Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 04, 2021

Israel is far more tolerant than Europe. It isn't even close.

From the BBC:

Europe's top human rights organisation has pulled posters from a campaign that promoted respect for Muslim women who choose to wear headscarves after provoking opposition in France.

The Council of Europe released the images last week for a campaign against anti-Muslim discrimination.

A slogan on one advert read: "Beauty is in diversity as freedom is in hijab".

Several prominent French politicians condemned the message and argued the hijab did not represent freedom.

But some Muslim women who wear headscarves said the reaction showed a lack of respect for diversity and the right to choose what to wear in France.

France's youth minister, Sarah El Haïry, ... suggested the poster had encouraged women to wear headscarves. She said this message jarred with the secular values of France, which had expressed its disapproval of the campaign.

It would be obvious to say that Israel is more tolerant than France, since France bans women wearing the hijab in many circumstances and Israel never does.

However, this is a story about Europe altogether.

One cannot even imagine such a campaign in Israel - because Jews don't discriminate against women in hijabs to begin with! Married religious Jewish women cover their hair, too. Muslim women with hijabs walk freely in Israel alongside Jews in restaurants, malls and cafes.

Israel is truly diverse. A tolerance campaign like this one would be met with puzzlement.

Europe, on the other hand, needs diversity campaigns because Europeans are bigoted. While I disagree with the messaging that hijab means freedom - it emphatically does not - any campaign to accept Muslims as normal members of society implies that many Europeans do not think that way today.

Which is why when the international community accuses Israelis of racism or ethnic discrimination, they are just falsely applying the hate in their own societies to Israel.

Israeli Jews hate terrorists. They hate those who want to kill them or throw them into the sea. But they don't hate Muslims or Christians or Baha'i.

The people who accuse them of such are far more bigoted than the Jews they label as racist.

The New York Times has announced that the newspaper has a new correspondent in Israel, Raja Abdulrahim:

Delighted to announce that @RajaAbdulrahim is joining the @nytimes Jerusalem Bureau where she will roam widely, writing about Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, with a special focus on Palestinian affairs.
— Michael Slackman (@meslackman) November 3, 2021

There is definitely justification for hiring a native Arabic-speaking journalist to add to the coverage of the region. However, newspapers should at least pretend to choose journalists who are objective.

Abdulrahim is not one of them. Not one of her tweets that mention Israel is positive about the country.

She regards Gaza as "little more than an open-air prison:"

She casts the IDF as immoral for having the same primary goal of every single army in the world - to protect its country's citizens:

She fully accepts the lie that Jews cast every critic of Israel as antisemites, ignoring (in this case) Marc Lamont Hill's antisemitism and support for Palestinian terrorism, as she implies that CNN is a Jewish pawn:

She doesn't think the UN is anti-Israel enough.

She believes that despite tens of thousands of anti-Israel articles attacking Israel, all critics of Israel (including herself) are being "silenced."

Abdulrahim gleefully embraces the "apartheid" slur:

The existence of a pro-Israel lobby is terribly unhealthy. But only the pro-Israel lobby - the only lobby in America she has ever mentioned.

One word Raja has never tweeted: "Hamas."

To her, there is no conflict, only unending oppression by a powerful Jewish state against innocent, unarmed Palestinians who have never done anything bad.

Raja Abdulrahim cannot be considered objective by any definition. Her own social media posts on the topic are far more than biased - they are completely one-sided against Israel.

The New York Times chose her not in spite of her bias but because of it.

What will Abdulrahim's reporting look like? This quote from an organization for Arab journalists indicate that she will enthusiastically interview Palestinians (as if they have been ignored.)

The guidelines that she extols for journalists to follow are explicitly anti-Israel. They include:

All reporting should take into consideration that Israel occupies Palestinian territory, and that Palestinians — whether they live in the West Bank, Gaza or inside Israel — are subject to an unjust and unequal system...

Avoid “both sides” framing. Recognize the power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinian people.

Do not call Gaza “Hamas-controlled.” It is sufficient to say “Gaza,” or “Gaza’s Health Ministry,” for example.

Replace “eviction” and “real-estate dispute” with “forced removal.” The terms “eviction” and “real-estate dispute” suggest a disagreement between a landlord and tenant, obscuring the Israeli government’s efforts to forcibly displace Jerusalem’s Palestinian population.

Be cognizant of how you’re identifying Palestinians. Do not use the identifiers “Arab-Israeli” or “Israeli-Arab,” unless requested by the individuals described. Instead use “Palestinian citizen of Israel” if that applies, or “Palestinian.”

This reporter is embracing guidelines that explicitly instruct journalists to be biased against Israel in every story, using inaccurate language. They are to push a narrative, not to seek out objective facts. They telling Arab reporters to exclude any Israeli or Jewish perspectives. And they tell them not to even mention Hamas or Palestinian terror - ever.

Judging from Abdulrahim's tweets, she internalized these guidelines before they were written. And this is the kind of slanted, one-sided reporting we can expect from her in Israel.

(h/t YMedad)

UPDATE: She actually denied that Hamas and Hezbollah were terror organizations, and that they murdered Israeli civilians - during the second intifada.

UPDATE 2: See CAMERA's 2011 article about her.

To the Jew-hating UN (and Ken Roth,) Jews are "aliens" in their historic lands

Human Rights Watch chief Ken Roth tweeted an article he loved:

They "experts" are Michael Lynk, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory, and Balakrishnan Rajagopal, UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing.

Let's see what the "experts" said that so impressed Roth.

“The very raison d’être of the Israeli settlements in occupied territory – the creation of demographic facts on the ground to solidify a permanent presence, a consolidation of alien political control and an unlawful claim of sovereignty – tramples upon the fundamental precepts of humanitarian and human rights law,” the experts said.

They said there are now close to 700,000 Israeli settlers living in illegal settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. “The Israeli settlements are the engine of the occupation,” the experts said. “They are responsible for a wide range of human rights violations against the Palestinians, including land confiscation, resource alienation, severe restrictions on freedom of movement, mounting settler violence, and racial and ethnic discrimination.

“Most seriously, the purpose of settler implantation – rupturing the relationship between a native people and its territory – is the denial of the right to self-determination, which is at the very core of modern human rights law.”

Alien political control? Even if you consider the territories occupied, it is the job of the occupier to maintain political control over the area! Let alone the fact that Jews were in the Land before anyone heard of Palestinians or Muslims.

Settlements - groups of buildings! - are responsible for human rights violations?

Those buildings are responsible for "racial and ethnic discrimination?" Are Palestinians a different race than Jews?

Finally, these "experts" are claiming that Jewish settlers who want to live in their ancestral homeland really don't want to live there. No, their entire purpose is to "rupture the relationship between a native people and its territory." Yes, they move to these villages and towns because they hate Palestinians.

Here is an example where the people who spout off such nonsense would deny all day that they are antisemitic. But listen to what they are saying: Jews have no historic, emotional or legal ties to the land of the Torah. Not only that, but the only purpose of their wanting to live in the Biblical towns of Bet El, Shiloh, Kiryat Arba/Hebron and others is because they want to hurt Arabs. That is how hateful these Jews are - according to "UN experts."

Denying Jewish history is antisemitism. Denying a Jewish link to the land that Jews have prayed to return to for 2000 years is antisemitism. Ascribing evil motives to Jews that have no basis in reality is antisemitism.

The UN should apologize to all Jews for this sickening display of hate. But it is so ingrained in the mentality of the modern antisemites that they cannot even see it.

A Drastic Proposal (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal

In my morning paper there is a discussion of the home front defense drill that will be taking place today, simulating an all-out war with Hamas and Hezbollah. Warning sirens will be activated in various places, and note will be taken of whether schoolchildren and others are able to reach shelter in time. My personal situation is good compared to that of most Israelis; there is a shelter on every floor of the apartment building I live in, and we get about a minute’s warning of rockets from Gaza (flight time is 90 seconds). Rockets from Hezbollah will take a bit longer.

Unfortunately, only about 42% of Israelis (according to my newspaper) have shelters in their homes. That means that they can’t possibly make it to the nearest public shelter in time, so they end up spending long hours or even days in them when there are rocket attacks. Or they depend on the somewhat dubious protection of stairwells. Even a shelter in the basement of a multistory building takes too much time to reach.

Iron Dome and other antimissile systems have provided good protection during the small conflicts that we’ve had in recent years, but in a war with Hezbollah, which is said to have some 130,000 rockets aimed at all parts of Israel, including some dozens of rockets with precise guidance systems that will be targeted at airbases, power stations, fuel depots, and other critical infrastructure, there will not be enough systems to protect most civilians.

There is money budgeted to fix this, but nowhere near enough, and the process is slow and (of course) bogged down by bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, the prospect of a conflict with Iran draws ever more likely as the Iranian regime plays for time with the Western powers. Unless something unexpected happens, like a revolution in Iran, the moment is near when Israel will have to decide: do we permit Iran to become a nuclear power or will we go to war? There is no third option.

War with Iran will involve Hezbollah, which has no other reason for existing. It will certainly trigger Hamas, and the other terror providers in Gaza. It will probably include missile and drone attacks on Israel from the territory of Syria and Iraq, and possibly directly from Iran. Estimates are of more than 1,000 rockets per day; the worst damage will be to border communities, which are in range of Hezbollah’s massive mortars. There will be ground incursions in the north, to try to overrun military installations and civilian communities, kill people and take hostages. We can expect a wave of terrorism from Judea and Samaria, and perhaps even the participation of Palestinian Authority “security” forces. Finally, terrorists among Israel’s Arab citizens will certainly join in, as they did in the last small war with Gaza.

Such a war would extremely traumatic for Israel’s home front, maybe worse than any of her previous wars. Nobody would be safe, and the country would not be the same afterwards, even if we win.

At the same time, war, no matter how it starts, would be portrayed in the international media as a vicious attack by Israel on helpless Lebanese, Gazans, and others. The international anti-Israel conspiracy – there is no other expression that adequately describes the coalition of organizations dedicated to the extirpation of the Jewish state from the world – will launch a coordinated antisemitic campaign throughout the world. This isn’t speculation: we’ve seen it in action every time Israel has acted to defend herself against rocket attacks from Gaza. The objective will be to pressure the international community to prevent an Israeli victory and allow our enemies to prepare for the next round.

I expect that the Biden Administration, like that of Barack Obama, will try to embargo shipments of essential weapons and ammunition to Israel. I believe that the overall climate in the administration and Congress is more anti-Israel today than in the days of Obama, although they have tried to avoid direct public confrontations so far.

What, then, is the best strategy for Israel in this situation?

Can we avoid war by appeasement? We can only delay it. The Iranian leaders do not want a conventional war at this time; the regime prefers to wait until it has prepared its nuclear shield. Once it is in place, it can unleash Hezbollah against Israel while deterring us from retaliating directly against them.

But even without war, a nuclear Iran would be disastrous for Israel. Iran would proceed to establish a sphere of influence over the entire region. It would gain economic and political power. The regime could demand concessions from Israel – a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, prisoner releases, withdrawal from all or part of Judea and Samaria, an airport in Gaza – and Israel, without allies, would be forced to comply. Each time, the alternative would be war; conventional war, but backed by a nuclear threat.

Little by little our sovereignty would evaporate, foreign investment and trade would dry up, Israelis with foreign passports would leave – and then there would be more demands. It would not be as dramatic as nuclear bombs on Tel Aviv, but just as final.

Israel needs to act soon, and with overwhelming force, against both Iran and Hezbollah simultaneously, in order to prevent massive damage on our home front. Their military capabilities and leadership must be destroyed, and very quickly, before they can strike back and before the US and Europe can intervene. I am talking about a few days, not weeks. It might be that the only way to do that is with unconventional weapons. We need to be prepared to use them.

I understand that this is a drastic proposal. Do you have a better one?

11/03 Links Pt2: The ‘indigenous Palestinians’ lie; Col. Kemp: 'From the River to the Sea': Hamas Explains What British Students Want; You can’t be an activist if you’re Jewish

From Ian:

The ‘indigenous Palestinians’ lie

The latest outrage was committed by the Washington, D.C., branch of a national climate action group, Sunrise DC, which bowed out of a voting rights rally because a “number of Zionist organizations” would be taking part. “Given our commitment to racial justice, self-governance and indigenous sovereignty, we oppose Zionism and any state that enforces its ideology,” Sunrise DC said in a statement.

You may want to read that statement again to fully comprehend its absurdity. Sunrise DC opposes Zionism, the nationalist movement for the reestablishment and support of the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland, because of the group’s commitment to “self-governance and indigenous sovereignty.”

Zionism is the ultimate act of self-governance and indigenous sovereignty. Only the Jewish people can make such a claim about their connection to their homeland in the Middle East.
In other words, all peoples—including ethnic successors of colonizers—are welcome to self-governance and indigenous sovereignty … except Jews.
• According to Amnesty International, an indigenous people has (among other things):
• A historical link with those who inhabited a region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived;
• Distinct social, economic or political systems;
• Distinct language, culture and beliefs;
• Been marginalized and discriminated against by newcomers;
• Maintained and developed their ancestral environments as distinct people.

The Jews of Israel possess all of these characteristics. The Palestinians have none.

The Jewish people are the oldest surviving civilization—by thousands of years—with ties to the land of Israel. Jews have their own laws, religion, language and culture. The Palestinian Arabs do not have any of those.

The Jewish people held sovereignty in the Land of Israel on multiple occasions in history, only to be conquered, occupied, oppressed and then violently expelled—or to be more precise, ethnically cleansed. Whether in Christian Europe or Muslim Asia and Africa, and even in their own homeland, Jews were a subjugated people, constantly harassed and reminded that they did not belong.

Yet even during the darkest moments of their exile, they never lost hope in a return to their homeland, and kept alive their distinct language and culture—firmly rooted in the territory that is today the State of Israel.

By all rights, such a people, who seized the opportunity to return home, liberated the territory from those who had occupied it with foreign settlers—buttressed and supported by imperial and colonial powers like the Arabs, Ottomans and Great Britain—should be the darlings of all who support “self-governance and indigenous sovereignty.”

Vic Rosenthal: Understanding Israel-Hatred

The state of Israel has been in existence only for 73 years. The Zionist project has been around for somewhat longer, beginning in the 19th century. Since 1860, some 116,000 Jews and Arabs have lost their lives in wars, terrorism, and pogroms related to Arab-Jewish conflict in Eretz Yisrael. In the annals of recent human bloodshed, this doesn’t move the needle; in the Congo Wars of 1996-2001 and the genocides that immediately preceded and followed them, as many as 5.4 million were killed. The Syrian Civil War, still under way, has claimed 500-600,000 victims. And yet, more concentrated diplomatic and media activity surrounds our conflict than any other since the Cold War. Why are we special?

Israel is regularly accused of genocide. According to the UN, her alleged victims, the Arabs of Judea/Samaria/Gaza and eastern Jerusalem, who were about 1.1 million in 1970, now number at 5.2 million. Genocide? Even if this figure is exaggerated, the accusation is simply crazy. Advertisement

Israel is regularly accused of apartheid, although Israeli Arab and Jewish citizens have equal rights, both de jure and de facto. There are no segregated facilities, no separate beaches, restrooms, or lunch counters (although Jews are forbidden to drink from water faucets on the Temple Mount). The Arabs in the disputed territories, by internationally recognized agreements, are citizens of the Palestinian Authority, and insofar as the PA holds elections, can vote in them. The historical phenomenon of apartheid bears no resemblance to anything found in Israel or the territories, despite the attempts of anti-Israel groups to torture definitions to make it so.

In the few decades of her existence the modern State of Israel has been attacked by soldiers of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia; other belligerents include Hezbollah, Hamas, the PLO and numerous other terrorist groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). She has been bombarded by missiles, rockets, mortar shells, balloons, and drones from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and Iraq. She has been infiltrated by terrorists countless times, including by means of rubber boats and hang gliders. She is currently the target of threats to annihilate her from Iran, which has provided large amounts of money and weapons to proxies in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, and which is developing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Iranian leaders have referred to Israel as a “cancer” that must be eliminated from the world. I don’t think there is any other nation in recent history that has its very existence questioned in a similar way.

Hamas, which took control of Gaza in a coup against the Palestinian Authority in 2007, two years after every last Israeli soldier or civilian left the strip, precipitates periodic wars against Israel while waging a continuous terror campaign against residents of southern Israel. Gaza receives millions in aid from the UN and the EU, along with large amounts of cash from Qatar, supposedly for humanitarian purposes. Hamas uses it to prepare for the next war, and to make its kleptocratic leaders fabulously rich, while the rest of the population suffers. But Israel is blamed for “occupying” Gaza and impoverishing its people.

Richard Kemp: 'From the River to the Sea': Hamas Explains What British Students Want

This conference flies in the face of the gullible optimists who have suggested the terror group has somehow softened its stance on Israel. That narrative has been especially prevalent since the issuance of a political statement in 2017 that was designed to improve Hamas's image by hoodwinking Westerners into thinking that the organization had reformed. While some pretend otherwise, this document did not supersede or amend Hamas's 1988 charter which is explicit: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it."

The 2017 document re-affirmed: "Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea", to be achieved by "armed resistance".

The 1988 charter also calls for the murder of Jews across the world, naked Jew-hate that was conveniently dropped from the 2017 statement. But in 2019, senior Hamas politburo member Fathi Hammad reiterated: "You have Jews everywhere and we must attack every Jew on the globe by way of slaughter and killing."

Those arguing that the Palestinian Authority has a different agenda from Hamas are wrong. Despite extensive subterfuge for the consumption of the international community, including implausible claims of support for a two-state solution, the PA shares the same "river to the sea" doctrine for the destruction of Israel that British university students find so attractive.

[W]hen students and others call for "Palestine" to be free "from the river to the sea", it is this fantasy that they embrace: Jews massacred, expelled, enslaved, hunted down or allowed a precarious subsistence as second class citizens in a repressive Islamic state.

Most recently, last week, more than 500 academics signed a petition attacking Glasgow University in Scotland for apologising over an antisemitic article published in a journal on the university website. Their concern was not the blatant antisemitism in the article but the fact that the university apologised for it.

In an era where opposition to racism and discrimination against all other peoples is rightly at the top of university authorities' and students unions' priorities, why does this not apply to Jews? Why are Jews the exception? Calls for the violent erasure of the one and only Jewish state is not only tolerated, it is actively encouraged by some professors, faculty bodies and students' union leaders. This causes many Jewish students to apply only to the few universities which are known to be less intolerant. It is time for university authorities to put a stop to these vicious demonstrations of antisemitic hate, and if they fail to do so, for the government to start cutting their funds

Kugel Yerushalmi (AKA Yerushalmi Kugel or Jerusalem Kugel)* is a strange dish for the uninitiated. It’s a kugel, but unlike a crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside potato kugel, it’s not strictly savory, and unlike a rich dairy noodle kugel, it’s not creamy and sweet with raisins and/or fruit peeking out from among broad egg noodles. Those other kugels were invented in Europe. But Kugel Yerushalmi was born in Jerusalem.

From the Jewish Exponent:

It all started in Lithuania. A wave of disciples of the Vilna Gaon arrived in the Holy Land in 1808, led by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Shklov. Although they first went to Tiberias, they later relocated to Tzfat, where they fostered warm relationships with the local Sephardic community. A second and third wave of students came to Israel in 1809, and purchased agricultural land.
But a plague broke out in 1812 in Tzfat, forcing many Jews to flee to Jerusalem. The refugees succeeded in renewing the Ashkenazi presence in Jerusalem after nearly 100 years of banishment by local Arabs. And they made Yerushalmi kugel.
They couldn't afford raisins, the story goes, so they browned sugar to make their kugels look dark. There is also a legend that local Jews of Polish descent preferred sweet kugels, while the Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews) opted for savory ones — hence the combination. I cannot vouch for the veracity of either of these stories.

Kugel Yerushalmi lore aside, it is a popular hobby these days to accuse Israeli Jews of stealing or appropriating Arab or “Palestinian” food. Just how popular is this cute little propaganda concept? I consulted Google. As it turns out, “stealing” is the preferred term of those frantically searching Google for “facts” with which they might demonize the ~~Jews~~ Zionists.

Here are the different search parameters I tried, with the approximate number of search results yielded by each:

· *israeli appropriation of arab food* (6,360,000 results)

· *jews stealing arab food* (11,600,000 results)

· *israel stealing palestinian food* (12,200,000 results)

· *israel stealing arab food* (13,400,000 results)

· *israelis stealing arab food* (15,000,000 results)

Not that the accusations of ~~nefarious Jewish~~ food thievery are true. An opinion piece for Haaretz by Mor Altshuler, gives us the, er, skinny:

Couscous was known thousands of years ago as the “grain offering” that was sacrificed in the Temple in Jerusalem: “And when anyone brings a grain offering to the Lord, his offering shall be of fine flour [solet]; and he shall pour oil upon it, and put frankincense thereon” (Leviticus 2:1). Incidentally, frankincense was added to the recipe’s spices.
As for Palestinian freekeh (toasted green wheat), wheat and roast barley, they were all mentioned among the courtship customs of the Biblical Boaz, who gave roasted grain to Ruth the Moabite in the fields of Bethlehem. It was from their relationship that the House of David arose.
Nor is there any need to go back as far as the Bible. In southeastern Turkey, kubbeh, the glory of the Palestinian kitchen, is called “Jewish kofta” – that is, Jewish meatballs.
Jews invented kubbeh because it was their custom to eat meat on Shabbat, but it is religiously prohibited for them to slaughter animals or cook on that day. Before the refrigerator was invented, the solution was to wrap ground meat in dough and fry or bake it on Friday, so it wouldn’t spoil over Shabbat.
Similarly, eggplant and hummus, also ostensibly from the Palestinian kitchen, are mentioned in the records of the Spanish Inquisition as characteristic Jewish foods that could be used to identify people who formally converted to Christianity but secretly remained Jews. . . .
The greatest irony of all is olive oil, which has become the symbol of the Palestinian people. Olives are one of the seven species the Bible cites as acceptable offerings in the Temple, but they had a special status in the Bible because olive oil was used to anoint kings and priests and to light the menorah in the Temple. King Solomon paid with olive oil for the cedar trees he bought from King Hiram of Tyre to build the Temple (I Kings, 5:25).
Pliny the Elder wrote in the first century, in his book “Natural History,” that olives from the Land of Israel were beautiful and full of oil, and therefore they were imported to Rome (Nissim Krispil, “A Bag of Plants,” p. 169 in Hebrew). And there’s a hypothesis that the Roman occupiers uprooted the Jews’ olive trees to destroy their olive oil industry, which competed with their own.

In other words, the idea that we stole Arab food is total crap. Facts and history aside, it’s a propaganda ploy, pure and simple. Except not so pure. Really, really dirty. The part that makes me crazy is when the ~~liars~~ propagandists say there’s no such thing as authentic Israeli food.

But back to our kugel. A couple of weeks ago, I got a hankering for Kugel Yerushalmi. I hadn’t made one in years. But making Kugel Yerushalmi is like riding a bike. Once you learn how, you never forget.

Some background: During the 1980s, I tasted Kugel Yerushalmi for the first time, and saw how everyone oohed and ahhed when it was brought out at a Kiddush. The look and taste were intriguing, so I asked a neighbor to show me how to make it. I jotted down her instructions in a tiny little notepad I had on me, and saved that piece of paper for years.

(Two weeks ago, I finally typed it out properly. God forbid my kids should someday have to inherit that tiny, oil-stained piece of paper of a recipe.)

The original recipe on a teeny weeny piece of paper, saved for posterity

I watched my neighbor make the kugel before braving it myself. Kugel Yerushalmi is made with very thin noodles mixed rapidly with a caramel and oil mixture that is ready only when on the verge of boiling over the pot and burning beyond repair. Which makes Kugel Yerushalmi a dangerous dish for the home cook to replicate. (I know someone who got third degree burns when the caramel splashed her as she was pouring it into the noodles on the day before her son’s bris, the reason she was making the kugel in the first place.)

Once the caramel and noodle mixture cools a bit, the cook adds some beaten eggs and lots and lots of ground black pepper. (In fact, my kids said I finally got it right when I used a full heaping tablespoon of ground black pepper—some cooks double that amount.)

Maybe you thought that at this point, you slide the kugel into the oven and an hour later, just like on the TV shows, a timer dings, and it’s ready to serve. But a properly cooked Kugel Yerushalmi is a deep, deep brown on the inside. If it isn’t the right color on the inside, don’t eat it. Seriously. Just don’t. You can’t get that color unless two factors are in play. 1) You have to cook the caramel way past when you think it’s ready. 2) You have to bake the kugel very slow in a low oven, and preferably overnight.

After looking on as my neighbor prepared this dish, I was ready to make one myself. It came out great! My family loved it. I was psyched. And as time went on, I got kind of small town famous for my kugel. At least on our tiny settlement.

My kugel was so good that people were asking me if I would sell it to them. Even the neighbor who taught me how to make it asked if I would make it for her—mine came out better than hers, she said.

And so, a little cottage industry was born. I’d make a humongous Kugel Yerushalmi every week, using 7 pounds of noodles. I baked it overnight on Thursday, and on Fridays, I’d sell it to my neighbors, weighing out the portions on a baby scale. Sometimes, I’d even barter the kugel for services, for instance, in exchange for yoga classes—what must have been a first in Kugel Yerushalmi history.

While I was making Kugel Yerushalmi a couple of weeks ago, it came to me: I have never heard of an Arab preparing, selling, eating, or claiming Kugel Yerushalmi as his own. Perhaps that will change after one of them gets wind of this Jewish Jerusalem delicacy with its 19^th century roots. But for the meantime, it’s undeniable: Kugel Yerushalmi is a Jewish delicacy invented by Jews in Jerusalem.

Kugel Yerushalmi is ubiquitous at a Shabbos Kiddush, served with a pickle. But not just any pickle. It has to be a pickle brined in vinegar.

No one eats those pickles at any other time; the Israeli vinegar-brined pickles are terrible. For everyday eating, Israelis prefer pickles brined in salt. A long vertical jiggly slice of a lukewarm vinegar-brined pickle is nonetheless considered de rigueur as an accompaniment to Kugel Yerushalmi. It adds a certain something.

(No, thank you. I take mine plain. But then I’m a purist.)

Kugel Yerushalmi

Yield: 12 or more servings

Ingredients:

·         1 lb. (400 grams) thin soup noodles (lokshen)
·         1 tablespoon margarine
·         ½ cup oil
·         1 ¼ cups sugar
·         2 eggs
·         1 teaspoon salt
·         2 teaspoons or up to 1 heaping tablespoon ground black pepper

Method:

1.       Boil noodles in salted water for 4 minutes. Drain, place in a heat-proof mixing bowl, and toss with 1 tablespoon margarine.
2.       In a medium-sized pot, combine the oil and the sugar. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. The mixture will bubble at the edges, then at the center, and will then foam up.
3.       Here is where you need speed, strength and caution: Immediately remove the oil and sugar mixture from the heat, pour it over the noodles well away from you to avoid burns from the hot caramel, and working quickly, vigorously stir the mixture until no clumps remain.
4.       The caramel residue in the pot will have already hardened. Not to worry. Beat the eggs in the pot with the fork and this will liquefy the caramel and mix it into the eggs. Add the eggs to the noodles. Any extra-stubborn caramel on your saucepan can be easily soaked away with water)
5.       Add the salt and pepper (Jerusalemites like it hot! Some use as much as 2 tablespoons of pepper).
6.       Pour the kugel mixture into a greased high, round, flat-topped metal mold as is traditional, or alternatively, a greased tube pan. Bake overnight at lowest oven setting, or if you prefer to cheat, for 3 hours at 300°F or until the top is crusty and brown, and a thin knife, inserted into the center of the kugel, comes out clean.

*Wikipedia erroneously states that Kugel Yerushalmi is sometimes known as “Galilean kugel.” I asked around, and no one had ever heard the kugel referred to as Galilean kugel. My friend Mark Kaplan even said, “I live in the Golan, right next to the Galil... I've never heard it called Galilean Kugel.”

I looked at the footnotes for this Wikipedia entry, and somehow figured out that the reference is to a recipe for “Galilean Kugel with Bacon” in a Nancy Silverton cookbook called “Israel Eats.” Maybe she called it that to distinguish it from its kosher “cousin,” but it’s strictly Silverton’s own invention, and certainly not how anyone has ever referred to the real deal.

The number of Christians under Palestinian rule has dwindled dramatically over the years, as a result of persecution by Muslims and the idea that they can do better economically elsewhere.

But the Palestinian Authority, especially cash strapped this year, wants Christians to come to visit - especially around Christmastime in Bethlehem.

Now consider this. The PA needs tourist cash badly. It controls some Jewish shrines, in Nablus, Jericho and elsewhere. Why aren't they trying to attract Jewish tourists?

The reason is obvious: they cannot guarantee the safety of Jewish tourists.

If they could, Jews from Israel and abroad would visit often, buying up souvenirs and even staying in hotels.

When Jews come to visit ancient Jewish sites under PA rule, they have to go in armored buses and be protected by the army, only an very specific dates and times of day.

If the Palestinians would embrace peace, their economy could do much better.

They know this - and they choose not to embrace peace anyway.

11/03 Links Pt1: David Singer: The key to peace: Israel and Jordan dividing Judea and Samaria; Whitewashing PA terror promotion in the UN Security Council; The Lasting Legacy of A.Q. Khan

From Ian:

David Singer: The key to peace: Israel and Jordan dividing Judea and Samaria

Two Australian politicians from Australia’s two major political parties – one of them Australia’s former Ambassador to Israel and Government backbencher Dave Sharma – have embarked on a trip to fantasyland in a rare show of bipartisan solidarity that has nothing to do with Australian domestic policy – but involves the self-titled “Palestinian People”.

Sharma (Liberal Party) seconded a motion by Chris Hayes (Australian Labor Party) which includes the following paragraphs:

That this House:
(1) notes that 29 November 2021 is the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People as declared by the United Nations in 1977;
(2) recognises the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to self determination and a future built on peace, dignity, justice and security;

Their hyperlinking of “Palestinian People” clarifies who these two politicians are talking about:
The Palestinian people (Arabic: الشعب الفلسطيني‎, ash-sha‘b al-Filasṭīnī), also referred to as Palestinians (Arabic: الفلسطينيون‎, al-Filasṭīniyyūn; Hebrew: פָלַסְטִינִים‎) or Palestinian Arabs (Arabic: الفلسطينيين العرب‎, al-Filasṭīniyyīn al-ʿarab), are an ethnonational group[31][32][33][34][35][36][37] comprising the modern descendants of the peoples who have lived in Palestine continuously over the centuries and who today are largely culturally and linguistically Arab.[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]

This definition is fabricated - ignoring history, geography and demography by falsely claiming the existence of a Palestinian People with roots purportedly going back 3000 years ago when the Jewish People entered the Promised Land (the region was not called Palestine until the conquering Romans coined the name in the first century for the land of the Jews) – rather than to the year 1964 - when the term “Palestinians” was first defined.

History is clear:
1. The League of Nations 1922 Mandate for Palestine only recognised the Arab inhabitants of Palestine as forming part of “the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” whose civil and religious rights irrespective of race or religion were to be protected without any political rights to self-determination.
2. The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan only spoke of two states – one Jewish, the other Arab – not a Palestinian State.
3. The Palestine Liberation Organisation – the sole spokesman for the Palestinian Arabs recognised by the Arab League since 1974 – defined the term “Palestinians” for the first time in history in its founding 1964 Charter:

Important report from @hlmg_org of senior military professionals, reiterating @IDF "scrupulously observed Int'l Humanitarian Law, specifically the principles of necessity, proportionality distinction and precautions" during Hamas/PIJ initiated May war.https://t.co/qTNxA2TKzJ pic.twitter.com/nKNYgvxYAW
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 2, 2021

Whitewashing PA terror promotion in the UN Security Council

In his quarterly update to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) regarding the implementation of infamous UNSC resolution 2334, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) Tor Wennesland went out of his way to distort reality, whitewash the Palestinian Authority’s multi-million dollar terror promoting “Pay-for-Slay” policy and ignore PA incitement to violence and terror. In doing so, the UN once again proved its bias against Israel and its acceptance of Palestinian terror targeting Jews.

During his update, Wennesland gave a general overview of every potential - real or alleged - breach of UNSC 2334 allegedly committed by Israel or Jewish Israelis (referred to by Wennesland collectively as “settlers”). However, when it came to the active participation of the PA in inciting, promoting, and rewarding terror, suddenly Wennesland remained completely silent!

Whitewashing the PA’s “Pay-for-Slay” policy

Since the PA was created, it has spent billions of dollars paying monthly salaries to imprisoned and released terrorists and allowances to wounded terrorists and the families of dead terrorists. These payments are collectively know as the PA’s “Pay-for-Slay” policy.

In 2018, 2019, and 2020, the PA cumulatively spent no less than 1.85 billion shekels ($577,048,429/ €495,453,782) on salaries and allowances to terrorists and their families.

The PA terror reward payments are a direct incentive for Palestinians to participate in terror. The 2018 US Taylor Force Act described the payments as an “incentive to commit acts of terror.” The goal of the Israeli law, also passed in 2018, is to reduce “terror activity and to cancel the financial incentive for terror activity.”

While the PA payments clearly breach numerus UNSC resolutions that deal with the international war on terror and even UNSC 2334, when addressing the payments Wennesland merely noted that “Israelis and Palestinians should urgently resolve the impasse over the prisoner payments,” not condemning it with even one word.

The UNHRC's End of Year Report: UN Watch's Dina Rovner on ILTV

On ILTV: UN Watch's Legal Advisor Dina Rovner discusses the UN Human Rights Council's end of year report and how the UN's highest human rights body singles out Israel for special and disproportionate treatment.

Nov 1, 2021 is the day we escalate our efforts to persuade public figures in three countries who mumble on this issue of justice to start speaking clearly. And to remind them of the monstrous giggling Jordanian we're determined to bring to a Washington courtroom, here's a clip: pic.twitter.com/UUgwy0WH8U
— This Ongoing War (@ThisOngoingWar) November 1, 2021

Tonight is the holiday of Sigd, celebrated by the Beta Yisrael Ethiopian Jewish community and more recently an Israeli state holiday.

Sigd has a number of customs that resemble other Jewish holidays. Like Shavuot, it is set 50 days after another major holiday (Yom Kippur in this case.) and like Simchat Torah it features the reading of the (Ethiopian) Torah, the Orit, a Ge'ez translation of the Chumash, Joshua, Judges and Ruth (perhaps parts of other parts of Tanach.) Like the Fast of Esther and Purim, it is a fast followed by dancing and celebration.

Part of the prayers ask God to return the Jews to Israel and rebuild the Temple.

Which makes this a very Zionist holiday celebrated by people who no one can call "white supremacists."

In Ethiopia, it was marked with a journey to the top of a mountain to re-enact the entire unified Jewish nation receiving the Torah. Nowadays, in Israel is is marked both at the Kotel and at the Haas-Sherover Promenade that overlooks the Temple Mount, where thousands gather to celebrate - Jews of all colors celebrating unity.

It's the sort of thing that the socialist Jews who pretend to care about diversity and Judaism would never celebrate themselves.

(h/t MtTB)

Anti-Zionist Jews are loving an article by Marc Tracy that will be published in this coming Sunday's New York Times magazine, "Inside the Unraveling of American Zionism."

Tracy interviews some of the Jewish rabbinical and cantorial students who signed a letter in May that attacked Israel. The letter compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians to American racism. It said Israel having a different legal system for territories it has not annexed (which it must have under international law!) is "apartheid." It did not even mention Israel's security concerns at the very same moment thousands of Hamas rockets were pouring on Israeli cities and towns. (Hamas isn't mentioned at all.)

Tracy notes obliquely that the students who wrote and signed this letter are really clueless about Israel's history:

If you are 26 years old, you were not yet born when Oslo was signed and do not more than faintly remember the height of the Second Intifada. Your impression of Israel could well be of an occupying power and a fortress protected by militarized barriers and the U.S.-funded Iron Dome missile-defense system — a powerful country that, during a 2014 war in Gaza, responded to Hamas’s killing of three Israeli teenagers and the firing of rockets at Israeli towns with airstrikes and ground incursions that killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, including many noncombatants. Israel to you is personified not by Rabin, or the senior statesman Shimon Peres, or even the reformed hawk Ariel Sharon, but by Netanyahu, who not only presided over more settlement construction in the West Bank but sided with the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate on matters both religious and civil, attempted to hamstring liberal NGOs, engaged in racial demagogy against Palestinians and made common cause with Republicans, including and especially Donald J. Trump.

Some of the very people who plan to lead congregations cannot see or understand anything before the year 2010. To them, Israel's desire for security is an abstraction and an excuse; they post idiotic memes like a nuclear power has no reason to be concerned over terrorist attacks. The very people who should be studying the thousands of years of Jewish history and putting today's events in context think that the oversimplification of the conflict by today's journalists is reality and history is irrelevant. Instead of thinking critically about facile comparisons between Palestinians and the American civil rights movement, they embrace them.

One of the most famous Talmudic expressions is "Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh Bazeh" - all of Israel is responsible for one another. The modern State of Israel takes this obligation very seriously. Its very purpose is to defend Jews physically from those who want to kill them. One can argue about whether it goes too far, about whether every restriction on the Palestinians is necessary, about balancing the imperative to protect Israelis against that of minimizing damage and casualties of the enemy. That is perfectly OK. But Israel exists to protect Jews, and it takes this responsibility very seriously.

If you do not understand this basic concept, you don't know anything about Israel.

To these supposed leaders, though, the expression of Kol Yisrael Areivim means that they are responsible - in their wisdom of being adults for a few years - to tell the State of Israel that it is wrong in how it decides to defend the Jewish people. They don't spend the time to actually read Israeli High Court decisions, or IDF MAG reports that describe the painstaking investigations into every war-time incident that results in civilian deaths, or the layers of decision-making that goes into every single airstrike to minimize the potential of innocent lives being lost. No, these future leaders decide that Israel is guilty based on articles they read in the New York Times and one-sided tours of Hebron by Breaking the Silence.

In short, if you don't believe that Israel acts as it does to protect its citizens, you are not being dan l'chaf zechut (giving the benefit of the doubt.) If you cannot be dan l'chaf zechut about your fellow Jews, you have no business becoming a rabbi.

The ignorance of these future leaders of liberal American Jews shown in this letter is breathtaking. But it isn't only ignorance.

It is narcissism.

They think they are wiser than the old fogies who actually remember the terror of Second Intifada, let alone the Six Day War or the War of Independence.

This narcissism goes beyond Israel into Judaism itself:

The fellowship is part of a broader trend among Jews in progressive spaces who have sought to align aspects of their identity — like political leftism and queerness — with their Judaism. When I met the farm director, she was wearing a shirt for Linke Fligl — Yiddish for “left wing” — an organization that calls itself a “queer Jewish chicken farm and cultural organizing project.” Another afternoon this summer, I spoke to two women who work at Mayyim Hayyim, a mikveh, or ritual bath, in Newton, Mass. Submerging in a mikveh is best known as the final thing one does in converting to Judaism, and in some Orthodox communities women use one every month and after childbirth — when the female body is considered “impure” by Jewish law. But Mayyim Hayyim seeks to “reclaim” the mikveh from its patriarchal practices, and has developed rituals for all kinds of life events; by the end of our call, they were trying to persuade me to take a dip in honor of having recently become a father. I also heard about SVARA, a yeshiva that centers the queer experience. It somehow did not shock me each time I learned of a new program with crunchy elements and noticed the participation of a student whose name was familiar to me from the letter’s signers.

“People are thirsty,” said Amalia Mark, who signed the letter last spring, weeks before she was ordained at Hebrew College — a multidenominational seminary outside Boston that is not to be confused with Hebrew Union College — and who now works at Mayyim Hayyim. “People want meaning and connection in their life right now, and people want authentic tradition.”

That last sentence from an actual ordained rabbi who signed the letter says it all. These people are so self-centered that they insist that Judaism itself be wrapped around their own concepts of identity and politics. They are no different than the JVP members who twist Jewish traditions into anti-Israel pretzels - but this is worse, because these people are aspiring or ordained rabbis who claim that these self-serving acts are "authentic tradition."

Judaism teaches humility. The signers of this letter think that they know better than every major Jewish figure of the past 3000 years. Which means that they are spectacularly unqualified to lead anyone.

The direct ancestor of Jewish Voice for Peace: The Jewish Alliance Against Zionism

In 1978, an anti-Zionist Jewish organization was founded, literally named The Jewish Alliance Against Zionism.

JAAZ's philosophy sounded a great deal like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow do today.

Its Statement of Principles sounds like it is out of the Soviet antisemitic handbook, saying things like "Zionism is very much part and parcel of the ideology of 19th century colonialism" and that "from the beginning [Zionists] had allied with powerful Western empires, first British and then US imperialism" and Zionism "was establishing an exclusivist Jewish state and sentenced those Palestinians who remained inside ever-expanding Israeli borders to economic,political and social domination, racial subjugation, religious discrimination, as.well as direct military occupation, arrests, and torture."

The group was against the Camp David Accords, just like today's successors are against the Abraham Accords.

One part of the Statement of Principles was excised, because even those self-hating Jews felt it went too far: "We also suggest that Israel, in its racist practice and reactionary role in the world, itself contributes to anti-Semitism, and that by opposing Zionism, Jews therefore contribute to the struggle against anti-Semitism."

In the days before intersectionality, the JAAZ principles said "We believe that the struggle of women against male supremacy is inextricably connected to the struggle against all forms of human oppression." Anti-racism wasn't so trendy in the 1970s, but feminism was, so they tried to hijack a different liberal cause to attract more members - again, just like JVP does.

JVP actually interviewed one of the first (and perhaps only) members of JAAZ on the front page of their newsletter in 2015.

JAAZ made a poster succinctly describing their ideas:

In 1978, it was unthinkable for Palestinians not to be violent. So the members of JAAZ embraced terrorism in their own artwork supposedly supporting Palestinians.

Similarly, in the midst of the second intifada, when Jews were being blown up nearly daily, that didn't stop Jewish "anti-Zionist" students from supporting the Palestinians and condoning their terror.

These groups now claim to be against violence. But they never were, and still aren't. They just follow whatever they think would attract people to their anti-Israel ideas; the actual philosophy behind them is elastic and can contradict itself from decade to decade.

Before "occupation" or after, before Camp David or after, before Oslo or after, during suicide bombings or after - any opposition to Israel is justifiable.

Because even when they are Jewish, it is always about hating Jews.