 16, multiple cars displaying Palestinian flags drove through Golders Green, a heavily Jewish-populated part of London. One individual shouted through a loudspeaker: “F–k the Jews, rape their daughters.”

The first step in combating overt antisemitism and anti-Israel bias is to acknowledge their existence – including at the BBC.

Friday, June 25, 2021

06/25 Links Pt2: Phillips: The delusional faith in reason of the liberal intellectual; Glick: American antisemitism – Israeli paralysis; Soloveichik: How Chancellor Kurz Redeemed Vienna

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The delusional faith in reason of the liberal intellectual
Surreally, the latest such candidate is radical Islam which is currently being accommodated, sanitised and genuflected to in western progressive circles. Evidence of the fanatical aggression perpetrated in its name is blanked out as if it isn’t there.

I personally encountered this phenomenon during the creation of the appalling 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which at best would merely delay the Iranian bomb while funnelling billions of dollars into the regime to fund its terrorist activities.

One of that deal’s most enthusiastic political architects told me that reports of the Iranian regime’s repression of its people were baloney because he’d seen no sign of it on a recent visit to Tehran, where he’d been impressed by the politeness of the Iranian police.

When I pointed out that in Iran dissidents were jailed, women violently oppressed and gay people hung from cranes, he simply waved all this away. When I observed that the regime was run by genocidal fanatics, he told me sternly that they were in fact highly rational individuals as evidenced by the way they negotiated. The idea that unhinged fanatics can also exercise strategic cunning was simply not on his radar.

For intellectuals who live inside their own heads, belief in a rational utopia is as immovably set in stone as is the fanaticism of the Iranian regime.

The irony, however, is that this worship of rationality has made liberal intellectuals irrational. They deny the evidence of their own eyes in order to declare that things are not as they are but as they want them to be. They are hopelessly in thrall to the power of the abstract idea.

So liberals like the Bidenites believe, with an arrogance exceeded only by their ignorance, that everyone in the world behaves like them — invariably motivated by a rational assessment of the benefits to themselves of negotiated compromise. All that remains to be hammered out are the terms.

As a result, the mortal enemies of the west are no longer bothering to hide their scorn and contempt as America humiliatingly plays into their hands, now putting at reckless and terrible risk the free world it is supposed to lead.
Caroline Glick: American antisemitism – Israeli paralysis
Lapid's strategy for securing and strengthening Israel-US ties cannot work because it is predicated on an untrue assumption – that the problems with the Democrats owe to former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's identification with the Republicans. Netanyahu was castigated as a "Republican" because the Democrats wanted a justification for their unwillingness to stand up to the likes of Omar and Ocasio Cortez – and Barack Obama before them.

Now that Netanyahu is out of office and Lapid the "Democrat" is in charge, the Democrats are still unwilling to stand up to them. And so, as Politico noted, their power continues to grow.

Netanyahu found that the best way to secure and expand US support for Israel was to work with people who are actually capable of achieving the goal. The man who has done the most in this area is Pastor John Hagee. Hagee founded and leads Christians United For Israel, the largest, and most politically powerful pro-Israel organization in the US But in the same speech where Lapid made rebuilding ties with Democrats and the liberal Jewish establishment in the US his top goals in office, he also made outreach to the Evangelicals a second-tier priority. In his words, "The fact that we are supported by Evangelical groups and others in the US is important and a heartwarming. But world Jewry are more than our allies. They are our family."

And this brings us to the second obstacle that will block the Lapid-Bennett government from acting effectively against the growing anti-Semitism in the US emanating from the Red-Green alliance. While 12 Jewish Democrat lawmakers were willing to sign a letter condemning Omar, other Jewish Democrat lawmakers supported Omar against their Jewish colleagues. Just as former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn had Jewish groups that were dedicated to acting as fig leaves to cover his anti-Semitism, so progressive Jewish groups and leaders serve as fig leaves for Omar, Sanders and their comrades. Some, like Bending the Arc and IfNotNow do so by joining them in their delegitimization of Israel's right to exist. Others, like Anti-Defamation League leader Jonathan Greenblatt, do so by refusing to call them out by name for their anti-Semitism and by going to great lengths to underreport and hide the breadth and depth and danger of leftist anti-Semitism and its direct relation to the demonization of Israel.
Meir Y. Soloveichik: How Chancellor Kurz Redeemed Vienna
It is often assumed that it was the Dreyfus affair that inspired Herzl’s vision, but in fact, as Rick Richman has noted, Herzl had originally assumed Dreyfus’s guilt, and he had dismissed French anti-Semitism as a mere “salon for the castoffs.” In contrast, Richman writes, “Vienna was Herzl’s home, the capital of the Hapsburg empire, the heart of Central European high culture, where a Jewish population nearly twice as large as that of all of France resided.” These Austrian Jews, who had given so much to their country, “were being accused of polluting the culture they had for a century longed to join, and not simply by a benighted clergy but by politicians and the populace at large, in a democratic election.”

Thus it can be said that, in 1895, Vienna’s leader taught Hitler his insidious craft and also inspired Herzl’s Zionist dream. Others had already written of a restored Jewish society, but Herzl became convinced that only as a genuinely political movement could Zionism succeed. “What,” Herzl wrote immediately after Lueger’s election, “is a flag? A pole and a piece of cloth? No Sir. A flag is greater than this. With a flag people are led to where you want, even to the chosen land. For a flag, people live and die. It is the one thing people are willing to die for.”

We are now able to understand the meaning of what it meant to fly the Zionist flag in the city that taught Hitler the power of hate and the city that taught Herzl the importance of Jewish nationalism. In a speech to American Jews, Kurz argued that Austria’s history “guides my political work today,” reminding him that “we have to be a strong partner of Israel.” By flying the Israeli flag, Kurz communicated that Vienna faces a choice: to stand with the locus of living Jewry, or to stand with Hamas, the heirs of the Nazis’ quest for genocide of the Jewish people.

And in the end, Kurz reminds his fellow leaders that this is a choice faced by all of Europe. Writing from Paris, Michel Gurfinkel recently reflected how, throughout the continent, ostentatious memorials to the Holocaust are erected, as Europe mourns “its lost dead Jews of yesterday, whose murder it variously perpetrated, abetted, or (with exceptions) found it could put up with.” Gurfinkel summarizes the European approach in a stark sentence: “To the dead Jews of yesterday, everything; to the living Jews of today, little and littler.”

But not, at least for one moment, in Vienna, where a chancellor in the city stood side by side with the state that was born in the mind of a Viennese Jew and hung Herzl’s flag from the edifice embodying his administration. It is too soon to tell whether the realignment described by Haddad is to endure, but if there is to be a better future in Euro–Israel relations, it will be because Sebastian Kurz has helped show the way.
MEMRI: The Dramatis Personae Behind The 1941 Farhud Pogrom In Baghdad – And Personal Recollections Of The Events
Between June 1-2, 1941, there occurred the most dramatic and gruesome event in the modern history of Iraqi Jews – the Farhud. During two days of political interregnum, after the coup of the pro-Nazi Iraqi prime minister Rashid Ali Al-Kailani had failed and the monarchy had been restored with the help of the British army, a violent mob attacked Jewish residents of Baghdad and plundered their businesses. Order was restored on the night of June 2, but the mob, which included soldiers and members of the police force, had left behind a shattered community. At least 180 Jews had been murdered and close to 2,000 wounded; women had been raped, and many Jewish businesses had been looted or destroyed. The Farhud was a turning point in the history of the Iraqi Jews: Previously, Jews may have thought that the future of the community was precarious; now many wondered whether the Iraqi Jewish community had a future at all.

Iraq's port city of Basra, where I was born and grew up, suffered less than Baghdad, but from the windows of our house I witnessed looters running through the streets carrying whatever they could grab from Jewish stores. There was always the uncertainty of whether the mob of looters was going to turn into a mob of murderers. Even though we were spared the fate of the Baghdadi Jews, the terror of our experience remains indelible in my mind.

The word farhud itself needs some explanation. It describes both an action and a cultural value. According to Nabil Abdul-Amir Al-Rubayi, who wrote two important volumes on the history of Jews in Iraq, the word is uncommon in the Arabic language; rather, it is adopted from Bedouin dialect and refers to looting and plundering. Quoting the well-known Iraqi sociologist Ali Al-Wardi, Al-Rubayi notes that the concept of farhud is part of Bedouin culture, in which looting and plundering are activities signaling "courage and daring."[1]

The events of the Farhud are well documented in numerous publications, and there is no need to dwell on them in detail in this report.[2] Instead, this report will focus on a number of individuals who played critical roles in the policies of the country which led to violence against a peaceful community and planted the seeds for the Farhud.

The figures discussed in this report are the following:
- The four colonels
- Prime Minister Rashid Ali Al-Kailani
- The Mufti of Jerusalem and his associates
- Younis Bahri (Radio Berlin)
- German Chief of Legation in Baghdad Fritz Grobba (commonly referred to as the German ambassador, but he did not carry this rank)
- British Ambassador to Baghdad Kinahan Cornwallis.


David Hirsh: Antisemite Richard Falk spearheads a global effort for ‘academics, artists and intellectuals’ to denounce Israel as apartheid
Antisemite Richard Falk spearheads a global effort for ‘academics, artists and intellectuals’ to denounce Israel as apartheid June 24, 2021 — David Hirsh

Richard Falk, who has for years now embraced an explicitly antisemitic worldview, who pushes 9/11 conspiracy fantasy and endorses Gilad Atzmon’s antisemitic book, is the public face of this campaign. He has referred to a ‘Palestinian Holocaust’ and he has published an antisemitic cartoon on his blog.

The text that he is asking ‘academics, artists and intellectuals’ (as if other people weren’t important) to sign:
- constructs Israel as an apartheid state
- constructs Israel as a criminal enterprise
- constructs Israel as a ‘system of ethnic cleansing’
- constructs the Nakba as ongoing
- claims that Israel explicitly claims ‘Jewish supremacy’
- claims that Israel has a system of ‘racial segregation’
- finds Israel guilty of crimes against humanity
- calls for the ‘dismantling’ of Israel
- urges governments to cease ‘complicity’ with Israel
- calls for an ICC investigation into Israeli leaders and security personnel
Copenhagen votes against renaming Israel Square for 'Palestine'
Members of the Copenhagen City Council voted not to split the city's Israel Square and rename one-half Palestine Square, Thursday night.

A vote on the proposal resulted in a tie, with 26 council members voting in favor of the move and 26 against. The ruling party in the Danish capital, the Social Democrats, voted against the proposal, which was introduced by council member Niko Grunfeld of the Free Greens party.

In an interview with local news outlet TV2/Lorry, Grunfeld said: "We have an Asia Square, an America Square, and an Israel Square in the city. Naming the square for Palestine would be an incredibly strong message of solidarity with the Palestinian people."

Finn Rudaizky, a member of the Copenhagen city council from the Danish People's Party who is Jewish, told Danish news channel TV2/Lorry the move would see "Copenhagen send the wrong signal."

Noting Palestinian ties to Hamas and Hezbollah, Rudaizy said such a proposal should only be considered once there is peace in the Middle East.


New ADL Guide Helps Campus Safety Teams Spot, Report Antisemitism and Hate Crimes
Amid a recent rise in antisemitic incidents on college campuses across the United States, a joint guide from a leading US Jewish organization and two college campus safety groups gives universities new advice in the fight against hate crimes.

The guide — “Combating Hate Crimes on College and University Campuses” — was released Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in partnership with the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) and the Clery Center, a nonprofit promoting campus safety. It outlines identifying markers of hate crimes, their effects on victims, and how campus officials can prevent and respond to them.

“A bias incident – whether or not it is determined to be a hate crime – deeply impacts a community,” the guide said, emphasizing the importance of informing campuses when incidents are being investigated as potential hate crimes, and of doing so with “compassion.”

“Include in your messaging a statement denouncing hate crimes and bias incidents, as well as details about efforts your campus takes to educate all campus community members about bias-related incidents or hate crimes, and the importance of working together to prevent them from occurring,” it said.

The guide gave a series of indicators to help officials identify hate crimes: the use of certain signs and symbols; the timing of an incident around dates such as Hitler’s birthday; and perpetrators that bear clothing patches or tattoos indicating membership in organized hate groups.

“We seek to help campuses improve communication about hate incidents, improve the rates of community members reporting incidents, and to improve communication in the wake of an incident so that campus community members feel supported,” the ADL’s National Director of College & University Programs, Elissa Buxbaum, told The Algemeiner. “Campuses will ultimately work together to create a culture where hate is a data point, but inclusion is what counts.
Listen: CBC Fails To Challenge Palestinian Authority’s Rationale For Rejecting 1 Million+ COVID Vaccines From Israel
Under pressure from Hamas, the Palestinian Authority rejected the 1.4 million Pfizer vaccine doses offered by Israel, saying they don’t “meet our standards.” But they’re the same vaccines given to Israelis. Now three other countries are asking for them.

What wasn’t good enough for the Palestinians seems to be good enough for everyone else! And yet Israel gets accused of “vaccine apartheid!”

With respect to this CBC report, it goes against CBC policy for its journalists to regard Gaza as being “occupied,” but Ms. Collard has done just that by claiming that it is, despite how Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, removing its 8,500 settlers, 21 settlements and its combined armed forces. There is no Israeli presence in Gaza (except for several Israeli soldiers that Hamas is holding captive and the remains of deceased IDF soldiers killed in battle).

Secondly, Collard said: “Israel has been a world leader in vaccine rollout with more than 55% of eligible adults already having received shots, but Israel came under international criticism for not providing vaccines to the millions of Palestinians under its military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.”

Collard ignored how Israel say that the Oslo Accords require the Palestinians to provide for the healthcare and vaccines for its own populace and how the Palestinians had declined Israeli assistance at the onset. As well, Collard also ignored how Israel has vaccinated over 100,000 Palestinians already – almost all are labourers who enter Israel.

CBC News told HonestReporting Canada that it felt that this was a short report that didn’t require any of the aforementioned context. Of course, we beg to differ as this report was highly tendentious, though CBC did concede that its referring to Gaza as being “occupied” wasn’t in adherence to its language guide.
Stand With Us: Why did Palestinians reject covid vaccines from Israel | Israel Weekly

Phoenix hospital axes Palestinian doctor who accused Israel of cannibalism
A radiologist at Phoenix Children's Hospital in Arizona is no longer affiliated with the center after posting antisemitic messages on social media and saying that Israel was a state based on "inhumanity" and even "cannibalism."

On May 26, Dr. Fidaa Wishah wrote a post saying, "We will uncover your thirst to kill our Palestinian children. … We sense your fear. The fear of your collapse. A state-based on atrocity, inhumanity, racism and cannibalism never last[s] long! Hey #israel … your end is coming sooner than you think."

In a post she published on several networks earlier this week, Wishah wrote: "You will not censor us anymore. Bomb our media buildings, we have phones. Bribe the mainstream media, and we have our little social platforms. From our streets, from the windows, from the destruction, we will expose you to the world."

In another post, Wishah revealed she had been called in for a conversation with Human Resources and wrote: "I told my boss I would not stop writing posts or talking about Palestine. This is my life and this is my struggle. The false accusations against me and my labeling as antisemitic will not lead them anywhere."

She also posted a picture of herself crying and wrote: "It hurts to be accused of lying just because I dare to tell the truth. The Zionists have a large and influential lobby that supports them in the US and everything is based on money buying everything, even my silence."

The hospital said in a statement on Wednesday: "All children in the care of Phoenix Children's receive hope, healing and the best possible health care, regardless of race, color, disability, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or national origin. After a thorough review of the facts related to this matter, this individual [Wishah] is no longer providing care at Phoenix Children's."


Incoming Cal State Dean Defended Farrakhan, Attacked Jewish Critics
An incoming dean at California State University Los Angeles is a staunch defender of the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and has denounced the minister's Jewish critics.

Julianne Malveaux, whom Cal State L.A. appointed to lead its newly established College of Ethnic Studies, wrote in 2018 that "white people's hatred for Minister Farrakhan is irrational and … racist" after the Women's March movement faced calls to denounce its ties to Farrakhan, who has compared Jews to termites.

In a series of past remarks uncovered by school reform journal Education Next this week, Malveaux also lashed out against Jewish critics of the Nation of Islam leader. Malveaux condemned a congressional effort to denounce Farrakhan in 2018, framing the push to condemn the minister as being led by Jews asking black people to "buck dance," according to the Nation of Islam's official newspaper, the Final Call.

"We have tens of thousands if not millions of people, black people, in these United States who are members of the Nation of Islam. They are productive people in our community, who many of us interact with, work with, on a daily basis," the Final Call quoted Malveaux as saying. "They are not racist people. They are not anti-Semitic. They are black people. So, until these Jewish people who are running around asking black people to buck dance, until they ask white people to buck dance, I ain't having it! I'm just not having it!"

Malveaux reportedly appeared at a 2005 event hosted by Farrakhan, where she criticized attacks on the Nation of Islam leader's rhetoric.

Farrakhan has a history of making anti-Semitic remarks. The Nation of Islam leader has attributed "pedophilia and sexual perversion" in Hollywood to "Jewish influence," said that "powerful Jews are my enemy," and accused Jews of being responsible for the slave trade in the United States. Farrakhan in 2018 tweeted, "I'm not an anti-Semite. I'm anti-Termite."

Malveaux, a columnist and former president of Bennett College, is also a staunch critic of Israel. During the country's latest conflict with the terrorist group Hamas last month, Malveaux wrote that the Jewish state "has a lock on U.S. foreign policy" and that "too many Jewish people say that criticism of Israel makes you anti-Semitic."
An Opening for Dissenters
Three years ago this month, the Supreme Court protected the First Amendment rights of public employees. In Janus v. AFSCME, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that requiring nonmember workers to help fund government unions violated the employees’ free speech rights “by compelling them to subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern.” At its core, Janus recognized the impossibility of distinguishing between clearly political causes—for which even union leaders conceded that they could not charge non-members—and allegedly apolitical workplace matters, for which unions could demand an “agency fee.”

A recent resolution from the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the City University of New York’s faculty union, confirmed the wisdom of Alito’s holding—and also showed how Janus can empower beleaguered dissenters in higher education. By a vote of 84–34, over the objections of a handful of delegates who argued that Middle East security issues weren’t a legitimate concern of the union, the PSC passed a measure described as a “Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People.” The offering approvingly cited groups accusing Israel of “apartheid,” and described the recent conflict in Gaza as “the massacre of Palestinians by the Israeli state.” To reach this peculiar interpretation, the resolution mentioned neither Hamas’s initiation of hostilities nor the thousands of rockets that Gaza’s leaders targeted at Israeli civilians.

Backers of the effort did not explain why CUNY faculty should condemn the alleged human rights abuses of one and only one foreign country. The PSC hasn’t criticized Iran for its treatment of gay citizens or Morocco for its annexation of Western Sahara. Egyptian persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood has escaped the PSC’s attention. The union not only has remained silent about China’s genocidal policies toward Uighurs but also passed a resolution last month claiming that “incessant China-bashing by the mainstream media” would lead to another “Cold War.” One PSC delegate even downplayed Hamas’s anti-Semitism, explaining that Hamas merely “wants to get Palestine back for the Palestinian people.”
Why I Resigned From the Professional Staff Congress (PSC)-CUNY
I am an ardent, lifelong supporter of organized labor. In the past, I served on the executive board and two contract negotiating teams for the Los Angeles College Faculty Guild. In recent years, I have focused on other areas and done other work — so during my five years teaching as an adjunct in the English department at Queens College, CUNY, my participation in the City University of New York’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC) has been limited to membership and reading union communications (many of which over the past couple of years concerned contract negotiations and the COVID-19 pandemic).

I first learned of the PSC’s so-called “Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People” on the very day, June 10, that the union’s delegate assembly was scheduled to vote on it. Like much American campus activity that is part of the malign campaign against Israel, it was a stealth act. Not primarily the supportive statement it labels itself to be, the resolution is really a malicious attack on the moral legitimacy and character of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people

News of the resolution came to me from an email blast, not by the PSC but rather from CUNY Rank and File Action (RAFA), a more radical, often dissident faction of PSC members.

RAFA, along with CUNY for Palestine and other, smaller groups, is leading the anti-Israel campaign within CUNY — which is aiming for a further BDS resolution in 2022, CUNY divestment from Israel, and a break in ties between the AFL-CIO and Histadrut, the Israeli General Federation of Labor.

According to Left Voice, a news service self-described as “part of the Trotskyist Faction” of the Fourth International, the resolution effort originated within PSC’s “anti-racist committee, international committee, and academic freedom committee.” All four principals of the PSC, including its president, newly installed after the retirement of 20-year leadership, voted against the much-amended-for-stridency final resolution, but it is instructive that they had been willing, according to Left Voice, to support language condemning the “massacre of Palestinians” by Israel.


Canada’s Leading Labor Union Secretly Passes Resolution to Boycott Israel
Canada’s largest labor union adopted “behind closed doors” a motion last week that supports a boycott of Israel after the resolution initially failed to garner support among members.

The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) held its annual convention virtually this year, during which delegates from affiliated unions debate and vote on a range of topics. A resolution calling for a boycott of Israel was proposed but never brought to the convention floor since members gave it such a low priority.

Later that same day, a committee called the Canadian Council—comprised of the CLC executive and some representatives from affiliated unions—met and secretively adopted the anti-Israel resolution.

The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) said in a press release on Monday that it has spoken with leaders of CLC-affiliated unions and union members who are “bewildered and upset to find out that an anti-Israel resolution was passed behind closed doors.” The CLC used “backdoor methods to ram through” a resolution in support of a boycott of Israel that have left many union representatives “shocked and angry,” said the FSWC.

A union member who was a delegate at last week’s convention told FSWC: “The CLC knew that the delegates did not consider it a priority to so much as debate this kind of inflammatory and divisive resolution. But it was adopted anyway. This leaves a lot of us with some very serious questions about the CLC and its commitment to hearing members’ voices.”
CAMERA Prompts Washington Post Correction on Palestinian Terrorist Attack
After contact from CAMERA, The Washington Post has changed inaccurate wording in a June 13, 2021, report.

That article, by Jerusalem bureau chief Steve Hendrix, initially stated that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “leaves behind a booming economy, newfound international respect and a decade without bus bombings by Palestinian militants [emphasis added].”

Yet, as CAMERA pointed out to Post editors and staff, the latter claim isn’t true.

On June 24, 2021, the dispatch was commendably changed, and per standard journalistic practice, a correction was appended, stating:

“Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Israel had experienced a decade without bus bombings under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A bus bombing in 2016 injured at least 21 people. The article has been updated.”
Germany passes law to give descendants of Nazi-era refugees citizenship
Germany's parliament approved changes on Friday that will make it easier for descendants of people who fled Nazi persecution to obtain citizenship, a move Jewish groups described as an important signal in the country responsible for the Holocaust.

The amendments approved by the Bundestag lower house of parliament enshrine in law decrees from 2019 already in force, which followed a campaign by relatives of Nazi-era refugees.

"The ruling coalition has taken important legal steps to ensure that Germany lives up to its historical responsibility," President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, said.

Relatives of refugees have been angered that their applications for citizenship were rejected despite constitutional guarantees.

Germany’s Basic Law states that former German citizens who between 1933 and 1945 were deprived of their citizenship on political, racial or religious grounds and their descendants can have their citizenship restored.

However, some had applications rejected or were told they are not eligible to apply, often on the grounds that they were born to a German mother and non-German father. Until 1953, German citizenship could only be passed on through the paternal line.
Lapid slams ‘immoral’ Polish bill complicating Holocaust survivors restitution
Poland must do the right thing for Holocaust survivors or ties with Israel will suffer, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said on Thursday, shortly after a parliamentary committee in Warsaw considered a bill making it more difficult for survivors to recover property seized by the Nazis.

Polish officials, however, defended the law as fighting post-communism corruption.

“No law will change history,” Lapid said. “The polish law is immoral and will severely harm relations between the countries. Israel will stand as a bastion protecting the memory of the Holocaust and the dignity of Holocaust survivors and their property.”

“Poland, on whose ground millions of Jews were murdered, knows the right thing to do,” the foreign minister added.

Poland-Israel ties have been strained since 2018, after Poland passed a law penalizing those arguing that Poland or the Polish people were in any way responsible for the Holocaust. Prominent Israelis sharply criticized the law; then-foreign minister Israel Katz repeated a quote from former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir that Poles get antisemitism with their mothers’ milk, and Lapid, then an opposition lawmaker, said Poland was complicit in the Holocaust. Then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said soon after that some Poles collaborated with the Nazis, which also sparked an uproar in Poland.
Tucson police arrest man in connection with synagogue vandalism
Tucson police have identified and taken into custody a suspect connected to the vandalism at the Chabad on River Synagogue that occurred on June 7.

Nathan Beaver, 30, was arrested Thursday in connection with the vandalism and was charged with aggravated criminal damage.

On June 7, at around 8:30 a.m., Tucson police were called to the Chabad on River Synagogue for a vandalism report, according to police.

Upon arrival, officers located graffiti on the building in the form of a swastika and anti-Semitic slur, according to police.

Tucson police spokesperson Officer Frank Magos said the vandalism happened sometime between 8 p.m. June 4 and 8 a.m. June 7.

The vandalism was first reported by Orthodox Jewish news service COLlive, and the news was later shared by state Rep. Alma Hernandez, D-Tucson, who tweeted that she woke up to the news Tuesday morning.

"When it happens to one, it happens to all of us," she wrote. "The amount of Jewish hate isn't shocking. The silence is."

Rabbi Yehuda Ceitlin of Chabad Tucson said the vandalism was discovered on the morning of June 7 by a congregant coming to the synagogue for prayer and a Torah class.

Gov. Doug Ducey condemned the "terrible" vandalism on social media.
Toronto man receives antisemitic abuse in a city-centre pharmacy
A Jewish shopper in Toronto posted a video on Facebook showing a fellow shopper screaming “dirty Jew” at him.

The Jewish shopper was abused while in a city-centre pharmacy by a woman shopper who had refused to put on a mask offered by an employee. She screamed “homosexual” and “dirty Jew” at him, in addition to other, inaudible comments. On leaving the pharmacy she again shouted “dirty Jew.”

The author of the Facebook post said that he had “considered not sharing” the video but “realised silence will not stop this sort of thing from happening again.” He added: “Let this be a reminder that hate is alive and well in our city” and said he had sent the video to B’nai Brith Canada which monitors antisemitism.
New York Cops Arrest 14-Year-Old Boy in Connection With Assault on Jewish Man in Times Square
Police in New York on Thursday confirmed that a 14-year-old boy had been arrested in connection with the savage assault on Joseph Borgen, a Jewish man who was set upon by pro-Palestinian thugs following an anti-Israel demonstration in midtown Manhattan on May 20.

The teenage boy, whose name was not released by the NYPD because he is a minor, was charged with assault, gang assault and menacing, all as hate crimes, and aggravated harassment.

The boy, who lives in Staten Island, is the fourth person to have been taken into custody since the attack. Police arrested 23-year-old Mahmoud Musa of Staten Island two weeks ago on charges of gang assault and hate crimes. Musa’s arrest came after the previous detentions of 25-year-old Faisal Elezzi, also of Staten Island, and 23-year-old Waseem Awadeh of Brooklyn for participating in the gang beating of Borgen. Awawdeh is alleged to have told prosecutors, “I would do it again.”

Interviewed in the wake of the attack, the 29-year-old Borgen emphasized that he had “been a proud Jew my entire life, I’ve lived in New York my entire life. Never once before was I accosted verbally or felt threatened by the fact that I was Jewish, for wearing a kippah, or anything of that ilk or that nature.”
UK Ministry of Defense Chooses Trophy Protection System to Boost Its Defenses
The UK Ministry of Defense chose the Trophy Active Protection System, made by Israeli defense company Rafael, for its Challenger 3 main battle tank, Rafael announced on Thursday.

The decision followed a study carried out by the British Ministry of Defense as part of an upgrade program that is being led by prime contractor Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land, “which will entail detailed integration and system trials of this lighter Trophy variant (Trophy MV) to fit the particular requirements of this vehicle,” said Rafael.

Trophy has been installed and operational on Israel Defense Forces’ Merkava tanks since 2010, and has also been installed on IDF Namer APCs.

It has made numerous real-world combat interceptions and accrued more than a million operating hours.

Developed in response to successful anti-armor attacks, the Trophy active protection system provides “combat-proven protection against rocket and missile threats, and simultaneously locates the origin of the hostile fire for immediate response,” the company added.

Trophy has been supplied to four US Army Abrams main battle tank brigades and will soon go to Germany for its Leopard main battle tanks.
Israel’s ZzappMalaria Wins IBM Watson AI XPRIZE Competition by Helping Eliminate Malaria
ZzappMalaria, the developer of a mobile app and dashboard to help eliminate malaria, has won first place in the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE Competition, as well as the People’s Choice Award for the Most Inspiring Team. As part of the award, the company has received a $3 million prize to continue its efforts to eliminate malaria from the world.

“The Zzapp team is deeply grateful to Xprize and IBM Watson for acknowledging the importance of the fight against malaria,” said Arnon Houri-Yafin, CEO and founder of ZzappMalaria. “We will dedicate the prize money to one ambitious goal: demonstrating that rapid malaria elimination is possible in Sub Saharan Africa.”

Malaria kills more than 400,000 people per year, most of which are young children under the age of five. While many countries have successfully eliminated the diseases, there are several African countries that are still impacted by malaria-bearing mosquitoes due to the operational complexities of such efforts, as well as the continent’s dispersed geography and tropical climate.

Zzapp uses AI to provide specific malaria-control strategies depending on the needs of each village or neighborhood. Then, it breaks down those strategies into clear and manageable tasks. Tasks are allocated to fieldworkers via its mobile app designed for local needs, such as battery consumption, internet access, and more. To date, the app has been tested in six African countries and has proven to increase coverage of water bodies, shorten work time, and increase the effectiveness of operations designed to tackle malaria.

The IBM Watson AI for Good competition was set up in 2016 to help promote the use of AI to solve some of the world’s most pressing issues. In total, there were more than 10,000 applications and Zzapp ultimately gained the top spot. Some of the judging criteria focused on technological achievements, proven impact, and potential scalability, among others.
‘They All Play Together’: 35 Children From West Bank, Gaza and Around the World Find Life-Saving Heart Care in Israel
A Tel Aviv-area medical center is now treating about 35 children from around the world for life-threatening heart conditions, in what is largest group of patients brought to the country by Israel-based non-profit Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) since the coronavirus pandemic began.

The children — hailing from Gaza, the West Bank, Ethiopia, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and Kosovo — include babies, toddlers, and teenagers, who are often accompanied by a guardian or parent. After arriving in Israel they quarantined under Israeli Health Ministry guidelines, before receiving free heart disease treatment at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon.

“It is our mission to bring children from developing countries and places where they can’t get or can’t afford life-saving treatments. Over half of the children whose lives are being saved in Israel are from the Palestinian Authority and Gaza. Doctors in Israel volunteer their time to conduct the heart surgeries,” Tamar Shapira, deputy executive director of SACH told The Algemeiner in an interview. “For us they are little ambassadors. We tell a different story of Israel which is not political.”

Following the treatment, the children and their guardian recuperate under medical supervision in the SACH’s children’s house, also in Holon. Before the outbreak of COVID-19, the group treated an average of almost 400 children a year in Israel.

“The children stay in Israel for two to three months before they can return home and some we bring back for further treatments as needed,” Shapira said. “They all play together in the children’s house even though they don’t understand each other, as they speak different languages.”







  • Friday, June 25, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon

Report: Palestinian Authority confused and off-balance from international criticism for killing Nizar Banat



This report was published by Safa. It rings true but there is no way to check it.
Informed sources confirmed that a high-level security meeting was held in the office of President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah last night. The meeting was to discuss concerns about the internationalization of the issue of the assassination by the security services of his political opponent Nizar Banat in Hebron.

The sources indicated that the meeting discussed "frightening scenarios" for the authority; The most prominent of these is the internationalization of the investigation into the assassination of Banat, especially if human rights organizations and his family use international statements criticizing his killing to pursue the case in European courts or with international human rights bodies, or pressure donor countries to restrict funding for the authority until its human rights record is improved.

The meeting was "confused" during the discussion of the proposed scenarios and ways to deal with them, in light of messages sent by local and international bodies, especially European, to the authority calling for a transparent investigation and accountability for the perpetrators of the crime.

Informed sources indicated that the international statements criticizing the assassination of Banat were surprising to the authority, as it did not expect the case to have such an echo at the international level.

The sources pointed out that the meeting also discussed the implications of former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's statements about the assassination of Banat.

They said: "The authority is used to critical statements from opposition organizations and personalities, but it is the first time that someone like Salam Fayyad has spoken in this way about the authority and the security establishment.

"Fayyad is a prominent international figure, and he does not speak arbitrarily, and therefore his statements indicate the need for some change in the power structure, which is the message for which the president's office has mobilized."

Banat's family confirmed that Nizar was subjected to a premeditated assassination as a result of his opposition to the political approach of the Palestinian Authority.

They said that more than 20 armed men stormed the house he was in in the southern district of Hebron, and blew up its entrance, then surrounded Nizar while he was sleeping and beat him with an iron bat on his head, then attacked him with rifle butts, sprayed him with pepper and tear gas, stripped him of his clothes and then dragged him out.
The PA has done outrageous things before, but the international community and media has always let them slide, because Israel was the oppressor in their narrative. Israel cannot be blamed for Banat's death, though, and this was too big to ignore. The Abbas regime does not have any real experience with bad PR from its usual friends. 



06/25 Links Pt1: An excuse to attack the Jews and Israel; US denies change in policy recognizing Golan Heights as Israeli; ‘Get out Abbas’: Thousands protest at funeral of activist who died in PA custody

From Ian:

An excuse to attack the Jews and Israel
During Operation Guardian of the Walls, Hamas “somehow managed to create a bizarre universe where lies are truths, fiction is fact, and the perpetrator is the victim,” asserted Nitsana Darshan Leitner, founder of Shurat HaDin Israeli Law Center.

Though Hamas is an internationally recognized terror organization, she noted that the Hamas leadership succeeded in obscuring their sponsorship of suicide bombings and the murder of thousands of civilians, including Americans, while persuading “the woke, the liars, the celebrity posers, and the haters that they are innocent victims who represent the interests” of all Palestinian Arabs.

They have also prevailed in expunging their history of seizing control of the Gaza Strip in a coup in which they attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons and threw Fatah fighters off the roofs of hospitals.

Pundits enlisted into the Palestinian Arab propaganda machine, she said, used words like They succeeded in spewing their vicious lies, but not in their usual virulent anti-Israel attacks. Instead, they focused on vilifying Jews “disproportionate use of force,” “illegal, “ethnic cleansing,” and apartheid nation,” to redefine Israel’s right to self-defense. This duplicity from a terrorist organization that recruits young men and women to become suicide bombers, was now being represented through social media as guiltless victims.

They succeeded in spewing their vicious lies, but not in their usual virulent anti-Israel attacks. Instead, they focused on vilifying Jews. At pro-Palestinian Arab rallies in the US and Europe, signs called for liberating Palestine from the “River [Jordan] to the Sea, [Mediterranean], Palestine will be free,” which means ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel, despite Arab denials to the contrary. At some of these rallies, there were Palestinian Arab flags together with swastikas.


JINSA PodCast: Moscow Takes Center Stage in the Middle East’s Great Power Competition
What role does the Middle East play in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s quest for Russia to be recognized once again as a superpower? Does Putin care about stability in the region? Is President Joe Biden confronting the growing Moscow-Damascus-Tehran axis effectively? Anna Borschevksaya of the Washington Institute joins Erielle to discuss the growing Middle East great power competition in which Russia has assumed center stage—and at the potential peril of U.S. interests.


  • Friday, June 25, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon

Fatah official defends arrests and attacks on critics

A Fatah member has obliquely addressed the PA's apparent killing of critic Nizar Banat yesterday amid mass arrests of other critics, which the PA and Fatah have been mostly silent about.

Muwaffaq Matar, pictured, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council of the Fatah movement, said on Facebook today that "treason, chaos and tampering with the system do not fall under freedom of opinion and expression."

Matar added,  "The president, the political system, and the security services are not corrupt... Those who have an agenda see who wrote their lines and their tools are known...Treason, chaos, and tampering with public order are neither expression nor opinion."

Matar indicated that the results of the investigation into the killing of Nizar Banat have not yet been presented to the public, accusing Hamas and Abba rival Muhammad Dahlan, of exploiting a "case still under investigation" to cause chaos.

In a series of Facebook posts, Matar questioned the reasons for "focusing on the president, the security services and the political system," he said.

Maybe because Abbas is a corrupt dictator who controls all aspects of life under his rule and does not tolerate any dissent?




Latest report proves again that @Amnesty International is antisemitic

Amnesty International just issued a report on Israel's arrests for the attacks between Arabs and Jews inside Israel during May.

The report includes outright lies:

Amnesty International has documented unnecessary and excessive force used by Israeli police to disperse Palestinian protests against forced evictions in East Jerusalem as well as against the Gaza offensive. The protests were mostly peaceful though a minority attacked police property and threw stones. In contrast, Jewish supremacists continue to organize demonstrations freely. On 15 June thousands of Jewish settlers and supremacists marched provocatively through Palestinian neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem. 
Those "mostly peaceful" Arab protests resulted in the deaths of two Jews, synagogues burned, apartments firebombed, people knifed. 

The Flag March on June 15 was not "organized freely." Israeli police limited the route of the march specifically to avoid Arab neighborhoods. While some Jews may have deviated from the route, Amnesty is saying that Israeli police allowed the marchers to do whatever they wanted, which is a lie. 

And look how Amnesty describes the Jews: "settlers" and "Jewish supremacists." Really? Every marcher either lives across the Green Line or considers Arabs to be less than human? 

Most of the marchers were not extremists or bigots. Some were. But Amnesty is saying all the Jews who support Jerusalem as their capital are "supremacists." 

In fact, Amnesty uses the phrase "Jewish supremacists" ten times in this report. Not "Jewish nationalists," not "Zionists," but "Jewish supremacists."

In the entire voluminous Amnesty website, there are only two types of "supremacists" mentioned: "White" and "Jewish."

People who demand that Israel be replaced with a Palestinian state "from the river to the sea" are never called "Palestinian supremacists." Members of ISIS are not once called "Muslim supremacists."

The word choice is deliberate: Amnesty is saying that Zionists who support the existence of a Jewish state are the moral equivalent of white supremacists and Nazis.

Amnesty is demonizing proud Jews as being in the same category as the most reprehensible racists. That is antisemitism, pure and simple.

What is even more ironic is that the report quotes Saleh Hijazi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, a "human rights" activist who is literally a supporter of terrorists. His Facebook page, even today, includes tributes to senior Islamic Jihad leader Khader Adnan (who openly advocates blowing up Jews) and to airplane hijacker Leila Khaled, with admiring pictures of Yasir Arafat, cartoons from antisemite Carlos Latuff  and evil caricatures of Benjamin Netanyahu.



His bias is blatant. 

For Amnesty, that is why they hired him to begin with. 

This is yet more proof that Amnesty International, at least its Middle East division, is systematically antisemitic. 






  • Friday, June 25, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon

Did Hamas commit the crime of human shielding in the May war?



In 2018, Congress passed the ‘‘Sanctioning the Use of Civilians as Defenseless Shields Act’’. It is meant "To impose sanctions with respect to foreign persons that are responsible for using civilians as human shields, and for other purposes."

Orde Kittrie, writing for Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argues that Hamas used human shields during the 11 day war in May, and therefore President Biden (or his delegates) should invoke this act and put further sanctions on Hamas.

This should be a slam dunk. The ICRC, in its Customary IHL Database, defines human shields this way:

The prohibition of using human shields in the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I and the Statute of the International Criminal Court are couched in terms of using the presence (or movements) of civilians or other protected persons to render certain points or areas (or military forces) immune from military operations.
This means that Hamas, by purposefully placing military targets in civilian areas in order to dissuade Israel from attacking them, is clearly guilty of "using the presence of civilians to render areas immune from military operations."

But the examples given do not include the purposeful placing of military targets among civilians. 
Most examples given in military manuals, or which have been the object of condemnations, have been cases where persons were actually taken to military objectives in order to shield those objectives from attacks. The military manuals of New Zealand and the United Kingdom give as examples the placing of persons in or next to ammunition trains. There were many condemnations of the threat by Iraq to round up and place prisoners of war and civilians in strategic sites and around military defence points. Other condemnations on the basis of this prohibition related to rounding up civilians and putting them in front of military units in the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Liberia. 

These seem to indicate that Hamas must coerce civilians to protect military sites, or at the very least not allow them to leave, to be guilty of human shielding. 

Placing military targets among civilians is still a war crime - mentioned as such in the Rome Statute Article 8 (2) (b) (xxiii) - but it is unclear if it is considered human shielding. The ICC's explanation of that law indicates that it is:

Article 8 (2) (b) (xxiii)
War crime of using protected persons as shields

Elements

1. The perpetrator moved or otherwise took advantage of the location of one or more civilians or other persons protected under the international law of armed conflict.

2. The perpetrator intended to shield a military objective from attack or shield, favour or impede military operations.

3. The conduct took place in the context of and was associated with an international armed conflict.

4. The perpetrator was aware of factual circumstances that established the existence of an armed conflict.

I cannot find a clear answer on whether placing military objects in civilian areas is human shielding. The wording of the ICRC and ICC explanations indicates it is, but no one mentions this an an example. 

However, the Shields Act of Congress seems to limit itself only to cases where people are actively placed in danger:

Each foreign person that the President determines, on or after the date of the enactment of this Act— ... (A) is a member of Hamas or is knowingly acting on behalf of Hamas; and

(B) knowingly orders, controls, or otherwise directs the use of civilians protected as such by the law of war to shield military objectives from attack. 

 Hamas has done this in the past - threatening people not to leave an area after Israel dropped leaflets warning them to leave - but I have not read about any coercion in last month's war, which the Shields Act seems to require for sanctions.

It seems that Hamas did commit the crime of human shielding last month - we saw tunnels deliberately built under apartment complexes, schools and shops - but did not violate the conditions mentioned in the Shields Act.

It seems the Shields Act needs to be re-written to include the more expansive definition of human shields.





Thursday, June 24, 2021

06/24 Links Pt2: Why the West loves the Palestinian narrative; Biden Admin Walks Back U.S. Recognition of Golan Heights; Google Sanctions Use of Anti-Semitic Slogan

From Ian:

Underdog appeal: Why the West loves the Palestinian narrative
The pile-on of the left against the Jewish state has with little doubt been fueled by the end of the apartheid era in South Africa in 1994. For self-styled progressives of the Left, always in want of a cause, Israel-Palestine was a no-brainer; in fact, it was there waiting. The verbal artifacts of this period, specifically “racism,” “apartheid” and “colonialism” were ready-made and easily adapted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by leftist ideologues. These have been joined with additional charges of “war crimes,” “crimes against humanity,” “murder of children” and “genocide” in creating the image of a society that is the epitome of evil.

The impunity with which these baseless and fallacious allegations have been leveled is facilitated by the fading significance of the Holocaust. Ironically, though, Holocaust inversion rhetoric, i.e. what the Nazis did to the Jews, the Jews are now doing to the Palestinians, is also employed in the malicious campaign to defame Israel. Israelis are today’s Nazis.

The ability of otherwise well-meaning people to buy into this narrative and to look the other way at, if not actually applaud, the incessant bombardment of civilian Israeli communities, requires on their part a powerful selective filtering of reality. The throngs of pro-Palestinian Western marchers and protesters see past the terrorist organization’s war crimes and focus only on the unfortunate non-combatant residents of Gaza, who themselves are victims of Hamas.

It is like those who only saw Bonnie and Clyde as a daring young couple standing up to a corrupt justice system. This is only possible for people who view the perceived underdog and social justice as synonymous; no more need be known nor asked. The underdog is blameless. That is the bite of the underdog.

What can Israel do? In the short term there is nothing Israel can do to alter the equation in its favor. Israel is now Goliath, the Palestinians are David. That image is accepted by most of the world. But if Israel continues to advance diplomatic relations with her Muslim neighbors, it is reasonable that they would concede the need for the Palestinians to also recognize Israel’s legitimacy and negotiate a mutually acceptable settlement. Diplomatic and even economic pressure from Arab countries at peace with Israel could serve as catalyst for positive change among the Palestinian leadership and within Palestinian society. If we are fortunate enough to arrive at that stage, the hateful rhetoric and deceitful imagery that is today the Palestinian narrative will simply lose relevance. The underdog will have wandered off.
Biden Admin Walks Back U.S. Recognition of Golan Heights as Israeli Territory
The Biden administration is walking back the United States' historic recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the contested Golan Heights region along Israel's northern border, a significant blow to the Jewish state and one of the Trump administration's signature foreign policy decisions.

The Trump administration declared the territory—seized by Israel from Syria in 1967 and later annexed by the country—to be wholly part of the Jewish state in 2019. Then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo took a trip to the area in 2020 and reaffirmed that America formally abandoned a decades-long policy of considering the area occupied.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken first raised questions about the Biden administration's view on the matter in February, when he would not say if his State Department continues to abide by the former administration's decision. At the time, Blinken would only say the Golan Heights "remains of real importance to Israel's security," but that its formal status remains unclear. Pressed on the issue by the Washington Free Beacon, a State Department official said the territory belongs to no one and control could change depending on the region's ever-shifting dynamics.

The shift in policy is already causing outrage among Republican lawmakers who backed the Trump administration's decision and hoped to see it continue. It is also likely to rankle Israeli leaders of all political stripes, the plurality of whom say the Golan Heights is absolutely vital to Israel's security in light of persistent threats from the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon and other militant forces stationed in war-torn Syria.

"The secretary was clear that, as a practical matter, the Golan is very important to Israel's security," a State Department official told the Free Beacon. "As long as [Bashar al-Assad] is in power in Syria, as long as Iran is present in Syria, militia groups backed by Iran, the Assad regime itself—all of these pose a significant security threat to Israel, and as a practical matter, the control of the Golan remains of real importance to Israel's security."

Recognizing Israel's control as a "practical matter," however, falls far short of the formal policy change ordered by the Trump administration, which became the first government to recognize Israel's complete control over the territory. As it stands now, U.S. policy on the matter is unclear, at best.
Meghan McCain Presses Bernie Sanders On Anti-Israel Rhetoric Of The Progressive ‘Squad’
Meghan McCain called out Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) during an episode of “The View” over his relationship with controversial progressive members of the Democratic Party.

“You are the Godfather of ‘The Squad.’ You’re a hyper-progressive socialist, and you’re talking about social justice before it was cool,” McCain said. “But it feels like the squad today has moved even to the Left of you. How is it for you to stand by everything AOC, Rashida Talib, and Ilhan Omar have said and done, particularly when it comes to Israel and talking about ‘From the river to the sea’ and the extermination of Israel, as a right to exist? Or do you think the movement, which you started, has moved away from what you envisioned?”

Sanders responded, “Well Meghan, first of all, I don’t believe that’s what they’re saying, and second of all, it’s not my job to have to defend every member of Congress, any more than it is their job to defend every statement that I make.”

The senator went on to discuss his work on a budget, as well as efforts to rebuild infrastructure and create good jobs, citing policy initiatives that varied from taxes to child care.

“I think the … progressives in the House are doing a very good job standing up for working families,” Sanders said. “It’s not my job to comment on everything that any member of the House says, any more [than] it is for them to comment on what I say.”


  • Thursday, June 24, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,

Comix: The rules of the newsroom







'Anti-Zionist' Students Excited To Return To In-Person Instruction, Jew-Harassment (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.



Antifa thugBerkeley, June 27 - Undergraduates across the country who hide their Jew-hate behind opposition to Israel expressed anticipation and enthusiasm for a post-COVID restoration of a routine that social distancing had disrupted, with specific anxiousness to bring back experiences that Zoom had replaced during the pandemic such as physical attendance of classes and face-to-face bullying of Jews under the pretext of protesting Israeli actions.

Self-proclaimed "anti-Zionist" students here at the University of California at Berkeley and and at college campuses across the country voiced their excitement this week at the prospect of a full return to normal, which for them involves actual presence in a lecture hall and the regular harassment of Jews on- and off-campus, as they exercise their animus toward those of the Hebraic persuasion by couching it in the more socially and politically accepted idiom of opposition to the Israeli government, its alleged policies, or other libels.

"It's been a tough year," acknowledged Jewish Voice for Peace activist Muhammad Bakri, who attends Berkeley. "Getting together on a screen to learn, or to rail against Jewish settlers or against ethnic cleansing just doesn't provide the same experience, or the same emotional rush as getting in the face of a Jew because I'm convinced that other Jews somewhere else have done something horrible to brown people. I can't wait to get back to that kind of fulfilling education and activism."

"My posters calling for BDS have been sitting in my room for months and months," lamented Charlize Beckett, a member of both of Students for Justice in Palestine and If Not Now and a student at Ohio State University. "I miss carrying them around campus and shouting at people I think are Zionists, on my way to class. I miss putting provocative messages on placards and challenging random people to condemn Israel or get called ethnic-cleansing apologists, Nakba-deniers, or white supremacists. You can't do that online, even on Twitter."

Faculty members displayed similar relief at finally being able to bring their antisemitic-dressed-up-as-anti-Israel-concern-for-human-rights diatribes and conduct back to the classroom. "During the pandemic closures and distance-learning I could still schedule exams for Jewish holidays," noted Oberlin University Professor of Sociology Cassandra Blohardt. "I could also try to single out students with Jewish-sounding names and berate them for not denouncing Israel. But on Zoom it just comes out wrong and you don't get the same effect as in the physical presence of a room full of other students, all condoning my actions with their silence and isolating the target of my projection. I want that Jewish student to feel intimidated, judged, and alone, like Israel."




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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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