In the Negev, a few dozen right-wing activists, reportedly residents of the south and students at yeshivas in the area, set up a new outpost overnight Tuesday on state land close to the Bedouin city of Rahat.
Two prefab structures were brought to the location, which the activists declared as a “new community” named Ma’ale Paula in memory of the wife of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion had advocated for Jewish communities to be established in the Negev during the early years of the state.
Activists said that Ma’ale Paula was set up because of “the conduct of the government and the abandonment of the Negev to a Bedouin takeover,” a reference to illegal Arab construction in the region.
Two people were arrested, the Kan public broadcaster reported.
A complaint against the outpost was filed by the Israel Land Authority, the Israel Police said in a statement.
The outpost was demolished.
But:
The right-wing, pro-settlement Regavim group said in a statement that some 3,500 illegal buildings are constructed each year by the Bedouin community.
“Worse than the lack of law enforcement is the selective enforcement,” the group said, according to Kan.
In 2013, I went on a tour of the Negev with Regavim. The group is not a bunch of anti-Arab, right-wing fanatics as they are often portrayed in the media. They want to find a humane and legal solution to the problem of the Bedouin in the Negev, and they admit that the Israeli government has not treated the Arabs fairly over the decades. But still, the Bedouin build thousands of illegal structures and villages in the Negev every year, and besides my own video, I have not seen any English language news reports that describe the issue accurately at all.
This is not the most professional video I've ever done, but it is still the best description of the complexities of the intersecting problems of Bedouin ignoring the laws of the state that they are citizens in, Israel trying to find solutions - including giving them land for free, the criminal acts of destroying infrastructure meant for Arabs, and even polygamy. The sheer amount of illegal building in the Negev is mind-boggling and the news media rarely reports it.
Today, the problems is much worse than it was when this was made nine years ago.
You will not regret spending.the 12 minutes to watch this video.
An Israeli taxi driver, who is apparently Jewish, decided to get his car repaired at an Arab shop near Nablus. That decision almost cost him his life.
In a terrifying video, you can see a crowd of Palestinian youths surrounded his car, smashed all his windows with large rocks (and a tire), stole his phones and tried to drag him out of the car. One tried to stab him.
Al Marsd is a news site that is mostly read by Saudis. The reactions to the video at the site included many who were supportive of the Palestinian attackers.
From Shabwah, Yemen, I dedicate my greetings and respect to these heroic men who taught this unclean pig a lesson that he will not forget.
Those who defend the Jew, surely you are Jews like him
But other voices entered the conversation who were shocked at the video, or used it as a reason to attack Palestinians:
Palestinians are really terrorists. What is the fault of the taxi driver, may God curse them?
[sarcastic] Hitting an unarmed elderly person who is running for a living by taxi... God bless the men of Hamas, huh, death to the old man and victory to Palestine.
Palestinians are known for their barbarism and demagoguery
all of them are ignorant, barbaric, Palestinians
I hope after the video, Israel wipes out Gaza
Young people with immature minds, is there a law that criminalizes the entry of an Israeli taxi driver into your city? You enter occupied Israel every day and they allow you
The Palestinian is a cowardly being who lived on treachery, betrayal, selling honor and selling land...
May God strengthen Israel against you, you scum
Some say Palestinians have courage, by God, they are cowardly cowards, beating a defenseless human being
In general, there were more "up" votes for the comments that were pro-Palestinian, but there are plenty of commenters who really dislike the Palestinians.
The Holocaust is back in the news but not in a good way. Whoopi Goldberg made sure of that. By wrongfully declaring that “the Holocaust isn’t about race” she revealed the total lack of understanding that many seem to carry around with them.
She apologized but the damage was done. Misinformation was the result of her bereft analysis. The Holocaust targeted the Jewish people. The Nazis sought the extermination of the Jewish race. They not only wanted to make Germany Judenrein but the entire planet.
Holocaust revisionism has been surging of late and unless the Jews stand up and correct the problem it will only get worse.
The leader of Holocaust revisionism today is not Whoopi Goldberg but the current Polish government.
An article by Professor of history at the University of Ottawa, Jan Grabowski (1/30/22) makes this patently clear.
He writes, “Poland’s efforts to reframe history reflect a trend proliferating in other European countries to obfuscate the history of the Holocaust. In France the far right has made efforts to whitewash the record of the Vichy government, which collaborated with the Nazis.”
The Poles have taken it to a whole new level in an attempt to defend the “historical innocence of the nation.” According to a Polish poll from 2020, almost half of Poles think that Auschwitz is most of all a place of Polish suffering despite the fact that that a million Jews were murdered there.
Professor Grabowski points out the method of distortion employed by the Polish government. Monuments are unveiled honoring Polish citizens murdered by the Nazis for giving water to the Jews as they waited in locked cattle cars outside Death Camps like Treblinka where 900,000 Jews were slaughtered. Survivors of Treblinka testified that Polish railway workers and Polish youths stood close to cattle cars ready to hand over water- in exchange for gold or cash. Most did this out of greed, not out of compassion. In any case, the false equivalence of victimization is a hallmark of the new Polish revisionism. This is not to downplay the fact that the Poles suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazis.
Despite isolationism being a factor in US politics, the notion that no one cares about China is false. There may be a number of explanations for the severe decline in ratings, which are down 43 percent from the 2018 Games, for NBC’s broadcast of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Beijing. But it is also true that Americans are more turned off by an Olympics being held in a country committing genocide than the corporate class and Biden think.
There’s another aspect to the free pass that Beijing is essentially getting from the civilized world for its criminal behavior that is equally disturbing.
Most human-rights groups have condemned China. But is there any doubt about the fact that the international human-rights community’s real priority is its war on Israel?
Last week Amnesty International issued a report in which it falsely condemned Israel as an “apartheid state.” Groups that pose as the arbiters of human-rights advocacy are investing far more effort on a smear campaign that seeks the elimination of the one Jewish state on the planet than in their protests about the persecution of more than a million human beings. The complicity of the United Nations in this—it is launching an open-ended probe of Israel intended to make it a pariah nation and revive the old Soviet “Zionism is racism” lie—while doing nothing about China makes this all the more obvious.
Certain Jewish groups have always been deterred to some extent from speaking out as much about China as they did, for example, about genocide in Darfur earlier in the century due to the business interests of their large donors.
Others in the Jewish community haven’t evinced much interest in the issue because they think their sole focus should be on defending Israel and in fighting against the rising tide of antisemitism that is spreading across the globe. But the precedent for the use of an Olympics by a human-rights offender—the 1936 Berlin Games that were a paean to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime—ought to motivate us to action.
Jews are capable of standing up for themselves and bearing witness against other human-rights disasters. That was the point of Elie Wiesel’s teachings about the Holocaust. If we have forgotten that—or worse, never really learned the lesson—then his son is right that we are failing him and ourselves, as well as the victims of the Chinese Communist Party.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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 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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Elder of Ziyon
