Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, February 11, 2022

02/11 Links Pt1: MK Mansour Abbas: Israel is not an apartheid state; Glick: The ayatollahs' men in Washington; Biden Appointed Palestinian Government Lobbyist To Steer Mideast Aid Strategy

From Ian:

MK Mansour Abbas: Israel is not an apartheid state

Ra'am Party leader MK Mansour Abbas rejected the claim that the state of Israel was guilty of the crime of apartheid within its sovereign borders.

"I would not call it apartheid," he said during a virtual talk he gave at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Thursday.

He pointed out the obvious, that he led an Israeli-Arab party that was a member of the government's coalition.

"I am within the coalition," he said, adding that the option exists for Israeli-Arabs to also be ministers in the government.

He was quizzed about the issue during his talk, in light of Amnesty International's report last month which accused Israel of the crime of apartheid both within sovereign Israel and within the West Bank and Gaza. Human Rights Watch and the Israeli NGO B'Tselem have made similar claims.

Abbas was asked if he felt the term apartheid aptly described the relationship between Arabs and Jews within sovereign Israel.

Mansour said that the was not a fan of exploring the situation from the broad macro level such as apartheid or racism, but preferred instead to take a hands-on approach to solve discrimination at the micro-level.

Such accusations, he said, do not help resolve the issues.

Caroline Glick: The ayatollahs' men in Washington

Former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif recently co-authored a book in Farsi about the 2015 nuclear deal that tells us a great deal about how we should be assessing the nuclear negotiations taking place in Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 (the US, Russia, China, France, Germany and France). Titled, "The Nuclear Deal: The Untold Story of the JCPOA, Projecting Iran's Security, Rights and Development," the book sheds light on a critical question. How did the US come to accept Iran's negotiating terms on all the major issues despite bipartisan opposition to Iran's illicit nuclear program?

Iranian human rights activist Heshmat Alavi translated the relevant portion of Zarif's memoir on his Twitter account. Zarif wrote that in 2014, the regime decided to send a copy of their draft agreement to the other negotiating teams through "an individual in contact with the US delegation and an active International Crisis Group (ICG) member."

"The goal," Zarif explained, "was to pave the path for lobbying for our draft agreement."

Zarif wrote that the highly secretive move produced the desired result. After the ICG's Iran desk officer Ali Vaez received Iran's draft agreement, the ICG published its own policy paper, which he authored that reflected the contents of the Iranian draft. Vaez's paper, "Iran and the P5+1: Solving the Nuclear Rubik's Cube," was embraced by Americans and became the basis for the 2015 nuclear deal.

Until 2014, Vaez's boss was Robert Malley, who joined the Obama administration that year after serving as the ICG's Program Director for the Middle East and North Africa. Shortly after joining the Obama administration as Special Assistant to the President and the White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf Region, Malley became a leading member of the US negotiating team with Iran.

In 2017, Malley returned to the ICG as its head of policy and later became its president. Malley left the ICG again in 2021 when President Joe Biden appointed him to serve as his envoy for talks with Iran.

As Alavi noted, the ICG denies that it served as a lobbyist and effectively as a proxy of Iran, presenting Iran's draft agreement as its own. True or not, both Malley's and Vaez's records indicate that even if they didn't launder Iran's draft agreement to sell it to the Obama team, they have long been champions of the Iranian regime and apologists for its terror proxies. Both men support the full removal of nuclear sanctions on Iran. Last October, when Iran was still refusing to renew nuclear talks after the change of government in Tehran, and so signaled Washington that it would accept no meaningful restraints on its nuclear program, Malley said, "We are prepared to remove all of the sanctions that were imposed by the Trump administration."

Vaez, for his part, has defended Iran's nuclear program, attacked sanctions, and defended Iran's missile program, among other things. He has praised the current government, led by Ebrahim Raisi, known as "the butcher of Tehran" for his central role in the mass murder of tens of thousands of dissidents in the 1980s.

Melanie Phillips: How America is helping Iran get a nuclear arsenal

It’s hard to imagine that the Biden administration can be so stupid. What’s more likely is that — astonishingly — it is either indifferent to Iran getting the bomb or even actually wants it to do so.

After all, the administration is stuffed with people who are the enemies of Israel and the west. President Joe Biden’s envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, whitewashed Yasser Arafat’s duplicity at Camp David and has a long track record of sympathy for the Iranian regime and animus towards Israel.

And since it gained power, the administration has been pivoting away from its allies in the Gulf towards their Iranian foe. This near-incomprehensible position was explained last year in a devastating and authoritative piece in Tablet by Michael Doran and Tony Badran.

The appeasement of Iran, they wrote, could be described as the third and final stage of former President Barack Obama’s hitherto unfinished policy. This had sought to achieve a new Middle East order which relied on partnership with Iran.

The aim was for America to withdraw from engagement in the Middle East. To enable that to happen, there had to be a new equilibrium between states to achieve a balance of power. The authors called this policy the “Realignment”.

It’s not too fanciful to see this as Obama’s strategy, since Biden has remained close to him while key Biden staffers, such as Malley, are even closer.

With signs that the United States might be about to cave in completely to Iran and close a renewed nuclear deal, several US lawmakers have become increasingly alarmed and outspoken. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, last week argued for an hour on the floor of the Senate against reviving the deal.

Yet in stark contrast to the ferocious public opposition to the 2015 deal voiced by Israel’s former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there has been almost total silence from Israel’s current Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Last weekend, in what’s been described as a friendly phone call between Bennett and Biden, Bennett reportedly expressed disagreement with America’s Iran policy.

It seems that he wants to keep Biden sweet by keeping such a disagreement private. But without public pressure from the world becoming aware of America’s treacherous perfidy over Iran, which is endangering not just Israel but America itself, it will be far easier for the Biden administration to flick away Israel’s profound and all-too-real concerns.

After all, how can sober realists like Menendez gain any traction if Israel itself remains silent?

And meanwhile, as the US advertises to the world its terrible weakness, Russia and China are watching, and making their plans.

How can a child trapped in a well bring out the latent antisemitism of Egyptian officials?

Syed Qassem Al-Masry, former assistant foreign minister of Egypt, writes in Shorouk News that Israel is upset at the show of concern and grief that the Arab world had as a five year old child, Rayan, was trapped in a well in Morocco.

He brings no evidence for this charge, but he does create a bizarre narrative.

Since the inception of Israel, and even since the emergence of the Zionist movement, Israel has been striving to become part of the region. But how can it achieve this when the region is called “the Arab world?”

It is necessary to put aside this concept and search for a new concept for the region that includes Israel. Studies began to be published about the many nationalities inhabiting the region; The Kurds and Turkmens in Syria and Iraq, the many peoples and ethnicities that make up Lebanon, the Berbers in the Maghreb countries, and the many African ethnicities in Sudan and Mauritania. As for the countries of the Horn of Africa that joined the Arab League, not all Arab criteria apply to them, the first of which is language.. Therefore, naming the region “the Arab world” is a misleading designation [to Israel.]

Israel was not satisfied with only the studies, but started to implement it, so it put forward a new name for the region, which is “MENA” which is the first letters of the phrase “Middle East and North Africa” in English.

As far as I can tell, the World Bank was the first to use that acronym. But hey, Jews, banks, same thing.

He goes on to say that Israel capitalized on intra-Arab fighting and then came up with the idea of the Abrahamic religion, for the Abraham Accords - all to split the Arab world! (The "Abrahamic religion" as a means to destroy Islam is now a popular conspiracy theory in Arabic media.)

This is how Israel achieved the dream, and even more than it dreamed of. The decade of Arab unity was scattered and fragments flew all over, and Arab nationalism died and was buried, and there is no hope of reviving it except for those who believe in the transmigration of souls.
• • •
But suddenly the unexpected happened. A Moroccan child fell into an abandoned well in a remote area of Morocco, and if the entire Arab world was terrified, praying to God as one family, whose child had fallen into the well.. The Arabs proved - without pretense - that the flame of Arabism is still burning.. ,Yes, this is our nation, one nation, despite the nose of schemers.

So Al Masry says that Israel was upset that the Arab world was unified in its concern over little Rayan, which ruined the nefarious plans of Jews dividing the Arab world.

This is mainstreamed insanity.

Finding lies in random Amnesty report pages, part 3

I've been picking out random pages of the Amnesty report to see if I can find a lie or deception on every page of Amnesty's latest "apartheid" report.

I spun the wheel of the random number generator chose Page 191 is my next target.

Here is the beginning of that page:

Stone quarrying is Palestinians’ largest export industry, but Israel’s control of the OPT has restricted Palestinian access to these resources. In addition, Israel has refused to grant permits for new Palestinian quarries or to renew existing licences.[1047] Meanwhile, Israel carries out quarrying activities in the OPT, in contravention of the law of occupation.

That sentence seems to say that Israel refuses to grant permits to any new Palestinian quarries or renew their licenses as it takes over the quarries.

Footnote 1047 adds a crucial piece of information:

[T]he Israeli Civil Administrations fail[ed] to renew or grant new permits for Palestinian quarries in Area C since 1994.

Israel isn't restricting quarrying in the areas that Palestinians control - at all. Nor can it, under the terms of the Oslo Accords.

Amnesty is giving the impression of "occupation" when Israel allows full freedom for Palestinians to self-rule in the areas under their control.

Now, why might it restrict quarrying in areas that it is responsible for? Perhaps because Palestinian quarrying, while important to the Palestinian economy, is destroying the environment:

The environmental economics as related to pollution trend caused by SMI [stone and marble industry] is considerably high. This is in terms of the damages and adverse impacts caused by SMI to the environment, public health, and green cover. This can be attributed to the lack of control and monitoring system on the industry, and due to the lack of law enforcement. This requires from the Palestinian ministries and institutions in charge to undertake an evaluation of such damages and impacts resulted from the air, water, soil, and noise pollution caused by SMI. ....While the evidence from environmental and health points of view shows that pollution caused by SMI imposes an economic cost to the Palestinian society, urgent steps should be taken to control the sources of pollution originated from SMI. However, if nothing would be done to improve the industry, with respect to its laws and regulations, as well as to short-term and long-term strategies, the SMI’s impacts will be devastating.

Is Israel supposed to allow this pollution to be spread in areas under its control? Arguably, even as an "occupier," it has a responsibility to ensure safety regulations and control. And no Palestinian quarry would want to be working under Israeli regulations.

So this is a lot different than Amnesty made it look. Yes, one can interpret the phrase "Israel has refused to grant permits for new Palestinian quarries or to renew existing licences" as not to mean "all," but unless someone takes the time to look at the footnotes, the impression given is of a complete takeover of the industry by Israel. And as we've seen in other pages, Amnesty is actively trying to create that misconception while giving itself wiggle room that the sentence could have meant "some."

Amnesty claims it worked on this document for four years. They chose this language deliberately to deceive.

Anti-Israel rally in New Zealand last May

The following is a guest post from an author who prefers to remain anonymous.

________________________________________

Government-backed BDS support, links to the Amnesty report, and Holocaust denial in major institutions: What’s up with New Zealand?

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis has produced an excellent overview of people who publicly promoted the latest Amnesty report, showing just how predetermined the narrative was. From the Secretary General of Amnesty, who has promoted BDS; to the Research and Advocacy Director and Senior Adviser, who reverted to antisemitic tropes of Jewish power when questioned about the disproportionate condemnation of Israel.

However, all the senior Amnesty staff who have remained silent as the once-proud organisation embarasses itself are also responsible. I was fascinated to see that one of the Vice Chairs, Tiumalu Peter Fa'afiu, hails from New Zealand. This struck me as surprising, given the image of the South Pacific as a tolerant, liberal, part of the globe and a people who should understand indigenous struggles - including those of the Jews.

Digging deeper here I was floored to learn that Mr Fa’afiu spent eight years with the New Zealand Foreign Ministry. Surely Fa’afiu’s silence in the face of his current organisation’s antisemitism was not representative of New Zealand politics?

I was about to enter a surprisingly dark rabbit hole. The island nation next to Australia might project itself as a natural ally of democratic countries and it is a member of some of the pro-Western ‘clubs’ like the Five Eyes security alliance, but New Zealand does not, in fact, hold a great record when it comes to Israel or Jews.

New Zealand, I discovered, is one of the only Western countries to not designate Hamas or Hezbollah as terror organizations;

The New Zealand Sovereign Wealth Fund recently joined Ben & Jerry’s joining of the BDS movement by divesting from Israeli banks;

Bizarrely, New Zealand maintains an Embassy in Iran and in Turkey but has no embassy in Israel whatsoever;

New Zealand is perhaps the only Western nation to have actively avoided investigating its provision of safe haven for Nazi SS officers to its shores after World War II;

New Zealand is the only Western country to have awarded a University degree for a work of Holocaust denial;

The list goes on

What the hell is up with New Zealand?

It appears the country is a sovereign equivalent of Ben & Jerry’s - an apparently cuddly brand on the outside but a bad apple on the inside. Not, in fact ‘The Lord of the Rings’, but much more like ‘The Lord of the Wrongs’.

New Zealand has been chasing a Free Trade Agreement with the USA as a ‘key goal’ for a while. While New Zealand continues to undermine America by undermining our closest ally Israel, we should make it crystal clear that a bad friend gets no free trade access.

This issue is likely to make its way to Congress via senators in much the same way an increasing set of vocal Americans notified their representatives that Ben & Jerry’s needed censure. Ben & Jerry’s is just an ice cream company, but New Zealand has influence over a number of Pacific Islands and their votes at the United Nations. New Zealand represents a case where patriotic Americans, both Democrat and Republican, can send a strong message that the US is a real friend of Israel.

Please write to your friendly senator or member of Congress and let them know that New Zealand isn’t a friend of Israel and shouldn't be rewarded without pivoting its voting at the UN, its bigoted sovereign investment policy, investigating its safe haven to Nazis, revoking its Holocaust denial theses in its Universities, and proscribing Hamas and Hezbollah.

See more details at this link.

02/10 Links Pt2: To Combat Antisemitism, We Must Oppose Anti-Zionism—at Home and Abroad; CAIR Doubles Down on 'Illegal Surveillance' Charges; Israeli team to produce Disney+ show on Anne Frank

From Ian:

To Combat Antisemitism, We Must Oppose Anti-Zionism—at Home and Abroad

This ideology—antisemitic anti-Zionism—is on the march. It is an ideology rooted in ancient hatreds which targets for hate and opprobrium the modern-day State of Israel. And tragically, in the West, it is Europe—in whose bloodlands six million Jews were murdered eight decades ago—which is at its epicentre.

Last week, for instance, Amnesty International published a report which compared Israel to apartheid-era South Africa. Factually inaccurate and intellectually dishonest, the report has little to do with legitimate concerns about the plight of the Palestinian people. Instead, it's part of a continuing effort by some on the Left to demonize and delegitimize the world's sole Jewish state.

The "apartheid smear" originated in the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign, a movement which focuses obsessively and exclusively on Israel's "crimes" and which has done nothing to further the cause of peace in the Middle East. That's not their goal. As Bassem Eid, the founder of Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, has argued, "The agenda of the BDS campaign is to try to destroy Israel."

It has, moreover, inspired a welter of anti-Israel campaigning on university campuses which has stifled debate and led to an atmosphere of fear and intimidation among many Jewish students. Last November, the CST, which monitors Jew-hate in the UK, reported that 2019-20 has seen the highest number of antisemitic incidents on campus in a single academic year, despite the year being cut short because of the pandemic.

The Oxford University Labour Club's 2016 decision to support "Israel Apartheid Week" lifted the lid on the underbelly of antisemitism which had infected some elements of the student body. "The student left produces the most aggressive and virulent propagators of antisemitism on campus," wrote the former president of the university's Jewish Society.

The new hard-left leadership of the Labour party had empowered and emboldened a racist fringe which now attached itself, limpet-like, to my party.

Alongside others, I fought the scourge of antisemitism within the party for three years before concluding that I couldn't tell voters in my constituency that Corbyn was fit to be Prime Minister. Thankfully, the British public agreed with that judgment. Research afterward showed that the party's association with Jew-hate made it simply too toxic to support. A year later, Britain's human rights watchdog concluded its investigation by determining that, Labour had become "institutionally antisemitic" on Corbyn's watch.

Repairing the moral damage the Corbynites inflicted on Labour will take time and determination. But the sheer speed with which a small far-left fringe was able to capture power in Labour offers a warning to those who are complacent about, or willing to indulge, the activities of the "The Squad" in the Democratic Party. The case of Labour demonstrates the need to set clear red lines and to call out each and every instance of antisemitism at the earliest opportunity.

The lesson of Corbyn showed the need not just to condemn antisemites but also to hold their fellow travelers to account. Jew-hate will never be snuffed out in an environment in which anti-Zionism is tolerated and condoned.

Melbourne survivor takes Whoopi to task

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1924, Annetta and Stephanie – who passed away in 2019 – were transported to Theresienstadt in 1942. The following year, they were sent to Auschwitz, where Mengele, known as “the angel of death”, immediately started his experiments on them.

At the end of the war, the pair returned to Czechoslovakia where they learned their entire family had perished. They subsequently moved to Israel, before Annetta relocated to Melbourne in the early 1960s.

In the video, Annetta, who celebrated her birthday last Friday with her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, said, “It was about race. It was about my race and that of my sister and parents and all who can’t speak today.

“Today, I am the oldest surviving twin of the murderous Dr Mengele. I shudder to call him doctor. My sister and I were part of his experiments and no one can claim this did not happen. We lived to tell of the horrors we went through.

“My sister would say more and better, and I’m sure she would be proud of me for speaking out today. It is not easy for me to do this. She was stronger than me. I always cry when I think of our family and their terrible end.

“Whoopi Goldberg and all others, be careful with the words you choose and use. Be careful with the effect they have.

“In a world of fake news, be careful not to bring back the horrors of the past. The Holocaust was about the Nazis’ policy to rid the world of the Jews in the cruellest-possible way. The Jewish race.

CST: Antisemitic Incidents Report 2021

CST’s Antisemitic Incidents Report 2021 , published today, shows 2,255 anti-Jewish hate incidents reported nationwide in 2021. This is the highest annual total that CST has ever recorded and is a 34% increase from the 1,684 antisemitic incidents reported in 2020. This is the first time CST has ever recorded over 2,000 incidents in a single year and is 24% higher than the previous record annual total of 1,813 incidents in 2019. The UK has seen record annual totals for antisemitic incidents in five of the past six years. CST has recorded antisemitic incidents since 1984.

A further 752 reports of potential incidents were received by CST in 2021 but were not deemed to be antisemitic and are not included in this total of 2,255 antisemitic incidents. Many of these 752 potential incidents involved suspicious activity or possible hostile reconnaissance at Jewish locations; criminal activity affecting Jewish people and buildings; and anti-Israel activity that did not contain antisemitic language, motivation or targeting.

CST’s Incidents Department receives reports of antisemitism from victims, witnesses, or individuals and organisations acting on their behalf. Every incident reporter (who has not come through an anonymised police report) is contacted by one of the Incidents Team. Emotional support is given, as is sensible and practical advice. If required or requested, CST will signpost or refer the reporter to further assistance, including more extensive psychological aid in the event of a particularly traumatic incident. In 2001, CST was accorded ’Third Party Reporting’ status, which allows CST to report antisemitic incidents to the police and to act as a go-between for victims who are unable or unwilling to report to the police directly. Data sharing agreements are also in place with various police services around the country, which has proved vital in gaining a more accurate and detailed picture of where and how antisemitism happens in the UK.

The record figure of 2,255 antisemitic incidents in 2021 is driven by the significant spike in anti-Jewish hate reported during and following the escalation in violence in Israel and Gaza last year. In May 2021, the month when the conflict in the region intensified, CST recorded a record 661 antisemitic incidents, and in June CST recorded the fifth-highest ever monthly total of 210 incidents. Together, May and June’s totals account for 39% of the annual total. When there is a trigger event, it consistently affects the levels of anti-Jewish hate directed at the diaspora Jewish community in the UK.

Another random page, more @Amnesty lies and deceptions

I'm fairly certain I can find at least one lie on every page of Amnesty's report accusing Israel of apartheid.

Today I chose to look at page 111:

Palestinians in East Jerusalem are neither able to participate in political life in Israel nor in the West Bank.

OK, let's see the proof:

Although they can vote and run in municipal elections in Jerusalem, they have traditionally boycotted them in protest at Israel’s ongoing occupation and illegal annexation annexation of East Jerusalem [468],and they remain excluded from national elections.

So they can vote in municipal elections - and boycott them instead. And this is Israel's fault, exactly, how?

Empty polling location in Arab neighborhood

Most of them are excluded from national elections - the ones who don't become citizens. It wouldn't make sense for non-citizens to vote in national elections! And most of them refuse to become Israeli citizens. So, again, their own decisions are what stops them from full participation in Israeli political life - and Amnesty blames Israel.

Now, let's look at that footnote 468 referred to in the quote above, from 2018 article in Foreign Policy. It says something that Amnesty doesn't want you to know:

In July, Aziz Abu Sarah, 38, a Jerusalem entrepreneur who co-owns MEJDI, a tour group providing “dual narrative” (Palestinian and Israeli) tours of Israel and the West Bank region, was the first to present his candidacy for mayor. He ran as head of the Our Jerusalem party he founded.
But after a few months, Abu Sarah dropped out of the race. ...He was frightened by threats of violence against himself and his family—and it was coming from other Palestinians.
“At a press conference, I was pelted with eggs. On the street, thugs were harassing my family. My character was assassinated on social media, and the mainstream Palestinian press refused to even mention my name, let alone defend me,” he recounts. “I was called a traitor and a collaborator. I had to drop out.”

Makes perfect sense if you are a bigot.

Meanwhile, the Israeli authorities prevent any Palestinian political presence, including campaigning, in East Jerusalem, and have opposed Palestinian general elections being held in the city, despite this being guaranteed under the Oslo Accords.

The Oslo II accords describes how elections would be held in Arab parts of Jerusalem:

A number of Palestinians of Jerusalem will vote in the elections through services rendered in post offices in Jerusalem, in accordance with the capacity of such post offices.

...
(1) Those Palestinians of Jerusalem who will vote in the elections through post offices in Jerusalem shall be notified of the relevant post office by Electoral Registration card provided by the CEC (hereinafter "the electors").
(2) On arrival at the post office, electors shall identify themselves to the relevant postal personnel (hereinafter "the personnel") and present their Electoral Registration card.
(3) The personnel shall provide the electors with the following:
(a) two ballot papers, one for the election of the Ra'ees, and one for the election to the Council; and
(b) two envelopes addressed to the DEO.
(4) The electors shall mark the ballot papers at the post office counter, then place them in the envelopes to be inserted in receptacles, the size and shape of which shall be agreed between the two sides.
(5) At the end of the day, the receptacles shall be promptly delivered to the office of the relevant DEO. Such delivery shall be open to international observers. These receptacles shall be sealed prior to delivery.
(6) The DEO shall be responsible for the counting and totaling of votes cast through the arrangements set out above as part of the total election count.

In other words, they are putting absentee ballots in post offices where they are secured and delivered to district election offices in the territories. And for those who insist on voting in person at an actual polling location, they can travel not very far to go there.

Israel didn't stop elections in Jerusalem under Oslo rules. Abbas insisted allowing full voting sites in Jerusalem, and canceled the elections using the excuse that Israel wouldn't allow it.

Abbas wanted to go against Oslo - not Israel.

Amnesty lies.

These are hardly the biggest lies and misrepresentations of the truth in Amnesty's document. After all, I just picked one page.

But if it was so easy to prove "apartheid," why does Amnesty have to twist the facts so much?

(To choose my next article on the report, I'll use a random number generator to choose the page.)

BDS Preparing To Continue Ignoring Russian Seizure Of Ukrainian Territory (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Russian launcher London, February 10 - Leaders of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement targeting Israel over what they consider the Jewish State's occupation of Palestinian land announced today that as Moscow prepares to increase its hold on areas that belong to Kiev under international law, the movement will maintain its exclusive focus on Israel, and not acknowledge the greater loss of life, suffering, human rights violations, and other monumental injustices elsewhere in the world that dwarf those against which they claim to fight.

Prominent advocates of BDS stressed Thursday the importance of riveting their attention to what they allege Israel does, and not to let the atrocities and egregious policies of some of the most murderous regimes in history distract them from the singular goal of righting a supposed wrong that barely registers in the annals of human suffering, in the process of which they foment and encourage further suffering, much of it self-inflicted by Palestinians.

"We have never let other crises divert us from the central issue, which is Palestine," affirmed Omar Barghouti, who holds a Master's degree from Tel Aviv University. "China's occupation and cultural genocide in Tibet; its extermination of Uighurs in Xinjiang; its suppression of dissent in Hong Kong; Russian occupation of South Ossetia and large chunks of Ukraine; Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus - all of these and other large-scale crimes lie outside of our moral purview. Despite their accounting for tens of millions of casualties, and hundreds of millions of devastated lives over vast swaths of land, not to mention the erasure of indigenous identity and culture in those lands, whereas the Palestine conflict accounts for perhaps fifty thousand lives and territory the size of New Jersey, we maintain that righting the injustices facing Palestine demands more urgency. Some of us, in fact, dismiss that any of those other conflicts involve injustices at all. But don't you dare try to question the Nakba!"

"I've always said our movement, which is all about universal justice, always focuses only on Jewish occupation because you have to start somewhere," explained Ariel Gold, of Code Pink. "If anyone wants to start a BDS targeting Ethiopia over Tigray, or Myanmar over the Rohingya, or Morocco over Western Sahara, or... you get the idea, I'd be hear all day if I had to go through all the ones affecting more people than Israel-Palestine does - if anyone wants to do the same thing in other places, they can. No one's stopping them. I mean, good luck generating interest when Jews aren't involved, but they're welcome to it."

02/10 Links Pt1: Kontorovich: There's Apartheid in the Holy Land, but Not in Israel; UN covered up Assad’s killing of humanitarian workers; NGOs call on US aid group to stop funding use of Palestinian child soldiers

From Ian:

Prof. Eugene Kontorovich (WSJ$): There's Apartheid in the Holy Land, but Not in Israel

There are reasons to be concerned about the emergence of apartheid in the Holy Land but not the ones Amnesty cites. The defining characteristic of apartheid - what distinguishes it from generic racial discrimination - is the rigid separation of groups in public spaces and positions of power. Thus, a sign of apartheid could be a government policy that bans real-estate sales or transactions to the disfavored group.

Apartheid is suggested by policies that carve out massive zones where the disfavored group cannot live or work, create ethnically homogenous zones, and restrict the disfavored group to ghettos. One might consider it apartheid if a government enforced a policy of extrajudicial execution of members of a disfavored group.

All these policies are practiced in the West Bank and Gaza by the Palestinian Authority government against Jews. The "Israel apartheid" meme is not just a lie, it is an inversion of the truth. In all areas controlled by Israel, Jews and Arabs mix openly. Yet all the areas under PA jurisdiction are Jew-free. Palestinian law makes selling land to Jews a crime punishable by death, often without trial. The South African government used death squads against blacks. The Palestinian government pays terrorists for killing Jews.

In all the territories controlled by the Palestinian government, Jews are prevented from worshipping at their holy sites, despite explicit provisions in the Oslo Accords requiring the Palestinian Authority to protect such worship.

UN covered up Assad’s killing of humanitarian workers

The United Nations has allegedly concealed the murder of two humanitarian staffers by the regime of President Bashar Assad, workers who were part of a relief convoy between the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Homs in 2016.

A nearly year-long investigation into alleged UN misconduct in Syria can now reveal that UN officials in 2016 appeared to have worked at cross purposes and did not publicize an internal UN message saying that Assad’s military had killed two aid workers.

A UN source in the Middle East said the reluctance to investigate and report the alleged murder of aid workers can be explained by the global organization’s fears it would be banned from conducting future relief missions in the Syrian Arab Republic.

Mohammad Al Abdallah, a Syrian human rights and democracy researcher and activist who is the executive director of the Washington-based Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre, said the United Nations had accepted a “poisoned and unhealthy” relationship with the Damascus government.

He added the Syrian regime has allowed them to access the places where they operate in exchange for dealing with the regime or concealing its violations.

NGOs call on US aid group to stop funding use of Palestinian child soldiers

The Coalition to Save Palestinian Child Soldiers called on CAF (Charities Aid Foundation) America to stop providing funds to Palestinian NGOs like “Defense for Children International Palestine” (DCI-P) due to its ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has been documented as using child soldiers.

The coalition is asking the public to email CAF with a request to stop funding such organizations as part of Palestinian Child Soldier Week which is observed from February 7-13. The campaign aims to raise awareness about the plight of Palestinian child soldiers and pressure offending organizations to stop their abuses.

"CAF America must stop providing a financial platform to NGOs affiliated with terrorist groups exploiting Palestinian children," wrote the coalition on the campaign's website.

"These organizations that profit from private money funneled through CAF America, exploit children for political purposes. CAF America provides, by association, a financial safe haven for 'retired' PFLP and Hamas terrorists. They are guilty by omission, affiliation and direct action in the incitement to violence, recruitment and training of Palestinian children for military purposes."

The coalition called the funding from CAF an "essential part in the upkeep of the brutal, systemic use of Palestinian children by terrorist organizations in the Levant."

By Forest Rain

Wisdom is knowing what we don’t know. When I made Aliyah I discovered that although I am Jewish and was raised in a Zionist household, I knew nothing about Israel.

Nothing. That was a painful discovery.

I was 13 and the culture shock was enormous. It took me years to reorient myself and be able to articulate what I didn’t know or understand and why it matters.

I was raised in a Zionist household. We weren’t religious but we observed Jewish holidays. Or so I thought. I attended a Jewish school and Jewish after-school daycare and even so - I knew nothing about Israel.

I don’t remember Israel ever being mentioned in my school. I thought I knew Hebrew (after moving here I discovered I didn’t). I knew what I thought were the basics about the Jewish holidays, but no one had ever pointed out the intrinsic link to the Land and to the fight for freedom and sovereignty. The most Zionist holidays either weren’t ever mentioned (like Shavuot or Tu B’shvat) or the elements of Zionism in them were simply ignored (like with Hannukah).

I knew we were different, but I didn’t really understand what that meant. Reverence for books and education was the air I breathed. I knew about the hate. I knew my grandmother was a fighter for Israel. And with all that - no one ever told me that the pillars of Jewish identity are the connection to our People, our Land, and the Torah. As secular Jews, our connection to the Torah was tenuous. We were connected to other Jews in our area but not in a way that was much different from other friends. You celebrate holidays with these, you do other things with those. And our Land? I had absolutely no clue.

Going to an Israeli school as an American ignoramus was difficult. Class trips were a big issue. Everyone seemed to love them. What was instinctive to my classmates was incomprehensible to me. We didn’t go on a trip to a museum or some similar location. We got on a bus, drove someplace, got out, and – walked. It seemed pointless to me. Why walk for hours, up and down hills, just to get back to the bus? That’s where we started off from so… why?

In his song “Get up and walk the Land” Yoram Taharlev articulates why – something every Israeli seems to know on a non-verbal, instinctive level and I, in a terrible disconnect from our heritage, did not.

Taharlev, an astoundingly prolific writer, articulated the primal truths of what it means to be part of the greatest love story ever documented – the love story between this Land and her People, between the People and our Land. That’s why his writings have become Israeli classics. We tend to think of classics as old cultural works, but they do not become classics by being old, they grow old by being profound, by conveying messages that are valuable and worth passing on.

That’s why it is worth studying his words. They can fill the hole in the Jewish soul that does not understand the full meaning of who we are.

In this song, Taharlev instructs us to walk in the land, put ourselves in the tools of hiking (backpack and stick), and let the paths of the Land embrace us. Walking is a way to physically reintroduce ourselves to the land that gave birth to our People. A way to remember that all the splendid buildings were built on top of a very old dream that is still there. It is also a way to remember that the places we walked as soldiers are full of children and homes, beauty, and life (which is exactly the reason why we were soldiers, to make those things possible).

Walking in the land is a way to connect with this unique entity that gave us our identity, that gave us a home, and is always ready to embrace us. Getting up and walking in the land is a way to remember the dream that ties the Nation of Israel to the Land of Israel.

THAT is the point.

Below is my translation of his song. I wish he was still with us so I could ask him about the nuances in his choices of language. May my words give justice to his.

קום והתהלך בארץ

להקת פיקוד צפון
מילים: יורם טהרלב
לחן: יאיר קלינגר

קום והתהלך בארץ
בתרמיל ובמקל.
וודאי תפגוש בדרך
שוב את ארץ ישראל.
יחבקו אותך דרכיה
של הארץ הטובה,
היא תקרא אותך אליה
כמו אל ערש אהבה.

זאת אכן אותה הארץ,
זו אותה האדמה
ואותה פיסת הסלע
הנצרבת בחמה.
ומתחת לאספלט
לבנייני הראווה,
מסתתרת המולדת
ביישנית וענווה.

קום והתהלך בארץ...

וכרמי עצי הזית
ומסתור המעיין
עוד שומרים על חלומה
וחלומנו הישן.
וגגות אודמים על הר
וילדים על השבילים,
במקום שבו הלכנו
עם חגור ותרמילים.

קום והתהלך בארץ...

Get up and walk in the land

Northern Command Band
Lyrics: Yoram Taharlev
Composer: Yair Klinger

Get up and walk in the land
In a backpack and a stick. [did he use the “in” rather than “with” for the rhythm of the sounds of the letters or because he was suggesting we put our soul into the tools of hiking?]
You will surely meet on the way
The Land of Israel again.
Her paths will embrace you
[The paths] Of the good land,
She will call you to her
Like to a cradle of love.

This is indeed the same country,
This is the same land
And the same piece of rock
Burnt in under the sun.
And under the asphalt
[Under] the showy buildings,
The homeland hides
Shy and humble.

Get up and walk in the land...

And vineyards of olive trees
And the hiding place of the spring
Still keeping her dream
And our old dream. [she and we are two separate entities, part of the same story].

And red roofs on the mountain
And children on the trails,
Where we walked
With belt and packs. [The words here work on two levels. Due to the choice of the plural form, to me, they seem to suggest the tools of soldiers rather than those of the hiker described at the beginning of the song - the belt of a soldier and bullet casings rather than backpacks. Bullet casings rather than bullets, to mirror the word used in the beginning of the song.].

Get up and walk the land...

https://youtu.be/vADdYHeuZ9w

From Times of Israel:

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.

02/09 Links Pt2: The Surge in Holocaust Revisionism; The ‘Genocide Olympics’ Gives the Lie to Human-Rights Rhetoric; Mehdi Hasan Conflicts With His Own Sources

From Ian:

The Surge in Holocaust Revisionism

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.

Jonathan S. Tobin: The ‘Genocide Olympics’ Gives the Lie to Human-Rights Rhetoric

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.