Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, December 12, 2021

12/12 Links: Is the Biden Administration at War with Israel?; Bennett takes off to UAE for first Israeli PM visit; Three dead at funeral of Hamas member killed in Lebanon explosion

From Ian:

"Is the Biden Administration at War with Israel?"

"The US does not want to open a consulate merely to have a place for diplomatic connections with the PA [Palestinian Authority]. If that is all they wanted, they could easily do this by opening a mission in Abu Dis or Ramallah -- where most other countries conduct their relations with the PA... the purpose of opening the consulate is to recognize Palestinian claims to Jerusalem." — Eugene Kontorovitch, professor, George Mason University, Antonin Scalia School of Law, Israel Hayom, December 5, 2021.

The 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations states that "a consular post may be established in the territory of the receiving State only with that State's consent". In other words, reopening the consulate may be done only with the consent of the Israeli government.

All this cannot be dissociated from the general hostile attitude of the Biden administration towards Israel from the moment it came to power.

Earlier in March, an internal memo from the US State Department was leaked to The National, a daily newspaper in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The National reported that "The Biden administration memo recommends voicing US principles on achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace under a two-state solution framework 'based on the 1967 lines'".

The author of the memo is Hady Amr, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs and Press and Public Diplomacy in the Biden administration, and also in charge of US negotiations with Israel and Palestinian organizations. It is hard to imagine that Amr was chosen as an "honest broker". Amr has a long history of anti-Israeli activities.

Amr also is the lead author of a report published by the Brookings Institution in December 2018 in which some proposals are made that could be regarded as disturbing. The report says that the United States must "reconnect" with Hamas, a fundamentalist terrorist group; seek "to create a Palestinian unity government integrating Hamas", and "compel Israel to make major concessions", even if it may "endanger Israel". The report never defines Hamas as a terrorist group, and never says that Hamas's goal is to destroy Israel. The report adds, "should Israel prove uncooperative with American efforts, the United States could signal it will move ahead anyway."

The behavior of the Biden administration towards Israel is all the more worrying in that at the same time, it places itself in a weak position regarding negotiations with Iran and seems ready to make a deal with the mullahs' regime at any price, in a resolution that has already been called "less for less", or, worse, "less for more".

Defense Min. Benny Gantz presents Iran attack timeline to US officials

Defense Minister Benny Gantz updated American officials that he has set a deadline for when the IDF will need to complete preparations for an attack against Iran.

The Americans did not voice opposition to the Israeli preparations when presented with the date by Gantz on Thursday, a senior diplomatic source said the following day.

“There was no veto,” the source said.

The IDF has intensified planning for an attack against its arch enemy. Last week, American sources revealed that Austin and Gantz were expected to discuss joint military preparations, and a report on Kan said that the IDF was planning a massive mock strike aerial drill for this summer.

Gantz met with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday. The conversations focused mainly on Iran and its continued pursuit of nuclear capability, but some of the US officials also brought up Israeli settlement activity and their concern that building in the West Bank will block a future two-state solution.

Jerusalem consulted with Washington on two previous strikes on Iran: one in June against a facility producing centrifuges in Karaj, and another on a missile production site outside Tehran, The New York Times reported.

Melanie Phillips: Speaking to the wider world

I appeared last week on Inside the News on Sky News Australia, where Rowan Dean and I discussed my argument that deep green environmental ideology was essentially pagan and anti-human. After that, we turned to the no-less enormous question of why the west persistently and catastrophically fails to understand the rest of the world — a topic which had to be dealt with in under two minutes! You can watch Sky’s video clip of the second item here, although you’ll have to battle through some advertising to get to it. Alternatively, you can listen to it by clicking the audio link above.

I was also the guest in an hour-long webinar hosted by Peter Kurti, research scholar at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, on the west’s crisis of reason and its onslaught upon its own culture. I had actually brought together the various strands of this crisis in my 2010 book The World Turned Upside Down: the Global Battle over God, Truth and Power — which Peter was kind enough to describe as “prescient” — and we talked about some of the most significant markers along my journey to the view that the west is in big trouble. We also discussed the current epidemic of antisemitism, whether the precipitous decline of reason in the west was now irreversible and, if not, what we could do to turn the situation round.

Texas man's threats to kill Chabad rabbis are still up on YouTube

From the Jerusalem Post:

A man in Amarillo, Texas, is facing up to five years in federal prison, accused of directing death threats at three rabbis, according to a statement published on Friday by the office of the US Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, Chad E. Meacham.

37-year-old Christopher Stephen Brown is charged with interstate threatening communications after he allegedly repeatedly contacted Chabad, calling for the death of all Jews, threatening to murder members of the Beit Din (Jewish court) and sending a link to his YouTube channel, on which he said Chabad's chairman, vice chairman and the son of another member of the organization must die.

He later called again, threatening to "tear out" rabbis' eyes and tongues and kill as many as he could, then again the following day saying he would blow their heads off, according to the statement.

When police went to Brown's residence to apprehend him, he resisted arrest, and his girlfriend, 28-year-old Rebekah Jones engaged physically with the law enforcement officers, aiming a gun at an FBI agent who then successfully disarmed her.

Brown's YouTube channel is still up, calling himself “The Maleficent Mystifying Oracle Dr. Obadiah.”

As of this writing, one can still watch his crazed screeds accusing Chabad of raping hundreds of thousands of children and of the Church wanting to assassinate him. His explicit death threats are also still there. He is enamored with The Joker villain.

Although he speaks as if he is religious, he also says he is defending LGBTQ people from Chabad.

One of his comments to his own video says, "I will - with my Lord's might - wipe humans off the earth as a slave wipes a mirror. I will create a new lifeform. So it is done."

Two of his videos have over 20,000 views!

In the end, is Brown any different than Zahra Billoo, another religious person who considers organized Jewry to be the enemy of all Muslims and all decent people? They are both crazed antisemites who threaten Jews. But one of them is a respected leader in a Muslim organization and her threats are more subtle, so she gets defended.

Hamas claims Lebanon weapons depot explosion was only "oxygen and disinfectants for COVID patients"

On Friday night, a large explosion in Tyre killed at least one person and injured a dozen others.

You can hear secondary explosions in this video.

While Lebanese and Arab media quoted Hamas members who admitted that the explosion was in a Hamas weapons depot - which may have been beneath a mosque that was destroyed - Hamas had a different explanation.

After examining the circumstances surrounding the accident and listening to eyewitnesses, it is revealed that the explosion was caused by a short circuit in a warehouse that includes oxygen cylinders for coronavirus patients and an amount of cleaning products, disinfectants, and preliminary material allocated to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

But then one of the people injured in the explosion, Hamza Ibrahim Shaheen, died of his injuries.

He was a member of the Al Qassam Brigades of Hamas. Their description of his heroic death contradicts the story about the short circuit, as they said that he was "martyred while on a jihad mission."

Hamas called for a major funeral in Lebanon today for this "mujahid."

A Lebanese official investigating the blast said that it was definitely ammunition that exploded, not oxygen tanks.

Lebanese are making fun of Hamas' explanation for the explosion, especially now that it was forced to contradict itself as to the heroic nature of the "martyr."

CAIR's defense of Zahra Billoo's antisemitism: "Some of our best friends are Jews!"

I reported earlier this month that 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 an American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) convention where she spouted antisemitism, calling synagogues and Jewish institutions the "enemy" of Muslims.

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...

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.

This caused quite an uproar, with even the Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL condemning Billoo's statements and demanding a condemnation from CAIR.

But instead of condemning Billoo, CAIR says it stands by her bigoted statements. It downplays what she said and then uses the oldest excuse in the book for antisemites.

In the wake of her speech, anti-Muslim websites misquoted Zahra’s remarks and falsely claimed that she had discouraged Muslims from working with Jewish groups at-large.

This is a blatant lie. In fact, Zahra praised the many Jewish activists and groups that support human rights for all people, including Palestinians, and specifically encouraged Muslims to engage in interfaith collaboration with Jewish organizations such as IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace.

Really? She didn't list any purportedly Jewish groups besides those two.

And Billoo specifically called out "Zionist synagogues." Which synagogues are anti-Zionist?

There are about 4000 synagogues in America, and hundreds more makeshift minyanim in workplaces and people's houses.

I am aware of only one synagogue that is explicitly "non-Zionist" and it is barely a synagogue. Brant Rosen's Tzedek Chicago meets for prayer only on Friday nights, in the basement of a Lutheran church.

Which means that approximately 99.98% of American synagogues are not anti-Israel.

Every single one of those are considered enemies by CAIR and Billoo.

CAIR's defense? They like some Jews like Brant Rosen, so they cannot possibly be antisemitic! The members of the other 99.98% of synagogues don't represent real Judaism!

Already in the 1930s people were making fun of "some of my best friends are Jews" defense against the charge of antisemitism.

What CAIR is really saying is that some of their best friends are Jewish dhimmis, anxious to please their Muslim masters and live in eternal proleptic dhimmitude.

12/11 Links: PA Textbooks ‘Encouraging Violence’ Found on Teenage Girl When Arrested for Jerusalem Stabbing; The Unmitigated Gall of Ilhan Omar

From Ian:

Palestinian Authority Textbooks ‘Encouraging Violence’ Found on Teenage Girl When Arrested for Jerusalem Stabbing

A 14-year-old Palestinian girl suspected of stabbing a woman in Jerusalem on Wednesday was carrying a number of Palestinian Authority textbooks with messages of violent incitement when she was caught, an Israeli watchdog revealed Thursday.

Police said they arrested the teenager at her school shortly after she stabbed 26-year-old Moriah Cohen — her family’s neighbor in the flashpoint neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah — while the victim was walking with her five children.

IMPACT-se, an Israeli nonprofit that reviews educational materials used by the PA, said that the girl carried books containing a number of “violent” materials in a school bag when arrested. These included a lesson on reading comprehension describing a terror attack on Israeli civilians as a “barbecue party,” a statistics lesson using a frequency table that featured the numbers of “martyrs” killed by Israel, and a social studies text portraying armed resistance as “natural” and “legitimate.”

“It is hard to imagine a more tragic metaphor for the brazen antisemitism and encouragement to violence in the Palestinian curriculum, than a 14-year-old Palestinian girl stabbing a visibly Jewish woman while carrying the Palestinian Authority’s inciteful textbooks in her backpack,” the groups CEO Marcus Sheff commented. “These textbooks are strategically created by the PA to promote a culture of hate and violence among 1.3 million children.”

“I truly hope those countries that still support the Palestinian Ministry of Education and UNRWA are paying close attention and drawing the appropriate conclusions,” Sheff said, referring to the UN agency serving Palestinian refugees that has come under fire for employing antisemitic and violent materials in its schools.

The Unmitigated Gall of Ilhan Omar

You may recall a few years back when the Democratic Party backed out of censuring Omar for her numerous repulsive comments because of “fierce backlash” from the Congressional Black Caucus (a group whose members have held strategy sessions and meetings with Louis Farrakhan, because the normalization of certain kinds of hatreds is nothing new on the left.) Censures and resolutions are almost always useless exercises in political theater. But Pelosi showed a special kind of creativity when she decided to reprimand Omar with a watered-down, platitudinous “anti-hate” resolution, which mentions Alfred Dreyfus, Leo Frank, Henry Ford, and “anti-Muslim bigotry,” but not Omar.

Parties are reluctant to censure their own members, no matter how odious the words, as that sort of thing telegraphs weakness and upsets the base. And the opposition likes to exaggerate the influence of backbenchers. Take the Washington Post’s partisan pseudojournalist Greg Sargent, who absurdly argues that Boebert et al portend emerging Republican attitudes. Certainly, the faction is not irrelevant, but it’s wishful thinking to say that they will “continue gaining adherents and intensity.” Not a single one of these Republicans is driving any serious policy initiatives. And Kevin McCarthy certainly isn’t posing with the Greene and Boebert on the cover of Rolling Stone in their “Women Shaping the Future” issue.

The Squad — who are surely “gaining adherents and intensity” as moderate Democrats shed seats due to the party’s progressive turn — already have outsized power. They can stop bills right now. A few months ago, they nearly sunk funding for Israel’s defensive “Iron Dome” system — perhaps the only spending that Squad members passionately oppose. (AOC was in tears because she had abstained from cutting off spending on a system that saves thousands of lives.) The Biden administration already uses AOC’s branding for its climate-change agenda. And virtually every Democrat defends the administration’s every move. These are consequential politicians treated with reverence by the press.

That said, the cynical effort to focus on the most absurd members of the opposition party is nothing new — especially as a means of deflecting attention away from your own problems. But when your champion is one of the most repugnant voices in Washington, the effort is transparently preposterous.

Former BBC chairman tells broadcaster: ‘Prove anti-Muslim slur claim or apologise’

Former BBC chairman Lord Michael Grade has urged the corporation to finally prove its claim that Jewish victims of an antisemitic attack on Oxford Street used an Muslim slur or apologise.

The Conservative peer’s dramatic intervention heaps further pressure on the broadcaster after a week of unbridled anger over its reporting of a sickening attack on a busload of Charedi youngsters celebrating Chanukah in central London.

The BBC’s report appeared to blame the Jewish teenagers on the bus for “anti-Muslim slurs” – while describing the shouting, spitting and Nazi salutes from outside the bus as “alleged” antisemitism.

In the audio someone is heard saying in Hebrew: “Tikra lemishehu, ze dachuf” – “Call someone, it’s urgent”. It is believed the BBC took this be someone shouting in English: “Dirty Muslims”.

The teenagers on the bus categorically denied they uttered any abuse and Jewish News learned that the claim of anti-Muslim slurs was added after the reporter filed his story, apparently by senior BBC staff.

On Tuesday the Board of Deputies sent a formal complaint from to BBC director-general Tim Davie, chairman Richard Sharp and head of news Fran Unsworth. Three days later the BBC is yet to respond

Noura Erekat appropriating Moroccan culture as Palestinian while accusing others of appropriating Palestinian culture.

Another day of Palestinian “activism” pic.twitter.com/6gZguHjhZ8
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) December 11, 2021

The King James Version of the Bible is inconsistent in translating פְּלָ֑שֶׁת - sometimes "Palestina" and sometimes "Philistia"

I always thought that while the King James Bible had its political motives, that its scholarship was pretty good.

But recently I noticed that the word "פְּלָ֑שֶׁת", which occurs eight times in the Hebrew scriptures, has three different translations in KJV.

Four times it is translated as "Philistia."

Three times as "Palestina."

And once as "Palestine."

It seems that the many translators of KJV didn't have a good editor to keep consistency between them.

But even in the entire King James, there is no mention of "Palestinians," only "Philistines."

12/10 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Double standard of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia; Why Josephus Matters; AOC goes full Jeremy Corbyn; Guardian corrects egregious error about Texas anti-BDS law

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Double standard of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia

An assumption of just such moral equivalence was on display in the BBC report of the London bus attack. Even if its journalists genuinely thought they heard an anti-Muslim slur on the video, they nevertheless recklessly failed to verify such an explosive claim before transmitting it.

Their reasoning became clear from an interview with one of the journalists involved, who said that his team “thought it important to reflect there was abuse going both ways.”

In other words, they thought they needed to demonstrate a notion of balance. Yet it is only where an anti-Semitic attack is concerned that the BBC seems to think balance involves diminishing the significance of the attack by suggesting that its victims were morally culpable in some way.

Moreover, the BBC report involved a further double standard—for it described the visibly anti-Semitic attack as merely “allegations,” while the alleged anti-Muslim smear was presented as fact.

The West in general has a problem with acknowledging anti-Semitism. There are various reasons for this.

Unable to cope with the fact that the Holocaust took place in the epicenter of high European culture, the West tries to bury the persistent evidence that much of it still has an innate prejudice against the Jewish people.

Although the anti-Semitic far-right exists, much of today’s anti-Semitism comes from the left, which assumes itself to be the acme of virtue and therefore incapable of bad things, and from Muslims, whom the left deem to be victims and therefore incapable of bad things.

Moreover, admitting the enormity of anti-Semitism within the Muslim world would shatter the fiction Western liberals believe as unchallengeable truth that, in the Middle East, the Jews of Israel are human-rights abusers while Palestinian Muslims are their victims.

The worst reason of all is that those who think that claims of anti-Semitism are exaggerated do so because they believe that the Jews really do dominate the world through money, media and politics, and try to manipulate it in their own interests.

In other words, the double standard used to minimize or deny anti-Semitism is itself further evidence of the anti-Jewish feeling that so frighteningly continues to poison the West.

Thomas Mann’s Philo-Semitism and Colm Toibin’s Thomas Mann

In January 1934, the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior revoked the novelist Thomas Mann’s German citizenship, in part, because of his membership in the ‘German Committee Pro Palestine’ (‘Deutsches Komitee Pro Palästina’) and his support for its main goal, to sponsor the settlement of Jews in Palestine. Shalom Goldman, Professor of Religion at Middlebury College, is an avid reader of both Thomas Mann and Colm Toibin, the author of The Magician, a new novel about Mann. Goldman explains his disappointment with the novel.

I have been reading and rereading Thomas Mann’s Joseph novels for over half a century. Like many others educated in the Yeshiva tradition, I delighted in Mann’s use of midrashim, the legends that supplement the spare narratives of the Bible. Mann accessed these legends through his own research, and through a network of European Jewish scholars he cultivated before he set to work on what would eventually be his four volume 1500-page magnum opus on Joseph – a quartet of books he dubbed his ‘pyramids.’

And I have been reading and admiring Colm Toibin’s novels – including The Master, his novel about Henry James – for over a decade. So it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to reading Toibin’s new novel about Thomas Mann, The Magician. Before its publication in September, I reread some of my favorite sections of the Joseph books, as well as all of The Magic Mountain, another Mann classic that has been a constant companion. I also looked again into a number of the excellent biographies of Mann that have appeared since his death in 1955, and it is these biographies that Toibin acknowledges in a note at the end of the novel, giving pride of place to Anthony Heilbut’s Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature, published in 1996.

Thomas Mann (1878-1955) was one of the great literary figures of the Twentieth Century. He wrote short stories, novels, and essays and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929.

Mann opposed the Nazis early on, left Germany when they rose to power, and used his considerable energies to oppose them.

Why Josephus Matters

If we leave biblical and New Testament authors out of the frame, Flavius Josephus (37–100+ CE) was the most consequential ancient writer in the West. This claim is not provable by statistics, but a process of elimination supports it. Plato was big, Aristotle too. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius had their admirers, and every literate Roman knew Cicero and Livy. But Christian Crusaders did not take Plato into battle in the Holy Land. Thucydides was not rewritten in Latin and Hebrew versions, as Josephus was, amplifying his already huge impact. From the first to the twenty-first centuries, Josephus’ work has mattered to more people and more consistently than any other non-biblical text.

Does that mean that he should matter now? Nothing simply matters. Classical music, stock prices, and American politics matter to some but not others. Things that mattered to us when we were twenty might not at forty or sixty. To ask why Josephus matters is to ask, first, why he has mattered, and second, why he might matter from now on, which is not the same thing.

It is only worth discussing Josephus’ mattering if we know something of his life and writings. When he was born in Jerusalem (37 CE), to a member of the priestly caste named Mattityahu, an older brother had already scooped the father’s name and so he was called Yoseph, after a grandfather. Furnished with the gold-plated education enjoyed by Jerusalem’s elite, in both Hebrew and Greek literature, young Yoseph must have stood out. When he was just twenty-six, the city elders dispatched him on a delicate mission to Nero’s Rome. His task: to liberate three fellow-priests being held by the emperor. Nero, though he had already ruled for a decade, was only Yoseph’s age. After surviving a deadly shipwreck, Yoseph succeeded in his mission by scoring an introduction to Nero’s wife Poppaea. She won over her volatile husband, who had recently killed his mother and would soon dispatch her.

When Yoseph returned to Jerusalem, in 65/66 CE, he was distressed to find the city in commotion. Nero had recently sent a new official to coastal Caesarea with instructions to extract large sums from Jerusalem’s world-famous temple, using his locally recruited auxiliary force to crush any resistance. We cannot explore Nero’s reasons (his officials elsewhere had the same orders), or the origins of the war that this ignited in Judea. Suffice it to say that the common image of Judeans long struggling under oppressive imperial rule is hard to sustain. In Josephus’ view, Jerusalem had until then been the happiest of all cities under Roman rule. Now he conveys a universal sense of shock, grievance, and humiliation at the latest moves. But what to do about them? Although we have nothing to check it against, his portrayal of the range of responses sounds plausible. Some desperately armed themselves for protection. Indignant younger priests demanded the exclusion of foreigners from the city. Many prominent elders who had worked with the ruling consensus counseled patience and relentless diplomacy. Eventually, charismatic militants would enter the city with armed followers, in deadly conflict with each other.

Friday afternoon massive meme dump

I've been posting lots of memes besides cartoons on Twitter and on Instagram.

Here are some from recent weeks:

12/10 Links Pt1: Expansionist Iran is the Pearl Harbor of the Middle East; UN Condemns Israel 6 Times, Rest of World 0; Media Erases Iran’s Ties to Hamas and Terrorism

From Ian:

Dore Gold: Expansionist Iran is the Pearl Harbor of the Middle East

This past Tuesday, America and its allies commemorated 80 years since the attack by Imperial Japan on the US Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. At that time, Japan was carving out its “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”

To secure the emerging Japanese Empire, Tokyo expanded its armed forces and its navy in particular, focusing its efforts on Manchuria, Southeast Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines. The key to securing its positions in Asia was knocking out the US military presence in the Pacific and making itself the uncontested hegemonial power in Asia.

The dominant diplomatic doctrine in the late 1930s in the US was isolationism, undoubtedly encouraging Tokyo to conclude that to force an American retreat was feasible even with just six aircraft carriers in the Japanese Navy. The Japanese command envisioned that the strike on Pearl Harbor would undermine America’s self-confidence to a point from which it could not recover.

It is important to review this history today as the Islamic Republic of Iran seeks to evict the US military from the Middle East and assert Iranian hegemony over the entire region. Indeed, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared during Friday prayers on January 17, 2020, that the real punishment for America is “expelling them from the region.”

Tehran’s plan began to unfold not long after the fall of the shah in 1979. Iran chose Lebanon as one of its earliest testing grounds, deploying its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the Bekaa Valley. It made every effort to evict the US Marine Corps from Beirut, using Hezbollah, the Shi’ite militia that it was forming under its command.

The Tikvah Podcast: Victoria Coates on the Confusion in Natanz

On Saturday, December 4, 2021, an explosion occurred near Iran’s nuclear facility outside the city of Natanz. Afterwards, two nearby villages were evacuated. Was the explosion the result of a weapons test? An accident? Sabotage? No one yet knows what took place in the mountains of northern Iran that day. And whereas civilians and observers can afford to wait for more information, national-security professionals are forced to act and react to events like this in real time without a lot of information. If there’s an explosion near the nuclear compound of an adversarial nation, what do you do?

Natanz and its uncertainty is the point of departure for this week’s podcast. Victoria Coates, the former deputy national security adviser for Middle Eastern and North African affairs, shares her experience making decisions under pressure and with imperfect information.

Caroline Glick: The generals' belated awakening

Something is changing in Israel's military brass' assessment of the Iranian nuclear threat. Evidence is growing that members of the IDF General Staff and the Mossad are beginning to realize that the US doesn't share Israel's goal of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Last week, for instance, Michael Makovsky, head of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, (JINSA) a Washington-based group that cultivates ties between Israeli and US generals, published an article in the New York Post in which he described their rude awakening.

Makovsky wrote, "Recent meetings with senior defense officials from our closest Middle East ally, Israel, were the most pessimistic I can recall. They perceive America as checked out, adrift, pusillanimous, unfeared and desperate to avoid military confrontation, and Iran as emboldened and nearing the nuclear weapons threshold."

Makovsky said that all his interlocutors had raised the same three points: The US withdrawal from Afghanistan showed that the Biden administration is comfortable betraying US allies. The administration's decision not to respond to the Oct. 20 Iranian attack on its airbase in Tanf, Syria, showed the US is willing to allow Iran to attack it with impunity. And the administration's willingness to be humiliated by the Iranians at the nuclear talks in Vienna shows that the only thing the administration wants is to reach a deal – any deal – with Iran.

By Makovsky's telling, the Israelis are divided on what the Iranians want and they still haven't completely given up hope that the Americans will come through, somehow. He ended his article by arguing that the US should provide Israel with the equipment and weapons platforms it requires to successfully strike Iran's nuclear installations without the US. But it was clear from his description of the Israeli security brass' disposition that their faith the US will actually follow through on its pledge to block Iran from becoming a nuclear power has waned significantly. It is beginning to dawn on them that in the fight against Iran, Israel is alone.

While Israel's security establishment's frustration with the Biden administration, and their apparent, grudging acceptance of reality are understandable, there is something deeply unsettling about both.

Where have the generals been for the past 13 years?

Israel must adjust to a weak US

If you need an indication that nothing is going to come out of the Vienna talks other than total capitulation to Iran's demands should look at the US's reaction to a more immediate and material threat to its closest allies in NATO – the Russian threat on Ukraine. Russia has shown determination, strength and strategic consistency, while the US has no sense of direction – something no superpower can afford, especially when it wants to stand up to the plate and counter the most important challenge of our generation, China's rise.

Tehran and Beijing are watching Biden and NATO and feel at ease. If the West's major powers just want to "return home safely from the battlefront" there is no risk that they will check Iran, and definitely not China.

Biden's Afghanistan fiasco has hurt him domestically, but that's much less of a concern because it was just a botched operational mission that ended a 20-year strategic failure that involved an unhelpful military deployment. Even the US departure from Iraq and other theaters in the region does not underlie weakness in and of themselves. In fact, in a different context, this would actually signal that the US was putting its resources where they are most needed.

But Biden has consistently shown that he lacks a backbone on all fronts. Just this week, the CIA chief said the US has no indication Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has decided to develop a military nuclear program. It's like a cop trying to stop a bank robbery but then says that he has no proof that the robbers' weapons are loaded.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has massed troops on the border with Ukraine and has been sending plainclothed troops to help pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has vowed a forceful response if Russia invades. But judging by how the US reacted to the annexation of Crimea, Putin can very well assume that the only thing he will face after an invasion is sanctions.

Tens of thousands gather in Gaza and on the Temple Mount, all hating Jews

Today, Hamas celebrated its 34th anniversary, and tens of thousands of Gazans gathered for a pro-Hamas rally.

Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar praised the terror attacks against Jews in Jerusalem, promised that not an inch of land can be compromised on, and told Great Britain, "We are a national Islamic liberation movement whose duty is to liberate its homeland and its people from occupation. If that is terrorism, then yes, we are terrorists."

Meanwhile, 50,000 Muslims went to the Temple Mount this morning.

If you think this was just to worship, think again.

The worshipers came out of the Al-Aqsa Mosque chanting slogans for Al-Aqsa and Al-Quds in front of the Israeli police.

Palestine Today writes, "It is noteworthy that hundreds of people performed the dawn prayer in the premises of Al-Aqsa Mosque in response to calls from Jerusalem institutions; In response to the massive incursions carried out by extremist settlers that accompanied the days of the so-called Jewish Festival of Lights or 'Hanukah'; During which the settlers and their rabbis carried out provocative tours and performed Talmudic rituals in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa and its squares where they received false explanations about the alleged temple."

So this isn't about worship, just like Hamas isn't about liberation. The root of these events always comes down to Jew-hatred.

A new chart of UN bias against Israel (update)

Palestinians are celebrating the UN passing 6 anti-Israel resolutions yesterday by lopsided margins.

These are in addition to three others passed last week.

The Palestinian representative to the UN, Riyad Mansour, thanked the international community for their "tremendous support in favor of the Palestinian cause and its resolutions."

UN Watch has been keeping a database on UN resolutions since 2015. Here is my updated chart using their data of the number of General Assembly resolutions condemning specific countries in that time period.

Outside the seven countries shown here, the UN has not condemned anyone else in that time period.

The UN is a joke, illustrated in one diagram.

UPDATE: UN Watch tells me that the latest 10 resolutions against Israel over the past couple of weeks have not yet been included in their database, so the reality is even worse than shown here!

Her father was a Nazi. She's a woke professor at Columbia. They both boycott Jews.

Willem Sassen was a Dutch collaborator with the Nazis who ended up becoming a Nazi reporter and a colonel in the Waffen-SS.

He was held in a British prison camp after the war but managed to escape and hide in various places after the war. In 1947, his girlfriend gave birth to a daughter, Saskia, and later that year they escaped Europe with many other Nazis, SS members and collaborators to hide in Argentina.

He became famous for interviewing Adolf Eichmann in 1957, before he was discovered and captured by the Israelis. He was friends with Eichmann, and the mass murderer visited Sassen weekly. Sassen had hoped to write a book of Eichmann's memoirs where Eichmann would deny the Holocaust, but Eichmann was proud of his role and the book never got written. Sassen sold the recordings to Life magazine in 1960, which claimed it did not know he was a war criminal.

Sassen was also a colleague of Klaus Barbie in Argentina.

His daughter Saskia grew up with Eichmann visiting her home, although at first she didn't know who he was. She would have political discussions with her father:

At home, Sassen didn’t hide his political views from his precocious daughter. Father and daughter discussed the war, politics, things that weren’t taught in school. Saskia Sassen proclaimed herself a Communist at age 12. “We were like two little titans having a lot of political debates,” she says. “When it came to politics, we disagreed completely. And he was part of my political education, clearly.”

Saskia became a professor of sociology at Columbia University with a very good reputation.

At least one part of Sassen's thinking made it through to his daughter, though: a hatred of Jews.

While the elder Sassen wanted to deny the Holocaust to discredit Jewish survivors, his daughter agrees that Jews are overly powerful and evil and should be boycotted:

Sassen signed a statement, published on August 12, 2014 by “American Muslim organizations, academics, Imams, community leaders and activists" who wished to “affirm our unequivocal support for Palestinian rights to freedom and dignity while forcefully condemning the illegal and oppressive occupation structure."

Signatories of the petition wrote that “The Israeli aggression against the civilian population of Gaza has surpassed all levels of brutality and cruelty" and went on to “Support the BDS Campaign to end occupation."

In December 2010, Sassen authored an article in which she described Gaza as “a site where Israeli forces can experiment with modes of urban warfare given the fact of occupation and control over most of the means of survival of the Gaza people. In the process it terrorizes a whole population."

She went on to charge that Israel “has done just about all that is conceivable to destroy it and demoralize a people."

On November 10, 2004, Sassen appeared on a panel at the University of Chicago (U of C) titled “Examining National Identity: Nationalism, Transnationalism, and the Future of the Middle East."

In an article chronicling the event, it was reported that Sassen walked out in the middle of the panel, outraged that her co-panelist suggested that Israel is disproportionately criticized by the United Nations.

The horseshoe theory of antisemitism has a great mascot.

(h/t Martin D)

12/09 Links Pt2: False Knowledge is Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimise the Jewish State; Did Resolution 181 create the State of Israel?

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: False Knowledge is Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimise the Jewish State

At the beginning of 2021, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and B’Tselem published reports alleging Israel to be responsible for, and Israeli officials to be guilty of committing, the crime against humanity of apartheid. These publications were accompanied by an extensive PR campaign. Concurrently, NGOs were influential in the establishment of two UN bodies where the claim of apartheid will prominently feature, and these same groups are vigorously lobbying the International Criminal Court to include allegations of apartheid in its investigation into Israel.

However, the definition of apartheid used by HRW, B’Tselem, and other NGOs is not legally substantiated. Instead, these groups promote artificial and manufactured definitions designed to extend the ongoing campaigns that seek to delegitimize and demonize Israel.

Beyond its pejorative colloquial meaning (“apartheid state,” “vaccine apartheid”), apartheid is also criminalized in some treaties as a crime against humanity and/or a war crime, establishing individual criminal responsibility. In addition, states are prohibited from practicing apartheid in other treaties and by customary international law.

Apartheid is a grave allegation both for the individuals accused as well as the country they represent. A conviction comes with long terms of imprisonment, while the accusation alone can result in severe penalties including sanctions and international isolation. It is not a claim to be made casually, and the crime itself must be precisely defined. However, the definition of apartheid is untested in international law as no courts have yet examined the crime, and there is little detailed analysis available. As a result, central actors in the delegitimization campaign have exploited this gap to advance narrow, and destructive, political agendas.

This report presents a corrective. First, it analyzes the policy and practices of apartheid as pursued historically in South Africa. Second, it examines the nature and evolution of the apartheid allegation levelled against Israeli officials. Third, it addresses the legal vacuum and provides a full analysis grounded in international law of apartheid’s definition as a crime against humanity.

In early 2022, NGO Monitor will issue a companion report, assessing whether apartheid, as defined here, is applicable to Israel and territories under its administration.

Did Resolution 181 create the State of Israel?

Although the League of Nations was superseded by the United Nations following WWII, Article 80 of the UN Charter stipulated that the UN would not alter existing states, peoples or mandates. This meant that the UN preserved and recognized the legal right for the establishment of a Jewish state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which was the boundary of the Mandate for Palestine.

Additionally, this boundary delineated Israel’s borders; under the customary international law doctrine of uti possidetis juris, newly forming countries acquire their pre-independence administrative borders.

In 1947, Britain resigned as the “mandatory” and gave control over to the United Nations. The UNGA passed Resolution 181 in November of that year, recommending the partition of the land into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem and the areas surrounding it placed under international control.

However, Resolution 181 did not declare statehood, as all UN General Assembly resolutions are non-binding recommendations that carry no force of law. Instead, Resolution 181, as former Israeli ambassador to the UN Dore Gold stated, “provided international legitimacy for the Jewish claim to statehood.” Gold stated that what establishes countries is declarations of independence as opposed to actions in the UN. Israel would declare its independence on May 14, 1948.

As of today, the Mandate for Palestine also provides legal rights for any claims Israel has to the disputed West Bank. Eugene Rostow, former US under secretary of state and Yale Law School dean, commented that the West Bank is an “unallocated part of the British Mandate.”

As an unallocated part of the British Mandate, the terms of document are still binding today even though the British resigned as the mandatory 74 years ago.

Rostow confirmed this by explaining, “Many believe that the Palestine Mandate was somehow terminated in 1947, when the British government resigned as the mandatory power. This is incorrect. A trust never terminates when a trustee dies, resigns, embezzles the trust property, or is dismissed. The authority responsible for the trust appoints a new trustee, or otherwise arranges for the fulfillment of its purpose.” Therefore, the international community is obligated in implementing the terms of the mandate.

In summation, it was the Balfour Declaration and the documents that enshrined it as a binding part of international law that created Israel, as opposed to the United Nations. These documents still apply today when it comes to Israel’s rights to the West Bank.

On This Day: Ottomans surrender Jerusalem in World War I

December 9 marks 104 years since the Ottoman surrender at the Battle of Jerusalem, winning major morale and strategic victory in a key city in this important World War I battle.

The battle itself was the culmination of a long, bloody campaign in the Middle East by the British against the Turks, something that had been up to a rough start for a while.

Throughout World War I, British forces suffered multiple humiliating and costly losses against the Turks. This included the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, the Battle of Kut in modern-day Iraq and two losses in Gaza.

Taking the holy city was important, not just because of the religious symbolism for the largely-Christian UK, but because it was vital for Ottoman supply routes and for the British to establish a stronger position.

Fortune began to change when, after a second loss at Gaza, the commanding general of what had been dubbed the "Egyptian Expeditionary Force," Gen. Sir Archibald Murray, was replaced with Gen. Edmund Allenby, who had been given instructions by the prime minister: Capture Jerusalem by Christmas.

This was easier said than done. The Ottoman front line dominated the South with trenches, redoubts and fortifications, as well as key roads and railway lines.

But at the end of October, Allenby finally led the British to victory over the Ottomans in the Battle of Beersheba, beginning the British Army's advance into the region, pushing back the Ottomans.

Was there a day of religious freedom in Jerusalem in 1909?

I just found this description of Jerusalem written in 1909 that described an incident earlier that year.

The author was Frederic J. Haskin, who was a prominent journalist and author, well known for a newspaper feature where people would ask him questions and he and his staff would find the answers.

I find it hard to believe this story is true, but if it is, it is remarkable. (Notice the antisemitism alongside the sympathy for Jews.)

From the Salt Lake Herald-Republican, December 26, 1909:

Within the year since last Christmas the light of freedom has broken upon this distressed Holy Land and for the first time in all the centuries its people have known the spirit of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.

For eighteen centuries it has been death for a Jew to enter the court yard of the Church the Holy Sepulchre. For twelve hundred years no Jew has stood upon the site of the Temple of Solomon. Blood-thirsty Christians, forgetting the words of the Master upon the cross, have murdered Jews who so much as dared to approach the grave of Jesus. Cruel believers upon Mohammed have cut the throats of pious Jews who sought to lift up their voices in prayer 'upon the hill where Melchesidek and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, David and Solomon, Hesekiah and the Maccabees. invoked the succor of Jehovah. Treacherous and vindictive Jews, suffering under the persecutions of centuries, have dealt death to their enemies of other creeds. ever since Jesus died on the cross of Calvary has Jerusalem and all this Holy Land been drenched with blood shed by murderers who slew their victims in the name of religion.

Then came this year 1909 of the Christian era, 5669 of the Jewish era and 1327 of the Mohammedan era, and the light of liberty for the first time broke through the clouds of religious intolerance and illumined the churches and synagogues and mosques of the city of Jerusalem. It was the Young Turks' revolution.

The despotic Sultan Abdul Hamid was overthrown, and the constitution became a realty in benighted Turkey, of which Palestine is a part. What a great celebration it was in Jerusalem! Young men of every creed united in the demonstration of joy. Christians, arm in arm with Jews and Mohammedans, went boldly into the holiest of all 'holy Christian churches, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and gave thanks for their new found liberty. Mohammedans took with them Jews and Christians to the platform of the temple, surrounding the Mosque of Omar, and gave vent to their joyous feelings. Jews took Christians and Turkish political allies into the sacred precincts of their synagogues. Every difference of faith was forgotten In the common joy.

Of course this religious union lasted only for a day and now the old lines are drawn again, but they are not as taut as they used to be, and never again will they mean death to the trespasser. Turkey is free and the Holy Land is delivered from the curse of despotism.

I cannot find any record of this in Jewish media of 1909. I cannot believe that the Muslims of Jerusalem, whose opposition to Jews visiting the Temple Mount were based on their own antisemitism, would have changed their policies even for a day without being instructed to.

But there might be some grain of truth in this story, as Haskin was a legitimate journalist.

IDF Detention Facilities Rampantly Assuming Gender Of Palestinians (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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prison Ofer Prison, north of Jerusalem, December 9 - Human Rights groups accused Israel's military today of inhumane treatment of Palestinian detainees, including such unnecessarily harsh measures as simply presuming that prisoners who talk, dress, act, and have anatomy in the manner of males are in fact males.

Amnesty International, Btselem, and Human Rights Watch, among others, issued a joint statement Thursday charging that the Israel Defense Forces, in violation of all things sacred and acceptable, assume the gender of every single inmate or detainee, a policy that underscores the cruel nature of the occupation and the urgent need to end it.

"This sadistic practice continues despite robust public awareness of the need to accommodate non-cisgender people," the statement read, in part. "We acknowledge our disappointment, but not our surprise, given Israel's established reputation for mistreatment of Palestinians." The document also cited the IDF's practice of not allowing Palestinians to stab Israelis, and even of applying lethal force in thwarting Palestinian attempts to kill Jews.

Progressive organizations followed up the letter with an online drive to get activists outside Israel to convey to their governments the importance of addressing the crucial issue of misgendered Israeli prisons, perhaps conditioning military aid to the beleaguered Jewish State on the implementation of a robust, independently-verified gender inclusiveness program in all military detainment facilities.

Palestinian activists embraced the statement and its overseas ripples. "Uh, yeah, that's uh, terrible," objected a spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoner Affairs. "Truly horrifying. Can't believe they'd be so, uh, evil. I can't imagine the horror our brave martyrs-to-be face day in, day out in those prisons. Sounds like pure torture. Somebody ought to do something."

A Hamas representative told reporters the movement would probably wait to declare another Day of Rage over the issue. "It's just that our schedule is so full of Days of Rage in the next few months," he lamented. "We wouldn't want to dilute the power of each Day of Rage, and its impact on the occupier, by holding another one in so short a time. An issue of this, er, importance deserves its own discrete... treatment."

The spokesman then requested more specifics about the phenomenon of "misgendering," and, upon receiving explanation, wondered aloud why the supposedly cruel IDF didn't do what he and his movement would have done, namely to hurl the identifying-as-female detainee from the nearest ten-story rooftop. "Something doesn't add up here," he cautioned.