Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 01, 2021

Elder Comix: The evolving consensus on how to destroy Israel

I had missed this story, and it is a pretty big one. From Haaretz:

The Yom Kippur War was the first, and also the last, all-out war fought by Israel and the Arab countries after Israel became an undeclared Middle East nuclear state. The war, the most difficult since the War of Independence in terms of the number of losses Israel suffered, was the first test case of the impact of Israeli nuclear deterrence on the regional conflict.
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According to a number of sources, Sadat’s insistence on a military action with a very limited territorial aim – to the pronounced displeasure of senior figures in the Egyptian armed forces – was partially related to his assessment that Israel would not use nuclear weapons in the face of a limited attack. At least one senior Egyptian source cites this as an explicit consideration by Sadat.

Additional third-hand testimony supporting the idea that Egypt was deterred by Israel’s nuclear capability from advancing toward the line of the Gidi and Mitla passes in the Sinai emerged in a television interview with Shimon Peres, conducted several months before his death, in 2016.

Peres related that, on his arrival in Israel on November 19, 1977, President Anwar Sadat was welcomed by then-Deputy Prime Minister Yigael Yadin. According to Peres, during the trip from the airport to Jerusalem, Yadin asked Sadat why the Egyptian army had not proceeded to the Sinai passes during the Yom Kippur War. Sadat’s answer: “You have nuclear arms. Haven’t you heard?”

The article puts this in the larger context of the Yom Kippur War and general deterrence, but it appears that Egypt, at least, limited its goals for the war based partially on the (justified) fear that if Israel was in danger of being destroyed, it would unleash nuclear weapons. Meaning that at least in this case, nuclear deterrence had an effect on how a war was fought, and even in the face of the terrible losses Israel suffered during the war, many more would have died without Israel's policy of ambiguity on its nuclear weapons.

11/01 Links Pt1: NGOs fellow-traveling with Palestinian terror; Survey shows that Rep. Tlaib, Progressives don’t represent Palestinian opinion; The joystick intifada

From Ian:

Yisrael Medad: NGOs fellow-traveling with Palestinian terror- opinion

It was Tuvia Tenenbom, disguised as “Tobias,” who in his book “Catch the Jew” shines an investigative light on what he termed the “peace industry” funded by foreign nations and NGOs. If that funding was reduced or properly spent, thousands of ‘good souls’ would lose jobs and their raison d’etre. And local Arabs would have less of an impetus potentially to siphon off funds for terror.

Instead of propping up violence, we might have had peaceful behavior, compromise and coexistence long ago. As one example, in 2019, it was made clear to the EU that their monies were spent on BDS campaigns and the demonization of Israel.

Moreover, the return, in early October, of the United States to the United Nations Human Rights Council is, in connection with this latest incident, all the more worrisome. This body, fed with lies and misrepresentations, much of it even antisemitic, by organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – who do not do independent research but rely on reports from, among others, these six PFLP- NGOs in order to besmirch Israel, has created a cauldron of spuming hostility. This is combined with the fact that the diplomatic corps and the foreign affairs officials in the related countries who attend international conclaves and approve the spending are youngish and have been brought up in universities, which are not necessarily friendly to Israel and Jews, and their training is to accept the Arab narrative to the “Palestinian Question.”

The US State Department is being briefed about the information upon which Minister Gantz made his decision. I assume other EU states are as well. If the information proves reliable and true, will there be an apology forthcoming? And will these activist diplomats admit error? Or is Israel to be treated as a pariah, the goal of Arab propaganda all these past decades?

What is also disturbing is the blind commitment Israel and Jewish groups display. A petition by the organization Peace Now refers to “Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations” who have “long faced such spurious accusations” regarding their terror links. Delegates from 25 Israeli civil society groups showed up in Ramallah on Wednesday in order to express their solidarity with their counterparts in the Palestinian Authority.

Left-wing NGO calls for US sanctions on Benny Gantz

A self-described "anti-occupation" Israeli-Palestinian non-governmental organization has called for US sanctions on Defense Minister Benny Gantz over his designation of six Palestinian human rights organizations as terrorist groups.

In a post to Facebook, Combatants for Peace said it was calling on US President Joe Biden to impose sanctions on Gantz, whom they accused of "political persecution" of the human rights groups, through the use of the Magnitsky Act.

Signed into law by then-US President Barack Obama in 2012, the Magnitsky Act grants the US government the authority to sanction individuals that violate human rights.

In addition, the organization further asked Biden to ignore Israel's terrorist designation of the human rights groups.

Combatants for Peace accused Gantz of deciding "to criminalize the six organizations without presenting any basis or proof, without a transparent procedure ...."

In addition, Combatants for Peace alleged that Gantz had "a personal interest in the matter: Some of the six organizations have raised personal accusations against him in the International Criminal Court in The Hague of committing war crimes during the 2014 attack on [the] Gaza [Strip]."

In apparent 'payback,' PLO designates 2 Israeli NGOs as terrorist entities

The Palestine Liberation Organization on Sunday designated two Israeli nongovernmental groups as terrorist entities in an apparent reprisal over a similar move made by Israel.

Last week Defense Minister Benny Gantz outlawed six Palestinian groups affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, designating them as terrorist organizations.

The PFLP is considered by several countries to be a terrorist entity, including Israel, the United States and the European Union.

The move against the groups was slammed by the Palestinian Authority and international human rights organizations as "a major escalation of its decades-long crackdown on political activism in the occupied territories," and equally criticized by the US and the EU.

Sunday saw PLO-affiliated workers unions slap a similar designation on the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor and Regavim organizations, citing their "collaboration with the Shin Bet [security agency] and the government of the occupation."

NGO Monitor is a watchdog group that analyzes and reports on the output of the international NGO community from a pro-Israel perspective. Regavim is a right-wing NGO that monitors illegal Palestinian building in Area C of Judea and Samaria and pursued legal action to stop it.

A joint statement by the Palestinian groups further urged all international institutions and NGOs to sever ties with both groups.

While it is doubtful the PLO's designation would affect NGO Monitor and Regavim's operations, but it reflects the Palestinian's anger over Gantz's move.

Here a case where the meta-story is more interesting than the story itself.

Israel’s foreign ministry announced last week that the National Library of Israel has launched a digital archive of Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper dating back to its beginnings in 1875.

Egyptian journalists are upset. They denounced the move as Israel stealing Egyptian heritage.

This is a digital archive, not the actual physical paper.

“This is a catastrophic incident that requires an immediate inquiry on the parts of Al-Ahram and the authorities in charge of the press in Egypt,” Khaled El-Balshy, a former member of the journalists’ syndicate board, told The New Arab.

“The looming questions now are: how they did acquire the archive or how did they buy it? Who can give away valuable content like this to Israel?” he asked. “Other than normalisation, the idea is about intellectual property rights.”

The answer is on the archive page itself.

Apparently, an American company named East View Information Services purchased rights to the newspaper archives eight years ago for $185,000. They work together with Stanford University Libraries and the Hoover Institution to digitize historic foreign newspapers.

Israel seems to have purchased the rights to Al Ahram, although the rights only extend to use within Israel.

The thing is, Al Ahram doesn't make its own archive available to Egyptians!

Instead of being angry with their own leaders for not making material available, Egyptian journalists are upset with Israel for legally acquiring the digital rights - and calling it theft.

Sounds vaguely familiar.

Israel's National Library has the full text of over 100 Arabic language newspapers - some of them Jewish, many of them Palestinian, but also from all over. I imagine many Arab researchers use the Israeli site for their own uses, as these archives are easily available and searchable.

The real story here are about how information is still not free in the Arab world even today.

The real story is about how Egyptian journalists still blame Israel for doing something that is perfectly normal and legal, and calling it theft.

The real story is how Arab nations still try to control all information, and how this impedes national progress.

The real story is how anger that should properly be directed at Arab leaders is instead redirected to Israel - because the Jews have been the scapegoats for everything that the Arab elite don't like rather than looking at their own shortcomings.

A LOT of news about antisemitism in the US over the weekend

This weekend, as we marked the third anniversary of the Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh, there was a great amount of news about antisemitic incidents in the US.

A citizen at the Chandler school board meeting went on an antisemitic rant:

Speaking about critical race theory and vaccines — topics not listed on the meeting agenda or discussed by the board — [Melanie] Rettler talked discursively for over a minute before blaming a number of the country’s problems on the Jewish “race:”

“If you want to talk about racism, if you want to bring it in, then let’s bring it in. Let’s get to the bottom of it. We’re talking about white supremacy. OK, let’s get to the very bottom of it. Every one of these things, the deep state, the cabal, the swamp, the elite — you can’t mention it, but I will — there is one race that owns all the pharmaceutical companies and these vaccines aren’t safe, they aren’t effective and they aren’t free. You know that you’re paying for it through the increase in gas prices, the increase in food prices — you’re paying for this and it’s being taken from your money and being given to these pharmaceutical companies and if you want to bring race into this: It’s the Jews.”

The school board complained that her screed was off-topic but did not address the fact that hate was spewed.

A New Jersey high school sent a letter to parents about incidents where students engaged in "homophobic, transphobic, anti-Semitic, and racist comments." No details were given.

New Hampshire State Rep. Maria Perez (D-Milford) posted a tweet last month calling for the destruction of Israel, echoing the terror slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."

After pushback, she deleted it - but after publicity, she doubled down, calling Israel an apartheid state and making the dubious claim that she wants a state with equal rights for all citizens, which has been code for "anything but a Jewish state" since 1947.

Jewish students at Yale University reflected on two recent incidents of antisemitic and racist graffiti at a building under construction on campus. Some said that they have heard subtle antisemitism in campus conversations.

A Brooklyn man was convicted on hate-crime charges for a brutal 2018 attack on a Jewish man walking home from his synagogue. James Vincent, 40, was found guilty of strangulation as a hate crime and assault as a hate crime. On April 21, 2018, Vincent shouted antisemitic slurs at Menachem Moskowitz, choked him and hit him in the head. Moskowitz suffered a black eye and broken rib.

A complaint was filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights over Oberin College professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, who was Iran’s ambassador to the UN from 1987 to 1989, The complaint included "anti-Israel teaching material from Mahallati’s courses, specifically noting a fall 2016 incident where students in his Religion 270 class were tasked with creating 'anti-Israel blogs online that reflect the professor’s lectures and assigned readings,' that his teachings refer to Israel as a 'colonialist state,' and citing him in connection with 'support for Hamas and terrorism.'"

There were also reports about a vandalism incident at a fraternity house at George Washington University where a student's paper Torah model (not a real Torah but including all the text printed) was ripped apart and detergent poured on it.

YNet reports that Israel's Shin Bet arrested a 29-year old Gazan on terror charges. He had been in Israel for well over a year.

Suleiman Kasab, from Khan Younis, entered Israel in January 2020 with humanitarian approval as an escort for his mother, who is suffering from a serious illness and was apparently treated in an Israeli hospital.

Kasab was in contact with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades branch in Gaza, which he was apparently a member of in Gaza. He contacted them asking how he can be of service in performing terror attacks. According to the indictment, the terror group leader Abu Abu Saif al-Din told him to lay low, and said they would provide him with weapons and money.

Kasab hid in the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Ramle.

Correspondence between the terrorist and his Gaza mentor on the Signal app showed that they discussed many potential attacks, including blowing up fuel tanks at a kibbutz to cause many deaths, shooting attacks, and abducting and killing a Jew in order to use the body for bargaining to release prisoners.

It seems that Kasab became impatient and decided to start an arson spree in Ramle. He set a bus on fire, and then he threw a series of firebombs at residents' sukkot, spraying graffiti that "Fatah was here."

When Israel haters claim that Israel is blocking people from Gaza from traveling to Israel, they don't care about the fact that there is a history of terror attacks perpetrated by people who were given permission to enter Israel. Many of them support such attacks.

There is no incentive to attack sukkot during the holiday outside of pure antisemitism. It is only meant to not only damage a symbol of Judaism but to hurt innocent Jews.

This is Fatah - the political party that is led by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

Book review: Bad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy

I've had my share of disagreements with Batya Ungar-Sargon, most notably when she was Opinion Editor of The Forward. But she has been outspoken about the dangers of the current far-Left "woke" movement, and I've had some reasonable private discussions with her, so I bought her brand new book to see what she has to say.

Bad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy is centered around two themes. The primary one is that the media has swallowed the woke narrative, specifically that everything must be viewed through the prism of race.

Ungar-Sargon traces the history of modern journalism through the lens of the New York media world since the 1820s, noting the divide between the media that catered to the upper classes and the newspapers that were aimed at the working class, derided by the traditional media as "sensationalistic." She contrasts the New York World and the New York Sun with the founding of the New York Times, which was explicitly aimed at the rich. She shows that the NYT continues with that mission today, using even digital media to aim at the most wealthy people and those who aspire to join them. Local news and stories about ordinary working class Americans are given short shrift.

Ungar-Sargon demonstrates that while the news business was a trade, with most reporters not having attended college until five decades ago and in touch with the working people, now the journalists are nearly all from a small number of exclusive universities and are in the top tier of what is now known as privilege. Even though journalism pays very little for entry level jobs, the New York media world is filled with young people who could only afford to live in the city because of their wealthy parents who subsidize them. More recently, these privileged young journalists - who have remarkably little experience with actual, on the ground reporting and instead concentrate on doing their jobs using the Internet - have been pushing out the older, experienced journalists by canceling or threatening to cancel them. The result is a remarkably homogeneous, ultra liberal, mostly white class of know-nothings.

Batya brings much evidence that the current fashion of claiming that everything is centered on race is nonsense. Americans are less racist than at any time in our history yet the number of articles about race have skyrocketed. Intersectionality theory is equally shown to be nonsense - African women immigrants, who should according to that theory be on the very bottom of the heap, have no economic disadvantage when seeking employment in the US. She does a great job at taking apart the hypocrisy behind the NYT's treatment of the Tom Cotton op-ed and the aftermath.

Her argument falters when it intersects with her second theme, a more implicit one that pervades the book. This theme is that while the racial problems in the US are exaggerated, there is a serious class problem that is not being addressed, especially not by the media.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide up everyone into two types of people and everyone else. Looking at the world as though everything is a class problem is just as simplistic as looking at everything through the lens of race. There are certainly class issues, but they don't explain everything, and Batya's class arguments are not convincing. While she demonstrates very well that journalists are overwhelmingly in the super liberal upper class, she does not show that the upper class itself buys into the woke narrative. In fact, she doesn't define what she means by upper class - her most consistent definition seems to be "college educated." What about Wall Street professionals - it seems unlikely that they buy into the woke/intersectional narrative even though they are clearly upper class (and college graduates.) The American middle class is treated as being effectively part of the upper class if they are "aspirational." But how many college-educated middle class Americans really want to be part of the rarified world of the New York Times Style section? And the huge middle class who live between the two coasts don't fit into her upper vs. working class worldview in this book at all.

As with race, this is not to say that there isn't a problem with the divide between the professional class and the working class, or with the working class not being represented by the media. The author shows that it is this very feeling of being disenfranchised that caused so many working class Americans of all races to vote for Donald Trump, who instinctively spoke to their concerns about keeping their jobs- and he even gained non-white voters in the 2020 election. (Ungar-Sargon somehow manages to say that the Republicans don't care about the working class after showing that Trump's policies were geared exactly to them.)

Because of her conviction that class is the defining feature of American life, one of Ungar-Sargon's core arguments does not hold up well. She claims that the young writers at the major newspapers support the idea of wokeness because they feel guilty about their white, upper class privilege, so they choose to focus on race because it is immutable - if the problem is one of race, then they don't have to examine their own privileged lives because they cannot solve the problem. There might be some truth to that, but it seems to me more likely that they learned this ideology in their universities and never questioned it as they moved from the college bubble to the media bubble.

If there was any consistent formula that Ungar-Sargon's data indicates, it is not the importance of class, but of money, power and influence. The reason that the New York Sun succeeded wasn't because of a principled coverage of the working class but because the larger market was lucrative. The reason Bernie Sanders flipped his stances on topics like immigration between 2016 and 2020 was because his desire to be elected was more important than his interest in consistency with his principles and agreeing with Trump was not a good look for a Democrat in 2020. The reason that the liberal media is obsessed over race stories is because they get ratings.

Bad News is an excellent book for members of the Left. If they have any intellectual honesty, it could convince them that their philosophy is not only wrong but a danger to democracy and the nation. For people who already know that critical race theory is ahistorical and wrong, this book gives more ammunition. There is plenty of interesting history and statistics (such as data that indicates that people on the Left are more racist than those on the Right) that make it a worthwhile read for anyone.

10/31 Links: Why are so many Americans taking the side of groups that work with terrorists?; The Moral Incoherence of an Academic Boycott Against Israel

From Ian:

Rushing to defend terrorism-linked NGOs: Why are so many Americans taking the side of groups that work with terrorists?

In light of the wealth of publicly available information linking these NGOs to the PFLP, multiple financial institutions have previously closed accounts and denied payment services. For instance, in 2018, Citibank and Arab Bank closed DCI-P accounts, and Visa, Mastercard and American Express shut down online credit card donations to Al-Haq and UAWC.

European governments and institutions have also expressed concern that their funds were being diverted by these terror-linked actors. In August 2021, the EU opened a preliminary investigation into its financial support to PFLP-linked Palestinian NGOs, and the EU’s anti-fraud mechanism, OLAF, has also launched an investigation. Similarly, the Dutch government froze support to UAWC and initiated an outside audit.

By defending the Palestinian NGOs, some of which may be implicated in murder, groups like HRW, IfNotNow and others undermine the basic human dignity they claim to so greatly cherish. They also prevent terrorist NGOs from facing proper accountability. Their impulsiveness can be attributed either to blind reverence to Palestinian NGOs, or worse, intentionally ignoring the facts that do not accord with their political priorities.

Caution and self-reflection might have been more appropriate responses to Israel’s carefully weighed decision. Instead, oblivious to the facts, these groups instantly condemned the move and again displayed their immoral agendas for all to see.

Michelle Goldberg and Angela Merkel seek moral absolution in the wrong place

Dr. Gerstenfeld is one of the many who concluded that at least when it comes to antisemitism there is little difference between mainstream Muslims and their Islamist masters. He specialized in Israeli-Western European relations, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and authored the book “The War of a Million Cuts.”

And so Gerstenfeld noted that the report defines Islamism as a form of political extremism that aims to end democracy. Anti-Semitism is one of its essential ideological elements. He said: “The document starts by stating that for historical reasons, and in view of the country’s experience with National Socialism, anti-Semitism was long viewed as being inevitably related to the extreme right. Only gradually has it become clear that right-wing extremists do not hold a monopoly on anti-Semitism in Germany today.”

The fact that Islamists and even less politically active Muslims have extreme anti-Semitic beliefs, has long been the “elephant in the room” and leftists seek to minimize their complicity in the immigration of antisemites by misleadingly categorizing antisemitism as emanating from the Right. This became a huge problem during President Trump’s administration as leftist news media, such as The New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN , only could see the “racists’ on the right, when the numbers and influence of extremist views in the Right pales in significance to the Left in mainstream media, the universities and the Democratic Party.

This report is too important to be hidden from the public. The report, as summarized by Gerstenfeld, “states that the arrival of over a million Muslims in Germany between 2014 and 2017 increased the influence of Islamist anti-Semitism in the country. It cites Anti-Defamation League statistics on anti-Semitism among the populations of Middle Eastern and North African states. Turkey—a country from which many Muslims now living in Germany originated—is one of the least anti-Semitic countries on the list, yet even it is “nearly 70 percent” anti-Semitic. The study mentions that many children in these countries are raised on a steady diet of anti-Semitic indoctrination.”

Despite Goldberg’s contention that there is little Islamic extremism resulting from the mass immigrations of 2015, the report notes the uptick in Islamist anti-Semitism, which was really made clear as a result of a demonstration that took place in Berlin in 2017. At that event, demonstrators carried placards demanding that Israel be destroyed, and set an Israeli flag on fire

Goldberg is also contradicted in Gerstenfeld’s disclosure that German Health Minister Jens Spahn remarked that the mass immigration from Muslim countries was the reason for the demonstrations in Germany; and Stephan Harbarth, deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU faction in the Bundestag (the German parliament), said, “We have to strongly confront the anti-Semitism of migrants with an Arab background and those from African countries.”

Goldberg has a history of whitewashing the antisemitism inherent in anti-Zionism. She infamously wrote in 2018 that it’s entirely possible to oppose what she calls “Jewish ethno-nationalism” without being a bigot.

It is a new low for her to run interference for German antisemitic pro-Iran, pro-Hamas, leftists and join them in their attempt for a national “redemption”, once again at a horrible cost to the Jews.

The Moral Incoherence of an Academic Boycott Against Israel

Seeming to give credence to George Orwell’s wry observation that “there are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them,” the fatuous members of the Virginia Tech Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) passed a “Resolution to Divest in Compliance with the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions Movement,” tendentiously pronouncing their solidarity “with the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation from Israeli apartheid, colonialism and military occupation.” Resolution 2021-22N3 calls on the university administration and staff, Virginia Tech administrators, and employees to “immediately begin to implement the academic and cultural boycott of Israel” by “adopting as a general principle a boycott of all Israeli academic institutions complicit in maintaining the Israeli occupation and the denial of basic Palestinian rights.”

The poisonous and historically inaccurate language of the GPSS resolution, including such loaded terms as “apartheid, colonialism and military occupation,” was troublingly similar to that found in the dozens of unctuous statements that oozed from university departments, faculty unions, student groups and other organizations in the wake of the latest Gaza war in May. All of the blame and condemnation for the ongoing conflict was assigned to Israel, and conveniently, for instance, no mention was made — either in this resolution or the many solidarity statements in May — of the more than 4,000 lethal rockets Hamas had fired into Israeli towns with the express purpose of murdering Jewish civilians, nor any recognition that each of these instances of rockets being fired constituted a war crime, or that Israel had every legal right under the laws of war to suppress such aggression and to retaliate in an effort to protect its citizenry from attack.

What was different about the Virginia Tech resolution, however, is that included a demand for Virginia Tech to join the BDS campaign since, the resolution claimed, “academic institutions are not neutral arenas of knowledge production, exchange and dissemination” and, therefore, “academic institutions are demonstrably key sites of contestation that can either uphold or challenge Israeli apartheid and colonialism.” Moreover, any consideration that an academic boycott, in practice, constricts academic freedom should be ignored because, the resolution asserted without providing any evidence, “it is clear then that the existing status quo is not one which upholds academic freedom, but rather is one which violently denies Palestinian academics the ability to freely participate in academic institutions and conferences around the world.”

Literary intellectuals who pan Israel

Imagine. In 1922, Irish author James Joyce published his novel, Ulysses, and the central character Leopold Bloom, holds both court and Jewish blood. It would be remiss to believe Joyce could ever have held Anti-Semitic views,after creating such a loveable character as Bloom. Instead, you just know Joyce had to have been an ardent admirer of Jews, even though he dwells not on Bloom's Hebraic roots, but on Bloom as a personality of interest.

But where Joyce, as author, was highbrow enough to offer literary if not humanistic acceptance of a member of the tribe, certainly at a time where the same lovefest for Jews in Britain, if not the world, was questionable, the same humanity Joyce expended cannot be said today of others, including Irish authoress Sally Rooney, who has made public her distaste for Israel, the only Democracy in the Middle East.

So much so, that she decided - in a well-publicized photo opportunity - not to permit Modan, the Israeli Publishing House which had originally translated her works into Hebrew, to continue their professional relationship.

While no doubt, librarians and other enthusiasts of humane underpinnings against censorship must pity of find repugnant Rooney The Fool, her decision to relinquish her relationship with Modan, certainly shows that she has an intended audience for her latest book, Beautiful World. This elite group could include others.

How about having a literary evening with such UGLIES as Ben & Jerry, Unilever, Haaretz, Roger Waters, Lorde, The Islamic Republic of Iran, Al Qaeda, The Taliban, United Nations, UNRWA, Hamas, Palestinian Authority, Jimmy Carter, Holocaust Revisionists, Britain's Labour Party, and likeminded literary intelletuals, like the JVP ones to be found on college campuses?.

In the end, it is never about "human rights" or "apartheid" - it is about desire for bloody vengeance for Jews beating Arabs in wars

There has been a huge uproar in the Arab world over the statements of a Lebanese Information Minister George Kordahi saying that the seven-year war by Arab Gulf states against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen in "absurd" and that the Houthis are “defending themselves … against an external aggression.”

One criticism against Kordahi in a Palestinian news site conflates the war against the Houthis with other Arab wars, especially against Israel, as if they are one and the same long battle against non-Sunni Arabs.

The article by Sheikh Abdul Manan Al-Sunbali describes why these wars are not "absurd." He knows his audience - it isn't Western media or the "progressives" but his own fellow Arabs who share his anger and shame.

Sunbali uses the pure language of shame and vengeance that reveals the real reason most Arabs hate the Jews:

It is a war to restore the Arab dignity lost for more than seventy years!

It is a war of proving and confirming the Arab identity and rooting it anew in the hearts of Arab youth!

It is a war of revenge for the defeats of 48 and 67 and the victory for the values and history of the Arab and Islamic nation!

It is a war to return Yemen to the warm Arab embrace, as Palestine and Iraq should be returned, as well as Andalusia before!

It is the war to liberate the islands of Abu Musa, the Greater and Lesser Tunbs, Ceuta, Melilla, the Golan Heights and the Shebaa Farms from the hands of the greedy invaders and occupiers!

It is a war to extricate the Arab nation from the clutches of backwardness, rupture, prostration and loss, and its liberation from under the armpits and feet of the foreigner!

What's wrong with you, George?!

Sunbali goes on to say that by defending the Houthis, Kordahi might as well condemn Hamas and Hezbollah rockets, or say "that the land of Palestine originally belonged to the Jews and not to the Arabs, and that the Zionists are our cousins and the closest race to us, and that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state...or you should have said that the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance factions are terrorist groups!"

To too many mainstream Arabs, the truth is what is absurd and lies are the path to honor.

Times of Israel reports:

Hackers believed to be linked to Iran have breached an Israeli internet hosting company, taking down several of its sites. The hackers on Saturday night released some alleged personal information online, including from an LGBT dating site, according to Hebrew media reports.

“Atraf,” a geo-located dating service as well as a nightlife index, is a popular app and website in the Israeli LGBT community, especially in the Tel Aviv area.

According to Hebrew media sites, names of “Atraf” users and their locations were posted online. The data leak had worried users it could expose those still in the closet.

Anti-Zionists and anti-Israel groups generally try to link their hate with more broad Leftist causes. But they have been completely silent over the potential danger to Israeli gays and their privacy being leaked by presumed Iranian hackers. Those that are still in the closet, especially those who come from religious families, are anguished over the news. (Reports say that the hosting company for the information was very lax in its security posture.)

The only mention I can find from the anti-Israel crowd is the supposition by disgraced former CNN host Jim Clancy that this was "revenge" for what he claims was Israeli hacking of Iranian gas stations - a doubly unfounded claim to blame Israel for the hack.

If this hack had been on an American site, the Left would have been all over the story with concern and anger. But Israeli gays don't deserve any sympathy from bigots who claim the mantle of "anti-racist."

From Times of Israel:

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan chastised the United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday for its disproportionate condemnation of Israel, tearing up the organization’s annual report while at the podium.

In a speech to the General Assembly, the Israeli envoy slammed the UNHRC for its “obsessive anti-Israel bias” during a special session at which the council presented its annual report.

“Since the establishment of the council 15 years ago, it has decided to blame and condemn Israel not 10 times like Iran or 35 times like Syria,” Erdan said. “The Human Rights Council has attacked Israel with 95 resolutions. Compared to 142 against all other countries combined.”

“It was on this stage at this very body that the very right of the Jewish people to have a national home was itself declared to be racist. A decision that was justly overturned. A decision that Israel’s ambassador at the time, Chaim Herzog, tore up at the United Nations,” Erdan said, referring to Herzog’s November 1975 speech. “And this is exactly what should be done to this antisemitic distorted one-sided report.”

Erdan said the report’s only place was “in the dustbin of antisemitism” before apparently ripping up it up and then leaving the podium.

In an irony that will be utterly lost on the world's media, one of the most notorious terror groups in existence - one which shoots rockets at Jewish civilians and celebrates the anniversaries of suicide bombings - came and defended the UN Human Rights Council from Erdan's attack.

A member of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, Dr. Youssef Al-Hasayneh said on Saturday that the behavior of the Israeli ambassador, Gilad Erdan, in tearing up the papers of the Human Rights Council resolution at the United Nations on the investigation of the crimes of his entity against the Gaza Strip, is “a behavior that shows the extent of arrogance, superiority, contempt, and the crude political insolence with which this person deals.”

He added, "It confirms his racist and aggressive tendency not only towards international institutions, but also towards the system of human values."

Yes, the people who brag about this are claiming to care about human values and fully support the UN's Human Rights Council.

10/30 Links: A terrorist organization by any other name; Israel Ambassador Rips Up UNHRC Report During Speech; Noura Erakat's Morgue of Palestinian Resisters

From Ian:

A terrorist organization by any other name

Hashem Abu Maria, the leader of Defense for Children International, died in a firefight with Israeli forces in 2014. The organization's president was the editor of the PFLP magazine. This NGO is funded directly by Italy.

The leaders of the UAWC are almost all members of the central committee and board of the PFLP. In addition, the vice president of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, already on the list of terrorist organizations, headed the military wing of the PFLP in Gaza and was sentenced to life in prison.

Al-Haq director Shawan Jabarin was accused of recruiting and organizing the training of PFLP members. Italy also directly finances Al-Haq.

The list is long and speaks volumes.

The cloaking of terrorist groups in human-rights garb is an established practice for those who want to destroy Israel, and the cynicism of international politics not only enables pretending not to understand this reality but helps the system.

So, the law goes to dust, the victim becomes persecutor, and the terrorist who ignores every democratic principle becomes the key protagonist of the NGO era.

It is sad there are Israeli politicians who are, or should be aware of the terrorist nature of these organizations, yet prefer to show how much they idolize the cause of "human rights."

It is even more tragic that the term "human rights" has become a trap, creating an absurd inversion of the very real distinction between perpetrators and victims. The ongoing dispute over Gantz's declaration should make the entire world tremble.

NGOs should not be used as cover for terrorist organizations

It was a pleasure to speak to @newsmax today with @EmmaRechenberg and @ShaunKraisman about how the Squad's latest campaign to demonize #Israel is whitewashing the terrorist connections these six NGOs have to the PFLP pic.twitter.com/vq2z9RZy2H
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) October 29, 2021

House Dems Praise Designated Terrorist Groups for ‘Courageous Work’

A group of House Democrats will propose a resolution urging the Biden administration to condemn Israel and support six Palestinian groups that were designated as terrorist organizations by the Jewish state.

In response to Israel's terrorist designations, Rep. Betty McCollum (D., Minn.) plans to introduce a resolution celebrating the designated Palestinian groups for the "value and importance" of their "courageous work," according to Haaretz. The resolution will be cosponsored by several House Democrats, including Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.).

Among the groups backed in the Democratic resolution are the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is designated as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union. Also included is the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which had funding cut from it in 2020 after the group's leadership was arrested for murdering a 17-year-old Israeli.

Rather than condemn the terrorist organizations, the group of House Democrats chose to attack Israel for its "repressive act designed to criminalize and persecute important Palestinian human rights organizations." The resolution demands that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemn Israel’s "authoritarian and anti-democratic act of repression" and support the six terrorism-tied organizations.

The other Palestinian groups in question are Addameer, Al-Haq, Defense for Children Palestine, and the Union of Palestinian Women's Committees.

This isn’t the first time House Democrats like Tlaib have sided with terror-tied organizations. Tlaib has fundraised multiple times this year for Baitulmaal, which pays money to the families of Palestinian terrorists. The leader of Baitulmaal, Mazen Mokhtar, has been accused of raising money for the Taliban and Chechen Mujahideen.

Of course she is ‘proud’. @AOC probably crying now it will be harder for #PFLP Palestinian terrorists to kill Jews. https://t.co/dZ4lqS4maf pic.twitter.com/2FgE6hFlDW
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 29, 2021

Egyptian newspaper explains the halachot of how many latkes one must eat on Chanukah. (Warning: Kids will gain a LOT of weight.)

Egyptian newspaper Youm7 has an explainer article about Chanukah, which is coming up at the end of November this year.

It starts off saying "According to Jewish accounts and allegations, the reason for celebrating this holiday is to commemorate the inauguration of the Second Temple in occupied Jerusalem in 164 BC."

Yes, they are saying that Jerusalem was "occupied" by the Hashmoneans. And that the idea that there was a Second Temple is merely "alleged."

Later on, we learn that there is a separate obligation of eating "fried cakes" for adults and children:

It is strange that there is a particular limit for eating cakes. During the 8 days of the Festival of Lights an adult eats 3-4 pieces of fried cakes in oil, while children eat 6-8 of them. During Hanukkah, families also eat French fries.

I hope that "fried cakes" means small latkes, because I don't think kids would feel too good after eating eight sufganiyot every night.

Here was the lead photo for the story, which they captioned "Jewish ritual."

10/29 Links Pt2: The Israel test of the Democratic Party; Hating Jews is Becoming a Leftist Purity Test; NY pension fund joins exit from Unilever over B&J's

From Ian:

The Israel test of the Democratic Party

The radical left, it seems, never misses an opportunity to snub the Jews and vilify the Jewish state. True to The Israel test’s thesis, this attitude has not been relegated to criticism of Israel but has evolved into a politics of victimhood, a self-loathing of America.

Yet antisemitism is not a winning issue in the free world, and in America, these strident voices still represent a fringe minority of the Democratic Party. The recent special election in Ohio’s 11th District bears this out. Backed by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the Squad, a radical leftist, Nina Turner, at one point enjoyed a 35-point lead in the polls. But as the election approached, her advantage narrowed. Ultimately, she lost the race to Shontel Brown, a centrist Democrat and friend of Israel supported by Hillary Clinton and the Congressional Black Caucus. The proof is on the ballot.

The defeat of the leftist radicals is not just an American phenomenon; a similar result occurred in the U.K. in 2019. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn single-handedly alienated the British Jewish community with his antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric and positions. This community represents only 0.5% of the general British population. Nevertheless, in late 2019 Corbyn suffered a massive defeat in the elections, with the worst Labour showing since 1935. In 2020, he was suspended from the Labour Party.

In the U.S. Congress, radical leftists remain but marginal group, the Squad notwithstanding. And the American public soundly passes the Israel test. To stay vibrant and relevant, the Democratic Party needs to do the same. It must unite around its support of Israel and disavow the radicals who are out of touch with the American public.

This is a pivotal moment for the Democratic Party. To keep from splitting at the seams, Democrats must choose to stand with Israel, as they historically have and as most of them continue to do. If the Democratic Party recognizes that the Israel test will determine its future, it can muster the integrity to withstand the radicals, reclaim its time-honored support for Israel, and return to the deserved vitality it once enjoyed.

Caroline Glick: Progressives can't handle inconvenient truths

The leftist-progressive camp's relationship with reality is at best ambivalent and more often than not pathological. For progressives, the narrative, rather than reality is what counts. According to the leftist-progressive narrative, antisemitism in America is the provenance of the political right, not the left. As a result, Barber merely "echoed" European blood libels that are deeply dangerous and harmful to the Jewish community. He didn't deliberately craft and disseminate slanderous statements to harm the Jewish state and its supporters in America.

Wiesel gave Barber a pass for his antisemitism initiative not because there is any question about his views – he stated them plainly and publicly. Wiesel gave him the benefit of the doubt because Barber is a progressive. And as a progressive, Barber can't be an antisemite. He can only be ignorant. And his ignorance can be remedied through a "conversation," and maybe a trip to Israel.

In a similar fashion, in the leftist-progressive narrative, the Palestinians are the victims of "Zionist colonialists." For progressives, champions of the Palestinian struggle against Israel must be good people because they are on the side of the oppressed. On the other hand, those who oppose the Palestinians and side with Israel must be bad, because Israel is the bad oppressor.

Both Lapid and Wiesel are soft progressives. As such, they try to be simultaneously on the side of reality and on the side of the narrative. But they can't, because there is no connection between the two.

Barber isn't interested in learning the truth about the Palestinians' hundred-year war against the Zionist movement and the Jewish people. He is interested in attacking the Jewish state. And Zank and Boston University want to help him to achieve his goal by giving him a pulpit embossed with the name of one of Israel's greatest late champions.

Likewise, the EU, the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the UN and EU member states don't fund organizations that facilitate the Palestinian war against Israel, including terror groups because they are ignorant of their goals. The donors fund these organizations because they support their goal of destroying the Jewish state.

Labor leader and Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli, Meretz head and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz and their fellow government ministers are harshly criticizing Gantz's designation of the six Palestinian groups as terror organizations for two reasons. First, their partners on Israel's far-left from B'Tselem, Yesh Din, Breaking the Silence, Peace Now, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and others are funded by the same donors that fund the terror groups. And second, Israel's far-left politicians are critical of Gantz's move because they have adopted the progressive camp's narrative of Palestinian victimization at the hands of their countrymen.

Hating Jews is Becoming a Leftist Purity Test

The answer is all around us.

Compelling people who used to be Democrats, then liberals, then progressives, and finally dogmatic leftists to jump through one more hoop makes them more willing to do anything.

And if there’s anything that history teaches about the Left, from Stalin to Mao, from Che to Pol Pot, from Kim Jong-Il to Mengistu there will come a time when ordinary people will indeed be expected to do “anything”, whether it’s to kill or to be killed in the name of the revolution.

Anti-Semitism is just one more stop on the extremist expressway. Like critical race theory and much of the rest of identity politics, it divides people into those who deserve to be beaten and those who deserve to do the beating to distract everyone from the fact that the leftist ideology of victims and oppressors is really about creating plenty more of both as grist for its political mill.

The Sunrise Movement claims that the planet is on the verge of destruction and Black Lives Matter insists that the greatest threat to black people are police officers, both are absurd lies, but like anti-Semitism they’re really weaponized distractions for a massive power grab.

Meanwhile the same American Jewish establishment that was convinced that the answer to anti-Semitism was social justice can’t help but double down on it even as it is becoming inescapably obvious that social justice isn’t the answer to anti-Semitism: it is anti-Semitism.

Organizations like NCJW or RAC embrace the extreme margins of the Left and are baffled when the anti-Semitism from those margins not only intensifies, but burns hotter than ever. The purity tests intensify with each concession: each willingness to embrace Sarsour, Omar, and whatever leftist social justice bigot follows on their heels only leads to worse hatred.

The leftist anti-Semitism that began on college campuses is defining a leftist America.

The unthinkable happens every day as Israel moves closer to full relations with the Arab world

Remember when Israel was the pariah in the Middle East?

From Globes:

Senior US sources as well as Israeli sources have told "Globes" that talks on ties with more Arab countries have intensified recently.

Senior US sources have confirmed that there are advanced talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia on establishing diplomatic relations. The sources said that it was not clear if Saudi Arabia would join the Abraham Accords and establish full normalization, or make do with lower level economic trade ties.

This would probably involve representative offices to deal with economic and trade matters and other topics, like handling the Covid pandemic. Israeli sources told "Globes" yesterday that diplomatic talks have intensified recently between Israel and some Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, as part of the Abraham Accords.

Some Arab countries might not want to publicly embrace Israel - but they happily cooperate with her:

A German military photographer posted two pictures of Jordanian fighter jets taking part in this month’s massive Blue Flag aerial exercise on social media on Friday, apparently inadvertently revealing that the kingdom had participated in the Israeli-hosted drill.

Until the cameraman, Falk Bärwald, posted the photographs on his Instagram account, Jordan’s participation in the two-week-long exercise had officially been kept a secret.

In one photo, a Jordanian F-16 fighter jet can be seen riding along a runway in the Israeli Air Force’s Ovda base, just north of Eilat, while a French Rafale jet flies above it. In the second, a Jordanian F-16 could be seen taking off from the same base.