Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

You Don't Have To Agree With Israel's Policies (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

In the age of groups like If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace, there seems to be a basic truth that Cubans get but an increasing number of Jews just don't grasp.

This is one of the points raised by Gol Kalev, a writer whose book Judaism 3.0 - Judaism's Transformation to Zionism will be published this year. Kalev sees Zionism as an integral element not only in how Jews in America relate to Israel, but also as a crucial component in how they identify as Jews and contribute to the country where they live. (Disclaimer: I helped proofread Gol Kalev's book for publication)

This question of Identity has become a major issue in the US as people choose from a variety of possibilities: race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political party -- or any combination of these and other identities.

And this presents an opportunity to Jews that historically has been denied them in the past, namely to proudly and openly declare their Jewishness in the context of their being Americans.

Kalev writes:

The patriotic American neighbors of the Jews today celebrate their own ethnological national affiliation, be it Mexican, Irish or Korean. This is manifested in Vice President Kamala Harris, who is proud of her Jamaican and Indian affiliations, and senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who in the 2016 Republican primary argued who was the more Cuban (not more Christian).

But Judaism is not only a religious affiliation, or even an ethnic affiliation. It is a national affiliation known as Zionism. And according to Kalev, Zionism today is crucial for maintaining one's Jewish identity:

Zionism as a conduit to one’s Judaism is not just in-line with prevailing American realities, but also needed, as legacy connectors to Judaism has faded: religious observance has declined, and memory of the Holocaust and nostalgia for the Eastern European past eroded as the generations pass.

And therein lies the problem.

There are antisemitic forces hard at work to punish Jews for any assumed connection or affiliation to the state of Israel, let alone for openly supporting or showing pride in it. Then of course there are the fringe Jewish groups who openly demonize Israel and refuse to defend it -- even when Israeli civilians are the target of terrorist attacks.

In this regard, Kalev makes a point that has clearly eluded those groups:

Centering one’s Jewish identity around Israel certainly does not mean one needs to agree with its policies. After all, Rubio and Cruz do not agree with the Cuban government. [emphasis added]

We are way past the point where we used to say you shouldn't criticize Israel openly in public. But honest criticism of Israel does not prevent Jews from seeing Israel as part of the Jewish identity.

This basic truth escapes not only those fringe groups, but also those antisemites who want to pin any Israeli failing -- either real or fabricated -- on the global Jewish community.

People who today would not hesitate to condemn the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II have no problem blaming Jews for whatever fault they find in Israel and have even insisted that they either disavow any support for Israel or that they pledge support for Palestinian Arabs.

But this disconnect between those "progressive" Jewish groups and Israel is part of an even larger problem.

Writing in 2019, Yisrael Medad noted Young Jews’ wrong turn at wrong intersection:

For all the bluster about Judaism and anti-Semitism in America, I am not convinced that far-out-left and liberal young Jews, who have been very strident and even threatening on Israel-related issues and local American political battles, have done much on the ground to confront and quash, one way or another, attacks on Jews. They have portrayed themselves as gliding along a moral highway but have permitted immoral actions to exist quite close to home, far from Gaza.

This problem that today's progressive Jews have with identifying with the Jewish community at large is not new. Consider Bernie Sanders, about whom Jonathan Tobin writes:

when most American Jews were demanding freedom for Soviet Jewry and denouncing the anti-Semitic nature of the Communist regime, Bernie Sanders was not there...There is no available evidence that he ever lifted a finger to fight for Soviet Jews.

We can sympathize with Palestinian Arabs who find themselves in a similar predicament. As Sean Durns points out, when it is politically expedient in their smearing of Israel, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are quick to tweet about events in the Middle East. But when it comes to the ongoing abuse that Palestinians suffer under the totalitarian governments of the PA and Hamas, such as during the Hamas crackdown in 2019 -- which even Amnesty Internation and Human Rights Watch condemned -- Omar and Tlaib were silent.

But in the US, the problem of Jewish identity is only getting worse.

According to last year's Pew survey on Jewish identity and belief

o Twice as many Jewish Americans say they derive a great deal of meaning and fulfillment from their pets as say the same about their religion.
o More of those surveyed consider “having a good sense of humor” as essential to being Jewish as following halakha (34% vs. 15%).

On the other hand, 45% of those surveyed said caring about Israel is essential to their Jewish identity -- and that number goes up to to 82% when taking into account those who said Israel was important (though not essential) to their Jewish identity.

That is good news, but that number is significantly less for Jews who do not have a religious affiliation:

Jews by religion are nearly twice as likely as Jews of no religion to say that caring about Israel is essential (52% vs. 27%).

Similarly, the Pew survey on Jewish community and connectedness in the US found that Jews with a religious affiliation are much more likely to feel a great deal of belonging to the Jewish people than do Jews with no affiliation (61% vs. 13%).

Going a step further, the survey found that feeling a responsibility for Jews around the world is linked with the sense of an attachment to Israel: Four out of ten Jews who feel at least somewhat attached to Israel said that they feel a great deal of responsibility to take care of Jews in need around the world (42%), compared with just 10% of those with little or no attachment to Israel.

In their survey of US Jews’ connections with and attitudes toward Israel, the Pew survey found that six out of ten Jews who have no particular denominational affiliation (59%) say they are either “not too” or “not at all” emotionally attached to Israel.

Regardless of what Jews in the survey felt allowed them to personally identify as Jewish, it was a religious affiliation or an attachment to Israel that allowed them to feel responsible for other Jews and be part of a larger Jewish community.

But considering that a little more than half of those Jews surveyed said that Judaism was important to them, the importance of the state of Israel for Jewish identity in general and for fostering a sense of global Jewish responsibility cannot be ignored and needs to be openly recognized.

An Arab hero is in an Israeli hospital with cancer. Here are seven of the Israelis he murdered.

After the supposed victory of Israel agreeing not to renew the administrative detention of hunger striker Hisham Abu Hawwash, there is now a huge campaign among all Palestinian factions for Israel to release terrorist Nasser Abu Hamid.

Unlike Hawwash, Abu Hamid is a convicted terrorist. He is now in Barzilai Medical Center with cancer. His condition has reportedly deteriorated in recent weeks and he now has pneumonia.

His photo is all over Palestinian websites, and today an Algerian newspaper Al-Wasat Al-Maghrebi added an entire two page supplement praising this Arab hero.

Abu Hamid was the top deputy of Marwan Barghouti, the head of the Tanzim terror group. He was convicted of seven murders and he helped facilitate more. He refused to participate in the trial, but in the end

Here are the people he was responsible for murdering.

Binyamin Ze'ev and Talia Kahane

Eliahu Cohen of Modi'in

Gadi Rajwan

Salim Barakat

Yosef Habi

Eli Dahan

Those aren't his only victims. Abu Hamid had been convicted of murdering nine people previously - and had gotten released from prison as part of the Oslo "peace" Accords.

In court, he admitted to the murders and said that murdering these Jews (and one Druze) was legitimate in the fight against Israel.

His brothers have been convicted of murdering twelve more Israelis. Their mother is considered a model for Palestinian women.

Dying painfully of cancer is too good for Nasser Abu Hamid. May he rot in hell very soon.

Zionist assassin dolphins!

Hamas has announced that they have uncovered a cell of Israeli spy...dolphins.

On Monday, the Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades said that Israel used dolphins to pursue its naval commandos off the coast of the Gaza Strip.

During an hour long infomercial for Hamas, in a video called “Suqur al-Sahel,” a Hamas naval spokesman claimed that the battalions succeeded in discovering a dolphin used by Israel to chase Hamas "into the depths of the sea."

Hamas claims to have recovered devices attached to the dolphins that were prepared for use in assassinations. According to the video, a Hamas terrorist was killed by one of the dolphins.

In the video, the spokesman did not disclose the time and place where they found the dolphins or the dolphin weapons. But they did show an image of something that looks like it could have been a dolphin harness with a harpoon-like weapon attached:

Other nations like Russia do train dolphins for military tasks, but not usually lethal force. This military site says that this is plausible, but there is no way to know if this evidence is legitimate.

Back in 2011, I published the canonical list of Zionist animals that were accused of spying on or attacking Arabs or Iranians. They included lions, wild boars, squirrels, badgers, pigeons, sharks, jellyfish and cows. But at the time I didn't have the dolphins, even though Al Quds says that they had already reported on Zionist spy dolphins in 2015.

01/10 Links Pt2: ‘Murdered Because They Were Jews’: Victims Remembered on 7th Anniversary of French Kosher Market Killings; Aura Herzog, wife to one Israeli president and mother to a second, dies at 97

From Ian:

‘Murdered Because They Were Jews’: Victims Remembered on 7th Anniversary of French Kosher Market Killings

Jewish community leaders and French officials gathered on Sunday to mark the seventh anniversary of a terrorist attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris, paying tribute and expressing solidarity against antisemitic violence.

Organized by the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), the main communal body of French Jewry, the ceremony took place in front of the Hyper Cacher where an Islamist gunman shot dead four Jewish hostages on Jan. 9, 2015 — Yohan Cohen, 20; Yoav Hattab, 21; Philippe Braham, 45; and François-Michel Saada, 63. A couple of days before the attack, two Islamist gunmen killed a dozen people at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Multiple French politicians were present at the commemoration, among them former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who described it on social media as a “necessary tribute” to the “victims of Islamist terrorism.” Also in attendance were Marlène Schiappa, minister for citizenship; Sophie Cluzel, secretary of state for people with disabilities; Jean-Michel Blanquer, minister of education, youth, and sports; and Aurore Bergé, a lawmaker from French President Emmanuel Macron’s party.

“Murdered because they were Jews,” wrote Equality Minister Élisabeth Moreno. “Remember, always.”

Remembrance candles were also lit during the ceremony for other French Jews killed in antisemitic violence, including Sarah Halimi, a retired doctor who was beaten and thrown from her third-story Paris apartment in 2017, and Mireille Knoll, an elderly Holocaust survivor who was stabbed and set ablaze in her Paris apartment in 2018.

Don’t Turn Away Supporters of Israel

Some American Jews have given this kind of support a mixed reception. On the positive side, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) has welcomed and encouraged the support of Hispanic evangelicals. In 2019, the AJC accepted an invitation to address the General Assembly of the Alianza Evangelica Latina (AEL, Latin Evangelical Alliance). It was the first Jewish organization to do so. At the Assembly’s opening service, Rabbi Noam Marans, the AJC Director of Interreligious and Intergroup Relations, said, “At a time of rising racism, xenophobia, and antisemitism, Jews and Latino Evangelicals must be brothers and sisters who will together battle the hate that demonizes both our communities.”

Similarly, the American Jewish International Relations Institute (AJIRI) allies itself with faith-based leaders, including Hispanic evangelicals, to help further its mission of reversing discrimination against Israel at the UN. Indeed, the AJIRI recently appointed Pastor Ortiz to its board of directors (I serve with him on that board.) There, he works internationally to combat UN efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state.

But unfortunately, many moderate and left-leaning American Jews tend to discount the support of evangelicals because they don’t like the brand of Christian theology it’s based on. New Israel Fund CEO Daniel Sokatch provides a good example of this in his recent book, “Can We Talk About Israel?” There, he devotes a whole chapter to a dismissive take on evangelical support for the Jewish state.

This attitude is all too common among some American Jews. Writing in the Winter 2008 issue of City Journal, James Q. Wilson noted that, “in one Pew survey, 42 percent of Jewish respondents expressed hostility to evangelicals and fundamentalists.”

Jews with this mindset ignore an important rule of coalition building: Coalition partners don’t have to agree on everything. They just need to agree on one thing: in this case, the legitimacy of Israel as the sovereign nation state of the Jewish people. Jewish rejection of evangelical support is shortsighted and self-defeating. And that is especially true of support from Hispanic evangelical leaders, whose political influence and work on behalf of Israel are international in scope.

As Wilson said, “Whatever the reason for Jewish distrust of evangelicals, it may be a high price to pay when Israel’s future, its very existence, is in question.” Thus, he concluded: “When it comes to helping secure Israel’s survival, the tiny Jewish minority in America should not reject the help offered by a group that is ten times larger and whose views on the central propositions of a democratic society are much like everybody else’s.”

Jewish leaders would do well to keep that in mind.

Matti Friedman: Chinese Itzik Comes to Haifa

Last week I drove up to Haifa to see with my own eyes a sight that, for most Israelis, has yet to sink in: the country’s brand new port, our third, which is beautiful, automated, efficient, and operated by the same Chinese company that runs the megaport at Shanghai. The first full container ship dropped anchor the day after my visit. Chinese characters adorn the soaring ship-to-shore cranes, freshly painted red and white; Israeli workers man joysticks opposite computer arrays running Chinese software; and in the managerial offices sit Chinese executives. To get to the port, I paid a toll and drove through the Carmel Tunnels, which were dug a few years ago by the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation. At a gas station on the way I bought a pineapple yogurt made by the iconic dairy-products giant Tnuva, founded as a cooperative by Labor Zionists and now controlled by Bright Food—263 Huashan Road, Jing’an District, Shanghai. China was far, far away, until suddenly it was right here.

The most prominent face of China in Israel belongs to a guy named Itzik. His real name is Xi Xiaoqi, and he’s a 35-year-old resident of Beijing, but here he’s known as Itzik ha-Sini, or “Chinese Itzik.” He gets recognized on the street. He stars in hundreds of internet videos about life in Israel from a Chinese perspective, and about life in China made accessible for Israelis. Some of these appear on his own YouTube channel, but sometimes he appears on Israeli outlets like Channel 12 or KAN 11, the public broadcaster, where journalists are delighted to have a Chinese figure—the first—who speaks perfect, slangy Hebrew and has an acute grasp of the Israeli audience. He’s impossible not to like.

A good introduction to the Itzik genre is the video where he lists his top 10 reasons for loving Israel, including malawah, Jewish holidays, and the Pride Parade in Tel Aviv. Or the one where he introduces his grandfather Xi Rennan, 87, an energetic veteran of the Korean War (on the side of the communist North, of course), gives him a Hebrew name (Ronen), and teaches him to sum up his philosophy with the Hebrew workaholic expression nanuach bakever, “We’ll rest in the grave.” In Itzik’s world, China is a great place, but one that can learn from us Israelis about openness, creativity, and fun. He has much respect for who we are and what we’ve accomplished. The “top 10” video actually includes only nine things, but he ends by saying, “It’s OK, these are Israelis, they’re good people, not small-minded—they won’t make a big deal about it.” He snaps his fingers. “That’s the 10th thing.”

I caught Itzik on Zoom from Beijing. He was born in the city of Jiangyin, he said, son of a traffic cop and a real estate agent. He’d never met a Jew or heard a word of Hebrew before arriving at university at age 18. The school offered Japanese, Nepali, Dutch, and a few other languages, but his grandfather told him that Jews were smart—people of the book. Everyone thinks this in China, he said. If his years communicating with real Jews in Israel has disabused him of this notion, he was too polite to say so. During his Hebrew studies, first in Beijing with an Israeli teacher and then at Tel Aviv University, he adopted his Hebrew name, a diminutive of Yitzhak, or Isaac.

In 2009, with China taking a greater interest in Israel, he was selected to run the Hebrew desk at China Radio International, a state outfit that might uncharitably be called a propaganda arm or, more generously, a showcase for China’s best self. (The Hebrew desk doesn’t actually broadcast radio, only videos.) The CRI website has a lot of upbeat content about, for example, the many plusses of life in Xinjiang. In Itzik’s rise from an obscure city to an elite college, then to studies abroad, and then to an official media job, it’s possible to sense the hand of the state identifying and promoting a gifted young person.

Iran's ABNA news agency reports:

Israeli occupation began importing aluminium from Bahrain, Manama-based newspaper al-Ayam reported on Sunday, citing an interview with Eitan Na’eh, the Zionist ambassador to Bahrain.

“We have already started buying aluminium from Bahrain, and I am sure this aspect will see growth in purchasing rates,” he added.

Bahrain Aluminium is one the largest smelters in the Middle East region. However, the ambassador did not specify the quantities or the value of Israel’s aluminium imports from Bahrain

Israel’s airline El Al should start flights to Manama soon, Na’eh said, according to the newspaper. Bahrain’s Gulf Air in September announced the launch of direct flights to Tel Aviv, according to the newspaper.

The occupation ambassador also said that in the near future, An air transport agreement will be launched that will allow the transport of goods from ships docked in Bahrain to aircraft bound for occupied Palestine.

I couldn't find any Israeli media outlet reporting this story from yesterday, at least in English, but it was reported in Arab and Iranian sites. (Plus Reuters.)

Normalization with Israel is now normal. Only those who hate it consider it news.

And that's good news!

01/10 Links Pt1: Daniel Gordis: "The Massacre That Never Was"; Hamas lauds Sydney Festival boycotters; Israel should declare "Three Nos"

From Ian:

Daniel Gordis: "The Massacre That Never Was"

Eliezer Tauber’s fascinating book reveals, therefore, the critical details of what did and did not happen in Deir Yassin on that fateful day, details that should (but undoubtedly will not) put to rest claims of massacre. There was killing, but not a massacre.

No less important, though, is Tauber’s illustration of how exaggerations of the carnage—intentionally concocted by the Palestinian press and others—led to widespread Palestinian flight and thus contributed to the Palestinian refugee problem. That is almost never discussed. Does that lessen the moral urgency of addressing the Palestinian problem? Probably not. But it should, at least, add nuance to the conversation about how to do so by highlighting that the causes of the problem are far more complex than many would like to acknowledge.

Other “massacres” that probably didn’t happen
Finally, it bears mention that Tauber’s book is part of a wider trend among some Israeli scholars who are upending long-held assumptions about massacres during the War of Independence and beyond. Another example is Martin Kramer’s masterful re-evaluation of the question of “What Happened at Lydda?”

You may recall that years ago, when Ari Shavit published a chapter of his (in many ways excellent and lyrical) book, My Promised Land, in the New Yorker, the chapter published was the one about the “massacre” at Lydda, also during the War of Independence, about which he wrote,

“In thirty minutes, two hundred and fifty Palestinians were killed. Zionism had carried out a massacre in the city of Lydda.”

That latter sentence infuriated many, since even if there was a massacre in Lydda, what did it meant to say that “Zionism” (rather than bad soldiers, for example) had committed the massacre?

That controversy festered for years, but it was only when Martin Kramer, the noted Israeli historian, began to look into the sources, that he, too, raised many doubts about whether there had been a massacre. Many deaths? Without question. An intentional massacre? In this case, very likely not.

With the publication of Tauber’s The Massacre that Never Happened, Tauber’s account of Deir Yassin and Kramer’s work on Lydda are now both available to the English speaking public. With the evidence so accessible, are those who accuse Israel of massacres going to read and re-think, or will they continue full steam ahead in accusing Israel of crimes that may well never have been committed?

That’s not the sort of question that Tauber nor Kramer address.

But then, again, we already know the answer.

Hamas lauds Sydney Festival boycotters

THE terrorist group Hamas has praised the artists who have chosen to boycott the Sydney Festival.

Comedians Judith Lucy, Tom Ballard and Nazeem Hussein, the Darlinghurst and Belvoir Street theatre companies and First Nations dance company Marrugeku are among more than 20 artists who have pulled out of the festival due to the Israeli Embassy providing $20,000 in sponsorship for the dance performance Decadance – created by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin – which opened at the Opera House to rave reviews.

According to the Palestinian Information Center, Hamas said in a statement late last week, “We commend and appreciate this decision that came in solidarity with the Palestinians’ legitimate rights, and in opposition to the Israeli crimes against our Palestinian people.

“We declare our solidarity with the participants who have withdrawn from the festival, and we call on all participants to raise their voices in face of oppression and injustice.”

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim said it was “now plain” that the boycotters have “unwittingly furthered the cause of the misogynists and homophobes of Hamas in seeking the obliteration of Israel”.

“A more accurate description of the ends their actions are serving would be ‘Artists for Genocide’,” he said.

Hamas perpetuated dozens of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians during the second intifada and since taking over Gaza in 2006 has fired thousands of rockets at Israeli population centres.

The Critical Role of Demography in the Middle East

The Jewish majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is stronger than ever, among other factors because of immigration from Russia and Ethiopia, and rising birth rates in the Jewish sector.

In Syria, Sunnis represented 60% of the population on the eve of the civil war, compared to President Assad's Alawite sect, which comprised 12%. The Assad regime and its allies, Russia and Iran, carried out an ethnic cleansing during which nearly 1/3 of the population - 8 million people, the vast majority of whom were Sunnis - were either expelled or fled. 10 million Syrians currently reside under Assad's control, and the percentage of Alawites has doubled to 25%, if not more.

In Iraq, the percentage of Shiites who rule the country has grown to 65%, with the remainder comprising Kurds and Sunni Arabs who have been relegated to secondary status and many of whom have fled to Jordan and even Syria.

In Lebanon, the Shiites have become the largest sect in the country, nearly 1/3 of the population, while the Christians represent 1/4,and the Sunnis and the Druze represent 1/3 of the population. One in every three Lebanese (2 million out of a population of 6 million) is a Syrian or Palestinian.

In Jordan, 1/3 (4 million out of a population of 11 million) are refugees from Iraq or Syria.

The Fertile Crescent is no longer as Sunni as it was for a thousand years. This serves the hegemonic interests of Iran.

Yesterday I reported that an official page at Morocco's Religious Affairs Ministry included an admiring article about an Arabic translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

It turns out that there are plenty of other examples of state antisemitism on that site.

While most of Morocco's official websites are complimentary to Jews and talk about coexistence, the Religious Affairs Ministry site has a definite problem with Jews.

An article describes how crypto-Jews in the Ottoman Empire converted to Islam in order to subvert the nation and turn it towards Western ways, like changing the weekend from Friday to Sunday. It also says that Jews control the media worldwide.

Another expands on the popular Arab theme of how much Zionists hated Mizrahi Jews, making this absurd claim: "In October 1948, the Jewish Agency decided to stop the immigration of Eastern Arab Jews to Israel, and its spokesmen declared the following: 'We must not forget that the State of Israel was established on the Palestinian lands to solve the problem of Ashkenazi Jews.'" Then the Zionists changed their minds, the article says, because they couldn't attract enough Ashkenazi Jews.

This article about the tiny and irrelevant anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism starts off with classic antisemitic tropes:

Despite the strength and tyranny of the World Zionist Party and its control over many means of propaganda and media, and its control over the political and economic machine in many capitals of Western Europe, there is a group of Jews who have had enough courage to challenge it and challenge its domination.

Then we have "The Hostile Attitude of the Jews towards the Holy Prophet," an example of pure antisemitic incitement, which starts off with:

Some people think that the war between Arabs and Jews is: the war of Arab nationalism on one side and Jewish nationalism on the other, and that the cause of the sinful Zionist aggression is: the love of Jewish national expansion at the expense of the Arab countries, as they are Arab countries only!
So...some people think. But the truth is: The Jews’ motive for recurring aggression is the mean religious hatred that their innate nature - since their first day - has been imprinted on, and which they inherited from their ancient forefathers.
The present war is: a war between Islam and Judaism, frankly and without the veil, and if the Arab countries embraced a religion other than Islam, they would not see aggression.

The article also says "Jews carry in their hearts the black hatred of all humanity, and believe that they are the dear children of God, and the rest of the people were from the breeds of mules and donkeys."

Another says that the Western Wall has no holiness for Jews, and they made up a story that it was sacred to them so that they could use it as a means to take over all of Jerusalem.

And here's one that starts with an admiring quote from a 1928 book:

The Jews traditionally hate other religions, and from this hatred arose in them a greed to plot against all humankind. From this plot they come to work for the demise of every non-Israeli entity and its replacement by a Zionist international rule. This is their plan that they followed.

These are just some of the articles, and only ones that talk about Jews. They also have a lot of articles about how Zionists and Israel are evil.

It seems incongruous that the official websites of a nation Israel is at peace with should still include so many examples of pure Jew-hatred and incitement.

Last week:

The Netherlands stopped its funding of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), one of six Palestinian NGOs Israel banned last year due to ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization.

The Dutch government had donated €21.5 million to UAWC, but suspended funding in 2020 after two senior UAWC officials were indicted for taking part in a bombing that killed Rina Shnerb, 17, in August 2019.

In a letter to the Dutch parliament released on Wednesday, two ministers wrote that the investigation found that 34 UAWC employees were active in the PFLP in 2007-2020, some at the same time as holding leadership positions in the terrorist group.

"The large number of board members of UAWC with a dual mandate is particularly worrying," Development Cooperation Minister Tom de Bruijn and Foreign Affairs Minister Ben Knapen wrote.
However, contrary to what Israel has said, the Dutch investigation did not find that UAWC itself was linked to the PFLP, organizationally or financially.

Still, the Dutch government criticized the UAWC board, saying that its behavior was a betrayal of trust. The ministers pointed out that the NGO’s own guidelines say employees may not be politically active and said the board should have been more transparent about those ties, and as such, they have decided to permanently stop funding UAWC.

The report also finds that several other Palestinian organizations could be viewed as "the social branch of the PFLP,” and De Bruijn wrote that the Dutch cabinet will look at its donations to other Palestinian NGOs, as well.

The ties between the PFLP and UAWC are fairly clear: The PFLP founded the NGO.

The Fatah website identified the UAWC as an "affiliate" of the PFLP (along with the Union of

Health Work Committees and the Addameer Foundation.) Abdel-Raziq Hassan Yassin Farraj, another PFLP member, was the financial and administrative director at the UAWC according to this site.

This biography of Rabah Hassan Abdel Aziz Muhanna shows the close ties between the PFLP, terrorism and these NGOs. Note the timeline where he remained involved in terror even after helping found these NGOs:

Muhanna worked as a doctor at Shifa Hospital in Gaza in 1972, and as a consultant in endocrinology and diabetes. Muhanna belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1979. He participated in founding the Union of Health Work Committees in 1985, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees in 1986, the Addameer Foundation for Prisoner Care and Human Rights in 1991, and the Return Hospital of the Health Work Committees in Jabalia in 1997. Muhanna was a deputy President of the Medical Society between 1981-1991, Vice-President of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in the Gaza Strip and member of its board of directors, and member of the Palestinian Higher Health Council between (1993-1996). In 2000, he participated in the Sixth Conference of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and was elected A member of its political bureau, he became its official in the Gaza Strip. He ran for the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 for the Gaza district, but he did not win.

There is no distinction in Palestinian society between membership in terror groups and working in NGOs.

The Palestinian Authority protested the decision today, calling on the Dutch government to cancel its decision. It's press release is interesting, because it says, "This decision would open the door wide to the Israeli occupation of the widest attack on development activities that benefit thousands of Palestinians in the so-called area C."

This makes it sound like the UAWC was directing land grabs of areas under Israeli control in Area C.

The UAWC is calling for a protest outside the Netherlands Representative Office in Ramallah tomorrow.

President of Arab World Institute rips BDS

We reported about some Arabs being upset at the "Jews of the Orient" exhibit happening now at the Arab World Institute in Paris.

A few of the exhibits are on loan from Israeli museums, and that is making some Arab artists and intellectuals freak out.

BDS France organized a campaign to boycott the exhibit, and they got some fairly famous Arab figures to sign on, like Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury, Moroccan director Farida Benlyazid, Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, former PLO official Hanan Ashrawi, and US academics Rashid Khalidi and Joseph Massad. In total they gathered 250 signatures of Arab intellectuals and entertainers.

The petition said the Institute holding the exhibition "would betray its intellectual mission by adopting this normalizing approach - one of the worst forms of coercive use. and immoral art as a political tool to legitimize colonialism and oppression ”

On Sunday, the president of the Arab World Institute and former French Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, insulted the BDS open letter and its signatories, saying that the petition was "laughable."

"It's a reaction that seeks to divert this exhibition from its deep meaning, which has nothing to do with this or that political debate," said Lang, in a radio interview. He noted that out of 300 objects being exhibited, only about four came from Israel.

"It is a trivial and somewhat unfortunate matter, especially since I myself contributed to highlighting the Palestinian culture as no other person or institution has ever done,” the IMA president added. "It saddens me to note that people, some of quality, writers and philosophers, let themselves get carried away, a bit like sheep, signing a text whose veracity they have not even checked", he added.

Jack Lang is pretty much telling the BDSers that they are idiots. Then he added that their boycott is meaningless: "The exhibition is a hit and gets an enthusiastic response, and every day the crowd is considerable."

The Syrian Foreign Minister, Faisal Miqdad, met on Sunday with a delegation of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, who was led by Jibril Rajoub.

Fatah official Ahmed Helles said that the delegation will pass on a message from Abbas to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, emphasizing how great their relationship is "and the desire of the Palestinian leadership to strengthen brotherly bonds between the Palestinian National Authority and the Syrian Arab Republic."

Helles added that Palestinians supports Syria against Israeli airstrikes of arms en route to Hezbollah, saying they are "keen on Syria's stability and territorial integrity."

Syria has killed over 3000 Palestinians in recent years.

I guess calling for BDS against Syria is not on the table.

01/09 Links: Biden administration remains ‘deeply blind’ to inherent flaws of UNRWA, say Mideast experts; Hoodlums, Jewish teens and the BBC; Democracy PA style

From Ian:

Biden administration remains ‘deeply blind’ to inherent flaws of UNRWA, say Mideast experts

Wilf said that no matter what the Americans seek to achieve with their funding, the Palestinian perception is more important.

“The way that American and all Western funding of UNRWA is perceived by Palestinians—and again we have ample evidence of that in the book—is perceived as Western legitimacy for the idea that they are refugees, that the war of 1948 is not over and that it could one day be won to their cause of no Israel,” she said.

The money, she said, will serve as fuel for another generation of conflict despite America’s good intentions.

“I think one of the biggest problems of U.S. foreign policy and Western foreign policy is that they prioritize feeling good over doing good,” said Wilf. “And that this is a classic case in point. They feel good about giving money, but they’re actually doing something very bad. They’re literally pouring money that translates into many more years of conflict.”

Yet Israeli governments, with the exception of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have not prominently opposed the funding of UNRWA. Wilf said that this is due to a mistaken notion among the Israeli security establishment that UNRWA is a stabilizing force. Yet, she pointed out, it’s not a coincidence that the places where UNRWA is most active, such as Gaza and southern Lebanon, are also the areas where Israel has found itself involved in wars combatting terrorism.

Romirowsky pointed out that Israel doesn’t contribute to UNRWA; rather, it’s American taxpayers that do, making it an American issue where the United States should ask what exactly it is funding.

Wilf noted that is especially true in Gaza, where 80 percent of the population is registered as refugees by UNRWA, despite being born there. The funding of UNRWA by the United States and Western nations has convinced the Palestinians that their place in Gaza is temporary.

“This means that they have exactly zero incentive to turn Gaza into the Singapore of the Middle East or the Dubai of the Mediterranean,” she said. “Because Gaza, in their view, is not their home and every dollar that goes to UNRWA merely sustains and fuels the Palestinians in their view that Gaza is a temporary station. They can have it until they take back … ‘Palestine from the river to the sea.’ ”

Instead, Wilf said that the Biden administration would be better served by defunding UNRWA, making it clear to the Palestinians that they’re not refugees, that the 1948 war is over, and that Israel is here to stay.

The Biden administration, according to Wilf, should demonstrate that they would be “thrilled” to fund Palestinians with a goal of living next to Israel, rather than instead of Israel, but that it has no intention of underwriting a worldview that seeks to “eradicate, annihilate and erase an ally of the United States.”

Will UN go ahead with plan to blacklist companies operating in Judea and Samaria?

A spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs told JNS that despite an Israeli government transition back in June, "There is no change in the way Israel sees the UN human-rights office and there won't be until there will be a fundamental change on its side and the way it treats Israel."

OHCHR spokesperson Rupert Colville told JNS, "Unfortunately, we have not received any indication from the Israeli authorities that our requests for visas will be answered in the near future. Nor have we received any specific requests from the Israeli authorities in relation to the possible granting of visas. As a result, none of the 18 international staff are currently able to return … which is deeply regrettable," adding that his office has reached out to the Israeli government on numerous occasions, without any substantive response.

"We are continuing to engage with concerned UN member states and continue to reach out to Israel in order to sort out this unsatisfactory situation. But so far, these efforts have not borne fruit. We sincerely hope the visa issue will finally be resolved soon and that we will be able to revert to our normal working conditions … as mandated by the international community," said Colville.

Among the 112 blacklisted businesses, 94 are domiciled in Israel with the remaining 18 scattered in the United States, Great Britain, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Thailand. The American companies include international food conglomerate General Mills – known for products such as Cheerios cereal and Häagen-Dazs ice-cream – along with communications company Motorola Solutions and travel lodging website Airbnb, which delisted rental properties in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria in 2018 before reversing course under legal pressure.

The BDS movement has had no noticeable impact on Airbnb's current operations in Judea and Samaria or elsewhere, and none of the companies on the OHCHR blacklist have made any public indication that their inclusion has harmed their bottom line or that they plan to decrease their activities in any territory tied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The OHCHR said it had examined another 76 companies that were ultimately not included in the original list. It has given no indication yet whether it intends to follow through with an updated blacklist this winter.

An Israeli government source told JNS that none of the foreign members of the record 24 full-time staff expected to be hired for the current Commission of Inquiry should expect to receive a visa to conduct its work either. The commission's findings could potentially be used by organs like the International Criminal Court to bring charges against current and former Israeli government officials and military leaders – a process that current Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz reportedly personally requested that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas put a halt to.

"In my experience, the Palestinians do promise not to continue with their diplomatic terrorism to use international organizations as a platform to carry out their war against Israel, but they always retract their commitment," said Danon

Amid calls to boycott #Israel at #SydneyFestival, @joshrfeldman writes: “There’s no excuse in isolating and vilifying Jews.”

Op-Ed in The @australian:https://t.co/LHHEMaHE9m pic.twitter.com/um1PTFQHpt
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) January 9, 2022

90 years ago: A Jew is executed in Persia

From JTA, December 31, 1931:

After being kept in prison for more than five years, Dr. Shmuel Yeheskel Haim, who was the Jewish representative in the (Medjlis) Persian Parliament, (The Jews are entitled under the Persian Constitution to have one Deputy in Parliament) has been executed this week, it is learned to-day, on a charge of having been implicated in a conspiracy against the life of the Shah.

Deputy Haim was first arrested in May 1926; he was soon after released, but he was rearrested in October of the same year, and had been kept in prison till his execution now, in spite of repeated intervention made on his behalf by the Zionist Executive, who had in May 1926 appointed him on the nomination of the Zionists of Teheran as the representative of the Zionist Organisation in Persia in matters relating to Jewish immigration to Palestine.

It was explained by competent Jewish personages in these places who had been in touch with Mr. Haim that he was an ardent Jewish politician, who had been constantly protecting as a Jew against the Government’s persecution of the Persian Jews, and that he was also an active Zionist, and it was argued that it was probably more on account of his activities in these directions that he had been arrested. The Persian Jews contended that he was innocent of the crime with which he was charged, and that the Government was only anxious to get him out of the way because of his stand on behalf of the Jews of the country.

It has been stated that Mr. Haim’s real offence was that as a member of the Persian Parliament he had addressed a letter to the League of Nations complaining bitterly of the treatment of the Jews in Persia. The League of Nations, it was said, had addressed an enquiry on the subject to the Persian Government, whereupon the Shah sent for Deputy Haim and demanded that he should write to the League of Nations and state that everything had been put right. Deputy Haim agreed to do this on two conditions. The first was that the Chief of Police should be dismissed, and the second that the oppression of the Jews in Persia should really be stopped. The Shah resented these demands, especially, it was stated, as the Chief of Police is a close relative of His Majesty, and Deputy Haim was thrown into prison and sentenced to death for conspiracy.

Jews in Persia, 1918

The article then goes on to describe the official antisemitism in Persia:

He was put into Parliament by the Jews of Persia in place of Dr. Loghman, a Teheran physiclan, who was the first Jewish representative in the Medjlis, after the proclamation of the Constituion. One Jew among 120 Moslem Deputies, it was complained, he sat down and made no attempt to raise the Jewish question, to protest against the unlawful taxation imposed upon the Jews in the Provinces, to demand that murderers of Jews who are time and again allowed to go free should be punished, that the laws which have at various times been passed in favour of Jews should not be allowed to remain a dead letters. Finally, the Jews deposed him and put Deputy Haim into his place, and Deputy Haim started a vigorous reorganisation campaign of the Jewish Communities, school committees, relief committees and the Zionist Committee.

After his arrest, a prominent Persian Jew wrote of the position of his fellow-Jews in Persia – “oppressed, persecuted, treated with contempt and ignored in their own country, the Jews of Persia have been almost forgotten by the Jewries of the world, and left to their fate. No one knows of them, or cares for them, and they themselves have lost the power and the energy to do anything for themselves. Pensian Jewry has become a backwater in Jewish life”.

Numbering all told about 60,000 souls, the Jewish community in Persia leads a life of continual harassment and affliction, he wrote. Surrounded by a vast ocean of Mohamedanism, the Jews are looked down upon as something inferior and second rate.

The standard of Jewish education is low. There are no Jewish religious schools and no Medrashim in Persia. The only Jewish religious knowledge is what is taught in the elementary schools – a little reading of the Torah and the study of Rashi for a few hours in the week, including oral translation into Persian, he continued.

The article says that things had been improving in more recent years, but this execution indicates that Jews were tolerated as long as they didn't make too much noise.

When the utopian vision of a one-state socialist "Palestine" crashes into Palestinian Islamism

Both Western Leftists and Palestinian Arabs agree that they would love to see a single state from the river to the sea.

Neither of them admit aloud how different their visions of such a state are.

When speaking to Western audiences, the Left - whether they are Jews like Peter Beinart or prominent Palestinian Leftists like Leila Khaled - describe a socialist utopia where Jews would ostensibly be treated equally with Arabs under the law, but the state would be strictly secular.

Palestinian Arabs, however, favor an Islamist state run by Sharia law. To them, the Palestinian Authority is too secular already.

The last time Pew did a survey of Muslims worldwide, it found that 89% of Palestinians would want Islamic law - Sharia - to be the law of the land. This was the third highest in the world, behind only Afghanistan and Iraq.

A vast majority of Palestinians would like to see corporal punishment for crimes like theft and stoning as a punishment for adultery. A majority would like their state to give the death penalty for those who leave Islam. Most Palestinians say that it is a bad thing that their current laws do not adhere closely to sharia law.

There is nothing in common between these two views of what a single Palestine would be. The majority of Palestinians have no interest in the secular paradise that you see described in the pages of Open Democracy and The Guardian and Jacobin. Most Palestinians say that their end goal is not one state with equal rights for Jews but one Palestinian state from the river to the sea where Jews are, at best, tolerated second class citizens - and many openly advocate for deporting any Zionist from the country altogether.

Polls show that a mere 10% of Palestinians want a state with equal rights between Jews and Muslims. The latest political polls show that socialist parties like the PFLP and DFLP would only get 2% of the vote in any election held now.

Palestinians hate socialism. They prefer Islamism.

Palestinians do not want equal rights for Arabs and Jews. They want an Islamic state.

Everything written about a one-state solution in the pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times is fiction. The Western Leftists will trot out people with Arabic-sounding names who write passionately about a single state with equal rights for all as if they represent Palestinian public opinion.

Only rarely does the Left admit that the idea of equal rights for Jews in a majority Arab state is problematic. Edward Said, the intellectual father of the one state idea, admitted in 2000 that he couldn't see how Jews would be treated equally in his solution. "It worries me a great deal. The question of what is going to be the fate of the Jews is very difficult for me. I really don't know."

The socialist fantasy and Palestinian reality cannot co-exist. A single state would become a nightmare for Jews. Everyone knows it.

Which goes to prove that the Leftists who make their one-state argument in the West - and who do not make the same argument in Arabic-language media - are only paying lip service to equal rights for Jews. They want to see Israel destroyed, and they are willing to partner with their Islamist ideological opponents to make that happen. They paper over their differences and hoping that no one notices that they are supporting a Muslim ethnostate where Jews are tolerated if they behave like good dhimmits and persecuted if they demand their own rights.

There is only one reason the socialist Left and the Palestinian Right support each other: their shared antisemitism.

The Moroccan Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs has a lengthy article on its official government website praising an Arabic version of the antisemitic forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The article, which has been on the site since at least 2017, describes an edition of the book that was written by Ajaj Nuwaihid, a Lebanese historian who moved to Jerusalem in the 1920s. There, he became a close colleague of the infamous Jew-hating Mufti of Jerusalem and helped him start a political party in 1932.

The Waqf site summarizes the book:

Global Judaism is a demonic force with a secret organization, which likens itself to a snake, and this snake has a 9-stage scheme.

This plan started from the time of the Babylonian captivity 24-25 centuries ago, and the end of the last phase was at the end of this twentieth century, and in Palestine.

“Strength” in global Judaism is its ability to conceal its attributes from the world, and spread the mist around itself so that the world remains confused about the Jewish truth.

The most skilled thieves in the world, and if they mastered the technical trick of stealing, piercing walls, manipulating iron locks, acrobatic climbing in the dark, speed of movement, surprising with the barrel of a pistol, using drugs and covering their palms with gloves and paint.

Nuwaihid's book is not merely a translation of the Russian forgery, but it is an expansion of it, where he warns the Arab world about the plots of the Jews that can be seen in the Talmud and even back to how they destroyed the Amalekite "hero," Haman.

Nuwaihid ties the Jewish plot to modern Zionism, as most Arab writings about the Protocols do. According to him, they were disseminated in the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland:

In that conference, which included the most notorious demons and heads of demons, its members and sects competed, individually or in collaborators, in devising the most dangerous plan to destroy and exclude the world. The conferees studied a criminal plan to enable the Jews to control the world.

The article goes on to say the Russian secret police got hold of the Protocols by starting a fire that forced the Jews out of the meeting hall and allowed the Russians to grab the secret papers.

This Arabicized version of the Protocols says that the "satanic Jewish thinking reaches the domination of the world by a Jewish government after the sabotage of Christian Orthodox Russia, Catholic Europe, the Pope and then Islam."

(The theme that the Protocols were connected to Zionism is quite popular in the Arab world. This Egyptian writer claims that the Protocols were written by early Zionist pioneer Ahad Ha'am.)

This article is pure antisemitism and pure anti-Zionism, and it does not even pretend to distinguish between the two. It says "the undoubted truth is that one of the Jewish fingers lies behind every call that disparages moral values and aims to destroy the rules upon which human society has been based for all time." It gives examples of Communism (Marx) and existentialism (Sartre, whom it claims was half-Jewish.)

Morocco may have signed a peace treaty with Israel and it may be the most philosemitic Arab country, but that is not saying much when these sorts of slanders and lies can be published on an official Moroccan government website.