Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Susan Sarandon thinks Jews are native to Europe. That's another kind of antisemitism.

Airhead actress Susan Sarandon retweeted a graphic by the absurdly named "Jewish Voice for Peace:"

The top half of the graphic is, of course, the much-debunked "Map That Lies" which has been recanted by MSNBC, McGraw-Hill and others.

This version is even more inaccurate than the usual ones, which often say "Map of Palestinian dispossession" or words to that effect.

This one says that the black areas in the top maps were "inhabited and stewarded by natives" and the white areas were "controlled by settlers."

Even if you think that most Palestinians are natives, when did they ever "steward" the areas of Palestine? The area was controlled by British, Turks, Ayyubid and Mamluk Egyptians, Crusaders, Byzantines, Romans - but never by Arab residents.

The last time it was controlled by natives was when it was called Judea.

But according to JVP and Sarandon, Jews aren't native to Judea. They are all "settlers."

Where exactly are Jews native to, then?

Whether she realizes it or not, Sarandon is saying that Jews are native to Europe, meaning that she is denying the very origins of the Jewish people - which is antisemitism.

While some Palestinians are descended from Second Temple-era Jews, most of them proudly trace their families back to areas around the world, from Arabia to Turkey to Morocco.

Clueless Westerners who consider themselves liberal, like Sarandon, are really racists.They romanticize the idea of being native into backwards, primitive, dark-skinned people who cannot speak English and cannot do any wrong. Jews, who they say are "white passing" and who win Nobel prizes for science, are clearly racist Europeans like them, and could not possibly be natives to the Middle East like the righteous Arabs are. (And Jews who never left the Middle East, who were ethnically cleansed from the wonderful Arab countries, are not to be mentioned except as victims of European Jewish oppression.)

This is another manifestation of modern antisemitism, one based on the idea that Jews are interlopers and outsiders no matter where they live - just like the old antisemitism.

Hollywood isn't exactly the place to go to learn about history. Unfortunately, it is a very good place to learn bigotry.

Another kind of antisemitism: Not believing Jewish media can be objective. It happened in 1937 by @AP and the @NYTimes.

Yair Rosenberg points to a 2011 Jewish Telegraphic Agency article that shows one reason the Western world didn't know about the Holocaust.

In JTA's words:

At no time in history were JTA correspondents more needed than during the 12 long years of the Hitler regime. The JTA reported on the persecution and then the annihilation of Europe’s Jews, often providing the first, and sometimes the only, reports on the unfolding Holocaust. And at no time did its correspondents face more peril to their livelihood and lives.

As soon as Hitler came to power in 1933, problems began for the agency. It was, after all, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a country that was determined to deprive all Jews of their rights. The agency faced the Nazi regime’s physical attacks on its operations and rhetorical attacks on its journalistic integrity. “Much of the JTA’s superb reporting from Germany … was labeled Jewish anti-Nazi propaganda,” JTA’s founder and editor, Jacob Landau, explained years later in a report to the JTA board.

The German government was not the agency’s only problem.

“About 1933 …a resistance began to develop in the world press to acceptance of news involving Jews and others from what was considered a partisan (Jewish) source,” Landau wrote.

The New York Times dropped the service in 1937 despite repeated entreaties from JTA editors. The Associated Press followed suit. So many non-Jewish newspapers canceled that the agency felt compelled to form the Overseas News Agency so it could report from Europe under a non-Jewish moniker.

Still, JTA maintained its mission of serving as “the eyes and ears of world Jewry.” To the rest of the press, the destruction of Europe’s Jews was a secondary story, buried deep within newspapers. To the JTA, the extermination campaign was the story. As Germany marched into Austria and then into Czechoslovakia and other European countries, JTA correspondents chronicled the ensuing anti-Semitic legislation, property confiscations, sporadic violence, work formations, round-ups, and deportations.

At the very time that the US and the world needed accurate reports about the impending genocide of Jews in Europe, the major news agencies decided to no longer trust the Jewish news agency that they had used for decades - because it couldn't be unbiased.

That decision is based on antisemitism, saying that Jews cannot accurately report about other Jews.

Who knows how many lives could have been saved if Americans could have been reading about the Holocaust a year or two earlier than they did?

I found an example of the media's skepticism of JTA's objectivity in this January 1940 article about how difficult it was for Western reporters to know what Germany had done to Poland, because the only sources were from Polish, Catholic and Jewish sources.

Note the scare quotes about "authentic details." Clearly United Press didn't believe the reports of Jews about massacres of Jews either.

10/11 Links Pt2: Antisemitic EU & ECRI policies on Israel cannot be whitewashed; Ben & Jerry’s excruciating Israel interview; BBC describes Alfred Dreyfus as 'notorious Jewish spy'

From Ian:

David Singer: Antisemitic EU & ECRI policies on Israel cannot be whitewashed

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) - in attempting to whitewash European Union (EU) policies directed against Israel in Judea and Samaria being labelled as “antisemitic” – is itself engaging in antisemitic criticism of Israel’s right to claim sovereignty there.

Antisemitic EU anti-Israel policies:
- Require goods produced by Israelis living in Judea and Samaria to be distinctively labelled for sale in the EU: “Product from West Bank (Israeli settlement)”
- Facilitate and finance illegal Arab building in Area C of Judea and Samaria - totally under Israeli control pursuant to the Oslo Accords – without the EU seeking Israel’s approval

ECRI’s 47 members – one from each Council of Europe member state – are appointed:
“on the basis of their independence, impartiality, moral authority and expertise in dealing with issues of racism, discrimination, xenophobia, antisemitism and intolerance.”

ECRI – in a recent report - clarified when it considers criticism of Israel to be antisemitic:
“Contemporary forms of antisemitism can differ from traditional forms of prejudice against Jewish people, but both forms can also exist in parallel. Nowadays, antisemitism can also be expressed in certain criticism of Israel that is baseless. For example, denying Jews their right to a national homeland, holding the State of Israel to a different standard of behaviour than other states, or demonising the State of Israel and viewing it and its people as inherently evil or racist, may be regarded as antisemitic.”

Under these guidelines:
- Textbooks used in Palestinian Arab and Saudi Arabian schools depicting hundreds of maps without “Israel” being designated on them - are antisemitic
- The Palestine Liberation Organisation and Hamas - whose respective Charters deny Jews have any right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in their ancient and biblical homeland – are antisemitic organisations and their leaders are antisemites.
- EU criticism of Israel for its responses in protecting Israel’s citizens from rockets fired from Gaza indiscriminately into Israeli population centres - is antisemitic - since European States would act similarly were their countries so confronted

ECRI however shoots itself in the foot when stating what criticism of Israel is not antisemitic:
“However, ECRI strongly emphasises that any attempts to stifle, or stigmatise as antisemitic, legitimate criticism of Israel and its policies, in particular towards the Palestinian people and in the context of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, will jeopardise efforts to combat antisemitism and should therefore be rejected.”

Ben & Jerry’s excruciating Israel interview

Ben & Jerry have never been shy about making politics part of their brand. The ice cream makers have made social activism a mainstay of their corporate outlook in recent years, with stunts including the refusal to serve two scoops of the same ice cream flavor in Australia (in support of same-sex marriage) and unveiling an anti-Trump batch flavor called ‘Pecan Resist’ to ‘lick injustice.’ They even found time to involve themselves in little local difficulties across the pond, berating UK home secretary Priti Patel last year for trying to stop migrants from crossing the English Channel in boats.

Now, though, one of the company’s stunts appears to have backfired spectacularly. In July the ice cream manufacturers declared that Ben & Jerry’s would stop sales in the ‘occupied Palestinian Territory’ as ‘we believe it is inconsistent with our values for our product to be present within an internationally recognized illegal occupation’. And who better to defend those values than Ben Cohen, appearing alongside his co-founder Jerry Greenfield in an Axios on HBO interview this weekend?

The septuagenarian Sanders supporter could only flounder when asked about the reasoning behind the Israel boycott, as the company he started continues to peddle its wares in Georgia and Texas, despite attacking the abortion and voting rights laws in those two states.

Scoop: Ben and Jerry stumped by Texas and Georgia

The activist co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s admitted in an interview with “Axios on HBO” that they don't know how to hold states like Georgia and Texas accountable when they pass laws with which they disagree.

Why it matters: Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield have made progressive politics synonymous with their brand. The 70-year-old entrepreneurs, who no longer control the company but retained their right to be its social conscience, have shown they’ll use business muscle in pursuit of their ideals.

Axios' Alexi McCammond asked, during an interview in the brand’s home state of Vermont: “You guys are big proponents of voting rights. Why do you still sell ice cream in Georgia? Texas — abortion bans. Why are you still selling there?”
- “I don’t know,” Ben Cohen said with a laugh. “It’s an interesting question. I don’t know what that would accomplish. We’re working on those issues, of voting rights. ... I think you ask a really good question. And I think I’d have to sit down and think about it for a bit.”
- When pressed on the Texas limits on women’s access to abortion, Cohen said: “By that reasoning, we should not sell any ice cream anywhere. I’ve got issues with what’s being done in almost every state and country. ”
- "One thing that's different is that what Israel is doing is considered illegal by international law. And so I think that's a consideration," Greenfield said.

One of the company’s latest moves — its 2021 decision to stop selling ice cream in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories — led to serious backlash.
- Cohen and Greenfield wrote a joint NYT op-ed defending the company’s decision. “While we no longer have any operational control of the company we founded in 1978, we’re proud of its action and believe it is on the right side of history,” they wrote.
- Thirty-five states in the U.S. have anti-Israel boycott laws, and so far four have announced they’re taking action or considering divesting from Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company.
- Greenfield told “Axios on HBO” that those states’ decisions are based on “misinformation” that “Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever are being characterized as boycotting Israel — which is not the case at all. It’s not boycotting Israel in any way,” he said.

Axios on HBO: Ben & Jerry’s founders on sales in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Arabs didn't blame their Algerian pogrom of 1934 on Zionism

From AP and NYT wire services in 1934:

Even now, scholars haven't determined the reason for the rampage. The Muslim version was that a Jew was drunk and insulted Islam. The Jewish community disputed that. What is undeniable is that the Arabs hated the Jews and any excuse was enough for them to massacre their innocent Jewish neighbors.

What is also undeniable is that this attack had nothing to do with Zionism.

The JTA quotes here were incomplete and whitewashed the real horror: "A scene of utter desolation and horror, of Jewish girls with their breasts cut off, of little children with numerous knife wounds and of whole families locked in their homes and burned to death."

Arabs and Muslims love to claim that Jews lived in peace and harmony with them until Zionism. That is garbage. The Jews always knew that they were second class citizens and that one wrong move could spark a pogrom like this one.

Notice also that even in 1934, the media would "both sides" a massacre of Arabs to Jews, claiming it was fighting between two sides and not a one sided massacre.

This was not the only Muslim pogrom of Jews in 1934. Only two months earlier, in the Thrace region of Turkey, Jews were attacked mercilessly and some 15,000 were forced to flee the area.

It is considered poor taste to mention Muslim antisemitism nowadays. All hate of Jews is assigned a "logical" excuse, Israel. But until you understand that antiemitism among Arabs and Muslims pre-dates Israel and Zionism by centuries, you cannot understand what is euphemistically called "anti-Zionism" by today's Arabs and Muslims.

The final official death toll in Constantine was 34 Jews.

Islamist site 5Pillars writes:

Civil society organisations and activists in the UK and overseas are threatening to organise a mass boycott of the University of Bristol unless it reverses its dismissal of Professor David Miller for his outspokenly critical stance on Israel and its supporters.

In a letter sent to the university today, they accuse the university of caving in to the demands of the pro-Israel lobby and violating the freedom of speech that is necessary for intellectual enquiry.

In doing so, they say, the university is no longer a safe space for students and staff.

Of course, David Miller attacked Jewish students in class, making it no longer a safe space for them. The academic freedom to attack one's students is fairly iffy, even for Jews and even at Bristol.

At least this year.

The letter justifies his actions, saying "his comments offended some of those whom his work identifies as racists, upholders of an apartheid regime and perpetrators of systematic oppression."

When they say they want to "boycott" the university, they of course don't mean that because such a boycott would not be noticed by any halfway decent school. What they really mean is that they are threatening to "cancel" the university. The letter says:

We hereby serve notice that unless Prof Miller is reinstated, we intend to bring the full force of civil society and public opinion to bear on your institution for as long as it takes to redress this injustice. This will include persuading national and international students and academics to boycott Bristol University because it cannot be relied upon to guarantee freedom of expression for racial and religious minorities, as well as political dissent which offends its targets.

It is a threat. Which is the only language that Israel-haters understand.

The signatories include such luminaries as "Rabbi Ahron Cohen, Neturei Karta" and "John Tymon, Football Against Apartheid."

10/11 Links Pt1: Ronald Lauder: The war Israel must fight; UNHRC approves Durban resolution, 10 nations oppose over antisemitism; Why We Should Care About Threats to Azerbaijan

From Ian:

Ronald Lauder: The war Israel must fight

The State of Israel is in a fight for its life: but you wouldn’t know it. For 75 years, Israel’s enemies could not defeat it militarily. What’s more, given enviable strides over the last decade, Israel’s enemies cannot defeat it economically. Yet we are in a far more dangerous place than ever.

That’s because these achievements are only part of the equation of Israel’s security and the battle for the safety of the Jewish people. Israel’s enemies have opened a new political front in their attacks – and Israel is losing that battle, which is not being fought on a border, in the sky or on the ground.

The battle for public opinion is being fought on campuses and billions of iPhones. And Israel has let itself fall behind and, as Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora, by not fighting the daily lies, distortions, dishonesty, and slander unequivocally and with one voice, we have let it happen on our watch.

Opponents of Israel’s right to exist have overtaken many mainstream press outlets, and this bias has infiltrated editorial boards and even supposedly unbiased reporting, who parrot anti-Israel, antisemitic talking points that would make the Muslim Brotherhood proud. They refer to Israel as an “apartheid state,” guilty of “ethnic cleansing,” and “crimes against humanity” – simply for defending itself.

On social media, influencers attack Israel for said self-defense in the face of rocket barrages launched by terror groups.

In the past, Israel’s opponents and enemies of the Jewish people funneled money to the state’s adversaries through weapons programs and militias. Today, it’s more insidious. It has effectively penetrated former staunch Israeli allies, including the US, through media and academia. It has split American Jews. Jewish students and professors are openly ridiculed, censored, and penalized for expressing support for Israel, including by fellow Jews. Universities recognize the problem, but most stay silent out of fear of condemnation and cancellation.

In government and politics, formerly unassailable allies of Israel and the Jewish people, including the Speaker of the House, are starting to bow to extremist factions including, terrifyingly, agreeing to temporarily pull votes for Iron Dome funding.

Yisrael Medad: Jewish prayer should be permitted on the Temple Mount

It should be clear: No Jew enters a Muslim building on the Temple Mount and surely not in a mosque. The compound is rather large and there is more than enough room for it to be shared. After all, in Hebron, Jews do pray daily in a structure considered a mosque (the Cave of the Patriarchs). So why is there this form of Islamic cancel culture which can be summarized so: The Temple Mount belongs solely to the Muslims and the Western Wall to the Jews.

First, the facts. Invading Muslim armies conquered Jerusalem in 638 CE and usurped, physically and theologically, Mount Moriah. Although Jews were permitted to enter at times, from the 13th century until the late 19th century, Jewish entry was prohibited. This also was the situation in Hebron. In 1947, a Jew who accidentally entered the compound was killed. Parallel to this, the majority rabbinic opinion was that, despite the compound being larger than the original sacred area, all entry would be prohibited.

On this background, in 1967, the famous status quo was adopted. But if that situation is not static – Muslims have opened three new mosques since then – do they have any right to protest? Are they the only ones who have the right to be “provoked?” The Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty’s Article 9 calls for the promotion of “interfaith relations … with the aim of working toward religious understanding … freedom of religious worship and tolerance.” Should that not be honored?

Can we not attempt to achieve peace through religious unity and compromise? Why do we need to tolerate such degrading language in the Arabic media on this issue as when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Jews "defile the Al-Aqsa Mosque with their filthy feet."

The Waqf, and its financial patron, Jordan’s Ministry of Awqaf Islamic Affairs and Holy Places, have prevented surveillance cameras that could reduce violence and encourage the bullying attitude that presages rock throwing and worse. They need to be more responsible.

In the spirit of Isaiah 56:7, that “my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations,” cannot we accept that all who seek to respect and worship at their holy sites be allowed to do so reasonably without recourse to threats of violence?

Kushner in Knesset: We all have a role in advancing Abraham Accords

It is time to act to ensure the Abraham Accords fulfill their potential, former senior advisor to the US president Jared Kushner said at a ceremony in the Knesset on Monday.

“What we created is a new paradigm in the region. It can have many different outcomes,” he said. “It is imperative on all of us to set high expectations for what we want the Abraham Accords to achieve.”

Kushner, who founded the Abraham Accords Institute for Peace, spoke at an event in honor of the one-year anniversary of the peace and normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states. The Knesset Abraham Accords Caucus, which includes 107 MKs and is led by MKs Ofir Akunis (Likud) and Ruth Wasserman-Lande (Blue and White), hosted the event.

The adviser to former president Donald Trump recalled that the announcement of peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates “shocked everyone.” He quipped that it was “one of the few things between Israel and the US that didn’t leak out.”

Kushner said that when he, together with the first Israeli delegation, arrived in Abu Dhabi on a direct flight, “the image captured the imaginations of the whole region. People realized things were just different.”

Now, he said, Israel is more popular in Arab states than he had imagined.

“Muslims in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Pakistani are seeing that Israel is not what they thought it is. They are seeing that Israel is welcoming their Muslim brothers,” he stated. “A new era has really begun.”

The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is defined as the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime if: (1) she was to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) through her lifetime and (2) she was to live from birth until the end of her reproductive life.. It is the sum of the fertility rates for all childbearing ages for any particular year.

According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, the TFR of Jewish women for the past 12 months is 3.00, while for Muslim women it is 2.99.

As far as I can tell, this is the first time in history the TFR for Jewish women was higher than for Muslim women in Israel.

In contrast, in 2002, the TFR for Jewish women was 2.56 and for Muslim women it was 4.19.

(h/t Noah)

Incitement continues: Iran just making up lies about Jews in the Temple Mount and publishing them

Usually, even the worst anti-Israel propaganda outlets try to base their lies on some crumb of truth. But when Iran owns the media, why even bother?

From Iran's Mehr News:

Zionist settlers attack Palestinians in Al-Aqsa Mosque
TEHRAN, Oct. 10 (MNA) – Settlers of the Zionist regime launched a large-scale attack against Palestinians in Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday with the support of the regime’s military forces and clashed with Palestinians.

Zionist settlers continue their hostile actions against Palestinian sanctities. The settlers brutally attacked Al-Aqsa Mosque again on Sun., Palestine Al-Youm reported.

According to the report, Zionist settlers chanted anti-Islamic slogans after attacking courtyards of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. A fierce clash took place between the Zionist regime's settlers and Palestinian citizens following the attack launched by Zionists on Al-Aqsa Mosque.

This never happened. Jews who visit the Temple Mount don't come near any of the Muslims there, and police keep them away from each other. If there had been an incident, it would have been widely reported.

The source given was "Palestine al-Youm." I believe this is the satellite channel PalToday.TV. When you visit their website you see something interesting:

In June, the United States seized 33 Iranian websites with domain names registered in the US, for operating illegally by not obtaining an Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) license. The Department of Justice noted "that components of the government of Iran, to include IRTVU and others like it, disguised as news organizations or media outlets, targeted the United States with disinformation campaigns and malign influence operations."

One of those websites seized was Paltoday.tv, a satellite channel that is an Iranian mouthpiece for Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Israel-haters are pushing a multi-pronged attack on Jewish rights, based on pure Jew-hatred. This is only one example; another one today comes from the socialist PFLP terror group, who said that the region could explode because of Talmudic prayers. The PFLP's only concern for prayer is when Jews do it.

A member of the Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Mahmoud al-Ras, called on the Palestinian people, their forces and resistance to continue to confront and be ready and ready to fight the battle to defend Jerusalem in light of the escalation of the occupation’s attack on the courtyards of Al-Aqsa and the decision of the occupation court, which paves the way for settlers to perform Talmudic prayers in its courtyards. Al-Ras considered that Jerusalem, with its churches and mosques, is the identity of a homeland and the beating heart of Palestine, pointing out that the attempt to evoke the Talmudic prayers with aggression against Al-Aqsa is to ignite religious fires that will explode the entire situation, not only in Palestine but outside it as well.

Palestinians upset over Jews having a ceremony on a former cemetery that Muslims deconsecrated in the 1940s

The Palestinian Wafa news agency reports:

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates and the Chief Islamic Justice, Mahmoud Habbash, today condemned the intention of American Zionist groups to hold a ceremony at Mammilla cemetery in West Jerusalem, considering it a desecration of the Islamic graveyard and a flagrant violation of international law and conventions.

They said in two separate statements that the historic cemetery includes the remains of Muslim leaders and residents of Jerusalem who have been buried there for more than a thousand years.

The ceremony is for the Museum of Tolerance.

Iranian media is already trying to turn this into major incitement.

I looked at this issue 11 years ago, and unearth this Palestine Post article from November 22, 1945::

An area of over 450 dunams in the heart of Jerusalem, now forming the Mamilla Cemetery, is to be converted into a business centre. The townplan is being completed under the supervision of the Supreme Moslem Council in conjunction with the Government Town Planning Adviser. A six-storeyed building to house the Supreme Moslem Council and other offices, a four-storeyed hotel, a bank and other buildings suitable for it, a college, a club and a factory are to be the main structures. There will also be a park to be called the Salah ed Din Park, after the Moslem warrior of Crusader times.

...In an interview with "Al-Wihda." the Jerusalem weekly, a member of the Supreme Moslem Council stated that the use of Moslem cemeteries in the public interest had many precedents both in Palestine and elsewhere....

The member added that the Supreme Moslem Council intended to publish a statement containing dispensations by Egyptian, Hejazi and Damascene clerics sanctioning the building programme.

The Supreme Muslim Council said that building on the cemetery was perfectly halal in 1945, and they even received support from Muslim clerics in Egypt and Saudi Arabia to build on top of these supposedly thousand year old graves.

Of course, the Museum of Tolerance was not built on top of a single grave. Court rulings consistently found that the graves had been moved years before.

There are few examples of Palestinian Arab hypocrisy more stark than how they themselves wanted to treat Mamilla Cemetery and their hysterical reactions to how Jews treat it in a far more respectful way.

One final piece of hypocrisy is how the Mufti himself acted when he built his own Palace hotel across the street from the cemetery.

He redirected hotel sewage on the graves.

Israeli natural gas might end up in Lebanon!

The Atlantic Council reports about a convoluted plan t provide Lebanon with much needed fuel - and some of it would be from Israel.

Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian, and Jordanian leaders want to give the beleaguered Lebanon natural gas from Egypt and electricity from Jordan. The gas would travel from Egypt to Jordan to Syria to Lebanon. But all Egyptian gas is mixed with Israeli gas - which means that Lebanon would be using Israeli fuel.

For it to work, the US may have to grant a waiver for the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019, which puts sanctions on Syria and would not allow the gas to pass through there.

The article asks why the US would allow such a waiver without demanding concessions to limit Iranian and Russian influence on the region. It isn't like Hezbollah would give the US any goodwill for facilitating fuel to Lebanon. And Hezbollah certainly aimed to benefit politically from illegally smuggling Iranian fuel through Syria into Lebanon.

10/10 Links: Why are Jews so quick to defend our enemies?; Amazon, Google Under Fire for Sponsoring Event With Linda Sarsour; Islamic/Arab terrorists bite the hands that feed them

From Ian:

Why are Jews so quick to defend our enemies?

Writing here last month, Sabrina Miller made a plea: Jewish schools should teach Palestinian views. Her argument was that this would help woefully ill-informed young Jews better to argue Zionism’s case once they arrive on campus. Although the plea came with the best of intentions, it risks falling into a trap. The nakba (an Arabic term for the ‘catastrophic’ exodus of 710,000 Palestinian refugees) is the self-inflicted consequence of the Arab decision to go to war in 1948 — a war which their side instigated and lost. To talk of the nakba without balance or context would be to promote a one-sided narrative of Palestinian victimhood.

If we mention the Arab nakba, we are compelled as a matter of law and equity to talk about the Jewish nakba (I use the expression for convenience). As many as 870,000 Jews (persecuted by the Arab League as the “Jewish minority of Palestine”) were driven from, or fled, the Arab world at around the same time as the Palestinian refugees — and as a consequence of the same conflict, merely because Jews in Arab lands shared the same religion and ethnicity as Israelis.

Why should we take only the Palestinian refugee cause seriously, while dismissing the Jewish refugees? Why are Jews so quick to empathise with our enemies, while failing to defend our own rights? Furthermore, no credible and lasting peace settlement could be reached if the grievances of more than half the Jews of Israel — refugees from Muslim lands or their descendants — are ignored.

Recognising the Jewish nakba, the mass displacement and dispossession of ancient Middle Eastern Jewish communities, is central to achieving reconciliation. It would mean acknowledging that an irreversible exchange of refugees took place, similar to exchanges which occurred as a result of other 20th Century nationalist conflicts.

One cannot teach about the Arab nakba without also teaching about its root cause: Arab rejectionism. Today, such rejectionism has religious overtones. The Israel-Palestine conflict cannot be divorced from the eliminationist intentions of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian ayatollahs and Islamist groups generally. These do not even bother to camouflage their genocidal aims in terms acceptable to western ears, such as “occupation”, “settlements” and “Palestinian human rights”.

Diaspora Jews do not make the right counter-arguments because our approach to Israel is frustratingly “Ashkenormative”. The tragedy of the Mizrahi (eastern) communities is not known to the majority of Ashkenazi Jews. Consequently, we don’t adequately make the case for Jews in general.

Israel is the vindication of an aboriginal Middle Eastern people’s aspirations for self-determination. Over half its Jewish population — Mizrahim from the Muslim world — never left the region and pre-dated the Arab conquest by 1,000 years or more. (The long sojourn of Ashkenazim in Europe does not make them any less Middle Eastern in origin, culture and identity.) Why should Arabs have 22 states, while other indigenous victims of Arab imperialism such as the Amazigh (Berbers) or the Kurds — 99 per cent of whom have voted for an independent state — have no political rights? To the latter, Israel is an inspiration.

Melanie Phillips: Far from an act of piety

Campaigners against the proposed Holocaust memorial and “learning centre”, which is to be built in Victoria Tower Gardens next to the Houses of Parliament, have launched an appeal in the High Court which starts next week.

Some may be wondering at this 11th-hour challenge. Isn’t building this centre a done deal? Why are people making all this fuss? Surely such a memorial is a good thing?

To which the answers are: maybe; for very good reason; and no, it is not.

Let’s take these in reverse order.

The site is wholly inappropriate. It’s a much loved, small, green oasis. The proposed centre, with its 23 tall, bronze fins, would be an eyesore. As a tourist attraction, it would be submerged by people and traffic.

Being so close to the Thames, its subterranean levels would be at serious risk of flooding. And as Lord Carlile, the government’s former reviewer of terrorism legislation, told the planning inquiry, its location would turn it into a terrorist target.

So why did this deeply unsuitable site suddenly become the only site? Westminster City Council told the inquiry that it was presented to the Prime Minister as a fait accompli.

“No alternatives were offered,” it said, “nor professional advice sought as to the acceptability in planning terms” of the site. “There has been no public consultation on this less than transparent process”. Why not?

David Collier: What if… it wasn’t Ireland? The awful truth about the antisemitism report

On Thursday I published an indepth study into antisemitism in Ireland – much of it disguised as anti-Zionist activity. This is Ireland’s shame.

These are the facts:
The report was based on years of research.
The report contains 760 footnotes that provide concrete evidence to support the findings.
It exposes Irish politicians who have shared blatant fake news stories.
Shows Irish politicians have also like or shared horrific antisemitic comments.
That violence, intimidation and antisemitism are pillars of anti-Zionist activity on campus.
It proves that on the street that there is foul antisemitism from key ‘human rights’ activists – including support for the Protocols and Holocaust denial.
That traditional Christian antisemitism plays a significant role and Christian NGOs facilitate the spread of antisemitism.
And It shows that a lot of antisemitism denial occurs where antisemitism is at its most concentrated.
In response to the report the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland called on ‘all the Irish political parties and both Houses of the Oireachtas‘ to take action.

And the response? Outside of the tiny Irish Jewish population and the small group of vocal allies that they have in Ireland – the response has been a wall of silence with just an occassional abusive comment thrown overhead. But what if… it wasn’t about Ireland…..?
What if a report had just been published in London, showing that an MP had liked a post saying Hitler’ wasn’t wrong’. The 200 pages of the report went on to prove that there were a few Westminster MPs sharing blatant fake news from the accounts of rabid anti-Jewish racists and Holocaust deniers – spreading anti-Jewish hate into the population. That these MPs were found to be obsessed with lying about Israel and openly calling for its destruction. What if the report also showed many of the UK’s well-known ‘anti-racist’ faces believed that the Protocols were real, the Holocaust never happened and evil Jewish bankers were secretly behind all the evil in the world. That antisemitism was a growing problem of the most vile kind.

What if too, the Jewish organisations in the UK expressed their outrage and horror – calling on the UK to take immediate action against the anti-Jewish racism.

And then what if nobody responded? Not a single MP from any political party said a word. And not a single member of the press thought it was worthy of writing about.

What if nobody cared and the cries of the Jewish citizens were just completely ignored? What if antisemitic Corbynism had risen and the response of the UK population was just to shrug its shoulders and call the Jews a bunch of liars?

What would that say about Jewish life in the UK? Or the US – or anywhere that such horrific anti-Jewish racism – at every level – was so easily ignored. This is the awful truth about how bad things are in Ireland.

Amad reports that the Human Center for Democracy and Rights (I think they mean this) sent a letter to a number of Palestinian and international bodies about the continued failure of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah to issue passports to a number of Palestinian citizens in the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian passport is not recognized everywhere but it is better than nothing, and it seems that the PA has a deliberate policy to deny many Gazans the ability to obtain one that they could use to travel through the Rafah crossing, or when they get permission to go through Israel. Egypt has recognized these passports in the past.

While Israel apparently has to give permission as well for Palestinian passports (according to Wikipedia, although the page seems dated) this NGO is not blaming Israel but the PA. If Israel was stopping the issuance of passports, you can be sure that it would be making headlines.

Gisha, the Israeli NGO that supposedly deals with freedom of movement for Palestinians, has nothing on this topic.

Muslim Temple Mount "silent prayer" reaction is nothing less than naked Jew-hatred - but too many Jews adopt their narrative anyway

On Friday, the Jerusalem District Court overturned the ruling the previous week from the Jerusalem Magistrate Court saying that Jews cannot be prevented from saying silent prayers on the Temple Mount.

Given that so many Muslims had made such a big deal over the initial ruling, one would think that they would celebrate this new ruling, right?

Nope - it is barely being reported. And most of the reports are dismissing the new ruling as being irrelevant, by the same people who claimed the initial ruling was cataclysmic.

Sheikh Kamal al-Khatib, deputy head of the Islamic movement inside the Palestinian territories, said in a press statement that the new court ruling "is a kind of fraud and igniting public opinion with a fair position of the Israeli judiciary, but the truth has proven that the judiciary is an arm of the Israeli establishment."

Palestinian lawyer Khaled Zabarka said that the Hebrew media was trying to "mislead public opinion."

Director General of the Waqf, Sheikh Muhammad Azzam Al-Khatib, said: “According to the information available to us, there is no decision to cancel the silent prayers in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque by the Israeli Central Court."

What he apparently means is that the Central Court ruled that since Rabbi Aryeh Lippo was shown to be moving his lips, even though his prayers were silent, it cannot be said that he was not doing "visible prayer" - and Muslims say that the ruling still allows invisible prayer.

Meaning that Jews should not be allowed to even think prayers.

Meaning that their goal, as always, is to ban Jews from the Temple Mount altogether. And this is something that they say explicitly in Arabic all the time, with daily headlines showing Jews visiting the site saying that they are "provocative" and "storming."

This court kerfuffle is just an excuse for Jew-haters to promote the lie that respectful Jewish prayer can somehow ignite a regional conflict.

Arab op-eds screaming about how the "silent prayer" decision will lead to the building of the Third Temple are still being published even after the new ruling.. Muslim organizations worldwide continue to condemn the initial court ruling. Arab social media is still filled with photos of Jews praying even today.

The unfortunate thing is that Israel's Public Security Minister Omer Bar Lev has swallowed the antisemitic lies and adopted them as his own.

He announced that Israel Police appealed the ruling because "a change in the status quo will endanger the public peace and could cause a flare-up."

"The State of Israel advocates freedom of worship and prayer for all, however, in view of the security implications, the status quo must be upheld that the prayer of Jews on the Temple Mount will take place next to the Western Wall and the prayer of Muslims will take place in al-Haram al-Sharif," he said.

Evidence from the past few years shows that this is not true. Jews have been praying, openly and in groups, on the east side of the Temple Mount without incident, proving that the apocalyptic predictions from the "experts" are thoroughly wrong.

There isn't a grassroots opposition to Jews quietly praying. There is official incitement from self-appointed Muslim leaders to spark such opposition. The reactions to the original court ruling are an affected outrage, not a genuine outrage - they are meant to rile people up. And for the most part, these efforts are failing.

But some Jews are so afraid of defending their rights that they are happy to adopt the Muslim incitement narrative as truth. This emboldens the haters to redouble their efforts to rid Jerusalem of Jews altogether, which is the "status quo" of 1948-1967 that many Muslims really desire.

Only when Jews actually fight for their rights will Jews get those rights. Proud Jews must combat the the meek dhimmis who think they must do what their Muslim masters say.

After another tweet by Ken Roth (roughly #130 this year) claiming that Israel practices apartheid, I decided to look further into the actual legal definition of apartheid and see if and how Human Rights Watch twists it.

All the relevant definitions of apartheid use specific language that it is a crime of racial discrimination. The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid says "For the purpose of the present Convention, the term 'the crime of apartheid', which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them" and then goes on to give lots of examples always using the term "racial group."

The Rome Statute defines apartheid as "inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime."

The April HRW report accusing Israel of apartheid says that "racial group" doesn't really mean racial group. They have no proof from the source materials, for which the definition of "racial group" was obvious enough not to be defined. Since the actual conventions didn't define the term, HRW took the definition from a completely different Convention.

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which was adopted in 1965 and came into legal force in 1969, defines “racial discrimination” as “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.” The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the UN body charged with monitoring the implementation of the ICERD, has consistently found that members of racial and ethnic groups, as well as groups defined based on descent or their national origin, face racial discrimination.[47] Rather than treat race as constituting only genetic traits, Human Rights Watch uses this broader definition.

On first glance, that sounds like a pretty good argument for an expansive definition of racial discrimination, although perhaps not for a definition of a racial group. (I think an argument can be made that the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute intended the narrower definition, and that the expansive definition is explicitly only meant for ICERD ["In this Convention, the term 'racial discrimination' shall mean..."]. Others have argued that the definition of apartheid is specifically based on race alone. But let's set that aside for now. )

Once HRW is relying on ICERD to define what racial discrimination is, they must then include the very next paragraph in ICERD, which applies directly to Israel - and which they do not quote in their report.

This Convention shall not apply to distinctions, exclusions, restrictions or preferences made by a State Party to this Convention between citizens and non-citizens.

This one paragraph completely destroys HRW's "apartheid" argument.

Israeli laws do not distinguish between Israeli Jewish citizens and Israeli Arab citizens. They distinguish between Israeli citizens and non-citizens - which every nation on Earth does.

HRW and others will base their "apartheid" arguments on claims like saying that Jewish "settlers" in the territories have different laws than their Arab neighbors. HRW says that Israeli "policies include limiting the population and political power of Palestinians, granting the right to vote only to Palestinians who live within the borders of Israel as they existed from 1948 to June 1967." But that is a lie - there are thousands of Israeli Arab citizens who live across the Green Line in French Hill, Beit Hanina, Beit Safafa and other communities, who can vote in Israeli elections, just like Israeli Jewish "settlers" can.

And if someone like, say, Peter Beinart decided to move to Ramallah to prove that Palestinians are wonderful people who wouldn't murder him, he would not be allowed to vote in Israeli elections even though he is a Jew - because he is not an Israeli citizen.

Virtually every example of discrimination in the HRW report, as well as in other articles that make the claim of "apartheid," is based not on whether someone is Arab or Jewish, but on whether they are citizens or non-citizens - the exact distinction that the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination made clear is not to be considered racial discrimination.

This one paragraph in the ICERD demolishes their entire 213 page report.

The authors of the Human Rights Watch report definitely knew this when they decided not to quote the other section of the ICERD that they base their entire argument on.

If this was an issue of conflicting legal arguments, then one could let the lawyers argue it out. But if it was a legal argument, one would assume good will from both sides, pointing out their own interpretations of the law. By quoting only the definitions that agree with HRW's pre-determination of Israeli "apartheid" and pretending that the definitions that disprove the argument don't even exist, HRW shows that its own arguments weren't based on the law to begin with, but on a bastardization of international law meant to attack only one state.

10/09 Links: US: 'Our position against unilateral Israeli settlement activity is clear'; Bernie Backs Iron Dome Funding – If Schumer Promises $1B for Gaza, Too

From Ian:

Biden administration to host Abraham Accords trilateral

The Biden administration plans to host an Abraham Accords trilateral meeting in Washington this Wednesday, between US, Israeli and Emirati officials.

"They will discuss progress made since the signing of the Abraham Accords last year, future opportunities for collaboration, and bilateral issues including regional security and stability," the US Embassy said in a statement about the meeting.

The trilateral will be held with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and his United Arab Emirates counterpart Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Blinken will hold separate bilateral meetings with Lapid and bin Zayed prior to the trilateral. The secretary of state tweeted on Saturday night that he looked forward to his meetings with both foreign ministers.

Lapid will be in the US from October 12-14, on his first visit since taking office in May.

Lapid has been the most visible government figure involved in the continuation of the Abraham Accords which were initiated by former US President Donald Trump and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The accords normalized ties between Israel and four Arab states; the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. Lapid has traveled to all but Sudan.

US: 'Our position against unilateral Israeli settlement activity is clear'

The Biden administration has clearly opposed unilateral settlement activity, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington, in response to a query about US pressure on Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to halt such action.

“Look, we don’t always – in fact we never read out our private diplomatic conversations, the back and forth we have, whether that’s with our Israeli partners or any partner around the world,” Price said.

“But suffice it to say we have made our position very clear, and when it comes to unilateral action like settlement activity, we have also made that very clear,” he said.

“And in fact, I just reiterated where the United States stands on settlement activity. There should be no question about that,” Price said on Thursday.

He spoke in the aftermath of a report by The Jerusalem Post’s sister publication Walla, that the Biden administration was quietly calling on Israel to restrain settlement activity.

Price, however, has been fairly blunt about the Biden administration’s opposition to it, including at the Washington briefing on Thursday. “We believe it is critical for all parties to refrain from those unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and, again, undercut efforts to achieve a negotiated two-state solution,” he said. “That includes, as I was saying before in a different context, annexation of territory, settlement activity, demolitions and evictions” and “incitement to violence.”