Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 12, 2022

Teddy Roosevelt's speech to a Jewish group in 1911. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

Two years after he left the White House, Teddy Roosevelt spoke at a New York dinner for the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. The New York Times, January 19, 1911, covered his speech.

Col. Roosevelt. said with particular emphasis that he believed that a few hundred years from now the Americans would look back with amusement at the "reluctance which one set of their ancestors had manifested at mingling with another set of their ancestors."

" I became acquainted with the east side, the greater part of the population of which is Jews, when I was Police Commissioner," Mr. Roosevelt said. " I earnestly wish that every American, for his can sake, could have the same experience. It taught me that the differences that seem to keep asunder the different peoples of this city are due to ignorance and misapprehension more than to any other cause. If we can only grow to sympathize with one another, we will quickly see that the things that divide us are superficial and the things that unite us are fundamental." The Colonel's remarks were cheered with enthusiasm....

All the diners sprang up from their tables and cheered when Mr. Roosevelt rose to speak. Mr. Roosevelt said: "I come here to-night to speak to you a few words of greeting, and to speak to you as fellow Americans.

"I don't feel that in acting as I always have to my fellow Americans of Jewish faith I deserved any praise. I would have deserved blame if I hadn't always treated them the way I have. I've met good Jews and bad Jews. good Christians and bad Christians. Whenever I have met a good man I have always tried to stand by him. Whenever I have met a bad man I've always cinched him. In both cases it would have been waste of time to have asked me to alter my course.

"I have been thrown much with my fellow citizens of the Jewish faith. When I worked with them I didn't know and didn't ask their faith. As I once said to a former member of my Cabinet--Straus, here - 'One of my favorite books is the Book of Maccabees.' White I wish most earnestly to do all I can to bring about the reign of peace, and wish the United States to do this, too, I wish to one peace with justice, and not weakness or timidity. I don't want to see the spirit of the Maccabees to die out.

"In my regiment at Santiago, after one of the fights, I promoted some men for gallantry. I knew nothing about them. Two I found out after were Catholics, two were Protestants. and one was a Jew."

One of the diners let out a shrill whoop, and Col. Roosevelt raised a laugh by exclaiming, "That's a real Rough Rider cry!"

"I didn't know or care what their religious faith was, all I wanted to know was whether, in a crisis, they'd 'stay put,' " Mr. Roosevelt went on when the laugh subsided, "Mr. Schiff probably remembers my visiting the Montefiore Home two years ago and meeting a member of my old regiment. That man was a Jew. He had been wounded in the first day's fighting at Santiago. I had sent him to the hospital. A few days later a rumor went out that we were going to assault the enemy's line, next morning. That Jewish soldier of mine left the hospital and came back to fight under me. I think he acted in an unconstitutional manner. You can imagine how that shocked me.

"When I was Police Commissioner I wanted the right kind of men on the force, but I never asked their religious faith. An English clergyman came over here to start an anti-semitic crusade. Some Jews asked me to stop his meetings. I refused because I am against stopping anyone from pitching into anyone else. Soon after, the clergy-man himself came to me and asked me to protect his anti-semitic meetings from interruptions by Jews. I sent thirty Jew policemen to protect him.

"In making the future American to be the highest possible type, it is our duty to accentuate the good qualities of each race and to reward each individual according to the high quality of citizenship he shows, no matter what his race is..

"There are countries where patriotism is shown by persecution. It takes the form of terrible outrages by Christians on Jews or by non-Christians on Christians. But this is an infamous form of patriotism and it is a source of degradation to the nation that does the wrong. No nation nowadays can rise by trampling down another. The motto on which we act here is 'All men up.' It is a much safer motto than 'Some men down.'

" Mr. Schiff alluded to my having Straus in my Cabinet. You'd have had to bring strong pressure to bear on me to keep him out. Perhaps I shouldn't compromise him by saying so. but he has always been a strong friend of mine. I must ask Mr. Schiff not to make this public in Wall Street, however. I'd have put Straus in my Cabinet anyway.

"But it was an additional pleasure to have him there because he was a Jew. The one prime lesson which should be taught to every man in this country is that if he acts like a good citizen the highest rewards are open to him.

"It has always seemed to me that the Jewish race possesses two qualities inherent in the old native American. The Jew is eminently practical, and .at the same time he is an idealist. But although both the Jews and the native Americans,have both these qualities in common, this mustn't keep them in separate compartments. The one quality I don't want to see developed in this Nation is the quality which applauds the loftiest sentiments provided they don't have to be lived up to.

" There is just one matter in which 1 want to see each race which composes this Nation show a separate identity. When I deal with a crook, I don't care whether he is a Republican crook or a Democratic crook. But I will always tend to hit the Republican crook a little harder because I feel a little responsible for him. It is the duty for all Americans to protest against dishonest public servants. But when a public servant of one nationality is dishonest his fellow-members in that race should especially punish him."

...Mr. Roosevelt concluded by saying that he was "only radical in trying to apply old moralities to new conditions."

" I believe in using any expedient the new condition warrants," he said. "I preach the old fundamental verities. My critics say I preach platitudes. The Decalogue is platitudinous—in theory. but not in practice. While we in this country need intellectual development, we need character more."

The episode that he mentioned with the antisemite was described in Tablet magazine in 2009, reproduced in The Atlantic, with another quote about the incident from Roosevelt:

"While I was Police Commissioner an anti-Semitic preacher from Berlin, Rector Ahlwardt, came over to New York to preach a crusade against the Jews. Many of the New York Jews were much excited and asked me to prevent him from speaking and not to give him police protection. This, I told them, was impossible; and if possible would have been undesirable because it would have made him a martyr. The proper thing to do was to make him ridiculous. Accordingly I detailed for his protection a Jew sergeant and a score or two of Jew policemen. He made his harangue against the Jews under the active protection of some forty policemen, everyone of them a Jew! It was the most effective possible answer; and incidentally it was an object-lesson to our people, whose greatest need it is to learn that there must be no division by class hatred, whether this hatred be that of creed against creed, nationality against nationality, section against section, or men of one social or industrial condition against men of another social and industrial condition. . . . "

01/11 Links Pt2: It's time for the UN to battle Holocaust denial; Palestine Deep Dive exemplifies the fantasy world of many on the left; Politics and combating anti-Semitism don’t mix

From Ian:

Emily Schrader: It's time for the UN to battle Holocaust denial - opinion

That’s where this resolution steps in. Ambassador Erdan’s resolution, supported by Israel and Germany, focuses on establishing an international consensus of Holocaust denial antisemitism based on the IHRA definition and calls on UNGA member states to take action against online Holocaust denial in their countries.

The IHRA definition is critical to Holocaust denial because it addresses the classical forms of antisemitism as they relate to the Holocaust, it acknowledges modern antisemitism, and how Holocaust distortion and denial has morphed into a new form of malicious hate under the guise of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist activities.

If you don’t see the connection, look at recent events. The Jewish community around the world is sounding the alarm, but the public isn’t learning the lessons of the past. In the aftermath of the Gaza war in May 2021, Jews in the diaspora were harassed, beaten in the streets, cursed at, spat on and threatened – with 60% of American Jews reporting they experienced some form of antisemitism during the operations in Israel.

Where does such vitriolic hatred against Jews come from? In part, the hatred comes from ignorance. In the United States, 63% of millennials and Gen Z don’t know that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, one in ten have never heard of it and 3% deny it occurred altogether. Sadly, it’s not just the US. One in twenty Europeans have never heard of the Holocaust, a third of them believe Jews use the Holocaust to advance their own goals and many believe that commemorating the Holocaust distracts from other atrocities today. In the Arab world, Holocaust denial and distortion is the norm, though trends are changing with the Abraham Accords.

While it’s true that Holocaust denial is already illegal in some countries, it’s time for an international consensus and a cohesive, multi-layered approach to dealing with one of the biggest challenges in Holocaust education today: Online antisemitism.

The UN must take a stand on this issue for the sake of the six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis and for the sake of humanity. Only by remembering the past can we ensure history doesn’t repeat itself, for anyone.

Palestine Deep Dive exemplifies the fantasy world of many on the left

Investigating the online media platform Palestine Deep Dive, of which Labour MP Grahame Morris is a director, I was confronted with a fantasy world. A world where the Jewish state was responsible for another Holocaust, for spreading coronavirus and even for “weaponising time”. A world where accusations of antisemitism could be a "smear campaign", or originate from the Israeli government.

To reduce Palestinian issues to the imagined crimes of Israel alone nullifies their relationship with the real world. A recent study showed that the vast majority of Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza hold their own leaders responsible for their situation. But despite having so many “voices” and so much content, this “deep dive” of Palestinian issues shows interest in little other than Israel's perceived role.

How could this self-styled "bold new platform" be so out of touch?

Perceiving the world around you through a singular, warped lens is an ideology and this particular one is called “antizionism”. Just as myths demonising Jews are not rooted in reality, antizionism fights against a mythical, distorted version of the Jewish state.

Since the Holocaust and founding of Israel, the Jewish Question - what to do about the status of Jews - is being reintroduced as the more socially acceptable package of antizionism, by denying the links to its ideological predecessor.

The rolling back of Jewish liberation is not up for discussion at individual or state level, and it shames the left that some are framing this as legitimate debate.

In 1975, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn told this story about Angela Davis, who, during a tour of the Soviet Union, said that Soviet dissidents "deserve what they get" and should "remain in prison." Solzhenitsyn called this cold-blooded cruelty "the heart of communism." pic.twitter.com/u1tSXUjPzi
— Christopher F. Rufo ?? (@realchrisrufo) January 10, 2022

New arts minister says Sydney Festival boycott is ‘censorship’

The state’s (New South Wales) new arts minister Ben Franklin has criticised the Sydney Festival boycott now affecting dozens of events, saying it risks silencing diverse voices and important perspectives at “great detriment” to society and artists struggling through the pandemic.

After joining the standing ovation for Decadance, the work controversially sponsored by the Israeli embassy, the minister posted on social media that he had significant concerns “about trying to shut down specific creative voices simply on account of their nationality”.

“Imposing censorship of this kind risks silencing important messages from a broad range of perspectives.”

A total of 27 events have now been withdrawn from the festival since the boycott was announced in November, according to boycott organisers. Ten artists have pulled out of events that are still proceeding and more withdrawals are expected.

The Houthis suffer major setbacks in Yemen

The Yemen war has been going on for so long, and it has been a long time since we heard anything besides Iranian-backed Houthi victories. So this is welcome:

Forces of Yemen's internationally recognized government have reclaimed the entire southern province of Shabwa from Iran-backed Houthi rebels, officials said Tuesday. The development is a blow to the rebels after government forces earlier this month made significant advances in the country's south.

The government, aided by allies from a pro-government militia, the Giants Brigades, and airstrikes from the Saudi-led coalition, pushed through Shabwa this month, retaking the entire province in a 10-day battle, officials said.

Military spokesman, Mohammed al-Naqib, said they have achieved "all targets" and pushed the Houthis out of the districts of Ain, Usailan and Bayhan.

Gov. Awad al-Awlaki also announced the "liberation of Shabwa," thanking Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — which fund the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis.

There was no immediate comment from the Houthis, but two rebel leaders acknowledged to The Associated Press that they lost control of Shabwa. The rebels fled to nearby central provinces of Bayda and Marib, said the two, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Taking Shabwa would enable government forces to cut major supply lines for the Houthis, who have been attacking the key city of Marib, the last government stronghold in northern Yemen, since early last year. The rebels have repeatedly pushed back against U.N. and U.S. diplomatic efforts to halt the Marib offensive, as well as rebel missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia.

Iran and their terrorist clients keep saying Israel will not survive. Here's why that's good news.

From Iran's ABNA news agency:

Head of Hamas’s political bureau Ismail Haneyya has affirmed that “the Zionist enemy has no future on the Palestinian land” and that “Palestine will remain alive in the conscience of the [Palestinian] people and the Arab and Muslim nations.”

Haneyya said in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV on Sunday evening that "there is no way other than the return of the Palestinians to their homeland and the villages from which they were expelled."

Iranian and Arab media have stories like this all the time. The most popular version is Iran's countdown clock for Israel's destruction, which is supposed to happen around 2040.

Who is their audience?

It isn't like Israelis are biting their nails and hiding in bomb shelters every time some terrorist says Israel is going to be destroyed.

The audience is clearly the Arab and Muslim world. And the underlying message is one that is quite positive for Israel!

As with everything else in the Middle East, one needs to look at this through the lens of the honor/shame culture. In this case, there is also the "strong horse" element.

Israel is strong. It is a regional superpower. It is officially at peace with a number of Muslim-majority and Arab countries, and has a tacit peace with many others.

Iran and Hamas and the others want the Muslim and Arab world to stop being friendly with Israel, so they are trying to convince them that relations with Israel is a losing proposition - and when Israel fails, they won't have any friends in the Muslim world. They want the Muslim world to think of Israel as weak, so they do not want to ally with the region's "strong horse."

The stream of articles forecasting Israel's imminent demise are a desperate attempt to convince Muslims not to believe their own eyes. They want to put doubt in nations that might be considering opening relations with Israel.

Every time Iran or terror supporters predict Israel's destruction, it shows that they are losing.

01/11 Links Pt1: The US is on the sidelines of a historic transformation in the Middle East; The general who coined the Abraham Accords; Israeli to play in Moroccan basketball league

From Ian:

The US is on the sidelines of a historic transformation in the Middle East

The Biden administration initially, while paying lip service to the Abraham Accords, made it clear that it had no interest in furthering the political integration of the Middle East — instead, focusing on seeking a renewed Iran nuclear deal. The administration’s rhetoric on the accords has improved lately, but the palpable momentum from a year ago has been lost.

Yet the Middle East is moving on with or without us. As Bennet’s visit to the UAE highlighted, the Abraham Accords are alive and well, and could not have come together at a better time. The Abraham Accords opened a flood of investment, with bilateral trade between Israel and the UAE increasing ten-fold to $874.5 million in just the first ten months of 2021. Dozens of memoranda of understanding have been signed, negotiations over a free trade agreement have begun, and the Emirati Minister of Economy has predicted a staggering $1 trillion in trade between the two countries within the next decade. Commercial flights now crisscross the skies between Abu Dhabi, Tel Aviv, Manama and Marrakesh.

This economic integration has now extended to Jordan, an earlier beneficiary of a peace treaty with Israel, with the signing in November of a trilateral water and energy deal. The UAE will build a solar power plant in Jordan to export energy to Israel for $180 million a year, and in return, Israel will send 200 million cubic meters of water to Jordan. Israel is thereby able to further its clean energy goals while applying its expertise in desalination to help address Jordan’s looming water crisis. The unsettled resolution of a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians continues to complicate relations between Israel and Jordan, but warming regional ties have allowed the two neighbors to seize a win-win opportunity to address existential water and economic challenges.

Nor are the benefits of the accords merely economic. In November the United States, Israel, Bahrain and the UAE conducted a joint naval exercise for the first time, in the Red Sea. That same month Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz flew to Morocco to sign an agreement laying the foundation for security cooperation, intelligence sharing and arms sales. This agreement builds on a cultural affinity between Israel and Morocco that long predated the Abraham Accords: Morocco has long boasted a tolerant attitude toward its historical Jewish population, and today some half a million Israelis claim Moroccan descent.

Even outside of the Abraham Accords there are remarkable political developments taking place. In another diplomatic breakthrough of the Trump administration that went almost entirely unnoticed, the rift between Qatar and its Gulf neighbors was resolved on January 4, 2021. This years-long rupture had debilitated the Gulf states in addressing multiple regional challenges, from Libya to Iran, and its healing has allowed Qatar to play the mediator in yet another diplomatic spat: that between Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The general who coined the Abraham Accords

How a two-star U.S. general from Puerto Rico earned the trust of the Emiratis to later help broker the Abraham Accords — and name it too

Despite criticism from some lawmakers and policy experts on the left that the normalization agreements are inherently flawed because they do not include the Palestinians, Correa asserts that the Palestinians are actually at the heart of the peace deals, even if they are not signatories to them. The Accords, according to Correa, were created as a way to pressure the Palestinians to come to the negotiating table with Israel.

“I didn’t fall, like, madly in love with the Abraham Accords. It’s not perfect,” Correa acknowledged. “But we’re better off today, because now at least the Arabs — some of the Arabs — understand the Israelis better, and Israelis understand the Arabs better. And the plan was that if we get everybody around [the Palestinians] to recognize the nation of Israel, then where does that leave the Palestinians? They’ll have to come, because they’re on an island.”

Following his retirement from the army last October, Correa is once again working for Kushner, this time in the private sector. He is a senior partner at Affinity Partners, a new investment firm helmed by Kushner that has brought in $3 billion in international investments following fundraising pitches to Middle East sovereign wealth funds. Kushner hopes to establish “an investment corridor between Israel and Saudi Arabia, by working with Israeli and Gulf companies and investors,” according to Reuters.

Correa remains a frequent visitor to the UAE, where he is greeted with a proverbial red carpet. Coates, who traveled with Correa in August of 2020 during his first visit back to the country after his 2019 dismissal, said, “the only problem he had is that he only had 24 hours in the day, and he had about 40 hours of people wanting to see him.”

Last month Correa spent two weeks in the country, where he attended a number of high-profile events, including a VIP celebration in the desert of the 50th anniversary of the UAE’s statehood, the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi and the World Expo in Dubai.

“He spends more time in the desert camping, falconing, taking camels out than I do, than most Emiratis do. He appreciates the culture. And our people appreciate that about him,” Otaiba gushed.

Correa knows his story is one that could only happen in America. A Puerto Rican kid who grows up in Kuwait, travels the globe as a two-star general in the U.S. Army, helps ink a major peace deal, then starts working on a new private sector startup? “It’s the American dream,” said Correa. “How many people from Puerto Rico ever get a chance to negotiate three peace deals?”

His only regret is that his father — the man who taught him the values that he would bring to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. — did not live long enough to see him become a U.S. Army general.

Normalization is the new normal for the UAE and Israel

The UAE and Israel share many of the same concerns about Iran and many of the same commitments and strategies — but not all. They are separate countries with differing interests and differing priorities. They don’t need to have identical interests and policies on Iran for a deepening of ties, just as they did not need normalization to cooperate on the Iranian threat.

In effect, the UAE faces the same dilemma that South Korea does regarding the nuclear weapons of its northern neighbor. Seoul, a densely populated city with an extremely advanced and developed economy, is within the range of North Korean missiles and fears that, in case of war over the North’s nukes, the South’s capital might suffer if missiles start flying.

Iran’s situation is slightly different. Tehran is unlikely to hit the UAE, or any of its neighbors, unprovoked. Unless the fighter jets that strike Iran take off from the UAE, Tehran will not drag its southern Gulf neighbor into a war.

Just like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait, the UAE would most likely be rooting for Israel in private and offering intelligence and other discreet logistical support if war was to break out between the Jewish state and Iran. Yet Gulf states remain cognizant of their Achilles heels — geographic proximity to Iran.

While security must have been one of the top priorities in the budding partnership between the UAE and Israel, it certainly has not been the only one. If and when the Iranian threat has been dealt with, peace between the two countries will prove to be durable, while economic cooperation will continue to fuel their strong relationship.

This expanding partnership, and even apparent disagreements on security, should be seen as reassuring. The UAE and Israel are two countries in the region with mostly overlapping security interests, but some notable differences. They are both wealthy, developed economies but radically different in their comparative advantages. They can cooperate in some fields to mutual benefit, compete in others, agree discreetly on some issues, and disagree politely on others.

A year on from the initial agreement, and despite all the sour grapes from critics and cynics, normalization seems to be, well, the new normal.

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."