Monday, November 08, 2021

  • Monday, November 08, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon


The University of Haifa has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work with UAE's Zayed University to work together on environmental and other research.

Previously,  Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) launched a program with the Weizmann Institute of Science on AI research.

These are welcome developments, but it takes time to reverse the antisemitism in the UAE.

News site UAE71 reports on how some activists find the idea of Jews in UAE universities as "ominous." And yes, the headline says Jews, not Israelis.

One activist, under the hashtag "#Normalizaion_Betrayal," says that the incoming students will be Mossad spies.

Someone responded that there is a plot to render "normalization" to be normal. (He doesn't seem to quite grasp the concept." He goes on to say that the goal is to make the UAE students love Israel and paper over how much Jews hate Islam and Muslims, which is a textbook case in psychological projection. 

The news site seems to have gone out if its way to find these negative reactions - those tweeters are not hugely popular -  meaning that the UAE media is not on board with peace with Israel. But it also means that there is some level of freedom in UAE media to criticize the government. 







  • Monday, November 08, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon


JTA reports:

Vice President Kamala Harris is set to denounce the singling out of Israel “because of anti-Jewish hatred” in a speech at the Anti-Defamation League’s annual Never Is Now conference.

“Three years ago, we suffered the most deadly attack on the American Jewish community in the history of our nation at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” Harris will say, according to prepared remarks Harris’s office released ahead of her appearance at the virtual conference on Sunday evening. “And I want to be very clear about this: When Jews are targeted because of their beliefs or their identity, when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred that is anti-Semitism. And that is unacceptable.”
Is there any more obvious statement than "when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred that is anti-Semitism"? It is a truism - when anything is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred it is antisemitism! 

Saying that anti-Jewish hatred is antisemitism isn't a brilliant insight. It is a tautology. 

This statement would never be contested by the modern antisemites of the Left, who claim that their obsessive and malicious targeting of Israel as "colonialist," "apartheid," "racist" and so forth are legitimate criticism, while never using those terms about any other nation who are obviously truly guilty of them. 

Palestinian Jew-haters would never publicly admit that their hate for Israel has anything to do with Jews, even when they freely talk about their hate in Arabic .

The media, the UN, NGOs, the old Soviet Union, Hamas, Louis Farrakhan, Al Qaeda - they all have claimed that they have no problem with all Jews, just Israel and Zionists (who deserve being hated.) They would all publicly agree with Harris' statement.

They aren't singling out Israel because of anti-Jewish hatred. Oh, no, how can you even think that? No, they single out Israel because to them Israel is truly a uniquely evil entity that must be destroyed, alone among every nation on the planet. Their hate for Israel is righteous, not bigoted. 

Harris says nothing to disagree.

The only people who admit that their hatred of Israel is prompted by Jew-hate are neo-Nazis. And even they would happily agree that their antisemitism is behind their hatred of Israel.

Harris' statement is an utterly meaningless bromide. It is nothing but applause bait - and you can be sure that when she says "and that is unacceptable!" her voice will rise, she will pause, and the audience will cheer her for her bravery at saying something as trite as hate is bad.

As such, unless she clarifies it during her speech, this isn't a positive statement that combats hate - it is a coded statement that justifies hate as long as the haters can hide behind an excuse of "legitimate criticism." 

Which they always do.

I don't consider Harris to be an antisemite by any means. But if this is all she says on the topic of antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism, she is giving a gift to the modern Jew-haters. 

Her speech doesn't combat antisemitism. It promotes it - as long as the haters call it something else.





  • Monday, November 08, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon


In late October, Israel announced that it would add another 3000 work permits for Gazans to work in Israel, making a total of 10,000 workers who will have such permits.

This weekend, Israel reportedly approved permits for 500 high tech workers from the territories to work in Israel over the next three years. 

These completely contradict the anti-Israel narrative of the haters.

In the second quarter of 2021, Israel employed 146,000 Palestinian workers, 19,000 in settlements. That's over 14% of the Palestinian workforce. These workers receive double the pay they get on average under Palestinian rule. That means that some 24% of the Palestinian tax base comes from workers who work in Israel.  (h/t Irene for correcting my math.)

In short, working for Israelis is the best thing the Palestinian economy has going for itself, especially after the significant drop in aid from the world. 

Palestinians know this. Last month, tens of thousands of Gazans applied for the several thousand permits Israel was releasing. 

Egypt doesn't employ Palestinians. Jordan doesn't employ Palestinians who live in the West Bank. There is nothing stopping those countries' borders from being opened to allow Palestinians to have jobs and dignity - but the only country that actually provides that is Israel. 

Yet the only thing one ever hears about Palestinian jobs in Israel is that it isn't enough. Which is very funny, since BDS demands that Palestinians don't accept Israeli jobs altogether (and the Palestinian Authority tried to stop them as well once, without making any dent in the numbers of Palestinians working in Israel.)

Another thing that gets very little coverage: when the Bennett government allowed Palestinians to use 4G networking, which will roll out over the next few months, it gives many Palestinian tech workers the opportunity to work remotely around the world.

How can one jive the facts that Israel is doing so much to help ordinary Palestinians and the lies that get spread by the media and NGOs? 

Simple. Just don't give much coverage to the truth.





Sunday, November 07, 2021

  • Sunday, November 07, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon


The Al Hayat Press Agency reports that today, terrorists and their families will be getting their salaries paid by the Palestinian Authority.

There was fear that with the current financial crisis gripping the PA, they would not be able to pay their terrorist population, but those fears were allayed.

Intisar Al-Wazir, head of the Foundation for the Care of the Families of Martyrs and the Wounded, stated that the payments for the families of the "martyrs" and the wounded will be disbursed today, Sunday, in the northern and southern governorates. 

The minister emphasized the keenness of the Palestinian leadership, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, to disburse these allocations despite the financial hardship the Authority is going through.

Abbas has been explicit in saying that these payments to terrorists are his highest budget priority.

The Minister thanked all the parties that cooperate with the Foundation for the Care of the Families of Martyrs and the Wounded in order to regularize the disbursement of these allocations, especially the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Communications and the money changers working in the Gaza Strip.






From Ian:

Palestinian Schools Have a Problem—and Are Running Out of Time
Nearly 60 percent of UNRWA’s roughly $1 billion annual budget is allocated to education programs which claim to teach children values of peace, tolerance, and nonviolent conflict resolution. Yet according to various studies of the Palestinian curriculum, which is taught by UNRWA in the Palestinian territories, the agency is falling far short of that goal. Textbooks depict Jews as enemies of Islam, glorify so-called martyrs who have died while committing terror attacks, and promote jihad for the liberation of historic Palestine, including areas firmly within Israel’s pre-1967 borders, such as Jaffa and Haifa. Maps of the region do not include the state of Israel, which throughout the curriculum is referred to as “the Zionist Occupation.”

A comprehensive report released in June, financed by the European Union and conducted by the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, examined 172 Palestinian textbooks used in UNRWA schools. It found “ambivalent—sometimes hostile—attitudes toward Jews and the characteristics they attribute to the Jewish people,” noting “frequent use of negative attributions in relation to the Jewish people in, for example, textbook exercises [that] suggest a conscious perpetuation of anti-Jewish prejudice, especially when embedded within the current political context.”

The only mention of peace with Israel was in one 10th grade history book, which quotes a speech delivered by late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and letters of mutual recognition exchanged between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in September 1993. “The recognition of Israel’s right to exist in peace and security documented in the letters by [former Palestinian leader] Yasser Arafat to [former Israeli Prime Minister] Yitzhak Rabin stands in contrast to the questioning of the legitimacy of the State of Israel expressed in other passages and textbooks,” the report states. It also determined that although textbooks focus heavily on human rights, they “do not apply these notions to Israel” or “to the rights of Israelis.”

A 5th grade Islamic education lesson “asks students to discuss the ‘repeated attempts by the Jews to kill the Prophet’ and then asks them to think of ‘other enemies of Islam.’” The report goes on: “It is not so much the sufferings of the Prophet or the actions of the companions that appear to be the focus of this teaching unit but, rather, the alleged perniciousness of the Jews.”

Another troubling example is a 5th grade lesson about Dalal Mughrabi. A perpetrator of the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, she carried out one of the worst terror attacks in Israeli history, killing 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children. The lesson about her reads, “our Palestinian history is full of many names of shuhada (martyrs) who sacrificed their lives for the homeland, including the shahida (martyr) Dalal Mughrabi whose struggle took the form of defiance and heroism, which made her memory immortal in our hearts and minds.” The report found that “no further portraits of significant female figures in Palestinian history are presented,” so “the path of violence implicitly appears to be the only option for women to demonstrate an outstanding commitment to their people and country.”

A 7th grade social studies textbook propagates the conspiracy theory that Israel removed stones from ancient sites in Jerusalem and “replaced them with stones bearing ‘Zionist drawings and shapes.’” A 9th grade Islamic education textbook features passages on jihad and “the wisdom behind fighting the infidels.”

In addition to criticism of its education system, UNRWA has also been roiled by other scandals. During the 2014 Gaza War, the agency discovered rockets stored in its schools and, on at least one occasion, returned them to Hamas. In 2019, the head of UNRWa resigned amid allegations of corruption and mismanagement, including abuse of power and suppression of dissent within the organization. Long accused of lacking transparency, a leaked ethics report that year led several European countries to suspend their funding.




Jonathan Tobin: Anti-Israel bias in one of America’s biggest newspapers matters
The question is, does this matter? Some pro-Israel activists and most Israelis will say “no.”

Israelis have always considered worrying about international opinion to be not in keeping with their goal of making their actions more important than what other people say about them. American friends of Israel say they stopped reading the Times years ago and that doing so is a waste of time.

Still, it’s a mistake to ignore what remains one of the most widely read publications in the world.

While the trend that Tracy’s article inflates into an “unraveling” is discussing the opinion of only a small minority, the support it gets from the newspaper that is still viewed by liberal Jews as the flagship of journalism can only strengthen it. Undermining Israel’s image by negative articles serves to help those trying to transform the Democratic Party from one with an increasingly vocal anti-Israel element to one in which that faction dominates.

That’s why it’s important that the calumnies of the Times never be allowed to go unanswered. If that answer can be in the form of mass mockery, as is the case with #SadSadIsrael, then all the better.

Ignoring the danger of allowing the “apartheid Israel” lie to gain traction in popular culture or even in Jewish forums is folly. Nor should Jewish organizations be shy about speaking up in condemning the sorts of actions that the seminary letter represents since it is providing cover for anti-Semites elsewhere.

While the vast majority of Americans remain steadfast friends of Israel and are generally unaffected by media bias, the one group that is impacted by it—and especially, at the Times—are American Jews. Fighting for Jewish opinion in this country means that no one who cares about Israel can afford to not care about what the Times publishes, no matter how wrongheaded or biased it might be.
Howard Jacobson: Advice to a Jewish Freshman
If all this seems more than enough to be going on while you are endeavoring to concentrate on your studies, there is, I am afraid, one more stratagem those who don’t want you to enjoy a quiet life have up their sleeve. This is Holocaust Denial, not the original Alpha or Beta Strains but the more recent Omega Variant.

In its early, primitive forms, Holocaust Denial was mainly a matter of macabre geometry. That many bodies could never have been processed in so few rooms, etc. The spectacle of the deniers scampering over what was left of the camps with their rulers and drafting triangles rendered them ultimately absurd. Their conclusion, that 6 million Jews could not possibly have been gassed in that space and in that time, still makes an appearance on pro-Palestinian marches, but it looks increasingly cranky.

What came next was less actual Holocaust Denial, more Holocaust Relativization. Yes, it happened, but who hasn’t it happened to? Your best bet when confronted with this is to concede that Jews are not the only people who have faced extermination; but you could try adding that few have faced quite so determined and thoroughgoing a version of it, or the ambition to have all trace and memory of them removed from the face of the earth for all time, and this as a consequence and fulfillment of centuries of Christian loathing, to say nothing of a fair amount of dislike from elsewhere. But, but, but, suffering the Holocaust was not a competition, and, if it had been — hand on heart — Jews would be more than content not to have been proclaimed the winners.

Uglier by far, and more sinister by virtue of what it concedes and why, is the new Omega Variant, which allows the horrors of the Holocaust but shakes its head over the failure of Jews to have learnt its lessons. By this reasoning, the Holocaust was a sort of University of Compassion into which Jews were, for their own benefit, enrolled, but where, as witness their subsequent hard-heartedness to the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza, they paid scant attention and flunked their exams. The next time you see the Holocaust figured as a University at which, uncharacteristically, Jews were the worst students, inquire politely,
  • Sunday, November 07, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Palestinian Legislative Council issued a press release that says that Jews have absolutely no legal, historic, religious or cultural claim to any part of Israel, Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

Oh, and that they support terrorism.


Al-Quds Legislative Committee: Al-Quds is a purely Islamic endowment to which the Jews have no right

The Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa Committee in the Legislative Council affirmed that the people of all of Palestine, from its sea to its river, and its armed resistance stand behind the people of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem in their decision rejecting the settlement option presented by the unjust  so-called Zionist Court of Justice.

The Al-Quds Committee stressed in a press statement regarding this continuous escalation against Al-Quds and its people and its sanctities, that Al-Quds and the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, like all of Palestine, are a purely Islamic endowment and holy site in which the Jews have no historical, religious or cultural right, and this was confirmed by the resolutions of the United Nations and its various bodies, especially UNESCO.
Needless to say, UNESCO, while often downplaying Jewish claims to sites in Judea and Samaria, never said that Jews have no history in the region. Quite the opposite.

The PLC is the official legislative body of the Palestinian Authority. In the last legislative elections in 2006 , Hamas won the majority of seats. Since the Hamas/Fatah split in 2007 it has been mostly dormant since it cannot meet as it requires a 2/3 attendance for passing laws. (Since then, PA president Mahmoud Abbas has, like any good dictator, taken on that job for himself.)  

Nevertheless, the PLC still has committees meeting, and it is essentially a shadow government run by Hamas, pretending to pass laws and issuing statements like this one.

Even though the PLC hasn't officially met for 15 years, its members continue to draw a salary of $3000 a month, which is on top of the regular salaries they make for other jobs they take on illegally






  • Sunday, November 07, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
At Al Arabiya, Ahmed Al-Sarraf writes a rare article that looks at Israel's success. It starts off comparing Israel to the Arab world as a whole, but then it only compares Zionism as an ideology to the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps to avoid too much shame.



There is a huge gap between the Jews and their enemies, and more precisely between us and them!

This gap is not only represented in the great physical and military capacity of the first party, but also in the difference in culture, sanctity of life and even conscience.

On the map, Israel looks as if its neighbors will swallow it up tomorrow, but it is clear that it will swallow us up in the end, if we continue to fall behind.

Although Arabs, Muslims and Christians have lived in this region for thousands of years, what separates them is more than what unites them. Although the overwhelming majority of the people of Israel immigrated to it decades ago, and from countless ethnic and cultural backgrounds, they were able, with minimal resources, and under the harshest conditions, to achieve something like a myth, compared to what our countries achieved in the same time period !

And if we did not have a  little oil, of which Israel does not have a drop, our situation would be much worse than the present!

What is their secret?

***

The Muslim Brotherhood is considered by many to be the only ideological, political and paramilitary organization qualified to play a “strategic” role, and to establish the Islamic Caliphate State or something similar, which some have long praised and sought to establish, just as the Zionist movement sought in 1897 in Basel to lay the foundations of the state of Israel.

During only half a century, the Zionist movement succeeded in realizing its dream and established an impregnable and advanced state capable of imposing itself on the whole world.

As for the Brotherhood, it has been trying, for more than ninety years, to establish its religious state, but it has failed again and again.

The success of the Zionist movement and the failure of the Brotherhood movement is due to several factors, including:

1.  The Zionists succeeded in recruiting the best scientific and political minds to serve the cause and lead it, regardless of the extent of their belief in traditional Jewish thought. This is what the Brotherhood failed in, as its choices were miserable and far from right, starting with the mediocre educational level of the majority of the movement’s guides and ending with their political representatives. The nature of the backward thinking of the Brotherhood does not allow the creative person to be a member of the group.

2. The absence of transparency from the Brotherhood’s ideology, as no one knows anything about their plans or programs for governance, and this is often due to their lack of transparency at all, and we saw this clearly during their rule in Egypt, Tunisia and Sudan.

3. Most importantly: the historical interest of the Jews in science and their known passion for reading, and the interest of the Zionist movement, and the founders of the state, in the need to form scientific, educational and cultural institutions since the first day of the founding of the state, in addition to their interest in religious belief and military deterrent force.

As for the group, which is supposed to be ideologically opposed to them, represented by the Muslim Brotherhood movement, it has proven its inability and failure, scientifically, politically and culturally, and for nearly a century, to build a single scientific edifice, and instead displayed their hatred for all topics of culture, art, thought and literature.

***

A study conducted by the well-known American Pew Center in 2016 showed that the Jewish per capita education averages 13.4 years, followed by the Christian, with an average of 9.3 years. Of course, there is no need to know the per capita education is in our countries!







  • Sunday, November 07, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
Israel haters love to quote David Ben-Gurion supposedly saying “We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian Arab  refugees] never do return. The old will die, and the young will forget.”


He never said it. No one has been able to find this quote. It is a lie.

It has been published, of course, in anti-Israel media like Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada. (Even after Electronic Intifada admitted that it was a fake quote, they never corrected their earlier articles that quoted it as true.)

The quote is too good to check. Rashid Khalidi writes in his 2017 book The Hundred Years War “The comforting idea that ‘the old will die and the young will forget’ — a remark attributed to David Ben-Gurion, probably mistakenly — expresses one of the deepest aspirations of Israeli leaders after 1948.” Yes, Khalidi knowingly uses a fake quote to make a point, years after late night comedians made fun  of the concept of "truthiness."

But it is a lie that has been believed and published in mainstream media as well.

The Guardian in 2006.

Ben White writing in Al Jazeera, 2011.

The Independent, April 30, 2011 page 38.

Detroit Free Press, May 21, 2021 (not mentioning Ben Gurion)

Foreign Policy, in May of this year (with a link back to The Guardian as proof!)

The quote is given in dozens of anti-Israel propaganda books. It is accepted as fact without question. But not only books by Palestinians - it was also quoted by NBC's Martin Fletcher in his 2011 book Walking Israel: A Personal Search for the Soul of a Nation.

The earliest I can find that quote in the context of the Palestinians was from a June 12, 1986 letter to the editor at the Lansing State Journal where the writer says that he was told by a young Palestinian Arab man in a refugee camp in 1955, "The United Nations thinks that the old will die and the young will forget. We will never forget!...We will fight!"



The only legitimate source I can find for the quote was in "Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939.      1st Series Volume 16. Upper Silesia March 22, 1921- November 2, 1922. Germany 1921." where a British analyst, discussing whether Germany may become an aggressive world power again after the first World War, says,
In any case it is not to be expected that a Nation which has been organised for war for over fifty years by the most searching form of conscription known to history, a system whose roots in the case of Prussia are 150 years deep, and whose Civil Service, Police and Education have all been tempered to that end, can be completely ‘demilitarised’ in two years. There are still too many ‘life interests’ involved in a return to the old system. Apart from the professional interests of the Armament firms, the Corps of Officers, the Military officials, and the N.C.O.’s, one has also to take into account the belligerent emotion of two strata of the population—youth and age, that is, those who were too young to be called up for military service and those who were too old. It is a common experience in all countries that those who are most disposed to glorify war are those who are least exposed to the risks of it. These two classes, strongly represented in the Universities and Gymnasia by the Students on the one hand and the Professors on the other, are a fertile field for militarist exploitation. But in time the old will die and the young will forget. In this respect the next five years will be decisive; they may decide the issues of peace and war in Europe for a generation.

It is ironic that a quote that tried to minimize the possibility of a resurgent militant Germany - one that would murder millions of Jews - is now being used to malign those same Jews.  








Saturday, November 06, 2021

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.

Friday, November 05, 2021

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.
  • Friday, November 05, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
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."








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.







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.








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.









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