Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, August 20, 2021

Pretending to be a Zionist to attack the concept of a Jewish state

For decades, we have seen people who use their (real or constructed) Jewish identity to attempt to discredit Zionism.

But some of them hate Israel so much, they pretend to be Zionists in order to discredit Zionism!

Is it time for liberal Zionists, in the name of Zionism, to embrace the end of a sovereign Jewish state in Israel and instead seek the establishment of a binational one? Omri Boehm, an Israeli philosopher and associate professor at the New School for Social Research, believes so – making the case in his new book “Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel,” published this week by the prestigious New York Review Books imprint.

The book is an effort to reconcile Zionism with the diminishing prospects of a two-state solution. For decades, the Zionist left in Israel and its supporters in the Jewish Diaspora focused on the two-state solution as the only way to preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Israel’s current government, however, has no intention to advance that solution, as Foreign Minister Yair Lapid recently reminded the European Union’s foreign ministers.

Boehm argues in “Haifa Republic” that the two-state solution is now impossible to achieve, and adjures those looking to prevent an apartheid reality on the ground to think outside its confines.

The most significant conclusion he invites readers to recognize is that without a two-state solution, one must consider another option: a binational state.

Unlike most proponents of a single state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, Boehm foregrounds his binational proposal in Zionism.

We've looked at Omri Boehm before, and his positioning himself as a Zionist now doesn't exactly jive with his previous writings.

In 2016, in the New York Times, Boehm wrote that Zionism is "a political agenda rooted in the denial of liberal politics." He clearly opposed Zionism, saying that having a nation that defines itself as Jewish is a violation of a liberal standard he made up: that liberal countries must have American-style separation of church and state. Otherwise, Boehm asserts, Zionists are hypocrites.

Opposition to the Palestinians’ “right of return” is a matter of consensus among left and right Zionists because also liberal Zionists insist that Israel has the right to ensure that Jews constitute the ethnic majority in their country. But if you reject Zionism because you reject the double standard, organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or the Jewish Federations of North America would denounce you as anti-Semitic.

Boehm clearly rejects Zionism because of this false double standard - one that he that he defined. but that has no basis in reality.

Now he suddenly pretends to embrace Zionism - to make a faux-Zionist argument that a Jewish state must be replaced with a "binational" state with a Muslim majority that will limit Jewish rights!

This guy is a philosopher, but his logic consistently falls far short of the intellectual rigor of real philosophy.

Not surprisingly, Boehm is also an "as-a-Jew." He wrote another article where he cherry-picked Biblical sources out of context to assert, bizarrely, that Jews who consider Jerusalem to be a central component of Judaism are in fact akin to idol-worshippers.

He asserts this insane theory, which couldn't withstand the arguments of a fourth grade cheder student, "as a Jew."

This sham philosopher creates his Jewish persona to argue against Judaism just as he creates a Zionist persona to argue against Zionism. If his arguments had merit, he wouldn't need to resort to redefining himself as a "As-a". The argument from authority (argumentum ab auctoritate) is a basic logical fallacy - and in this case it is argument from false authority, since Boehm is clearly not an authority on either Zionism nor on Judaism but he claims such authority as implicit in his arguments.

The Guardian, August 28, 1924

In the 1920s, the notoriously antisemitic Mufti of Jerusalem - appointed by the British - built his power base by raising money in the Arab world for restoration of the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, which had fallen into disrepair under 400 years of Ottoman Muslim rule.

Part of his sales pitch was that the Jews intended to destroy the mosque to build a third Temple. He would take statements by rabbinic leaders in Palestine about the Messianic era and pretend that Jews were planning to demolish the structures on the Temple Mount.

This was a powerful message that the antisemitic Arab world eagerly accepted. It was the lie that was at the root of the deadly 1929 massacres of Jews.

The 1931 Muslim Congress in Jerusalem, led by the Mufti, neatly tied together his lie about the "Jewish designs" on Al Aqsa and his antisemitism, as he banned any Jewish reporters from covering the conference.

In 1967, the lie resumed, even though Israel could have (and should have) taken over complete control of the Temple Mount.

Arab political cartoons continue to push the lie that Israel plans to demolish Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, even though it has had the ability to do that for 54 years.

Every August 21, the lie reaches a fever pitch on the anniversary of the attack on Al Aqsa by mentally ill Australian Christian named Denis Michael Rohan.

Palestinian Arab media usually flatly lies and says that Rohan was Jewish and that this arson was part of a Zionist plot to destroy Al Aqsa.

This lie is a reliable means to inflame Arab passions, fueled by Arab antisemitism. It is especially useful when Palestinian leaders want to divert attention from their own failures and their own people's problems, by using their Jew-hatred as a political tool - just as the Mufti did a century ago.

Hamas will hold a mass rally at the Gaza fence tomorrow, using this anniversary as an excuse to fire up Gazans with hate. The Hamas Youth Department issued a statement:

The fires that have been ignited on the walls and sides of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque since 1969 have not yet been extinguished. The smell of black Zionist hatred is still wafting, and their intrigues are still waiting in Al-Aqsa Mosque to implement criminal plans against it, starting with the intention of the occupation to divide the mosque in time and space. up to the idea of demolishing it and erecting their alleged temple in its place.

The fire that was ignited was not, as the occupation claims, actually an anomaly from a crazy person. Rather, it is a systematic policy, and a firm vision adopted by the occupation since the first day that its unclean feet set foot on the pure land of our Jerusalem, so it set its sights on the project of the Judaization of Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem.

The narrative is that Palestinian "steadfastness" is what has kept the Jews from destroying the buildings so far, so the antisemitism must be stoked to "defend" Al Aqsa from an imaginary threat.

The entire history of the lie is tied to Jew-hatred.

Germany funding schools in Gaza that erase Jews

The Hashem Elementary School "A" in Gaza was built in 2017.

Here's its logo:

Obviously there is no room for Israel in this map - but that is what one would expect in Gaza. No big deal, right?

Except that its Facebook page shows this photo:

In the background the sign has the logo for KFW, which is a German state-owned investment and development bank.

I found a video from the school of an adorable girl in front of the same sign, where it says that the school was "Funded by the Federal Republic of Germany."

Germany is funding schools that erase the existence of Jews in the region.

Palestinian antisemitism is so accepted that the West doesn't even blink at things like this. But when they fund it, that is a completely different story.

Funders have influence. If Gaza schools want funding from Europe, they must agree to stop teaching hate. And if they refuse, then that means that they value teaching hate more than EU funds, which should be a valuable thing for European taxpayers to know.

08/19 Links Pt2: 30 Years Later: Remembering Crown Heights; From Anti-Semitic Agitator to Democratic Power Broker: The Preposterous Resurrection of Al Sharpton

From Ian:

30 Years Later: Remembering Crown Heights

Thirty years ago, anti-Semitic mobs plundered the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn for three days, chanting Nazi slogans, destroying Jewish homes and businesses, and lynching a young Jewish seminary student.

On the night of Aug. 19, 1991, a 22-year-old Orthodox Jewish man named Yosef Lifsh lost control of his car and skidded onto the sidewalk, killing a seven-year-old black boy named Gavin Cato and injuring his seven-year-old cousin. Rumors quickly spread that Lifsh had been intoxicated and that a private Jewish community ambulance service had treated Lifsh while refusing to treat the injured children—claims that were later determined to be false.

The neighborhood, which was majority black with a growing Orthodox Jewish minority, erupted in violence. Within hours of the boy’s death, 250 rioters descended on a Jewish religious school and set its van on fire. Mobs marched through the streets shouting "death to the Jews," smashing car windows, and beating Jewish pedestrians.

Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Jewish seminary student from Australia, was stabbed to death by rioters who shouted, "Let’s get the Jew!"

The police struggled to deal with the riots in the face of anti-law-enforcement sentiments in then-New York City mayor David Dinkins’s office and among city leadership. Department leaders "emphasized restraint, fearing that aggressive action would exacerbate already-strong feelings and make the police the focus of the crowds’ anger," according to a 656-page report on the riots compiled by Richard H. Girgenti under then-governor Mario Cuomo’s administration.

Police weren’t given helmets or shields, with the Brooklyn South chief explaining that this was "not our style of policing in New York City. We don’t use clubs or horses," according to the Girgenti report. One officer advised Jews to leave the neighborhood, telling Rabbi Joseph Spielman that the police were not able to "hold the street and guarantee the safety of the Jews in the area."

Without a strong police response, the riots raged on for three days as city leadership downplayed the unrest. Dinkins questioned whether Rosenbaum’s stabbing had anything to do with the riots, saying, "Whether that’s related, whether that’s retaliatory, I don’t know."

Self-proclaimed civil rights leaders stepped in to fan the flames. On the afternoon of Aug. 20, Al Sharpton showed up to address a growing crowd of black protesters in Crown Heights and called for the arrest of Lifsh, the Jewish driver who hit the 7-year-old boy. "We are on the verge of an explosion," threatened Sharpton, who claimed that "apartheid ambulance services" run by the Jewish community were responsible for the child’s death.

Hundreds of rioters pelted Chabad-Lubavitch’s headquarters with rocks and bottles, chanted "heil Hitler," and burned an Israeli flag. Mobs also looted businesses and firebombed a jewelry store as police looked on, under orders from department leadership to "stand fast and not take any action."

The Crown Heights Riot, In Context, Explained

The Crown Heights riot was hardly a spontaneous act in response to the tragic death of a child. In the days and weeks leading up to the fatal crash, black activists such as Leonard Jeffries Jr., a professor of black studies at City College of New York, had been priming the community for violence with their anti-Semitic tirades.

"Everyone knows rich Jews helped finance the slave trade," Jeffries said in a lecture delivered on July 20, 1991. He accused Jews of colluding with the Mafia to "put together a financial system of destruction of black people." Activists such as Sharpton aggressively defended Jeffries against charges of anti-Semitism. At a rally in Harlem just days before the riot broke out, Sharpton threatened his Jewish critics. "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house," he ranted.

Dozens of Jews were injured in the rioting, as were more than 150 police officers, some of whom reported being under orders to refrain from taking decisive action to quell the violence. A crackdown was ultimately carried out on the third day of rioting, after New York City mayor David Dinkins (D.) was confronted by a violent mob on his way to meet with Crown Heights community leaders and eight police officers were injured by a rooftop sniper.

By the time order was restored, at least 120 people had been arrested. Stores were looted, vehicles vandalized, and millions of dollars of property damage was inflicted upon the community. The Jewish residents of Crown Heights, already traumatized by the violence and destruction, were forced to watch as Sharpton and other charlatans stoked the fires of anti-Semitic hate.

The Last Acceptable Hate Crime

In New York’s Crown Heights neighborhood and nationwide, anti-Semitic violence is still common. Why is it taken for granted?

There is little physical evidence of the bloody history at the corner of President St. and Brooklyn Ave., where in 1991 a gang of young, black men surrounded, beat, and stabbed Yankel Rosenbaum to death. Today, the corner is home to a Christian school and a defunct children’s Yeshivah. The surrounding blocks are dotted with shuls and kosher restaurants, everything you would expect in a thriving Jewish neighborhood.

But the three-decade interlude has not brought an end to anti-Semitic attacks against Crown Heights’ residents. Since 2019, there have been 20 anti-Jewish hate crimes in the surrounding 71st precinct, the fourth most for any single NYPD precinct. That includes multiple incidents of aggressive harassment, three robberies, two assaults, and one instance of "terroristic threats." As before, gangs of roving teenagers still feel comfortable beating Jewish men in broad daylight.

Rosenbaum’s death, and the ensuing riots, ought to have been a watershed for anti-Semitic violence in America. But three decades later it remains commonplace, as this past summer saw renewed aggression against Jews from Crown Heights to Los Angeles. In spite of this spike, however, the reality of anti-Semitic crime continues to receive little notice. Even as tens of thousands rally against other forms of hatred, anti-Semitism remains the blind spot.

In New York, anti-Semitic hate crimes surged this summer after a year of abeyance, with over 120 offenses reported by the end of June. A recently released repeat offender attacked an Orthodox family with a knife; a minivan driver tried to run over five Hasidic men; and four synagogues were vandalized in the Riverdale neighborhood.

The uptick has many fearing a return to the pre-COVID status quo, when a wave of hate crimes made assaults on conspicuously Jewish New Yorkers a weekly or even daily occurrence. The violence culminated in two shocking attacks in the greater New York area: a shooting at a kosher grocery in Jersey City, which left six dead, and then a mass stabbing perpetrated in the home of a Hasidic rabbi in Monsey, N.Y.

Mayor Bill de Blasio responded to that surge by deploying more NYPD patrols and expanding anti-bias education in the city’s schools. Eric Adams, the city’s likely next mayor, has promised a "zero-tolerance" policy for all hate crimes, including anti-Semitic ones.

Many times, I have seen the families of terror victims take the tragedy and turn it into something beautiful , such as charity organizations or rehabilitation centers.

Here is an example that is much less ambitious but no less beautiful.

Two years ago, 17-year old Rina Shnerb was murdered by a PFLP terrorist with a roadside bomb exploded as she was hiking with her family.

Her friends embroidered a gorgeous wedding canopy - a chupah - in her memory, to be used by anyone who wants or needs one for their own happy occasion. One couple, Naama Ben Chaim and Alon Eliyad, just used this canopy for their outdoor wedding.

Under that chupah, a letter was read from the Shnerb parents:

Dear Naama and Alon,

When a baby is born we wish his parents: 'May she be merited to grow up with the Torah, the chupah and good deeds'. Thank God, we got to see Rina grow into Torah and good deeds. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see her at her chupah.

Thanks to you, and thanks to all the couples who get married under the 'Rina Chupah', we get to see a type of 'her chupah '.

The main theme of wedding and building a home is the continuity of the people of Israel. Rina didn't get that privilege, but the people of Israel have that privilege. It is a privilege that even though our enemies seek our destruction, to despair and weaken us, not only do we not fall, but we move forward, and with strength.

Another couple getting married, another home being built, Am Yisrael Chai!

We wish you that your home will be filled with the voices of rejoicing, jubilation, pleasure and delight, love and brotherhood, peace and friendship.

Mazal Tov!

The Schnerb family

Their beauty and strength is awe-inspiring.

If any couple in Israel wants to use this chupah, here is the information.

(h/t Sivan Rahan Meir)

Virus Forgot To Check Political Affiliation Of Person It Just Infected (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

COVID Tel Aviv, August 19 - A local pathogen confessed its chagrin today upon realizing that before invading the cells of its current host and hijacking their nucleic processes to produce more viruses, it neglected to examine the views and behavior of said host to determine whether it harbors conservative views, and therefore welcomes infection, or progressive views, in which case the pathogen must not enter.

SARS-CoV-19 unit Delta-M-Z99999933.9034594710 admitted its oversight in an interview Thursday, and expressed its regret that the process it has unleashed on the host's cells, mainly in the respiratory system, cannot be reversed.

"Listen, I'm sorry, whoever you are," the virus stated. "It's totally my bad. I know that I'm supposed to be a concern only when conservatives gather, but not when progressives do, and I flubbed this one. Unfortunately it's not up to me at this point, since all the little viruses I cloned can't tell the difference from the inside, and they're just going to do their thing. We can all hope the immune system in this host is robust enough to get this person through more or less unscathed, but obviously that's a big unknown at this early stage. Again, I'm sorry."

Mainstream media narratives have long treated conservative gatherings - both indoor and out - as super-spreader events demonstrating ignorance, selfishness, malice, or some combination of the three, whereas progressive events of a parallel nature - protests, riots, rallies, marches, speeches, even birthday parties - invite no such opprobrium, and even attract praise.

Health experts noted that the current case of a virus forgetting to determine its potential host's politics constitutes a rare exception. "Just look at the media coverage and you'll understand," explained Haaretz television critic Rogel Alpher. "All those months of marches and protests against Netanyahu were fine, because the virus knows whom to infect at such events. It's in the domestic setting, where most infections take place, that the virus has trouble distinguishing between correct and incorrect politics. Perhaps future mutations will evolve the ability to detect political orientation even in non-political contexts, but we cannot plan public health policy based on such an optimistic scenario."

Observers have noted a similar dynamic across the Atlantic, where American press coverage of conservative events always highlighted lack of adherence to conventional masking and distancing wisdom, as well as the shifting importance of COVID among thousands of illegal border-crossers depending on which party sits in government when the crossings, detentions, or releases take place, indicating COVID's politically-conscious vectoring.

08/19 Links Pt1: Can the West be honest about the Islamist threat?; The Worst Presidential Dereliction in Memory; The Biden Administration’s Vision of a Woke Taliban

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Can the West be honest about the Islamist threat?

That fact notwithstanding, since 2001, Americans have been preoccupied with the idea that Islamophobia is our greatest worry with respect to conflicts in the Middle East. But while any instance of prejudice against Muslims is deplorable, that has produced a mindset that has seemed to argue that anyone who speaks the truth about radical Islam and those who enable it are Islamophobes. Indeed, in one of the worst such instances, the Anti-Defamation League – the organization tasked with defending Jews against anti-Semitism – actually opposed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's nomination for the post.

They claimed that he was an Islamophobe because he called upon American Muslims to condemn acts of terror committed by Islamists. Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center also regularly smear those who are honest about the Islamist threat as bigots.

The left is preoccupied with criticisms of American conservatives with whom they have disagreements on many domestic political issues and whom they have falsely accused of waging a "war on women." And yet, liberal groups are curiously unenthusiastic about calling out those who are waging an actual war on women such as the government of Iran and other Islamists.

Just as some who deplore terrorism seem to exclude Palestinian terror against Israel from their concerns, the same people are more concerned that the Jewish state's liberal policies that ensure freedom for gays be used as a reason – what they call "pinkwashing" – to refute attacks on the legitimacy of Zionism.

The result is that discourse about the subject has become hopelessly distorted, and the misogyny, homophobia and anti-Semitism that is normative in most of the Muslim and Arab worlds is downplayed or ignored. That makes a mockery of any attempt to stir up advocacy for human rights in countries dominated by Islamists simply because to speak up exposes those who do so to false charges of prejudice.

The willingness of too many to give a pass to members of the left-wing congressional "Squad" because two of them are Muslims – Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) – for their anti-Semitism and relative silence about the fate of their co-religionists under the thumb of groups like the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah and their Iranian allies do more to undermine human-rights advocacy than anything said by their critics.

The fall of Afghanistan and the abandonment of its people to the tender mercies of Islamists are a reminder that the struggle against those who are a real threat to the rights of women and minorities must involve a frank discussion about what it is that we oppose and why. As long as we fail to note that the oppression that these illiberal groups promote is rooted in a popular version of their faith, we will fail to help those under their power and to prevent the further spread of this illiberal movement.

Durban IV: Take a Stand Against Hate

Noah Rothman: The Worst Presidential Dereliction in Memory

We have placed the fate of untold thousands of Americans and our Afghan allies in the hands of the Taliban. They dictate the terms and tempo of our operations. We depend on the Taliban to allow foreign nationals and credentialed Afghans into Hamid Karzai International Airport. According to what remains of the American diplomatic presence in Kabul, “the United States government cannot ensure safe passage” into the airport. We are dependent on the beneficence of a theocratic militia that has demonstrated no capacity for mercy. And the U.S. government has no intention of remedying this condition.

When pressed as to why America’s withdrawal strategy involved the sacrifice of the capable Bagram Airbase in favor of a much smaller commercial airport, Gen. Milley insisted that this was a better “tactical solution in accordance with the mission set that we were given and in accordance with getting the troops down to about a 600, 700 number.” In translation, either civilian or military leadership wanted the U.S. footprint in Afghanistan to be so small as to be incapable of defending an installation as large as Bagram, so it had to be abandoned. That has proven terribly insufficient to the scale of what we’re trying to pull off. So, we’re going to remedy the condition now that we have upward of 4,500 soldiers back on the ground facilitating evacuations, right? Wrong.

When pressed as to why the operation to retake Bagram and expedite the exfiltration of American personnel and allies isn’t already underway, Milley stumbled. “Good question,” he stuttered. “Great question. But I’m not going to discuss branches and sequels off of our current operation. I’ll just leave it at that.” We can assume that the mission to redeploy troops in numbers sufficient to get Americans out in a timely manner isn’t underway because Joe Biden will not authorize it.

Time is of the essence, but not because Americans in their untold thousands are trapped behind enemy lines, any one of whom could become a hostage that would tie the hands of policymakers in Washington. No, time is running out because Washington had set an artificial political timeframe for Afghan withdrawal, and they’re sticking to it. “We’re going to get everyone that we can possibly evacuate evacuated,” Austin meekly promised. “And I’ll do that as long as we possibly can until the clock runs out or we run out of capability.”

What a heart-stopping admission. Until that moment, your United States citizenship meant something. Now, however, it is something that entitles you to the protection of your government—a government that has put you in this jeopardy—only if our self-limited capabilities aren’t overextended and if it is conducive to the kind of news cycle the president wants.

Melanie Phillips: After America

Much deserved opprobrium has been heaped upon US President Joe Biden for his shameful remarks on Monday justifying his decision to cut and run from Afghanistan. He blamed everyone but himself for the Taliban’s expedited return to power, and accused the Afghan army — who have lost almost 70,000 soldiers fighting the Taliban — of having
collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight… American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves… We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.

Today, the Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat made an emotional and blistering speech in the House of Commons emergency debate. You can watch his speech here.

Tugendhat served in Afghanistan both as a soldier and as an adviser to the governor of Helmand province. He spoke about the soldiers who had died in Afghanistan, the good men he had watched going into the earth and who had taken with them “a part of all of us”. He said how proud he had been to be decorated by the American 82nd Airborne Division after the capture of Musa Qala in 2006. Making an effort to compose himself, he went on:
To see their Commander-in-Chief call into question the courage of men that I fought with, to claim that they ran; it’s shameful. Those who have never fought for the colours they fly should be careful about criticising those who have.

He went on to raise the issue that must now be preoccupying all who have depended upon the United States as the principal defender of the free world. For as I wrote here, the US has now shown itself to be a faithless ally and the weak link in that defence.

As a result, said Tugendhat, there was now a need to
reinvigorate our European NATO partners, to make sure we are not dependent on a single ally, on the decision of a single leader, but that we can work together with with Japan and Australia, France and Germany, with partners large and small and make sure that we hold the line together.

It was patience, he said, that had won the Cold War, achieved peace in Cyprus and brought prosperity to South Korea where America had stationed more than ten times the number of troops than it ever had in Afghanistan. He went on:
So let’s stop talking about “forever wars”. Let’s recognise that “forever peace” is bought not cheaply but hard, through determination and the will to endure. And the tragedy of Afghanistan is that we’re swapping that patient achievement for a second fire and a second war.

Ayyee.

He responds directly to Biden’s claim that supposedly cowardly and pathetic Afghans are to blame the Taliban takeover: “Those who have never fought for the colors they fly should be careful about criticizing those who have.”

British Parliament: "HEAR! HEAR!" https://t.co/Ai0MaDdYl7
— tsar becket adams (@BecketAdams) August 19, 2021

The Afghan gov't overthrown by Taliban never existed - ex-soldier

“They believed it because they had to; they couldn’t bring themselves to admit that this might not be real, it was just a sham,” said Graham Platner, who served in Iraq and then Afghanistan as a US soldier, and later as a security contractor. “Military officers are not trained to admit that maybe we can’t do this.”

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Platner reveals the deeply troubling levels of corruption, waste and myths that underpinned the US role in Afghanistan, and explains why the country fell to the Taliban in just a few days.

The Taliban captured their first provincial capital of Zaranj on August 7, and by August 15 they were in Kabul after President Ashraf Ghani had fled the country. US forces had left Bagram Air Base in early July, roughly a month before the Taliban offensive gained momentum and swept over the country.

Platner came to Afghanistan with high hopes in 2010. He’d been in Iraq, and would ultimately serve for eight years with the US Infantry. He came to Afghanistan with the surge of US troops that was supposed to turn around a war that had already dragged on for a decade.

“My unit was deployed in November 2010 as part of the Obama surge to move troops into the country to conduct counter-insurgency the right way,” he said. “I believed it before I left.”

Platner had seen mistakes in Iraq, and believed that Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the International Security Assistance Forces, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, his predecessor, were saying the right things about Afghanistan.

McChrystal said “that we would now drive on the road like we are part of the Afghans, and walk more and get out of our trucks,” remembers Platner. “And as an infantry sergeant who believed counter-insurgency could work, I wanted to do this, and I was excited to go and fight in an army that was going to take seriously this strategy that I had fully bought into.”

How did we spend 20 years, over 2 trillion dollars and over 2,000 American lives to wind up losing Afghanistan to the Taliban in under two weeks? Was the mission doomed from the start? A frank and wide-ranging conversation with @LTGHRMcMaster: https://t.co/VwjVEoYipZ
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) August 19, 2021

JINSA PodCast: U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Fall of Kabul

Vance Serchuk of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) joins Erielle to discuss the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, the magnitude of the consequences, and what the Biden Administration must prioritize in the coming days.

"Globalize the Intifada" is led by an NYU adjunct professor who openly advocates violence

Amin Husain is an adjunct professor at New York University where he teaches .Art and the Practice is Freedom and Art, Activism and Beyond.

He teaches "Activism and Practice of Freedom" at the Pratt Institute.

He also gives a class titled "Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the Media" at The New School.

Oh, and Amin Husain also openly promotes violence around the world.

He is a founder and lead organizer of "Decolonize This Place" which has been pushing the slogan "Globalize the Intifada."

Decolonize social media has explicit calls to violence and rioting- not only against "Zionists" but against anyone they declare the enemy, like the police or the New York subway system.

Decolonize This Place actually publishes their mindless antisemitic chants to destroy Israel and support terrorism, in case the idiots at their rallies can't repeat after the person with the bullhorn.

They try to walk the line between advocating violence and pretending to be pacifists to attract followers. So while the poster above says it is "anti-war" they also say - even in these chants - that terrorism is "justified."

Husain openly advocated violence, as well as the cynical attempt to hijack Black issues, at a 2016 Al Quds Day rally to Muslims at Times Square where he said, "One thing is certain: boycott, divestment and sanctions is changing the conversation and it's creating a new set of relationships and it connects us to the black liberation struggle in this country, and it gets around the idea of violence and non-violence which no one should judge each other on, and the days in which they call you terrorists...We're Muslims, proud Muslims, fighting for justice, and in all the ways possible, and yes jihadis, jihadis in all the ways possible..... don't let anyone tell you that you need to renounce your brother or sister because they're fighting in a way that's unacceptable."

This poster from Decolonize This Space openly advocates methods and tools of violent rioting.

Last year, Husain scrubbed his social media posts after his followers caused $100,000 of damage to NYC subways to delete direct calls for violence.

He has also publicly met with a major Islamic Jihad figure.

"Globalize the Intifada" means exactly what it sounds like: mainstream Palestinian-style terrorism worldwide, in the name of a fake "justice."

(h/t DigFind)

Iran and Hezbollah are trying to take advantage of Lebanon's economic crisis by sending an Iranian ship - supposedly with much needed fuel- to Lebanon, in violation of US sanctions.

Reuters reports:

A shipment of Iranian fuel oil for Lebanon will set sail on Thursday organised by the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah, the group said, warning its U.S. and Israeli adversaries the ship would be considered Lebanese territory as soon as it sailed.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said further ships would follow to help the people of Lebanon, who are enduring crippling fuel shortages as a result of the country's two-year-long financial meltdown.

"We don't want to get into a challenge with anyone, we don't want to get into a problem with anyone. We want to help our people," Nasrallah said. "I say to the Americans and the Israelis that the boat that will sail within hours from Iran is Lebanese territory."

Obviously, a ship doesn't become the territory of its destination. Iran and Hezbollah are trying to challenge the US and Israel to make them appear to be the aggressor for enforcing the blockade of Iranian arms and oil exports.

Nasrallah is also openly challenging the government of Lebanon.

In June, when he first announced his plan to import Iranian oil, he said, “Shipments of fuel will arrive at Beirut’s port, and let the state prevent their access to Lebanon.”

The Lebanese themselves recognize that this is a way for Hezbollah to strengthen his separate government, bypassing the Lebanese government for important decisions that affect the entire country.

“Nasrallah used a high tone when he talked about bringing fuel from Iran,” MP Bilal Abdallah told Arab News. “The Lebanese are suffering from shortages in drugs, food and fuel. Their suffering should not be used to establish stronger bridges with Iran.”

Abdallah added: “People’s suffering cannot be used for political purposes that affect Lebanon’s relations with its neighbors and the international community.”

Elias Hankhash, a politician who along with his Kataeb Party colleagues resigned from the parliament after the Beirut explosion last year in protest against government negligence, said that “Hezbollah controls all the state’s assets, including the illegal border crossings and the legal facilities and is a cover for the corrupt mafia.”

He blamed Hezbollah “for the bankruptcy, hunger and the international isolation the Lebanese are facing” and said that “buying fuel from Iran exposes Lebanon to sanctions and more isolation.”

In June 2020, Lebanon refused to allow Iranian ships to dock because of the fear that the US would extend sanctions to Lebanon if it accepted the shipments.

Israel also has interest in stopping these Iranian exports. Reports say that Israel has struck oil and arms shipments from Iran to Syria.

Nasrallah is trying to position himself and Iran as Lebanon's savior, and to get Lebanese citizens to support him. Hezbollah's popularity has plummeted in the wake of the Beirut explosion and current crisis.

During his speech, Nasrallah even said, "Iran has never interfered in Lebanon's internal affairs and we are not tools in the hands of this dear state." Instead, he accused the American embassy in Lebanon of inciting the Lebanese against each other.

"The U.S. embassy present in Awkar is not a diplomatic representation mission, it is an embassy for conspiring against Lebanon's people," he said.

This week, Israel suffered major wildfires west of Jerusalem. It asked other countries for aid in fighting the fires, but not the Palestinian Authority.

The PA volunteered to help, and Israel accepted. They sent four firetrucks and 20 firefighters to help control the blaze.

Now, Palestinians are complaining about their leaders approving doing something humanitarian for Jews.

Social media in Arabic had many posts against the Palestinians helping Israel.

Many of them pointed out that this happened on the same day that Israeli forces killed four armed terrorists in Jenin.Journalist Ibrahim Moqbel said on his Facebook page, "The occupation killed 4 and we sent them 4 fire engines. This is the national project in the religion of Abbas!"

Journalist Alaa al-Rimawi tweeted, "The Minister of Defense of the occupation, responsible for destroying Gaza a few months ago, thanks the Palestinian Authority and the President for sending the Palestinian Civil Defense to participate in putting out the fires in Jerusalem."

One other referred to the Algerian wildfires which Morocco offered to help fight and Algeria refused, saying, "A sad short story. Morocco offers to help Algeria to put out its fires, but the latter refuses, on the pretext that Morocco is allied with Israel. Massive fires erupt in the mountains of Jerusalem, and the Palestinian Authority offers assistance to Israel to put them out, and the latter agrees.” She doesn't seem to be saying that algeria was wrong or stubborn to refuse Moroccan help.

Algeria blames major wildfires on, you guessed it, Zionists

From Reuters:

Algeria on Wednesday blamed devastating wildfires this month on two groups it recently designated as terrorist organisations, adding that one of them was backed by Morocco and Israel.

The president's office said police had arrested 22 people for starting the deadly fires, but said ultimate responsibility lay with the Islamist Rashad group and MAK, an autonomy movement for the mostly Amazigh-speaking Kabylie region.

Algeria designated both groups as terrorist organisations this year. The presidency said on Wednesday that MAK "gets support and help from foreign parties, particularly Morocco and the Zionist entity", referring to Israel.

The wildfires have killed some 90 people in Algeria.

08/18 Links Pt2: New York City’s Kristallnacht; How Israelis can fight the Durban conference's Jew-hatred; B&J’s Founder Doubles Down on Anti-Israel Boycott

From Ian:

New York City’s Kristallnacht

Ed Koch called it “a pogrom.” So did Rudy Giuliani. The Reverend Al Sharpton—the chubby, agitating, last-century version—led a march along the streets as rioting young blacks rampaged through the neighborhood looking for Jews and Jewish businesses to attack. Hasidim cowered behind their mezuzah-trimmed doors while the sluggish police ducked rocks and bottles. New York’s first African-American mayor, the courtly David Dinkins, showed up, hoisted a bullhorn, and tried to pacify the mob.

“Will you listen to me for just a minute?” he pleaded.

“No!” they responded, trying to stone him.

“I care about you. I care about you desperately,” he shouted.

“Arrest the Jews!” they demanded.

That was the raw scene 30 years ago, in August 1991, when the worst race rioting in modern New York memory engulfed Crown Heights in Brooklyn. Caribbean immigrants, American blacks, and Hispanics shared the neighborhood with a heavily outnumbered community of Jews, most of them Lubavitcher Hasidim. The convulsive episode drove Dinkins’s handpicked black police commissioner back to Houston and helped doom his mayoralty, but not before that commissioner’s successor, Ray Kelly, began to reenergize the police force. This, in turn, gave momentum to Rudy Guiliani’s more muscular regime once he had defeated Dinkins in the mayoral election two years later.

Even today, many of the details about the traffic accident that touched off the riot and its deadly aftermath are in dispute, despite a 656-page investigatory report commissioned by Governor Mario Cuomo that was released two years after the event. The question for the future is whether Crown Heights was a one-time, perfect-storm explosion—or possibly an augury for Jews.

When Crown Heights erupted, I had been the editor of New York magazine for more than a decade. There had been flickerings of trouble between blacks and Jews before, but nothing on its ferocious scale. Some friction was inevitable because for decades poor blacks had done much of their food and clothing shopping at stores owned and run by Jews, lived in tenements owned or managed by Jews, and often worked as maids or janitors in Jewish homes and apartment houses. To be sure, many liberal New York Jews had been active in the civil-rights movement, contributing to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, journeying south as freedom riders, and—as in the case of Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman—dying for the cause at the hands of Dixie racists. But it was also true that some working-class Jews closer to them geographically and on the social ladder lived in fear of blacks or condescended to them.

Memorial Prayers in Brooklyn for Yankel Rosenbaum on Hebrew Anniversary of Murder in Crown Heights

Honor the sacrifice and elevate the soul of Yankel Rosenbaum HYD, murdered in Crown Heights in 1991. Thirty years ago, an angry mob shouting, “Kill the Jews!, chased Yankel through the streets of Crown Heights. Near the corner of President and Brooklyn, Yankel was surrounded and violently stabbed and beaten.

On the 30th anniversary of his murder, Wednesday evening at 6:45 pm ET, friends and family are gathering at the scene of the anti-Semitic attack to recite prayers in his memory.

Yankel’s only sibling, Norman Rosenbaum, flew to New York from Australia over 250 times in his never-ending quest for justice on behalf of his brother.

Norman never gave up and was in Crown Heights on the 25th anniversary of Yankel’s killing and held a memorial on the corner of President Street and Brooklyn. Sadly, Norman passed away in 2020.

“On Yankel’s 30th Yahrzeit (Hebrew anniversary of murder), let’s remember his story. Let’s continue Norman’s 30 year commitment to seek justice and keep Yankel’s memory alive,” said Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, leader of the Crown Heights ‘Jewish Future Alliance’ organization.

“Join the Rosenbaum family in saying Kaddish and Mishnayos in his memory. Norman’s son, Yoni Rosenbaum, will recite Kaddish and speak during the program.”

How Israelis can fight the Durban conference's Jew-hatred - opinion

From Israel it’s clear: such Jew-hatred isn’t about Palestinians or borders or Left-Right – it’s right-wrong, and it’s about survival. An increasingly vocal cadre of elite American Jews not only calls Israel “racist” and “apartheid,” but tries cleansing these terms of their Jew-baiting pedigrees or their genocidal implications – against Israel. Few Israelis fall for such nonsense.

It’s self-defeating to claim to oppose antisemitism while overlooking one of its most popular forms today – namely, anti-Zionism. Jew-hatred often mutates, attacking Judaism, Jews as a nation, and now Israel, the Jewish state. Refusing to fight Jew-hatred on all fronts is like vaccinating only strangers, not friends, against COVID-19.

An influential minority of American Jews today still view antisemitism through partisan prisms. Durban is inconvenient ideologically. It disrupts the preferred American Jewish narrative treating antisemitism as right-wing. According to the American Jewish Committee, 89% of American Jews recognize the extreme Right as antisemitic, but only 61% “say the same about the extreme Left.” Durban’s parallel NGO meeting, which became a festival of Jew-hatred, with social-justice-seeking do-gooders lustily demanding Israel’s destruction, proves that antisemitism festers on the Left, too.

The new Israeli government is putting politics aside when confronting our enemies. We need zero tolerance for Jew-haters and all bigots. We don’t accept “useful Jew-haters” – conservatives who claim to be pro-Israel yet hate Jews – or “well-meaning Jew-haters,” progressives who hide their Israel-obsession behind human rights talk. Durban showed that fighting Jew-hatred requires clear redlines, broad coalitions and a laser focus, refusing to be duped by side issues or fake friends.

Israel also has the heartbreaking honor of representing the largest concentration of victims of Jew-hatred. They include Holocaust survivors, refugees expelled from Arab and Muslim lands, Russian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, French Jews, and those killed by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, “lone wolves” and other terrorists inflamed by anti-Zionist antisemitism.

Most American Jews recognize – as President Joe Biden does – that anti-Zionism and antisemitism overlap. But many won’t connect the dots, refusing to acknowledge that Israel-bashing at the UN and elsewhere feeds Palestinian violence and rejectionism.

“Antisemitism has grown and continues to grow,” Theodor Herzl noted, “and so do I.” Fighting bigotry diminishes too many, making them pinched, angry, defensive, narrow-minded.

Israelis master Jew-jitsu, turning outsiders’ hatred into binding energy that unites us as a nation. The Jew-haters win when, by targeting us, they exacerbate divisions. The Israeli way is to see your enemy, unite our people, fight like hell, then argue about everything and anything once we’ve handled the threat.

With both Afghanistan and the Abraham Accords in the news this week, it is interesting to note that the Abraham Accords could potentially have started off with Afghanistan.

According to Radio Free Europe, in 2005 -- following Israel's disengagement from Gaza -- Afghanistan suggested establishing formal ties with Israel:

In an unprecedented interview in Kabul with a reporter from Tel Aviv daily "Yedi'ot Aharonot," Afghan President Hamid Karzai hinted at a desire to establish formal relations with Israel. While the euphoria that accompanied presumptions of imminent full diplomatic relations was quickly tempered by preconditions, the warming of ties between Afghanistan and Israel sets Kabul's policies in sharp contrast to those of neighboring Iran, where President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad has called for the destruction of the Jewish state.

According to the article, Karzai had met Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres and called him "a dear man, a real warrior for peace."

Israel's response to this news was "muted," but Ha'aretz reported that unnamed Israeli political sources believed that such a move by Afghanistan would represent "another important step on the road to recognition of Israel by the Muslim world."

That recognition of Israel never happened, in part of because of pressure from Iran, but even so -- the current debacle in that country is also likely to have an effect on relations between the Muslim world and Israel.

The website Breaking Defense looks the fall of Kabul, and the way it happened, in the context of the deteriorating situation of the Middle East in general:

In private talks with top Israeli defense and political sources alike, the view was echoed that the US drawing down in the region and the fall of Afghanistan, combined with ongoing aggression from Iran and political instability in Lebanon, all tie together into a potential regional bonfire. One senior source even raised concerns that Jordan or Iraq “be thrown away in one well planned act of the extreme jihad.”

The article also quotes retired Major General Amos Yadlin, who served as the chief of military intelligence of the IDF. Yadlin suggests that one result of the disillusionment with the US is that countries in the Middle East will look to improve their relations with Russia and China.

But Yadlin sees a second possible result:

Yadlin noted, it’s possible that the fall of Afghanistan could create space for Israel to strengthen defense ties with countries who may be looking for a more localized partner.

In other words, the tragic fall of Kabul could lead to a strengthening and even expansion of the Abraham Accords.

Elliott Abrams expands on this point, noting how Afghanistan illustrates why the Abraham Accords happened in the first place:

What is happening in Afghanistan will deepen the impression among Arab governments that they cannot rely on the United States to protect their security as they used to. So those states have increasingly drawn the conclusion that they have one neighbor who unlike Iran or Turkey poses no threat to them, and who continually displays a firm willingness to use military power against its enemies. That’s Israel. Israel in addition has a modern economy based on exceptional high-tech achievements, and maintains not only a close alliance with the United States but working relationships with Russia and China. For the Arabs, then, the Abraham Accords were at long last the victory of self-interest over ideology –and over outmoded versions of Arab nationalism and support for Palestinians. [emphasis added]

In addition to pointing to how the Accords may be strengthened by these recent events, Abrams also draws a connection between Arab nationalism and support for the Palestinian Arabs.
It's worth taking a closer look at the implications of that linkage and what it may mean.

The Palestinian Arabs reject the Abraham Accords because of the normalization of relations with Israel. More than that, despite the UAE insisting that Israel still must work towards a Palestinian state, the Palestinians still see the Accords as an abandonment of their cause.

They're right.

When Abrams refers to "outmoded versions of Arab nationalism," he is talking about Arab pan-nationalism which sees all Arabs as one nation, a supra-national community. That is what Nasser envisioned with his establishment of the United Arab Republic, which started with Egypt and Syria, but was supposed to grow into an even larger pan-Arab state.

That plan failed.

Instead -- today, Arab countries are developing their own individual, unique national identities -- tied to their own interests, including their defensive needs. Seen this way, the growing estrangement of the Arab world from the Palestinian cause is more than an issue of antagonism towards the Palestinians and their requests for money.

This growing individual, Arab nationalism, may also help explain the lack of response in the Arab world to the situation of the Uyghurs in China, with whom they may not find common cause, just as they do not find common cause with the Palestinian Arabs as they once did.

Afghanistan is now learning the same lesson that the Uyghurs -- and a growing number -- have learned. As Shoshana Bryen, senior director of the Jewish Policy Center, writes in Newsweek:

The Afghan people—like the victims of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, ISIS in the Middle East and increasingly in Africa, Iran's mullahs and their proxies, and China's genocidal policies against its Uyghur and Tibetan people—are now also victims of the "international community" and its haughty platitudes. [emphasis added]

If Israel can prove itself to be above such platitudes and be a truly reliable ally, it will go a long way towards assuring its own security, and peace in general, in the region.

The director of the mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Sheikh Hefzy Abu Sneina, now claims that his mosque is the fourth holiest mosque in Islam after the Al-Haram in Mecca, the Al-Nabawi mosque in Medina and the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. He says that it contains Islamic sanctities and the tombs of their prophets, "which proves the right of Palestinians and Muslims to it and denies any Israeli claims of their rights in it. "

Even though the prophets buried there have nothing to do with Islam, with the exception of Abraham, but everything to do with Judaism.

The Jewish ties to Hebron have given the Ibrahimi Mosque some holiness inflation, it seems.

I have not seen the Hebron mosque listed as the fourth holiest in any other source.

This article in The Guardian says that #4 is Imam Ali in Iraq, #5 is the Dome of the Rock, #6 is Great Mosque of Djenne in Mali and #7 is the Quba Mosque in Medina. Hebron isn't mentioned.

This site lists the Quba mosque as #4.

Wikipedia gives three sources saying that the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus is the fourth holiest site in Islam.

So how did the mosque in Hebron rocket to the top of the charts? (No one will argue about 1,2 or 3, although Shiite Muslims used to rate Al Aqsa as #5, behind Najaf and Karbala.)

It seems that the holier Jews consider a site, the more Muslims want to take it away from Jews. It happens in Jerusalem, in Hebron, in Bethlehem, in Shechem (Nablus.)

It is pure antisemitism, and something that no one is willing to talk about.