Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, September 20, 2021

Lebanon is falling apart - but Lebanese are upset over Arab actress posing with Israeli

Israelis have some amazing superpowers over the Lebanese.

A photograph of Lebanese actress Nadine Njeim apparently posing with an Israeli make-up artist in the UAE sparked a social media storm over the weekend.

“Lebanese model and actress Nadine Njeim is pictured with an Israeli make-up artist in UAE. Likely his customer. Is this another case of ‘Oh, I didn’t know’!?” Twitter user Lebanon News and Updates (@LebUpdate) wrote in a message posted on Twitter on Saturday alongside the photograph.

In a subsequent Tweet, he said: “It is confirmed that she was his customer, according to his TikTok video. It is obvious that famous people do not simply choose random makeup artists without some background research on his/her work and experience.”

The messages provoked a number of shocked and angry responses on Twitter.

“Nadine Njeim they are asking for models in Tel Aviv,” a user called Mimo wrote.

Another, called Adam, simply tweeted three puking-face emojis, as others chimed in. Some critics predicted that Njeim, a former beauty queen who was crowned Miss Lebanon in 2004, would say she did not know the makeup artist was from Israel. But other people said so what if he is?

“I am so tired of this backward mentality and these people,” a Twitter user called Romy wrote. “When they’re not destroying Lebanon with their foreign allegiance and ideology they spend their time online on their iPhones stalking people to see if an Israeli breathed near them, and then bully them or get them in trouble.”

After the backlash, Njeim - who has had more plastic surgery than Joan Rivers - said that she thought he was Greek, and said how much she loves Palestinians. She tweeted "I cannot bear the land they [Israelis] walk on. My love for my country is great. They are dirty people like this makeup artist who did not reveal his identity. ”

Makeup artist Ido Rafael Tzadok - who the Arab News cannot deign to name - went on Kann TV in Israel saying that he spoke Hebrew in front of Njeim and couldn't imagine that she didn't know he was Israeli.

The Lebanese obsession with Israel - especially given the Abraham Accords - is legendary. Last year, the government wen through lots of hoops to find an independent audit firm that didn't have connections with Israel. They famously banned Wonder Woman because its star is Israeli.

And Lebanon is considered the most liberal Arab nation!

If I was an Israeli, I would stalk Lebanese celebrities in the US and UAE and take tons of selfies with them just to mess up their lives. I want to see videos of frightened Lebanese celebrities running away from Jews for fear of being photographed with them.

(h/t Yoel)

Azzam al-Ahmad, a member of the Executive Committees of the PLO as well as Central Committee of Fatah, visited the families of the six prisoners who briefly escaped from Gilboa Prison.

He gave the standard party line of Fatah regarding the terrorists in prison - terrorists that the PLO pays handsomely.

Al-Ahmad said, "We are proud of the persistence, determination, and will of the six prisoners ...who conveyed their message to the whole world that without their freedom and the establishment of our state, there will be no security, no peace, no stability, and that we will not rest. "

This means that the Palestinian leadership intend to continue to encourage terror attacks against Israeli Jews until Israel gives in to blackmail, releases all prisoners and gives the Palestinians a state from which they can continue to attack Israel.

Al-Ahmad added: "We came to Jenin and its camp, the governorate of steadfastness, challenge, struggle and determination, and the city of martyrs, prisoners and the wounded, which always embodies its national unity by confronting the policy of the occupation. [The escapees] embodied the national unity among the one people in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem and the lands of 1948, through their support and backing of the prisoners."

About 25 Israeli Arabs came to a protest outside the Gilboa prison on Sunday evening. It was hardly a huge turnout but the Palestinian media gave it lots of coverage.

Al-Ahmad also referred to President Mahmoud Abbas' statements that "if there is one penny left [in our coffers], it will be spent on our prisoners," and said "this is a clear message to the occupation and to the world that we will not abandon our prisoners, the bodies of the martyrs, and the national principles."

As always, when given a choice between supporting murderous terrorists or acting like a moral agent, the Palestinian Authority chooses to support the terrorists - and to publicly say that they will continue to do so, forever.

No wonder Arab nations are getting sick of the Palestinian issue.

More descriptions of Sukkot in British newspapers of the 18th century

The Derby Mercury in 1755 described how Jews were buying lots of flowers and greenery for the holiday:

The same newspaper in 1756 reported of a windstorm in Amsterdam, which caused lots of damage - including destroying many of the sukkot of the Jews.

Jackson's Oxford Journal in 1765 gives a brief description of Sukkot, but a longer description of a 102-year old rabbi who was visiting town ahead of the holiday and made quite an impression.

The Derby Mercury, again, in 1790, gives a description of a community sukkah, beautifully decorated but quite small:

The (London) Morning Post in 1802 tells a story of how forgiving one's fellow on Yom Kippur seemed to lead to a reconciliation between two feuding Jewish families - and a possible shidduch:

Both of the families seem to have been quite well known and wealthy, and it seems like Solomon and Goldsmid had worked together several years before before a falling out. Unfortunately, I could not find any news of a marriage between the two younger members; Miss Goldsmid may have married a cousin of hers with the same surname several years later.

A most unusual Sukkot in a London prison in 1727

Fleet Prison in London held prisoners, on and off, between 1197 and 1844. In the 18th century it held debtors and people who declared bankruptcy, and it ran as a for-profit enterprise, charging prisoners to remove their leg-irons as well as for food and rent.

The Caledonian Mercury, October 5, 1727 says that Jewish prisoners in Fleet Prison built their own sukkah to celebrate the Sukkot holiday.

The Jews of the prison must have paid a great deal to be able to celebrate Sukkot.

That was probably the last year that Jews could even consider building a sukkah in Fleet Prison. Thomas Bambridge, who purchased the job of warden in 1728, was notorious for treating the prisoners poorly and extorting exorbitant amounts from them.

I Can't Wait For Another Gaza Relief Flotilla That Carries No Relief (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column (delayed) from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

I Can't Wait For Another Gaza Relief Flotilla That Carries No Relief

By Subhi Jamaal, Gaza resident

old Arab Gaza City, September 16 - More than eleven years have elapsed since the Mavi Marmara incident, in which Israeli commandos boarded a vessel bound for the Gaza coast that carried mainly activists and some weapons, but which organizers touted as carrying "aid" to our "besieged" territory, and took control of the boat to prevent it from breaching maritime blockade. For various reasons, no subsequent effort has progressed nearly as far, but I, personally, get excited at the prospect of more activists wasting their time, money, and safety on additional useless endeavors of the same nature.

I can still picture the scene: the aftermath of the Israeli raid, when the Mavi Marmara sat in impound at Ashdod, where its impressive cargo of a couple of boxes of redundant medicine was offloaded; the collection of guns, clubs, knives, and some improvised weapons that the Israelis confiscated from the "humanitarian" activists on board; the International Criminal Court inquiry that found the blockade of Gaza in accord with International Law, and its enforcement therefore legal. It feels like a lifetime since then, and yet the sentiments remain fresh.

Perhaps what I miss most about the experience in real time is the condescending, if not downright racist, motives of those involved. Sure, everything sprang from a robust feeling of antisemitism, with a generous dose of Holocaust inversion thrown in for good measure, but those are so commonplace in our culture that examining them is no longer so interesting. No, for me, what I relished was seeing how those activists saw themselves as noble warriors on behalf of powerless Gaza Palestinians, and without whom those poor Palestinians faced starvation, disease, and other ills. In the meantime, Gaza has an obesity epidemic, there are vanishingly few cases of malnutrition, life expectancy is among the highest in the Arab world, luxurious resorts dot the coastline, high-end shopping and dining abound, and we can apparently afford to start a disastrous war with Israel every few years.

Whenever it happens, I can't wait to once again look in the eye a bunch of people who view themselves as saviors, and us as wretches fortunate enough to enjoy their largesse and attention. It gives such a sense of empowerment, and clearly for them, who want cameras and microphones on them all the time, it's all about us. But first they must generate media and NGO attention to a situation that media and NGOs have been giving constant attention for decades, and then may be later they can ship in actual aid.

First things first.

09/19 Links: David Collier: Pillars and Myths – destroying the false narrative of the 1948 Nakba; Iraq’s Nazi regime ‘had plans to intern Jews in 1941’; Durban IV: Time for Some Tough Diplomacy

From Ian:

David Collier: Pillars and Myths – destroying the false narrative of the 1948 Nakba

I witness pro-Israeli arguments online every day – and one of the things that always depresses me is when I see those defending Israel get stuck down pointless rabbit holes. Anti-Israel activists are only interested in the present ‘what’ – as in ‘the prisoner’, ‘the checkpoint’, ‘the wall’ – and they do this because this is where they are comfortable. These propagandists deliberately avoid the ‘why’ because the truth is quicksand for them. Such as why the ‘wall’ was built in the first place. And why on earth would anyone argue over a ‘settlement’ like Ariel – if the person you are arguing with thinks that Tel Aviv is an ‘illegal settlement’ too. This cannot be stressed often enough – it is simply foolish to fight on their turf.

Nowhere is this more visible that in discussion over what they call the ‘Nakba’ – the Arab defeat in a war that they wanted, started and lost. A war in which they sought to annihilate the Jews. Arguing from within their narrative is like bitterly arguing over the size of the thrones in the Narnian Capital ‘Cair Paravel’.

A recent comment piece in the Jewish Chronicle provides a perfect example. One of our naive and privileged youth wrote a piece bemoaning the fact that she wasn’t prepared by her Jewish school to fight for Israel on campus – because as she sees it – ‘we do not talk about the Palestinian narrative in a meaningful way’. Her answer includes introducing ‘Israel-critical’ groups like Yachad into schools and to teach our children about the ‘Nakba’. This is an absurd and submissive response to the problem. Her suggested solution would send an entire generation down the rabbit hole.

The Nakba narrative is a lie. Should the UK have taught children Soviet propaganda so that they would have been better prepared to defend the UK at uni too? Yes campus is hostile. Some places have adopted a far darker and more Islamist vision. I know it is deeply uncomfortable for young Zionists, but submission is not the way forward. If we Jews do not defend ourselves – then who will defend us? Adopting the lies of our enemies onto our own platforms will only lead to self destruction.

The Nakba – as it is described by our enemies – never happened. They have taken isolated incidents, such as the disputed events of Deir Yassin or what took place in Lod – and built an entire fairytale around them. The truth of 1948 – the foundation of everything that followed – is very simple and we should never lose sight of it – nor stop teaching it to our children. The truth can sometimes be really unpopular – but it does not stop being the truth.

What follows is a list of pillars and myths. The pillars are the foundations of the self inflicted distaster that was to befall the Arab population. The myths are the lies upon which the history is being rewritten.

Iraq’s Nazi regime ‘had plans to intern Jews in 1941’

In his passionate attempt to restore the plight of the Jews to one academic’s mangled history of the period, a scholar of Iraqi-Jewish origin has revealed that the 1941 pro-Nazi government in Iraq was planning to intern Jews in a ‘harsh ghetto’ from which ‘they would not come out.’

London-based Dr E. N., who has 600 academic publications to his name, says that a senior Arab Muslim officer tipped off a group of Jewish army officers that there were plans to intern Jews in ‘terrains of the military’, a place where Jews would supposedly go in and never come out.

Following a coup on 1st April 1941, a virulently anti-Jewish, pro-Nazi government led by prime minister Rashid Ali al-Ghailani ruled Iraq until 31 May 1941 when it was defeated and put to flight by the British army.

The terrified Jewish officers, who had been recalled into the Iraqi army during the two months that the pro-Axis government ruled Iraq, ‘felt powerless’ at news of the internment plans. They would meet at the home of Dr N.’s grandfather, a Jew who felt compelled to resign from his post as commander in charge of the Baghdad Royal Arsenal in 1939, and converse in German and Turkish so that they would not be understood.

According to Dr N., the internment plans remained in place well after the pro-Nazi government had been deposed – until the defeat of General Rommel in the autumn of 1942.

The pro-Nazi government had already established a Jewish ghetto in the city of Diwaniyya.

Dr N.’s revelations come in his review of a book by John Broich, Blood, Oil, and The Axis: The Allied resistance against a Fascist state in Iraq and the Levant, 1941 (Abrams Press, New York 2019) The review, entitled A moral dilemma, appears in a book edited by Dr N.titled For the centennial of Berthold Laufer’s classic Sino-Iranica (1919): Sino-Iranica’s Centennial. Between East and West, Exchanges of Material and Ideational Culture. Broich also contributed a cover story on the 1941 British conquest of Baghdad in the July 1919 issue of the BBC History magazine.

‘There Is a Jew Hiding Behind Me — Come and Kill Him’

When the former Trump administration announced that it was moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in December 2017, the reaction in the Muslim world and among Muslim communities in the West was predictably furious. In the Friday sermons that followed that announcement, several imams around the world denounced Israel in uncomplicated antisemitic terms, many of them quoting the same hadith — a saying attributed to the prophet Muhammed — that speaks of a mass slaughter of Jews by the Muslim faithful.

Writing about these sermons at the time, I highlighted three that were delivered at mosques in the United States in that same week, all of which spoke about Jews in genocidal terms. Two of the sermons — one at a mosque in Houston, Texas, the other in Raleigh, NC — cited a rather bloodcurdling hadith that reads as follows: “Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say, oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me — come and kill him.”

That same hadith surfaced at a sermon given by the Imam of the Grand Mosque in the city of Toulouse in southwest France, Mohamed Tataiat, right after the embassy move. Resident in France since 1985 and occupying the post in Toulouse in 1987, Tataiat has been hailed by his supporters as a voice of moderation and enthusiastic backer of interfaith dialogue with Christians and Jews.

Last week, the criminal court in Toulouse concurred with that dubious assessment, acquitting Tataiat of the incitement charges that were filed against him by CRIF, the main Jewish organization in France, as well as the National Office for Vigilance Against Antisemitism (BNVCA) and the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA). After a three-month trial, the court deemed that in quoting the hadith, it had not been Tataiat’s intention to “provoke hatred or discrimination.”

Since the authenticity of this hadith is not in question, one can understand why the act of simply quoting it might not be regarded as a criminal offense, even in countries, like France, with stringent hate-speech laws on the books. But as with any kind of hate speech, context is key.

Hamas issued a statement condemning the first anniversary of the Abraham Accords, and ended up promoting them to any normal person.

Hamas' statement said, "the so-called Abraham agreements are a Zionist-American project par excellence, aiming at openness and regional normalization with the Zionist entity, integrating it into the region, and forging alliances with it to replace the priorities of the conflict ... It exhausts the forces of the nation and the factors of its steadfastness, and isolates Palestine and the Palestinian resistance forces, and all those who support them and stand with them officially, popularly or institutionally.”

Sounds pretty good to me!

Usually, Hamas issues these statements in a EU-friendly way, acting like the terrorists are the victims. This statement is aimed squarely at Palestinians and those who sympathize with terrorists.

It will be interesting to see whether Hamas issues an English translation on its English language website, or will modify the statement to a different audience. As of this writing, it was only on their Arabic website.

Early this morning, Israeli forces captured the last of the six terrorists who had escaped from Gilboa prison.

Palestinian leaders are scrambling to pretend that this was a "victory."

As we've noted, everything they say is through the lens of the honor/shame culture. In order to claim this as a victory, they must position this as if the escapees brought them honor and the Israelis shame.

The official Palestinian Wafa news agency quotes an official as to the many reasons this was a wonderful episode:

- "The prisoners won the moment they came out of a tunnel they prepared with the handles of the frying pans, with their nails, with their patience, their will, with their courage that approaches the limit of the miraculous, they defeated the security and military system and its endless arrogance. "

- "The prisoners also won when they united all the Palestinian people in the West Bank, Gaza and the territories of 1948, and in the diaspora as well. Everyone without exception felt that these were his children, brothers or neighbors. Everyone was with them moment by moment counting for them the hours of freedom."

-"The prisoners were victorious when people forgot, for a moment, which organizations they belong to, and they became Palestinians only. No one thought about their political or party affiliation."

- "The prisoners were morally victorious, when they refused to resort to Arab families in the 48 lands so as not to expose them to accountability and abuse, and they triumphed when they touched the soil composed of the remains of their ancestors over thousands of years."

- "The prisoners were victorious when they defeated the war machine, its eyes, its planes, its dogs, and its intelligence, and they were able to reach Jenin, despite the massive deployment of army forces at every meeting point between the West Bank and the 1948 territories."

-"The captives won when they preferred to surrender themselves in order to preserve the lives of the people who sheltered them in their home. They were not willing to sacrifice people."

Some of these are laughable - the Arabs of Israel helped turn them in, and the Palestinians are spinning it as if they didn't seek their help to begin with. If the terrorists in Jenin had started a firefight and their hosts had been killed, the same statement would have claimed that as a victory.

When Palestinians claim victory over Israel, they always lower the bar of "victory" to be practically on the ground. Ironically, this makes Israel seem even more powerful: they create a straw man of an invincible Israel that never makes mistakes, and then they say - look, Israel screwed up, and therefore we won!

Hamas was even more explicit in what we've mentioned before, that the Palestinian celebrations weren't for the very temporary "freedom" of terrorists, but in Israeli humiliation, saying that the capture of the last two terrorists doesn't make up for the claim that they "made the enemy a puppet that everyone laughs at."

In the end, the last thing that Palestinians want to admit is the shame that their escapees could not remain free, they could not rely on other Arabs to protect them, they couldn't find a place to sleep securely, and that they will now be in prison even longer than they would have been previously. They have such a low opinion of themselves that they need to pretend to be victorious no matter what the facts are just to shore up their nonexistent self esteem.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei told Iranian athletes that they must never compete against Israelis, even if they are disciplined by international bodies for it.

"Any Iranian athlete worthy of the name cannot shake hands with a representative of the criminal regime in order to win a medal," Khamenei told a group of Iranian Olympics and Paralympics athletes on Saturday.

“The genocidal, illegal Zionist regime attempts to gain some legitimacy by appearing in international athletic competitions. The world’s arrogant powers and their cohorts [the West] assist and support them in this,” he added.

He added they Iranian athletes must not even shake hands with Israelis.

As far as I know, this was never official policy for Iran beforehand, although athletes were broadly expected to withdraw from competing against Israelis using flimsy excuses.

Now that it is clearly official Iranian policy, it is time for all international sports federations to pro-actively ban Iranian athletes from all competitions unless Iran says explicitly that they will compete against Israelis. Khamenei has now made it crystal clear that he does not subscribe to the basic standards of international sport, and as such Iran should be disqualified from all competitions - today.

If international sports federations have any integrity whatsoever, they must act now, and not wait for any future competition.

09/18 Links: Islamic terrorism and the Age of the Holocaust; Mossad assassinated Iran’s chief nuke scientist with remote AI gun; Watchdog Calls on NY Pension Fund to Divest From Ben and Jerry’s Parent Company

From Ian:

Islamic terrorism and the Age of the Holocaust

The Islamist genocidal agenda is promoted by PA/PLO/Hamas media and textbooks, and by UN organizations, such as UNRWA. Not only is the Holocaust denied, it is portrayed as an attempt to “steal Palestinian land” and deprive Arab Palestinians of their goal to wipe out Israel. Enshrined in proposals for a “two-state-solution,” it’s the core of what the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, an acronym for “The Islamic Resistance Movement,” and others represent. It’s also promoted by Fatah and the PLO.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s totalitarian ideology has become dominant in Islam and among Muslims. Centered in Egypt, where the highest Islamic authorities convene, the Brotherhood asserts its gospel of hatred of Jews and Israel via mosques throughout the world and their media. In North and Latin America and Europe, it supports hundreds of student and political organizations. In Israel, it is represented by the largest Arab-Israeli political party, the Joint List, which is part of the current governing coalition.

The Muslim Brotherhood supported the Nazis and after the war it helped thousands of war criminals find refuge in Arab countries. Brotherhood apologists argue that this activity was in the past, but it’s not – documented by Palestinian Media Watch and NGO Monitor. Attacking Jews in Israel happens daily and is promoted by all Islamists.

This is their “holy war” against Israel and anyone who stands in their way – Muslims and non-Muslims. Any recognition of Israel and its right to exist is considered a betrayal of Islam. It’s what justifies their support for terrorism and suicide bombings, which they call “martyrdom.” Their goal is another Holocaust mandated, they preach, by their “prophet, Muhammad.” Ultimately, they boast, they seek world domination under their Caliphate.

According to Richard P. Mitchell (The Society of Muslim Brothers), jihad, death and martyrdom are not only a means to an end, but an end unto itself. David Brooks called the Brotherhood’s ideology promoting suicide bombing “the culture of martyrdom.” For further information, consult Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Radical Islamists, led by the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, are one of the greatest threats not only to America and Israel, but to our society and our civilization. Understanding this matters. It’s about survival.

‘What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours will be mine’

Beyond that, though, it is worth taking a moment to bring the larger picture into focus – and to get a clear understanding of what’s wrong with this picture, as it were. The facts indicate that the recent pronouncements by Gantz and Bennett are nothing more than a smokescreen.

Since the ratification of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority has been in control of areas A and B; this includes the authority to grant building permits as it sees fit. As of this writing, 70% of the territory under PA jurisdiction remains completely empty. The PA has the right, the obligation and the means to plan and build, to utilize this territory as it chooses, without any Israeli involvement whatsoever, and without any expectation of commensurate approval of Jewish construction in PA-administered areas A and B – which are judenrein.

The fact that the PA chooses not to build in the areas under its own jurisdiction, and instead pours all of its resources into illegal construction in Area C, is a choice – with very clear motivations. This very simple fact makes the current government’s capitulation to the Biden administration’s demand for “construction parity” a dangerous precedent.

Just as the Americans have no expectation that the Palestinian Authority will match every construction permit issued in areas under PA jurisdiction with a commensurate approval for Jewish construction, so too can there be no justification for the demand that every construction project approved by the State of Israel for Jewish residents of the areas under Israeli jurisdiction be matched with projects for Arabs.

To make matters worse, the asymmetry extends beyond the issue of demography, into the realm of geography. The area taken up by residential structures in the Jewish sector, numbering about half a million residents (again, limited to Area C) is only 3.5% of the total area under Israeli jurisdiction, whereas the area taken up by Arab settlement in Area C, which numbers about 200,000 people according to recent estimates, currently takes up more than double that area.

Rather than counting the number of housing units approved for Jewish versus Arab residents of Area C, the question we should be asking about the new construction projects is how many more square meters will this add to the area taken up by Jewish settlement as opposed to the area that will be ceded to Arab settlement in Area C?

Government Watchdog Calls on New York Pension Fund to Divest From Ben and Jerry’s Parent Company

A government watchdog group is calling on New York's public pension fund to divest from Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry's, in response to the ice cream company's decision to boycott Israel.

The National Legal and Policy Center asked New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in a Thursday letter to "effect the immediate divestiture" of the state pension fund's $73 million holdings in Unilever, arguing that the company has not taken sufficient steps to oppose anti-Semitism and the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

The letter comes after Arizona and New Jersey announced they would pull investments from Unilever, and as Florida and Illinois have said they are looking at taking similar action. DiNapoli said in July that Ben & Jerry's boycott decision would make New York reconsider its investments with Unilever in the future.

"Unilever's position that it is opposed to anti-Semitism is belied by the actions and associations of Anuradha Mittal, the chair of Ben & Jerry's Board of Directors," wrote NLPC chairman Peter Flaherty in the Sept. 16 letter. "Mittal is the architect of the ice cream company's policy of ending sales in Israeli ‘occupied territories.' Reportedly, Mittal also proposed a boycott of all of Israel. Her Twitter account has many anti-Israel tweets and contain specific endorsements of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement."

Flaherty also noted that Mittal is a trustee of Ben & Jerry's nonprofit arm, which issued $170,000 in grants to an unrelated nonprofit that Mittal also controls called the Oakland Institute. The arrangement could violate IRS rules against self-dealing, according to the NLPC, which filed a complaint with the IRS about the financial activities last month.

Mittal's Oakland Institute has published defenses of Hezbollah and Hamas, the Washington Free Beacon reported in July.

In one article published by the Oakland Institute, former Green Party Senate candidate Todd Chretien argued that progressives should support Hezbollah during the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006.

09/17 Links Pt2: Antisemitism Masked as Anti-Israel Bias at Berkeley; What ‘The Wire’ actor Michael K. Williams taught my Jewish students at NYU

From Ian:

Interview‘People Love Dead Jews,’ says Dara Horn, but the living ones don’t fare as well

Author Dara Horn surprised herself by choosing “People Love Dead Jews” as the title of her new collection of essays. She was even more amazed that her publisher agreed to let her keep it.

Horn’s testing the limits of good taste is not gratuitous. It’s a justified provocation that draws readers into the incisive analysis that she weaves through the book’s 12 individual but thematically-linked pieces.

To be clear, Horn isn’t talking about dead Jews in the literal sense… at least not entirely.

“It’s not dead Jews, as in people wanting to see Jews die,” Horn explained in a recent interview with The Times of Israel from her home in New Jersey.

Rather, she said, it’s about the insidious ways in which non-Jewish societies — including contemporary America — pressure or gaslight Jews into modifying, glossing over, or erasing their own identity altogether.

Horn noticed this particularly with regard to how the general public uses dead Jews — from Anne Frank, to Hasidic Jews killed in a terror attack on a kosher market in Jersey City in December 2019, to fictional Jewish characters — to accomplish this.

“The role dead Jews play in non-Jewish civilization is not the same as the one that they play in Jewish civilization,” Horn said.

A scholar of Jewish history and literature, Horn has until now preferred to focus her work on how Jews lived in different places and eras, rather than on how they died.

But her observations made her want to “unravel, document, describe and articulate the endless unspoken ways the popular obsession with dead Jews, even in its most benign and civic-minded forms, is a profound affront to human dignity,” as she writes in the book’s introduction. ‘People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present’ by Dara Horn (W. W. Norton & Company)

After writing five well-received novels grounded in different eras in Jewish history, Horn, 44, turned her attention to “People Love Dead Jews” (and her parallel podcast, “Adventures With Dead Jews,”) after being asked to write opinion pieces and articles responding to events such as the fatal shooting attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018.

“I started noticing in the past several years that every time my editors from mainstream publications would ask me to write something, it was about dead Jews or antisemitism,” Horn said.

“I became the go-to person for this emerging literary genre — synagogue shooting op-eds. I did not apply for this job,” she said with the kind of dark humor that she laces throughout the essays in the book, some of them previously published.

Education Minister urges IHRA adoption

[Australian] Federal Minister for Education Alan Tudge addressed Jewish community leaders on Monday night, voicing his support for a nationwide implementation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

During the Zoom hosted by president of the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) Jeremy Leibler, Tudge told his audience that the IHRA definition is currently being considered by the Morrison government and that he is “determined to see this implemented and adopted as government policy” – hoping that it would then be adopted by key institutions, including universities.

Earlier this year, addressing an Executive Council of Australian Jewry online forum, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese pledged that a future Labor government would endorse the IHRA definition.

Tudge went on to note that while the public universally calls out “filthy antisemitism” from the far right, his “equal concern to that antisemitism is the antisemitism which is emerging very rapidly and very aggressively, from the left”.

“Instead of it being done in the dark, at night when no one’s watching, it’s often done quite proudly, as if it’s a virtue signal from some on the extreme left,” he commented, recalling Melbourne barrister Julian Burnside’s recent tweets equating the actions of Israel to those of the Nazis.

Tudge recognised universities as a channel for what he called antisemitism “under the cloak of anti-Zionism”.

Acknowledging the discrimination some Jewish students experience on campus, he added that anti-Zionism is “the same as any other form of antisemitism”.

He said his greatest concern is that this “open left-wing antisemitism starts to infiltrate more broadly into our mainstream political parties”, suggesting that it already has in relation to the Greens and is starting to creep into the Labor party, noting what happened with the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn in the UK.

The Omar I knew: What ‘The Wire’ actor Michael K. Williams taught my Jewish students at NYU

Awe and humility are my abiding memories of the evening. A packed room of Jewish students were thinking deeply about what incarceration and freedom could look like, and about how justice could be structured around atonement for crimes and self-improvement rather than around punishment. Without exception, the students who spoke to me afterward — none of whom came from an activist background — expressed how much they would be bringing from the evening to their seder tables.

Michael, Dominic, Derrick and Dana stayed on for dinner after the event sharing stories, taking pictures, answering questions. Schmoozing. In addition to telling their critically important stories, they had also come to meet the audience, hear their stories and find common ground. A friend of mine — a rabbi of an Orthodox synagogue in the U.K. — saw my Facebook posts about the event and brought Derrick and Dana to speak to his community.

After the event, Michael said to me that “if the Black and Jewish communities could work together, nothing would be able to stop us.”

Michael wished to tell the story of his own community, but simultaneously expressed a genuine curiosity about the Jewish community. We spoke about doing a series of conversations with one another on the book of Exodus — the original story of slavery and liberation — and its relevance to our times. One day he was in the building at the same time as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, and expressed an interest in meeting the man I had described to him as “the premier Jewish thinker, a man obsessed with justice.” The students’ meeting with Rabbi Sacks ran overtime, otherwise the King would have met the Lord.

Michael was open about his struggles with addiction and passed away from a suspected drug overdose. His passing has been in my mind throughout this week of preparation for Yom Kippur. It feels appropriate to reflect on what we can all learn from those who face similar battles to Michael.

Maimonides lists the threefold requirement of teshuvah, or repentance, as confession (vidui), regret (charata) and determination for the future (kabala l’atid). I have seen no greater lived example of the struggle to live those three elements than those who struggle to overcome addiction.

Those people I have been privileged to know, such as Michael, for whom every day is a challenge, show us the truth that we would all do well to remember, that teshuvah is not something that is “achieved,” a destination arrived at. Rather teshuvah, like the recovery from addiction, is an ongoing process and struggle that is never over but requires constant work and regular re-examination.

As Michael went through many struggles, he simultaneously used his story, fame and innate brilliance to help others. And he did this with humility and a smile.

No matter how great Omar Little is, Michael K. Williams was infinitely greater. May his memory be a blessing.

The new Lebanese government has been working on a statement to describe its policies.

The statement has not been released yet, as the government plans to iron out some final points today. But according to Hezbollah media, the statement will include the "right of resistance and the liberation of the Lebanese territories occupied by 'Israel.' "

Yes, even though Lebanon is suffering its worst economic crisis in a century, it still wants to prioritize the right to attack Israel. Meaning, the right for Hezbollah to make unilateral decisions to attack Israel under the pretense of "liberating" territory that the UN certified as being part of Israel.

It turns out that this phrase has been part of Lebanese government policy for a while. The short-lived government of September 2020 included a nearly identical statement, no doubt at Hezbollah's insistence, in its own policy statement, although that one also "stressed the need for Lebanon to stay away from external conflicts."

It is not clear yet if this policy statement will include that contradictory phrase.

Jimmy Carter has nothing positive to say about the Abraham Accords

Arutz-7 reports:

President Isaac Herzog called former US President Jimmy Carter on Friday to mark the occasion of the 48th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War and the one-year anniversary of the Abraham Accords.

President Herzog told President Carter: “You did something really holy. This was the first peace agreement between Israel and an Arab state, which led all the way to the agreements we had last year with the Gulf states.”

Has Jimmy Carter ever praised the Abraham Accords?

While the Carter Center has issued plenty of articles about Israel, most of them critical, the term "Abraham Accords" is not mentioned. I couldn't find a thing about the peace agreements between Israel and Morocco, Sudan, Bahrain or the UAE.

This seems odd since Carter positions himself as the godfather of Middle East peace.

It isn't hard to guess why. The Abraham Accords violated the primary rule of wannabe peacemakers since Oslo - that no Arab nation would make peace with Israel until the Palestinian issue is resolved. They were brokered by a president that the traditional "peacemakers" abhorred. They were accepted and promoted by an Israeli leader that the same traditional "peacemakers" abhorred as well.

All of the arguments about why the Abraham Accords were useless have been proven wrong in the year since they were signed.

Which makes Jimmy Carter's silence on the biggest breakthrough in Middle East peace since his own Camp David Accords seem like he does not really support peace between Israel and Arab nations - he wants the Palestinians to have veto power over any relations between Israel and every Arab nation, which means they can decide the terms of Israel's foreign relations.

That's not peace. That is blackmail. And that seems to be what Carter prefers to peace.

09/17 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Why Oslo still rules; Abraham Accords Show that Israel Victory Enhances Arab Lives; Melanie Phillips: The unstoppable engine of infamy

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Why Oslo still rules

Faisal Husseini, who held the Palestinian Authority's Jerusalem portfolio, gave an interview shortly before his death in the summer of 2001 in which exposed the fraud at the heart of the Oslo process. Speaking with Al Araby newspaper, Husseini said that Yasser Arafat, his deputies and henchmen never saw the "peace process" as a way of achieving peace with Israel. Oslo for them was a means to advance their goal of destroying Israel, "from the river to the sea."

Husseini described the Oslo process as a "Trojan Horse." Arafat and his people were the hostile army that infiltrated the city "in the belly of the wooden horse." When Arafat rejected Palestinian statehood and peace at the Camp David summit in July 2000 and initiated the Palestinian terror war two months later, it was as if he and his men exited the horse and began the fight.

"This is the beginning of the real work," Husseini explained.

The PLO used the seven years that preceded the Palestinian terror war to build up their power. Arafat held "peace" talks and Israel paid through the nose for the privilege of sitting across the table from him and his apparatchiks. Israel gave them the Gaza Strip. Israel gave them the Palestinian cities and villages in Judea and Samaria. Israel gave them weapons and ammunition. Israel gave them international legitimacy. Israel – and with Israel's permission, the nations of the world – gave PLO terrorists billions of dollars every year. Israel permitted the EU and the CIA to arm and train Arafat's terror legions.

Arafat promised that in exchange for all that, he would fight terror and build the institutions necessary to run a state. Instead, he and his minions transformed the cities Israel gave them into terror bases. They used the funds to finance terror armies. They used the international legitimacy Israel's recognition conferred to escalate and expand their political war against Israel's right to exist.

The Israeli public didn't need Husseini's interview to know that Oslo was gravest strategic error in Israel's history. The first Palestinian suicide bomber blew up at a crowded bus stop seven months after Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat shook hands at the White House on Sept. 13, 1993. Between their handshake and the beginning of the Oslo war in September 2000 the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists was twice the total killed from 1967-1993.

Despite the public's opposition, today, 28 years after Oslo's launch, we are still living the world Oslo unleashed. The strategic and political realities the Oslo process created still dominate the life of the country. The Palestinian Authority still exists. It still finances and incites terror and wages its political war against Israel. The Oslo-obsessed "international community" still demands that Israel "make painful concessions for peace," and together with the Israeli Left, insists that the "two-state solution" is the only possible way to resolve the Palestinians' never-ending war for the annihilation of Israel.

Melanie Phillips: The unstoppable engine of infamy

The NGOs that contributed to the Durban auto-da-fé are still producing vicious and sustained anti-Israeli lies and incitement. Yet no governments denounce them or hold them to account.

The United Nations itself continues to act as the crucible of the campaign to delegitimise and destroy Israel. Last year, for example, the UN General Assembly adopted 17 one-sided resolutions against Israel and only six against any of the other 192 member states for human rights violations.

Last September, the UN’s Economic and Social Council condemned Israel alone for allegedly violating women’s rights — even though Israel is the only upholder of women’s rights in the Middle East.

Last May, the UN’s World Health Organisation accused Israel of violating the Palestinians’ health rights over COVID-19 — a wickedly false claim, and with Israel once again the only country to be singled out during the entire assembly.

The UN’s charter says its role is “promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion”.

The world body betrays this commitment almost every day. Conspicuously failing to deal with the racism and gross abuse of human rights around the world, it chooses instead to persecute Israel, a country that guarantees human rights for all its citizens.

The Durban conference displayed the moral bankruptcy of the United Nations for all to see. Yet the west continues to treat it as the legitimate arbiter of world peace and justice. Support for the United Nations is the pivot for the west’s loss of moral compass.

The boycott of the New York meeting is thus an empty gesture. It’s the United Nations itself that is allowing evil to triumph — and in which the two-faced, cowardly and self-indulgent west is all-too complicit.

19 principled nations have withdrawn from #Durban @UN antisemitic hate-fest.

These countries in #Europe though not prepared to #SayNoToDurbanIV. They are Ok with antisemitism & racial hatred@PolandMFA ????@dfatirl ????@NorwayMFA ????@SweMFA ????@SpainMFA ????@MFA_Lu ????@SwissMFA ???? https://t.co/MbGhmFBTOq
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 17, 2021

Sweden releases pledges to combat antisemitism, ahead of its hosting of the Malmö International Forum on Combating Antisemitism.

We ask @SwedishPM @SweMFA @Anna_Ekstrom: So why are you legitimizing next week's antisemitism-tainted Durban IV event?https://t.co/t6Iztczq0D
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 17, 2021

2014 press conference of major Gaza terror groups

From Middle East Monitor:

The Palestinian resistance factions announced yesterday the formation of "a joint operations room" in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, Anadolu has reported. The military wings of Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are all involved, the first time that the three movements have joined forces in such joint action.

The agency quoted a resistance fighter from Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a group affiliated with Fatah. "There is no room to talk [with Israel] except with bullets," he said. "We are ready to fight and we will not retreat."

The agency pointed out that armed masked men wearing the insignia of the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, were also present.

According to a fighter with Islamic Jihad's Al-Quds Brigades, "A general mobilisation has been announced in the camp and all factions are ready to fight. The Israeli army will see what it does not expect if it even thinks to enter the camp." He explained that resistance fighters from different parts of the West Bank have arrived in Jenin camp "in preparation for any battle."

The joint operations room appears to be a response to the fact that two of the escapees from Gilboa Prison in Israel are believed to be trying to get to Jenin refugee camp. The Israeli Chief of Staff, Aviv Kochavi, said on Wednesday that if the two do indeed reach Jenin, the Israeli army will storm the city in force in order to recapture them, even if the operation affects the rest of the West Bank.

Mahmoud Abbas claimed to have dissolved the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades back in....2007. It wasn't true then and it isn't true now.

The three terror groups have worked together in Gaza for years. This is the first I have seen them work together in the West Bank. The prisoner escape seems to be the reason, but it is clear that the Palestinian Authority is allowing this to happen - especially when the terror groups are so anxious to publicize how they are active in the areas that the PA supposedly keeps law and order.