Thursday, August 12, 2021

08/12 Links Pt1: Biden Admin Decision to Hide Info About Palestinian Terrorism From Congress Broke Law; HRW’s Inconsistency and Incoherence Continues; Abraham Accords, one year later

From Ian:

Biden Admin Decision to Hide Info About Palestinian Terrorism From Congress Broke Law, Watchdog Says
Biden administration officials may have broken the law when they erased information about the Palestinian government's terror incitement from a mandatory compliance report submitted to Congress in July, according to a legal watchdog group.

The America First Legal Foundation (AFLF) in a letter sent Wednesday is asking the State Department inspector general to investigate the Biden administration's decision to omit references to the Palestinian government's calls for violence, as well as its support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement—issues that are being closely monitored by Congress as the Biden administration restarts millions of dollars in U.S. aid to the Palestinians. Information about Palestinian terror incitement and support for the BDS movement were included in the outgoing Trump administration's October 2020 version of the report, but removed by the Biden administration when it came into office, as the Free Beacon first reported.

The AFLF letter says the Biden administration removed this information to downplay Palestinian intransigence as it renews taxpayer aid to the government. Lawmakers, including a large portion of Republicans, criticized the resumption of U.S. aid, particularly since the Palestinian government subsidizes terrorists and advocates for Israel's destruction. The AFLF has also submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the State Department for all internal records related to the decision to nix information from the latest congressional report.

The Biden administration "unlawfully [concealed] multiple material derogatory facts regarding the Palestinian Authority's ongoing economic, political, and ideological support for terrorism; economic warfare against Israel; and opposition to regional peace," Reed Rubinstein, AFLF's senior counselor, wrote to acting State Department inspector general Diana Shaw. "It seems these derogatory facts were deleted, expunged, and concealed not because circumstances on the ground had changed, but rather because officials in the Department's Bureau of Near East Affairs and in the Biden White House decided to cover them up, at least in part to facilitate the planned transfer of hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Palestinian Authority in potential violation of U.S. law."

If the information was removed in order to keep Congress in the dark about the Palestinian government's ongoing transgressions, it could constitute a violation of U.S. law, according to AFLF's letter.

The watchdog group says the State Department must "immediately open an investigation" into any decision by officials "to conceal and cover up material derogatory facts regarding the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority from the Congress."
Murphy urges U.S. to deprioritize Iran, says Saudis should to ‘come to terms’ with Hezbollah influence
Murphy warned that Lebanon, which has been besieged by a series of crises, is on the brink of becoming a failed state and a source of instability and terrorism that could last decades. He blamed the deteriorating situation in part on a lack of Saudi engagement due to Hezbollah’s influence inside Lebanon.

“[The Saudis] are deeply uncomfortable with the role that Hezbollah plays. The Saudis should come to terms with the fact that — at least in the short term — Hezbollah is going to be part of the political infrastructure there,” he said. “It would be much better for the Saudis to be a partner with the United States, with the French and other countries to try to offer the kind of economic support that might provoke political reform that would eventually allow for technocrats and non-sectarian actors to have greater influence in the government. That would lessen the influence of Hezbollah.”

Murphy’s proposals on Iran and Lebanon reflect his broader view of U.S. Middle East policy as severely out of date.

“What we want is to try to midwife a conversation about a regional security architecture, in which the Iranians and the Saudis and the Emiratis aren’t constantly battling with each other through proxy fights,” he said. “I don’t think that our current position in the region — whereby we are essentially giving the Saudi side whatever they need — is actually leading to that détente or to that conversation happening.”

A key part of an altered U.S. strategy must include “play[ing] hardball” with the Saudis,” Murphy continued, dismissing concerns that decreased U.S. influence could create openings for its geopolitical rivals.

“I don’t believe this argument that the Saudis are going to walk away from a security alliance with the United States,” he explained. “They will never get from the Chinese nor the Russians what they get from the United States today… They want us to be tougher on Iran, but they don’t have another potential partner like the United States.”
Gaza rockets killed Palestinians, Israelis in 'flagrant' war crimes - HRW
The report did not mention attacks on Jewish-Israelis that took place in the days leading up to Operation Guardian of the Walls. “Hamas authorities should stop trying to justify unlawful rocket attacks that indiscriminately kill and injure civilians by pointing to Israel’s violations,” Goldstein said. “The laws of war are meant to protect all civilians from harm.”

Abu Hamza, spokesman for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another Gazan-based terror group, told Al Jazeera that when the terrorist organization discovered that there were children present at targets, “these missions were stopped,” adding “the enemy knows very well what I am talking about.”

Two Israeli children were killed by rocket fire from Gaza during the operation: five-year-old Ido Avigal and 16-year-old Nadin Awad. Abu Hamza’s statement echoed statements the IDF often makes during operations to explain its policies to avoid civilian casualties. The IDF often calls off missions if civilians are spotted at the targeted location.

Palestinian terrorist groups have repeatedly been found to violate the rights of children and place children at risk.

HRW Executive Director Ken Roth, who in May accused Israel of being an apartheid state, came under fire in July after he retweeted a report on the severe spike in antisemitism in the UK during Israel’s war with Gaza in May, implying that Israeli government action was responsible for antisemitism.


HRW’s Inconsistency and Incoherence Continues: EJIL: Talk! Symposium on A Threshold Crossed
On 5-9 July 2021, EJIL:Talk!, an influential international law blog, hosted a symposium on “Apartheid in Israel/Palestine”. According to Marko Milanovic, co-editor of the blog, its purpose is to discuss legal issues related to the “increasing trend amongst human rights activists and NGOs of labelling Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians as constituting apartheid”, and specifically to focus on Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) April 2021 publication, A Threshold Crossed. The symposium does not purport to be a comprehensive examination. Rather, it is intended to explore whether and how the crime against humanity of apartheid, initially proscribed specifically in relation to the situation in southern Africa, might be applied to other situations; additionally, as Milanovic noted, how “labels such as apartheid” are employed to create political narratives to “mobiliz[e] and (de)legitimiz[e] power.”

The charge of apartheid against Israel is not new, nor does it reflect a novel or increasing trend.1 However, the five articles written for the symposium and HRW’s response are illuminating in two respects: first, they provide confirmation that the central agenda of the “apartheid campaign” is to delegitimize and demonize Zionism and the existence of Israel within any borders; and second, that HRW’s Threshold is based on an invented legal definition. HRW’s artificial and manipulative process under the façade of systematic legal analysis is used to provide support for, and mutually reinforces, the political objective – to delegitimize Jewish self-determination. HRW’s response also reflects what can (charitably) be described as ongoing incoherence concerning their methodologies, policies, and control over media coverage.

Predictably, the contributions offered by Noura Erakat (Rutgers University and associated with multiple Palestinian NGOs) and Rania Muhareb (Al Haq) attack Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, regardless of borders. Erakat’s post is an historically false screed, labeling Zionism as “defined by discrimination”. Erakat promotes conspiratorial theories, including that “Israel is manifesting to the world what Palestinians have long known: it wants the land without the people and seeks to remain the sole source of authority from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” Erakat invokes the calumny, popularized in the 1920s by the antisemite Henry Ford and later revived by the neo-Nazi, KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, of “Jewish supremacy”. Erakat’s conspiracies, rejection of Jewish self-determination, and characterization of Israel as racist could be considered as antisemitism under the International Holocaust Remembrance Association Working Definition.2 It is hard to imagine that a post expressing similar sentiments directed at any other ethnic or religious group would have been published. For example, how many academics in the field of international law call for the dismantling of India because of the 1947 partition and allegations of ongoing discrimination against its Muslim population, much less advocate for it in a highly respected legal publication.

Carola Lingaas, a Norwegian academic, and Joshua Kern, Barrister at 9 Bedford Row and counsel to the Institute for NGO Research, offers in-depth analyses of the legal definition of apartheid, noting material differences between the standards delineated in international legal instruments and those posited by HRW. Professor Eugene Kontorovich details the factual and political distortions endemic throughout Threshold.

House Demolitions Are Still Controversial, Even Though They Are A Proven Deterrent (Daled Amos)

daledamos2

 

 

The controversial demolition of the homes of Palestinian Arab terrorists is in the news again, following a terrorist attack in May:

The Judea Military Court on Tuesday [August 3] convicted Muntasir Shalabi for the terror murder of 19-year-old Yehuda Guetta in a drive-by-shooting on May 2 at Tapuah junction.

...Shalabi, 44, was also convicted of multiple attempted-murder counts after he wounded two other 19-year-olds during the attack.
The demolition itself was done last month, in July. 
 
I already mentioned the obvious, that the house demolitions are controversial -- one problem is that the demolition was already done in July, while the actual conviction was not until later, this month.
 
In an article for the Yale Journal of International Law in 1994, Dan Simon notes in The Demolition of Homes in the Israeli Occupied Territories
The provision's breadth affords tremendous discretion to the Military Government on a number of levels. First, Article 119 allows the Military Government to issue demolition orders as an exercise of administrative authority, without recourse to judicial proceedings. [p. 15; emphasis added]
And Article 119 requires a history lesson, since it is not an Israeli law.

Article 119 is one of the 1945 Defense (Emergency) Regulations [DERs] issued by the British during their rule in then-Mandate Palestine. Article 119 is the regulation the British used to authorize the confiscation and destruction of houses in which security-related laws were violated or where someone who committed such a violation lived.
 
That regulation goes even further back, to the South African Boer War:
The roots of Israel's home demolition policy date back to British orders promulgated during the South African Boer War. In June 1900, Lord Roberts, the general in command of British forces in South Africa, issued two proclamations in response to repetitive Afrikaner commando attacks on railroad and telegraph lines. His orders permitted the destruction of homes closest to the sites of such attacks. [p. 8]
The British applied this law as a response to Arab sabotage, especially from 1936-1939.
 
On a side note, Simon claims the regulation was never used by the British against Jews. But there are two  Wikipedia articles that contradict him, referring to The Sergeants Affair, where, in retaliation for the execution of 3 members of the Irgun, the Irgun killed two British sergeants.

According to the article on Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine, referring to the book Terror Out of Zion by Bowyer J. Bell:
The British reacted by arresting 35 Jewish political leaders including the mayors of Tel Aviv, Netanya, and Ramat Gan and held them without trial, the Revisionist Zionist youth movement Betar was banned and its headquarters was raided, and the army was authorised to punitively demolish Jewish homes, with a Jewish home in Jerusalem demolished on August 5 after an arms cache was discovered there during a routine search.
The article The Sergeants affair uses a different source, Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947, by Bruce Hoffman:
Cunningham authorized the British Army to begin demolishing Jewish homes, a tactic it had previously failed to use during the Jewish insurgency. A Jewish home where an arms cache had been discovered in a routine search was demolished in Jerusalem on 5 August.

As to the unequal application of the regulation between Arabs and Jews by the British, issues of politics and publicity were likely the reason.

That leads to an issue raised by Gideon Levy in the current application of the law to the Shalabi home, in his article for Ha'aretz, Israel razed a Palestinian mansion as collective punishment, U.S. intervention be damned:

And hardly anyone protests. Not even when there’s a punishment implemented in the manner of an apartheid state: The Jewish terrorist whose family’s home is demolished has yet to be born. The homes of the murderers of the Dawabsheh family and of the teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir – like the homes of Ami Popper, Haggai Segal and others of their ilk – stand proudly intact. But the home of the Shalabi family in the affluent West Bank town of Turmus Ayya, north of Ramallah, was demolished last week.

Let the Israeli government address the issue of their application of this regulation. But it should be pointed out that over the years the Israeli Supreme Court has gone to great lengths to limit this law. Also, there is a distinction to be made between attacks by Arabs done to undermine the state and attacks by Jews that are hate crimes and are no less deserving of punishment. Also, as pointed out below, by its very nature this law is British penal law -- and so can only be applied in the "West Bank"  as local law and has no basis for application within Israel itself.

Levy also deliberately labels the demolition of homes as collective punishment, which the Israeli government has made a point of saying is not the purpose of the law.

Levy is not alone in this.

Similarly, in its criticism of house demolitions, the US also mischaracterizes the measure as collective punishment:

“We attach a good deal of priority to this, knowing that the home of an entire family shouldn’t be demolished for the action of one individual,” [State Department Spokesman] Price said when asked about the matter at a daily press briefing, adding that the US would continue to raise its concerns “as long as this practice continues.” [emphasis added]

Similarly, a spokesperson for the US Embassy in Israel said that

the home of an entire family should not be demolished for the actions of one individual.

According to the Israeli government, the point of the house demolitions is deterrence, and it defends the legal application of the law -- relying in part on the fact it was British law in Mandate Palestine.

According to Simon, in 1971, the then-Attorney General Meir Shamgar gave two supports for the use of Article 119 in accordance with International Law. First:
The Demolitions are based on Regulation 119 of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations, 1945, which are part and parcel of the penal law in the West Bank and Gaza.... Article 64 of the [Geneva] Convention leaves the penal provisions of the local law intact insofar as the local law includes rules permitting demolition.
In addition,
[Shamgar] asserted that the practice falls within the legal boundaries of Article 53 of the Geneva Convention, which makes an exception to the prohibition on destruction of private property under circumstances of absolute military necessity:
It is necessary to create effective military reaction. The measure under discussion is of utmost deterrent importance, especially in a country where capital punishment is not used against terrorists killing women and children.... In conclusion, it appears that even if Regulation 119 . . .is regarded as suspended, demolition can be based, in appropriate circumstances, on Article 53 of the Convention." [p. 18]
Obviously, this has not -- and will not -- put to rest the legal challenges to the policy, but it is important to keep in mind Israel's legal justifications.
 
But what good is a policy if it is not effective?
Again, this is mired in controversy.
 
In 2005, The New York Times reported in Israel Halts Decades-Old Practice of Demolishing Militants' Homes that Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz had ended the policy of home demolition, hinting that they were not an effective deterrent:
A military statement did not say why the policy was being changed, but the newspaper Haaretz reported on its Web site that Maj. Gen. Udi Shani, who headed a committee reviewing the matter, had challenged the existing military position that demolitions were an effective deterrent. It said he had concluded that the policy had caused Israel more harm than good by generating hatred among the Palestinians. [emphasis added].
The Wall Street Journal was more explicit, reporting that a military study had advised against continuing the practice “after finding demolitions didn’t deter potential attackers.”
 
Yishai Schwartz wrote in 2014 in The New Republic, an article entitled Israel Destroys Homes to Deter Terrorists. A New Study Says It Works—But Is It Moral?  In it, he notes that the accepted 'rumor' that Israel ended demolitions because they were not effective -- is not based on fact.
 
Schwartz spoke to Amos Harel, who wrote the Ha'aretz article referenced by The New York Times article:
Amos Harel, told me that the committee wasn't primarily intended as an objective evaluator, but as professional cover for the political echelon’s decision. Its recommendation—to end the demolitions—was largely a foregone conclusion.
More importantly, a report in 2014 indicates that house demolitions in fact do have a deterrence effect on terrorism. 
In 2008, Efraim Benmelech, a professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and Hebrew University economists Claude Berrebi and Esteban Klor began to collect data on all house demolitions and suicide attacks between 2000 and 2005, relying on Palestinian sources, human rights group B’tzelem, and publicly available Israeli security information (Benmelech says they received “zero help from any government agency”)...
The authors distinguished between “punitive demolitions” (those that target the homes of terror operatives) and “precautionary demolitions” (those justified by a home’s location, for instance posing particular danger of housing sniper fire)...

Precautionary demolitions resulted in a significant increase in suicide attacks, a “48.7 percent increase in the number of suicide terrorists from an average district,” according to the study. By contrast, punitive demolitions led to a significant decrease in terror attacks, between 11.7 and 14.9 percent, in the months immediately following the demolition. [emphasis added]
According to the abstract in the introduction to the actual report, Counter-Suicide-Terrorism: Evidence from House Demolitions:
...punitive house demolitions (those targeting Palestinian suicide terrorists and terror operatives) cause an immediate, significant decrease in the number of suicide attacks. In contrast, Palestinian fatalities do not have a consistent effect on suicide terror attacks, while curfews and precautionary house demolitions (demolitions justified by the location of the house but unrelated to the identity of the house's owner) cause a significant increase in the number of suicide attacks. The results support the view that selective violence is an effective tool to combat terrorist groups and that indiscriminate violence backfires.
This goes beyond dissuading potential terrorists themselves who would not want to be responsible for causing problems for their families. In addition, those who become aware of would-be terrorists in their family are also motivated to act, as Schwartz writes:
But even if the demolitions didn’t deter the terrorist himself, Israeli officials also believe the threat will motivate friends and family members to dissuade or turn in the would-be terrorist. Shaul Shay, head of terrorism studies at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and a former deputy head of the Israeli Security Council, told me that he had seen “several examples where [families of a terrorist] tried to convince their relatives, or came to the Israeli authorities saying, ‘better that my son is in jail than in the grave.’” [emphasis added]
But that leads to still more controversy: is an 11.7 - 14.9% decrease enough to justify house demolitions?
 
Of the 3 analysts who wrote this report, one refused to address that question, another said it does -- but only in combination with a carrot as well as the stick -- and the third said the decrease was not enough to justify the practice.
 
One possible counter-argument to that last opinion is to note that the 11.7 - 14.9% decrease would include the potential for more than just one individual victim in each case, thus amounting to many more lives being saved. 
 
One last point.
 
The regulation itself can also be seen as a counter-cultural deterrent to the pay-to-slay policy of the Palestinian Authority and the culture it creates.
 
...demolitions were a necessary deterrent to offset “a culture of support within Palestinian society,” citing a report showing that the Palestinian Authority paid families of what it calls martyrs nearly $7 million in 2011.
Moreover, the logic of the policy goes, family members of terrorists would be more keen to “keep an eye” on potential terrorists in order to avoid the demolition of the family house (a consideration which may offset the social prestige enjoyed by families of so-called “martyrs” in Palestinian society). [emphasis added]
That in itself does not justify using house demolitions, but it may be a benefit.
One more controversial point among many when discussing these house demolitions.
  • Thursday, August 12, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon

HRW's report on Gaza rockets is nothing but a whitewash - of @HRW's bias against Israel. (And even this report is biased against Israel.)

After every Gaza conflict, Human Rights Watch issues massive (and usually multiple) reports accusing Israel of war crimes - and then a perfunctory report saying, yes, Palestinian armed groups may have also committed war crimes by shooting thousands of rockets towards Israeli civilian centers.

The May 2021 conflict is no exception. 

Human Rights Watch now has something that they can point to in order to claim that they are objective observers and not anti-Israel fanatics. 

Their whitewash report on Gaza rockets itself betrays their bias - against Israel.

For example:
In late July, Human Rights Watch reported on Israeli strikes in Gaza in May that accounted for 62 of the 129 or more Palestinian civilians who, according to the United Nations, were killed in Israeli strikes. Human Rights Watch found that these attacks violated the laws of war and amount to apparent war crimes. Human Rights Watch will soon release a report on Israeli airstrikes that destroyed or extensively damaged four high-rise towers in Gaza.
HRW always finds multiple angles to release multiple anti-Israel reports, but when it comes to Hamas and other terror groups - only the rockets. Its bias is clear when you look at the war crimes of Gaza groups that they don't report.

Nothing about Hamas using Gazans as human shields - in fact, HRW has issued different definitions of human shielding for Hamas and other international players to exonerate Hamas from that war crime.

Nothing about Gaza groups employing children as soldiers.

Even this report on Gaza rockets doesn't mention that they targeted Kerem Shalom, the main source for imports to Gaza, hurting their own people.

And this Gaza rocket report doesn't say a word about Hamas and other groups shooting rockets from civilian areas.




More bias is apparent in HRW's capsule summary of the events in May:

The May 2021 fighting followed efforts by Jewish settler groups to evict and confiscate the property of longtime Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem. Palestinians held demonstrations around East Jerusalem, and Israeli security forces fired teargas, stun grenades, and rubber-coated steel bullets, injuring hundreds of Palestinians.

On May 10, Palestinian armed groups in Gaza started to launch rockets toward Israeli population centers. The Israeli military carried out attacks in the densely populated Gaza Strip with missiles, rockets, and artillery. Many of the attacks by the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups used explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas. A ceasefire between the warring parties went into effect on May 21.
According to HRW, the fighting started in Jerusalem, and Hamas' claims that they shot hundreds of rockets to Israel in order to "defend" Jerusalem has validity. HRW believes Hamas statements, no matter how absurd.

The war started with Hamas rockets at Israeli civilians. But for  HRW, Israel always starts the war, and the facts must be twisted until they fit that narrative.

Note also that HRW doesn't mention any violence by the Palestinian protesters in Jerusalem - and elsewhere in Israel - before the war. Only Israelis are violent.

Beyond that, only Gaza is described as "densely populated" - even though Hamas rockets were aimed at Tel Aviv, which has a higher population density than the Gaza Strip.

Israel chooses weapons very specifically to avoid injuries to civilians, using the smallest possible explosive when targeting, for example, terrorists on a motorcycle. Hamas rockets are designed to spread as much damage as possible. HRW's equating the two is perverted.

This is the pattern of bias of HRW.

Also, while the Human Rights Watch report investigated one rocket that fell short in Gaza that killed seven people, it didn't investigate the multiple reports of other rocket fire that fell short and killed Gazans. Nor did it investigate other evidence of Hamas rockets falling short, like this classroom that Hamas pretended was hit by Israeli fire while the spray patterns indicate that it was a Gaza rocket.


When it comes to Israel, HRW goes out of its way to maximize its accusations. When it comes to Hamas, HRW goes out of its way to minimize them.

One other interesting observation from HRW's reports:

When an eyewitness in Gaza supports the Hamas narrative, their names are used. When they contradict the Hamas narrative, they are anonymous.

In the first report on Israel's alleged war crimes, buried deep in the report, HRW mentions:
One civilian living in the immediate area of the attack, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Human Rights Watch that a member of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, was in the building at the time of the attack. 
In this report, HRW again does not mention the names of those interviewed in Gaza about the single rocket among nearly 700 that fell short that was investigated:

The wife of one of those killed said:

[My husband] ...told me he wouldn’t be delayed, as he was feeling tired. But he never came back.  

A local shop owner said:

People were gathering [on the street] watching the rockets in the sky. I saw a rocket spinning in the air and then it came down and exploded, about 10 meters from where I was standing. There was smoke. I saw the dead and injured. I couldn’t stand what I saw. I broke down.… I saw a child, Mohammed Shaban, whose eyes were bleeding.

A relative of another person killed said:

At about 6 p.m. I was standing near the entrance to the local market on Martyr Salah Dardona Street....Suddenly, I heard a barrage of rockets being fired and I looked up and saw them rise in the air. I saw one rocket rising in the shape of a spiral and then it came down in the middle of the street about 10 meters from where I was standing.
HRW doesn't mention that the reason that people want to remain anonymous it because if they gave their names, Hamas would persecute them. Furthermore, it never mentions the possibility that the "witnesses" it interviewed about Israeli airstrikes might be purposefully saying what Hamas wants them to say, which may prompt them to make highly improbable statements like seeing a high speed missile explode only one meter above the ground from meters away and not saying that it appeared to be a militant rocket.

The fact that Gaza civilians are afraid to talk freely to reporters and investigators is itself evidence of Hamas violations of human rights. But instead of calling this out, HRW meekly accedes to Hamas' dictates.

One other major difference between Human Rights Watch's anti-Israel reports and this whitewash report: 

HRW assumes that anything an Israeli official says is a lie. If Israel says that they were targeting a tunnel or a weapons cache or a Hamas leader, if HRW's crack team of militarily ignorant researchers cannot find their own corroboration, they will accuse Israel of not telling the truth. This assumption reaches almost comical proportions when HRW claims that there were no tunnels under the streets that Israel methodically bombed even when the evidence is apparent.


But when it comes to Hamas, HRW does not accuse them of lying. Hamas proudly admits that it targets Israeli civilian centers, so when HRW accuses Hamas of war crimes, they are not going beyond anything Hamas itself says. It doesn't investigate to contradict Hamas claims but to prove them.

HRW officials will point to this report as evidence that they take Hamas war crimes seriously. In fact, it is only proof that they take criticism of their overwhelming anti-Israel bias - which erodes their reputation - seriously.

It is a license for them to publish their next ten anti-Israel screeds.





  • Thursday, August 12, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon

A unusual story from Gaza - because it is normal




I read Palestinian news sites every day and see the crazy, funhouse mirror world that they live and think in.

Today I saw something normal - which makes it extraordinary.

The Association for Culture and Free Thought, in Khan Yunis, is organizing a summer camp for children in cooperation with the Research and Astronomy Center of Al-Aqsa University in Gaza called "Adventures in Astronomy".

The kids learn astronomy and have access to a large telescope to use in the evenings.

The camp coordinator, Youssef Daher, says the camp "aims to develop the scientific, cognitive and astronomical skills of a segment of Gaza children, and to alleviate the scientific gap that exists between them and scientific development outside Palestine."

I looked up the Association for Culture and Free Thought. It was set up by a group of women in Gaza who were sick of how everything Palestinian kids are exposed to is politicized. They want Palestinian kids to have normal lives, protected from danger - not exposed to it as Hamas and Islamic Jihad camps do. They want kids to learn and thrive.

They aren't Zionists - they partially blame the "occupation" for kids' problems in Gaza. But they are clearly not fans of Hamas and the terror groups that dominate everyday life in Gaza, either. 

They want kids to have a chance to be curious and grow. This astronomy camp is just one of their initiatives.

What is remarkable is that this is so unusual. If most Palestinians would act like these brave women that started this center, instead of growing up with  singleminded hate, there would be peace.







Wednesday, August 11, 2021

08/11 Links Pt2: Bret Stephens: The Cheap & Easy Sanctimony of Ben & Jerry; WaPo Finds a Way to Blame Trump for Rashida Tlaib’s Antisemitism; Building Israel’s Dust City

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: The Cheap & Easy Sanctimony of Ben & Jerry
The decision also called attention to the fact, unmentioned by Cohen and Greenfield, that the supposedly independent Ben & Jerry’s board that exists to handle its social mission was in no hurry to bless Unilever’s pledge to keep doing business in Israel.

On the contrary: the Ben & Jerry’s board chair, Anuradha Mittal, is publicly furious with Unilever. NBC News reported that her board tried to put out a different statement “that made no reference to continued sales in Israel,” but that “Unilever released the statement against the wishes of the board.”

As for Unilever, it will be hard-pressed to honor its promise to stay in Israel while keeping out of the West Bank, since Israeli law forbids companies from operating that way. It will also have to seek approval from the ticked-off Ben & Jerry’s board for a new Israeli licensee once the current contract expires next year.

So much for Cohen and Greenfield bravely honoring the principle to distinguish between the West Bank and Israel. What we really have is a feckless political gesture, a corporate fiasco, a de facto boycott of the Jewish state, an enraged Israeli government, and a handful of customers who won’t get their Chunky Monkey cravings satisfied. Just how any of this translates into peace or justice, much less ending “the occupation,” is anyone’s guess.

In his book, Ramaswamy asks, “How did we come to this farcical point where your politics chooses your sandwiches”— or ice cream? “I’m tempted to say that nothing is sacred anymore, but America’s problem is actually the opposite: Nothing is allowed to be ordinary anymore.”

To have to write a whole column about the Ben & Jerry’s founders’ personal political views shouldn’t be necessary. Too bad their sanctimonious, inept, and dishonest attempt at foreign policy makes it so.
Daniel Gordis: The Bearable Heaviness of Being (Alone)
Ice cream boycotts themselves aren’t very high stakes. We can live without Chubby Hubby. Yet ice cream boycotts are a potential harbinger of much worse, still to come. If boycotting Israel gets to be in vogue, this could spread. What if it comes to include airlines? Tech companies? Those Israelis and others applauding the boycott because it applies “only” to the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” ought to ask themselves—given that there’s no obvious policy alternative at the moment (though there is much that Israel can and should do to make Palestinian life easier and better)—whether that’s fire they really want to play with.

The boycott has gotten all the attention in Israel that it has because it’s a reminder of the fundamental loneliness that often lies at the heart of Israeliness. It’s a reminder that a thriving economy, insanely successful tech sector, world class health care, superb universities, Tel Aviv being one of the most LGBT-friendly cities in the world, Jewish cultural creativity exploding in ways that are hard to fathom, Jews in Israel being physically safer than ever before and much more all notwithstanding, it weighs on you, this knowledge that you live in the only country in the world about which there has been—even before it declared independence—a consensus that the world might be better off if you didn’t exist.

As was noted this week in Tokyo, it took 49 years for the Olympics to formally honor the dead Israeli athletes murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Is there any other country that would have had to wait half a century?

Obviously not.

Only one country.
Former Ben and Jerry’s Employee Says Anti-Israel Activist Spoke to Board Ahead of Boycott Decision
A former longtime Ben & Jerry's employee said the company's decision to boycott Israel was based on advice from a BDS activist who was expelled from Israel for spearheading economic pressure campaigns against the Jewish state.

Susannah Levin, who spent 21 years as a freelance graphic designer for Ben & Jerry's before resigning last month over the company's decision to halt its sales in the West Bank, said the company's board consulted with Human Rights Watch's Israel-Palestine director Omar Shakir, an advocate of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement who accused the Jewish state of "crimes against humanity."

"Omar Shakir spoke directly to the board," said Levin in an interview with Israel's Channel 2 radio on Tuesday. "He wrote the Human Rights Watch report, [which] is what they were basing their information on. It's a report that accuses Israel of apartheid."

"They believed him to be a valid source of information about Israel," she added.

Ben & Jerry's has come under scrutiny for its involvement with anti-Israel activists. The company recently hosted a conference call with anti-Zionist writer Peter Beinart, who has said he supports the destruction of the Jewish state, to address concerns about the boycott from its franchise owners, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Ben & Jerry's declined to comment on Shakir's alleged involvement with its board. Human Rights Watch did not respond to a request for comment.

Shakir was deported from Israel in 2019 due to his attempts to pressure various companies and international organizations, including FIFA, to join boycotts against homes and businesses in contested parts of Israel. He took credit for Airbnb's decision to bar Israelis in the West Bank from renting their homes on the site in 2018. The rental service later backtracked in the face of legal challenges.

Antisemitism and the Jewish State (Vic Rosenthal)

(Judean Rose is taking off for several weeks.)


abuyehuda

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal


Jews have always been a minority in their temporary diasporic homes, and so they have usually been at the mercy of antisemites. If at a given time and place they are not actively persecuted, the possibility of persecution always remains, as European and even American Jews are rediscovering today. The commandment to keep one’s suitcase packed is no less apt today than in previous centuries.

Despite the heartwarming (but illusory) feeling of a worldwide solidarity of good people engendered by Yair Lapid’s recent remarks that antisemitism is just a particular form of a much more general collection of religious, ethnic, racial (etc.) hatreds that all those of good will should decry, the pervasiveness of antisemitism over the millennia and its shape-shifting nature show that it is indeed sui generis, a thing by itself. And we learned from the Holocaust that the Jewish people ultimately must stand alone against it.

Early Zionists like Moses Hess, Leo Pinsker, A. D. Gordon, and of course Theodor Herzl thought that the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty would remove much of the basis for antisemitism, by ending the parasitic economic life of diaspora Jews and restoring to them their self-respect as productive beings. The world had forgotten that the Jews had a homeland and saw them only as a people who belonged nowhere, and who were permanently aliens no matter how long they lived in a particular place. Of course the Jews themselves never forgot, but that only added to their foreign and exotic nature in the eyes of their hosts.

Gordon thought that through the labor involved in the creation of a self-sufficient state, the Jewish people could be fundamentally changed. With the removal of the restrictions of the diaspora, Jews could now engage in truly productive work, especially agriculture, which would create a “new Jew,” a strong, self-reliant one, different from the cringing targets of diasporic pogroms. A Jew that for once knew how to defend himself! The socialist kibbutz movements that actualized Gordon’s program did in fact create such a Jew (although the loss of Jewish tradition and spiritual motivation that followed did not serve the state well. But that’s another story). Once the Jews became an “ordinary” people, with an ordinary homeland containing Jewish police and Jewish prostitutes, it was expected that antisemitism would die out.

Today Israel has plenty of both police and prostitutes. But antisemitism did not die with the reestablishment of a sovereign Jewish state. It simply mutated, and today its virulent “Delta Variant” is the extreme, irrational, obsessive hatred of the Jewish state that I’ve called misoziony. Hand in hand with traditional religious, racial, and political antisemitism, misoziony became a useful tool for Islamic dictatorships and other anti-Western forces. In particular, the Soviet Union invested a great deal of ingenuity employing it as a tool to develop an anti-American (and of course anti-Israel) bloc in the UN. Today, various forms of antisemitism permeate the world.

Imagine that it were possible to assemble Bogdan Chmielnicki, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Louis Farrakhan, Ismail Haniyeh, Jeremy Corbyn, Rashida Tlaib, Lara Friedman, and Gideon Levy in one room. Antisemites all, albeit of greater or lesser import. They would agree about very little except the vileness of the Jewish people. Their followers and their ideas are everywhere; the initial impetus by the KGB in the 1960s and 70s set fire to latent Jew-hatred whose overt manifestation today is so shocking to those who don’t know the history of the Jewish people.
Most initiatives to “fight antisemitism” rely on some form of educational enterprise. These are doomed to fail, especially “Holocaust education,” which is intended to make people behave better toward Jews by making them feel sorry for them. Psychologically, this has the opposite effect, causing subjects to distance themselves from Jews. Antisemites respond that the Holocaust is either a Jewish lie, or if it did happen, it was because Jewish behavior precipitated it, and they are encouraged by Hitler’s partial success and want to finish the job. They add that Jews are like Nazis. Misozionists insist absurdly that their “criticism of Israel” is different from antisemitism rather than a mutant form of it. They add that Israelis are like Nazis.
Misozionists will also say that the existence of the state is the whole problem. If Israel didn’t exist, there would be no conflict, no terrorism, no hatred. I point to the entire history of the Jewish people prior to 1948 as a counterexample.

One thing that has been learned is that Jews cannot end antisemitism by improving themselves, either by involvement in “social justice” activities to help other oppressed groups (many of whose members don’t like Jews much anyway), or by becoming “new Jews” who drive tractors and milk cows rather than lending money.

Bari Weiss wrote a book called “How to fight Antisemitism.” I liked the book, but the title is a poor one. The enemy is not “antisemitism;” it is antisemites. There is only one way to “fight antisemitism” and that is to instill enough respect for – and fear of – Jewish power in antisemites to deter them from their anti-Jewish activities. The ideology can die out on its own (or not, we don’t care). The real enemy is not an abstract ideology, but concrete and specific: we and they know who they are.

And that is why a Jewish state, even though the fact of its existence does not itself prevent antisemitism, is invaluable in ending it. A stateless people is a powerless one, and the use of power is the best remedy for Jew-hatred. The Jewish state has bombed nuclear reactors in enemy countries, and Israel’s covert services have arrested or killed terrorists all over the world. Jewish police protect Jews in Israel from terrorism, and Jewish diplomacy, backed by military and economic power, can defend them in the diaspora. Ultimately, persecuted Jews can go to the Jewish state; indeed, Israel has preemptively rescued Jewish populations in danger in places like Ethiopia and Yemen.

If there is a problem, it is that too many Israelis have forgotten Jewish history and even the history of their state. They think that now we are a “normal” people in a “normal” state, and so we can relax and live normal lives. We aren’t and we can’t. Our state has a unique responsibility: to protect and nurture our people in a hostile world.

  • Wednesday, August 11, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon

Hamas blocks UNRWA from inspecting a school with a tunnel underneath it




In June, UNRWA issued a press release:

With no advanced warning, between 13 and 15 May 2021, the Israeli Air Force conducted strikes that caused damage to UNRWA installations, most notably to the UNRWA Zaitoun Preparatory Boys’ School “A” and Elementary Boys’ School “A”...The strike calls into question respect for the fundamental principle of inviolability. Thankfully, no displaced persons were inside the school at the time of the strike and no physical injuries were caused.

While investigating how to secure the building from the missiles, a detailed assessment on 31 May 2021 revealed what appears to be a cavity and a possible tunnel, at the location of the missile strike. The depth of the cavity is approximately 7.5 meters below the surface of the school. UNRWA discovered the existence of a possible tunnel in the context of the investigation of the fired missiles. There is no indication of the existence of any entry or exit points for the tunnel within the premises.
Clearly, Israel struck a valid military target, after ensuring that there were no civilians. This is completely legal under international law.

UNRWA wanted to check to see if the school was in further danger from Hamas. The answer is clearly yes:

Hamas has prevented UN bomb disposal experts from inspecting a Palestinian refugee agency school in the Gaza Strip under which a tunnel dug by the terror group was uncovered during fighting in May, the Kan public broadcaster reported Tuesday.

The team was asked by the UN Relief and Works Agency to make sure that its Zaitoun Preparatory Boys’ School was safe for students to return to with the upcoming start of the new academic year. The experts were to ensure that no unexploded munitions were in the compound, left over from the fighting between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas.

Sources in the Gaza Strip said that the experts arrived at the compound, but when Hamas learned of the development, it swiftly sent police to block them and order them to immediately leave.
Hamas chose to build the tunnel, and almost certainly hide weapons, under the school.

UNRWA issued a letter of protest.




08/11 Links Pt1: Hamas Bars UN Inspectors From Examining Tunnel Under UNRWA School in Gaza; The bombing of Sbarro’s and why Oslo failed; Beinart Started Out as a Critic of Israel, Now He Wants It Dead

From Ian:

‘UNRWA is missing the point entirely’
UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer responded to UNRWA’s statement in which it announced a probe into alleged anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias by its staffers which was exposed in a UN Watch report.

“UNRWA’s reply misses the point entirely. If the agency employs dozens of teachers and school principals who quote Hitler and praise Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist attacks, the issue isn’t their social media posts and their so-called ‘neutrality breaches,’ but rather the fact that UNRWA’s education system is repeatedly hiring and putting in the classroom teachers that admire Hitler and propagate hatred and terrorism,” explained Neuer.

“Deleting a post on Facebook does not remove the hate in those teachers’ hearts and minds. It does not solve the problem. And claiming, as UNRWA does in its response, that certain teachers were not employed with UNRWA at the time that they advocated racism or terrorism is equally beside the point. Palestinian children deserve to be fully protected from teachers of hatred and racism. Zero tolerance in schools means you remove racists from the classroom, period,” he added.

“We regret that UNRWA is trying to kill the messenger by maliciously attacking UN Watch for vetting their teachers regarding racism and terrorism, a minimal form of oversight that the agency itself has failed to exercise. UNRWA slanderously accuses us of ‘unfounded and politically-driven assertions,’ yet it fails to cite a single example. By contrast, UN Watch’s series of reports, including our new list of more than 100 UNRWA staffers guilty of incitement, are replete with supporting factual evidence in footnotes, links and screenshots,” continued Neuer.


Hamas Bars UN Inspectors From Examining Tunnel Under UNRWA School in Gaza
Hamas prevented a team of United Nations inspectors from examining a tunnel discovered in June under a school in Gaza city’s Zaitoun neighborhood, Israel’s Kan news reported on Tuesday.

Citing Palestinian sources, the report stated that a UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) bomb-disposal unit had arrived at the site a few days ago at the request of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which runs the school.

Upon learning of the presence of UNMAS inspectors, Hamas police arrived on the scene and forced them to leave.

As a result, the UNMAS team canceled plans to inspect another UNRWA-run school, this one in Rafah, under which there is reportedly also a Hamas tunnel, according to the report.

In the absence of safety inspections, the schools will not be able to open next week as scheduled.

In response, Israeli Ambassador to the UN (and outgoing ambassador to the United States) Gilad Erdan tweeted: “I’ve demanded that the UN Secretary-General & Director General of @UNRWA investigate this incident & all UNRWA facilities in Gaza to ensure that they are not being used by Hamas for terror. 4,000 Palestinian kids can’t go to school because of Hamas! The international community cannot ignore Hamas’s heinous human rights violations & the state of terror it inflicts on Gazans. Hamas is a terror organization that uses innocents & children as hostages & human shields.”


Human Rights Watch and its Tunnel Deceptions
Contrast this with claims by Human Rights Watch that they were apparently able to investigate and found no evidence for Israel’s tunnel claims:
The Israeli military has presented no information that would demonstrate the existence of tunnels or an underground command center in this vicinity … Human Rights Watch did not find any evidence of a military target at or near the site of the airstrikes, including tunnels or an underground command center under al-Wahda street or buildings nearby.

So we are to believe that Hamas prevents the UN from searching for tunnels under UN schools in Gaza, but they allowed Human Rights Watch to search wherever they wanted? Or when HRW says they found no evidence is that because they never actually looked for evidence? Or is it just that Hamas trusts HRW more than they trust the UN?

The bottom line is that when it comes to Israel, Human Rights Watch is less credible even than the United Nations, and that is a truly low bar.
  • Wednesday, August 11, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon

Palestinian envoy to Greece spouts antisemitism at an "anti-racism" festival




The Greek city of Kalamata hosted it s tenth annual Anti-Racist and Anti-Fascist Festival on July 24 and 25. Photos of the event show lots of socialist graphics and literature and perhaps 200 people in attendance.

The first day of the festival had sessions on LGBTQ+, wind energy and Greek history. The second day featured the Palestinian envoy to Greece to give an anti-Israel speech. 

The speech by Marwan Toubassi was filled with clear lies and incitement against Israel as well as pure antisemitism.

He said:

 I come from a land where 100,000 Palestinians have been killed since 1948 and 1 million Palestinians have been imprisoned in Israel since 1967 and 1.5 million have been displaced from their homes and land. I come from a country where more than 60 organized massacres have taken place since the founding of the colonial state of Israel.

I come from a country that suffers from an ongoing holocaust.
Literally every word is a lie, and the use of the word "holocaust" is by any definition antisemitic.

But the Jew-hatred doesn't end there.

On this occasion, I would also like to mention some excerpts from the book by the President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, entitled "The Zionist Movement in Lenin's Writings", the first edition of which was published in 1979 and the second in 2011.

"Lenin believed that the continued exploitation of the Jewish question was in the interest of colonialism and that it achieved the goals of the Zionist movement, which feeds on this issue, moves it and benefits from it."

He goes on to say, "If world leaders had followed Lenin's example in their assessment and handling of the Jewish question, there would have been no Zionist movement and no colonial state of Israel, because, in short, Lenin believed that Jews they are not a nation and they do not have the components of a nation and they should live in the societies in which they existed hundreds or even thousands of years ago. "Lenin did not accept the declaration of separation between colonialism and imperialism on the one hand, and the Zionist movement on the other. "

Toubassi is quoting Mahmoud Abbas' book saying that the Jews aren't a people and they should not have a state. 

Denying Jewish peoplehood is antisemitism, and in this case it is part of a demand that Jews in the Middle East always remain as second class citizens under Muslim rule.

The irony of a featured guest spreading antisemitism at an "anti-racist" festival was somehow lost on the organizers and attendees.




An elevator for the disabled is called a "racist, Judaizing, colonialist,Talmudic crime" by the Palestinian Authority

The Palestinian ministry of foreign affairs issued a statement condemning Israel for doing...something..at the Cave of the Patriarchs, what they call the Ibrahimi Mosque. 

Nowhere in the entire press release does the ministry actually say what Israel is planning to do.

The mentality of the racist colonialism dominates the government in the occupying state and its various arms, and is embodied in its worst forms, with the operations of control, familyization and Judaization of the Ibrahimi Mosque, changing its historical, cultural, cultural and religious landmarks, and depriving the original owners of the land and Muslims from accessing it and praying in it. The occupation is one, its mentality is one, and its narrative is one, whether as it constantly appears in the oppression of Palestinian and Arab prisoners in prisons, or in the theft of Palestinian land and targeting the Palestinian presence through mass demolitions and forced displacement, or in the attempt to impose Israeli sovereignty and control over all the holy, archaeological and historical sites that are located in the heart of cities and Palestinian towns. As a result of this racist mentality, Palestinians are constantly paying high prices for the occupation’s complex crimes and violations. ....It is the mentality of Judaization and creeping annexation that denies the right of the Palestinian to his homeland and tries to change the parameters of the historical and legal reality to serve the Talmudic narrative of occupation, with the aim of replacing the political character of the conflict with the religious one.

The Ministry condemns in the strongest terms Israel's colonial attacks on the Ibrahimi Mosque and Christian and Islamic holy sites, and bears the Israeli government full and direct responsibility for this crime. The Ministry calls on UNESCO to defend its decisions and take the necessary practical measures to protect the Ibrahimi Mosque and return it to its historical and legal reality that was distorted and stolen by the occupation forces....
When the ministry says they want the Cave of the Patriarchs to "return to its historical and legal reality," they mean they want to revert to the days before 1967 when Jews were not allowed to visit the site altogether. 

So why did they issue this unhinged screed?

This is all about an elevator that Israel approved to be built to that handicapped people can access the holy site. Right now, anyone in a wheelchair needs to be physically carried up the ancient stone stairs to visit the site.

Israel unilaterally decided to build the elevator after many years of lobbying because the Palestinian Authority would never agree to anything like this. The human rights of the disabled would not even be considered as a factor. In fact, you will not find any supposedly liberal anti-Israel activist who supports the idea that Jews have the human right to visit the site freely, let alone that disabled people have the right to visit safely, because the imperative of being anti-Israel is much more important than mere human rights.

Arab media claim that this will be a Jewish-only elevator. Arab media is lying - the elevator is for all. But the hate that the Palestinians and their supporters have for Jews is far, far higher than their desire to allow even disabled Muslims to visit their own holy sites, as long as the plan also helps any Jews.

The main Palestinian argument is that this elevator and supporting infrastructure is using land that belongs to Arab Hebron and the Waqf, and therefore this violates agreements. But the Palestinians have also signed agreements saying that Jews should have free access to their holy places. No one seems to insist that they hold up those agreements. If they were a normal government that cared about human rights and peace, something could have been hammered out to allow wheelchair access for all back in 2003. 

When the PA uses language like "racist" and "colonialist" and "Talmudic" - one of their favorite epithets  - to describe an elevator to help the disabled, it proves yet again that this is all about hating Jews and denying Jews their rights. 





  • Wednesday, August 11, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon

A Gazan threatens to stab his 13 children to death if he doesn't get a job and medicine. He won't stab himself, just his kids.

Nabil Al-Jabri, who lives in Gaza, cannot find a job, and needs medicine for his son. 

He is a Hamas loyalist. He sent his kids to Hamas camp and shows off their souvenir trading-card style photos on his Facebook page.


He's no sexist though - he allows his daughter to pose with weapons, too, as in this photo posted this week.


As well as a son too young for the camp:





One of al-Jabri's sons had a medical condition and needs medicine. Al-Jabri himself seems to have a kidney ailment. He does not have a job and cannot afford the medicine needed. 

So he made a video to get Hamas' attention to get the medicine and possibly a job.

In the video, he didn't threaten to kill himself if he didn't get what he wanted. No - instead, he threatened to slaughter his 13 children. (He didn't mention the two wives he seems to have.)
On camera. 

With a knife.




The commenters are all very sympathetic. I didn't see one who said, "How can any decent father threaten to murder his own kids, even if it is meant to publicize his medical plight.

It seems his love of Hamas has paid off, because on Tuesday, he posted that he spoke with Hamas officials who assured him that things will work out, although they made no promises yet and negotiations are continuing.

This is a story about both how Hamas has no problem spending millions on weapons and tunnels, very little to help the people of Gaza, and only the people of Gaza who are on Hamas' side can expect some help. It is also the story of the sickness that so many Palestinians have where threatening their own children is not worth condemning. 






Tuesday, August 10, 2021

08/10 Links Pt2: Diaspora minister: ‘We may lose US’ if liberal Jews continue backing BDS, BLM; The bride is beautiful: An irresistible anti-Zionist story; When Hitler’s Mufti Gave a Press Conference

From Ian:

‘We may lose US’ if liberal Jews continue backing BDS, BLM — Diaspora minister
Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai warned last week that if liberal American Jews continue supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions and Black Lives Matter movements, Jerusalem may lose the support of the United States altogether.

Making a guest appearance on the American Jewish Committee’s People of the Pod podcast, Shai said he recently briefed fellow members of the Israeli government on the status of American Jewry, telling them that “if we see more of the radical left and progressive liberal Jews continuing to support BDS and Black Lives Matter, and similar to the Palestinians… relat[ing] to Israel as a genocide state or an apartheid state, we may lose America.”

Israel has long identified the BDS movement as a significant threat against which millions of dollars have been invested, but the lumping of the boycott movement together with the Black Lives Matter movement is less common.

Some major Jewish organizations in the US have expressed opposition to statements and positions made by some BLM activists. However, the movement has won the support of many US Jews, and the Anti-Defamation League has spoken out against portraying its supporters as “violent extremists.”

Over 600 Jewish organizations, representing the majority of American Jews, signed a letter in support of the Black Lives Matter movement that was published in a full-page New York Times ad in August 2020.

Shai said “there were ideas to rely on other groups in America today” for support, instead of American Jewry, but that he rejects such proposals. He appeared to be referring to recent remarks made by former Israeli ambassador to the US Ron Dermer who suggested that Israel should prioritize the “passionate and unequivocal” support of evangelical Christians over that of American Jews, who he said are “disproportionately among our critics.”
Israel Advocacy Movement: Are progressive Jews abandoning Israel?
The data suggests that Reform Jews are less likely to be emotionally attached to Israel than Orthodox Jews and more and more appear to take more hostile positions on Israel.

We explore whether this is the case and what can be done to strengthen the bond between Diaspora Jews and the State of Israel.

We're joined by Rabbi Haim Shalom, Rabbi Lea Mühlstein and Josh Howie (@joshxhowie)


75 years on, harsh British detention of Holocaust survivors in Cyprus remembered
After surviving the Holocaust, trekking the Alps in winter and crossing the Mediterranean in an overcrowded boat, Rose Lipszyc clearly remembers her months incarcerated in harsh British camps in Cyprus.

“After all that, we were back behind barbed wire again,” 92-year-old Lipszyc said, speaking 75 years after British soldiers began imprisoning Jews on the eastern Mediterranean island, dark events whose legacy resonates today.

Lipszyc’s family, from the Polish city of Lublin, were among the six million Jews the Nazis massacred during World War II.

She escaped death using false papers, working as a forced laborer in Germany.

After the war, she walked to Italy. Then, joining an exodus of thousands of traumatized refugees dreaming of a Jewish nation, Lipszyc boarded a rickety boat in Venice bound for British-run Palestine.

“There were 300 of us squeezed into the boat,” Lipszyc said. “We were like sardines.”

But as the shores of Palestine appeared on the horizon, two British warships powered out.

“The English soldiers — who I would have kissed the feet of for liberating me in Germany — were leaping into our little boat with batons,” she said, her voice trembling.
When Hitler’s Mufti Gave a Press Conference
By the 1960s, however, Husseini’s position had deteriorated considerably. Rejecting peace and any accommodation with Zionism, his forces had tried — and failed — to destroy Israel during its 1948 War of Independence. Husseini no longer had a great power patron and was reliant on support from Egypt and later Saudi Arabia. Nonetheless, he lived in comparative luxury with a retinue of staff, including a driver for his limousine, and constantly plotted against the Jewish state and the West.

Meir wanted Gideon Hausner, the Israeli Attorney General and prosecutor at Eichmann’s trial, to tie the infamous Nazi to Husseini, and thereby “link Israel’s Arab enemies to the Nazis.” Hausner had Avraham Zellinger, who did research for the trial, investigate the relationship between the two men. Zellinger found an entry in the Mufti’s diary which speaks of the “best of the Arab friends” with the name “Eichmann” written underneath it. But the court, Klagsbrun noted, “went no further than to recognize that Eichmann had met the Mufti once, with no evidence of a close relationship between them.”

It was against this backdrop that Amin al-Husseini held a March 4, 1961, press conference in Beirut. The Mufti, CIA cables reveal, “categorically denied any connection with the persecution of Jews in Germany during the Second World War.” He claimed that “all allegations in this respect were baseless and they were prompted by Zionists’ enmity toward him and the Palestinian national movement.”

The Mufti also distributed a statement in response to a recent book on Eichmann by the American journalist Quentin Reynolds, which alleged that Husseini had several contacts with the SS officer and had toured Nazi death camps. Husseini “said that he did not know Eichmann and that he had no connection whatsoever with him.” Further, “neither he nor any other Arab had plans in the past or at present to annihilate any race, Jews or others.” Husseini closed out the press conference by asserting that “what the Jews have done” in Israel “is similar to what the Nazis did to them in Germany” — a libel that is still echoed by antisemites today.

Husseini’s press conference was replete with lies.

Husseini was well aware of Hitler’s plans for European Jewry. Indeed, he hoped to replicate them in the Middle East.

In his own memoirs, the Mufti recorded a November 28, 1941, meeting with Hitler: “Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews.”

“The answer I got was: ‘The Jews are yours.’”

Many apologists, journalists, and academics spent decades denying that Husseini visited concentration camps, but in 2017, conclusive photographic evidence emerged showing Husseini touring the Trebbin camp near Berlin.
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