Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, July 06, 2021

Palestinians in Syria in danger of being forced to become Syrian soldiers

From The Action Group for Palestinians in Syria, June 25:

Syrian security forces have tightened military grip around Deraa and its outskirts, south of Syria.

Local sources told AGPS that all access roads to the city centre have been blocked except for the Sajneh road, where three military checkpoints have been pitched.

Palestinian refugees have expressed concerns over a new wave of forced military conscription and arbitrary manhunts in the area.

This comes only a weeks after Palestinians who had been forced out of the Deraa area were allowed to return after three years - under Russian mediation:

A former commander of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the al-Lajat area told Enab Baladi that Russia’s mediation through its affiliate 8th Brigade had allowed the return of displaced families from the villages of al-Shayyah, al-Shomara, al-Modawara, and Alali to their homes.

He added that the residents of those areas had been displaced since 2018 in the villages of Hauran, and their areas were controlled by the 9th Division and Hezbollah-affiliated forces.

He pointed out that residents took the return decision after Russia guaranteed them that the Syrian regime’s security apparatus would not arrest them.

The Palestinians in Syria have every reason to be concerned.

However, "pro-Palestinian" activists - and even Palestinian media - have been silent about these latest moves by Syria.

Just more evidence that unless Israel is involved, no one cares about Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority has been arresting and attacking political opponents and protesters for years, but this is the first time that the Palestinian masses have been openly and publicly fighting back to a great extent.

Yesterday, there were more protests against the apparent murder of Nizar Banat in Ramallah. The PA police responded by arresting, beating and dragging many of the protesters.

When the PA arrested Abi Al-Aboudi and others, his wife, journalist Hind Sherida, went to the police station with her family and joined others in a protest chant to release the detainees. The police came out and beat, pepper sprayed and arrested the protesters, and pulled Sherida by the hair in front of her children. Her 77-year old father was pepper-sprayed and beaten. They then beat Hind inside the police station.

Many other well known figures were arrested and beaten: political activist Omar Assaf, researcher Khaled Odallah, Omar Al-Jallad, Tayseer Al-Zabri, Adham Karajah, Hussam Barjas, Khaled Awad, Omar Al-Auri, Osama Al-Bdeir, Sri Othman Hammad , Adly Hanaysha, Bashir Al-Khairy, and Ahmed Al-Kharouf.

Also journalists Aqil Awadeh, who was severely beaten and taken to hospital for treatment, Muhammad Hamayel, Mays Abu Ghosh, Muammar Orabi, and Amid Shehadeh. The police also confiscated the equipment and phone of journalist Badr Abu Najm.

Palestinian organizations are publicly calling for all political prisoners to be released and they are condemning these arrests. They include the National Democratic Forum, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, the Palestinian People's Party, the Popular Resistance Movement and the Palestinian National Initiative.

The Palestinian Medical Syndicate issued a statement that the arrest of doctors on the grounds of freedom of opinion is unacceptable and in violation of the Palestinian Basic Law and freedom of opinion.

The Union of Palestinian Women's Committees condemned the Interior Ministry for allowing the beating of women at these protests.

The official Wafa news agency has been largely ignoring the protests, with occasional statements from government officials against insulting the police or the government. The people are reading about the protests in other media.

This level of protest is unprecedented, and it resembles the Arab Spring protests.

The Twitter account of Human Rights Watch has blocked me, meaning that they can no longer see my tweets.

While I don't know what exactly I tweeted that caused them to do this, I have been a vocal critic of the group and of its leader, Ken Roth, who has interestingly not blocked me.

There are many reasons why one may want to block another user - harassment or offensiveness would be two of them. But that doesn't apply to a large organization, with well over 4 million followers, which probably has a team of people to support their social media accounts.

On the other hand, there are many reasons why a human rights organization would not want to ever block users. After all, freedom of expression is a human right, and by blocking someone, they are making it more difficult for legitimate criticism to be aired - and impossible for such criticism to be considered.

I have stridently criticized HRW for a long time. I was one of the people who exposed their Middle East researcher Marc Garlasco as a collector of Nazi memorabilia - and he had less bias than most of their researchers on Israel. Even during that incident, I revealed that HRW employed sock puppets to defend Garlasco. HRW called the criticism a "conspiracy."

Since then, I have exposed HRW's lies, deceptions and bias numerous times. And I have argued that its bias against Israel crosses the line into antisemitism. But I document all of my assertions - it is hardly harassment.

On the other hand, I have started to note its director Ken Roth's obsession with posting things about Israel by creating this graphic this past weekend to respond to every time he mentions Israel:

That is trolling - but it is trolling Roth, not Human Rights Watch.

No matter what the reason, this is not a good look for an organization that pretends to care about freedom of expression. Roth once thanked PA prime minister Shtayyeh for his "pledge" that the PA will no longer arrest people for political speech, a transparent lie as we've seen in recent weeks where the PA has arrested numerous critics. Yet HRW has no compunction to try to limit my own criticisms of them.

It appears vindictive, not dispassionate.

In other words, Human Rights Watch is acting the way it falsely accuses Israel of acting.

HRW often uses shallow analysis that assumes that since it cannot figure out a legitimate military target that Israel attacked, there was no such target and Israel acts like an animal, lashing out with multi-million dollar weapons just for spite. Anyone who has actually studied the IDF knows that there are multiple layers of decision-making for every airstrike, and the IDF tracks virtually every bullet. Yet HRW pretends that Israel acts capriciously and that the army acts reflexively and without consideration.

It turns out that HRW - or at least whoever is in charge of their social media - is the one that makes decisions based on emotion and not on facts.

It would be nice if we lived in a world where a human rights organization, that often accuses others of acting with impunity, would be open to criticism and not act with impunity itself. While even the most anti-Israel newspapers will issue corrections for errors of fact, NGOs like HRW never do. They promote the myth that they are objective observers and that their opinions have more moral weight than anyone else's, that their research is objective, that their rulings are inviolate.

When you look a little closer, you see that they are the ones who act out of emotion. They are the ones who show bias. And they are the hypocrites who pretend to care about basic human rights like freedom of expression but are unwilling to tolerate criticism, no matter how well sourced.

07/05 Links Pt2: Anti-Israel Item Before Largest US Teacher’s Union Overwhelmingly Defeated at Assembly; Students for Justice in Palestine Spreads Anti-Israel Blood Libel

From Ian:

Anti-Israel Item Before Largest US Teacher’s Union Overwhelmingly Defeated at Assembly

An anti-Israel item placed before the National Education Association (NEA)’s Representative Assembly was overwhelmingly voted down, with only 23 percent of representatives supporting it, while another was sent back to committee.

The largest union in the United States, the NEA has more than three million members, and exercises considerable influence both in national Democratic politics as well as over curriculum and other educational activities.

New Business Item 29 brought before the 8,000-member assembly employed virulent anti-Israel language that referred to Palestinian terrorism as a “heroic struggle” against alleged Israeli “military repression” and “ethnic cleansing,” and demanded the NEA “publicize its support for the Palestinian struggle for justice and call on the United States government to stop arming and supporting Israel.”

It cited a cost of $71,500 in order to implement its stipulations.

Following strong opposition, including from Jewish members, the item was defeated by a margin of 77 percent to 23 percent.

The Cleveland Jewish News reported before the vote that the NEA’s Jewish Affairs Caucus had mobilized strongly against the item, with chair Patrick Crabtree saying, “I’m almost positive 29 is so divisive, it will go down in flames.”

The caucus also opposed NBI 51, which calls on the NEA to “use existing digital communication tools to educate members and the general public about the history, culture, and struggles of Palestinians.”

Citing a budget request of $5,500, it would have the NEA “recognize the existence and sovereignty of Palestine and Palestinian children and families,” including by placing an article in the union periodical NEA Today acknowledging members’ work “fighting for the rights of Palestinian children and families.”

The Representative Assembly adjourned before NBI 51 came to a vote, sending it back to committee.

These items, the Jewish Affairs Caucus leadership said in a letter, “could inadvertently exacerbate antisemitic sentiment, or anti-Arab sentiment, in the United States, and G-d forbid, lead to hate crimes of some sort.”

Washington State’s ‘Native Education’ 5th-grade curriculum attacks Israel

Public school officials in the state of Washington have inserted the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into mandatory 5th-grade lessons on Native American history.

Children as young as 10 are being taught to associate the Native American experience with the Palestinians’ “fight to be free from Israeli dominance.”

The lesson is part of an otherwise informative Native American curriculum called Since Time Immemorial: Tribal Sovereignty in Washington State, which was developed by the Tribal Leaders Congress on Education, the Washington State School Directors Association and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Subsequently, the curriculum was approved by all 29 federally recognized tribes in Washington State. It has since been widely used in K-12 public schools after state legislation in 2015 required the teaching of Native American history.

The bizarre inclusion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to be at odds with the curriculum’s self-described “place-based approach,” in which teachers and students are supposedly encouraged to focus on “the context of tribes in their own communities.”

“Unfortunately, we’re finding this sort of politicization of Israel in public schools across the United States,” said my colleague Steven Stotsky, who investigates bias in K-12 education for the CAMERA International Student Leadership Institute.

“In this case, I find it particularly troubling that the curriculum is being used by anti-Israel activists to divert attention away from Native American history,” Stotsky said. “It’s as unfair to Native Americans as it is to Jews. And ultimately, it’ll damage the credibility of the entire curriculum, as people figure out what’s going on.”

Troubled as well, I contacted the organizations behind the curriculum.

Jews who suffer from self-hatred - what does it mean?

Says Peter Beinart, quite literally the guy who called for One State Solution and annihilation of the Jewish state. I don’t think he is exactly the best suited to lecture on Jewish leadership! pic.twitter.com/gq0xxNwYnu
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 5, 2021

Elder Comix: Islamophobia!

This is about the hysterical reactions to organizations that have issued statements against antisemitism.

Al Monitor has an article on Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror camps - and they interview a couple of the campers who attended the Hamas camp.

Mohammed makes it clear that the camps are recruitment for terror groups.

Mohammed, 14, told Al-Monitor, “I joined the camp in order to defend my land against Israeli attacks and subsequently join the ranks of al-Qassam Brigades.”

He stressed that although his family does not belong to Hamas, they let him join the camp for the second time — the first time was in 2019.

“I don't find the training to be hard or inappropriate for my age. On the contrary, I want to learn more martial arts,” he said.

He pointed out that he learned how to dismantle and load weapons and shoot. He also received scouts and physical training.

As disturbing (and illegal) as that is, 12 year old Khalil shows how the kids are brainwashed to want to die:

Khalil, 12, from Gaza City who joined the summer camp for the first time, told Al-Monitor, “I will participate in the camp in order to strengthen myself and learn self-defense skills so I can fight Israel, become a martyr and go to heaven.”

Teaching kids that they should want to die is about as disgusting and immoral as it gets.

Not that "human rights" groups give a damn about that.

07/05 Links Pt1: David Singer: Israel signals end to EU-funded unauthorised building in Area C; Will Palestinians denounce Mufti Hussaini, and Hitler?

From Ian:

David Singer: Israel signals end to EU-funded unauthorised building in Area C

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s declaration in January 2020 – made before he was elected Israel’s Prime Minister – should now set off alarm bells in the EU:
“Our objective is that within a short amount of time, and we will work for it, we will apply [Israeli] sovereignty to all of Area C, not just the settlements, not just this bloc or another… We are embarking on a real and immediate battle for the future of the land of Israel and the future of Area C"

The EU then responded:
"Demolitions and seizures of humanitarian assets are contrary to Israel's obligations under international law".

Representing these EU-funded structures as “humanitarian assets” was deceptive and misleading. They are “political structures aimed at stopping Israeli sovereignty being applied in Area C “.

EU intervention and meddling in Area C of the 'West Bank' over the last ten years will seemingly no longer be tolerated by Israel’s new Government.

The EU claims to have given the PA 34.4 million EURO since the beginning of the year.

The PA financial reports say that the PA hasn't received even one single euro cent.

I wonder who, @vonderleyen @JosepBorrellF @EGiaufretEU @EUpalestinians @EUinIsrael, isn't telling the truth? pic.twitter.com/0k3s4P2VgQ
— Maurice Hirsch, Adv. ???? ??''? ????? ???? (@MauriceHirsch4) July 5, 2021

Will Palestinians denounce Mufti Hussaini, and Hitler?

That the Palestinian institute does not denounce Hitler — and anyone who cooperated with him, outright and without any justification — is a huge ethical and moral failure. Since the dawn of history, nations formed alliances in ways that served their interests, and that’s understandable.

Hitler, however, was not an average autocrat with whom an alliance was debatable. Hitler was a psychopathic leader who unleashed endless evil among his followers. Believing that other ethnicities or races were inferior and deserved to be exterminated belonged to Medieval times. But by the Twentieth centuries, such ideas had become morally reprehensible. That some Palestinians still believe, today, that an alliance of expediency with Hitler was justifiable, is a problem.

Now the question is this: Why does IPS still support Hussaini, even though some of its most influential leaders, such as the Chicago academic activist Rashid Khalidi, do not think highly of Hussaini?

In his most recent book, the picture that Khalidi painted of Hussaini was as such: “[A] bitter split between those loyal to the mufti… and the mufti’s opponents, led by the former Jerusalem mayor Raghib Al-Nashashibi… resulted in hundreds of assassinations in the late 1930s [and] gravely sapped the strength of Palestinians.”

Al-Nashashibi was forced into exile in Beirut in 1938, “after his life was threatened and his house in Ramleh burned with the loss of all his books and papers. This was undoubtedly the work of the mufti’s men,” according to Khalidi.

So Mufti Hussaini was not only someone who did not see the moral failure in allying with Germany’s Hitler, he was also a charlatan who threatened the lives of his political rivals in Jerusalem and sent them into exile. And yet, the IPS celebrates Hussaini’s life as one of the founding fathers of the Palestinian national movement. Until those Palestinians start denouncing such characters and learning from their mistakes, their movement will remain as ethically and morally challenged as it is today.

The Mondoweiss site has been shown to traffic in antisemitism again and again and again. Its cofounder, Philip Weiss, seems to have a bizarre hatred for Jews.

So it is interesting to examine when the site pretends to suddenly become a champion of the Judaism it despises.

It recently published an article titled "The Zionist assault on Judaism" from Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and opponent of the concept of a Jewish state.

This article claims that "Zionism has not yet murdered Judaism but it has undermined its moral and historical integrity. "

In order to make this claim, Halper has to do no less than redefine Judaism itself.

Merriam-Webster defines antisemitism as “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group.” On this score, Zionism minced no words. In its foundational doctrine “the negation of the Exile,” Zionism, of course, did not discriminate per se against Jews as a religious, ethnic or racial group. It did, however, express hostility towards them, particularly in its devalorization of Jewish life and culture abroad over the past two millennia – often encapsulated in the dismissal and ridicule of “galut (exilic) mentality.” While targeting Jewish communities for the purpose of recruiting them to its settler project, Zionism repudiated them, denying their very validity.

This is the basis for Halper's long article attacking Zionists as being anti-Judaism - that Judaism is Exile, and any desire for a Jewish state somehow negates the Judaism in communities throughout the world.

The idea that the essence of Judaism is exile is not new to Halper. Judith Butler has come up with that argument as well.

In order to attack Israel while claiming not to be antisemitic, one must redefine Judaism as being fundamentally diasporic, and having nothing to do with the Land of Israel.

Too bad Judaism disagrees.

Three times a day, in prayers, Jews say "Sound the great Shofar for our freedom, raise the banner to gather our exiles, and gather us from the four corners of the earth. "

And "Return in mercy to Jerusalem Your city, and dwell in it as You promised. Rebuild it soon in our day as an eternal structure, and quickly set up in it the throne of David. "

And " let our eyes behold Your merciful return to Zion."

There are similar passages in the Grace After Meals and elsewhere. Not to mention the many Jewish laws that only apply to those living in Israel. One simply cannot separate Judaism from Zion. To claim otherwise is to show an astonishing ignorance of Judaism itself.

Judaism has never regarded the Diaspora as an ideal. Only revisionists like Butler and Halper do that. They want Jews to remain powerless - and to eventually disappear. They hate Israel so much that they redefine Judaism to exclude some of its basic tenets.

In fact, Israel helps strengthen the Jewish communities of the world. Jewish pride in Israel has become an important component of modern Judaism.

This is what the Jewish revisionists want to demolish - they want to turn Israel from a source of pride into a source of shame. Moreover, they want to redefine Judaism itself to transform the millennia-old Jewish desire to return to Zion into an immoral compulsion to oppress Arabs.

These attempts to redefine Judaism as inherently diasporic, with nothing to do with the Land of Israel, is in fact all the proof you need that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism. One cannot separate Judaism from the concept of the return of the exiles without attacking the fundamentals of Judaism itself.

This attack on Judaism is eagerly done by Jewish ignoramuses like Halper and Butler. It only proves what they are trying mightily to argue against - that they are today's antisemites.

This photo of President Biden bowing down in front of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin’s chief of staff Rivka Ravitz is having the expected reactions from Israel's enemies.

Last Monday, when Rivlin visited the White House on his farewell tour, he took Ravitz along. When Biden wanted to shake her hand, Biden was told that as a haredi Jew she doesn't shake men's hands and that she has twelve children.

Upon hearing that, Biden bowed to her in appreciation of her motherhood, telling Ravitz, “I have a picture of my mother here, you have to see who she was!”

Arab commenters on social media pretty much shrugged, saying that they already knew that Israel controls America.

One person at Al Quds al Arabi said, "It's normal, what is the problem... Many bow before the people who rule the world."

On a Turkish YouTube site, one said, "We are not surprised by the behavior of this old and malicious man, because he is carrying out a sacred message for the satanic Masonic organization in order to represent the miserable role model for the decadent and morally degenerate Left."

But Iran is trying the most to make hay out of this.

Al-Alam tries to argue that this episode has nothing to do with the number of children Ravitz has, but in fact literally shows that Biden bows down to his religious Jewish rulers.

Using bizarre logic, the Iranian site says, "She is not an ordinary Israeli official, but rather an extremist Zionist and holds a high position in the Israeli entity. Otherwise, the "Israeli president" would not have taken her with him to the White House."

Al-Alam also says that Americans do not respect large families, and that they hate Gazans because they have large families, so Biden's act cannot have been from respect for her motherhood.

I guess Ravitz is the most important person in Israel, since Biden only bowed to her!

The Iranian site adds that Ravitz, as a haredi Jew, belongs to "a radical and extremist sect" in Israel, showing that Iran does not respect the Jewish religion as it constantly claims to.

Al-Alam concludes that this episode "confirms that Zionism is the one that controls America and controls the Americans."

The Jerusalem Post reported on Sunday (archived):

Some 5,000 Israelis have received Emirati citizenship during the past three months, Emirates Leaks reported on Thursday.
This was done due to the Arab country having recently amending its law that would make it easier to grant citizenship, explaining that granting foreigners citizenship would help stimulate its economy amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
A visa will not be necessary for Israelis in order to cross Arab countries and the Persian Gulf, provided that they have Emirati citizenship, multiple sources confirm.
Furthermore, UAE authorities would allow businesspeople and investors to acquire citizenship without having to give up their Israeli citizenship.

It seems that Emirates Leaks, a thoroughly anti-UAE site, is not very reliable. The Jerusalem Post took down the article.

The UAE did liberalize its citizenship requirements a few months ago, allowing foreigners to become citizens, but the foreigners need to be nominated by the UAE royal family or top officials - one cannot apply to become a citizen. It seems very far-fetched to say that they offered citizenship to 5000 Israelis - or that the Israelis took it.

Iranian media is going nuts over this report, though.

The story brings up the question that Westerners are loath to ask: Why don't Arab governments offer citizenship to the Palestinians that they pretend to support so much? The official reason is to keep the "right of return" alive, but as the case of Jordan shows, they can still profess the desire to "return" even as citizens.

The only reason is because Arab nations prefer Palestinians to be stateless to becoming citizens. Which shows you how much they like the Palestinians they pretend to champion.

Making up numbers out of thin air: "Nine out of ten children in Gaza suffer trauma"

This morning, Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch tweeted this:

His source was the ridiculously biased Middle East Monitor which is essentially a Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood mouthpiece.

Middle East Monitor got the statistic from the equally biased Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which wrote a report about it.

Actually, "report" is way too generous. It was essentially a ten page slideshow with minimal text.

Here is the "source:"

The small print says "Based on a random sample conducted by Euro-Med Monitor."

A random sample of whom?

There is no methodology described. Did they interview children? Parents? Doctors? How did they randomize the people they sampled? Who diagnosed them with trauma - psychiatrists or parents? What was the exact question asked?

We don't know.

What we do know is that the Euro Med Monitor has, in the past, has shown it is pro-terror and regularly lies about Gaza deaths. In fact, their most recent report on Gaza shows that the pattern continues. For example, it counts Bashar Ahmed Ibrahim Samour as an innocent child when Fatah refers to him as a "hero martyr." It says

Killing four civilians in Nuseirat
On May 12, an Israeli aircraft bombed with a single missile a group of civilians in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, killing four of them: Hamza Mahmoud Al-Hor, 25, Muhammad Abdel Moneim Shaheen, 27, and Muhammad Mu›in al-Qarah, 26, Ahmed Walid Al Talaa, 29.

All four of them were Islamic Jihad terrorists. Here are Shaheen and Talaa.

An NGO with a history of lying makes an unsupported claim based on no written methodology - and gets quoted by a leader of an international human rights group as being accurate.

07/04 Links: Melanie Phillips: The real story about that Gaza death toll; Anti-Zionist Jews and Antisemitism; Operation Entebbe: The Rescue Mission that Thrilled the World

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The real story about that Gaza death toll

In the recent hostilities between Israel and its attackers in Gaza, a prime Israel-bashing meme was — as ever — the falsehood that the Israeli forces were killing a huge number of Gaza’s civilians.

In vain did defenders of Israel point out that Hamas deliberately sited its missiles and other weaponry in and among apartment buildings, schools and hospitals in order to maximise civilian casualties of Israeli air strikes and thus defame Israel as a wanton aggressor.

In vain was it pointed out that Israel goes to lengths deemed unthinkable by any other armed forces in the world to avoid the loss of enemy civilian life, including issuing residents of targeted buildings with evacuation warnings by text, phone calls or “knock on the roof” harmless missile strikes to tell anyone in there to get out.

None of these facts stopped the relentless flow of claims that the majority of those killed by Israeli missile attacks in May’s Operation Guardian of the Walls were defenceless civilians.

Now, however, the evidence from the updated casualty figures in that operation reveals that, relative to Israel’s massive bombardment of Gaza with some 1500 strikes, the proportion of civilian deaths was astonishingly small.

With two million civilians — 60 percent of whom are children — packed into densely occupied Gaza, and given the Hamas strategy of using them as cannon fodder for air attacks, any Israeli airstrike would be expected inadvertently to kill thousands.

The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry says in fact that 256 Gazans were killed.

According to Israel’s Meir Amit Terrorism and Information Centre, which puts the figure at 234, nearly half of those were Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad combatants whom it has identified by name. Of the 95 of those killed who had no terrorist affiliation, 52 were children and 38 were women.

By international standards, this roughly one-to-one ratio of civilian to combatant deaths is amazing. In Afghanistan, Iraq or other theatres of war, British, American and other armies’ airstrikes usually achieve a ratio of about three civilians killed for every one combatant.

Seth Frantzman: Does Iran think Israel is vulnerable at sea? - analysis

The reason Iran doesn’t sink the ships, if Iran is indeed behind all this, is because the crews of these ships – and the management, ownership and flags they sail under – are not Israeli. In the case of the Gulf of Oman mining attack in May and June, the crew was not harmed. This is because Iran didn’t want a war on its hands.

It believes in using proxies and pin-pricks to strike at enemies. That is why it sends drones and missiles to Yemen to get Houthis to die for Iran and it is why it delivers weapons to Hezbollah and units in Syria, and aids Hamas, but doesn’t do the fighting itself. And why it encourages Iraqi-based pro-Iran militias to fire 107mm rockets at American forces. Because a 107mm rocket is less likely to inflict severe casualties, but rather to cause damage and send a message.

The question these maritime incidents raise is whether Tehran believes it can carry out retaliatory strikes against Israel after it alleges incidents took place in Iran, and whether it will strike at commercial interests.

Iran has done things like this before. It was likely linked to the attack on the Jewish AMIA center in Argentina in 1994. Hezbollah, and thus Iran, was linked to the Burgas bombing in 2012 in Bulgaria. Iran may have been linked to a New Delhi attack in January this year and attacks in Bangkok in 2014. There were also attacks in India and Georgia in 2012, for which Israel blamed Iran and Hezbollah.

This means that Iran has sought to target Israelis and Jews abroad and that it has possibly set on a new course of action against commercial shipping. Then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Iran for the February incident at sea: It is unclear if officials will point the finger at Iran again.

Anti-Zionist Jews and Antisemitism

This phenomenon of Jewish antisemitism is nothing new.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Jewish apostates spread lurid “inside stories” of Jewish blasphemy and perfidy against Christians, prompted anti-Jewish religious disputations such as the burning of the Talmud, and reinforced anti-Jewish claims of deicide and blood libels.

During the 19th century, Otto Weininger, an Austrian thinker of Jewish descent, wrote an antisemitic screed entitled “Sex and Character” that was later incorporated into Nazi propaganda and praised by Hitler.

A century later, the Jewish wing of the Soviet Communist party known as the Yevsektsiya was tasked with the “destruction of traditional Jewish life, the Zionist movement, and Hebrew culture.” These Jewish antisemites agitated to close down synagogues and Jewish cultural centers throughout the Soviet Union. For them, Zionism was counter-revolutionary and reactionary, harming the assimilation of Jews into the workers’ paradise.

Today’s Jewish anti-Zionists are simply following the long tradition of Jewish antisemitism. Often from assimilated backgrounds at odds with the mainstream Jewish community, they gain “in-crowd” standing by reinforcing widespread anti-Jewish attitudes and repeating falsehoods such as the idea that Israel engages in apartheid, war crimes, and genocide.

The recent wave of anti-Jewish harassment and violence is the latest confirmation that the anti-Zionist movement is inextricably linked to hatred toward Jews. People of good faith must not allow themselves to be misled by those who use their Jewish identity to cover for their antisemitic ideologies.

The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family, by Joshua Cohen, is a story about the only Jewish professor at the fictional Corbin College was forced to host Ben-Zion Netanyahu and his family (which included his sons Yonatan, Bibi and Iddo) for his interview.

The plot is thin, but Cohen's writing is a joy to read. Writing as the professor Ruben Blum, the book is filled with sly asides and observations as well as a profligate vocabulary.

Blum is an assimilated Jew who cannot escape his Jewishness. The only reason he is placed on the committee to evaluate Netanyahu is because he is Jewish. he is embarrassed to have the only house in his adopted town of Corbindale not to have a Christmas wreath.

When Ben-Zion Netanyahu arrives with his thoroughly Israeli family, Nathan and his wife Edith are shocked at their rudeness as they take over the house, making long-distance calls, using the washing machine, changing their youngest on the counter without asking permission. (One of the few missteps that Cohen makes is assuming that Pampers existed in 1960.)

Netanyahu's academic career was centered on proving that Jews were always treated as Jews no matter what they did. His major work centered on the Jewish converts to Christianity in Spain - most of whom, he claims, converted willingly - and how the Spanish Inquisition persecuted them anyway, being the first to treat Jews as a race and not just a religion. To Ben-Zion, one cannot escape being a Jew no matter how hard one tries; the antisemites will go after you no matter what.

Even though Cohen is not a fan of the real Netanyahus - his afterword makes that clear - the point of the book is that Ben-Zion is right, that Judaism is not something one can run away from, even if some Jews are uncouth, blunt, rude and pushy.

One of the many observations made was that in 1960s, Jews in the US were all trying to become as American as possible and leave Judaism behind, while in Israel the Jews were trying to all become Israeli and homogenize their Judaism. All Jews were moving to become something else.

The Netanyahus is an often funny book, poking fun at the assimilationist American Jews as much as the overbearing Israelis. The Blum's daughter Judy would ask her maternal grandmother, who was all about appearing cultured, whether she had seen gallery openings or poetry readings of people from the Andrew Jackson administration and she would answer that of course she did; Blum's wife asks the baffled Netanyahus to take off their shoes when they enter her house and Ben-Zion ("Son of Zion") has a hole in his sock showing his big toe; the Netanyahus take no responsibility for anything they do wrong, blaming others.

Cohen's writing is virtuosic. The Netanyahus is a fun read and it brings up a number of issues about the differences between American and Israeli Jewry that are still relevant.

The current issue of World Literature Today is dedicated to Palestinian literature.

It unwittingly highlights the fact that even fiction - and even poetry - can lie.

There is a tacit contract between the writer and reader of fiction. No matter how fantastical literature is, it all relies on some common set of facts that the writer and reader can agree on. This way the readers can empathize with the characters and allow themselves to be swept up in the emotion of the story.

When fiction or poetry is insidious propaganda, the writer feeds the reader lies as if they are facts. The reader assumes that the contract is valid, that the writer would not purposefully feed the reader lies to turn the reader into an antisemitic bigot.

Yet this is what much - not all, but probably most - of Palestinian literature does.

One of the poems in this issue is about a Palestinian prisoner who smuggled his sperm out of prison in a candy wrapper to his wife, who then conceives.

Most of the poem is based on actual facts. There have been nearly seventy cases of such births. But then, this poem goes into a bizarre scene where Israel - observed by the UN - is blocking the woman from her hospital, pointing guns at her as she gives birth.

This is not how I imagined it would be

Legs parted on the blood-soaked dirt

Strangers rolling up my skirt

Hands pulling down my undies

Guns and phones pointing at me

UN observers counting indignities

They write me down

They write down me

They write me down . . . a number

I’m case #70

Sixty-nine women before me

Not one . . . not two . . . not three

I inhale strength and sumud

And exhale their cruelty

I’m not a stray animal left on the dirt

That ambulance they block is for me

I booked a hospital room

I decorated a nursery

I even prepared a music playlist

To reduce my anxiety

But all of this is out of reach

I’m case #70

I push . . . I push . . . I push

Can I have some privacy?

I inhale the wisdom of a thousand matriarchs

And the patience of a million refugees

And I exhale fear and tyranny

The scene described is indeed inhuman. And it is a complete lie - no one would stop her from her doctor, no one would point guns at her as she gasps through labor. The emotional arc is based on the poet breaking the contract with the reader and creating a universe of the monstrous Jew persecuting the innocent Palestinian, a Jew whose evil is assumed and does not have to be explained; Jewish depravity is just an unquestioned part of the universe like gravity.

In another poem, "Taking Back Jerusalem," even the title is propaganda - it tells the reader that Jerusalem is unquestioningly "Palestinian" and Jews who have lived there and prayed for return there for thousands of years are the outsiders. Excerpt:

& for the first time that night,

a familiar I could but couldn’t

have known: a boy with moonlit tongue

promising his mother he’ll make it

back with every breath – peering

around the corner: a soldier, his

gun, that precise small

-ness – I couldn’t unsee him

or Him, couldn’t uncast that smile

from his nodding face, our mouths

pretty with english – he stopped

one of us. he searched

only one of us. & there, I remembered

my mother, begging God to watch

over us in Jerusalem, where,

at four years old, a soldier held a gun

to her head & maybe it was or wasn’t

at this exact spot, & maybe she prayed

for the wrong son but in that moment,

I prayed. & there was no God

but the space between us – how the distance

between my holy & His

holy could resurrect a broken

lord on my breath – & there I began

to understand how my mother could

abandon her birthright –

& I suppose, she made it out.

Here there is another soldier, someone who may randomly kill an Arab for any or no reason, who stops an Arab in a group. This reminds the poet that another soldier pointed a gun at his mother's head when she was four years old.

If the reader knows that this is impossible, that Arabs were not expelled from Jerusalem, there there are hundreds of thousands of Arabs who live in Jerusalem today (more than at any time in history,) that Arabs and Jews walk together and take classes together and sit next to each other on buses and shop together every hour of every day in Jerusalem, and that it is inconceivable that a Jewish soldier in 1967 would have held a gun to a four year old girl's head when there was a real war going on - the poem would lose its power.

The poet knows that the reader is ignorant, and that the poet must fill in these gaps of knowledge with lies to create the impression of Jewish immorality.

The poems don't have to say "Jew" to be antisemitic. The propagandist/poets know that the reader knows that the vile soldiers are Jews. Their depravity doesn't need to be explained any more than Nazis do in World War II -era movies. Their actions need no explication, their humanity simply doesn't exist. Their mere presence in Israel is oppressive and has no possible excuse - in this world, curated for the naïve Western reader, there are no terror attacks, no stabbings, no car rammings, no suicide bombings, no daily calls for ethnic cleansing, no explosive packages left by the good native Palestinians for the evil colonial Jews.

In Arabic, the poems can romanticize the terrorists, but not in English. Not in World Literature Today.

Not yet.

Later, when the world is primed to hate the Jews more through these poems and stories and editorials and activist reporters, then the terrorists can become heroes and the suicide bombers who blow up the irredeemably evil Jews can become freedom fighters.

That will have to wait for the 2031 edition of the magazine.

(h/t ymedad)