Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, November 06, 2021

11/06 Links: 83 years after Kristallnacht, antisemitism is again rising; B&J's Parent Company Doing Business In Countries With Questionable Human Rights Records

From Ian:

83 years after Kristallnacht, antisemitism is again rising

All over the Western world, Jews are experiencing a resurgence of antisemitism. Synagogue doors are being reinforced, Jewish businesses are being attacked, Jewish monuments have been defaced. People are careful not to wear anything that can identify them as Jews, and those who do are in danger of verbal or even physical attack. It’s happening all over Europe as well as the US.

Members of Antifa, the supposedly anti-fascist organization, have been known to support the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement. And in Germany, where antisemitism was suppressed after the defeat of the Nazi regime, it is again unashamedly raising its ugly head. In their recent government election, the AfD (Alternative for Germany) Party won 10.3% of the votes. It is a nationalist and right-wing populist political party that stands for opposition to the European Union and immigration. It is on the furthest right political spectrum. At a recent party congress of the AfD, there was consensus of their dislike of Islam. They agreed to include the sentence “Islam does not belong to Germany” in their manifesto. Those sentiments can easily extend to antisemitism.

Quoting from an article in The Atlantic:
“By claiming a share, however small, of Germany’s political real estate, the AfD has forced the country’s mainstream parties to broaden their tents, and in some cases, even normalize far-right positions.

“It has also forced them to consider more cumbersome coalitions that not long ago might have been unthinkable, complicating the math of forming a government in a country where a single party rarely wins an overall majority.”

Only time will tell in which direction a new Social Democrat chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, will lead his country.

This week, Jews all over the world commemorate the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass,” named after the windows of Jewish businesses and homes that were shattered during the overnight of November 9 to 10, 1938. Most synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the annexed Czechoslovakian Sudetenland were plundered and set alight that night. Thousands of Jewish businesses were damaged, and 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps.

What does Israeli-Palestinian conflict have to do with cognitive neuroscience?

When looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we see two sides entrenched, driven by fear and hatred. What we take for granted is that we are the ones doing the looking.

Research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology is increasingly aware of the power of cognitive biases shaping our perception of reality. While politicians and extremists are often responsible for fueling discord, every person is somewhat guilty of falling into narrow patterns of discourse and rigid views.

Being mentally entrenched, people and governments alike feel there is very little that can be done to resolve this century-long conflict - most have given up altogether. But problems can get easier when looked at from a different angle. Before we ask ourselves what we can do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we should turn our attention to how we think about the conflict.

That leads us to the supposedly-harmless grey blob between our ears.

One of the brain’s functions is to construct a model of the world in order to help the body navigate it. An optimal model must balance (a) sensitivity to differences between objects or situations with (b) generalization across categories and contexts.

In Machine Learning, this is called the bias-variance trade-off. Human cognition routinely faces the similar choice between using simple heuristics (a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems quickly) or relying on complex models for perception and decision-making.

However, every organ and organism would rather be lazy and conserve energy. So long as it can afford it, the brain will favor the simplest model possible: as Daniel Kahneman suggests, heuristics are usually cognitively “cheap”, while complex models are demanding, thus effortful and energy-consuming.

There are a number of heuristics that allow the brain to produce a simple and economical model out of a complex and dynamic reality. However, ‘simple and economical’ is not always ideal, and sometimes it can be destructive. How do such cognitive biases affect our approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? We will focus on three.

Ben & Jerry's Parent Company Doing Business In Countries With Questionable Human Rights Records

In 2006, Unilever PLC responded to an SEC inquiry regarding its “contacts with countries identified as state sponsors of terrorism by the U.S. State Department,” stating that the Unilever Group’s contacts with Cuba, Iran, Sudan, or Syria weren’t material.

Unilever PLC said that along with providing general products to consumers for the benefit of those countries’ citizens, it was abiding by U.S. laws and regulations and considered its own “sensitive territories” policy.

The letter stated that the Unilever Group’s partners in Iran, Sudan, and Syria aren’t connected to those countries’ governments.

Unilever disclosed to the SEC in 2020 that it had sold products to a hotel owned by an affiliate of the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State in 2019. Unilever paid some of the “income, payroll and other taxes, duties and fees” to the Iranian government and the company’s “non-US subsidiary” retained an Iranian bank account, according to the filing.

The SEC continued to ask Unilever about its business in countries deemed state sponsors of terrorism, and the company continued to defend that its business in those countries weren’t material to its operations.

Greendorfer said that even though Unilever is not a U.S.-based company it should still be required by the SEC to fully disclose to investors the effects of pulling its products from certain countries.

“While Unilever is not a U.S. corporation subject to the requirement that it act in the best interests of shareholders, rather than third parties, because its shares are listed on U.S. markets it is obligated to abide by U.S. reporting requirements,” Greendorfer said.

“As such, the SEC should, at a minimum, require Unilever (and any other company engaging in discriminatory boycotts) to provide investors with full disclosure on the financial impact of engaging in boycotts so investors can make a reasoned decision as to whether the actions are material to their decision whether to buy, hold or sell their Unilever shares.,” he concluded.

Unilever did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

11/05 Links Pt2: Jewish Activists Noa Tishby, Bari Weiss, and Eve Barlow Discuss How Social Media Emboldens Antisemitism; ADL's anti-hate speaker accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing"

From Ian:

Palestinians — How Invaders Became Indigenous

According to the anti-Zionist narrative, the Palestinians are the residents who have always lived in “historic Palestine”, they were the Canaanites, Philistines, Jebusites and even the ancient Israelites who in the Byzantine period converted to Christianity and in the Islamic period and converted to Islam.

According to Shlomo Sand’s theory in his book “The Invention of the Jewish People”, for example, the Jews were never expelled from Judea, but simply became the ancestors of the Palestinians.

How true is this narrative?

What does Genetics Say?

According to the study “The Y chromosome pool of Jews as part of the genetic landscape of the Middle East”:
“Palestinian Arabs and Bedouin differed from the other Middle Eastern populations studied here, mainly in specific high-frequency Eu 10 haplotypes not found in the non-Arab groups. These chromosomes might have been introduced through migrations from the Arabian Peninsula during the last two millennia.”

Studies show that Palestinians are genetically closer to Saudi Arabia than to the Levant:

The Demographics of Palestine
The following data is based on Rivka Shpak Lissak book “When and How the Arabs and Muslims Immigrated to the Land of Israel” details the migration of various groups to Palestine that have become in recent centuries, especially in the years 1830–1947

During the Byzantine period (4th to 7th centuries), Eastern Orthodox Christians were the majority of the Land of Israel’s population, with Jewish and Samaritan minorities. The country’s population declined during the Arabic occupation, but exact numbers are not known. In total, there was a significant decline in population, from 1.500,000–2.000,000 during the Byzantine the period, to less than 500,000 during the Crusader period.

The Eastern Christians continued to be the majority during the Arab-Muslim period, and, joined by Franks, were still the majority during the Crusader period: There were 100,000 to 120,000 Franks, and the Eastern Orthodox Christians numbered approximately 200,000 to 250,000. No data exist for the number of Jews and Samaritans — the Samaritan population declined while the Jewish population declined and then increased, but both communities remained small.

After centuries of Islamic repression and massacres of the Crusaders, the Jewish population was reduced to a few thousand

‘We Are at War:’ Jewish Activists Noa Tishby, Bari Weiss, and Eve Barlow Discuss How Social Media Emboldens Antisemitism

Israeli author Noa Tishby and Jewish journalists Bari Weiss and Eve Barlow discussed the fraught relationship between social media and the rise of antisemitism, and their efforts to defend Israel and counteract Jew-hatred at a virtual event on Wednesday.

The three Jewish activists took part in a panel discussion moderated by award-winning news broadcaster Jamie Gutfreund and hosted by Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, as part of the organization’s annual State of the Union event. The panelists analyzed how social media has allowed the proliferation of anti-Jewish sentiment and disinformation about Israel, and what the public can do to stop it.

“There’s a worldwide war right now on truth and facts,” explained Tishby, the actress-turned-author who published earlier this year her debut book, “Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth.” She said, “it’s a long-term battle, it’s going to be ugly,” urging online audiences not to get “triggered” when they see antisemitism.

The Tel Aviv native said she has already spoken to members of Congress about ensuring that major social media companies are held accountable for what people say on their platforms. She also spoke to Congress about the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and said, “BDS needs to be rooted out of Western society.”

She argued that while it’s often seen as effective to have celebrities and recognizable figures speak out against antisemitism, she believes “the work needs to be from the bottom up” — with outreach to organizations at the grassroots level, to support the Jewish community.

“This is a well-funded political campaign that has been waged against Israel in the past 20 years,” Tishby added.

What about the Palestine lobby and our media?

Abdel-Fattah bemoans the fact that anti-Israel campaigns are not plugged for free in our media outlets and that she and her Israelophobic cohort have to actually pay to insert nasty statements, subscribed to by a band of die-hard anti-Zionists, into our newspapers.

At the end of the day, our media covers the Israel-Palestine dispute very extensively and one senses that the complaints from the likes of Abdel-Fattah are that articles bashing Israel don’t appear frequently enough. In the same vein, she needs to note that there are very few reports appearing that extol the virtues and achievements of an extraordinary country that is compelled to spend so much of its resources on defence. Media moguls know all too well that to screen a program or to write an article that shows Israel in a good light is inviting the restive Palestinian lobby to rise up and object.

In the meantime, I continue to produce programs on my radio show that attempt to cover many issues broadly and fairly about Israel. Now that the Australian government has adopted the IHRA Working Definition on Antisemitism we will hopefully see more sanity in discussion about Israel-Palestine.

For me, the name of the game is engagement, something that the pro-Palestinian movement appears to loathe. They are fundamentally dishonest by avoiding being challenged, unwilling to be genuinely accountable for malevolent views they are trying to shove down our throats.

Lebanese journalist is accused of "treason" for giving an interview to Israeli media

Maria Maalouf is a Lebanese Christian-Maronite journalist broadcaster, publisher and writer who is based in Washington DC.

Her outspoken opposition to Hezbollah and Syria have resulted in death threats and she no longer visits Lebanon.

Now she is in hot water again, after granting an interview with Israel's Kan network.

She told the Israeli station, "What Israel did to Lebanon is a drop of water in an ocean" compared to the damage Iran has done to Lebanon since 1982. "We oppose violence . We are a generation of civil war and Hassan Nasrallah and the Iranian party kidnapped our country and are trying to take us to the Stone Age, after we were once the Switzerland of the Middle East."

She also said she would want to visit Israel.

Naturally, the Lebanese are going crazy.

Members of Hezbollah are suing her in Lebanese court, claiming “Maalouf committed crimes for having contacted people from an enemy country and for collaborating with it, espionage, treason, incitement and conspiracy, in addition to damaging Lebanese honor, damaging national sentiment and security, and urging an enemy to eliminate the Lebanese."

Maalouf responded on Twitter, saying “The more Hezbollah mercenaries in Lebanon accuse me of things, the more sure I am right and that our future will be better thanks to the expansion of peace. Israel proved not to be an enemy of Lebanon and the Abraham Accords are the most important development in favor of our region. The one that is occupying Lebanon is Iran, our greatest enemy through the terrorist organization Hezbollah."

11/05 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: From Glasgow to the War to Destroy the West; Einat Wilf: Let’s lay the myth to rest: Rabin wouldn’t have brought peace

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Bennett's diplomatic tsunami

Naftali Bennett's government's diplomatic policies came into full view in recent weeks and were put to the test at the UN climate conference in Glasgow this week. The results are unmistakable.

Under Bennett's government, Israel's foreign policy is predicated on making far-reaching concessions – first and foremost to the Palestinians, and second to the international Left. Four such concessions stand out.

The first concession is Zionism. Last week, Defense Minister Benny Gantz abandoned the central tenet of Zionism – redemption of the land of Israel through land purchases for Jewish settlement. After it liberated Judea and Samaria from Jordanian occupation in 1967, the Eshkol government chose to administer these areas through the military while maintaining Jordanian law as the governing law of the areas. The military government issued orders that updated the laws from time to time to align the legal regime in the areas with basic principles of civil rights.

Jordanian law contains several racist provisions. One of the most prominent racial laws is Jordan's land law, which bars non-Muslims from purchasing land. In 1971, Israel's military government amended the law to permit non-Muslim owned companies – but not private non-Muslim citizens – to purchase privately owned land in Judea and Samaria. The amendment required these companies to register the deals with the Civil Administration.

After the Palestinian Authority murdered a number of Palestinian land owners following the registration of their land sales at the Civil Administration, the Defense Ministry and IDF legal advisers recommended amending the law again to permit private citizens who are not Muslims to buy land from private owners.

Gantz refused to enact the recommendation. His refusal caused two Israeli NGOs to petition the Supreme Court to require Gantz to enact the recommendations, which are geared toward ensuring the property rights and the lives of Palestinians Muslims and Israeli Jews.

Gantz told the justices that he chose to bar Jews from purchasing land from Palestinians to avoid angering the Palestinian Authority, which is engaging in the wholesale murder of Palestinian land sellers. He also doesn't want to tick off the international community which, in an expression of unbridled antisemitism, rejects Jewish property rights in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.

The Caroline Glick Show: Ep25 : From Glasgow to the War to Destroy the West | Guest: David Wurmser

In the latest episode, Caroline was joined again by David Wursmer. They discussed Tuesday’s off-year elections and what they tell us about the future of the Biden presidency. They then moved to the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow and what it tells us about America’s shrinking posture on the world stage.

Caroline and David then moved to Israel and its government’s wholesale abandonment of core principles of Zionism. The discussed the central role Israel plays in the left’s war on Western civilization and what Israel must do to save itself – and the free world as a whole.

Einat Wilf: Let’s lay the myth to rest: Rabin wouldn’t have brought peace.

There is a reigning myth that when Yigal Amir assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995, he also assassinated peace. It is, like many myths, at once comforting and entirely wrong.

This myth is comforting because it reinforces the kind of foundational story that Western civilization is based on, from Christ to the modern superhero. In these stories, a savior figure or leader shapes history through sheer force of will and against all odds. Transplanted to the Middle East, this foundational myth sets the stage by casting peace between Israelis and Palestinians as requiring an end-of-times salvation. And Yitzhak Rabin is the savior who could have brought about salvation and peace on earth had he not been martyred.

But this myth also reinforces another foundational Western trope, in which Jews are always cast as having an outsized role in shaping human affairs. This is why Jewish agency is always elevated over Palestinian agency in the context of the Middle East. Had Rabin been alive there would have been peace, the myth goes, and since Rabin was assassinated by a Jew, there is no peace. Thanks to the addition of the Jewish trope, the actions, goals and world view of Palestinians have no bearing on the possibility or impossibility of the attainment of peace. Rabin's contribution was recognizing us as partners. Don't erase his. by the Forward

Rabin’s contribution was recognizing us as partners. Don’t erase it.

But the reason to be suspicious of the myth of the Rabin assassination killing peace is not just because of how neatly it fits into the wishful thinking of Western storytelling. The myth has persisted for another reason, too: because it rests on the belief that we cannot know what would have happened had he lived.

But we actually do: When he died, Rabin was already on his way to being trounced in direct elections by the up and coming Benjamin Netanyahu. Rabin was going to lose because there was a cavernous gulf between the handshakes on manicured lawns following elevated speeches about peace on the one hand, and the bloody massacres carried out by Palestinian suicide bombers against Israeli civilians on the other. And this gulf did not endear Israelis to the cause of peace. In the highly unlikely case that Rabin would have won the elections, the Israeli public would have pressured him to put the breaks on the so-called peace process, and there is evidence that he was already planning to do so.

Moreover, the shock of the assassination actually swung Israelis to the left, nearly preventing what was a secure Netanyahu victory. Israelis swung so much to the left that a few short years later, Ehud Barak was elected on a platform for peace more far reaching than anything imagined by Rabin. Ehud Barak said yes to the Clinton Parameters that would have created an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital in east Jerusalem, including the Old City. It was Arafat who walked away from this opportunity with no criticism from his people.

PreOccupiedTerritory: We Must Blame Religious Zionists For Rabin’s Assassination To Prevent Division And Hate By Ofir Tzfonbon (satire)

Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination that Saturday twenty-six years ago drove home a point that I and my like-minded colleagues had been arguing – and continue to assert: extremism will be the death of the Zionist enterprise, which is why we must adopt the extreme tactic of assuming the worst about anyone whose background, at a cursory glance, resembles that of Yigal Amir. We must ostracize, shame, and shun them from civic life, and make them regret being born into, or joining, the religious Zionist community, the overwhelming majority of which would never in their worst nightmares consider such a heinous act to prevent undesirable political developments, or to further favored policies, but that’s not important: we see the same thing in them because they dress the same way. So out of civic life they must go. In the name of tolerance and reconciliation, to prevent extremism.

Too many of us have let this important lesson fade as the years pass. But with the passage of the decades the responsibility to ensure a tolerant, open society devoid of fascist crocheted-yarmulke-wearers grows, not lessens. Those of us who lived through the trauma bear responsibility to convey this existential principle to the younger generation, who will never know the religious Zionists cannot be trusted, let alone allowed to engage in leadership roles or public life, unless we inform them in the starkest, uncompromising terms. They will never know what can happen unless we impress upon them the dangers inherent in such people participating in our democracy, which, I need not remind you, is perpetually at death’s door unless we ACT NOW to save it, much like the planet, which we have destroyed how many times now? The younger generation will never realize how dangerous those religious Zionists are even if they examine religious Zionist behavior and policy goals, which we must depict as monolithic and destructive if we take this threat with the seriousness it deserves.

Otherwise we will become intolerant, which is what they are.

From the New York Times:

In a remarkable breach with Israel over one of its most successful technology companies, the Biden administration on Wednesday blacklisted the NSO Group, saying the company knowingly supplied spyware that has been used by foreign governments to “maliciously target” the phones of dissidents, human rights activists, journalists and others.

The firm, and another Israeli company, Candiru, acted “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States,” the Commerce Department said, a striking accusation against a business that operates under the direct supervision of the Israeli government.

It is definitely newsworthy to say that two Israeli companies are sanctioned for marketing spyware. Yet as I pointed out months ago, there are plenty of other companies that do the same thing worldwide, and no one seems to have a problem with them.

Twenty paragraphs into the article concentrating on NSO, we read:

NSO was one of four companies that were blacklisted on Wednesday.

Candiru, another Israeli firm, was sanctioned based on evidence that it supplied spyware to foreign governments. Positive Technologies of Russia, which was targeted with sanctions last April for its work with Russian intelligence, and Computer Security Initiative Consultancy of Singapore were added to the list for trafficking in hacking tools, according to the Commerce Department’s announcement.

I didn't see anyone make a big deal over a Singapore company being sanctioned for selling hacking tools (besides in Singapore itself.). Most articles didn't mention that at all.

Giving the other two companies more attention would lessen the goal of associating Israel with spyware, so the Times ignores putting things in context,

The NYT also praises President Biden, saying "The ban is the strongest step an American president has taken to curb abuses in the global market for spyware, which has gone largely unregulated. "

The Commerce Department announcement itself doesn't mention Biden. It only mentions one president whose orders allowed them to make this move:

Export Control Reform Act of 2018
On August 13, 2018, the President signed into law the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, which included the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA) (50 U.S.C. 4801-4852). ECRA provides the legal basis for BIS’s principal authorities and serves as the authority under which BIS issues this rule.

Who was president in 2018 again?

Context.

Now, a reporter might wonder, how many companies are on the US Department of Commerce Entity List for potentially selling items that might compromise national security?

Just joking. No reporter asked that question. But if they did, they would find a document that is 475 pages long that lists over 1700 companies.

As you might expect, hundreds of them are Chinese. But you might be surprised to see that over 35 of them are based in the UK, 20 in Germany and 24 in Canada.

11 of them are Israeli.

Has anyone darkly accused Canada, Britain or Germany of being enemies of the US because they host so many companies on the Commerce Department list?

No. Only Israel is singled out for such scrutiny.

Even though there is a bustling cyber-arms industry worldwide - here's one headquartered in Italy and one in England, for example - no one accuses their host countries of being complicit in how the software is are used.

Only Israel gets such reporting.

The lack of context in stories like this is irresponsible and it betrays the antipathy that the media has against Israel.

Arab population growth in Palestine 1882-1947 double that of Egypt, Syria

There has long been a controversy about whether the large population growth of Arabs in Palestine that coincided with the beginning of Zionism was natural or the result of massive immigration.

The British officials at the time, and later demographers, insist there is no evidence of large Arab immigration. Some people, like Joan Peters and Fred Gottheil, bring evidence for such immigration from neighboring Arab countries to Palestine. Gottheil in particular showed that even within Palestine, the Arabs would move near where the Jews were concentrated, because the economic opportunities were coming from Jewish areas - and there is no reason to think that Arabs outside Palestine weren't similarly attracted to the booming economy that came from the Jews.

I thought that a comparison of Arab population growth in Palestine to that of its neighbors in Egypt and Syria would help shed light on this question. After all, if Palestine's Arab population growth was way faster than its neighbors in the north and the south, it sure sounds like something unique was happening with the Arabs in Palestine - and immigration is the most likely explanation, since there wouldn't be much of a cultural reason for a baby boom (and no contemporaneous descriptions of one that I am aware of.)

In fact, Palestine's population remained steady from the 16th century to the 19th. Only in the 19th century did it start to increase significantly.

Here is my chart of population grown of Palestine, Egypt and Syria for the years that Palestine had censuses:

We can see that the Palestinian Arab population exploded at double the rate (480%) of those of its neighboring countries Egypt (250%) and Syria (201%)..

If the actual natural growth in Palestine would have mirrored that of Egypt and Syria, then that implies that nearly half of the Arabs living in Palestine in 1948 - over 600,000 - had immigrated since 1882.

If true, that means that half of today's "Palestinians'" ancestors lived in Palestine for fewer years than Israel has existed.

More Muslims are visiting Al Aqsa on a typical Friday under Jewish rule than ever visited under Muslim rule in history

It's Friday, which means that tens of thousands of Muslims will be visiting the Temple Mount as they do every Friday.

Here is what it looked like one Friday in October, when 50,000 Muslims visited to pray.

Muslim media typically reports 40,000-50,000 visiting every Friday. Even during COVID there were tens of thousands visiting every week when it was open.

As far as I can tell, more Muslims visit Judaism's holiest site, under Jewish rule, on a typical Friday than ever visited even on Muslim holidays under Muslim rule, in history.

I have looked for any photo or description estimating the number of Muslims that visited the holy site even during Muslim holidays, and while some descriptions mention "thousands" of worshippers, never have I seen anyone report "tens of of thousands" as the site sees every single week nowadays.

A letter from a British resident of Jerusalem in the November 23, 1937 Manchester Guardian disputes the claim that 10,000 Muslims carried the Mufti around the Temple Mount by pointing out that only perhaps once a year does the Haram esh Sharif attract that many Muslims:

Only 13,000 Muslims lived in Jerusalem in 1922 and 40,000 in 1948 (compared to over 300,000 today) so 40,000 visitors would have been an astronomical figure to visit at any time under Muslim rule.

Now, during Fridays in Ramadan, Israel allows some 200,000 Muslims to visit Judaism's most sacred spot.

I am confident in my claim that more Muslims will visit the site today, on a typical Friday, walking past Israeli guards, than had ever visited at one time in the entire 1200 years of Muslim control of Jerusalem.

The contrast to how Muslims didn't allow Jews to visit the Temple Mount or the Cave of the Patriarchs at all under their rule couldn't be more striking.

Never in history has there been as free access to holy sites for all religions than under Jewish rule, yet earlier this week the UN again accused Israel of "racial and ethnic discrimination."

We are truly living in 1984 where ignorance is strength.

11/04 Links Pt2: An etrog, a lion and all the secrets of 1,300-year-old mosaic in Jericho; The time for Israeli hasbara is now; The Ethiopian Jewish holiday Sigd belongs on all Jews’ calendar

From Ian:

How Israel Shaped Ruth Mayer And Her Hope For Her Homeland’s Future

Mayer got married in 1958 to her late husband, Arye, who immigrated to Israel at eight years old from Romania. Pogroms forced Arye's family out of their home.

"They left their home with only two suitcases, and they were forced to leave on the side roads, and they were walking for days and days without food or water," Mayer said. "And then the Red Cross was taking orphan kids away from the war zone. So his parents declared that they were not their kids; they found them. So the kids went with the Red Cross."

"They never knew if they would ever see their parents again."

The Red Cross put Arye and his brother on a boat to the British Mandate for Palestine. But they were turned away. (In 1939, Britain began limiting immigration to Palestine following the 1936-39 Palestine Revolt against the British Mandate for the increase of Jewish immigration as Hitler rose to power.)

According to Mayer, Arye's ship went to Italy, where he and his brother boarded another boat that went back to Palestine, and this time, they were allowed to enter the region. They were adopted by a man from a Kibbutz (a communal settlement in Israel, typically a farm) near Jerusalem.

Arye and his brother served Israel as soldiers, volunteering for the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary organization of the Jewish population in Mandatory Palestine between 1920 to 1948. (The Haganah turned into the Israeli Defense Forces or IDF.)

"The first war that he served in, he was 15-years-old, so we are talking 1945 (before Israel's independence). There was an unorganized war, and it was a brutal battle," Mayer said. "He and his brother lied about their age."

"But he served in 73 in the Yom Kippur war and the Sinai war."

Eventually, Mayer, Arye, and their three daughters relocated to the United States after their youngest, who has a disability, was born. And they've remained here since. However, Mayer's brother and family still reside in Israel, in Tel Aviv, close to where missiles are often fired. So when an escalation between Israel and Hamas occurs, like the latest in May, she fears for her family's safety.

Mayer says she loves Israel because it saved her family and many other Jewish families. But she's tired of the bloodshed and fighting between Israelis and Palestinians.

"The Jewish and Israeli people, they love Israel, and they cherish Israel. I know how I feel. I miss it terribly. I feel like I know what it means to be homesick," she said.

"I do hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians."

Am I a Jew? Australian? Both? - opinion

There is a gap between the role of the rabbi in Israel and the Diaspora. On the whole, the Israeli rabbi is more of a Talmudist and teacher and less of a mentor and minister. The Diaspora rabbi tends to be a professional, concentrating more on people skills, ministering to a congregation and representing Judaism to the host society.

I was an incarnation of the second concept. Forty-five years in Diaspora pulpits molded me into an ecclesiastic and ambassador. Commencing my career in the United Synagogue in London, I spent 32 years in Sydney as chief minister of the Great Synagogue. Early on, I had a meeting with the synagogue’s Board concerning the role of the rabbi. I said I seemed to have two full-time jobs – congregational minister and community ambassador. I felt I was competent to do either and asked the board what they preferred. Rather pragmatically, they said: “Both!”

So “both” it remained. I know I wasn’t the perfect rabbi: nobody was or could be. But somehow the combination of roles evolved over the years by previous rabbis (not always in consultation with the lay leaders) seemed to work, and that’s the way things were and remain. Occasionally I asked myself a philosophical question: when I got involved in matters of national debate was it as a Jew or an Australian? Once again the pragmatic answer was “both!”

The question actually arose constantly. Interviewed on TV in the 1990s (billed as “one of twenty leading Australians”) about the future of the British monarchy in Australia, did I speak as a Jew or an Australian? When I spoke at the national Sea of Hands event at Bondi Beach to advocate reconciliation with (and an apology to) the Aboriginals, was I there as a Jew or an Australian? When I helped the Uniting Church to get its first female military chaplain, was my involvement as a Jew or an Australian? At times I stood up for the Muslim, Chinese and Roman Catholic communities; I addressed conferences of politicians, judges, journalists, nurses, naval chaplains, teachers and child care workers. What was I – a Jew? an Australian? I addressed large audiences on national occasions like Anzac Day and Australia Day – as a Jew? as an Australian? I can’t be sure, but I think the answer was “both!”

The extinction of Jewish heritage in northern Cyprus

Historically, large Jewish population groups lived across coastal towns in Cyprus such as ancient Salamis in the city of Famagusta, which is today under Turkish occupation. Sadly, the invasion campaign has brought widespread destruction to all non-Muslim Cypriot historic sites.

To this day, the occupying forces continue to plunder and destroy the Cypriot cultural heritage, including the Jewish heritage of the occupied area. The Jewish cemetery there, for instance, has been destroyed. According to the 2012 report "The Loss of A Civilization: Destruction of cultural heritage in occupied Cyprus,"

“The historic Margo Jewish Cemetery, a national monument for the Jewish people, southeast of Nicosia, has been desecrated and destroyed in the same way as Christian cemeteries in the area occupied by Turkish troops have been desecrated and destroyed.

“The Margo Jewish Cemetery is home to the graves of Jews of the diaspora of 1885 and of Jewish refugees who came to Cyprus after the Second World War.

“The cemetery is located in a strictly controlled military area and is guarded by an armed Turkish soldier. Jewish organisations and other groups have persistently petitioned for free access to the cemetery to conduct religious ceremonies, but these requests have not been granted by the occupying power and its puppet regime.”

“We have visited the cemetery several times,” Philippou confirms. “But we haven't been able to hold any religious ceremonies, just a quick visit under supervision. We would like to have it restored, but no permission was given thus far.”

See a video of the destroyed Jewish cemetery in the Turkish-occupied part of Nicosia here.

Cypriot-Dutch author, cultural campaigner and activist Tasoula Hadjitofi became a refugee at age 15 when Turkish troops invaded Famagusta, the city of her birth, in 1974. For several decades, she has collected artefacts and other symbols of cultural heritage that has been looted and stolen to bring them back home to Cyprus. Referring to the liberation of prisoners from Nazi concentration camps in 1945, Hadjitofi said:

"Cypriots fought alongside the allies as British troops during the liberation of the Jews and other prisoners, for Cyprus was then a British colony. There are no poppies for those heroes on Holocaust Memorial Day in the United Kingdom or in Cyprus and little is known anywhere about them. Most of these forgotten heroes died quietly and took with them so many untold stories. Perhaps a handful are still around? Their stories must be told and their courage must be honored."

"The historical ties are strong between Israel and Cyprus," added Hadjitofi. "I do hope that our Jewish brothers and sisters worldwide are watching attentively the Islamisation of northern Cyprus by Turkey, as well as the destruction of the Christian and Jewish sites in the occupied area. And for the sake of our shared heritage, historical and current struggles for freedom, as well as fundamental principles, they must do their best to stop them."

Palestine Activists Disappointed: Upcoming Kristallnacht Observance Not A Reenactment (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

burning house Toronto, November 4 - Students and community figures devoted to fighting Zionism and anyone associated with the movement voiced a sense of letdown today upon discovering that this week's anniversary of a 1938 pogrom throughout the Third Reich against Jews, Jewish institutions, and Jewish-owned businesses involves commemoration in a subdued, somber manner, and not, as they had assumed, an occasion to try it again.

Abu Bakr Jabareen, a spokesman for the Free Palestine Coalition at area university campuses and mosques, informed a shocked group of activists that their planned regimen of beatings, lynching, arson, vandalism, and violence targeting Jews, synagogues, Jewish schools, Jewish-owned shops and offices, and other identifiable elements of Jewry, will not in fact take place, because it turns out Kristallnacht has a mournful and didactic character, not a celebratory one.

"We're all disappointed," acknowledged Jabareen, addressing volunteers from Students for Justice in Palestine, If Not Now, Jewish Voice for Peace, and assorted organizations advocating BDS. "I, too, thought that Kristallnacht called for what we've always envisioned we could do if we made the political decisions. But I found out just now that our reenactment of justice against suspected Zionist targets and those who condone them might be illegal. We could get in trouble if we hold it as planned."

The activists decried the discovery. "That's just not fair," declared Louise Hoffman of If Not Now. "How much says Zionists slandered us to the police, who will now be expecting us to go rioting and looting, when in fact we'll be doing something that to the untrained eye might look like rioting and looting, but is actually fighting for justice for Palestinians? What a cynical Zionist ploy."

"Now what are we going to do with all this gear?" wondered Yusef Najjar of SJP. "I can't very well go burning down the Hillel on campus now, or any of the synagogues in the area, much as I want to express my identity and sense of justice."

"But that's not really what the disappointment is about, I guess," he sighed. "Anti-Zionism has long been more about making Jews feel insecure everywhere because they have the temerity to want to feel secure in a place of their own, where dominant cultures dictate whether Jews will be safe, let alone prosperous. Obviously that's not acceptable - it goes against everything we've always known to be true. I hope I'm not to old to enjoy the day when that truth reemerges and we can go kick some Jews to make ourselves feel better. I think today's youth are so troubled precisely because they don't have the reassurance that no matter how bad things are for them, at least they're not as lowly as the Jew. We need that back."

Judaizing Jerusalem (poster)

This poster pretty much went viral on Twitter.

11/04 Links Pt1: Palestinians Admit: Only Destroying Israel Will Bring Peace; Israel cannot allow terrorism financing under guise of humanitarian aid

From Ian:

Palestinians Admit: Only Destroying Israel Will Bring Peace

As Palestinian Media Watch has shown, every year the PA and its institutions mark November 2nd with a comprehensive diatribe against the Balfour Declaration.

This year, PA Chairman and President Mahmoud Abbas issued a new “presidential decree,” ordering that the “national flag” be flown at half-mast on all the PA governmental buildings, including embassies and representative offices abroad.

According to the official PA news agency Wafa, the aim of lowering the flag is to remind “the world in general and the United Kingdom in particular of the suffering of the Palestinian people and their rights to achieve independence, statehood and self-determination.” Last year, the PA courts held a trial against the UK government demanding that it be held accountable for the declaration and its consequences.

Unsurprisingly, the PA never mentions that prior to 1917, much of the Middle East and other regions were part of the Ottoman/Turkish Empire for 400 years. They never mention that an independent “State of Palestine” never existed. They similarly do not mention that the Balfour Declaration was not merely a British whim, but rather a decision adopted and ratified by the international community at the San Remo Conference in 1920.

The PA also never mentions that the Balfour Declaration was then adopted by the League of Nations in the 1922 Mandate for Palestine. At that time, “Palestine” included both Israel (including Judea and Samaria) and Jordan.

While pretending that Israel only has to withdraw to the 1967 borders to achieve peace, the reality is that every day, the PA further intensifies the anti-Israel propaganda and brainwashing of the Palestinian population. For the PA, only the cancellation of the Balfour Declaration and the undoing of its consequences — i.e. destroying Israel — will suffice.

JCPA: The Palestinian Authority: President Biden's Promises Are a Mirage

The PA is disappointed that the administration is delaying the reopening of the American consulate in Jerusalem and does not accept the claim that this requires the consent of the Israeli government. PA sources claim that according to the law and UN Resolution 181, Jerusalem is international territory and the status of its diplomatic missions has not changed. Therefore, reopening the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem only requires the political will of the Biden administration.

Regarding the renewal of U.S. civilian financial aid to the PA which was stopped by the Trump administration, it claims that its hands are tied because of the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits any financial support to the PA as long as it continues to pay monthly salaries to terrorists and their families.

U.S. sources claim that to unfreeze the “Taylor Force” restrictions, President Biden needs to persuade Congress and invoke a clause in the U.S. Constitution that states that foreign relations are under the president’s authority. This claim has been made throughout the last century with little success, since the Constitution gives Congress the power to approve or block appropriations.

Again, this is a sensitive political issue that could provoke great opposition from Israel and its supporters in the United States. According to PA officials, several members of Congress who met in July with the PA Chairman and Hussein al-Sheikh, the minister of civil affairs, demanded that the allowances to terrorists and their families be converted to a social benefit unrelated to the number of years the terrorists sat in Israeli prisons. The Members of Congress also urged the PA to stop all its activities against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is not interested in a diplomatic falling-out with the Biden administration. He knows that he cannot get anything better at the moment, so he is trying to bypass the administration by appealing to Russia to reinvigorate the Quartet to secure its political goals.

It is highly doubtful that his efforts will succeed, but he is trying to show that he is doing everything possible to break the impasse in the political process. The PA is in a severe financial crisis. There are insane price increases in the West Bank markets, popular anger is growing, and no Arab country is willing to come to the PA’s rescue financially. Mahmoud Abbas is urgently seeking an achievement.

@StateDeptSpox sent out the "Department Press Briefing - November 03, 2021" with an "ARTICLE INDEX" listing "~ISRAEL/PALESTINE~" Below is the screen shot and the link - https://t.co/YelQU3qJL1

This is concerning and wrong. Is it a change in policy or typo? Serious question. pic.twitter.com/7bFPFDR6uY
— David Milstein (@davidamilstein) November 4, 2021

'Israel cannot allow terrorism financing under guise of humanitarian aid'

Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan responded on Monday to two letters sent by the Palestinian Authority to the UN protesting Defense Minister Benny Gantz's recent designation of six Palestinian organizations as terrorist entities.

Erdan pointed to the hypocrisy of UN members for not enforcing their own Security Council Resolution 2129 of 2013, which affirms the rights of member states to prosecute and penalize the financing, direct or indirect, of terror groups and their activities.

In a detailed letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Erdan outlined the reasons why those organizations were outlawed by Israel as, through money laundering and other tactics, they provided a lifeline for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is designated a terrorist organization by the United States, European Union, Australia, Canada, Japan, and Israel.

The PFLP, wrote Erdan, pioneered terrorist attacks in the 1960s and 1970s through armed airplane hijackings, and through the half-century continued to murder civilians, children, and students in bloody terrorist attacks and bombings.

After extensive investigations by Israeli authorities, the six organizations were found to have contributed to the PFLP by raising funds from foreign donors by disguising themselves as human rights and civil society organizations. These organizations also employed and provided consistent salaries to individuals who openly declared being PFLP operatives and allowed the PFLP to use its facilities as safe-havens.

Several of the operatives were found to have actively participated in plotting and executing attacks against Israeli civilians.

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinian Authority Campaign Against Palestinian NGOs

The six Palestinian NGOs were classified by Israel as terrorist organizations because of their affiliation with the PLO's Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by both the United States and the European Union.

The PFLP, which has carried out many attacks against Israelis, including civilians, is one of 11 groups that form the PLO, headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Each group receives monthly allocations of up to $70,000 from the PLO's unofficial finance ministry.

Yet while Israel has come under attack for its move against the six NGOs, there is almost no mention that the Palestinian Authority (PA), which joined the bandwagon of anti-Israel criticism, has also been targeting Palestinian NGOs for quite some time.

[T]he PA has been targeting hundreds of Palestinian NGOs... as part of an effort to control them and take their funds. Unlike Israel, the PA is not targeting the NGOs because of their affiliation with terrorism. Many of the NGOs have been critical of the PA leadership: that is why Abbas wants to silence them.

Al-Haq, one of the six organizations labeled by Israel as a terrorist organization... pointed out that this was not the first time the PA leadership had targeted Palestinian NGOs.

When Al-Haq complained about the PA decree targeting Palestinian NGOs, the mainstream media in the West, as well as several human rights organizations self-righteously chose to look the other way.... The international community did not demand clarifications from the PA leadership about his "assault" on Palestinian NGOs.

Palestinian legal expert Majed al-Arouri.... said that more than 20,000 Palestinian employees would lose their jobs as a result of the restrictions imposed by the PA on the work of Palestinian NGOs and charitable organizations.

As far as many in the international community are concerned, it is fine if Abbas takes punitive measures against the PFLP, but it is outrageous if Israel does it.

Those who are ignoring Abbas's crackdown on the Palestinian NGOs are depriving the Palestinians of democracy and freedom of speech.

The international community's obsession with Israel... proves that it is more interested in condemning and delegitimizing Israel than improving the status of human rights and democracy under the PA.

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.