Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, August 08, 2021

08/08 Links: The PA has already paid $1,183,257 to the terrorists who blew up the Sbarro pizza shop murdering 15; For Anti-Zionists, 'Palestine' Does Not Stop at the Green Line

From Ian:

PMW: Blood money: The PA has already paid $1,183,257 to the terrorists who blew up the Sbarro pizza shop murdering 15 and injuring 130

Tomorrow, August 9, 2021, will mark 20 years since the attack on the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem. 15 people were murdered, including 5 members of one family, and 130 people were injured.

As a reward for carrying out the attack, each month the Palestinian Authority pays a total of US$8,006 (25,800 shekels) to the imprisoned terrorists and the families of the dead terrorists, who were involved in the attack.

By now, the PA has paid Abdullah Barghouti, the terrorist who built the bomb and is responsible for the murder of 67 people in various attacks, a cumulative sum of US$285,571 (921,500 shekels). Every month, the PA pays him a salary of US$2,255 (7,300 shekels). In addition, the PA has paid the family of the suicide bomber US$68,498 (221,400 shekels). Every month the PA continues to pay his family an allowance of US$432 (1,400 shekels). The minimum wage in the PA is 1,450 shekels/month (US$44).

The monthly PA salary payments to the imprisoned terrorists are not just a whim. Rather, they are codified in the PA Law of Prisoners and Released Prisoners, No. 19 of 2004 and regulations promulgated pursuant to the law.

Thus, "Government Decision No. (23) for 2010 regarding a regulation of payment of a monthly salary to the prisoner" sets the salary scale the PA pays to imprisoned terrorists, including additional benefits for married terrorists, terrorists who have children, and terrorists who are residents or citizens of the State of Israel.

In addition to the issue of payments, section 4 of the Law of Prisoners stipulates that the PA will not sign a peace agreement "without the release of all prisoners", including terrorists like Abdullah Barghouti and hundreds of other terrorists like him, who are responsible for killing thousands of people.

The PA payments to the families of the dead terrorists (so-called “Martyrs”) is not regulated by law. Rather, these payments are made based on internal regulations of the PLO Institute for the Care of the Families ‎of the Martyrs and the Wounded, which is entirely funded by the PA.

Father dies by suicide on grave of son killed by Gaza rocket fire in 2014

Moshe Etzion, 88, the bereaved father of Ze’ev Etzion who was killed by rocket fire from Gaza during the 2014 war, took his own life at the gravesite of his son on the Hebrew anniversary of his death on Sunday.

The Etzion family lived in the southern Kibbutz Nirim, near the border with the Strip.

Moshe Etzion left his home early Sunday morning, and after he did not return for a number of hours, authorities launched a search for him.

He was found dead next to the grave of his son in the kibbutz, the Eshkol Regional Council said. He is to be buried tomorrow in Nirim.

His son Ze’ev, also known as Zevik, was a local security officer for the kibbutz during the 2014 war, as well as an emergency medic and ambulance driver.

Ze’ev was killed on August 26, 2014, when a Hamas-launched mortar shell landed in the kibbutz and shrapnel hit him. The seventh anniversary of his death fell on Sunday, according to the Jewish calendar.

For Anti-Zionists, 'Palestine' Does Not Stop at the Green Line

In the aftermath of the recent uproar over the Ben & Jerry's ice cream company announcing it would boycott the "Occupied Palestinian Territory," it is worthwhile to look closer at that term: "Occupied Palestinian Territory."

In 1964, Ahmad el-Shukairy convened a conference at which he created a terror movement called the "Palestine Liberation Organization." The PLO undertook to perpetrate terror acts against civilians to "liberate Palestine from the Israelis." At the time Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), and Egypt occupied Gaza. Yet, none of the PLO's terror campaign was aimed at driving Jordan or Egypt out of those illegally occupied lands. Rather, to liberate the newly fabricated "Palestine," all PLO terror aimed instead at driving the Jews out of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Ra'anana, and other cities, towns, and villages in pre-1967 Israel and "into the [Mediterranean] sea."

It always has been Arab Muslim Orthodoxy that "Palestine" actually is the entire country of Israel, not merely Judea and Samaria. Just contemplate the emblems of the "Palestine" terror groups, including the PLO, Fatah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

That is their "Occupied Palestine Territory" – not the "West Bank" nor Gaza but all of Israel. It is as clear as day — on their flags and banners. It is their logo. There is no need to gain fluency in Arabic to grasp what is on their minds and in their attack plans.

To the degree they claim they want "back" their "Palestine territory" from which they claim they were "expelled," anti-Zionists' demands would not be resolved by telling Arabs who claim their families once lived in Akko (Acre) or Yafo (Jaffa) that, in satisfaction of their aspirations, they now may have Jenin in Samaria or Beit Hanoun in Gaza. People claiming Akko or Yafo lineage do not want Gaza. It's like a real estate agent telling a Chicago-based Midwestern American Jew seeking to relocate to the Brooklyn, NY of his childhood: "I know you have a cultural longing for Brooklyn, the sights of Flatbush, old Ebbets Field where the baseball Dodgers played, Boro Park and Crown Heights, and Irv's Knishery of Canarsie. Unfortunately, I cannot offer you that, but here is something that is basically identical: I have a listing in Chubbuck, Idaho and another in Waterloo, Iowa. Believe me, you won't know the difference."

Seeing how this picture is from 1950, we are surprised Quds News actually used "occupied West Bank" in the correct context. https://t.co/rSSjsUgweV
— The Mossad: The Social Media Account (@TheMossadIL) August 8, 2021

Biden, along with practically the entire House and Senate, supported the Bush letter saying Israel would retain parts of the West Bank

In April 2004, President Bush sent a letter to Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon supporting Israel's withdrawal from Gaza - but with a crucial addition that Sharon sought.

The letter said, "As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."

Two months later, the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to support that position. The Senate resolution 393 said:

Whereas, in light of realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, but realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities;

The House resolution H.Con.Res.460 was largely the same.

Among the 95 senators and 407 representatives who voted for this resolution was Joe Biden.

Everyone who looks at the situation with clear eyes knows that it is out of the question that Israel would ever move back to the 1949 armistice lines.

Yet the US contradicts that every day by treating the entire area of Judea and Samaria as presumed to be belonging to Palestinians. Joe Biden's angry reaction to the announcement that Israel would build additional units in Ramat Shlomo in 2010 is just one example - no one could possibly think that Ramat Shlomo would ever be part of a Palestinian state. We see the same absurdity today in American policy.

So is the Bush letter - and its confirmation by the overwhelming majority of Congress - just a joke? Should Israel not trust what the US has to say? Or, more specifically, the US government makes a solemn promise, should Israel assume that a later less-friendly administration will not adhere to those promises?

And should we not insist that President Biden keep his own promises?

(h/t Mitchell)

Original sources of the Arab threat to "drive the Jews into the sea"

Back in 2014, I looked at the origins of the phrase "drive the Jews into the sea," because some have claimed that the expression was a hoax by Jews and Arabs never used that phrase in reference to Jews in Israel.

I found solid evidence that it was used after 1948, and then saw that the phrase was documented in the book "O Jerusalem" as having been used first by a Jerusalem police chief Kamal Irekat, adopted by the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem and then used by Fawzi el Kaukji, an Arab League field commander.

Yisrael Medad looked at the issue and found a British memo from August 1948 from Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin:

It is quite untrue to suggest that we have let the Arabs down or failed in any obligations towards them. We did not urge them to intervene by force in Palestine, nor did we promise them support if they did so. They went in of their own accord, in most cases without telling us beforehand. Very small measure of military successes which they achieved shows that their forces, while capable perhaps of occupying friendly territory, were not prepared for and incapable of undertaking major military operations, which would have been necessary to achieve the announced object of the Arab states, namely to drive the Jews into the sea.

I wanted to see if I could find an earlier version in contemporary newspapers.

An AP dispatch from June 10, 1948, said that Jews were amused at Arab claims that they already had thrown Jews into the sea:

This article from the News York Daily News in April 1948 quotes Fawzi al Kaukji directly:

An AP analysis from February 8, 1948, uses quotation marks for the phrase referring to Arab leaders in 1947:

The earliest quote I can find is from AP from a December 19, 1947 dispatch, quoting "Arab informants:"

That is a lot of different sources for an identical expression. It sounds like this was a common Arab response to the 1947 partition plan.

Medad also found this cover of an Egyptian pamphlet literally titled "Throw the Jews into the sea" before the 1967 war:

In 2013, the EU added Hezbollah's military wing to its list of terror groups.

So why couldn't they mention Hezbollah in this press release?

The European Union strongly condemns the firing of rockets from southern Lebanon towards northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights including those for which the “Islamic Resistance” has claimed responsibility.

The European Union is following closely the developments that ensued over the last days, including the artillery and air strikes response by Israel. It is crucial for all parties to exercise utmost restraint and work towards a quick resolution of the current tensions.

For some reason, they use the euphemism "Islamic Resistance" instead of Hezbollah - which is arguably worse, since it promotes the lie that Hezbollah is "resisting" Israel even though Israel withdrew from Lebanon more than two decades ago.

(h/t Irene)

08/07 Links: Rhythmic gymnast Linoy Ashram wins Israel’s 3rd-ever Olympic gold; Beinart Tapped by Ben And Jerry’s to Defend Israel Boycott to Franchisees.

From Ian:

Rhythmic gymnast Linoy Ashram wins Israel’s 3rd-ever Olympic gold

Rhythmic gymnast Linoy Ashram won Israel’s third-ever Olympic gold medal on Saturday, beating out tough competition to take the top spot on the Tokyo 2020 podium and ending over two decades of Russian dominance in the sport.

Ashram is the first Israeli woman to win a gold at the Olympics.

“It’s what I dreamed of for all my life,” Ashram said after the win.

“It’s an amazing feeling to stand in this place, at this time, on the podium and in first place,” said the 22-year-old gymnast who has now been picked to carry the flag at the closing ceremony.

“It’s a crazy experience that I still haven’t fully digested and with peak levels of excitement,” Ashram said.

She was visibly moved as Israel’s national anthem, Hatikva, rang out through the gymnastics center as the flag was raised.

The gymnast won Israel’s third Olympic gold medal just days after gymnast Artem Dolgopyat won Israel’s second. Israeli windsurfer Gal Friedman won the first gold for Israel in Athens in 2004.

As well as the two golds, Israel’s Olympic team had already picked up two bronze medals in Tokyo — for the judo mixed team, and Avishag Semberg for taekwondo in the women’s 49kg category.

The Tokyo games are thus Israel’s most successful, since it has never previously won more than two medals at any one Olympics.

Linoy Ashram brings joy to Israel with gold medal win - comment

When Saturday’s final results were announced, placing Ashram in first place in the hoop, ball and clubs exercises, and securing her the gold with an overall score of 107.800, the ‘twittersphere’ exploded.

It wasn’t the public explosion of cars honking and joyous fans running into the street, like when Maccabi Tel Aviv won its first European basketball championship in 1977 and, as star player Tal Brody, excitedly proclaimed, put “Israel on the map.”

But it was a source of happiness in a country that could sorely use some.

“Israeli pride!” someone posted. “So proud of Linoy” wrote another.

“It’s a shame that observant people aren’t going to find out about this for hours,” piped in another.

It indeed was a shame, especially when, for the second time in a week, “Hatikva” was heard from the podium in Tokyo as the ecstatic Ashram stood with the coveted medal. Last week, of course, the anthem was played after artistic gymnast Artem Dolgopyat won gold in the men’s floor exercise on Sunday.

That was certainly an emotional moment, and even the most hardened observers could be seen with moist eyes. Saturday’s repeat performance was icing on the cake, but no less resonant in its evocation of the elation felt at witnessing the blue and white flag dominating the screen and the national anthem resounding to the world.

We Israelis can be divided about and argue about anything and everything. Politics, vaccines, traffic, neighbors and the government, and the list goes on. There aren’t many issues or events that bring us together, as a country and as a people. There’s something transcendent about seeing young men and women stretch themselves to the limit of their abilities, and then some.

Linoy Ashram and Artem Dolgopyat, along with bronze medalists Avishag Semberg in women’s tae kwon do and Israel’s mixed team in judo, did just that. Their accomplishments in Tokyo made us all proud of them and of our country. It’s no small feat and should be savored for as long as the news cycle allows.

And it’s another reminder to those that might like to think otherwise that Israel is still on the map after all these years.

Wow! ???? Hatikvah plays for our champion Linoy Ashram ?? ??

So proud! pic.twitter.com/R1EUIA47hn
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) August 7, 2021

08/06 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Lipstadt must tackle antisemitism among Democrats; Islamists and the Left are linked in rejecting the Enlightenment

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Lipstadt must tackle antisemitism among Democrats

The fact is that the left consistently refuses to acknowledge the Jew-hatred in its own ranks. Exactly the same denial occurred in Britain's Labour Party under Corbyn and continues within the wider British Left today.

This is partly because so much of this Jew-baiting is wrapped up with the demonization of Israel, an animus that many on the left fail to understand possesses the unique characteristics of antisemitism throughout the ages.

On a deeper level, it's because the left find it impossible to accept that their side is capable of bigotry; and that's because their precarious moral and political identity rests upon the fantasy that their attitudes and goals are the quintessence of virtue.

Liberal Jews subscribe to the same paralyzing fantasies and delusions; and whether out of ignorance or cowardice, many others seem unable or unwilling to scratch beneath surface pieties.

So Lipstadt's appointment has been lauded by a wide range of Jewish organizations. Once again, it's only the Zionist Organization of America that has called out a reality that most American Jews find too difficult to acknowledge.

As with the rest of the viciously oppressive "intersectionality" agenda, the reason the new antisemitism has achieved such traction in America and the West is that so many in positions of cultural power and influence have stayed silent or cravenly genuflected to these unspeakable positions.

As Biden's anti-Semitism envoy, Lipstadt's first duty is to call out the antisemites in Biden's own party. We'll soon see whether the concerns about her appointment are borne out or whether she rises to this particularly loaded challenge.

Islamists and the Left are linked in rejecting the Enlightenment

For too many others on the Left, Islamists have become an essential part of what they seem to construe as a new Popular Front against the oppression and injustice of neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism which — it is claimed — arise from the deification by the post-Enlightenment western state of instrumental reason and Eurocentric universalism. You can see this in the Stop the War Coalition. You can see it in the common cause Islamists and Leftists make over the issues of Palestine or Iran. And you can interestingly see it in shared attitudes towards Israel more generally, where Jewishness often becomes — as Stephan Malinowski has recently reminded us — the emblem of a wider and deranging capitalist modernity.

It was Marx and then Hannah Arendt who suggested that antisemitism could function as an anti-Enlightenment/anti-modernist cultural code. And it is this belief in the wrong turn the Enlightenment represents that binds Islamists and Leftists together in an unholy alliance against the Enlightenment’s heirs. This belief is in practice founded upon 200 years of largely European Counter-Enlightenment thought, privileging cultural relativism over Kantian universalism, nativism over cosmopolitanism, Being over Scientism, romanticism over rationality. It can be traced from Vico, Herder, Fichte and le Maistre through Nietzsche, Spengler, Heidegger, Croce and Sartre to Derrida and Deleuze — among many others. And it powerfully influenced the development of Islamist thought, sometimes at second-hand, sometimes more directly.

In my Policy Exchange paper, I take Michel Foucault, the French philosopher, theorist and activist, as an example of the reciprocal influence of this intellectual current. In Iran in 1978 he saw in Khomeini and his followers the birth of what he described as a new “political spirituality”, reenchanting the dismal Weberian bureaucratic state and dissolving oppressive power structures. That judgement was harshly criticised for its ignorance at the time by the great French scholar, Maxime Rodinson. And it has not (ahem) stood the test of time. But Foucault had been shaped by the thought of Heidegger, Adorno, Sartre, Fanon and other critics of the Enlightenment. So had many Iranian revolutionaries. And this current of thought, with all its faults, remains intensely seductive to those in search of an ultimate meaning beyond instrumental reason, especially if it is enables them to reject the West at the same time as they make it central to their own discontents. It is present in different ways and to different extents in Hassan al Banna, Abul A’la Mawdudi, Sayyid Qutb, Ali Shariati and Yusuf Qaradawi. It is why Ali Khamenei can regard the West as doomed at the same time as he thinks Les Misérables is the greatest novel ever written. And it is fundamental to a way of thinking about the world shared by too many on the Left.

The fact they tend to believe truth is unobtainable, while Islamists claim to have exclusive access to it, that when Islamists take power, one of the first things they do is turn on the Left, the fact that among the first targets of Islamist insurgents are feminists, lawyers, novelists and journalists and the fact that Islamists are constitutively misogynist, homophobic, totalitarian, illiberal, antisemitic and wholly intolerant seems to be lost on them.

They don’t care — not because they don’t know but because whatever else may divide them, the higher goal, the drive for a “counter-Enlightenment in the garb of post-Enlightenment”, is precisely what Islamism and the self-styled progressive and postmodern Left share. If it ever arrives, it will be a disaster for all of us.

The Tikvah Podcast: Kenneth Marcus on How the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism Helps the Government Protect Civil Rights

With anti-Semitism on the rise over the last few years, it is essential for institutions to be able to assess clearly whether an incident is anti-Semitic or not. For this purpose, over the last two decades many governments, companies, and international organizations have, as Joshua Muravchik discusses in this month’s Mosaic essay, adopted the “working definition of anti-Semitism” from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Today, the U.S. federal government uses the IHRA definition to assess federal claims of anti-Semitism under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and all government agencies also consider the IHRA definition in their own assessments of anti-Semitism.

This week, Kenneth Marcus, who was instrumental in getting the federal government to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, joins our podcast. Formerly the assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education, Marcus has played a major role in protecting the civil rights of diverse groups, including Jews facing anti-Semitism; he’s also the author of Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America, and The Definition of Anti-Semitism. In conversation with Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver, he explains how the IHRA definition helps American officials protect civil right

Jonathan Tobin: Is the ADL a greater threat to liberty than extremists?

Since Greenblatt replaced Abe Foxman as head of the ADL, the organization has repeatedly demonstrated that it is now just another Democratic Party auxiliary. That's a shame since, unlike most national Jewish groups, it still has a job that needs to be done in terms of monitoring antisemitism. By intervening in partisan fights like the US Supreme Court confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, slandering former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as an "Islamophobe," engaging in relentless, dubious efforts to link former US President Donald Trump to right-wing antisemites, and being constantly willing to wink at false analogies between his administration and the Nazis — the ADL surrendered its non-partisan status.

That is the context for understanding how the ADL/Moonshot effort to root out "right-wing violence" worked. It ignored the fact that hate, not to mention antisemitism, is also emanating from the Left. That's the only explanation for why they signed off on criteria for determining whether someone was searching for a hate site that included typing in the words, "the truth about Black Lives Matter." Anyone who was curious about the movement or who wanted to know more about its opposition to the State of Israel and Zionism, or the way critical race theory has granted a permission slip to Jew-hatred, was automatically labeled a hater by the ADL and its partners.

That's more than ironic following the wave of violence directed at American Jews in the wake of Israel's conflict with Hamas terrorists in May, and the way the BLM movement and its most prominent congressional supporters sought to demonize Israel and its supporters.

Yet it is the same ADL that has just been asked by PayPal to set criteria that will allow the global online payment service to shut down financial networks that, according to the group, "support extremism and hate" or endanger "at-risk communities." Again, the ADL isn't saying how it plans to decide who fits that bill. Its record, however, leaves little doubt that the group is being empowered by PayPal to put any group that dissents from its support for BLM or other left-wing causes out of business by pinning the extremist label on them.

That prospect raises more questions about the future of free speech than answers about how to deal with extremism.

You don't have to be a Trump supporter or have the slightest sympathy for actual extremists, whether on the Right or the Left, to understand what this means. The ADL's partnerships with Big Tech should be fueling worries of a growing threat of a liberal corporate tyranny regime that will — in the name of safeguarding democracy, "anti-racism," and opposition to extremism — not merely chip away at free discourse in the public square but shut it down altogether. In what may be the ultimate expression of gaslighting, those, like the ADL, who pose as the defenders of democracy may be a far more serious threat to our freedoms than the marginal groups they claim to be targeting.

Unpacked: Why is Antisemitism Still Around? | Antisemitism, Explained

Why is it that even post-Holocaust, Jews experience a large percentage of the world’s hate crimes, despite being less than 0.2% of the world’s population? That’s because the Holocaust wasn’t an antisemitic exception — it was the culmination of years of religious, scientific, cultural and political anti-Jewish sentiment. This foundation still exists today. Many still subscribe to anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, resulting in disproportionately high statistics of anti-Jewish sentiment and large numbers of hate crimes.

Have you seen our video on #Antisemitism produced by @Yair_Rosenberg and @JewishUnpacked? Well, Instagram really doesn’t want you to. They’ve denied our appeal. https://t.co/J80KslSk9M pic.twitter.com/JLs1fnA7zT
— Johnny Kunza (@johnkunza) August 5, 2021

Some memes for Friday

Here are some memes I made this week:

(From a Twitter thread yesterday)

A quick lesson on psychology, anti-Zionism and antisemitism:

It has been known for quite a long time that people tend to make decisions based on emotion and only afterwards back up their decisions with what passes for logic.

Studies have consistently shown that people will trust facts that confirm their biases and reject those that prove them wrong.

Antisemitism has been around forever, but since the Holocaust it has been socially unacceptable to be publicly antisemitic. But the Holocaust didn't change people's natures; it just made it shameful to be on the same side as Hitler.

Israel became a convenient target for antisemitism. And an entire industry has sprouted up to justify this hate of Israel as somehow being supported by facts - after the fact.

By any measure, the amount of time and effort made by people to demonize Israel is far, far out of proportion to any real or imagined human rights crimes it is guilty of. Israel is shown to fall short of moral standards that no other nation is expected to reach.

But because so many people still have antisemitic attitudes, and need to justify their hate, Israel is the target they choose. The "facts" are justifications for their hate, not the reasons for it.

The hate we see, the double standards, the creation of "international law" that is only applied to Israel, it is all an ex post facto justification for the Jew-hatred in people's hearts.

Antisemitism never went away. It just morphed, as it always has, to make Jews the collective target for everything people hate. A country full of Jews is an irresistible proxy for the Jewish collective that has been the world's scapegoat for centuries.

08/06 Links Pt1: Ruthie Blum: Time to take advantage of cracks in Tehran’s armor; Lebanese Druze intercept truck with rockets meant for Israel; The “Squad” targets Jerusalem

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Time to take advantage of cracks in Tehran’s armor

According to MEMRI, he went on to say, “Lebanon and Hezbollah now stand strong and capable against the Zionists, and every time the enemy wants to make a move, Hezbollah nips it in the bud. America has brought the nations of the world nothing but poverty, backwardness and the looting of their wealth. America has lost its credibility in Iran, and we sacrifice our lives for the Iranian nation.”

Then, he hit the relevant crux of the matter.

“Now that the enemies have all realized that they are unable to defeat the Iranian nation in bitter warfare,” he said, “they have hatched other plots, such as imposing economic sanctions… From the first day of the [Islamic] Revolution, our enemies, chief among them America, showed their hostility towards us with all kinds of plots, assassinations, sanctions and threats, but our nation never stopped; [on the contrary, it] accelerated its pace.”

These foes, he announced, “must know that the Iranian nation will not give up Islam and the revolution because of power outages or a water shortage… The people of Iran have shown these days that they are loyal to the ideals of Islam and of the revolution.”

Salami seemed not to grasp that footage of those very people shouting to be released from the chains of the corrupt, repressive regime’s bondage has managed to make its way to Twitter for everyone to see and many to champion.

Whether or not his social-media adviser failed to fill him in on the discrepancy between his words and goings-on in the street below, however, he was able to claim with no small amount of justification: “Today, we are dictating the terms under which a superpower like America will return to the nuclear deal, and this indicates the [extent of] the authority wielded by Islamic Iran.”

Biden and his European cohorts must not prove him right. The time has come to take advantage of the cracks in the regime’s armor. Khamenei, Raisi and Salami should be put on notice that it is not they, but rather their victims, who warrant bolstering.

Since that’s not likely to happen in the immediate future, Israel will have to go it alone. Let’s hope that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is up to the task.

The Caroline Glick Show: Episode 16: How to Overthrow the Iranian Regime | Guest: Cameron Khansarinia (NUFDI Policy Director)

In this week's episode of the Caroline Glick Mideast News Hour Caroline filmed from Washington, DC. Where she spoke with Cameron Khansarinia, Policy Director of the National Union for Democracy in Iran. The two discussed the anti-regime protests that have spread throughout the country. They talked about how the US and/or Israel can assist the protesters to bring down the regime. And they contemplated what Iran's achievement of military nuclear capabilities will mean for human rights in Iran and international security.

This episode is dedicated to the courageous men and women in Iran risking their lives for freedom. Their struggle truly is our struggle. Their success will be a blessing to us all.

On Israel TV, prisoners who escaped Iran’s 1988 killings compare Raisi to Hitler

In Israeli TV interviews broadcast Thursday, former political prisoners who escaped Iran compared the Islamic Republic’s new President Ebrahim Raisi to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler for his alleged central role in extrajudicial executions, mostly of young people, across Iran in the late 1980s.

“It was exactly like the final solution that Hitler made for the Jews,” Iraj Masadagi, a former Iranian political prisoner, told the Kan public broadcaster.

“Raisi was a killer,” Masadagi continued. “He talked to me, and he said that they don’t want to have any more political prisoners. He said that we want to solve the ‘problem.”

The ultra-conservative cleric Raisi was sworn in on Thursday as the Islamic Republic’s eighth president. He has been accused by activists and human rights groups of having played a key role as a prosecutor on the “death commission” that sent thousands of prisoners to their deaths in 1988.

Amnesty International has described the killings as a crime against humanity.

“They sent hundreds of prisoners to the gallows,” Masdagi said. “When I see him I see the face of the one who killed my fellow prisoners, my friends, my beloved ones.”

Masdagi, one of the tens of thousands of political prisoners in Iran at the time, told Kan he spent 10 years in jail, starting in 1981. “I was in solitary confinement for a long period, and when I see him, I remember those days, that I was tortured,” he said.

Israeli Officials, Human Rights Activists Condemn EU for Envoy Appearance at Iranian Presidential Ceremony Next to Terrorist Leaders

Israeli officials and human rights activists criticized the presence of a top European Union diplomat seated immediately behind senior leaders of the Hamas and Hezbollah terror groups at Thursday’s inauguration of hardline Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi.

The Israeli embassy in Austria — the country hosting ongoing talks between Iran and world powers over the 2015 nuclear deal — called the attendance of EU representative Enrique Mora at the inauguration of the cleric “unbelievable but true.”

Raisi was placed under US sanctions in 2019 after his appointment to lead Iran’s judiciary, for his alleged role executing thousands of political prisoners in 1988.

Also attending Thursday’s event were leaders of three militant groups that the Israeli embassy noted are on the EU terrorist list.

Mora was spotted behind Palestinian Islamic Jihad chief Ziad al-Nakhalah, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem, who were taking their seats in the first row at the presidential ceremony.

“Hezbollah, Hamas & the EU in one photo at the inauguration of the ‘butcher of Tehran.’ How can they [EU] preach about human rights while sitting with representatives of terrorist organizations days after Iran’s murderous attack on a civilian ship and right before the UNSC discusses the issue?” Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations, questioned.

This week, UN Watch issued a report on the pro-terror, antisemitic social media posts of over 100 people who claim to be UNRWA employees.

I had started this line of research back in 2014 when I exposed antisemitic and pro-terror posts in nearly 100 specific Facebook pages of UNRWA employees after earlier exposing antisemitism in official UNRWA school sites.

UN Watch ran with this idea, and since then has issued reports on UNRWA employees' hate.

While UNRWA read my reports and silently removed the posts, it never actually did anything to address the underlying problem - that UNRWA teachers and UNRWA itself support terror and Jew-hatred as part of their official and unofficial curriculum.

UNRWA's response to the UN Watch report this week is a classic example of not taking responsibility, shifting the blame, superficially covering up the main problem attacking the messenger:

This week, UN Watch -- an organization with a deep history of unfounded and politically-driven assertions against the Agency -- released a report accusing 22 UNRWA personnel of promoting violence and hate through social media channels. UNRWA confirms that 10 of the 22 persons mentioned in the report are UNRWA personnel; the others are not associated with the Agency.

UNRWA is upholding the values of the United Nations and has a zero-tolerance policy for hatred. The Agency takes each allegation seriously. It has immediately launched a thorough investigation through due process to determine if any of these 10 persons, out of more than 28,000 personnel, violated the Agency’s social media policies that prohibit personnel from engaging in non-neutral behaviors online. We are concerned that some of the posts violate our rules and policies, and should misconduct be found, UNRWA will take immediate administrative or disciplinary action.

In previous reports over a five years period, UN Watch identified a total of 101 cases where UNRWA personnel allegedly posted content on social media that was in breach of its Regulatory Framework, including the neutrality policy. Upon investigation of these cases, UNRWA found that 57% of the allegations could not be tied to personnel employed by the Agency at the time of the reported incident. Personnel who were found in breach, then, where either censured and/or subjected to financial penalties.

To suggest that hate is widespread within the Agency and schools is not only misleading and false, but validates sensationalist and politically-motivated attacks that deliberately harm an already vulnerable community: refugee children. UNRWA’s mandate is to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance to over five million Palestine refugees, a responsibility the Agency takes very seriously. The Agency has invested immense efforts in training its personnel to promote their understanding of neutrality and the vital role it plays in their daily work and of their obligations in that regard, including through courses on social media and neutrality, ethics trainings, and in-person field trainings on neutrality. Oversight and accountability of any organization is vital, and UNRWA welcomes future opportunities of assessment and looks forward to continued partnerships with all parties engaging with UNRWA to ensure every Palestine refugee child has access to quality education.

If UNRWA is really neutral, then find a single map of the Middle East showing Israel in an UNRWA school.

Let us know specifically what was done in the past when UNRWA schools held student events commemorating terrorist attacks besides removing the evidence.

Explain why UNRWA designated a "youth ambassador" who glorifies violence against Israeli in music videos - and extended his contract.

Ask UNRWA whether they still teach students that they will "return" to destroy Israel.

And very simply - explain why doesn't UNRWA have school websites anymore? If they have a zero tolerance policy for hate, then they should not be worried that their school sites will have anything problematic! Why take down the sites if the problem is so minimal or nonexistent? Why deny students the pride of a website?

UNRWA knows that they are selling lies. They may have invested a lot in neutrality, but they know that schools that teach that the students will defeat Israel is not going to be neutral.

Head of Lebanese Forces tells Hezbollah to stop endangering Lebanon by shooting rockets at Israel (update)

Overnight and this morning, Hezbollah shot 19 rockets at Israel - three of which landed in Lebanon itself, and ten of which were intercepted by Iron Dome.

This was in response to Israel's mostly symbolic air strikes to earlier rocket fire from southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese are not supporting Hezbollah at all.

The head of the Lebanese Forces, Samir Geagea, tweeted to Hezbollah,

What is happening in the south is very dangerous, especially in light of the great tension emerging in the region.

The Lebanese people have had enough torment, daily suffering and continuous struggle until the day comes where someone plays with fire. If it ignites, God forbid, you will destroy what is left of the people of Lebanon.

Fear God and leave the Lebanese people with their current tragedies, and do not add to them other bigger, more terrible and more painful tragedies.

Lebanese citizens actually stopped a Hezbollah rocket-firing truck that had fired, according to Hezbollah, 21 of its 34 rockets at Israel. A video shared on social media showed angry villagers blocking the truck and accusing Hezbullah of endangering civilian lives by launching rockets from close to residential areas.

The Lebanese army later arrived in the village and confiscated the truck carrying the rocket launcher. This is the first time I have ever seen the Lebanese army directly confront Hezbollah.

The Lebanese are sick of Iranian meddling in their country, and on top of their other problems, this is bringing their anger to a boil.

UPDATE: Here's the video of Lebanese villagers attacking Hezbollah rocket launcher personnel.

(h/t Daled Amos)

On March 15, 1960, Connecticut senator Thomas J. Dodd submitted a long, impassioned speech to the Congressional Record on the subject of antisemitism. It took up over 8 pages in the tightly printed Congressional Record, which is probably about 25 normal book pages. It starts on page 5205.

Dodd knew a great deal about antisemitism. He was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.

In this speech, Dodd surveyed the entire breadth of antisemitism of the day, from residual antisemitism in West Germany from the Right (there was an epidemic of swastikas on synagogues,) through ex-Nazi officials who were still in positions of power worldwide, to a long, detailed description of antisemitism of the Left from the Soviet Union, which he said was being largely ignored in the West.

Just as it is today.

He says:

There should be no secret about Soviet anti-Semitism. The terrible ordeal of the Jewish people under the Kremlin's rule has been painstakingly set forth and documented in a whole series of studies by scholarly authorities....

But for some strange reason, the terrifying story of persecution of the Jews under communism has not penetrated the public consciousness of the free world.

...I try to be a reasonably assiduous reader. I was aware before I began preparing this analysis that anti-Semitism existed on a very substantial scale throughout the Soviet sphere. But as I checked through the available documentation. I found myself constantly appalled.

I was appalled by the totality of Soviet anti-Semitism, by its utter ruthlessness, by its doctrinal and practical similarity to Nazi anti-Semitism. I was even more appalled to discover how little I knew, how little my friends knew, about this terrible crime against humanity which has been going on for more than two decades now.

Let me set forth here the full record of this crime.

There follows an exhaustive analysis of socialist antisemitism from Karl Marx' own words through 1960.

About Marx, he said:

In reality, anti-Semitism is as inherent in Marxist totalitarianism as it was in Nazi totalitarianism. Karl Marx himself was, in many of his statements, as virulently anti-Semitic as Goebbels. Over the decades, the Communists have done their utmost to conceal this fact. Marx's translators into English and the European languages carefully eliminated his anti-Semitic diatribes from editions of his books and writings. But the proof exists.

I have in hand the first English translation of the unexpurgated papers of Karl Marx on the so-called Jewish question. It was printed only last year. In it, you will find that Marx referred to the distinguished German Social Democratic leader, Ferdinand Lasalle, whom he considered too moderate, as, I quote, "Judei Itzig--Jewish nigger." In another letter, Marx made the statement: "Ramsgate is full of Jews and fleas." In still another statement he said—and I quote again—"emancipation from usury and money, that is, from practical real Judaism, would constitute the emancipation of our time."

This was not Hitler speaking. It was the recognized ideological father of Soviet communism. This was Karl Marx.

After proving beyond a doubt the systemic, state-run antisemitism of the Soviet Union, Dodd mentions that the Soviets also have geopolitical reasons to be more vicious towards Jews than other suffering minorities behind the Iron Curtain.

The USSR was trying to ensure the Arab world would be on its side.

He said:

Let me give you one example of the Kremlin's propaganda to the Arab world. I quote from the publication, -The State of Israel—Its Position and Policies," printed by the Soviet state publishing house in 1958:

"The Zionist movement represents a form of the nationalistic ideology of the rich Jewish bourgeoisie, intimately tied to imperialism and to colonial oppression of the people of Asia. Zionism has tied itself to American and other Western capitalism and, with Jewish terrorist tactics, attacked its Arab neighbors. The national liberation movement of the people of the Middle East, spearheaded by its native leaders (such as President Nasser, King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, and King Iman Ahmed of Yemen) is constantly threatened by naked Jewish aggression. The clear duty of all Marxists and Communists in this situation is to help the Asian and African people crush the reactionary Jewish forces."

This quote shows that early Leftist anti-Zionism was the same as classic antisemitism. Ideologically, they started at the same place.

Then, as now, the world didn't take Leftist antisemitism seriously.

Then, as now, the Leftist leaders took pains to hide their historic - and current - antisemitism.while claiming to be anti-racist.

Then, as now, anti-Zionism was simply a specific manifestation of antisemitism.

08/05 Links Pt2: Bari Weiss and Merav Michaeli on How Global Media Portrays Israel; The Franklin Prophecy; Dershowitz: Ben and Jerry's Decision Is Anti-Semitic; Oren: The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

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.

EuroPalestine: Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel or antisemitic?

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.

Mahdi Spotted At Tel Aviv Ice Cream Parlor (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

milkshake Tel 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."