Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 09, 2022

"Fighting Each Other": Caryn Elaine Johnson Explains the Holocaust (Judean Rose)

When I heard about the Whoopi thing, I thought, “She’s right. The Jews are not a race.”

Five minutes later, my husband asked if I’d heard about the Whoopi thing. He said, “You know, she’s right. We’re not a race.”

Dennis Prager appears to agree with both of us.

So no. It wasn't what Whoopi said about race that angered me. It was when she described the Holocaust as white people doing stuff to other white people, and worse yet, when she said (emphasis added): “Most of the Nazis were white people and most of the people they were attacking were white people. So to me, I’m thinking, ‘How can you say it’s about race when you’re fighting each other?’”

This is how Caryn Elaine Johnson alias Whoopi Goldberg describes the Final Solution.

“Fighting each other.” Tell me, Caryn. When was that? Because I missed that part of history. Was it when we were in the cattle cars? In the gas chambers clawing the walls? Being sent up in smoke? I am not at all convinced that "Goldberg" is ignorant of the meaning of her words.

To describe Hitler's Final Solutions as “fighting each other” is worse even than blaming the victim. In Whoopi's mind, there is no difference between aggressor and victim, Nazi or Jew. To Caryn/Whoopi, all white people are just . . . white people. What they do to each other is no concern of hers. The Holocaust? Just white people fighting it out.

Whoopi's description of the systematic extermination of millions of Jews as white people “fighting each other,” reminds me those who refer to the “Israel-Palestine conflict” to describe a situation in which Arabs terrorize Israeli Jews in order to steal their land.

Lies are lies. Call things as they are. Or don't, and expose your naked Jew-hate to the world.

It wasn’t white people fighting white people, it was Nazis killing JEWS.

It's not an “Israel-Palestine conflict,” it’s the Arab War Against the Jews.

Perhaps worse than the business with Whoopi are the stupid things people are saying about the "Goldberg" affair. Some examples:

1) Whoopi doesn’t know she’s an antisemite

Oh, COME. ON.

Her stage name misappropriates a classic Jewish surname combined with "whoopee," like "Big deal. A Jew." (Way to get attention Caryn Johnson--because without the eye-popping offensive name, you couldn't make it on your own).

Her recipe for JAP chicken depicts, or rather caricatures Jewish housewives as wealthy people who make servants do their housework, while they make themselves beautiful. Reminiscent of the old South?

She designed and marketed a Chanukah sweater of an octopus menorah, the octopus being a classic image used in antisemitic cartoons, to suggest that Jews are at the top with their fingers in everything, exerting control over the entire world.

And of course, the excrement she so lately spewed about the Holocaust. But some of her fans have selective hearing and choose not hear the disdain in her voice when she refers to “white people,” and lumps us all in one basket. Whoopi fake Goldberg doesn’t think Jews are more special than other white people. She doesn't believe they deserve any special compassion.

That’s naked hatred, baby. And if you are too stupid to see it perhaps you’ll do us the favor of not reproducing.

2) The Jews ARE a race because DNA

Did your momma drop you on your head?

3) B-b-b-but she apologized

Why do people give a pass to naked Jew-haters when they apologize in order to shush their detractors? Adolf Eichmann spoke Yiddish and a bissel Hebrew to ingratiate himself with his Israeli captors. This was also meaningless.

Learn from the past.

Look, I’ve tried to stay out of the discussions, for the most point. I don’t like arguing with people. Either they get it after a reasonable try, or they don’t. Whoopi is a racist, a naked Jew-hater, and the Jews are not a race.

But after a wonderful day of not talking or thinking about Caryn/Whoopi Fake-Goldberg, i.e. Shabbos, I booted up my laptop (with some regret at parting from a nice relaxing day complete with gourmet meals, snacks, and books) and found a request from a friend for my help. She knew it was Shabbos for me but when I got back on, could I please help her.

I looked and Oh GAWD. It was the Whoopi thing again with a bunch of bloviating fools spouting off on a comments thread, all so impressed with their own importance.

Except for my friend. She was being reasoned and logical, but couldn't get anywhere at knocking sense into their heads, a useless exercise, of course. She knew that Whoopi was wrong, but didn't know how to persuade the idiots on her thread. I actually thought she was doing a great job of explaining why the things Fake Goldberg said were vile, and told her so, but she wanted me to weigh in and so I did.

This was not my usual crowd and I wasn't sure what to say to them. I didn't know how much to say to them: how much they could absorb. So I just started writing and the following free-form essay/rant evolved. It’s not polished writing and it’s even a little repetitive, but I decided not to stealth edit and just share it here, as is:

The Jews are not a race. They are a nation, a peoplehood, an indigenous people, and a religion. Jews come from many races, just as Christians do.
Through the ages, the Jew was always the scapegoat whenever anything went wrong for non-Jews, and even when nothing went wrong. The fact that Jews stubbornly refused to convert to the much later religions of Christianity and Islam, caused a great deal of resentment.
These religions, which both have as their basis, the sacred writings and basic tenets of Judaism, were meant to be accepted as superior to Judaism. They were meant to supersede Judaism with replacement theology. The fact that Jews stubbornly refused to accept the superiority of these religions, clinging to their own God and their own commandments, made them an object of resentment.
Sometimes that resentment led to pogroms, where non-Jews would release tension by entering a Jewish ghetto and killing and raping Jews. Jews were not allowed to enter certain professions through the ages. Jewish musicians were forbidden to play certain musical instruments*. There were expulsions, we were put into ghettos, sent from country to country, place to place. And no matter what they did to us, we clung to our God; our desire to return to our land, which we never lost; and our Torah.
The feeling that grew and grew over thousands of years of resentment was that if only the Jews could be eradicated, the world would be a better place.
Hitler, may his name and memory be erased, spread the theory that the Jews were a race: a race of untermenschen. If you look up this word in the dictionary, it means: "a person considered racially or socially inferior."
Hitler said the Jews were vermin: like rats, lice, and cockroaches. They infiltrated and proliferated. As such, they needed to be eradicated.
By expounding the theory that the Jews were vermin, it became, in the eyes of the German people, and much of the rest of Europe, okay to exterminate them. The Jews were a malignant pest.
Before this, there was no concentrated effort to eradicate the Jews in toto. Murder went against the moral code that most people accepted, no matter their religion. But Hitler's theories, as expounded in Mein Kampf and other writings, gave moral permission to murder Jews. Because the Jews were no longer like other people, but a race of vermin.
If you look at old copies of Der Stürmer, you can see how the Jew is depicted as a pig, a rat, and various other types of vermin.
Hitler told Germans that they were a superior race, when they were no race at all. He said the Jews were an inferior race and needed to be exterminated.
Hitler even used the bogus science of phrenology in order to lend credibility to the idea that the Jews are a race. There were charts of the different regions of the head, showing how the Aryan and Jewish skulls differed. Supposedly, our skulls would give us away. That is, if circumcision wasn't enough. I imagine his idea was to show that just as black people and Asian people have different physical characteristics, so do Jews.
The entire point of all of this was to give license to kill.
Hence, even though neither Aryans nor Jews are a race, the Holocaust was definitely about race.
The irony is that Whoopi said that the Holocaust was about white people doing stuff to other white people. So if the Jews are not a race, how are they white??
The Jews are not white. First of all, we originate in the Levant, and many of us are swarthy until today. Because we were expelled from our land, and wandered the earth, we picked up other characteristics, mostly through rape. But also because people of all kinds converted to Judaism through the centuries.
If you have ever visited Israel, you will see that most Israelis pass for Hispanic. That is because most Israelis settled in other parts of the Levant after the Romans expelled us. They stayed swarthy, and retained our original physical characteristics.
I will tell you the truth. It was not the race thing that bothered me the most about what Whoopi said. It was when she suggested that the Holocaust was just white people killing each other. As if there were parity between the Nazis and the Jews. As if the Jews were aggressors, equal aggressors, and it just two kids in a sandbox fighting it out.
This is not what happened. You know what happened. So does she. The Jews never had any power or control. We weren't aggressive or fighting the German people. We were just trying to live our lives in peace.
But when the chips were down and the economy was in dire straits, the people needed a scapegoat, and that scapegoat was the Jew. By directing their energy to the task of exterminating the Jews via the Final Solution, Hitler mobilized the people and gave them a focus and hope. So they were all onboard with seeking out every last Jew, herding them into cattle cars and systematically gassing and burning them.
It was the theory that Jews were a race that gave them permission to do all of this. And it was never whites doing stuff to other whites or whites doing stuff to each other.
Whoopi is a repugnant person who appropriated an obviously Jewish surname, combining it with a ridiculous first name in order to make herself famous. She couldn't rely on her own name and her talent, so she exploited the Jews and made fun of them by adding that clownish first name. She was caricaturing the Jew, and it was not dissimilar to what Hitler did: imputing to them certain characteristics and making them a laughingstock, somehow LESS than people. Untermenschen that could be caricatured and ridiculed as a separate and subhuman "race."

Like I said, not polished or well-written. But apparently effective. Because not a single comment--in a very LONG and contentious thread--followed my treatise on the subject of Whoopi Goldberg, the Holocaust, and the history of the Jewish people.

They’d just been shut down by The Vard.

via GIPHY

*See, for instance: https://bje.org.au/knowledge-centre/basic-judaism/jewish-items-objects/klezmer-music/. Alexander II lifted the ban on “loud instruments” in 1855.

Amnesty and its Israeli Collaborators (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal

The recent Amnesty International report which accuses Israel of apartheid and crimes against humanity is demonstrably dishonest, tendentious, and so lacking in context to be unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, it has even been called “a paradigmatic example of anti-semitism [sic].” But this will not prevent its use as a weapon in the ongoing diplomatic and legal war being waged against Israel in the UN. As Anne Herzberg of NGO Monitor wrote,

These groups [Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem]—through their personal connections and singular influence at the U.N. Human Rights Council, and the acquiescence of Europe—instead will simply get U.N. Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk and the Navi Pillay-headed Commission of Inquiry [COI] to uncritically adopt their claims and mark them with the U.N. stamp of approval in the next few months. Unsurprisingly and in keeping with his history of anti-Israel activism (as well as in violation of U.N. rules), although he is ostensibly currently conducting an independent and objective investigation of apartheid, Lynk promoted the group’s report on Twitter. There is no doubt that the COI will act in a similar fashion.

Here are a few of Amnesty’s dozens of recommendations (p. 272ff.): Israel must repeal its nation-state law, “relocate” Jewish residents from areas outside 1949 armistice lines, cancel evictions of Arabs (for nonpayment of rent) and change the law so that “Palestinians” are not subject to “forced eviction,” grant recognition to all “unrecognized villages” in the Negev (i.e., legalize squatting on state land), remove all restrictions on freedom of movement of people and goods into and out of the Gaza strip, punish officials and military personnel for their “violations of international law” and “crimes against humanity,” and – last but not least:

Recognize the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to homes where they or their families once lived in Israel or the OPT, and to receive restitution and compensation and other effective remedies for the loss of their land and property.

It should be clear from the above that Amnesty’s objective is no less than the end of Israel as a Jewish state, and its replacement by an Arab-majority state. Nevertheless, we can expect in short order UN resolutions calling for sanctions on Israel and attempts to prosecute Israeli officials and IDF officers in accordance with Amnesty’s recommendations.

The accusations contained in the report constitute a große Lüge, a “big lie.” They are “supported,” in a parody of scholarship, by citations from their own previous reports, from anti-Israel UN agencies like the notorious Human Rights Commission, from documents provided by the so-called “State of Palestine,” from interviews with Palestinians, from the work of anti-Israel academics, and of course from numerous NGOs, including those that were recently outlawed in Israel because of their links with the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Amnesty is the largest player in the world-wide “human rights” industry. The organization operates in numerous countries and has an overall budget of close to $US 300 million. It started out in the 1960s with a pro-Western orientation, perhaps receiving funds secretly from the British government and the CIA. At some point it became more critical of the West; in 2011, it called for George Bush to be prosecuted over the treatment of 9/11 detainees. In recent years, it has focused disproportionately on alleged human rights abuses by Israel, perhaps as a result of hiring a number of anti-Israel activists for key positions. Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general since March 2021, recently had to disavow a tweet she made in 2013, idiotically accusing Israel of poisoning Yasser Arafat.

But Amnesty’s biased researchers had significant help on the ground. The Zionist group Im Tirtzu (disclosure: I’m a member and donor) analyzed the Amnesty report and found that 77% of the citations from various NGOs in the report came from 16 Israeli organizations, which are heavily funded by foreign money, mostly from the EU and its constituent governments. They are the usual suspects; B’Tselem, Adalah, Ir Amim, HaMoked, Peace Now, and others. Over the past 10 years, these groups have raked in more than half a billion shekels ($US 171 million) from the European Union and its constituent governments. B’Tselem alone got more than 62 million shekels ($US 19 million).

This is a huge sum and should be a scandal of major proportions. These organizations, despite having almost no support among Israel’s Jewish population, are able to exert great pressure in the legal and political realms. They have petitioned the Supreme Court to dismantle communities built over the Green Line, to prevent the demolition of the homes of convicted terrorists, to prevent the deportation of illegal residents, and so on. They seem to have good access to the Israeli media, as illustrated by the recent B’Tselem and Peace Now campaign to mainstream the idea that there is an outbreak of “settler violence.” But most importantly, they produce a steady flow of accusations against Israel to the international media and to foreign governments.

Whenever there is a military conflict, they swing into action to provide respectability to the propaganda from Israel’s enemies; and they provide the fodder for international condemnations of Israel, as happened in 2009 with the Goldstone Report. Much of the material they supply is simply a repetition of claims made by the PA and Hamas, which achieve credibility through the “halo effect” created by their passing through a supposedly disinterested NGO.

Why does the EU pay to maintain subversive anti-state organizations in Israel? Some of the officials involved may actually believe that they are advancing the cause of human rights. On a few occasions, when the connection to terrorism has been blatant, the EU or a government has suspended funding for a particular group. But they appear to be fine with the idea of supporting the Palestinian cause, the dissolution of the Jewish state, at least when no guns or bombs are directly and immediately involved. I believe that there is a deep feeling in Europe, possibly going back long before there was a Palestinian cause (or even Palestinians), that the world would be better off without Jews or, even more so, their state. Antisemitism has somehow morphed into humanism.

And why does Israel permit her enemies to support a subversive fifth column inside the state? I don’t know. Big money corrupts. Maybe enough Israeli politicians have personal connections to these NGOs, and they or friends and family benefit from them, and that’s why the laws that have been passed to regulate foreign money are weak and toothless. Maybe now, after the damage has been done, the Knesset will take action.

The Amnesty report is just another libel against the Jewish people, like the medieval blood libels and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. There is little that the State of Israel can do to silence its external enemies. But it does not have to allow them to pay her home-grown quislings to do their dirty work.

02/09 Links Pt1: Amnesty’s apartheid lies abet global anti-Semitism; The Moral Mismatch: Democratic Israel vs. Palestinian Dictatorship; Sudanese envoy in Israel to promote ties

From Ian:

The biggest lie of the decade

A poll conducted in 2021 by “Palestine News Network” found that 93% of the Palestinians in East Jerusalem prefer to live under an Israeli government rather than a Palestinian one. This is the strongest answer to apartheid - even Palestinians themselves prefer the so-called “Israeli apartheid.” Because they know the truth - they know that Israel is a paradise for them, where they can make the “American dream” come true.

The ongoing efforts by Amnesty International and others to define the identity of Palestinians and Arabs living in Israel is nothing more than a colonialist effort to tell a minority how they should feel and who they are. I think that the Palestinian people and Israeli Arabs are smart, vibrant, and educated, and they do not need help defining their own identity.

Amnesty International will probably never report on the real apartheid against Israelis. While Palestinians can freely enter Israel with the proper documents, I, an Israeli Jew, am banned from entering Gaza or other Palestinian cities. The last time a Jewish man entered Gaza, it didn’t go very well. Avera Mengistu, an Israeli man, is being held hostage by the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza.

It’s time to put an end to the biggest lie of the century - Israel is not an apartheid state. It’s true that Israel is not a perfect country, just like no country in the world is perfect, but the fact that international forums treat Israel like a punching bag is outrageous. Israel goes above and beyond to preserve its minorities and support the Palestinian people while at the same time defending its civilians against radicals who want to destroy the only Jewish state in the world.

Before anyone calls Israel apartheid, they should come to Israel and visit the thriving communities and speak to Palestinians. They will hear nothing about apartheid and everything about coexistence and diversity.

Gil Troy: The Moral Mismatch: Democratic Israel vs. Palestinian Dictatorship

Sometimes headlines don’t mislead.

Consider the contrast: June 7, 2021: “Palestinian Authority pays $42,000 to family of terrorist who killed 2 Israelis.” February 1, 2022: “IDF’s Kochavi: ‘Immoral, Reprehensible’ Conduct by Soldiers in Death of Palestinian-American.”

These dueling headlines pit Israel’s imperfect democracy against the Palestinians’ perfectly awful dictatorships.

Anyone expecting their country to be perfect is a fool; anyone claiming their country is perfect is a liar. Life is messy. No nation lacks scoundrels. You cannot judge a democracy by its criminal citizens, or by every evil that occurs on its watch.

Instead, you judge a democracy by how it responds when people sin — and whether its politics or culture encouraged the wrongdoing.

Notice the stunning gap in the discourse about Israel’s enemies and Israel.

No one expects autocracies like the Palestinian Authority (PA) — let alone the Hamas regime oppressing Gaza — to investigate when a Palestinian kills an Israeli.

The request, which Western democracies make meekly and infrequently, is essentially: “please stop cheering, please stop calling murderers heroes, and please stop paying them off or naming streets after them.”

Half of the PA’s foreign aid budget subsidizes convicted terrorists — what they call “martyrs” — and they are the supposed “moderates.”

In 2016, the American Task Force on Palestine’s founding president, Ziad Asali, told Bloomberg’s Eli Lake that these payments are “sacred in Palestinian politics.”

By contrast, what’s sacred in Israeli politics is the Israel Defense Forces’ Code of Honor.

By Daled Amos

It is nothing new for self-described experts in international law to join together to accuse Israel of evil.

A year ago, critics came out of the woodwork to claim that Israel had an obligation, under international law, to provide free Covid vaccines for all of the Palestinian Arabs under the Palestinian Authority. They pointed to Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, claiming it proved that Israel, as an "occupying power" bore responsibility for public health. In his article, Fake International Law Is the Newest Anti-Israel Libel, Eugene Kontorovich pointed out that those making this claim overlooked -- or ignored -- the Oslo accords, which provide that the "powers and responsibilities in the sphere of Health in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will be transferred to the Palestinian sides." He went on to explain that even on its own terms, the Fourth Geneva Convention would not apply.

Kontorovich also noted that among those who mistakenly claimed that Israel was obligated to provide Covid vaccines were Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

HRW and Amnesty International?

Those are the 2 "human rights groups," along with B'tselem, who are now twisting international law in order to accuse Israel of Apartheid.

But first some context.

This is not the first time we have seen international law weaponized to attack Israel. Far from it. We have seen misleading statements and inaccurate analyses. But we have also seen fake international law, where there is one standard for the rest of the world and a different standard or interpretation when it comes to Israel.

In his 2013 article, Manipulating International Law as Part of Anti-Israeli “Lawfare,” Robbie Sabel -- a member of the law faculty at Hebrew University, found no less than 10 examples where international law is manipulated in order to attack and discredit Israel.

Here is a condensed version of his 10 examples, including the "apartheid wall" (#5):

1. UN General Assembly Resolutions

UN General Assembly resolutions are merely recommendations and are therefore not binding. Just as they are not binding, those resolutions do not create actual international law -- and a state cannot be held to be "guilty" of violating them.

Sabel notes:

the claim is frequently heard that Israel is “violating” General Assembly resolutions. Apparently there is an interpretation of the UN Charter that is applicable only to Israel.

2. UN Security Council Resolutions

Just as with General Assembly resolutions, Security Council resolutions are not binding -- unless the council invokes Chapter VII of the charter, declaring that there has been an act of aggression by a state or that a state’s action is a threat to world peace or security:

The Security Council has never made such a declaration regarding Israel, nor for that matter has it ever made such a declaration regarding Arab aggression against Israel.

The Security Council, like the General Assembly, is a political body. Its resolutions are political statements, not legal judgments.

3. “Illegal” Military Occupation

In armed conflict, international law clearly allows military occupation. That may explain why the UN Security Council has never declared Israeli occupation to be illegal, knowing that occupation is legal in the case of an armed conflict. That was the case with the Allied occupation of Germany and Japan after WWII, and the US occupation of Iraq after the Second Gulf War -- the legality of the latter was explicitly confirmed by the Security Council.

Nevertheless:

The fact that Israel was acting legally has not, however, deterred its detractors from attempts to attach to Israeli activity the invented new international legal concept of “illegal occupation.”

4. The “Right of Return” of Arab Refugees

According to international law, a state's nationals have a "right of return" and the state, therefore, must allow its nationals into its territory. Some believe that right should also apply to permanent residents, but no state seems to have adopted such a position. Governments interpret the rule as meaning that the right applies only to nationals.

There has been an attempt, however, to repurpose this into “a well-established norm in international law and practice” which gives a right to all Palestinian Arab refugees to “return” to Israel, even though they are neither nationals nor permanent residents of Israel.

In the case of Palestinian Arabs, the very term refugee has been redefined to include all direct descendants, to the extent that:

The Arab claim is now that even though the person involved was born in another country as were his parents and grandparents and they may be nationals of another state and permanent residents of another state, nevertheless international law grants them a right to “return” to Israel.

5. "Apartheid Wall"

The separation fence built by Israel as a defensive measure against terrorist attacks is often referred to by critics as being a "wall" -- and by some even as an "apartheid wall." They point to the decision of the International Court of Justice in December 2003 that the fence is illegal according to international law.

What the court did not do, however, was make any reference or analogy whatsoever to apartheid. Neither did the court deny that Israel had the right to build such a fence in the interests of security. What the court criticized was the route along which Israel built the fence.

Noting how the various apartheid laws In South Africa were based on racial segregation, Sabel wrote at the time that

The crux of the accusation against Israel lies in the often-repeated charge that its racism “is symbolized most clearly in Israel’s Jewish flag, anthem and state holidays.” The accusers have not a word of criticism against the tens of liberal democratic states that have Christian crosses incorporated in their flags, nor against the numerous Muslim states with the half-crescent symbol of Islam as their state symbol. Again, there appears to be a special legal definition of apartheid where Israel is concerned. [emphis added]

6. The Legal Status of The "Green Line"

The 1949 Israel-Jordan Armistice Demarcation Line, known as the “Green Line,” is often used as the basis for negotiating a border between Israel and a future Palestinian state. But it is only an Armistice Demarcation Line, and when Israel and Jordan signed their peace agreement in 1994, the two countries mutually acknowledged the termination of the Armistice Agreement.

In accordance with international law, international boundaries survive the demise of the treaties that established them. This, however, is not true of ceasefire or armistice-demarcation lines. The temporary nature of a ceasefire or armistice line is such that their validity expires with the expiration of the ceasefire or armistice. Therefore, formally, there is no longer any legal validity to the Green Line.

Yet the "Green Line" is often manipulatively presented as a legally binding border.

7. Commissions of Inquiry

When the US, UK or any other democratic state establishes a judicial committee of inquiry to investigate their armed forces, world opinion views it as a reflection of that countries democratic values.

Nevertheless, when Israel sets up such a judicial commission of inquiry, it nearly automatically encounters demands that the commission must include non-Israeli participation. Thus, apparently, there is one international rule for Israeli commissions of inquiry and a different one for the rest of the world.

8. “Occupied” Gaza

Noting that Gaza is completely under Hamas control and subject to Hamas-created laws, Sabel points out that according to international law, for Gaza to be considered under Israeli occupation, it would have to be placed under its authority -- something it clearly is not. The blockade, which is in place for security reasons to prevent arm shipments from entering Gaza, does not constitute occupation.

Even according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC):

occupation could not be established or maintained solely through the exercise of power from beyond the boundaries of the occupied territory; a certain number of foreign ‘boots on the ground’ were required.

And yet the ICRC continues to contradict itself and maintain that Gaza is in fact occupied -- proving, according to Sabel:

Again, there appears to be a unique definition of “occupation” applicable only to Israel.

9. Laws of Armed Conflict

Here, there are 2 areas where international law depends on whether or not Israel is involved:

(1) Disproportionate Force

There are 2 requirements of proportionality in armed combat according to international law:

1. It is prohibited to attack a military target if it will cause civilian casualties that are excessive in relation to the military advantage to be obtained.
2. Measures of self-defense must be proportionate to the threat.

And then there is the third requirement.
The one that applies only to Israel:

3. Israel must not use weapons that are not proportionate to the weapons used by terrorist groups

For every other army on the planet, it is understood that they will use superior force and arms against the enemy.

(2) Civilian casualties

Although civilian casualties are practically unavoidable in times of war -- especially when weapons are kept in civilian areas, as is the practice of both Hamas and Hezbollah -- deliberately targeting civilians is a violation of international law.

However, as far as Israel is concerned, any enemy civilian casualties are presented as the result of a “war crime,” even though it is acknowledged that Israel takes immense steps to try and prevent and minimize civilian casualties.

10. Self-Defense Only against Attacks from States

Article 51 of the UN Charter, recognizes the “inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.”

But in the context of its decision on the separation fence, mentioned above, the ICJ came to the conclusion that Article 51 required that an attack must originate from a foreign state itself and not from terrorists operating from a foreign state -- although there is no mention in the UN Charter of such a requirement.

Sabel writes:

This strange dictum of the court has not been followed by other states, and one academic writer notes that “State practice strongly suggests that the international community has recognized a right to use force in self-defense targeting nonstate actors in foreign territory to the extent that the foreign state cannot be relied on to prevent or suppress terrorist activities.

These examples show a clear and consistent pattern of reinterpreting international law when it comes to Israel.

When NGO's like B'tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International recently attacked Israel as an apartheid state, they again resorted to the fake international law, even going beyond the accusation of apartheid that Sabel addressed.

A key issue, of course, is to first define what actually constitutes apartheid.

The challenge facing these groups is that South Africa has served as a model for what apartheid looks like, but that makes apartheid into a matter of racial discrimination, which would not apply to Israel's dealing with Palestinian Arabs.

So, as Elder of Ziyon illustrates, B'tselem fudged the definition in a leading question when it foisted their definition in a poll:

“A regime in which one group controls, and perpetuates its control over another, through laws, practices and coercive/forced means is considered an apartheid regime. In your opinion, does this description fit or it doesn’t fit Israel?”

This definition is of B'tselem's own invention, neatly sidestepping the Rome Convention, according to which

"The crime of apartheid" means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime; [emphasis added]

According to B'tselem, that definition applies to everyone else. But for Israel, international law can be fabricated so that it bypasses the inconvenient issue of race.

Human Rights Watch goes a step further. In addition to the Rome Statute, HRW includes The Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (the Apartheid Convention) which defines apartheid

“which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa” – as covering “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them”. [emphasis added]

But HRW then claims an expanded definition of "race" based on The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which defines "racial discrimination" in Article 1(1) as “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin" [emphasis added] -- which would then apply to the Palestinian Arabs.

This is where Elder of Ziyon notes that HRW deliberately omitted Article 1(2) which immediately follows:

This Convention shall not apply to distinctions, exclusions, restrictions or preferences made by a State Party to this Convention between citizens and non-citizens. [emphasis added]

The point is that the expanded definition of racial discrimination according to ICERD itself does not apply to the distinctions/restrictions that a country makes between their own citizens and non-citizens, something that countries around the world commonly do. In Israel's case, this applies to Palestinian Arabs living under the Palestinian Authority who are not citizens of Israel. Under ICERD, Israeli distinctions and restrictions on Palestinian Arabs would not automatically qualify as apartheid.

Amnesty International tries its hand as well to shoehorn Israel into being an apartheid state.

Like HRW, Amnesty International refers to ICERD too, but deserts HRW, admitting "it does not explicitly define apartheid." Instead, they claim that they are the ones that have found the law that proves Israel is Apartheid:

The public international law prohibition of apartheid is best found in an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice relating to South Africa’s presence in Namibia, where the violation is defined as “distinctions, exclusions, restrictions and limitations exclusively based on grounds of race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin which constitute a denial of fundamental human rights.”

The problem is that the ICJ was addressing the issue of apartheid -- it was addressing whether South Africa was in violation of the UN Charter or not:

130. It is undisputed, and is amply supported by documents annexed to South Africa's written statement in these proceedings, that the official governmental policy pursued by South Africa in Namibia is to achieve a complete physical separation of races and ethnic groups in separate areas within the Territory...

131. Under the Charter of the United Nations, the former Mandatory had pledged itself to observe and respect, in a territory having an international status, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race. To establish instead, and to enforce, distinctions, exclusions, restrictions and limitations exclusively based on grounds of race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin which constitute a denial of fundamental human rights is a flagrant violation of the purposes and principles of the Charter. [emphasis added]

The ICJ found not that those racial distinctions were apartheid, but rather that there was a violation of the UN Charter.

Once again, as it did in the case of Israel's separation fence, the ICJ again did not call the issue before it a case of "apartheid."

This difficulty that B'tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have in finding a straightforward definition of apartheid that they can apply to Israel may explain odd comments they make on just what they are trying to do.

Eugene Kontorovich writes that what Btselem claims clinched the deal, actually did anything but:

Btselem says what has sent Israel over the brink to Apartheid is the Nation State Law and political discussions about applying Israeli law to the West Bank (“annexation”). This is perhaps their most ludicrous statement.

Kontorovich's reasoning is that first of all, the Nation State Law was not an apartheid law. Its provisions relating to national identity are similar to those in many European democracies and secondly, "annexation" has nothing to do with apartheid.

Meanwhile, HRW claims their report

does not set out to compare Israel with South Africa under apartheid or to determine whether Israel is an “apartheid state”—a concept that is not defined in international law. Rather, the report assesses whether specific acts and policies carried out by Israeli authorities today amount in particular areas to the crimes of apartheid and persecution as defined under international law.

It is not at all obvious that HRW avoids comparisons to South Africa out of principle or simply because any comparison to South Africa invalidates their argument.

Amnesty International also makes a point of insisting they are not comparing Israel to South Africa:

Amnesty International notes and clarifies that systems of oppression and domination will never be identical. Therefore, it does not seek to argue that, or assess whether, any system of oppression and domination as perpetrated in Israel and the OPT is, for instance, the same or analogous to the system of segregation, oppression and domination as perpetrated in South Africa between 1948 and 1994. [emphasis added]

To which Elliot Kaufman of the Wall Street Journal responds:

Not even analogous? Then why use the word “apartheid” at all?

Good question.
But we all know the answer to that --

As then-CEO Jessica Montell pointed out in a 2003 interview:

I think the word apartheid is useful for mobilizing people because of its emotional power

Looks like we'll have to expand on Sabel's list.

From JTA, February 4, 1952:

Maj. Gen. G.L. Nold, Deputy Chief of Army Engineers, told the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee that the Army considers it undesirable to hire American Jews to work on bases in North Africa because Jewish construction workers might offend the Arabs.

For this reason, some 20,000 unemployed construction men in New York were by-passed for such jobs in Morocco and elsewhere. The New York State Employment Service said it would not screen out Jews, while officials in Minnesota cooperated with the Army’s request, Gen. Nold said.

A month later, the Secretary of the Army clarified matters - but they ended up being more muddied:

Secretary of Army Frank Pace has written Sen. Herbert H. Lehman that recent statements of Maj. Gen, G. L. Nold concerning the desirability of eliminating Jews from among candidates for employment on overseas projects “were broader than the facts justified.”

The Secretary of Army wrote that contractors have not discriminated against Jews who seek work on Saudi Arabia projects, but that such Jews are automatically eliminated because the Saudi Arabian Government will not grant them the required visas. He added that it was possible that Gen. Nold, at the time of his testimony, was of the opinion that the same or similar difficulties applied to all Arab countries. “Our investigation, however, discloses that is not the case,” Pace emphasized.

Secretary Pace also made known that the Army is still investigating reports of anti-Jewish discrimination on U.S. construction projects in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland.

Jewish groups said that this was hardly better:

Major Jewish organizations today announced that they considered unsatisfactory the explanation of Secretary of the Army Frank R. Pace, regarding discrimination against Jewish workers by Army contractors in recruiting labor for military construction projects in Saudi Arabia.

“We note, however, that contractors are, in fact, discriminating against workers of Jewish faith in recruiting for military construction in Saudi Arabia. Although the contractors assert that they are doing so contrary to their own wishes, and solely because Jews are refused visas for entry into Saudi Arabia by officials of that country, the net result is discrimination on government contracts in clear violation of Executive Order 10308.”

“It is our belief,” the letter stated, “that the government of the United States, if it is to remain true to its basic democratic principles, must advise the government of Saudi-Arabia that it will not accept the discrimination against U.S. citizens practiced by that country in granting visas, and will insist that Saudi-Arabia admit those American citizens hired by our country to work on military construction there.”

The Arab boycott was of Jews, not Zionists. It tried to get people who didn't hate Jews to change their behavior to adhere to the boycott for economic reasons.

Sounds exactly like BDS.

Palestinian Authority mourns three terrorists

After Israel's shooting of three known Fatah terrorists in Nablus yesterday, the Palestinian Authority has made it crystal clear that they support the terrorists.

They put out posters to make them look like ordinary people:

But there are other photos of the three posing with weapons:

It is no secret that they were terrorists. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade has said so very publicly. Their obituary praised them as being part of "a tireless march of struggle and jihad" and called them "heroic fighters who were not discouraged by all adversities from continuing to fight the enemy."

They had been responsible for several shooting attacks in recent weeks,

Yet members of the Palestinian Central Council publicly recited the Surat Al-Fatihah for the souls of the three terrorists.

There is no question whose side the "moderate" Palestinian Authority is on.

02/08 Links Pt2: My father Elie Wiesel would have been ashamed of Beijing Olympics; Lyn Julius: The Nazi roots of Arab anti-Semitism must not be denied; LA as the Center of American Jewish Life

From Ian:

My father Elie Wiesel would have been ashamed of Beijing Olympics

I know now that we have failed my father in this regard. He did not fail us. He spoke of how he always felt he had to answer to the dead: Did he do enough? And yes. He did.

He was there to speak up against atrocities in Darfur, Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda. He tried with everything he had to tell us. And all the words he spoke and wrote could not change the fact that five years after his death, 1 million people are reportedly in concentration camps, because of their race and religion, in the grip of a totalitarian regime — a regime honored to host the world’s nations, on a global television platform that packages sports with advertising.

Today’s culture of workplace activism is highly developed. In corporations and small businesses across the United States, Black Americans and their allies, for one, showed with emotion how cries against police brutality could be heard in board rooms and executive suites.

But are men and women of conscience reaching out to their managers at the corporations that sponsor the Olympics? Are voices inside corporate America respectfully but insistently calling for company conversations about their responsibility when they hear survivors’ reports of genocide on the part of the Chinese government? If they are, they are not making themselves heard.

There are brave leaders, like Steve Simon of the Women’s Tennis Association, who canceled a lucrative tournament in China when the WTA’s demands for player Peng Shuai’s safety and freedom went unanswered. Natan Sharansky and Bernard Henry-Levi, two leading Jewish intellectuals, took out an ad in the New York Times urging a protest of the Beijing Olympics; Jewish organizations across the denominational spectrum have spoken up for the Uyghurs; and Jewish World Watch is trying generate widespread action around the issue.

But they are still too few. I fear that China’s state-sponsored capitalism has silenced us through our greed.

My father believed passionately that speaking up mattered, especially to the victims.

Have I, blessed to live in this country which stands for freedom, done enough?

“Shame on Xi Jinping,” shouted the determined young people in Times Square on Thursday night.

And I think: Shame on me, if we can’t find some way to help. Shame on us.

Lyn Julius: The Nazi roots of Arab anti-Semitism must not be denied

The Mufti was, for various realpolitik reasons, never tried at Nuremberg. This meant that, unlike in Europe, Nazi-inspired anti-Semitism was never discredited in the Arab and Muslim world.

When the war was over, one by-product was the mass ethnic cleansing of almost a million Jews from Arab countries: Arab League states drafted anti-Semitic decrees eerily reminiscent of the Nuremberg laws, stripping Jews of their rights and stealing their property. The effect of Nazi incitement on an illiterate and easily swayed Arab population cannot be discounted. In 1945, pogroms erupted in Egypt and cost the lives of 130 Jews in Libya.

To assert that the Nazis and their Arab sympathizers had no connection with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is historically illiterate. The Mufti was, according to the scholar Matthias Kuentzel, the lynchpin between the Nazis’ great war against the Jews and the Arabs’ small war against Israel.

Nazism inspired paramilitary youth groups, such as Young Egypt. and Arab nationalist parties, such as the Ba’ath and the Syrian Socialist National parties, which still exist today. Nasser’s regime engaged fugitives from Goebbels’ propaganda office, Leopold von Mildenstein and Johann van Leers, among other Nazi war criminals, to spread vicious anti-Semitism in Egypt. One 1956 CIA report pronounced the Arabs “hypnotized” by their efforts.

Nazism and Stalinism both fueled anti-Semitic anti-Zionism. Arab intellectuals, such as Fiyaz Sayegh, who was once a member of the Nazi-inspired Syrian Socialist National Party, exported their anti-Semitic ideologies to the West. Sayegh linked the Palestinian struggle to the international left by pioneering the idea of Zionism as “settler colonialism.” He was the architect of the notorious 1975 ‘Zionism is racism” U.N. resolution.

The Mufti was far from the only pro-Nazi in the Arab world, as he is sometimes portrayed; the Nazis were hugely popular among Arabs. They called Hitler “Muallem” or “Hajji Hitler.” A major cog in the Arabic-speaking propaganda machine was Yunis Bahri, whose “Voice of the Arabs” became so popular that the BBC despaired of competing with his radio broadcasts when the war was over.

The form of Islamized anti-Semitism promoted by the Mufti became ever more influential after World War II. It was the central plank of the philosophy of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots, such as Hamas. Had there been Jews remaining in Syria and northern Iraq during the ISIS rampage in 2014, they would certainly have been massacred.

The Abraham Accords have been crucial in breaking down hostility towards Jews and Israelis, but there is still a deep current of anti-Semitism awash in the Arab world. To know the present, one needs to understand the past. But history is not hasbara, and it is ill-served by myopic and Eurocentric misconceptions.

Toxic generosity

The wisdom that democracy is not a suicide pact must be recalled, internalized and put into practice.

Several years ago, the Knesset passed legislation requiring organizations that receive the majority of their funding from foreign governments to report annually as to this state of affairs.

Now is the time to go further. Organizations that receive the majority of their funding from foreign governments, or entities related to them, should lose their tax-exempt status in Israel.

Of course, Israel respects free speech. However, there is absolutely no requirement that its government should, in effect, subsidize with taxpayer funds any speech that is designed to delegitimize the state. We are being self-destructive in the name of being an open and moral society.

Israel should also consider replicating the situation in the United States, where foreign government-funded organizations are required to register as foreign agents.

Finally, there should also be a closer connection between anti-BDS legislation and the delegitimizing efforts of these organizations, since their goals are very much the same.

We make a grave mistake thinking that, as a society, we are immune from the toxicity of that which European governments and their stooges here are seeking to accomplish.

Israel might be a strong country based on certain criteria, but we remain the “Jew among the nations,” and as such are vulnerable to demonization on a scale that is unique in the world.

We need to see the agenda of European cynicism for what it is, and not be complicit in our own delegitimization.

Storming Jews - The Next Generation

We've seen so many stories in Arab and Muslim media about "fanatic settlers storming and desecrating the Al Aqsa Mosque" (accompanied by photos showing Jews walking quietly on the Temple Mount).

But the same story every Sunday through Thursday gets a little boring. It needs a little extra - something, something to make the Jews look even more monstrous.

From Iran's Mehr News (English):

Zionist settlers brutally raid Al-Aqsa mosque

TEHRAN, Feb. 07 (MNA) – Zionist settlers launched a large-scale raid on Al-Aqsa Mosque and chanted anti-Islamic slogans in the holy place.

The Zionist settlers are continuing their hostile actions against the Palestinian sanctities, Palestine Al-Youm reported.

According to the report, the Zionists heavily raided the Al-Aqsa mosque on Monday and chanted anti-Islamic slogans.

A fierce clash took place between the Zionists and Palestinian citizens following their attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Look at how they are brutally raiding!

The parts about the clashes are fiction. There were none reported - if there were, Palestinian media and Haaretz would have headlined it.

When Muslims play soccer and volleyball on the sacred site, they are "worshippers." When Christins visit, they are ignored. When Jews visit and act respectfully, they are "brutal raiders."

Yeah, that might be a little antisemitic.

Here's an article that is utterly unremarkable - yet it is a message that is very rarely written in Arabic language media.

Elaph is considered a liberal Arab newspaper published in London. Today, Fadel Al-Mansafa wrote that Israel needs to make concessions for peace - and so do Palestinians.

His specific ideas are not as important as the possibility of Arabs reading this message that is commonplace in English and Hebrew, and incredibly rare in Arabic media:

Should hundreds of Palestinians die and starve in order for the idea of Hamas to live, which sees no place for Jews in Palestine? Should hundreds of thousands of Israelis live in fear of rocket attacks from Gaza?

Where is the humanity in all that is going on!? And for how long will we continue with the same methods that lead to the same results. Until the end of the world?

Peace and coexistence is the solution and the only option for resolving the Middle East issue. Otherwise, neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians will succeed in imposing the logic of force, violence and racism. Although I went on to talk that may be ridiculous to some, but it is the closest to the truth.

The moment when the establishment of the State of Palestine will not come without serious Israeli concessions. On the other hand, Israeli concessions will not come without an explicit recognition of the right of the Jews to live next to the Palestinians. Without excluding or denying the right to be on holy land.

The part that stands out, and that I honestly don't ever recall seeing in Arabic media, is an element of empathy. I have never seen an Arab writer even attempt to look at things from the perspective of Israelis. Empathy requires looking at the other side as humans. I've seen articles that insulted Palestinians, but none I can recall that expressed any empathy for Israeli Jews from any perspective.

It's s start.

02/08 Links Pt1: Amnesty hops on the UN Antisemitism bandwagon; Tlaib has paid out $170,000 to firm of anti-Israel activist; Biden’s BDS Activist’s Nomination ‘in Limbo,’

From Ian:

David Singer: Amnesty hops on the UN Antisemitism bandwagon

Only one statement in the Report makes any reference to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (1920-1948) that governed Palestine for the first 28 years of that conflict:

“… subsequent to 1967, Israel has exercised effective control over the whole territory of British mandate Palestine.”

Totally false.

Jordan – in fact - exercises effective control over 78% of the territory of British mandate Palestine. The Arab residents of former Palestine attained their right to self-determination there when Britain granted it independence in 1946. Not one Jew lives there. Selling land to Jews is punishable by death.

The Jews were left to exercise their right of self-determination in the remaining 22% of the territory of British mandate Palestine.

Since 1967 the PLO has demanded an additional area from this Jewish-reserved 22% - known as Judea and Samaria (West Bank), East Jerusalem and Gaza - to create a second Arab state in former Palestine - in addition to Jordan.

Every Jew living in these areas had been expelled in 1947 after Jordan and Egypt conquered and occupied these territories.

Arabs living in Judea and Samaria 'West Bank') and East Jerusalem were Jordanian citizens between 1950 and 1988.

The UN has falsely alleged that Jews have no right to live in Judea and Samaria ('West Bank'), East Jerusalem and Gaza and where so doing now - are acting illegally in flagrant violation of international law and are the major obstacle to peace

Articles 6 and 25 of the Mandate encourages close Jewish settlement in these areas and rebuts such claims. This internationally- sanctioned right of Jewish settlement still exists today by virtue of Article 80 of the UN Charter.

Amnesty International has acted with deliberate malice and put at extreme risk the lives and well being of Jews – and innocent bystanders - worldwide.

The UN-Amnesty International bandwagon is on a journey to hell as a result of their dishonest machinations against the Jewish People.

Jewish Groups Urge UN Not to Use ‘False Claims’ of Amnesty Report Against Israel

The blowback over a biased report by Amnesty International on Israel continues nearly a week after its release as 469 organizations and more than 4,000 individuals signed a strongly-worded letter on Monday urging UN Secretary-General António Guterres to make sure the report is not used to attack Israel within the United Nations.

Besides the 4,000 individual signees, the letter was signed by 172 Jewish federations and Jewish Community Relations Councils.

“The Amnesty report traffics in false claims against the sole Jewish state, distorts international law, questions the very existence of Israel, and ignores the violence and terrorist assaults on Israeli civilians—Jewish, Muslim and Christian,” the letter stated.

Released on Feb. 1, the report called Israel an “apartheid state” and even questioned the founding of Israel. It also urged the UN Security Council to impose a military embargo on Israel.

An overarching concern of the organizations was that the report would be used by the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry (COI) into Israel, which the organizations vehemently oppose. That could lead to yet another review of Israel—a “democratic country in which multiple faith communities live under the rule of law, participate in civic life, contribute to the economy and serve in the highest levels of government”—by the International Criminal Court.

The groups further urged Guterres and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, who was also sent the letter, to terminate the COI.

Learn the facts: Countering the sham Amnesty Report with truth

In fewer pages than Amnesty International took to smear Israel in a “report” they rooted in distortion and omission, Robert Spencer had preemptively set the record straight in The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process.

Spencer takes readers through an easy to digest, academic journey that stretches from before the reestablishment of the modern state of Israel, through today. The Palestinian Delusion shines light on the aggressive forces, and the appeasers of such aggressive forces, that have tried to inhibit Israel's success and devastate its people.

Amnesty International has joined in on an already established off-tune chorus in which slandering the Israeli state has become an increasing trend. They released their hit job months after Human Rights Watch released theirs. Neither report mentions that Islamic terrorists regularly target Jewish citizens with violent attacks that have killed more than a thousand people and injured thousands more in just the past couple of decades, or that Israelis have been prompted to tighten security to discourage such attacks.

Spencer provides the context that these sham human rights groups take pains to conceal. He details the harsh reality inflicted on the people of the only democracy of the Middle East and how the single-minded goal to destroy them, also harms Palestinian Arabs. “Mahmoud Abbas and his two sons control a business empire worth four hundred million dollars . . . the leader of Hamas’s political wing, Khaled Mashaal, is also a billionaire.”

Mashaal isn’t the only Hamas terrorist with a fortune, largely skimmed from United States and European aid money, funds that were meant to help improve the lives of the people, but instead, have gone into harming them. In addition to hoarding money to indulge in a lavish lifestyle that they deny their people, Hamas (acronym for their Arabic name, The Islamic Resistance Movement) leaders pay Palestinian Arabs to deliberately get in harm’s way.

Spencer details the Hamas injury reward system they implemented during the 2018 riots, riots that were erroneously reported as simply, protests. Hamas’s goal was to boost global anger toward Israel when the terror group tried to breach Israel’s border: $500 to any Palestinian who would get shot and $3000 to the family of a Palestinian who would get killed. Said “human rights organizations” didn’t condemn that, nor mention it in their “reports.” Spencer also included several stories in which Hamas got unharmed Palestinian Arabs to act injured or to get family members to lie about causes of death to direct erroneous blame at Israel.

Fabrications used to smear Israel have long been enough to turn public opinion against Israel. Spencer eloquently articulates that legend far outruns facts.

This is false. It is a blatant blood libel. @amnesty is just peddling in Jew hatred of the vilest kind. Next they’ll be promoting ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’ https://t.co/ek9w4gA3pE
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) February 8, 2022

We Need Justice International to Investigate Amnesty International

The outrage against this latest international assault on Israel has been widespread. Elliot Abrams called it “a shockingly dishonest document whose biases against the Jewish state leap off each of its 280 pages.” The ADL called the report “an effort to demonize Israel and undermine its legitimacy as a Jewish and democratic state. In an environment of rising anti-Jewish hate, this type of report is not only inaccurate but also irresponsible and likely will lead to intensified antisemitism around the world.”

We’ve gotten so used to these brazen and discriminatory attacks against Israel it just feels like Groundhog Day. But we can’t allow ourselves to slip into outrage fatigue. We should instead increase the level of our response.

Condemnations are no longer enough. The world needs an organization, call it “Justice International,” to investigate so-called human rights groups that consistently single out and discriminate against the world’s only Jewish state.

We must investigate the investigators.

I assure you they will be very busy, not only with this latest insult from Amnesty International but with the recent insult from the UN Human Rights Council, which made Israel the first-ever country to be under permanent investigation.

The best way to defend is to go on the offense. These vicious attacks poison Israel, fuel antisemitism around the world and endanger the lives of Jews everywhere.

These international groups that have a pathological obsession with Israel have knowingly treated the Jewish state a lot worse than they’ve treated the world’s greatest human rights violators. That is pure antisemitism. The only way they’ll stop is if they know there is a price to pay for such blatant discrimination.

If this means Amnesty International will spend more time going after the world’s most evil regimes, then Justice International will mean justice for Jews and justice for the world.

From Reuters:

Two potential successors to 86-year-old Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were named on Monday to top posts in the Palestine Liberation Organization at a meeting boycotted by his Islamist rivals.

Official Palestinian news agency WAFA said the PLO's 141-member Central Council appointed Hussein Al-Sheikh, 61, an Abbas confidant who serves as key liaison with Israel and the United States, to the PLO's Executive Committee.

He is likely to replace the late Saeb Erekat as the committee's secretary-general.

Al Sheikh is widely known in Palestinian circles as a serial sexual harasser and molester.

The Palestinian Kawther site says:

Mr. Hussein Al-Sheikh is the so-called “Minister of Civil Affairs” of the Palestinian Authority, a senior Fatah member and the man charged with keeping the coordination between the colonial israeli military administration in Beit Il and the PA. Using his lucky position, Mr. Al-Sheikh commits crimes of sexual molestation and abuse against women, often employees of the PNA.
Mr. Al-Sheikh could until now count on complete impunity for his crimes against women, as he perpetrates them with knowledge of “President” Mahmoud Abbas, who in turn is fully supported and financed by the USA, the EU and other western countries.
As has already happened in the past, it became known that Mr. Al-Sheikh again used the prerogatives of his position to sexually harass a woman. It is not the first time that such a thing happens, and it is not the first time that the PA keeps silence over criminal complaints lodged against him.
Mr. Al-Sheikh is considered by president Abbas as the most important minister due to his work with Israel, which involves issuing VIP Cards and travel permits of Abbas, PA elements, students, workers, sick people, marrying couples, burial permissions etc, so a few rapes here and a few abuses against women there are of no consequence.
The first time that his pastime became known to a wider audience was when minister Al-Sheikh molested the wife of a political prisoner who continues behind bars Israeli jails.
The second time around, he raped a girl in Tel Aviv. This victim was a friend of his daughter and the good minister convinced her family to join him in a picnic in Tal Aviv, a trip which lecherous Al-Sheikh then used to rape the girl.
The third time his lewd pastime became known, some weeks ago in September 2012, “Minister” Al-Sheikh tried to molest one of his female employees at the ministry. The woman is married to Ahmad Abu Al-Am, a former leader of the Al-Aqsa Brigades and a former Israeli political prisoner and a friend of Al-Sheikh.

The site mentions reports of other rapes and implies that Al Sheikh would trade highly sought travel permits, which he was in charge of, for sexual favors.

Haaretz verified the third incident and mentioned the others obliquely. It also detailed how Al Sheikh's family and PA security forces threatened the victim's family.

Al Sheikh remains one of Abbas' favored advisors and is the main liaison with Israel.