Thursday, August 05, 2021

From Ian:

Bari Weiss and Merav Michaeli on How Global Media Portrays Israel
This Q&A is adapted from one of eight mainstage conversations held at Z3 2020: Visions of a Shared Future, a virtual conference produced by The Z3 Project and the Oshman Family JCC of Palo Alto, California, aimed at reimagining Diaspora-Israel relations.

This discussion has been condensed and edited for length and clarity. It is adapted from a conversation moderated by Anne Kornblut, Facebook’s vice president of global curation, featuring Israeli lawmaker and former reporter Merav Michaeli and New York Times editor Bari Weiss.

Kornblut: My whole life has been spent in the media, much like you all, but for me, specifically journalism and newspapers. I was at the Daily News, The New York Times, The Washington Post … and everywhere I worked — everywhere — there was a complicated relationship between the news organization and Israel, and the Jewish Diaspora, and the Jews that we covered. There was no place where it was easy, or where it wasn’t a pain point. … Then I left traditional journalism, and I joined Facebook. And I think it’s fair to say that the relationship is also fraught. So I want to ask you both: This pain point — coverage of Jewish issues, coverage of Israel — where are we with it? And is the traditional news coverage growing more fair? Is it growing more antisemitic?

Weiss: I think that, in part, the fixation of The New York Times and other places on Israel and on the conflict with the Palestinians had to do with a just a mirroring or an echoing of that conventional viewpoint — that if you want to solve the broader problems of the Middle East, and all of these sort of pathologies that set groups against one another, well, the only way to do that is to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There’s an old idea: “If it bleeds, it leads.” And it’s also true that if you could also have the slogan that if Jews are involved, if Jerusalem is involved, it’s more than just a story. People are inordinately focused on Jews and on Israel. What I’m contending is that the [stress] on it in the American press bears very little relationship to how important it is to the Middle East story. Meaning if every newspaper has a dwindling amount of resources and, you know, foreign bureaus and foreign correspondents, and Jerusalem always seems to be sort of like the center point of people’s attention. Maybe you [Michaeli] think that’s justified, I’m just curious.

Michaeli: It’s not a linchpin that, you know, once solved means that everything else will, you know, fall in place. But it is a linchpin, even in the sense that it provides an excuse to so many other hostile factors in the region. Even in that sense, it will generate a major change once there is genuine advancement or something really happens in the direction of a peace process regarding the conflict. So I completely agree. I mean, like the war in Libya, for instance, OK. Obviously it does not have anything to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the whole sort of how people and how countries and forces are divided in the Middle East, all of them have something to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And once this is changed, it will change a lot in the area. But having said all this, as an Israeli, all this is a lot less important for me, and what’s most important for me is to care about Israel’s security and its sustainability. And for that I need to find a way to figure out this conflict.

Weiss: We’re living in an era, at least in the States, or at least let’s say in the liberal institutions, like places like The New York Times, in which there is an unbelievably intense fixation on diversity, inclusion, making sure work is a safe space for everyone. And yet, you know, the lack of care when it comes to Jews inside these institutions is striking. For example, The New York Times ran two, you know, large puff pieces about the writer Alice Walker while I was there, who is a medieval antisemite. She writes poems about the bloodsucking rabbis of the Talmud, she talks about the lizard Illuminati, she’s a huge fan of David Ickes, who was banned from YouTube. We ran puff pieces about her. The Times ran one recently about Louis Farrakhan, basically saying he was just a gentleman who was sort of misunderstood.


The Franklin Prophecy
When Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., borrowed the title of a song by rapper Puff Daddy in 2019 and tweeted that “it’s all about the Benjamins, baby,” critics across the political spectrum lost no time denouncing her. The reference to $100 bills, which bear the portrait of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), was widely interpreted as an antisemitic trope suggesting that the pro-Israel lobby, because of its campaign contributions, holds unwarranted sway over American policy in the Middle East.

Omar’s tweet called to mind the age-old “dual loyalty” accusation often leveled against American Jews, but she might just as well have been referring to another antisemitic slur that also concerns Franklin, the Founding Father sometimes known as “the first American.”

This is the story of the “Franklin Prophecy,” known more accurately as the “Franklin Forgery”: how it got started, how it has been appropriated through the years, how it persists to this day, and what the Jewish community ought to do about it. Apart from Ben himself, the cast of characters runs the gamut from white supremacists William D. Pelley and Robert Edward Edmonson, to Nazis Rudolf Hess, Joseph Goebbels, and Julius Streicher, to New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, historian Charles A. Beard, poet Ezra Pound, columnists Walter Winchell and Charles Krauthammer, and even Osama bin Laden.

Like its elder sibling, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Franklin Forgery has survived because of its utility to Jew-haters, who, in every generation, have relied on rumor, innuendo, and falsehood to excoriate “the Jews” when facts fail to serve their ends. Concocted in 1934, it has refused to disappear despite overwhelming evidence of its wholesale fabrication. The “fake news” of its day, the Franklin Forgery stubbornly lives on, one item in a veritable Sears catalog of antisemitic slanders in the Twitter and Facebook feeds and hate sites of neo-Nazis in America and in the polemics of clerics across the Muslim world.
Michael Oren: The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem
Israeli television’s latest hit, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, is melodramatic, plodding, predictable, and, by American standards at least, culturally inappropriate. It is also ahistorical and politically biased. Most disconcertingly, though, at a time when Israel is increasingly believed to have been born of militarism, racism, and colonialism, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem is silent about these charges. At its worst, it corroborates them.

Based on a bestselling novel by Sharit Yishai-Levi, the series follows the vicissitudes of the Ermozas, an upscale Sephardi family in pre-state Jerusalem. Clumsily toggling between the early 1920s and late ’30s, the drama focuses on the materfamilias, Merkada, and her sybaritic son, Gabriel. The owner of a store that appears to sell only halvah, Gabriel falls in love with a working-class Ashkenazi woman but is forced by Merkada to marry an even lower-class Sephardi woman, their illiterate housekeeper, Rosa. Played by the alpaca-eyed Hila Saada, Rosa inundates the show with a stream of tears that stretches across all 16 of its first-season episodes. And there are the Ermoza daughters—Rachelika and Luna, with the latter growing up to become the eponymous beauty queen. Their loves and disasters, longings and disappointments take place against the backdrop of Palestine from the end of the Ottoman Empire and throughout the British Mandate.

It was a period of relentless instability, punctuated by outbursts of internecine violence. It began in Jerusalem in April 1920, when thousands of Arabs, led by the fiercely antisemitic Hajj Amin al-Husayni and chanting “Palestine is our land, the Jews are our dogs,” ravaged the Old City’s Jewish Quarter. Hours of looting, raping, and murder left five Jews dead and 216 injured. Some 300 Jews had to be evacuated. The following April saw another spate of pogroms, this time directed at the Jews of Jaffa and Petah Tikvah. Eight years later, the same al-Husayni—since dubbed Grand Mufti by the British—claimed that the Jews were plotting to take over the al-Aqsa mosque. The libel incited Arab mobs to massacre the Jewish communities of Sefad and Hebron and overrun Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek. In Jerusalem, dozens of Jews were killed and wounded both within and outside the Old City walls.

This Arab-Jewish friction came to a head in the Arab Revolt, lasting from 1936 to 1939, when Palestinian irregulars attacked both Jewish and British targets. The result was a disaster from which the Palestinian nationalist movement never recovered. While 90 Jews were murdered and many more wounded, an estimated 10% of all adult Palestinian males were either killed, wounded, or jailed. Haj Amin al-Husseini took his Grand Mufti title with him to exile in Beirut, and from there to Berlin where he became an honored guest of Adolf Hitler and supporter of the Final Solution.
Here is the header of the (French language) "EuroPalestine" site.



The words "Boycott Israel" are much larger than the site name itself!

Nothing about Palestinian culture or music or cuisine or poetry. Just attacks on Israel.

Or, maybe, on Jews.

In the top article at this time of this writing, a roundup of the week's news, it says:

It is not good to pray in Al-Aqsa, the third holiest site of Islam, and the hypothetical location of Herod's temple! On the esplanade of the mosques, the almost daily provocations, around 9 a.m., by Jewish supremacists protected by the army are not always limited to slogans and insults. Sometimes, on the 27th for example, these thugs in kippahs amuse themselves by molesting the faithful Muslims, as if to transform this colonial conflict into a religious war.
Really? The religious Jews"molested" the Muslim worshippers? 

Anyone who has visited the Temple Mount - or even watched videos - knows that the police keep the Muslims far away from the Jews - to protect the Jews. If one of the Jewish visitors managed to run away from the tight group and touch a Muslim it would have been screaming headlines.

So we have Temple denial, lies about Jews, snide comments about their kippot, more lies about Jews, and then this photo to illustrate it:


Isn't their behavior outrageous?

In this case, EuroPalestine has proven itself to be not only anti-Israel but antisemitic.

The "Who We Are" section of this antisemitic site, naturally, insists it cares about human rights:

We citizens of all origins, committed to respect for human rights, international law and justice for all the peoples of the world, are determined to tirelessly denounce the occupation of the Palestinian territories which has endured for decades and which threatens seriously world peace.

The brutal repression suffered by the Palestinian people, the destruction of their houses, their cultures, their health and educational infrastructures, their social organization, aims to drive them out of their lands.

The State of Israel, which has always refused to define its borders in order to be able to annex more and more territory, has turned its back on all just solutions despite the many concessions made by the Palestinians over the years. 
You can't even spoof these idiots. Lying is a basic part of their very identity.






Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.


milkshakeTel Aviv, August 5 - Customers and passers-by saw the main eschatological figure of Islam enjoying himself at a local frozen treats shop in this hip Mediterranean city, witnesses reported Thursday.

The Mahdi, known in some Islamic sects as the Twelfth Imam, and believed in some circles to be in a concealed state until Allah decides the End Times have come, ordered a strawberry milkshake followed by an espresso and some cold water, drawing awed whispers from other patrons of Menudo. He was seen to pay with a Bank-HaPoalim-issued charge card, an act that further fueled speculation that Allah's attitude toward Zionism differs from the mainstream Muslim position of the last several centuries.

"I couldn't believe it at first," admitted fellow customer Ron Guy. "Who expects to share a space with one of the most important figures in all of history? Quite the privilege. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to snap a few photos. Must have been too surprised and impressed to even think of it."

"I knew exactly who it was the moment I caught sight of him," recounted a still-wide-eyed Navi Sheker, a tourist from India. "I was right behind him at the counter! You bet your bottom rupee I ordered the same thing. I even sneaked a selfie with him in the background - look." She retrieved her phone from her handbag. "Oh. His face is all blurred. Darn it."

Discussion of the dramatic sighting included guesses as to the Mahdi's purpose in Tel Aviv. "Must be to move along the resolution of history," offered one witness.

"It might just be he needs a break from centuries of occulation," suggested another. "I know I could get tired of hiding away from human eyes for so long. A milkshake would be just the thing to restore my spirit and patience for a good while. I'd go for chocolate, though."

Talk then turned to the fact that the Mahdi had apparently shared a table with another mysterious figure, whose beard and quirky attire attracted no notice in a city as cosmopolitan and open as Tel Aviv. "Oh, I see the two of them come in here every now and then," recalled the manager. "They're obviously close, always affectionate, or at least very friendly. Jesus, the other guy looks so familiar, too, but I can never place him. Maybe next time I'll start a conversation. Anyway, I'm happy to have the venue be my business, but the event itself isn't all that surprising, what with Tel Aviv always being called a Gay Mecca."






From Ian:

Arab News: After the Abraham Accords, Olympics Continue to Build Israeli-Arab Peace
To this day, sports are used to bring together Israeli and Arab children in an open, neutral, and friendly environment. Sports have a way of stripping down biased tendencies, and allowing people to connect on a basic, person-to-person level.

The Abraham Accords marked the beginning of a warm peace between two nationalities that were eager to move forward. Unlike past treaties, these accords were not limited to government interaction but extended to people-to-people exchange.

Across the Middle East — and in the face of armed conflict, terror, and political discord — brave individuals have decided that rather than hide behind barriers, it is time to start building bridges and connect with people from different religions, countries, and races.

Whether it is in sports, the arts, culture, or religion, when we push past personal biases and relate on a person-to-person level, we discover that we are more similar than we might think.

The Olympic Games were created on the premise of the 9th century BC Olympic Truce, which halted regional conflict to allow athletes and their families to travel safely to and from the Olympic games.

The Olympics continue to be a time of unity and pacifism, as the Saudi-Israeli judo match beautifully proves. Sports, in the form of “ping-pong diplomacy,” have improved international relations before. Let’s hope that the Tokyo Olympics can help do it again.
Dore Gold: Israel Enters the Arab World
When Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress in 2015 to make the case against the Iran nuclear deal, many Arab heads of state heard him lay out the evidence for Iran's plans for increased control of the Middle East and found themselves nodding in agreement.

With hindsight, Netanyahu's controversial appearance looks like the catalyst that accelerated rapprochement between Israel and many Arab states. It set the stage for the Abraham Accords in 2020, which formalized new normalization agreements between Israel and key Arab states. Iranian aggression - more than any peace plan or blueprint for economic cooperation - became the glue that was binding Israel and some of its former adversaries.

The Israeli prime minister explained how four Arab capitals - Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Sanaa - had fallen under Iranian domination. "If Iran's aggression is left unchecked," he warned, "more will surely follow." In fact, Iranian media at the time was predicting the imminent fall of Saudi Arabia.

Without having planned it, Israel's diplomatic campaign against the Iran deal opened its door to the Arab world. Communication channels soon opened between Arab states and Israel, even in the absence of formal agreements. Israel has achieved a level of integration with a large part of the Arab world that would have been unthinkable not long ago.

The threat Israel and many Arab states face is the same. Tehran likes to remind its people that the Arab states had once been part of its territory, and that those lands must one day be returned to Iran. A common threat, to adapt a phrase, is a terrible thing to waste. The time to move this improbable, promising, and essential alliance forward is now.
Israel in contact with most Arab countries, including Iraq — senior diplomat
The Foreign Ministry maintains some form of contact with almost all Arab countries, including ones officially designated as “enemy states” like Iraq, a senior Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday.

“Over the last twenty years, the Foreign Ministry was always in touch with almost all the players in the Arab World,” said the outgoing director of the Foreign Ministry’s Middle East Division, Haim Regev, during a briefing in Jerusalem.

While he clarified that this list of covert contacts does not include Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, it does extend to Baghdad.

In 2019, Iraqi ambassador in Washington Fareed Yasseen said, “There are objective reasons that may call for the establishment of relations between Iraq and Israel,” speaking in Arabic at an event entitled “How Iraq Is Dealing with the Current Regional and International Developments” at the Al-Hewar Center for Arab Culture and Dialogue in Washington.

He noted that there is an important Iraqi community in Israel and they are still proud of their Iraqi attributes. “At their weddings, there is Iraqi culture of celebration. At their weddings, there are Iraqi songs,” the veteran diplomat, who has served in DC since November 2016, went on. Yasseen also noted “outstanding” Israeli technologies in the fields of water management and agriculture.

“But the objective reasons are not enough,” he added, stressing that there are “emotional and other reasons” that make open communication between Jerusalem and Baghdad impossible.

Though he faced backlash from other Iraqi officials, Yasseen was not recalled.



Wednesday afternoon, 3 rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel. Two of them made it into Israeli territory, landing in Kiryat Shemona. One of them landed within Lebanon.

It soon became clear that the rockets were launched by Palestinian factions -- not  by Hezbollah:

As i24NEWS points out, even given that the rockets were not launched by Hezbollah, the fact remains that those rockets could not have been launched without the permission of Hezbollah.

And Iran.

Which might account for the timing of the attack. After all, it was only Tuesday that Ebrahim Raisi was inaugurated as President of Iran.

Maybe Raisi -- and Iran -- are trying to send a message.

In an article last month in the Jerusalem Post, Yonah Jeremy Bob suggested that Israel's successful attacks on Iran's nuclear reactors are having an effect on more than just the reactors themselves and on Iran's nuclear program.

Israel's attacks may have an effect on US policy towards Iran and on Biden's eagerness to restart the Iran Deal:

Washington’s premise for rejoining the deal without prior fixes of loopholes was that there was no way to stop the Islamic Republic from obtaining a nuclear weapon besides that specific diplomatic solution.

One of the reasons this was Biden’s strategy was another premise: Any military action to set back Tehran’s nuclear program would either be too costly in terms of Iranian responses, would flat out fail or would only slow – not stop – the ayatollahs.

But the four (known) attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and officials have hobbled the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program far more than most of the general public realizes.

From the Iranian perspective, where they have an established record of successful manipulation and exploitation in terms of their nuclear program, terrorism, kidnapping and expanding their influence -- the Iranian government finds itself in a position of being repeatedly stymied, and embarrassed, by Israel.

Meanwhile, Iran is immensely embarrassed by the attacks and feels it is negotiating from a far weaker position than it believed it would be in. Without a real imminent threat to hold over the West, why would the West give in to Tehran on any new concessions that it wants?

Enter Ebrahim Raisi.

Over the past few months, the previous Iranian president Rouhani has been signaling an imminent agreement on the renewal of the Iran Deal.

Yet, so far -- nothing.

While Rouhani had the reputation of being a "moderate," Raisi is known for cracking down on dissidents and for his alleged role in a series of extrajudicial political executions.

This rocket attack on Israel could be a risk-free way for Raisi -- and Iran -- to assert themselves.

That would be in the context of Tuesday's incident when a tanker ship was seized by suspected Iranian gunmen in the Gulf of Oman near the port of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, and the drone strike last week on an oil tanker off the coast of Oman -- also attributed to Iran. That second attack killed two crew members from the UK and Romania.

The Jerusalem Post article suggests

Biden administration officials are starting to consider whether it might be possible to keep Iran’s nuclear program “in a box” for a very extended period even without the JCPOA.

It is not clear what the source is for this analysis, but Iran does appear to be making a point to dispel such an assumption.

The rocket attack might be part of that.








  • Thursday, August 05, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
Antisemitism from members  (or wannabe members) of Congress are getting more and more egregious, and American Jews need to wake up.

We've already discussed member of Congress Rashida Tlaib's outrageous linking of Israel to "they" who profit off of racism in America. Somehow, Israel is responsible for racism in America, and the "same people" who are behind Palestinian lack of water are those who take away water from people of color in Detroit - the people behind the curtain: The Jews. The Jew "behind the curtain" meme is a variant of the antisemitic trope of the Jew as the secret puppet-master controlling the lives of their poor victims, who are - according to Tlaib - "us" vs. the rich, Jewish, capitalist "them."


Then Democratic candidate Nina Turner blamed "evil money" three times for her defeat in a special congressional primary election on Tuesday to Shontel Brown in a heavily watched race.




Turner had raised far more money than her opponent - $4.5 million to Brown's $2.1 million - but the bulk of Brown's support came from the Democratic Majority for Israel buying ads. Saying that money raised by pro-Israel Jews is "evil" is once again evoking Nazi tropes about Jewish control. Somehow, Jewish money is more effective at winning elections than gentile money. Not only that, but she is saying that campaign money from Jews is equivalent to accepting money from murderers or thieves, that it is immoral for a campaign to allow funding from Jews who support a Jewish state. 

Even though the President and the mainstream Democratic Party supported Brown, Turner blames Jews and their evil money for her defeat. It is hard to imagine a more antisemitic take. 

But there was yet another politician, and member of Congress, who linked Jews to dirty money this week. Cori Bush gave a speech - on the floor of the House, no less - saying that Israel is somehow stealing money from poor people in St. Louis, repeatedly linking Israel with social problems in her district. 

Bush, Turner and Tlaib are scapegoating Jews in the guise of "criticism of Israel" when their blaming Israel or Zionists for their own issues is as bogus as the age-old blaming of Jews for every other problem.

For a thousand years, people have falsely blamed Jews for every problem they cannot solve and everything they hate. The scapegoating of Zionist Jews we are seeing here from major politicians is exactly the same - the same hate, the same irrationality, the same scapegoating, the same antisemitism. This is not "criticizing Israel" - it is political figures going out of their way to attack Jews, to foment antisemitism and to attract antisemites to their side. 

Almost worse are the apologists for these prominent political Jew-haters. They split hairs - Tlaib was only talking about "global systemic racism" (in which her only example happens to be Jewish Israelis), Turner is only talking about outside money influence (in which her only example happens to be Jewish Zionists,) Bush is only talking about the intersectionality of people struggling for their rights worldwide (in which her only example happens to be Jewish Israelis.) 

This is more than concerning. This is the mainstreaming of Jew-hatred in American politics in ways that have not been seen since the 1930s. 









EcoPeace ME is an organization of Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian environmental activists who work on fixing the water shortages in the region to benefit all.

It doesn't get more progressive than that.

But it breaks a BDS rule. 

So BDS attacked EcoPeace, and specifically Nada Majdalani (center), director of the Palestinian branch, who recently met with her Israeli and Jordanian counterparts in Washington:


BDS issued a statement denouncing the meeting: "What [Nada] Majdalani is doing goes beyond normalization by being completely involved in covering up the crimes of the occupation against our people, and in harmony with the betrayal of Arab regimes that are rejected and fought by the peoples of the Arab region, including our Palestinian people."

This was particularly upsetting to the BDS hate group because Majdalani's father, Ahmed Majdalani, is the Palestinian minister of Social Affairs and Secretary-General of the Popular Struggle Front. Majdalani is also a member of the PLO Executive Committee. Seeing his daughter actually touching an Israeli must have been enraging. 

Of course, they were also trying to shame Nada's father Ahmed with this statement, as they name checked him.  

So what did her father do?

He organized his own "normalization" meeting between Israelis and Palestinians in Al Bireh, under the auspices of the PLO!


BDS Fail!

Other Palestinian factions and media complained bitterly that Palestinian officials are meeting with Israelis sometimes. 

Palestinian journalists also protested a press conference today for Israeli journalists in Ramallah.

This obsession with cutting off all communications with Israeli Jews has accomplished less than nothing, but many Palestinian officials continue to insist on it - either because they are stupid or because they are afraid of their constituents.

You will not find "pro-Palestinian activists" publicly denouncing BDS, even when they are clearly acting in ways that are counterproductive to all Palestinians. For most of the "pro-Palestinian" crowd, hating Jews is a higher moral imperative than helping Palestinians. 

Nada Majdalani should be a hero for people who claim to want the best for Palestinians. Instead, she is vilified. And that tells you everything you need to know about the hypocrisy and regressiveness of the BDS crowd.







Wednesday, August 04, 2021

From Ian:

Rashida Tlaib Says Certain (((People))) Are Exploiting America
In a recent video, Rashida Tlaib tells her audience that “behind the curtain,” the forces who stop a “free Palestine” are the “same people” who exploit “regular Americans” for “their profit.” Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL, who’s done yeoman’s work wishing away the anti-Semitism being normalized on the progressive left, calls this a “dog whistle.”

It isn’t. This isn’t some subtle messaging aimed at other leftists or Hamas apologists; these are some of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes on the books. The claim that Jews are “exploiting” “regular” citizens is the basis for nearly every major anti-Semitic tract of the modern age — from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Mein Kampf to the Hamas charter. The notion that Jews operate behind curtains is another popular anti-Semitic image.

Tlaib knows exactly what she’s saying. She also knows that no one in her party — not the cowardly Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelsoi or anyone else — is likely to call her out on any of it.


Top gallery accused of hosting ‘hate-filled’ exhibit
The Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester has been accused of hosting a “hate-filled” art show on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The exhibition, titled Cloud Studies and created by Forensic Architecture, a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, purports to detail the environmental effects of Israel’s military action in Gaza and the West Bank - as well as looking at "toxic clouds" in places such Indonesia, Argentina, Hong Kong, the UK, US, Mexico, Turkey, Lebanon.

Visitors are shown an opening statement headed “Forensic Architecture stands with Palestine”, and can then browse films and displays that show how “tear gas, bomb clouds, chemical weapons... suffocate entire neighbourhoods and air pollution targets the marginalised”.

Language used in the exhibition includes phrases such as the Palestinians’ “struggle against apartheid” and the problem of “settler colonial violence”.

One visitor to the Whitworth told the JC: “I don’t remember experiencing anything so hate-filled in an art gallery. The information is totally decontextualised and there is no mention of Hamas or the reasons for the conflicts”.

UK Lawyers for Israel have written to the vice-chancellor of Manchester University — to which the Whitworth belongs – reminding it that the gallery is “legally bound by the Public Sector Equality Duty”.

The lawyers said they were concerned about “the impact of the inflammatory language and representations contained in the exhibition on the Jewish people in Manchester”.




(Judean Rose is taking off for several weeks.)

 abuyehuda

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal



Today the world we live in is dominated by a Western alliance that includes the US and much of Europe, along with some smaller players. This alliance is threatened by two major forces: radical Islam, whose most dangerous expression is the revolutionary Iranian regime; and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), still smarting from its oppression by the West prior to its emergence as a great power. I’ll discuss Iran first.

Last week, Iranian drones attacked a ship near the coast of Oman, killing the captain and a crew member. Apparently the motivation was a tenuous Israeli connection. More recently, a ship in the same region was hijacked, and several others were disabled, apparently by a cyberattack. Although Iran denies being connected with any of these incidents, most observers believe that the Iranian regime was responsible for them.

The Iranian regime finances and arms terrorist groups throughout the region, including in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Lebanon, which survived a brutal civil war, an attempt by the PLO to set up a “Palestinian state” within her borders, an Israeli intervention to throw out the PLO, and the systematic murders of members of its government by Syrian agents, has finally been brought to her knees by her exploitation by the Iranian-controlled Hezbollah. The Covid epidemic, and a massive explosion of a cache of Hezbollah’s explosives at the port that leveled a third of her capital city didn’t help.

Israel, which fought a vicious little war with Hezbollah in 2006, now lives in the shadow of 130,000 rockets located in South Lebanon. These rockets, which include ones with precision guidance systems that can strike within a few meters of targets anywhere in Israel, are deeply embedded in the civilian population, including private homes. Israeli defense officials have said that if Hezbollah activates its rockets, the IDF will be forced to employ massive firepower that will essentially destroy the country. The possibility of war breaking out due to escalation between Hezbollah and Israel is a constant threat.

Westerners who visit relatives in Iran or go there for business, educational, or  other reasons are often arrested on trumped-up charges and held hostage, either for ransom or political advantage. Sometimes they are tortured. Conditions in prisons for Iranian political dissidents are atrocious, with torture and rape common. Hundreds of Iranians are executed every year, some for serious crimes like murder or rape, but also for “being gay, committing adultery, sex outside marriage and drinking alcohol.” Political opponents of the regime are sometimes charged with spying and executed as well.

Iranian women protesting Islamic dress codes that are forced on them are beaten, arrested, jailed, and tortured. Masih Alinejad, an Iranian feminist now living in exile in the US, was the target of a plot to kidnap her and bring her back to Iran. The plan was foiled by the FBI. Kidnapping and murdering dissidents abroad has been standard procedure for the regime since it came to power in 1979.

The new Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, has been nicknamed “the butcher of Tehran,” because of his responsibility for the execution of thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of people during a reign of terror in 1988. Raisi is considered one of the top candidates to succeed Ali Khamenei as Supreme Leader.

Last, but not least, is the regime’s plan to develop nuclear weapons, which is advancing rapidly. Whether such weapons would be directly used – something which is difficult to judge, due to the religious aspects of Iranian ideology – or whether they would be employed as an “umbrella” to shield its more conventional military aggression, it’s likely that the imminent attainment of nuclear capability would greatly change the balance of power in our region, and make war likely. The regime has consistently and explicitly threatened to “wipe Israel off the map,” and Israel takes these threats seriously.

The Iranian regime, while it is economically and militarily weak, has developed means of leveraging asymmetric warfare, which along with its aggressive and even messianic ideology makes it a serious threat – not just to the region, but to the Western alliance and its leader, the US, which it calls “the great Satan.” The threat is immediate in the short term, due to its nuclear program. It is a highly repressive society, and although there is a strong domestic opposition, attempts to overthrow the regime will be (and have been) met with great brutality.

As an Israeli, naturally I am concerned about the local and immediate threat of Iran. But the PRC is a far greater threat to the Western alliance. China is already a nuclear power, and has recently been reported building up its stock of weapons. China’s military and economic power is thousands of times greater than that of Iran, and is every bit as brutal in its repression of internal dissent.

Although China does not publicly announce that the US is Satan, it is quietly moving its pieces – military and economic – on the world’s chessboard to increase its power and influence. It operates an unprecedented system of industrial espionage that has already neutralized the technological superiority of the US. It is building infrastructure throughout the world under its “Belt and Road Initiative” that will not only provide its industries access to markets, but the large debts incurred by the recipients will provide China political leverage over them.

Chinese technology that is used in the most critical communications infrastructure may contain “backdoors” that allow access to traffic on the networks. Everything from mobile phones to PCs to military communications systems have been suspected to be compromised.

The US and other developed countries are experiencing a long-term transition of their economies away from agriculture and manufacturing and toward service-based economies. Manufacturing has moved to China and to other countries, most of which are, or soon will be, in the Chinese sphere of influence. At the time of the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic, the US suffered a severe shortage of personal protective equipment and medical devices such as masks and so forth. It was simply not produced in the USA.

China does not (as far as I know) export violent terrorism as does Iran. But it has been engaging in territorial expansionism in all directions. Chinese pressure on Hong Kong and Taiwan make headlines, while China quietly “nibbles away” at Japanese islands, territories under Indian control, bits of Nepal and Bhutan, and so on. In the South China Sea, China has built artificial islands which have greatly extended its territorial waters and provided locations for military installations, including missile silos.

I have not discussed the possible exploitation of the Covid-19 epidemic. Certainly the misinformation and disinformation that was provided by China at the time of its outbreak exacerbated the harm to Western societies. There is even a credible argument that once the disease had become established in Wuhan, authorities there – under the direction of the national government – deliberately allowed the residents of the city to travel worldwide during the Chinese New Year period, knowing that this would spread the disease.

The Chinese strategy is safer and surer, if somewhat slower than the Iranian one. But the West has done little to protect itself, either against the immediate danger of nuclear weapons in the hands of a proven rogue aggressor state, or the long-term combined economic, military, and possibly biological domination of a rising totalitarian superstate. Western nations should be confiscating the Iranian regime’s nuclear toys, reestablishing self-sufficient economies, protecting their technological intellectual property, and strengthening their military forces. They are not doing any of these things.

Instead, the most advanced states of the West are self-destructing over issues of race and gender identity.




  • Wednesday, August 04, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
In 1921, prominent lawyer and former ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau Sr., wrote an article describing why Zionism is foolishness and a Jewish state is simply impossible.

Here are some excerpts, reported in the Bnai Brith Messenger, August 5, 1921. 

Zionism is the most stupendous fallacy in Jewish history , writes Mr . Morgenthau . I assert that it is wrong In principle and impossible of realization ; that it Is unsound in its economics , fantastical in its politics , and sterile in its spiritual ideals . Where is it not pathetically visionary , it is a cruel playing with the hopes ol a people blindly seeking their way out of age-long miseries . These are bold and sweeping assertions , but I shall undertake to make them good . The very fervor of my feeling for the oppressed of every race and every land , especially for the Jews those of my own blood and faith , to whom I am bound by every tender tie , impels me to fight with all the greater force against this scheme , which my intelligence tells me can only lead them deeper into the mire ol the past , while it professes to be leading them to the heights .

...The notion that Great Britain would for one instant allow any form of government In Palestine , under any name whatever , that was not , in fact , an apparange of the British Crown , and subservient to the paramount interests of British world policy, is too fantastical for serious refutation . 

... I speak as a Jew . I speak with fullest sympathy for the Jew everywhere . I have seen him in his poverty —despised , hated , spat upon , beaten and murdered . My blood boils with his at the thought of the indignities and outrages to which he is subjected . I , too , would find for him , for me , the way out of this morass of poverty , hatred , political inequality and social discrimination . But , is Zionism that way ? I assert emphatically that It is not . I deny it , not merely from an intellectual recoil from the fallacy of its reasoning , but from my very experience of life ; as a seeker after religious truth , as a practical businessman , as an active participant in politics , as one who has had experience in international affairs , and as a Jew who has at heart the best interests of his co-religionists .

The truth is that Palestine cannot support a large population in prosperity . It has a lean and niggardly soil. . It is a land of rocky hills , upon which for many centuries a hardy people have survived only with difficulty by cultivating a few patches of soil here and there with the olive , the fig , citrus fruits and the grape , or have barely sustained their flocks upon the sparse  native vegetation . The streams are few and small , entirely insufficient for the great irrigation systems that would be necessary for the general cultivation of the land . The underground sources of water can only be developed at a prodigious capital expense . This is the condition of Palestine ; not only must agriculture be pursued under the greatest possible handicaps of soil and water , but it is subject to the direct competition of far more favored lands in the very agricultural products for which it is distinctive . A great industrial Palestine is equally unthinkable . It lacks the raw materials of coal and iron ; it lacks the skill in technical processes and the experience in the arts ; and , above all , it is not in the path of modern trade currents . What hope is there for Palestine , as an industrial nation , in competition with America , Great Britain and Germany , with their prodigious resources , their highly organized factories , their great mass production , and their superb means of transportation ? The notion is preposterous .

 Is Zionism a political fantasy ? I assert most emphatically that it is . The present British mandate over Palestine is a recognition , by the great powers of the world , of the supreme political interest of Great Britain in that region .,,, British statesmen can hold but on opinion concerning either Egypt or Palestine , and this opinion is that no matter what else may befall , British influence must be omnipotent on both sides of the Suez Canal . Neither can the British Government afford to irritate India by placing the Mohammedan shrines in Palestine under the control of a Jewish State.

Remember that Palestine Is as much the Holy Land of the Mohammedans as it Is the Holy Land ot the Jew or the Holy Land of the Christian. His shrines cluster there as thickly . They are to him as sacredly endeared . In 1914 I visited the famous caves of Machpelah , twenty miles from Jerusalem , and I shall never forget the mutterings of discontent that murmured in my ears , nor the threatening looks that confronted my eyes , from the lips and faces of the devout Mohammedans whom I there encountered . For these authentic tombs of Abraham , Isaac and Jacob are as sacred to them , because they are saints of Islam , as they are to the most orthodox of my fellow-Jews , whose direct ancestors they are , not only In the spiritual , but in the actual physical sense . To these Mohammedans my presence at the tombs of my ancestors was as much a profanation of a Mohammedan holy place as If I had laid sacrilegious hands upon the sacred relics In the mosque at Mecca . To Imagine that the British Government will sanction a scheme for a political control of Palestine , which would place in the hands of the Jews the physical guardianship of these shrines of Islam , is to imagine something very foreign to the practical political sense of the most politically practical race on earth . They know too well how deeply they would offend their myriad Mohammedan subjects to the earth.

 My answer to the spiritual pretensions of Zionism Is the positive answer that the solution has already been discovered—the way out has been found . The courageous Jew , the Intellectually honest Jew , the forward looking Jew , the Jew who has been willing to fight for his rights on the spot where they were infringed , has won his battle and has found all the glorious freedom which Zionism so unpractically describes .
It is interesting in retrospect that while Morgenthau spends a lot of further space describing how successful Jews have been in the West, he still has a diaspora mentality that indicates that Jews are only successful because the gentiles allow it. It certainly doesn't occur to him that Jews can fight for their rights in Palestine - because the Muslims will never allow it. To him, it is perfectly natural that Muslims should bar Jews from their holiest spots.He says (in a section I didn't excerpt) that Zionism would prompt antisemitism in the same Western nations that he claims Jews have achieved equal rights - but if Jews truly had equal rights, they wouldn't be worried about being attacked by the majority gentiles. 

Morgenthau (and other anti-Zionist Jews of the era) were really concerned about the possibility that a Jewish state would threaten their own financial and political gains by turning Americans against Jews. But they created more seemingly scientific arguments to buttress their opinions, about how the land of Israel could not support more than a million people, how agriculture and industry is impossible. 

When you read an expert opinion, it is very often as based on incorrect assumptions and wishful thinking as that of Henry Morgenthau.  

Of course, this is also a reminder of Ben Gurion's quote: "In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles."





From Ian:

With only 40% support, Israelis still think 2 states best option - poll
Only 40% of Israelis support a two-state resolution to the conflict with the Palestinians, even though it remains the most popular choice, according to a poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute.

Past IDI polls on this question have shown that Israeli support for two states has fluctuated widely over the past 28 years since the signing of the 1993 Oslo I Accord in Washington.

Past polls on this topic by IDI show that support for a two-state resolution peaked at 70% in 2007 during the Annapolis peace process brokered by former president George W. Bush between former prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

It was at its lowest point in 1995 with only 36.9% support, based on IDI data.

From July 27 to 29, the IDI polled 750 Israelis over the age of 18 by phone and over the Internet, including 151 Arabic-speakers. The margin of error is 3.59% for the poll on a wide array of topics, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Participants were asked if they would back a “two-state solution with the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

Israeli-Arabs were much more likely to support a two-state resolution than their Jewish peers.
Saudi FM praises Abraham Accords, puts Palestinian statehood first
The Abraham Accords have been good for the Middle East but its momentum should be used to help the Palestinians achieve statehood, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said at a virtual conference of the Aspen Security Forum on Tuesday.

“We think, overall, the Abrahamic Accords have worked positively to spur engagement in the region, so in that sense, the decision by those countries can be viewed positively,” he said.

The Saudi Foreign Minister added that the best way to build on the normalizations between Israel and Arab states in the past year would be “to find a path to solving the issue of the Palestinians and finding a path to a Palestinian state because that will deliver complete normalization for Israel in the region.”

Peace, he said, “is a strategic choice of the Arabs” that must be used to reach a comprehensive solution for the Palestinians.

Asked if that’s a precondition for Saudi-Israel normalization, in light of the divisions among Palestinian factions making Israel-Palestinian peace unlikely in the short term, Prince Faisal did not address the first part of the question.

Rather, he said that the PLO and Palestinian Authority are the legal representatives of the Palestinians.

“That engagement is the key engagement in order to progress towards a peaceful solution,” he stated. “I think without solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a sustainable, long-term way not, we’re not going to have real, sustainable security in the region. We need to try everything we can to make that happen.”

Prince Faisal pointed to the new government in Israel, saying “perhaps it can deliver some progress. Let’s wait and see.”

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister also said that he sees an emboldened Iran acting in a negative manner around the Middle East, endangering shipping, arming Yemen's Houthis and contributing to political deadlock in Lebanon.


The only Jewish village in Jordan
In the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, Jews were expelled from East Jerusalem and Gush Etzion in the West Bank. Not well known is that a few Jews were also expelled from the east bank of the Jordan. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Tel Or was the only Jewish village, built to house the employees of a power station.

During the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, Tel Or was the only Jewish village in Transjordan at the time. Tel Or was designated for residence of the permanent employees of the power plant and their families, aiming to create an agricultural village at the Eastern border of the Land of Israel. Employees of the power station also farmed thousands of dunams of land and sold some of the produce at a company workers’ supermarket in Haifa. Due to its relative isolation and despite the limited number of resident families, the village included a clinic, a kindergarten and even a school, established by Yosef Hanani for the children of employees.

An Iraqi brigade invaded at Naharayim area on May 15, 1948, in an unsuccessful attempt to take the Gesher kibbutz and fort. The power plant was occupied and looted by the Iraqi forces. After the Tel Or village and the power plant were overran by the Arab forces they were destroyed. To prevent Iraqi tanks from attacking Jewish villages in the Jordan Valley, the sluice gates of the Degania dam were opened. The rush of water, which deepened the river at this spot, was instrumental in blocking the Iraqi-Jordanian incursion.

Today the power plant and the destroyed village of Tel Or are located on the Jordanian side of the Israel-Jordan border. The remains of the power station are part of the Jordan River Peace Park on the Island of Peace on the Israel-Jordan border.

After the expulsion of the residents of Tel Or, combined with the expulsion of the Jewish residents of the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, an Arab commander remarked,
“For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews’ return here impossible.”
  • Wednesday, August 04, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon



Lebanon has been failing as a state for years, and in the past year its severe problems have been on the world stage with the explosion at the Beirut port and the incompetent government response. 

That has been only the most visible part of Lebanon's swift decline. A political deadlock has left Lebanon with a government has not been able to govern.  Hezbollah has veto power over anything it doesn't want. Even so, the terror group had built its own independent army that is more powerful than the Lebanese army, with an arsenal of 200,000 rockets in civilian areas.  Internal fighting still breaks out. Lebanon treats Palestinian refugees from Syria differently than other Syrian refugees. It's COVID response has been anemic. Its economy is in shambles as people cannot get basic goods.

This morning, rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel. This has been the most serious such rocket fire, although it has not been the first one - there have been other rocket launches in recent months. Hezbollah is not behind them - Palestinian groups in Lebanon are. 

A wide assumption is that Hezbollah is the beneficiary of Lebanese chaos. It has better organization than most Lebanese political parties - and it has an army. This is probably true.

But the further assumption Hezbollah, and therefore Iran, would take over Lebanon itself is far less likely.

Alma, an Israeli thinktank that specializes in threats from the North, gave its latest analysis in its weekly newsletter yesterday:

The statement that Hezbollah is taking over Lebanon is vague and needs more clarification. Hezbollah will not be a sovereign government serving on behalf of the Iranians after officially, legally, and completely replacing the Lebanese government. 

Like Syria, Lebanon is made up of a variety of ethnic groups. There are areas in Lebanon like the Druze Chouf Mountains, the Sunni Tripoli in the north, or even Christian areas, that Hezbollah would not be able to enter easily. In any scenario in which "Hezbollah takes over Lebanon", with or without the defeat of the Lebanese army, there will be more chaos than order.

Like Syria, Lebanon is likely able to be divided into areas of influence and control of the various factions, local or foreign, while the central government becomes irrelevant. This is a reasonable scenario, in light of the images originating in Lebanon, that depict a shortage of food, fuel, and medicine. They depict an unending political crisis and a ruling elite that is in no hurry to solve the country's fundamental problems.

Lack of control and chaos also require a different approach on  Israel’s part - when negotiating on the maritime border, Israel cannot assume that it is dealing with a normal sovereign state. 

Israel has no influence over what is happening in Syria and Lebanon, and if it does have any influence, it is a very small amount and cannot prevent the collapse of these two countries. But the Israeli government has a greater responsibility than any other country in the world in anticipating the future and being prepared for continued instability in our neighboring countries.
Saying that Hezbollah will take over seems too simplistic.  However, Iran certainly benefits from a Lebanon in chaos and divided in sectarian sections, just as it has benefitted from Syrian and Iraqi chaos. It doesn't necessarily have to take over the country to achieve its goals of creating safe areas for its military and allied militants to act with impunity. 

In fact, just as in Gaza, governing is a distraction from Iran's goals. What would Hezbollah be able to achieve that it cannot do today? It already has near complete control of its own virtual state on the border with Israel. 

Hezbollah might be unable to rule Lebanon - but the alternative chaos may be even worse.






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