Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

02/16 Links Pt1: Israel advocacy, from Dreyfus to Amnesty; What's in Russia's global game of Chess for Israel?; Pelosi: Israel is 20th century's greatest accomplishment

From Ian:

Israel advocacy, from Dreyfus to Amnesty

The best way to truly counter anti-Semitism is to look into the darkness and declare: “I see you, and I am not afraid.” Yes, this is a daunting task, especially with the recent explosive surge in global anti-Semitic violence. But if we allow those who try to terrify and silence us to succeed, if we fail to stand up for ourselves and the Jewish state, then they will have truly won.

But what can be done beyond just shouting J’Accuse? What practical steps can Jews, pro-Israel activists or anyone fighting for truth and decency take?

The first and most important step is to call out those who spread lies and fan the flames of hate. Use your voice. Don’t assume as fact a story on Instagram. Always research, fact-check and create your own informed opinion. Create allies in this fight. Learn from experts and organizations on the front line. Most importantly, be proud and unapologetic in your Jewish and Zionist identity.

We are a generation with countless tools at our disposal; we just need the willpower, knowledge and skills to use them. The more we learn and truly understand, the better we can make the case for Israel. We should never be afraid of the debate or to learn more to make us better advocates.

Of course, none of this is to imply that everyone has to unflinchingly agree with every Israeli policy; far from it. That being said, if you call for Israel’s destruction, deny the Jewish people their fundamental right to self-determination or perpetuate anti-Semitic tropes and lies, such as Amnesty has done, the anti-Semitic line in the sand has well and truly been crossed.

Attacks such as these must be confronted no matter where they arise, whether on campus, online or within major organizations by elected officials. We must show that, while open to debate, we will not allow ourselves or the State of Israel to be vilified—that we will no longer stand idly by in the face of hatred and anti-Semitism, no matter what form they take.

We have an obligation and a responsibility, not only to the generations that have gone before us—those who went through hell on earth, yet never gave up on the dream of rebuilding our nation-state in our ancestral homeland—but to future generations, as well.

We cannot continue to allow the blatant lies and hatred of groups like Amnesty to go unanswered. Israel and the Jewish people are here to stay. We are fighting against a relentless enemy that has persisted for millennia. But even the smallest light can push away the darkness. And each one of us, in our own way, must be that light.

Amb. Alan Bake: Amnesty International’s Obsessive Fixation with Israel

The January 2022 Amnesty International report alleging that Israel practices apartheid against the Palestinians reveals a bitter fixation, extreme prejudice, and blatant hatred of Israel, even to the extent of questioning Israel’s very legitimacy and right to exist.

The Amnesty report willfully and deliberately distorts and misrepresents the circumstances surrounding the historic development of the State of Israel. Moreover, it ignores, sidelines, and downplays the existential dangers that Israel continues to face from its neighbors since its establishment, including ongoing Palestinian terror directed against Israel’s civilian population and territory.

Amnesty alleges that Israel “coerces Palestinians into enclaves within the State of Israel…and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” In every multicultural society throughout the world, people of shared cultures and languages live together in their own communities as part of their national whole. This is a natural, social inclination and such social fragmentation is not apartheid.

Amnesty deliberately misled its readers by claiming that Israel was “forcefully evicting Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem in order to transfer Jewish settlers.” The issue is a long-running, civil real-estate litigation that has been under scrutiny in Israel’s courts since 1972. It involves competing property claims by Jewish owners and Palestinian tenants and squatters.

The Amnesty report presents the flawed claim that six “prominent Palestinian civil society organizations” are innocent human rights organizations, manipulating readers into believing that Israel randomly and illegally outlawed such organizations. Yet the Israeli decision to outlaw NGOs with direct connections to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror organization was in full accordance with international law and obligations set out in international counter-terrorism conventions.

South African Judge Richard L. Goldstone, who headed a UN Human Rights Council investigation of the 2008-2009 Gaza War, wrote in an article in the New York Times on October 31, 2011, entitled “Israel and the Apartheid Slander”: “In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the Rome Statute.” The central elements of apartheid, and specifically the “intent to maintain an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group,” simply do not exist.

The Amnesty report repeats the phrase “occupied Palestinian territory (OPT)” as a given, ignoring the historical and legal claim by Israel and the Jewish People to the territory. Yet the “West Bank” territory of Judea and Samaria has never been determined by any authoritative and binding legal document, treaty, resolution, or declaration to be “Palestinian.” On the contrary, the territory is subject to a dispute, the settlement of which is to be negotiated between the parties.

Amnesty's Israel apartheid claim is a continuation of the Nazis' antisemitic propaganda

It was at Durban I that the taking down of Israel as an apartheid state became the cause du jour at the expense of other causes. Signed by groups including Amnesty International, the NGO Declaration called Israel a “racist apartheid state” guilty of “genocide”.

Fast-forward to 2022 and the methodology used by the Nazis, culminating in the Durban conference in 2001, has reappeared. Following on from Durban’s legacy, Amnesty have picked up the mantle and produced a report about Israel that reads like a conspiracy theory. In it, incomplete and incorrect pieces have been pushed together to confirm the pre-ordained conclusion that Israel is an apartheid state.

An interview with the Amnesty officials behind the report by Lazar Berman in the Times of Israel revealed a frightening lack of logic behind the report. Nor does it have any legal basis. Its publication is part of a wider campaign by those who perceive the Jewish state as symbolising a powerful evil in the world and something which must therefore be dismantled.

Amnesty’s report alters the very understanding of apartheid to shoehorn Israel in, and finds Israel guilty of the original sin of existing. Amnesty appears to want to remove the remaining Jewish presence, the Jewish state, from the Middle East.

The aftermath of the impact of Nazism in the Middle East is still being felt and its legacy seems to be reflected in the latest Amnesty report. What greater abuse of Jewish human rights could there be than this?

By Daled Amos

With the ongoing talk about apartheid, I was reminded of a report that targeted Israel for war crimes.
Not the B'tselem report.
Not the HRW report.
Not even the Amnesty International report.

Instead, I was reminded of the 2009 Goldstone Report.

Of all the issues and topics that were going back and forth back then, one thing that stood out in my mind was the denial -- the denial from one of the judges on the Goldstone commission.

Desmond Travers, a retired Irish Army colonel, was part of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. Whatever else Travers may have contributed to the group, one thing he seemed to make it his job to do was offer implausible deniability.

Yes, implausible deniability

In an interview at the time with the Middle East Monitor, Desmond Travers came up with the following response to Hanan Chehata:

So far, no substantive critique of the report has been received?

Well, one of the easiest ways to rebut a criticism is to deny that it was ever made (this was back in the day, before it was fashionable to rebut criticism by accusing the other person of being a racist).

Among the papers and articles that came out rebutting the Goldstone Report on issues of law, fact and bias were those from:

o  The Israeli government
o  Alan Dershowitz
o  David Matas (international human rights lawyer)
o  Richard Landes (historian and author)
o  Yaacov Lozowick (historian)
o  CAMERA
o  Intelligence and Terrorism Resource Center

[As well as EoZ.]

But you would never know it from Travers, who made it his business to assure everyone that there was nothing to see -- no criticism, no errors of fact and no controversy in the definition and application of the law.

Fast forward to 2021.

When the HRW report came out, the group apparently adopted the same strategy of denying that anyone could come up with a credible critique of what they wrote. On July 9, 2021, Omar Shakir, HRW's Israel and Palestine Director, tweeted:

One week later, Shakir repeated his claim in an interview with Al Jazeera:

Strawmen?

Anne Herzberg, a legal advisor for NGO Monitor, notes the irony in Shakir's use of the term:

Moreover, the invocation of “strawmen” is ironic, given that neither Shakir nor Roth provided any identification of who or what those strawmen might be, in order to avoid having to refute the substantive arguments.

More to the point, Shakir claims that he did not receive "almost any" counter-arguments on questions of law or definitions.

He is ignoring Eugene Kontorovich's paper, which oddly enough does address the issues of both law and definitions that Shakir claims are lacking -- as well as addressing errors of fact. Kontorovich has a shorter post as well.

CAMERA is apparently guilty of the kind of ad hominem attacks that Shakir condemns. They note that Joe Stork, HRW's Deputy Director for Middle East and North Africa who joined the group in 1996:

Before being hired by HRW, Stork openly supported Palestinian terror attacks against Jewish civilians, and opposed any and all peace treaties between Israel and Arab states.

But pointing out the anti-Israel bias of Stork is done as the context for the factual errors in the HRW report that follow in CAMERA's analysis.

Joshua Kern, a lawyer in international law who has defended clients at the ICC, also wrote one of those posts criticizing the HRW report that Shakir missed. One of the points he makes is that the report appears to water down the concept of "domination" in the context of apartheid from outright "supremacy" down to an Israeli policy designed “to engineer and maintain a Jewish majority in Israel” and to “maximize Jewish Israeli control over land in Israel and the OPT” (A Threshold Crossed, p. 49). Kern notes

With respect to Israel, a policy intended to safeguard the Jewish character of the State and to protect its citizens’ security scarcely reflects the racism of baasskaap [an Afrikaans term for "supremacy"]. On the contrary, recognition of Israel as a Jewish State has been integral to how the international community has addressed issues arising from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1947 at the latest (when the General Assembly recommended partition between the “Jewish” and “Arab” States). [emphasis ]

Will Human Rights Watch now condemn the UN General Assembly as encouraging apartheid?

So how is it Shakir can claim that he is not aware of challenges to the HRW report?

Herzberg may have the answer.

She notes that in the actual report, Shakir's role in creating the report is mentioned:

Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, was the lead researcher and author of this report. [emphasis added]

Yet in a symposium last year designed to allow for HRW and critics of its report to confront each other -- Shakir was not to be found. Instead, Clive Baldwin and Emilie Max provided HRW's response.

According to the report, Baldwin is a senior legal advisor at HRW who provided program and legal review, while Max is a consultant who contributed research.

So Shakir is the lead person responsible for the report -- yet did not show up to actually answer for it. Lawyers who had a secondary role in creating the report were there instead.

No wonder Shakir has no idea of the challenges to his report.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Bullying "progressive" voices who are not adequately anti-Israel

Last year, progressive member of Congress Jamaal Bowman visited Israel. This raised the ire of the Democratic Socialists of America, which slammed him for violating the BDS principles of not recognizing Israel in any way.

At the time, the National Political Committee of the DSA said that their highest priority was to ensure that Bowman follows their anti-Israel agenda completely. They considered expelling him from the group, but in the end they decided to keep him.

Apparently, there was a quid pro quo involved.

Yesterday, Bowman withdrew his support for a bill that supports the Abraham Accords. The DSA took credit for this. Sydney Azari, of the DSA's National Political Committee, tweeted that "This was one of the conditions the @DemSocialists NPC set during our discussion with Bowman."

Bowman claims that he made the decision based on what he "learned" during his trip to Israel in November bit the DSA is saying that they insisted on this to allow him to remain a member.

The "progressives" bullied a Black man to toe their line if he wants to stay on their good side.

This is not the only case where people and groups who are already anti-Israel have been bullied lately to ensure that they never say anything remotely supportive of the existence of Israel.

Rabid Israel hater Mairav Zonszein tweeted, "Israel was not founded as a Jewish ethno-national state in order to dance on Palestinian suffering, but that is in fact what it does consistently."

This is hardly a pro-Israel statement, but saying that Israel was not intended from the outset to be genocidal was too much for some, who slammed Zonszein.

Comments included:

This is the face of liberal Judaism. She denies the genocide and ethnic cleansing done by her liberal Jewish ancestors in the 30s and 40s, and again in 67. Even golda meir was a leftist.

This would be akin to saying the United States wasn’t founded as a white supremacist slave state hellbent on expansion through genocide into Indigenous land, but rather that it just stumbled into being that and started doing it consistently.

I have some moots who follow this Zionist. Please unfollow.

In case you missed it, Mairav Zonszein is a Nakba denier and you probably shouldn't be following her.

Why do I have 11 mutual with this dumbass z*onist bitch for ?????

I have 86 mutuals with this degenerate. Fix that please.

Starting off any sentence with “Israel was not founded as a Jewish ethno-national state in order to dance on Palestinian suffering” demonstrates how not to be an ally to Palestinians. Exonerating Zionism has no place in showing solidarity with Palestinians. Reassess.

Mairav, of course, caved to toe the line of the rabid antisemites and apologized:

Just as she did when she said Roger Waters crossed the line into antisemitism, deleting her tweet after the new Nazis bullied her into submission.

She's so brave!

Another example from just this week: after scores of tweets and reports and videos that considered the very concept of a Jewish state to be a crime against humanity, Amnesty International tweeted very specific and limited praise for Israel:

GOOD NEWS 🏳️‍🌈
Israel has become the 27th country to ban the cruel and destructive practice of ‘conversion therapy'. Other governments must follow suit - nobody needs converting.

I don't know if this waa fig leaf for Amnesty to claim that it is objective about Israel or if the tweet originated in a different Amnesty division that has not been infected with rabid antisemitism. Either way, the new Nazis immediately started bashing Amnesty, their most prominent ally, because it said something nice about Israel.

JVP bizarrely accused Amnesty of "pinkwashing" Israel.

All of this is intended to ensure that Israel is treated as a pariah, and anyone who adds any subtlety or tries to inject facts in the discussion is immediately discarded as another Zionist, which is the worst insult possible.

The word "Zionist" is indistinguishable from how the word "Jew" has been used throughout history by people equally filled with hate.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

From the Washington Institute for Near East Policy:

On February 9, just as the nuclear talks in Vienna reached a critical stage, Iran unveiled its “Khaybar Sheikan” (Khaybar Buster) missile, which has a purported range of 1,450 kilometers. This significant development demonstrates, more than anything, the increasing size and range of Iran’s slant-firing solid-motor missiles. The Khaybar reference, meanwhile, points to a seventh-century battle between Muhammad’s army and Jewish communities near Medina whose members refused to convert to Islam and were defeated after their hardened fortresses were overrun.

This isn't exactly subtle. The primary target for such a missile is Israel and they name it after a battle where Muslims massacred Jews.

Anti-Israel protests are often punctuated with chants of "Khaybar, Khaybar ya Yahud, Jaish Muhammad, sa yahud,” which means, “Khaybar, Khaybar oh Jews, the army of Muhammad is returning.” No one can miss the symbolism.

Yet no one is calling Iran out for its obvious antisemitism in naming the missile as a weapon built specifically to attack Jews. The supposed experts on antisemitism from the Left have been silent about their Iranian allies naming a weapon to evoke killing Jews.

It isn't even like this is the first missile named after Khaybar. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah introduced the Khaybar-1 rocket in 2006 and it was used in the 2006 Lebanon war against Israel, hitting Haifa.

Iran and its apologists love to insist that the country has no problems with Jews, only Zionists. They can't explain this Khaibar Sheikan away, so they simply ignore it.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

02/15 Links Pt2: Why We Lied to Ourselves About Whoopi Goldberg and Antisemitism; Jewish left leader accidentally calls PA chief an anti-Semite; AOC heckled by pro-Palestinian protestors

From Ian:

Why We Lied to Ourselves About Whoopi Goldberg and Antisemitism

For me, the motives were somewhat personal. When I was growing up the whole family loved Goldberg’s performance as the wise and ageless bartender Guinan on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” I’ve always looked at Goldberg with great affection, and would prefer to continue doing so; I imagine a great many feel the same, for our own reasons. I loved Goldberg on “TNG,” and I didn’t want her to be an antisemite. So, I decided she wasn’t. I accepted comfortable bromides about ignorance and education, and reflexively absolved her of all responsibility.

The problem is that no one can look into anyone else’s soul. With very few exceptions, it is all but impossible to say a person is “an antisemite” in the essence of their being. We can only know what they say and do. As James Baldwin said: This is the evidence. What Goldberg said and did was, without question, monstrous. And as Barlow put it, “What evidence is there that Goldberg is a friend of the Jews? I don’t yet see it.”

Neither do I. The latest evidence we have indicates that she is, at best, not particularly fond of us, and we should have treated her accordingly. We were wrong to do otherwise. Moreover, our rush to the “education solution” indicates a deeper problem: We want to believe that antisemites, despite all evidence, can be fixed. That if we apply the progressive methods of nurture and consciousness-raising, the problem will simply go away. It is to this comfortable fantasy that we clung when we were faced with the uncomfortable necessity of repudiating a celebrity we admire.

And it is a fantasy. The truth is that education does nothing to fight antisemitism, because antisemites are, by definition, people who have refused to be educated. They are not antisemitic because they are ignorant — they are antisemitic because antisemitism serves selfish needs, rooted in the depths of their psyches, often unknown even to themselves. You could have educated Haman until the cows came home, and it would have made no difference, because his hatred of the Jews was not circumstantial but primordial.

In the end, against people who are immune to rational argument, self-defense is the only option. Resistance and deterrence can effectively fight antisemitism. Nothing else works or has ever worked. This is the evidence. In the face of not simply the Goldberg affair but our own reaction to it, we would all do well to remember that.

Whoopi Goldberg returns to ‘The View’ after suspension

Whoopi Goldberg returned to her hosting chair on “The View” Monday after a two-week suspension for her much-criticized comments about the Holocaust, pledging to “keep having tough conversations.”

“I listened to everything everybody had to say, and I was very grateful,” Goldberg told her viewers in a brief address at the top of the talk show as her co-hosts told her they missed her.

“It is an honor to sit at this table and be able to have these conversations, because they are important,” Goldberg said, without offering another direct apology or mentioning the Holocaust or Jews at all.

“Conversations,” she said, “are important to us as a nation, and to us more so as a human entity.”

Goldberg’s suspension had followed her Jan. 31 remarks on the program that “the Holocaust is not about race,” but rather about “man’s inhumanity to man.” Many groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, objected, saying that Hitler saw his planned extermination of the Jews as a racial project. Goldberg apologized, but further comments she made on the subject — including on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” — continued to add fuel to the fire, leading to ABC News President Kim Godwin announcing her suspension the following day “to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments.”

Jewish left leader accidentally calls Palestinian Authority chief an anti-Semite

Last week, for example, Jacobs was quoted by The Washington Post in its article about the Senate hearing concerning the nomination of Holocaust historian and Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt as U.S. envoy for combating anti-Semitism. Jacobs has no particular connection to Lipstadt and no particular expertise on anti-Semitism; nonetheless, the Post chose to present her as a Jewish leader commenting on the issue.

Now here’s where things got interesting.

Jacobs made a few general, unremarkable statements about examples of anti-Semitism. One of her examples was “denying Jewish history.” And that’s obviously true.

But Jacobs, who fervently supports the Palestinian statehood cause, does not seem to have considered the implications of her statement with regard to the man who would become the head of the Palestinian state that she wants to see established in Judea and Samaria, and the Old City of Jerusalem.

I’m talking about the fact that Abbas is one of the most outspoken deniers of Jewish history in the world today. He has made so many statements denying Jewish history that they could fill a book—and, in fact, they have; he is the author of an entire book claiming that the Nazis killed only 1 million Jews and accusing Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, of collaborating with the Nazis. But for now, I’m going to cite just two of his speeches because they are particularly revealing.

Today's joke: UN Human Rights Council claims it cares about impartiality (plus ElderToon)

UN Watch wrote a letter to the head of the UN Human Rights Council and attached a 30 page report proving that Navi Pillay, who was appointed to lead an inquiry on Israeli actions, is biased against Israel.

The facts aren't even in question. Of course she is biased. Here is the table of contents of the report:

STATEMENT OF FACTS
A. Commission of Inquiry Was Created to Target Israel.
B. Pillay Declared Israel Guilty for 2021 Hostilities That She is Investigating
C. Pillay Repeatedly Accused Israel of “Apartheid”
D. Pillay Described Israel’s Actions as “Inhuman”
E. Pillay Defended Antisemitic Durban Process
F. Pillay Defended Agenda Item Targeting Israel
G. Pillay Pre-Judged Israel Guilty in Prior Gaza Conflicts
Pillay Prejudged Israel Guilty in 2009 Hamas-Israel Conflict
Pillay Prejudged Israel Guilty Within Hours of 2010 Flotilla Incident
Pillay Prejudged Israel Guilty in 2014 Hamas-Israel War

The head of the Human Rights Council responded with one of the more ridiculous statements the UN has ever put out:

The President of the Human Rights Council places the utmost importance on examining the independence and impartiality of each member in order to ensure the objectivity of the body.

Additionally, the President places special emphasis on the qualifications, skills, expertise and experience of the candidates when making his/her appointment.

While there were differing views during the negotiations and voting on the resolution that created the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, once the Council adopted that resolution, the Commission became a mechanism of the Council that deserves the full respect and cooperation of all Council stakeholders.

In other words, we are wonderfully objective and you cannot complain about us with facts.

And it could not be any other way, because he cannot refute a single sentence of that document.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

A Hamas Valentine

I admit that I don't quite know what this means - it seems to say "Jenin" جنين within the heart, but I cannot find any major stories that happened in Jenin recently - but it was the caricature in Hamas' Felesteen on Valentine's Day.

Which means, even love is an occasion for killing according to Hamas.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

02/15 Links Pt1: Bahrain chooses alignment with Israel over submission to Iran; Why we should care about the fate of Ukraine; Hamas Plan to Target Israelis in Philippines Thwarted

From Ian:

Bahrain chooses alignment with Israel over submission to Iran

Since the announcement of the Abraham Accords in August 2020, ties between Bahrain and Israel have grown steadily, reaching a milestone last week when an Israeli military aircraft, carrying Defense Minister Benny Gantz, touched down in Manama. It was the first Israeli military plane to fly over Saudi Arabia and land in a Gulf country.

Bahrain has long suffered from Iranian bullying. In 2007, Hussain Shariaatmadari, an aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, wrote that Bahrain was once a Persian province that Western powers unlawfully separated from Iran. In 2017, the state-owned daily Iran reiterated this claim, asserting that until 1956 Bahrain had been Iranian, with a 70% Persian-speaking Shiite population. In other words, Bahrain belongs to Iran, and its independence is not acceptable.

Neither history nor demographics supports Tehran’s claims. Today, the majority of Iranians who live on the east bank of the Persian Gulf, under Iranian sovereignty, are ethnic Arab citizens of Iran who suffer under immense discrimination and a policy of Persianization.

An island nation that could just about fit inside the Washington Beltway, Bahrain needs allies. Now it has found in military cooperation with Israel a good way to deter Tehran. Close ties to the Jewish state were once unthinkable for the Arab Gulf monarchies, but Iran has kept up its threats despite mounting evidence that it is driving its adversaries closer together.

In Bahrain, the Israeli defense minister met with top officials, including King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa and Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al Khalifa. Gantz also signed a memorandum of military cooperation with his Bahraini counterpart Abdullah al Nuaimi.

The memorandum accorded the Israeli navy basing rights in Bahrain, also home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, according to Israeli media reports. David Salama, the Israeli navy chief, implicitly substantiated such reports when he said that cooperation with Bahrain “will bring safe passageway and a secure maritime area for the State of Israel [like it does] for our partners in the U.S. Central Command.”

Cognizant that military cooperation between Bahrain and Israel will make Iranian bullying harder, Tehran-funded media threatened Manama, citing an attack that pro-Iranian militia launched on an alleged Mossad office in Iraqi Kurdistan. State-backed outlets quoted Israeli reports about the basing agreement, while pundits argued that the real added value to Israeli military power would be Bahrain’s proximity to Iran. “Israel will use Bahrain as a platform to conduct its intel operations” directed against Islamist Iran, an analyst wrote.

Only 170 nautical miles separate Bahrain’s Sitra port from the Iranian docks of Bushehr.

Amb. Alan Baker: Area C of the “West Bank,” EU Hypocrisy, and Double Standards

The EU Signed as a Witness to Uphold the Oslo Accords
Recent policy decisions by the European Union regarding the Israeli-Palestinian dispute indicate profound contradictions, double standards, and hypocrisy.

Being signatories as witnesses to the 1991-3 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO, together with the United States, Russia, Norway, and Egypt, the EU took upon itself a responsibility to encourage the parties to observe the obligations and commitments encapsulated in the Accords and ensure that they would be duly honored and followed by the parties.

By the same logic, one would expect that those witnesses, all highly involved and active stakeholders in the Middle East peace process, would meticulously ensure that they honor the agreements and refrain from any action that could undermine or frustrate them. The significance of such expectation would be that a witness would seek to assist the parties to fulfill their respective commitments pursuant to the Accords and not encourage one of the parties to violate such commitments.

This would be the obvious responsibility of a witness to such a vital international instrument. Otherwise, why would the EU or any of the other witnesses have added their signatures to the Accords?

Witnesses should refrain from actively seeking to undermine and frustrate the Accords by urging the Palestinian leadership to summarily violate their obligations and thereby hinder the viability and integrity of the Accords.

Even if the EU takes issue with the manner in which Israel or the Palestinian leadership implements or fails to implement the Accords, the EU, as a party seeking to help advance the peace process, should act with the parties to assist in settling any dispute rather than encourage that party to openly and blatantly work to defy the Accords.

Regrettably, this is precisely what the EU is doing in assisting the Palestinian leadership to violate the Oslo Accords by encouraging and financing unauthorized development projects and building in that part of the West Bank area of Judea and Samaria under the control and jurisdiction of Israel.

Jonathan Tobin: Why we should care about the fate of Ukraine

Large-scale wars like the one that may happen in Ukraine, which was unimaginable in the not-so-distant past, are now very real possibilities. Small countries that looked to international opinion and a strong United States to ensure their independence are now pretty much on their own. And rogue states like Iran can be forgiven for thinking that the United States is committed to appeasing them no matter the cost.

A weak America doesn't just mean a dismal fate for Ukraine. It means a budding Chinese superpower will be further seeking to limit America's influence and undermine its security. It means that after the next Iran deal, Tehran will be emboldened to further aggression and threats against Israel and regional Arab countries alike. And if Americans think all this will have no repercussions for their economic security, then they haven't been paying attention to what's been going on in Europe and Asia.

Given that the United States is in no position to stop Putin, reversing these losses will be difficult. It would mean a reaffirmed commitment to reasserting power in order to save Taiwan, as well as backing away from the appeasement of Iran.

Right now, that seems unimaginable, especially with an American surrender to Iran in the nuclear talks being held in Vienna seeming already a done deal. Nor is it easy to imagine an administration still obsessed with demonizing its domestic political foes and crippled by leftist intellectual fashions that have undermined belief in American exceptionalism being able to assert itself again on the global stage.

The threats to Ukraine will be the least of America's worries if we are now living in a world in which Washington is neither respected nor feared.

I've been going through Y. Harkabi's 1972 book, "Arab Attitudes to Israel," and this is something else:

The Jordanian English language daily, Jerusalem Times, published the following "Open Letter to Eichmann" on April 24, 1961:

Dear Eichmann,

1 address you in your glass cell to extend a word of sympathy in your present plight. German genius that has invented Sputniks and missiles and all sorts of things has failed to inspire you to avert the disaster that has befallen you.

What a pity Eichmann that you allowed those swine to arrest you and stage their drama. But don't worry Eichmann it will in the end fall on their heads.

Listen Eichmann you are accused of decimating six million of this breed. Whether this is correct or not it is not our object to debate this issue but what we like to say is this if you actually managed to liquidate six million of them and if the remaining six million have been instrumental in inflicting so much havoc and suffering on the Arabs and disgorging them from their homes we wonder what would have been the result if the decimated six million would have been allowed to survive.

It is likely that a similar drama would have been staged in another part of the Arab countries. So that by liquidating six millions you have minimized the extent of the calamity and conferred a real blessing on humanity you can imagine dear Eichmann the feelings of the million or so of Arab refugees at this drama.

.The object of this trial is simply to attract more tourists to the occupied section and to exploit it for fund raising and for skinning the rest of mankind.

But be brave Eichmann find solace in the fact that this trial will one day culminate in the liquidation of the remaining six million to avenge your blood and the manner in which you have been kidnapped and brought to trial by the very same people who tortured and ejected a million or so from their homes.

It's pretty clear whose side the Jordanian media was on.

Harkabi brings other examples of Arab media during the trial, for example a cartoon in Lebanese paper al-Anwar of June 9, 1960 with Ben Gurion and Eichmann yelling at each other:

Ben-Gurion: "You deserve the death penalty for killing six million Jews."
Eichmann: "There are many who argue that I deserve the death penalty for not finishing the job."

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

More than 150,000 Palestinians now work for Israelis

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics Labor Force Survey for the fourth quarter of 2021 has been released.

There are now 153,000 Palestinian workers employed in Israel or in the settlements, which I believe is the highest since Oslo. It is an increase of 8,000 workers over the 3rd quarter of 2021.

Here is the trend in fourth quarter Palestinian employees in Israel and settlements since 2012:

The number of employed persons in Israeli settlements increased from about 21,600 thousand in the 3rd quarter 2021 to about 22,400 thousand employed person in the 4th quarter 2021. This is not close to the highest number working in settlements - that number reached 28,000 in 2018.

While most Palestinians working for Israelis work in construction, all of the increases between the third and fourth quarters were in other sectors: manufacturing, commerce and hospitality.

The average daily wage for Arab employees in Israel and settlements was about 269 NIS, about 1% higher than the third quarter and 3% higher than in 2020.

To give an idea of how dependent each economy is on the other, about 3.7% of all workers in Israel live in the Palestinian territories while about 15% of all Palestinian workers (West Bank and Gaza combined) work for Israelis.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Times of Israel reports:

Israeli officials and journalists Monday gushed over a video showing Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi walking across a Cairo convention hall to personally greet Israeli Energy Minister Karine Elharrar at a conference.

Sissi entered the large hall to fanfare, welcomed the convention’s guests, and then put down his mic to walk to the other side of the hall, where he spoke a few words with Elharrar.

Elharrar, who uses a wheelchair, received international attention after infamously being unable to enter the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow last year.

A spokesperson for Elharrar said Israelis are right to be enthused over Sissi’s warm welcome at the Egyptian Petroleum Show in Cairo.

“The president approaching the minister, the fact that he said he is happy she came, and invited her to return, is super exciting and testifies to the fact that ties that were once under wraps have become public,” the spokesperson said.

It is a remarkable and touching moment.

Egyptian media mostly ignored the story from what I can tell, while some other Arab media covered it, or covered Israel's positive reaction to it.

On Twitter, the Arabic reaction to the move was mixed, with most praising Sisi and Egypt, and some pointing out that Elharrar is from a Moroccan Jewish family. (I don't know what language Sisi spoke to Elharrar.) And there were a few negative reactions as well as happens every time an Israeli is mentioned.

Altogether, the fact that Israel was represented in this conference at all, for the first time, is at least as significant. Normally Egyptian media, including official media, is hostile to Israel. The two original peace partners of Israel seem to always be walking a line between wanting to gain the economic benefits of working with Israel and keeping their antisemites happy.

There is no doubt that the Abraham Accords has warmed up the cold peace between Egypt and Israel.

The main Arab story about Karine Elharrar was not about Sisi's greetings, but about a comment she made at the conference. When asked what she thought about the possibility that Israeli gas might make its way to Lebanon via Egypt and Jordan, she answered that there's nothing wrong with that.

Lebanon had denied Israeli reports that any Israeli gas would reach that country under an agreement to transport Egyptian gas there, and Elharrar's response is being taken as confirmation that this is in fact true. Of course, Israeli natural gas seems to have special properties that can harm the Lebanese, judging from the crazed reactions to the story when it came out.

Both stories show how Israel is now an integral part of a Middle East that has been dead-set against that very possibility.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

02/14 Links Pt2: Benny Morris:The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Isn't about Race; CAIR's Media Enablers; The Harvard Hummus Protests; AOC bemoans ‘cancel culture’ that fired Marc Lamont Hill

From Ian:

Benny Morris (WSJ$): The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Isn't about Race

In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel conquered the West Bank - which most Israelis refer to as Judea and Samaria - and East Jerusalem from Jordan. This territory was the heartland of the biblical kingdom of David and Solomon, and successive Israeli governments have been unable or unwilling to give it up. Since then, more than half a million Israelis have settled there, making an Israeli withdrawal inconceivable even if Palestinian leaders were sincerely willing to agree to peace in exchange.

Despite what the new Amnesty International report says, racism is not what underlies the Israeli-Arab relationship. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essentially national, a struggle between two nations over the same tract of land.

The Amnesty report "charges" that Israelis define Israel as "the nation-state of the Jews." Of course, that definition is correct. The world is divided into nation-states and Israel is the Jews' nation-state, just as the 22 member states of the Arab League are Arab nation-states.

Many Israeli Arabs resent the fact that "their" Palestine has become a Jewish state. But most seem to have made their peace with life in Israel, appreciating the prosperity, the social and health benefits, and the freedom that the Jewish state guarantees. Most Israeli Arabs, to judge by opinion polls, aren't eager to be inducted into a Palestinian Arab state should one arise next door.

If that did happen, many, if not most, Israeli Jews would regard it as a mortal threat. After Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas took over and began to rain down rockets on Israel, eventually sending missiles flying toward Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion International Airport.

Hamas would likely gain control of the West Bank if Israel withdrew, allowing it to bombard Israel's population centers. Hamas rule would allow Iran to install forces and weapons in the West Bank, as it has already done in Lebanon.

Who Are the Arabs of Jerusalem?

Jerusalem Arabs numbered 70,000 on the eve of the Six-Day War (according to a Jordanian census from 1966) and today, they are 380,000, while 120,000 live in the neighborhoods under Jerusalem Municipality jurisdiction but beyond the security fence.

Prof. Itzhak Reiter, an expert on Islam and the Middle East at Ashkelon Academic College, describes the different parts of Arab society in the city.

"About 50% of the present Arab residents of Jerusalem originally came from Hebron and...took over and developed their careers at the expense of the old locals, like the Nusseibeh, the Nashashibi and the El Khatib families."

Another group are educated Israeli Arabs who moved to Jerusalem from villages in the Galilee. The Christian community has shrunk to 13,000.

Inside the Muslim population there are Sufis, identified with a mystical approach to Islam, as well as Salafists, who are much more extremist both in religious and political terms.

There are also those identified with Hamas, which is quite strong in eastern Jerusalem, and those identified with Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Thanks, Whoopi! Why Holocaust Education Is mostly counter-productive

At best, Holocaust education accomplishes little or nothing for perpetuating Judaism or Jews and, at worst, offers unhelpful talking points to ignoramuses for their unrelated agendas. In its most ubiquitous form, Holocaust education results in “Godwin’s Law,” which posits that every argument on social media sooner or later finds one adversary calling the other a Nazi.

I personally know and pastor to Holocaust Survivors and their offspring. For most, the Shoah singularly defined the rest of their lives. Of course it did — and no decent person would tell them: “Get over it.” Their understandable life-calling is to bear witness. Moreover, Holocaust Denial eventually emerged as its own new form of anti-Semitism as memories faded, evidence vanished, and Survivors died. So it became even more compelling for Survivors to relate their personal experiences and show the branded numbers on their wrists. The truth must be known.

Nonetheless, it is time to re-think the “common wisdom” that tens of millions of dollars must be budgeted on general Holocaust education. A time comes when enough data exist for people to see what works and what not. Data and results on the street demonstrate unequivocally that fifty-plus years of Holocaust education has not brought young Jews closer to Judaism. Rather, it has driven them away. It does not inspire observance of Shabbat or kosher dietary practice. It just makes kids feel bad and determined not to grow up to be sheep and martyrs. Young Jews don’t want that in their lives, and they think they can run away from it.

Finally, even much worse, for pathological haters among non-Jews, Holocaust education ultimately inspires a deadly inference: If a hater despises several groups and wants to murder people in at least one of them — Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Asians — Shoah education proposes that Jews are easiest to murder without payback. Blacks, Mexicans, Asians might have illegal hand guns and shoot back. But Holocaust education propagates that Jews apparently are pretty easy and safe to kill. They don’t seem to carry guns but briefcases. They seem to go like sheep. So the imagery actually is counter-productive. You watch movies like The Godfather or Goodfellas, and that teaches you never to start up with Italians. But not enough focus is directed to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising or the armed revolts in places like Treblinka that show Jews fighting back.

That is partly why some people cannot process the idea of Israel fighting back when attacked. Holocaust education has so ingrained that Jews do not fight back that, when the one Jewish polity in the world actually does, the woke cannot handle it. Well, tough noogies.

If we do not re-allocate our Holocaust education funding to educating Jews instead about their culture and religion, we will end up with history museums recounting what Jews once were.

There is a lot of talk about virtual reality, virtual real estate, virtual money. And a lot of people are thinking a great deal about how these spaces intersect with the real world and what it means when people spend so much of their time in virtual spaces.

Israel haters have been living in such a space for years. And the problem is when no one can distinguish between the virtual and real.

In the virtual reality world of Israel haters, Israel is the worst human rights violator on the planet. Israel is guilty of colonialism, apartheid, genocide, white supremacism, racism, persecution and an illegal occupation. Israeli forces regularly disregard the laws of war by violating the rules of distinction and proportionality. Terrorists are freedom fighters who have the right - or obligation - to attack the "occupier" which includes killing Jews in the name of "resistance."

None of this is remotely true in the real world.

But you do not need 3-D headsets to join the virtual world of the haters. They love their virtual world so much that they have been moving it into the real world as fast as they can. They arrange rallies and demonstrations, they write letters to newspapers and politicians, they tweet in the same spaces as the people who inhabit reality.

And they teach at universities, which are now pretty much a part of the virtual world with the students not realizing that they have become part of an experiment where they can become residents of a world of lies. Some of them join the real world and spread the lies to more people who don't realize they are now living, partially, in this virtual reality where facts are not important, where feelings are dominant and where human rights have been inverted to encourage Jew-hatred.

In virtual worlds, people can make up whatever rules they want. As long as others accept them, they have the force of natural law. One can change the laws of physics. When the virtual world of Israel haters leaks into the real world, it has lots of people who are willing to change reality as well.

One example is in the realm of international law. Jews wanting to live in their ancestral lands are now counted among the worst war criminals - as bad as war rapists and mass murderers and slavemasters - according to the Rome Statute.

There are builders of these worlds who intend to create a new reality. Amnesty and HRW, together with Palestinian NGOs and some media, know quite well that their world is not real - but they love their constructed worlds and want to mold the real world around it.

You cannot talk to people in these virtual worlds. Because they constructed a world that is so far from reality, their basic rules and objective facts are different from the real world. To them, the evil of the "Zionists" is so absolute and so clear that it is axiomatic. They can only argue amongst themselves within their carefully constructed world, and they are clueless about the real world that they sometimes are forced to inhabit.

If sociologists want to understand what the future of virtual reality is, they just need to understand the nature of the virtual reality that has surrounded Israel for decades.

Of course, the sociologists would need to understand that their own "realities" might be constructed as well.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

02/14 Links Pt1: Recent antisemitic events should serve as a wakeup call for Israel; UN Watch: Pillay is biased against Israel, must be ousted from UNHRC probe

From Ian:

Recent antisemitic events should serve as a wakeup call for Israel

Colleyville, Whoopi Goldberg, Amnesty International. These are just some of the names and headlines that have been circulating around the world and the hot topics of conversation in the Jewish community. Whether the nature of these incidents, verbal or otherwise, was antisemitic and what the ramifications will be for the Jewish community as a whole and Israel, in particular, has been the discussion held around many a Shabbat table in the last few weeks.

So often, these kinds of conversations wind up circling back to rising antisemitism in the diaspora and the diaspora Jewish community’s response, how they should fight back or even, at least within Israel, asking what Jews are still doing living outside of Israel. It’s time that we, in Israel, start to change our perspective.

Once upon a time, when Israel was still a newly born state, fighting every day for its survival, Israelis viewed Diaspora Jews as their saving grace. They looked to them for support, lobbying, assistance with government relations and money. Israel relied on them to help in their struggle and continued existence, and diaspora Jewry readily accepted that role. But somewhere along the way, there was a shift. Israel is no longer the brand new “little engine that could.” Instead, Israel became the Start-up Nation, a nation of strength, a nation of fighters and tech and innovation. And slowly, Israel stopped relying on Diaspora Jewry and started taking their support for granted. Sadly, in addition to the change on Israel’s side, change was also seen on the Diaspora side. No longer was support for Israel unquestionable. Jews around the world have become more critical and questioning – especially among the younger generations. Now, diaspora Jewry is facing a rise in antisemitism – something that until now, young Jews have yet to contend with and face. In many cases, this antisemitism stems directly from anti-Zionist and anti-Israel sentiments and diaspora Jews are automatically the target for those attacks.

This rise in antisemitism and ignorance surrounding its nature has already woken up diaspora Jewry, we in Israel must wake up now. We need to take responsibility for our brothers and sisters around the world, just as they once took responsibility for us. We need to find ways to build a bridge and connect with them. We need to encourage the strengthening of Jewish and Israel education in diaspora communities so that the younger generation remembers what their ancestors fought for all those years ago and be ready to take up the fight themselves.

Case Study The Anatomy of ONE of Amnesty’s Falsehoods

There’s nothing new in Amnesty International’s latest report seeking to delegitimize Israel’s existence.

The dogma of anti-Israelism — not criticism of Israel, but opposition to the survival of the Jewish and democratic state — is many decades old. Palestinian leaders violently opposed immigration by the children of Israel to the Land of Israel before the State of Israel even existed. In 1948, the Arab world went to war to prevent a United Nations compromise calling for both a Jewish and an Arab state on the coveted territory. And for decades, the Palestinian national movement has viewed the struggle against Jewish self-determination as, in the words of historian Benny Morris, a “zero-sum game: if the Jews win, we are lost.”

While Middle Eastern fundamentalists continue to issue pithy calls to “wipe Israel off the map,” radical NGOs have taken the longer route, using reams of paper and scores of footnotes to demand the same. Now, even organizations that were once mainstream have radicalized and joined that number.

This drift to radicalism, too, has been years in the making. In 2009, Robert Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch, issued a stunning rebuke of the organization he created, lamenting that it had lost perspective, abandoned its mission, and risked undermining its own reputation, largely because of its unjustifiable obsession with Israel.

Long before that, and certainly before 2010 when Salman Rushdie charged Amnesty International with “moral bankruptcy,” Amnesty officials expressed similar concerns. In 1970, the group’s US chairman Mark Benenson publicly slammed the organization, charging that its reporting on Israel “reveals the zeal of the prosecutor, convinced of the defendant’s guilt,” and “omits material which would help the defense.”

Two years later, after Amnesty appeared to shrug at the massacre of Israeli Jews by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympics, Gidon Gottlieb, Amnesty’s representative to the UN, resigned, citing his colleagues’ “moral obtuseness” and the organization’s “climate of tolerance from inhuman acts by ‘the underdog.’”

Anti-Israel extremism and rejectionism have been the consistent background music accompanying conversations about the Jewish state, and before that about Jewish immigration to the Levant. Amnesty might have brought some new tinsel to the party. But the bubbles are flat, the ashtrays are full, and the phonograph keeps spinning the same, stale tune.

Several fatal flaws in Amnesty's 'apartheid' smear

While much has been written refuting Amnesty’s report accusing Israel of imposing an apartheid regime on Arab citizens of Israel and Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, their argument, in its declarative accusation cited below, is also a priori flawed on at least three accounts:
Israeli authorities impose a system of domination and oppression against the Palestinian people in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and against Palestinian refugees.

The first flaw is the use of the term “Palestinian” to refer to Arab Israelis. This represents the frequent attempt by anti-Israeli NGOs – in this case Amnesty – and media outlets to use the term “Palestinians” i.e., Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank – to describe Arab Israelis – i.e., Arab citizens of Israel. This is an attempt to create a completely false equivalence.

The Atlantic magazine recently presented the results of research demonstrating that, in fact, Arab Israelis, by a large majority, do not consider themselves of Palestinian nationality (to the extent that a stateless group can be considered a nation, of course), but either just “Arab” or “Arab-Israeli” .

Moreover, there is a growing trend among Israeli Arabs to hold a positive view of Israel, which of course for good reason was never the case in apartheid South Africa.

Nasser Al-Hadmi is the head of the Jerusalem Committee against Demolition and Displacement.

He is also apparently a member of Hamas.

He is in Palestinian media today warning about plans by "Jewish settler groups" to "storm" the Temple Mount during the Passover season.

Al Resalah says, "The Jewish settlement associations are working to mobilize their members for a major attack on the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque in the coming month of Ramadan, which coincides with the holidays for the Jews."

He is counting Shabbat Hagadol which is Sabbath before Passover, the fast of the first born which is the day before Passover, the entire holiday of Passover itself, Yom HaAliya and Yom HaShoah, all of which occur during the Hebrew month of Nisan, which coincides this year with Ramadan.

Israel often has to juggle access to holy places where Jewish and Muslim holidays coincide, but the haters are trying to use this year's coinciding calendars as excuses for violence and a repeat of last year's Hamas rocket attacks on Jerusalem.

Nasser al-Hamdi wants a pre-emptive "explosion" to pressure Israel to take away Jewish rights in Jerusalem, saying, "Unless things explode in the coming Ramadan, the occupation will impose a new reality, permanent prayers for settlers inside Al-Aqsa, and setting times for Jews to pray in the mosque, especially in Bab Al-Rahma."

This is as explicit incitement to violence as can be.

Last year, Israel temporarily expelled al-Hamdi and three other Hamas activists from Jerusalem in order to keep the calm. He might still be under that ban. Given that he has made clear his desire to start an explosion in Jerusalem this April, they might need to do more in order to keep things calm.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!