Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, December 03, 2021

12/03 Links Pt2: Is it Islamophobic to call out Ilhan Omar for antisemitism?; The National Endowment for the Humanities Spends $250K to Fund a 1619 Project for Israel

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Is it Islamophobic to call out Ilhan Omar for antisemitism?

The Democratic leadership has lined up behind Omar with a statement accusing Boebert of Islamophobia and racism, in addition to a demand that Republicans condemn "bigoted members of their conference."

Even if we concede that making remarks about a Congress member being a potential suicide bomber – as well as speaking of a "Jihad Squad" and then boasting about it in public is inflammatory, rude and un-parliamentary behavior – the notion that Omar is nothing more than an innocent victim of a smear is chutzpah on steroids. More to the point, this incident was made possible not just by Boebert's penchant for insults but by the failure of the Democratic caucus to discipline Omar and her fellow "Squad" member, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), for their open antisemitism and extremism.

Omar is the darling of the left because she is an immigrant, a woman of color and, as the headscarf-wearing first Muslim woman in Congress, a symbol of diversity. But she is also someone who accused AIPAC and the Jewish community of buying Congress ("It's all about the Benjamins, baby"). She and Tlaib are also open supporters of the antisemitic BDS movement that targets Jews and seeks the elimination of the one Jewish state on the planet. They have embraced the "apartheid state" lie about Israel and sought to enter it on a trip arranged by a Palestinian group that promoted the classic blood libel that Jews bake Christian blood into Passover matzah. While claiming to oppose terrorism, they have acted as tacit defenders of the Hamas terrorist group, ignoring its criminal behavior while asserting that Israel commits war crimes.

So while Boebert's barbs went too far, the reason they resonate for many is because Omar is not merely just as extreme as her antagonist (she is an ardent supporter of efforts to defund the police while seeking police protection for herself), she is also someone who deserved to be censured for her antisemitism. Pelosi is mindful of the influence of the left these days and knows that Omar has been treated like a rock star by the liberal press, the late-night comedy shows and other pop-culture outlets. Instead of depriving Omar of committee assignments, she gave her a plum role on the House Foreign Affairs Committee to use as a platform for her hateful agenda.

Democrats may well appease Omar and their activist base by censuring Boebert. But all they'll be doing is turning Boebert into a Republican heroine. And if, as now seems likely, the GOP wins back control of the House in 2022, the following January we can expect Republicans to prioritize payback in the form of censures of Omar, Tlaib and other radical Democrats.

Congressman Says Jews Are Crazy

Maybe he didn’t mean it the way it sounded, but a United States Congressman this week insinuated that Israeli Jews are all mentally unbalanced. If he had said that about another national or ethnic group, he would have been widely denounced as a bigot.

Following a visit to Israel, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) said on November 29: “I felt a tension in Israel, from the Jewish community, the psychology of occupation impacted the Jews who live there who are free….there’s a history of complex trauma that people are living with every day. Yad Vashem brought that home to me.”

Congressman Bowman is not the first observer to make the insulting and false claim that Israeli Jews are mentally disturbed as a result of the Holocaust, and that they are therefore incapable of making rational decisions about government policy. In fact, that allegation has become almost standard fare among armchair psychiatrists looking for ways to deride the Jewish state.

One of the first to level that charge was New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. In his 1989 book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, Friedman wrote at length about what he called “the Holocausting of the Israeli psyche,” that is, an excessive interest in the Nazi genocide of six million Jews.

“Israel today is becoming Yad Vashem with an air force,” Friedman asserted. He alleged that Israelis’ memories of the Holocaust were to blame for, among other things, their impatient driving habits, unethical business dealings, meek acceptance of high taxes, and reluctance to make more concessions to the Arabs.

The National Endowment for the Humanities Spends $250K to Fund a 1619 Project for Israel

Last year, Lior Sternfeld and Michelle Campos signed the so-called Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism which argued that calling for the destruction of Israel was not antisemitic.

The signatures of Sternfeld and Campos alongside numerous other anti-Israel academics was unsurprising. Sternfeld had previously signed a petition in support of BDS activists which concluded with the assertion that the signers might refuse to “enter the State of Israel”. He and Campos had also signed another petition accusing the Jewish State of “apartheid”.

More recently, Campos, Sternfeld, and Orit Bashkin had signed on to the Statement on Israel and Palestine in Jewish Studies accusing Israel of engaging in “state violence” against Hamas. In language echoing Soviet propaganda, it denounced Zionism as “ethnonationalist” and “settler colonial” systems of “Jewish supremacy” that led to the “segregation” of “Palestinians”.

Israel, all of it, it asserts, exists on occupied territory, not only from the 1967, but the 1948 War of Independence.

From an academic standpoint, the various professors and graduate students declare that they will support their colleagues who boycott Israel and as scholars to “amplify, and support our Palestinian and other colleagues” and emphasize the “place of Palestine in Jewish Studies”.

With the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The NEH is one of the more toxic components of the federal government. While the Trump administration tried to defund it, the Biden administration is using it to push critical race theory into classrooms. But not to leave anyone out, it’s also funding a 1619 Project for Israel.

Sternfeld, Campos, and Bashkin were showered with a nearly $250,000 grant to “reimagine” Jewish life in the Middle East before Zionism. The NEH grant, one of the two largest in Pennsylvania, funds a “large-scale collaborative project to rewrite the histories, narratives, and memories of and by Jews in the Middle East in the 19th-21st centuries.”

Chanukah video night 6: Sweet Chanukah (plus a Jewish Blitzkrieg Bop)

But how can you do a parody of "Sweet Caroline" without the iconic "Bah Bah Buhhhh"?

Also, Dave Grohl and Greg Kurstin have been releasing a new cover of songs by Jewish artists every night of Chanukah. Most of them do not have overtly Jewish content, but their cover of the Ramones' Blitzkrieg Bop includes video of old Bar Mitzvahs.

And it rocks.

12/03 Links Pt1: Stop saving UNRWA from itself; Abraham Accords momentum isn’t fading; it’s soaring; Group financing Breaking the Silence also funding PFLP

From Ian:

Dr. Martin Sherman: You couldn't make this up!!

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad—Anonymous ancient dictum—misattributed to Euripides.

Israel is a country of many paradoxes and colliding opposites—many of which make it one of the most fascinating and dynamic countries on the face of the globe; a country that has overcome almost impossible odds to drive its way to the forefront of virtually every realm of human endeavor—including medicine, agriculture, cybertechnology, arts, and entertainment—with the jarring exception of the functioning of its body-politic.

"Incentivizing the murder of civilians is barbarism."

This is particularly true regarding the paradox embedded in Israel's perverse, perilous and puerile approach to what has become known as "the Palestinian problem". Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to state that it is a patently self-contradictory policy, in which certain elements thereof manifestly contradict and annul other elements of it.

Thus, in 2018, Israel passed a law—with disconcerting reluctance—mandating the reduction of payments to the Palestinian Authority (PA) by deducting a sum equivalent to the amount the PA pays to imprisoned terrorists and the families of deceased terrorists, killed while perpetrating acts of terror. This legislation reflected a compelling rationale that Israelis should not be complicit in compensating their Judeocidal Arab assailants…or their dependents.

Oddly, rather than spearheading such a measure itself, the Israeli government found itself belatedly echoing the punitive initiative—taken over a year previously—by the US Congress, known as the Taylor Force Act. The bill provides for ending US aid to the PA unless and until it ceases to pay stipends to the incarcerated terrorists and to the families of deceased terrorists, including the families of suicide bombers.

Indeed, one prominent legal expert, Professor Thane Rosenbaum, designated these payments for terror as "lavish incentives to commit violence", which, in effect constitute "a bounty system…enshrined in Palestinian law, provided for in the Palestinian Authorities budget and indirectly supported by foreign aid…"

Stop saving UNRWA from itself

UNRWA claims to advocate for a just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but in practice the agency has overlooked terrorist group activity in some of its camps, allowed its schools to be used as human shields for Hamas military tunnels, allowed members of Hamas and other terrorist groups to hold UNRWA staff positions, falsely presented images that stir up hatred against Israel and continues to teach children to demonize and delegitimize Israel using violent propaganda. In short, UNRWA spends more to do less, while perpetuating a problem it was meant to resolve and undermining the peace process itself. That is why some countries, like Germany and the UK, have cut their funding in the first place.

The UN is often, and deservedly, criticized for singling out the State of Israel. But if the nations of the world want to actually help solve the Middle East conflict, they need to stop singling out the Palestinians as well.

Perhaps the UN should support the resettlement of Palestinian refugees – but they should do so only within a framework that would: a) not falsely blame the situation entirely on Israel, and b) involve even trying to accomplish the goal of resettling actual refugees from the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948, using the internationally recognized definition of refugees that applies in every other instance. Doing so is far from impossible. As an example of how this might realistically look, take the 2000 Clinton Peace Parameters in which Israel agreed to allow 100,000 refugees to return – more than three times the estimated number of actual refugees under the definition, but still a reasonable amount. All other “refugees” were to be resettled in their present places of residence, the future Palestinian state, or in third-party countries, with Israel contributing $30b. to fund their resettlement.

In the meantime, it’s not surprising that it’s becoming more difficult to raise money for a corrupt agency whose culture the Palestinians themselves consider “highly problematic” and full of “entitlement and abuse.” A policy of support without accountability for an organization that has long done nothing but disservice to the very population it was meant to protect helps exactly the same amount of people that UNRWA itself does – no one.

Fleur Hassan-Nahoum: Abraham Accords momentum isn’t fading; it’s soaring

If anything, the accords have given Israel permission to call its Arab neighbors cousins again. What has for decades been discreet is now out in the open.

Everything about how peace was forged this time around—from four landmark agreements being reached in the space of five months, to the business framework through which negotiations were held—was different, and the hope is that this model can one day be extended to Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations that have eluded history’s best statespersons and diplomats. Indeed, the best brokers for lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace may very well be not in Washington D.C., but in Manama, Rabat, Abu Dhabi or Khartoum.

The accords helped create a model of peace that is rarely seen in the Middle East—one based not just on closed-door diplomacy, but on culture, business and deep person-to-person friendships. The accords should not—and do not— purport to replace the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but they demonstrate the viability of alternative methods of peace-building.

Palestinians and Arab Israelis will benefit from these regional normalization agreements, and the city of Jerusalem can serve as a key bridge to the Gulf states since 40 percent of its population is Arab. The hope is that the accords herald a new era of Muslim tourism to Jerusalem, eventually becoming the research-and-development heart of the Middle East.

Peace agreements are inked by leaders, but they are forged by everyday people. Israel and its neighbors are now building a model for peace in the Middle East, one spearheaded by entrepreneurs and environmentalists who envision a better region for their children

The Tikvah Podcast: Judah Ari Gross on Why Israel and Morocco Came to a New Defense Agreement

Last week, the Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz visited Morocco, where for the first time he was accompanied by uniformed Israeli military personnel. Gantz’s visit comes on the heels of visits in the last year by Israeli national-security advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat and Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid, both of whom prepared the way for full diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Building on Israel and Morocco’s burgeoning diplomatic relations, the purpose of Gantz’s recent visit was to negotiate a memorandum of understanding focused on their security cooperation. Judah Ari Gross, the military correspondent for the Times of Israel and this week’s podcast guest, accompanied Gantz on his trip. In conversation with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver, he explains here how this historic agreement happened, what it means, and how it serves each nation’s interests.

Very cool! @TelAviv Municipality lit up in honor of #UAENationalDay pic.twitter.com/nsKOZvQAL4
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) December 3, 2021

Islamic Jihad terrorist dies after a "work accident"

There was a large funeral in Gaza on Thursday for Diaa Al-Dahdouh.

Islamic Jihad issued a flowery statement about how wonderful the terrorist was:

We count our martyr as one of the distinguished Mujahideen who prayed and toured in resistance and giving and had the imprint and impact on the project of resistance and liberation.

We pray to Allah Almighty to bless the Mujahid Al-Dahdouh with the vastness of his mercy and dwell in his vast gardens, accompanied by the prophets, the truthful ones, the martyrs, and the good of those are companions, and to inspire his family, relatives and companions with beautiful patience and solace.

How did this hero die?

He blew himself up a year and a half ago while building a bomb, and finally succumbed to his wounds.

May Gaza see many, many more such martyrs. Ameen.

The "foreign ministry" for the nonexistent "State of Palestine" has celebrated the fake Miss Universe Greece for pretending that she rejected being a contestant for a pageant that she was never invited to.

Rafaela Plastira claimed in October that she was boycotting the Miss Universe contest in Eilat. As Israellycool has been reporting, the official Miss Universe organization in Greece denied that she was ever Miss Universe Greece.

Rafaela Plastira is Star Hellas 2019 and is her only title, she never had the official anointing to represent our country in MISS UNIVERSE 2021, as MISS UNIVERSE GREECE.
The official MISS UNIVERSE GREECE for 2021 is Sofia Arapogiannis, announced by Miss Universe 2021 and is the crowned of the GS HELLAS NATIONAL CULTURES entitled MISS GS HELLAS 2021.
I would like to inform all Greeks, that now, the national organization GS HELLAS, is the one who preserves the legal rights and contracts for Greece's representative, but also its participation in Miss Universe 2021. Everything else is false, unsolicited and cunningly alleged misinformation.

Plastira, who was Miss World Greece in 2019, has been falsely claiming to be Miss Universe Greece 2021 since June. It appears that she felt that if she claimed the title, the Miss Universe Greece organization would go along with it, rather than publicly denounce her as a fraud.

Big mistake.

Now, a week after the news of Plastira's fraud, the equally fraudulent "foreign ministry of the State of Palestine" has publicly thanked her for pretending to boycott Israel, calling the liar a "cosmic icon" for Palestinians.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants expressed its great thanks and appreciation to Miss Greece Rafaela Plastira and her high-level humanitarian principled stance, which she took in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their suffering, as well as a victory for international law and in favor of peace based on resolutions of international legitimacy.

The Foreign Ministry said, "Plastira triumphed for the values of justice and humanity and for the rights of the Palestinian people, and abandoned her great dream and refused to participate in the Miss Universe contest in the occupying country, as an expression of her rejection of injustice, occupation and all forms of persecution and discrimination, on the basis of her conviction of the importance of human solidarity as a value that transcends borders. She is not only Miss Greece, but Miss Humanity, and thus she represented all the free people in the world and became for our people a cosmic icon."

Indeed, a person who falsely tried to take a pageant title from its legitimate owner is a perfect representative for a Palestinian state that falsely tries to take Jewish historic lands away from the Jewish people.

Meanwhile, the real Miss Universe Greece is enjoying her visit to Israel.

Zahra Billoo, executive-director of the San Francisco Bay Area branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SFBA), spoke in a panel session at the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) 14th Annual Convention for Palestine in Chicago over the past weekend.

She said that Muslims cannot trust mainstream Jews and Jewish organizations, like Hillel or synagogues - the Jews will sell them out every time. Muslims cannot be friends of Jews who want to make peace with Palestinians.

Billoo declares that practically every Jewish organization in America is an enemy of Muslims. Not only that, but any organization that supports a two state solution is an enemy of Muslims. She doesn't call them out explicitly, but that includes J-Street, that includes Peace Now, that includes Breaking the Silence. And she explicitly says that Hillels, the ADL, the Jewish Federations and even essentially all synagogues in America are the enemies of Muslims.

This is incitement for Muslims to hate Jews being spread publicly in Chicago.

You can see this pure antisemitism for yourself. (Taken from one of the sessions in the AMP YouTube page.)

We need to pay attention to the Anti-Defamation League. We need to pay attention to the Jewish Federation. We need to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues. We need to pay attention to the Hillel chapters on our campuses, because just because they are your friends today, doesn't mean that they have your back when it comes to human rights.

So oppose the vehement fascist, but oppose the polite Zionist too. They are not your friends. They will not be there for you when you need them. They will take your friendship and throw your Palestinian brothers and sisters under the bus. Oh! You get along because you are all in Girl Scouts together? Talk to them about what is happening in Palestine, and see how that conversation goes.

And so, when we think about Islamophobia and Zionism, let's be clear about the connections. There is no difference between domestic policy and foreign policy when it comes to our human rights. There is no difference between domestic policy and foreign policy when it comes to those who seek to target us.

And so when we do our work here in the US us we have to work together, because they're working with or without us.

Now how do you fight back? Know your friends who actually has your back. Know that you can call American Muslims for Palestine. And by the way, you should be a monthly donor to American Muslims for Palestine. Build it into your budget and forget about it. Make it your monthly contribution, because you are contributing to the apartheid monthly. It is a part of your budget. You are paying your taxes, so you should be giving money to AMP monthly.

Know your friends. Know that you can call CAIR if you face a boycott or legislation or something where you are being targeted for your views. Know that you can call CAIR where you should also by the way be a monthly donor because we will support you. We will file the lawsuit on your behalf and we will not charge you.

Know your JVP leadership, your SJP leadership, your IfNotNow leadership, the list goes on. Know who is on your side. Build community with them, because the next thing i'm going to tell you is to know your enemies.

And I am not going to sugarcoat that, they are your enemies. There are organizations and infrastructures out there who are working to harm you. Make no mistake of it. They would sell you down the line if they could, and they very often do behind your back. I mean the Zionist organizations, I mean the foreign policy organizations who say they are not Zionists but want a two-state solution. I am not a Palestinian myself, but it is my understanding that that is laughable. So know your enemies.

Because it's the last time I'll talk to you this Saturday let me just tell you: Also know the Muslim organizations that are out to harm you. Know the Muslim organizations that are not holding to their principles and hold them accountable, because they're doing it in your name. In some ways they are worse than the Zionists because at least the Zionists will tell you what they're out for but when Muslim organizations sell you out, they're doing it in your name.
Be principled.

Those are AMP and CAIR "principles": treat all mainstream Jews as your enemy, treat the governments of the United States and Europe who want a two state solution as your enemies, treat the UAE and Egypt and Saudi Arabia who support peace plans that would allow Israel to exist as your enemy.

We see here that CAIR and AMP are extremist organization. There is no other way to describe them, unless their leaders condemn these words of hate that were greeted with audience applause and approval by the moderator.

This is bigotry. This is hate. This is incitement. This is antisemitism. And, in America today, this is considered acceptable discourse.

(h/t MEMRI)

12/02 Links Pt2: The targeting of Jewish teenagers on Oxford Street is a wake-up call; Academia and the Dehumanization of Jews

From Ian:

The targeting of Jewish teenagers on Oxford Street is a wake-up call

When a friend shared a video of drama on Oxford Street on Monday night, I knew it would go viral. The clip showed a gang of men harassing a group of Jews on a bus, spitting, cursing, making obscene gestures, and even appearing to perform a Nazi salute.

This was a group of Jewish teenagers being taken by their rabbi to see the Chanukah lights at Trafalgar Square. They had stopped on Oxford Street and, in their exuberance, left the vehicle to do a Jewish dance on the pavement. That was when it happened.

Let’s start with the good news. I knew this story would attract attention because such naked demonstrations of hate are, thankfully, widely pilloried in modern Britain. We saw it when the Israeli ambassador was hounded at the LSE; we saw it when a lone aggressor walked around Stamford Hill hitting random Jews; we saw it when convoys of men abused London Jews during the Gaza conflict. On each occasion, the vast majority was appalled.

But it’s bad news from here on in. The reality that Jewish people live with every day will come as a surprise to many. Every synagogue in the country has long been patrolled by security officers, and the prominent ones are watched by police.

Every Jewish school is equipped with advanced security systems and guards, and there are at least two charities specifically dedicated to keeping the community safe.

Sadly, with good reason. The everyday threat that British Jews encounter spans the spectrum from antisemitic graffiti at one end to full-on terror attacks at the other.

Moments after this video, these teens were racially abused with Nazi salutes and spat on simply for being Jewish.

These kids are celebrating Hanukkah and causing no harm to anyone.

The very idea that Jews in 2021 were treated with Nazi-level abuse in London is horrifying. pic.twitter.com/2FYsPKuwGQ
— GnasherJew®????? (@GnasherJew) December 2, 2021

uncomfortable feeling to Have to hide the fact that you are Jewish. I’m a proud Jew. This incident made me decide to take self defence classes to improve my ability to defend myself”.
Luckily, no one was hurt. Raphael says police came by and said they can’t do anything. >
— Elad Simchayoff (@Elad_Si) December 1, 2021

Thirty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia instils grave concern

Several years ago, Putin gave a passionate address to celebrate the founding of the intelligence services in the USSR. He read out a rollcall of legendary Soviet agents. The first name on the list was Yakov Isakovich Serebryansky, an agent who infiltrated the early Zionist immigration to Palestine and lived there for several years. In 1926, he moved to Paris where he led a secret group of Communist sympathisers which carried out assassinations and kidnappings.

“Uncle Yasha’s group” possessed its own laboratory and utilised chemical weapons in its struggle against the anti-Soviet opposition in Europe. Many Jews then believed passionately in the Soviet future and thereby justified throwing morality to the wind.

As with the Soviet predilection for poisons, Putin has followed his predecessors in the USSR for spreading disinformation — “fake news” — to create division in democracies. In 1959, General Ivan Agayants, who headed the KGB’s disinformation department, initiated an antisemitic graffiti campaign in West Germany to discredit Konrad Adenauer’s rule and implicitly compare it to the blemish-free Communist East Germany.

Under KGB supervision, swastikas were painted on headstones in Jewish cemeteries, antisemitic slogans written on synagogue walls and Jewish-owned shops, hate mail sent to rabbis and threatening telephone calls made to Jewish leaders. The unspoken suggestion was that not too much had changed in West Germany since 1945.

Today there have been repeated Russian attempts to stir the fires of populism and racism in an outreach to the European far Right — to figures in the British National Party, the Hungarian Jobbik and the French Front National.

And then there is the manufactured crisis of hapless refugees sandwiched between Belarus and Poland. For Jews, it brings to mind the time in 1938 when stateless Polish Jews, expelled from Nazi Germany, were located in the limbo of Zbąszyń on the Polish-German border. Close to 10,000 Jews were marooned in deteriorating, insanitary conditions while both Poles and Germans refused to budge.

By My Calculations, We Only Need To Sacrifice Three Hundred More Children And Palestine Will Be Free (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

By My Calculations, We Only Need To Sacrifice Three Hundred More Children And Palestine Will Be Free

by Itbah al-Yahud, PhD candidate, Al-Quds University

nerd Abu-Dis, December 3 - Sir, I've come close to finishing these equations, and I've some exciting news: it looks like we only need to throw a few hundred more children into battle against the Zionist enemy, and Palestine will be restored to its legendary glory when Jews were an underclass!

Just look at this, sir. I've double- and triple-checked my calculations, and it's clear as day: somewhere between three and four hundred Palestinian children have to die when we put them out in front during any of our confrontations with Israeli security forces, and then, as you can see from this graph, the parabolic function kicks in and all the Jews get pushed into the sea in a matter of months.

Let me elaborate. It doesn't have to be literally out in front during a face-to-face confrontation, though of course those count toward the total. This area, where you can see the coefficient effects emerge, demonstrates that placing children in harm's way, in a general sense, in the context of conflict with the Occupation, will produce congruent progress toward freedom. That obviously includes children who die because Israel blew up a Hamas position or stockpile, but it also includes children who die when our own weapons fall short, misfire, or malfunction.

You don't have to be a tactical expert to realize that makes success so much more attainable and likely. With a modicum of planning, we can hit, even surpass, that threshold in the next Gaza conflict! We really have to get this paper to the leadership in Gaza - better yet, in Doha and Ankara, perhaps our friends in Tehran - so they can make optimum use of it.

There is one thing I still need to figure out, though, and I'd love some guidance, sir. In defining "children," I remain unsure which data set to use: the legal definition of "child" prevalent throughout the world, which by and large pertains to those under the age of eighteen? Or our propaganda-definition of children, which includes basically everybody? Because my initial assumptions and variables use only the restrictive definition. The numbers might not work the same way if you have to plug in everyone that NGOs and Ministry of Health claim was a child killed by Israeli fire. I need at least a few more weeks if those are the parameters to use, and I can't guarantee coherent results.

Either way, though, we an look forward to glorious martyrdom for our kids. I postulate that there's nothing more precious!

12/02 Links Pt1: 129 nations ignore Jewish ties to Temple Mount, call it solely Muslim; Crucial PA admission: UNRWA is a political, not a humanitarian organization

From Ian:

129 nations ignore Jewish ties to Temple Mount, call it solely Muslim

The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution 129-11 on Wednesday, that disavowed Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and called it solely by its Muslim name of al-Haram al-Sharif.

The text, referred to as the “Jerusalem resolution,” is part of a push by the Palestinian Authority and the Arab states across the UN system to rebrand Judaism’s most holy site as an exclusively Islamic one.

The United States, which opposed the text, said that the omission of inclusive terminology for the site sacred to three faiths was of “real and serious concern.”

Located in the heart of Jerusalem's Old City, it is where the ancient Jewish Temple, stood 2,000 years ago, and it is the home of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound which is Islam's third holiest site.

“It is morally, historically and politically wrong for members of this body to support language that denies” both the Jewish and Christian connections to the Temple Mount and al-Haram al-Sharif, the US envoy told the UNGA.

The US has not been the only country to voice concern over the lack of inclusive language. In an attempt to ensure support for the resolution, its authors had made some small amendments since the UNGA last approved the resolution in 2018 by 148-11. That text referenced al-Haram al-Sharif twice, one in the action portion of the resolution and once in the introduction.

This time, the phrase al-Haram al-Sharif was mentioned only once in the introduction. Despite this shift, support for the resolution dropped, with the number of countries that abstained growing from 14 to 31.

Three years ago, all the European countries supported the text, this year a number of them changed their votes.

Hungary and the Czech Republic opposed the resolution, while Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia abstained.

A British envoy said “the resolution adopted today refers to the holy sites in Jerusalem in purely Islamic terms without recognizing the Jewish terminology of Temple Mount.

This morning, I addressed the @UN General Assembly before it voted on 3 biased & anti-Israel resolutions, including one which tries to erase Jewish history in our eternal capital, Jerusalem 1/9 pic.twitter.com/uenDK9pU3X
— Ambassador Gilad Erdan ???? ???? (@giladerdan1) December 1, 2021

On the 4th night of Chanukah, as we celebrate the Maccabees' 167 BCE rededication of the Jewish Temple & victorious resistance over Greek Seleucid tyrant Antiochus who outlawed Judaism in ancient Israel, the U.N. wants to pretend this Temple never existed. https://t.co/cloKALFoHm https://t.co/lR2jZcgadW
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 1, 2021

This Anti-Israel "Special Committee" Must Be Shut Down

Former Reps. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), Dan Burton (R-Ind.) and Eliot Engel (D-NY)

At every session of the UN General Assembly, more than a dozen resolutions are passed to demonize Israel - more than against all other countries combined. One is the reauthorization of the mandate of and funding for the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Human Rights Practices (SCIIHRP). Established in 1968, its sole purpose is to excoriate Israel before the court of world public opinion. Despite internationally recognized human rights violations occurring in numerous states, no other country has a "special committee" devoted to churning out harsh and inflammatory reports criticizing it.

The existence of such a body discredits the UN and is offensive to U.S. taxpayers, who pay close to 25% of the entire UN budget. The Abraham Accords have created dynamic partnerships between Israel and visionary, forward-looking Arab countries. Isolation of Israel and the fetishization of Palestinian victimhood is not conducive to peace, which can only come about through direct negotiations between the parties.

UN Watch: LIVE: The Future of UN Watch

On Wednesday, December 1, at 12 pm EST, UN Watch’s Fundraising Campaign concludes. Hillel Neuer will announce the total amount raised thanks to your help, and discuss the battles ahead for UN Watch.

About the Campaign:
UN Watch needs to raise $500,000 by December 1st to ensure the continuation of its vital work. We are turning to our social media community to help us reach our goal.

To take part in the campaign, all you have to do is make a $5 donation and inspire 5 friends to do the same so that we can reach our $500,000 target by the end of November. It might not sound like much, but if every one of our social media followers gives $5 and asks 5 friends to do the same, we will surely hit our goal.

The tenth anniversary of "pinkwashing" and what it teaches about Leftist antisemitic conspiracy theories

It was ten years ago when Sarah Schulman popularized the term "pinkwashing" in an op-ed for the New York Times. (I found one earlier mention, by Jasbir Puar in The Guardian in 2010.)

At the time, I noted how steeped in hate is the absurd theory that Israeli pride in its support for gay rights is merely a front to whitewash its alleged crimes.

There is another angle, though, that points to a commonality between antisemitism from the Left and the Right: they are both often rooted in conspiracy theories.

After all, the idea that the Israeli government, Zionist organizations, gay Zionist Americans and liberal Zionist Jews all work together to push a narrative of Israeli tolerance of gays is nothing but a huge conspiracy theory.

Not all antisemitism is based on conspiracy theory, but a great deal of it is. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the blood libel, the idea that Jews are behind the Plague as well as Covid, Holocaust denial, Jews controlling Hollywood - all of these are familiar antisemitic conspiracy theories of the Right.

But the "Israel Lobby," charges of pinkwashing, Zionist control of the media, the ADL is behind US police brutality, Zionists are "silencing" pro-Palestinian voices, Israel engages in "Jewish supremacism" - these are all conspiracy theories of the Left that are no less bigoted.

Jovan Byford is an expert on conspiracy theories and wrote a major book on the topic, "Conspiracy Theories: A Critical Introduction" (2011.) He dedicates a chapter to antisemitic conspiracy theories and segues from analyzing conspiracy theory antisemitism on the Right to that of the Left:, arguing that the conspiratorial aspect is exactly how one can distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism:

Recent years have witnessed an increased awareness of a seemingly new brand of conspiratorial antisemitism propagated mainly by sections of the left. The phenomenon, which has become known as ‘new antisemitism’, or anti-Zionism, is defined by the fact that the central object of disparagement and prejudice are not Jews as such, but Israel as the Jewish state (Chesler, 2003, Iganski and Kosmin, 2003, Foxman, 2004, Taguieff, 2004). Rather than viewing Israel as a country whose policies and actions, like that of any other, can (and indeed should be) criticised on merit, sections of the political left have come to view it as the source of uniquely harmful influence in the world. Israel’s actions, and even its very existence, are believed to be an expression of the uniquely iniquitous nationalist ideology (Zionism), which is considered to be comparable to Nazism: it is racist, imperialist, expansionist and tyrannical. Transgressions of the Israeli state – from human rights violations to military actions that are deemed, by critics, to be disproportionate – are seen as inherently more sinister than those committed by any other state in history, with the exception of Nazi Germany. Furthermore, Israel’s policies are seen as sufficiently egregious to undermine its basic legitimacy: exponents of ‘new antisemitism’ often go as far as to call for the dismantlement of Israel. This makes Israel the only member of the United Nations whose very existence is routinely brought into question and Jews the only people whose right to self-determination, it is argued, should be retrospectively revoked. Crucially, as David Cesarani (2004: 72) notes, the definitive crossing of the boundary between criticism of Israel and antisemitism occurs at the point where the former becomes articulated in language typically associated with antisemitism, that is, when it ‘intentionally or unintentionally uses or echoes long-established anti-Jewish discourse, characterising Jews inside Israel or in the Jewish diaspora as singularly wealthy, powerful, conspiratorial, treacherous and malign.’ In other words, when it is embellished with the motifs of a Jewish conspiracy.

The chapter section is an excellent summary of the new antisemitism. Here Byford shows how Leftist antisemites will even note the similarity between their theories and traditional antisemitism - as a way to defend themselves from being considered antisemites!

Accounts of ‘the Lobby’ are so blatantly conspiratorial that their exponents on occasions candidly admit that what they are alleging is essentially a Jewish plot, one that resembles the classic antisemitic conspiracy theory. Writing in the magazine Tikkun, Paul Buhle (2003) writes, for example, that when one looks at the power of the pro-Israel lobby ‘it is almost as if the anti-Semitic Protocols of Zion, successfully fought for a century, have suddenly returned with an industrial sized grain of truth’. The British historian Tony Judt has also admitted that claims about the sinister power of the ‘Israel lobby’ sound ‘an awful lot like, you know, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the conspiratorial theory of the Zionist Occupational Government and so on’ but that, while ‘unfortunate’, this cannot be helped as this is ‘just how it is’ (cited in Hirsh, 2007: 86). Such comparisons are rhetorically significant, because writers use the notoriety of the Protocols to accentuate the sinister influence of ‘the Lobby’, while at the same time forestalling any accusations of antisemitism by implying that, despite the resemblances, their claims are distinguishable from those of the right. As Tony Judt put it, ‘you can’t help it if idiots [on the right], once every 24 hours, with their stopped political clock are on the same time as you’ (ibid.). Thus, a distinction is drawn between disreputable (and false) conspiracy theories of the right and the accounts of real conspiracies uncovered by the left.

Leftist antisemites, sensitive to charges of racism, add a new layer to their conspiracy theory to forestall the idea that they are antisemitic:

The ‘slippage from criticism of American foreign policy to wild eyed conspiracy theory’ (Fine, 2006) apparent in the discussions of ‘the Lobby’ should not occur so easily, however. Left-wing thought is marked by long tradition of opposition to racism and a standing commitment to equality and social justice, which means that its contemporary exponents should be resistant to ideas traditionally peddled by their ideological opponents. And yet, as we have seen, among critics of ‘the Lobby’, this sensitivity is often lacking. This is at least in part because their ideological position is sustained by another key feature of the conspiracy theory, namely its essential irrefutability. As noted in Chapter 2, conspiratorial explanatory logic comprises a number of interpretative devices that makes the conspiracy theory immune to conventional cannons of proof and testing (e.g. by transforming disconfirming evidence into proof of the conspiracy). These devices protect the conspiracy theorist not just from challenges related to evidence or proof, but also from those made on moral grounds. Moral criticism, just like disconfirming evidence, can be attributed to the conspiracy and thus rendered invalid. This is an essential feature of the writing on ‘the Lobby’. The very reason why the idea of a Jewish plot should be resisted – namely antisemitism – is perceived as a distraction, a label deliberately manufactured, manipulated and used by ‘the Lobby’ for silencing opponents, de-legitimising criticism of Israel and controlling public opinion. Thus, antisemitism ceases to be a danger to be avoided by all those discussing the sensitive issue of Jewish influence in politics, and is perceived, instead, exclusively as a weapon of Zionist self-legitimisation. This stance towards antisemitism goes hand in hand with the so-called Holocaust industry argument, popularised by Norman Finkelstein (2000). According to Finkelstein and his followers, the Holocaust has been exploited and instrumentalised by powerful Jews to justify Israel’s aggression against the Palestinians and build a taboo around antisemitism (see Laqueur, 2006, Cesarani, 2004). The effect of this stance on antisemitism and the Holocaust, but also its underlying psychological function, is to undermine any sympathy for Jews that would normally foster resistance to antisemitic motifs. In other words, by persuading their audience, and, importantly, also themselves, that the moral standpoint from which their arguments can be criticised is consciously imposed by ‘the Lobby’ – and therefore an essential part of its sinister method – writers can pre-empt, destabilise and render unfounded any criticism of their ideological position. This places ‘the Lobby’ theory of America’s foreign policy beyond moral reproach, removes the taboo surrounding antisemitism, reinforces the believers’ conviction in the absolute truth of their views and inoculates them from any awareness of where the boundaries lie between acceptable and unacceptable opinion. The belief that everything, including the definition of what is acceptable, is manipulated by the sinister lobby not only shields the anti-Zionist worldview from the effects of disconfirming evidence, but also makes it vulnerable to the malign influence of motifs and stereotypes rooted in the conspiracy tradition.

This is brilliant analysis, describing how the Left uses the additional conspiracy theory that Jews are defining antisemitism to discredit critics as a way to make modern antisemitism palatable - and immune to criticism itself!

The entire campaign against the IHRA definition of antisemitism is based on the idea that the Zionist establishment is conspiring to define antisemitism to allow Israel to act in sinister ways.

When "criticism of Israel" crosses the line into the idea that Israelis - the most argumentative, contentious people around - unite to embrace evil, that is no longer criticism of Israel. It is Jew-hatred, and it is something that Jews recognize quite well.

From the New York Times:

The official residences of U.S. ambassadors overseas are almost always prime pieces of real estate: stately mansions in desirable neighborhoods where American diplomats entertain dignitaries, hold high-level meetings and occasionally host presidents.

In Israel, for more than half a century, the top U.S. envoy lived just outside Tel Aviv in a luxurious five-bedroom estate with sweeping views of the Mediterranean Sea. Israel gave the land to the United States in the 1950s.

Yet President Donald J. Trump sold the property when he moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in 2018. And that has left the newest American ambassador to Israel, Thomas R. Nides, to resort to the rental market for a place to live.

Mr. Nides, who arrived in Israel on Monday, has said he will live in Jerusalem to be near the embassy. More than half of the embassy’s staff members, however, still live in Tel Aviv, hampered by Jerusalem’s skyrocketing housing prices and security precautions required for American officials living there. That arrangement will require Mr. Nides to make the hourlong drive several times each week to meet with his own diplomats.

The bias in this article is from omission.

1. For decades, US Embassy staffers had to commute from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to meet with Israeli government officials. The entire reason embassies are located in national capitals is for convenience. But when it comes to Israel, suddenly it is considered inconvenient to mirror what happens in every other country.

2. Jerusalem real estate is indeed expensive. But Tel Aviv was just declared the most expensive city in the world! Every staffer is going to rent, not buy, in Israel, so the argument that Jerusalem's expensive real estate is an impediment for them to move makes no sense.

3. Why is the ambassador commuting to meet his own staffers instead of them commuting to him? Aren't they meeting in the embassy in Jerusalem?

4. An hour-long commute is not unusual in US metropolitan areas. Over 30% of workers in New York and Washington have commute times of over 45 minutes. There are hundreds of people who regularly make the trip between New York and Washington, 3 hours by train and 4 hours by car. Traffic is very bad in Israel but not worse than in many US cities.

5. It's 2021. Isn't there telecommuting to cut down the frequency of travel?

I'm not saying that the fact that the US Ambassador now has to scramble to live in Jerusalem and to find appropriate places to host VIPs is not newsworthy. But when you look at what the article seemingly goes out of its way to ignore, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the entire reason for the article is to say that the US Embassy move to Jerusalem was a mistake, and to only mention facts that support that conclusion.

There are dozens of articles in Arab media over the past two days that have the identical headline (and mostly identical text): "Settlers perform provocative dances in the Old City" of Jerusalem.

Jewish settlers continued, this evening, Wednesday, their provocative dances on Bab Al-Wad Road in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem.
And Jerusalem sources reported that settlers stormed the Old City in groups, and performed provocative dances on Bab al-Wad Road for the fourth consecutive day.

Here are the "provocative" dances:

They are singing a Chanukah soong.

It is worth reiterating what these headlines mean.

Palestinian media thinks that Jewish celebrations are not just celebrations, but are deliberately done to provoke Palestinian Arab feelings. This is a combination of antisemitism (Jews only use their holidays to hurt people) and egocentrism (Jews spend all their time thinking about Palestinians.)

But also they say that all these Jews are "settlers," meaning that they do not belong in Jerusalem or in the Middle East to begin with.

This Jew-hatred is so pervasive that people don't even bother to call it out. But the pervasiveness is the point: Palestinians are brought up with antisemitism, from their media, their schools, their families.

Saying that Jewish celebrations are really excused to hurt others is antisemitism. And it is the headline in dozens of Palestinian news sites, today.

Yes, Israel Can Attack Iran (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal

Did you ever notice how from time to time a particular theme appears simultaneously in various media? One that I’ve seen a lot of lately is “Israel doesn’t have the ability to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, so we need to find a way to live with it.” Here is yet another example, from security analyst Yossi Melman, writing in Ha’aretz:

As the nuclear talks with Iran resume in Vienna, Israel must try to reach an agreement with Washington, by which the U.S. will extend it a nuclear umbrella and openly acknowledge it. …

The deployment of a nuclear umbrella is the ultimate guarantee of deterrence in the face of Iran’s nuclear program and, if Tehran succeeds in assembling a nuclear weapon, the possibility that Iran will threaten Israel in order to extract concessions from it. …

You don’t have to be a general or a military strategist to understand [why Israel can’t destroy Iran’s nuclear program]. It’s enough to look at the map, at the forces operating in the area and to read about the air force power from available sources. …

I’ve left out Melman’s detailed arguments about why it would be difficult. He discusses countries the IAF can and can’t fly over, the need for refueling, the fact that we would almost certainly lose some pilots, and so on. But all he can do is produce a list of constraints. Such a list only shows that he, Melman, doesn’t know how to attack Iran.

Let’s look at the consequences if Iran develops a nuclear capability (in this context it doesn’t matter if they have a bomb or just the ability to assemble one quickly). The psychological effects for Israelis of living under that kind of threat would be crushing. Because of the great imbalance in size and population between the countries, the threat of Israeli retaliation might not be sufficient to deter Iran from a first strike, especially if it were combined with a massive rocket attack from Hezbollah. And remember that the Iranian leadership acts in large part from religious motives, which may lead to irrational behavior.

Other countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia or Egypt might decide that they needed bombs too, which they could purchase from several suppliers with no need for an extended development program. Israel’s Begin Doctrine would be shredded. The possibility of an accidental nuclear exchange would become exponentially greater, as would the possibility that such weapons would fall into the hands of terrorists. Outside investment in Israel would dry up, the economy would struggle, and some Israelis might even flee the country.

The issue is much simpler than Melman presents it. Israel does not have a choice but to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, because she cannot live with it. The suggestion that Israel could simply outsource her deterrence to the US, even if the US were led by someone more dependable than the man who called the rout of American forces from Afghanistan “an extraordinary success,” is more than stupid – it is suicidal.

The US, unfortunately, is a nation in decline, socially, economically, politically, and militarily. I don’t think any of her adversaries – China, Russia, and Iran – are strong enough to frontally challenge her at this point, but I expect to see them chipping away at her allies, like Taiwan and Ukraine. Israel would be very foolish to put all her eggs in America’s basket today.

Melman himself admits the “weakness of the Biden Administration and its lack of desire to confront Iran” in connection with the negotiations for a nuclear deal. But a few sentences later, he suggests that a “nuclear umbrella” placed over Israel by the same administration would protect her. And this he calls “a bold and creative move!”

It seems to me that despite what Melman and others have said, Israel does have options to attack Iran. One approach is to paralyze the regime as a whole: cut off the head by killing the leadership, and cut the spinal cord by wrecking her communications and power infrastructure (perhaps with EMP weapons). Not everything must be done by manned aircraft: drones, submarine-launched missiles, Jericho ICBMs, and even special forces on the ground could take part. In this way, Iran can be taken out of the game without the need to destroy all her nuclear facilities at once. This also entails neutralizing Hezbollah at the same time, which might be the most difficult part.

There are other approaches, but rather than the surgical removal of the nuclear program, I prefer an attack targeting the regime because it will also lead to solutions to other problems, like Hezbollah. Possibly if the regime is hurt badly enough, the domestic Iranian opposition will be free to act, which could bring about the best outcome of all.

It’s not known to me who is encouraging the voices of defeatism coming from those like Ehud Barak and Yossi Melman, but in both cases the suggested solution is that Israel beg for the protection of the US, which makes me suspicious of those circles in America – for example, former president Barack Obama and his associates – who would like to see a further erosion of Israel’s independence and freedom of action.

Israel has a history of solving difficult problems in innovative ways. This is precisely such a case. I’m confident that she will prevail – and sooner than some think.