Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, February 19, 2022

Mondoweiss: "Let's make Hebron Judenrein again!"

Hebron is the second holiest city to Jews. It has had a continuous Jewish presence from ancient times through today, with the exception of only 19 years when Jordan controlled the city. Jews there have been subjected to shootings, sniper attacks, boycotts and massacres, including the 1929 pogrom that murdered over sixty Jewish men, women and children in the most horrific ways. During the second intifada, Jews in Hebron were murdered by snipers, including ten month old Shalhevet Pas who was deliberately targeted in her baby stroller in 2001.

Now a Palestinian group together with hate site Mondoweiss are pushing the agenda of physically cleansing Jews from the city - fulfilling their Nazi desire to make areas "Judenrein."

We, as members of civil society in Hebron, call on our international partners to take action and join in the campaign Dismantle the Ghetto, evacuate the settlers out of Hebron.

Dismantle the ghetto? You mean, like, dismantling the Warsaw Ghetto? What happened to those Jews again?

The antisemitism is not even hidden here. The "open letter" not once refers to the Jewish connection to the city. It refers to the Tomb of the Patriarchs exclusively with the term created by Muslim usurpers, the "Ibrahimi Mosque." It doesn't mention that nearly all of Hebron is already Judenfrei.

Ethnic cleansing becomes a moral imperative to modern antisemites.

(h/t Andrew P)

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

02/18 Links Pt2: Amnesty International should be ashamed; America’s future depends on our relationship with Israel; Dem Heavyweights Back BLM Bail Fund That Freed Would-Be Assassin

From Ian:

Danny Danon: Amnesty International should be ashamed

To apply the term "apartheid" to Israel in 2022, or ever, is literally to distort reality to fit a false narrative and stigmatize the Jewish state for a crime that it is not committing and has never committed throughout its history. One doesn't even need to rely on third-party sources to discover this. All those who wish to come to Israel and see the reality for themselves can do so.

Or perhaps they could listen to the truth from Bassam Eid, who said in response to the Amnesty International report: "As a Palestinian peace activist and founder of the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, I am here to set the record straight. The international community is yet again lying about Israel. While it is not a perfect country, Israel is definitely not an apartheid state."

At the same time as Amnesty International falsely accuses Israel of crimes of which it is innocent, its report also entirely fails to mention that the situation of the residents of Gaza is entirely different from that of Israel's Arab citizens because the Gazan population is living under terrorist rule. The same applies to the Arabs who live under the rule of the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria.

The situations of both are dire – due to their own leadership, not because of Israel. It is their leaders who subject them to poverty, unemployment and a lack of education. It is their leaders who flood their education systems with hate and incitement.

It is their leaders who disgracefully pay and glorify murderers when they mutilate, bomb and assassinate innocent Israeli citizens. It is their own leaders who keep them in a state of victimhood. I suggest that Amnesty International turn its attention to these crimes perpetrated by Hamas and the P.A.

Amnesty International, an organization that claims to campaign "for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all," has drafted a report that is nothing more than a publicity stunt designed to generate headlines through highly charged, erroneous language.

The only thing this report does is stir up hate and antisemitism and attempt to encourage the isolation of the innocent party, Israel. It does nothing to further progress or dialogue in the region.

By blaming Israel for crimes of which it is innocent, Amnesty International should be held responsible for enabling the real crimes to continue. The so-called "human rights" organization should thus be ashamed of itself.

America’s future depends on our relationship with Israel

We’re not the only nation in Western civilization to have politicians making poor choices regarding Israel and her descendants. We have watched in recent years as there has been a dramatic rise in antisemitism in Britain, including within the Labour Party which has been the traditional home for Jewish voters, and all of this on a continent that should mind some extra caution given its history with antisemitism.

We all know where intolerance can lead if left unchecked, and that oppression and opposition to Jews is nothing new.

That being said, whether or not our politicians, professors and pundits leave Israel alone, I’ve got a feeling that Israel is going to be just fine.

After originally reaching their promised homeland, the people of the young nation were continually attacked by hostile tribes and other nations. In 722 BC, the Assyrians conquered northern Israel and deported its people. In 586 BC, Babylon conquered southern Israel and exiled its citizens. The Jews returned to their homeland 70 years later, but the Romans finally crushed them in AD 70, leaving them without a country for 1,878 years.

Even in the countries of their exile, the Jews were oppressed, denied rights, isolated in ghettos and persecuted. In 1933, there were nine million Jews living throughout Europe, but by 1945, two out of three European Jews had been gassed, beaten, starved to death or died of disease in Nazi concentration camps. The Holocaust led to the elimination of one-third of the world’s Jewish population.

Since 1948 and the establishment of the modern state of Israel, despite being hemmed in on all sides by hostile nations, and against all odds or human logic, Israel has survived all-out war and constant threats of domestic terrorism. The nation has been forced to maintain a continual state of warfare throughout its sixty-eight years of existence. Yet increasingly, the international press portrays Israel as an aggressor nation, an occupying force, a brutal regime afflicting poor and disenfranchised Palestinians who have had their land stolen out from under them.

Indeed many among the Palestinians genuinely want a peaceful resolution to the current conflict. But a Palestinian nationalism continues to thrive with its singular fixation: the death of Israel. The Palestinian leaders pay stipends to terrorists and their families who kill Israelis, financed in part by the Israel-hating regime of Iran.

Abraham Sion Faithfully Examines the Promises of the Promised Land

It is almost a cliché to note that today too many historians and laypeople erroneously look at history through modern lenses that distort the picture and prevent an honest understanding of historical events.

But many others still want to read about history through the lens of as it was, not as today’s talking heads would have it. For those folks, Abraham Sion’s “To Whom Was The Promised Land Promised?” is a breath of fresh air.

Sion’s book is over 400 pages of thorough but eminently readable legal and historical analysis of the key moments and documents that led to the creation of a Jewish State in the land in which it was reestablished.

From the late 19th-century origins of modern Zionism to the British White Papers of the 1930s, the book provides a wealth of fascinating details on the legal and political understandings of the times that underpinned documents from the Balfour Declaration to the Hussein-McMahon letters.

The importance of these details to today’s debates is correctly identified by Sion, who notes in the context of the constant attacks on Israel’s legitimacy by institutions like the United Nations:
“Only by ignoring or overlooking these original treaties and resolutions could the international community arrive at the decisions adopted incessantly by the United Nations and other international organizations. These fundamental truths are ignored by the international community, and they are treated as if they never existed.”

“To Whom Was The Promised Land Promised” is at its best when it is examining the terminology found in agreements and declarations. Sion not only provides contemporary documentary sources to clarify the original meanings, but he also includes the words of key personalities of the times. The views of important figures – such as Col. Richard Meinertzhagen, Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, Emir Feisal, Woodrow Wilson, and many others – are illustrated throughout in relation to the conferences, correspondences, and agreements in which they partook.

The book contains fascinating and thorough examinations of the debates and negotiations inside the British Cabinet, the San Remo Conference, the drafting of the Treaties of Sevres and Lausanne, the De Bunsen Committee, and the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Importantly, it does not treat these conversations and events as isolated from each other or unrelated, but rather as inter-connected and reinforcing.

Another dreaded "Talmudic ritual"

Palestinian media breathlessly reported this morning:

This morning, a settler performed a provocative Talmudic ritual at the Qattanin Gate, one of the gates of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

According to the official Wafa agency, a settler performed Talmudic rituals at Bab al-Qattanin, guarded by the occupation police, who prevented young men from passing through the gate to pray in Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Unfortunately, we are not privy to the exact nature of the Talmudic ritual that so scandalized the Arabs.

Did he perform a brit milah? Did he have a sheva brachot? Did he put on Tefillin? Did he build a sukkah?

Or maybe he made a blessing before drinking a Coke? Or perhaps he greeted one of the guards with a "Shalom Aleichem"?

We need to get to the bottom of this. The Israeli media is not doing their job.

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

02/18 Links Pt1: David Singer: End the jaw-jaw – redraw the Israel-Jordan border; Caroline Glick: Biden's 'victory' against Putin; West is on verge of signing 'surrender pact' with Iran

From Ian:

David Singer: End the jaw-jaw – redraw the Israel-Jordan border

The UN Security Council needs to urgently activate the following Plan B:

Call on Israel and the PLO to negotiate on the basis of Trump’s Plan – and in default of their agreeing to do so

Call on Israel and Jordan to redraw their current agreed international boundary - designated in the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace Treaty - by dividing sovereignty in Judea and Samaria ('West Bank') and Gaza between their two States - based on Trump’s Plan

About 70% of these territories will in either scenario be returned to Arab sovereignty after an absence of 55 years. No Arab or Jew will have to leave his current home.

The UN is charged under Article 1 of its own Charter:
“To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace”

Time for the UN to end the jaw-jaw and facilitate redrawing the Israel-Jordan border using Trump’s Plan.

Melanie Phillips: The lethal miscalculations over Vladimir Putin

Others in the West have fallen into the same trap of believing that a deal with Putin was in their own country’s interests. Thus Germany agreed to Nord Stream, the gas pipeline across the Baltic Sea, which was in turn green-lighted by U.S. President Joe Biden—until Russian aggression revealed even to Biden that the pipeline enabled Putin to weaponize gas supplies against the West.

Russia was also viewed as a bulwark against China. But Putin has made a strategic alliance with China’s president Xi Jinping, both of them having decided that culturally riven America under its wobbly president is now a busted flush unprepared to do what it takes to resist their aggression.

In other words, my enemy’s enemy may not be my friend but may still be my enemy. But those desperate to believe that swords can be turned into plowshares fall into the trap of wishful thinking.

That’s why the West is regularly played for a sucker by regimes that are inherently far weaker from economic mismanagement and corruption, such as Russia or Iran.

Their power lies in two things: that while they perceive Western states are no longer prepared to fight and die for their country and its culture, Russia and Iran—driven by nationalism or religious fanaticism—very much are.

So, too, is Israel, which knows what it stands for, recognizes its enemies and behaves as if war is just round the corner—which, alas, it so often is.

But even hard-boiled Israel has wobbled, with lethal consequences. During the Oslo process, it allowed itself to believe that the Palestinian Arab leader Yasser Arafat had abandoned terrorism for peace, embraced the “two-state solution” and was bringing the long nightmare of never-ending war to an end.

This lethal miscalculation not only led to the Second Intifada and the murder of more than 1,300 Israelis. It also meant that Israel seemed to sign up to the Palestinian Arab falsehood that this was a dispute over land boundaries rather than a war against its very existence.

Ever since, while the West has believed this falsehood, Israel—trapped by its terrible Oslo error—has been unable to convince the world that it has always been defending itself against the threat of extermination.

Because of this threat, Israel has always been forced to ally itself with unpleasant governments whose support is crucial to Israel’s defense. It has held its nose and done those deals because it is driven above all by the need to survive.

By contrast, the West can no longer agree within itself what exactly it is worth surviving for. That’s why Putin won’t be the last to run rings around it as it feebly flaps its hands.

Caroline Glick: Biden's 'victory' against Putin

Biden's dismissal of a US-Russian war as a possible outcome of a Russian invasion is not a function of any anti-war predisposition on his part. It is a function of four considerations, which are not subject to change.

First, the US public is unprepared and unwilling to go to war against Russia. With 53% of Americans opposing US involvement in the Ukraine crisis, a presidential decision to go to war is unthinkable.

Second, the US has no formal commitment to defend Ukraine's independence. For nearly 20 years, successive administrations have worked behind the scenes to block any possibility of Ukrainian membership in NATO because they don't want to be formally committed to protecting Ukraine from Russia.

This then brings us to the third reason the US will not take up arms to defend Ukraine. While the US national interest is advanced by an independent Ukraine willing to stand up to Russia and welcomes the US and the EU as allies, that interest cannot compete with the US interest in avoiding war with Russia. And as a result, it is against the US's national interest to wage war for Ukraine.

Finally, the US has a limited military capacity to fight a ground war in Ukraine against Russia. Russia has 150,000 troops deployed along its border with Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin can manage their logistical supply lines because they are in Russia.

The US has neither the forces nor the will to send tens of thousands of soldiers to Ukraine to fight the Russian army. It cannot compete.

So far from rebuilding US credibility on the world stage after his Afghanistan debacle, Biden's empty threats of world war have exposed America's weakness and the hollowness of the US's commitment to its allies.

Biden hasn't only been bluffing about the prospect of world war. He is also bluffing about sanctions. Biden said Tuesday that if Russia invades Ukraine, the US will impose sanctions on "key industries" in Russia. But just as his talk of World War III was entirely empty, so his threats of sanctions have no foundation in reality.

The Caroline Glick Show Ep39 - What Game is Biden playing with Ukraine and Iran? | Guest: David Wurmser

In this week’s show, Caroline was joined by David Wurmser in Washington, DC to discuss the ramifications of Joe Biden’s brinksmanship with Russia on Ukraine for America’s continued superpower status and for NATO. They then moved from Ukraine to Iran and the implications of the administration’s abandonment of all red lines in favor of a deal at all costs. They spoke in detail as well about former Iranian Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif’s recent claim that Rob Malley’s underling laundered Iran’s draft nuclear deal, presented it as his own work and then had Malley get the Obama administration to adopt it as the basis for negotiations.

Caroline Glick: 'Biden’s Foreign Policy is Juvenile'

Editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin discusses the Ukraine crisis and the decline of American influence as well as the connection to appeasement of Iran.

He’s then joined by journalist Caroline Glick who discusses the failures of the Biden administration and the current Israeli government and the way she believes they are endangering the West and the Jewish state.

Fatah has rejected Australia's designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization.

In a statement released today, Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement expressed its rejection of designating Hamas as a terrorist faction from anyone in the world.

Osama al-Qawasmi, spokesperson for the Fatah Revolutionary Council, said that the Palestinian people, with all their components and factions, are struggling for freedom, justice and national independence.

Of course, Fatah hates Hamas. It has been engaging in a battle against Hamas. In recent years, it has cut off electricity from Gaza, it has stopped giving permits to patients who wanted to leave Gaza for medical reasons, and it has cut off funding to Gaza.

A few years ago, Fatah head and PA president Mahmoud Abbas called Hamas a terrorist organization himself.

But when it comes down to it, Fatah considers Hamas an ally, and Hamas terrorism is a critical component of the Palestinian strategy. It is a "good cop, bad cop" dynamic, where the West happily talks to Fatah as the non-violent side (despite its continued support for its own terrorist wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades). Hamas terror attacks sometimes get condemned by Fatah and the PA to maintain the facade but, as this announcement proves, they are on the same side.

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

Horseshoe theory proven again: Far-Right antisemites adopting far-Left language

Yesterday, antisemitic flyers were distributed in Fort Myers, FL, part of a wave of such flyers placed in plastic bags around the United States.

Other incidents in recent days occurred in Helotes TX, Austin TX, Atascocita TX, Huntington Beach CA, Vancouver WA, Eugene OR, and Sarasota FL.

It is an inexpensive way for far-Right antisemites to get publicity with no risk. In most communities, distributing hate speech is not a crime, and some of the flyers say that they are distributed randomly in order to forestall the charge that they are targeting Jews.

The Fort Myers flyers are a bit different than the others, though. While the usual flyers list out Jews who supposedly control the media or the White House or the "Covid agenda," this one uses the language of the Left.

It says "Anti-semitism is a human right." This echoes the far-Left tropes that everything they like is a human right (on Valentine's Day, "love" was claimed to be a human right) while anything they don't like is an attack on human rights. In such a universe, it would be difficult for the antisemites on the Left to argue that hate is not a human right.

It also claims to support Whoopi Goldberg's statements on The View, which is ironic because the same people happily admit that their hate for Jews is based on race, the opposite of what Goldberg said. But these white supremacists now claim to support a Black woman - echoing how the far-Left will respond to any criticism of their positions said by a member of a minority group by claiming that the critics are racist or Islamophobic.

Of course, the only thing the haters like about Whoopi Goldberg is that she upset Jews, which also is echoed in far-Left discourse: they will support any cause that aligns with their hate of Israel to the point of claiming that terrorism is legitimate under international law and that people who support Jewish self-determination are racists.

For both sides, the hate is primary. Facts and "rights" can be twisted to support their hate.

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

Of all the country-specific Amnesty sites, only two still have "Israeli Apartheid" as their top story 2.5 weeks later. @AmnestyUSA is one of them.

Amnesty International spent a great deal of effort and money putting together their anti-Israel report this year, including videos, workshops, lessons and the 280-page report itself.

For two weeks, the main Amnesty International site put links to the report "above the fold" in the most prominent area of its site. Then this week it started to show other topics, pushing the slurs against Israel to the #2 position.

Similarly, other Amnesty sites have different priorities.

Germany:

France:

Spain:

Canada:

UK:

There are only two local Amnesty sites that still consider the anti-Israel report their top story, which is a pretty good indication of obsessive anti-Zionism and therefore antisemitism.

One is Ireland:

And the other is.....Amnesty USA:

Based on how much the AmnestyUSA site tweeted when the report came out - I counted about 80 tweets in one day - this is beyond obsession. This is crazed hate for Israel.

And the only reason anyone has crazed hate for Israel is when they are trying to suppress their true crazed hate for Jews.

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

02/17 Links Pt2: Propaganda Exposed: Review of 'The Massacre That Never Was'; How did social justice become antisemitic?; BLM-Linked Bail Fund To Free Louisville Activist Who Shot at Jewish Democrat

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Propaganda Exposed

In April 1948, Deir Yassin was an Arab village of about a thousand residents. It was captured then by Jewish forces seeking to break the siege of Jerusalem during the war for Israel’s independence. Most of the fighting was done by the underground soldiers of the Irgun and Lehi, with assistance from the Haganah, the official fighting force of the Jewish establishment. A truck-mounted loudspeaker blaring a warning for residents to flee the village fell into a trench that had been dug by villagers. The result was a bloody house-to-house battle with a high death toll.

That much everyone agrees on. But how high was the death toll? How many of the Arabs killed were combatants? What were the circumstances under which they died? All that has been the subject of much dispute. Interestingly, the testimonies of the Jews and Arabs who were at Deir Yassin that day are consistent with each other. Meanwhile, a narrative was formed about Deir Yassin in the public imagination—one that portrays Jewish troops as rapists and child-murderers. That narrative was established by people far from the scene who were crafting post-battle propaganda. How to correct the record?

That was the task Eliezer Tauber, an influential Middle East historian and former dean at Bar-Ilan University, set for himself. It was simple but ambitious: He would comb through the eyewitness testimony in Hebrew and Arabic to identify every single fatality and how each person died. “I do not think the investigator will be able to reach his research goals,” was how one reader for the Israel Science Foundation responded to Tauber’s book proposal. But Tauber succeeded. The book that resulted, The Massacre That Never Was, came out in Israel in 2018. It is indisputably the authoritative account of the battle that began the morning of April 9, 1948.

American readers have had to wait four years for a translation from the Hebrew. Why? Well, one university press in America told Tauber that “we could sell well to the right-wing community here but we would end up with a terrible reputation,” as Shmuel Rosner reported in 2018. Koren Publishers admirably stepped into the breach and, by publishing The Massacre That Never Was, has not only done the historical record a genuine service but has also exposed the cowardice and pusillanimity of the publishing houses that refused to touch Tauber’s groundbreaking work for fear of offending the leftists and Arabists who dominate Middle Eastern studies in American universities.

The background to the Deir Yassin tragedy is this: Palestine’s Arab population declared war on the nascent Jewish state as soon as the United Nations approved its plan to partition Mandatory Palestine into two countries, one Jewish and one Arab, in November 1947.

How did social justice become antisemitic? - opinion

The far-left ideology of critical social justice that has permeated United States (US) academia is working its way into the US K-12 education and has infiltrated popular media outlets. That antisemitism, in the thinly-veiled form of anti-Zionism, goes hand-in-hand with this dogma is clear. However, the role of the late Columbia University professor Edward Said in making antisemitism an integral component of social justice is often overlooked and as a result, there are still many who mistakenly believe that they can separate critical social justice activism from its antisemitic component.

Examples of antisemitism in movements termed social justice abound. My organization, CAMERA, has documented the links between the leadership of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

A recent study of college and university Diversity, Equity and Inclusion department staffers by the Heritage Foundation found many such individuals engaging in extreme hyperbolic and obsessive criticism of Israel on social media to a point which the Foundation concluded was antisemitic.

As well, researchers searched 741 Twitter accounts that they identified from Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) movement staff at 65 universities. Of tweets about Israel and the Palestinians, they found that 96% were critical of Israel, including false allegations of apartheid and colonialism.

My alma mater, Oberlin College, is a vanguard of the far-left that long ago embraced identity politics and critical social justice. There, antisemitic anti-Zionism has manifested as an exhibit displayed just before Passover that portrayed the ten plagues as Israeli actions against Palestinians, professors teaching material in classes that would be considered antisemitic under the widely-adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, and lauding antisemitic speakers like Eli Valley.

Edward Said’s writing has played a major role in bringing antisemitic anti-Zionism into critical social justice. In their book Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity – and Why This Harms Everybody, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay demonstrate that critical race theory and the post-colonialism popularized in academia by Said have the same ideological ancestor in postmodern theory.

Moral relativism, an emphasis on identity and language, and distrust of empiricism were common to them. These once-arcane theories took root and gained broad support both in and out of academia over a period of several decades, even as they became more intertwined.

The Myth of ‘Jewish-White Privilege’

While in the Diaspora, there was nothing privileged about our denial of citizenship, university entrance, positions in government, or acceptance to professional schools. There was nothing privileged about our expulsion from Italy, England, Hungary, Switzerland, Austria, Bavaria, Portugal, Spain, Germany, and the Papal States.

Those who committed the pogroms of Russia, Poland, and other European countries did not see our whiteness as they shot, burned, and buried us alive beneath the landscape of their motherlands. Neither did the Nazi monsters and their all too willing accomplices, see our whiteness, while they unceremoniously carted us off to the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Majdanek.

Upon landing on the shores of the United States, our “whiteness” did not exempt us from restrictive quotas denying us entrance to Ivy League universities, jobs in corporate America, membership in “whites only” clubs, fraternities, and organizations. And a most callous decree, ironically occurred in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, when Jews were denied safe harbor in the United States during World War II.

Consequently, the term Jewish-white-privilege is offensive, because it conflates my ancestry, heritage, and religion with the very people and cultures who shunned, excluded, persecuted, expelled, and murdered my Jewish family. To antisemites, there was nothing privileged about me being “white” — no sanctuary, no escape, and no mercy.

Jewish-white-privilege is not a term of advantage, but a cruel catchy canard that obscures our history, and it is a painful trope that leads to divisiveness, thus denying us the comfort and acceptance as a member of the community of inclusiveness. We should strike that fictitious expression from the lexicon, because Jewish-white-privilege is a myth.

I noted recently that Jamaal Bowman and dozens of other "progressive" members of Congress have decided not to endorse the Israel Relations Normalization Act of 2021.

The Israel haters are describing the act this way (from a JVP mailing:)

Leave it to the U.S. government to say “peace” when it means “weapons sales.” That is exactly what’s happening with the Israel Relations Normalization Act of 2021, a bill encouraging more arms sales and shady political favors between authoritarian regimes while masquerading as “peace” and “diplomacy.”

This bill is essentially a green light to the Israeli government, saying: you don’t have to end apartheid, ethnic cleansing, or the occupation against Palestinians. We’ll still give you everything you want.

As usual, they lie. But it is worth reading the text of the bill - specifically, the US policy to be affirmed within the bill - to see what the haters really oppose and what they support.

The bill, HR 2748, says:

It is the policy of the United States—

(1) to expand and strengthen the Abraham Accords to encourage other nations to normalize relations with Israel and ensure that existing agreements reap tangible security and economic benefits for the citizens of those countries;

(2) to develop and implement a regional strategy to encourage economic cooperation among Israel, Arab states, and the Palestinians to enhance the prospects for regional peace, respect for human rights, transparent governance, and cooperation to address water scarcity, climate solutions, health care, sustainable development, and other areas that result in benefits for residents of those countries;

(3) to develop and implement a regional security strategy that recognizes the shared threat posed by Iran and violent extremist organizations, ensures sufficient United States deterrence in the region, builds partner capacity to address shared threats, and explores multilateral security arrangements built around like-minded partners;

(4) to support and encourage government-to-government and grassroots initiatives aimed at normalizing ties with the state of Israel and promoting people-to-people contact between Israelis, Arabs, and peoples from other countries and regions, including by expanding and enhancing the Abraham Accords;

(5) to continue to support a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in two states—a democratic Jewish state of Israel and a viable democratic Palestinian state—living side by side in peace, security, and mutual recognition;

(6) to implement the Nita M. Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act of 2020 (title VIII of division K of Public Law 116–260), which supports economic cooperation and peacebuilding efforts among Israelis and Palestinians;

(7) to oppose efforts to delegitimize the state of Israel and legal barriers to normalization of relations with Israel;

(8) to work to combat anti-Semitism and support normalization of relations with Israel, including by countering anti-Semitic narratives on social media and state media and pressing for educational curriculum reform; and

(9) to encourage partnerships and collaboration on climate solutions, water, health, sustainable development, and other areas.

This means that opponents of the Act are against one or all of these things!

They support delegitimizing Israel. They do not support a Palestinian state next to a Jewish state. They are against economic cooperation that would help Palestinians.

And they are against fighting Arab antisemitism.

This is the official position of the Democratic Socialists of America. This is the official position of the Squad and the other members of Congress who oppose this measure.

It is good to know exactly where these people stand.

(h/t Irene)

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

Arab Israeli Voting, Enjoying Freedoms Unaware He's Victim Of Apartheid (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Arab Israeli Voting, Enjoying Freedoms Unaware He's Victim Of Apartheid

Fureidis, February 17 - A prominent resident of this predominantly-Arab town in northern Israel runs his business, engages in local and national politics, maintains active civic involvement, and benefits from liberties and security unavailable to the vast majority of his ethnic peers in the region and beyond, a situation that has concealed from him, his family, and his community that in fact they suffer under the repressive boot of a tyrannical Jewish-supremacist segregationist racist colonialist fascist regime hell-bent on ethnically cleansing him and his ilk from the land.

Jamil Zoabi, 50, operates a construction-supply enterprise that he and his brothers established two decades ago, but that he now owns outright after having bought out his brothers' shares in 2010. The father of six and soon-to-be grandfather enjoys a comfortable lifestyle and participates in civic life as his time permits, focusing mostly on local municipal issues such as infrastructure, and advising a committee that works with the Ministry of Education to help maintain and enhance academic achievement in the coastal town of 13,000. The freedoms of assembly, the press, expression, and religion that Mr. Zoabi exercises - he attends mosque services regularly and has completed the Hajj, and has had letters critical of government policy published in mainstream Hebrew newspapers - only mask, however, the inescapable reality that Israel perpetrates Apartheid against him, depriving him and his family of the very freedoms and rights he so blithely enjoys.

"It's been a decent year, even accounting for COVID," Zoabi disclosed to a reporter who asked after his welfare. "Sales didn't shrink as anticipated, and I've been able to give my employees a raise. Our local council got a nice allocation from the government to fix up schools and a bunch of dangerous intersections, plus the planning of an overpass that will ease our town's access to the main highways. [Daughter] Noora just won a math competition at school, and she's going to compete nationally - maybe even represent Israel internationally." The man gushed with the enthusiasm of someone manifestly unaware that he has been expelled, despoiled, genocided and ethnically cleansed, according to numerous international NGO reports.

Zoabi acknowledged the ethnic tensions that make Arab-Jewish relations fraught. "You can't erase history," he explained. "Some Jews deny Arab suffering, and many Arabs refuse to acknowledge Jewish rights. But in the end we have to share this small parcel of land. There's no other way. It's not supposed to be easy. Nor can we expect to build paradise in a day," he chuckled, in apparent reference to the town name etymology.

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

02/17 Links Pt1: Why do Iran, 'progressives,' fear Israel, the Abraham Accords?; The Palestinian Leaders' Five-Star Jihad; Why is no one talking about Iran digging a new unbombable nuke facility?

From Ian:

Why do Iran, 'progressives,' fear Israel, the Abraham Accords?

IN CONTRADICTION to the sour and rejectionist remarks of the American “progressive” groups mentioned above, the Abraham Accords are not a Trump-tainted gimmick or a Netanyahu-stained end-run around the Palestinians. Rather, they are an authentic breakthrough for both peace and security in the Middle East; a transformation that evinces staying power and deepens by the day.

To assert that only Trumpian razzle-dazzle and arms deals were the basis for the Abraham Accords, as do the partisan grouches mentioned above, is a complete misread of Emirati, Bahraini and Moroccan purposes in pursuit of peace with Israel. The leaders of the countries want to redefine the self-identity and global image of Arab Muslims by blending tradition with enlightenment, anchored in an admirable discourse of religious moderation and broad-mindedness.

Affiliating with Israel fits perfectly into this agenda because this is exactly how they view Israel too – as a nation that successfully synthesizes strong ethnic and religious identity with modernity. Therefore, the Abraham Accords are deeply rooted in genuine ideological intentions (as well as urgent security realties) and are locked-in for the long term.

Alas, for the hard-left and anti-Israel mob it is hard to exult in the Abraham Accords. It means swallowing the fact Israel is demonstrably a force for good, knowledge, prosperity, and stability in the Middle East. After all, that is the reason the Gulf states and Morocco are jumping on the bandwagon with Israel!

It is even harder for these extremists to accept that, de facto, the Abraham Accords are a blunt refutation of the ongoing Palestinian campaign to deny and criminalize the Jewish People’s historic rights in Israel.

By referencing the Abrahamic common heritage of Muslims and Jews in the foundational document of the Abraham Accords, and repeatedly playing “Hatikvah” in their royal palaces, Arab countries implicitly are acknowledging that Jews are a Biblical people indigenous to the Land of Israel. This is a joyous revolution that overturns generations of Arab and Islamic ideological delegitimization of Israel.

It is truly tragic that the intransigent Palestinians and their backward backers in America are unable to appreciate the gargantuan opportunities made possible by the Abraham Accords.

Col Kemp: This is the EU's darkest hour

As Russian forces continued to build along the Ukrainian border last month, Netflix released one of its most popular movies to date – Munich: The Edge of War. The film is set in 1938 as German troops prepare to attack the Sudetenland while Chamberlain and other European leaders negotiate away Czechoslovakia’s sovereignty. Today, it’s almost as if President Macron is reading from Chamberlain’s script. Since his meeting last week with Putin, he’s been pressing Ukraine to implement the Minsk accords, brokered by France and Germany in 2015 as Russian forces and their proxies fought in eastern Ukraine.

The imposition of the Minsk accords would see an end to Kyiv’s sovereignty. They would give Russia a say in running the country and its foreign policy and hand seats in parliament to Moscow’s proxies. A few days ago Putin made clear exactly what he wants, telling Ukraine, with undertones of rape: ‘Like it or not, you’ll have to tolerate it, my beauty.’

It is extraordinary that Macron, whose country now holds the EU Council presidency, should entertain such gunpoint bartering of a democratic nation’s integrity. He has a track record of failed conciliations with Russia and has recently suggested there is ‘legitimacy’ in the Kremlin’s concerns over a putative threat from Nato. It must be obvious to him that Putin will not be mollified by such appeasement and that even if President Zelenskiy were to accede to Minsk it would not end there. But Macron has elections in April and perhaps believes that a Chamberlain style proclamation of peace for our time might secure victory for him.

Germany too has looked happy to go along with this ‘grand bargain’. That is no surprise from a government that has blocked another Nato member from supplying defensive arms to Kyiv and is desperate to placate Putin, having allowed an increasing dependence on Russian energy supplies. The Nordstream 2 gas pipeline is designed to bypass Ukraine, removing the only bargaining chip against Russia in Kyiv’s hands. While some have proposed the pipeline’s termination if Russia invades, Chancellor Scholz has been reluctant to express such a warning, falling back on the unsustainable excuse that it is a ‘privately managed commercial project’.

Russia Continues Military Buildup, Expels US Diplomat

Russia has added another 7,000 troops to the more than 150,000 forces already in place along the border with Ukraine.

The move comes in direct contradiction to claims by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin that forces were being withdrawn in the wake of a military drill with Belarus.

Russia Expels US Diplomat, Ukraine Reprimands Israeli Envoy

Russia on Thursday expelled deputy US Ambassador Bartle Gorman from the country, the RIA news agency reported, quoting the US Embassy in Moscow. Washington will “respond” to the move, the embassy said.

No reason was given for the expulsion.

Shortly after the announcement of Gorman’s expulsion, and the same day Russia submitted its response to Western security proposals, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs website became “unavailable,” Reuters reported.

In a separate move, Ukraine has rebuked Israel’s Ambassdor Michael Brodsky in Kiev.

The reprimand came after following a request to Moscow from Israel’s Foreign Ministry director-general Alon Ushpiz asking for Russian assistance in the evacuation of Israelis from the war zone in the event of an invasion of Ukraine.

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinian Leaders' Five-Star Jihad

Hamas leaders are not sitting among their people in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. It is easier and safer for them to call on the Palestinians to send their children to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel while they are relaxing in the comfort of their hotel rooms, villas and gyms in the Qatari capital of Doha. The Hamas leaders are not going to send their own sons and daughters to engage in the jihad against Israel.

The Iranian-backed Hamas and PIJ are the two largest groups in the Gaza Strip. Instead of investing their resources and efforts in improving the living conditions of their people, the Hamas and PIJ leaders have brought on them one disaster after the other. They have brought war and destruction on the people of the Gaza Strip by firing thousands of rockets towards Israel, forcing Israel to fire back to defend itself.

Instead of building schools and hospitals, the Hamas and PIJ leaders have chosen to invest tens of millions of dollars in a network of tunnels along Gaza's border with Israel, to attack and kill Jews.

The leaders of Hamas and PIJ left scorched earth behind them and chose to lead luxurious lives in Doha, Istanbul and Beirut. Strangely, however, instead of hiding their faces in shame, they are calling from their gyms, jets, and jacuzzis for the Palestinians to pursue the fight against Israel.

Some Palestinians, it seems, refuse to be duped by the deception of the Hamas and PIJ leaders. These Palestinians have finally realized that their leaders care only about their personal interest and the well-being of their families and are enjoying the good life in Doha and Istanbul.

Above all, the Palestinians need to boot out the thieves who masquerade as their leaders, the butchers responsible for the deaths of the young men and women in the Hamas-incited jihad against Israel. The Palestinians will never move forward with their lives as long as their leaders are relaxing in hot tubs in Qatar and Turkey while sending them orders to bathe themselves in yet more Jewish blood.

Some Pallywood from 2015

Kweansmom asked me to check out this photograph of a man bathing his kids in Gaza.

I dug a little and found this article about the photo and photographer:

In an interview with Independent Journal Review, [Emad] Nassar said he captured the shot on June 26, 2015, while he was taking pictures of the conflict in Gaza.

He was walking around the apartment complex when he suddenly saw the family and snapped the photo. It was not staged.

The only information he knows about the family in the photograph are the names of the people and how they’re related; Salem Saoody, 30, daughter Layan (left), and his niece Shaymaa (right).

OK, there are a few points right off the bat.

The photo was taken in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza, which was a Hamas stronghold during the 2014 war. Hamas purposefully didn't rebuild the area for well over a year as it would show it off to clueless Europeans about how evil Israel was to bomb Hamas targets purposefully placed in a residential area.

As we can see, photographers loved this neighborhood and continued to take staged photos over a year after the war. After all, the destruction was photogenic and served a wonderful propaganda purpose, even as tens of thousands of homes in other sections of Gaza were rebuilt.

Now, how likely is it that this photo was not staged?

Let us take at face value that a loving father would want to give his daughter and niece a bath or have them splash around in the equivalent of a kiddie pool in a clearly dangerous room.

A corner bathtub holds at least 50 gallons/200 liters. This photo was taken at least on the third floor of the building. There is obviously no running water there. This means that according to the photographer, the father carried a great deal of water up and down three flights of dangerous stairs alone, several trips, yet not bothering to clear a path to the tub he was filling up and preferring instead to step over rubble. He then asked his daughter and niece to walk up the same path, on top of the rubble.

Now, what if the father had help - say, the photographer Emad Nassar, helping him carry the water with the intent to stage an award winning photograph? Seems somewhat more likely, although it would still be a lot of work.

What if there was at least a third person there - say, Emad's brother Wissam, whom he doesn't mention but who is also a photographer, and who also won awards for his versions of the same scene at the same time?

Suddenly the idea that Emad was wandering around the neighborhood and stumbled onto this scene on the third floor of a teetering building seems a lot less likely.

The brothers seem to have found other similar scenes of ordinary Gazans just hanging out in ruins a few floors up in very photogenic ruins.

Emad:

Wissam:

Wissam has lots of similar, "spontaneous" scenes from upper floors of destroyed buildings:

And he also finds clean toys in rubble:

And old women sitting photogenically in rubble.

Why would anyone think that these brothers are anything but honest when they say they don't stage photos?

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

Hamas denounces Australia designating it a terror group - even as it praises terrorism

Al Jazeera reports:

The Australian government has said it planned to list the whole of the Palestinian movement Hamas to its list of outlawed “terrorist” organisations.

Australia had previously listed Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades military wing as a “terror” group in 2003, but the new designation which will come into force in April, will list the organisation in its entirety, including its political wing.

“The views of Hamas and the violent extremist groups listed today are deeply disturbing, and there is no place in Australia for their hateful ideologies,” said Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews.

The designation will place restrictions on financing or providing other support to Hamas – with certain offences carrying a 25-year prison sentence.

“It is vital that our laws target not only terrorist acts and terrorists, but also the organisations that plan, finance and carry out these acts,” Andrews said.

Hamas denounced the move on its website:

The Islamic Resistance Movement " Hamas " deplored the Australian government's move to classify the movement as a "terrorist" organization, according to Minister of Home Affairs Karen Andrews, expressing her rejection of this designation.
The movement stressed that this trend of the Australian government contradicts international law, which guarantees the right of peoples to resist the occupier...And called on the Australian government to reverse this decision, which harms the reputation of the Australian state, in its care and respect for human rights, and its recognition of international laws and norms.

At the very same time, the Hamas website has an article praising their late engineer who pioneered designing missiles aimed at civilians - the very definition of terrorism:

The sixteenth of February coincides with the nineteenth anniversary of the martyrdom of the Qassam leader and the first missile maker, Nidal Farhat, who destroyed the occupation’s beds in his life, and paved the way for generations after him to humiliate the occupation and disgrace its face.
He grew up loving the homeland and sacrificing for the sake of God, as his family home was a shelter for the resistance fighters and wanted people of the occupation army, and a starting point for carrying out military operations against the occupation forces.
In the early nineties, he joined the Al-Qassam Brigades to be the right-hand man of the martyred General Imad Aqel, whom he used to shelter in his home during the period of his pursuit.
Commander Farhat spent most of his time in order to manufacture a weapon that would be a strong deterrent to the occupation, so he came up with the idea of making a missile that would be launched from the Palestinian territories towards the occupied territories.

The "political wing" of Hamas does't even try to hide its support for attacking civilians.

Notice also that to Hamas, Gaza isn't occupied - Haifa is.

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

Lebanon's English-language news site Naharnet is one of the few that allow readers to comment freely, and most of them really hate Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Here are some quotes from Nasrallah's Wednesday speech and some Lebanese responses:

Nasrallah: Israel is in retreat and it is heading to demise.
Response: Had to laugh at this;)! Sure Israel's economy is in shambles, its national debt exceeds $150 billion, it defaulted on its sovereign debts, its currency depreciated more than 20 times, it is isolated, and has no friends.

Nasrallah: We encourage the Israelis to leave Palestine and we’re ready to pay for their travel tickets.
Response: Uffff.... why not use the money to keep the Lebanese in their country instead.

Nasrallah: Hizbullah Making Precision Missiles, Drones inside Lebanon
Response 1: Great.... and the Lebanese people are starving! Take your missiles and drones and shove them where the sun don't shine.
Response 2: Can we cook the missiles and drones to eat them? Has Hezbollah created a tech industry around this. Or is Nasrallah just yapping to get the pay check from Khamanei?
The aim of politics is to bring about peace and prosperity to a majority of people while Hezbollah’s aim is to serve the interests of its paymasters in Teheran.
What a monstrous circus!

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

02/16 Links Pt2: BLM activist charged in murder attempt of Jewish mayoral candidate; Irish Parliament Refusing to Host Israeli-Arab Who Denies Israel is Apartheid State

From Ian:

Anti-Police Activist Charged With Unspeakable Act of Political Violence

A radical anti-police activist was charged Monday with the attempted murder of Louisville, Ky., mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg. The activist, Quintez Brown, was apprehended shortly after he allegedly entered Greenberg's campaign headquarters and fired multiple shots with a handgun.

Brown, 21, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and four counts of wanton endangerment. No one was injured during the attack, but a bullet reportedly grazed the back of Greenberg's sweater. The mayoral candidate, a Democrat, said the suspect walked into his office where he and four other staffers were meeting Monday morning. "When we greeted him, he pulled out a gun, aimed directly at me, and began shooting," Greenberg told reporters. "The individual closest to the door managed to bravely get the door closed, which we barricaded and the shooter fled the scene."

Police said Greenberg, who is Jewish, appeared to have been targeted in the shooting. Authorities did not identify a motive for the crime and said they believe Brown acted alone. The alleged attack occurred two months after Brown announced his candidacy for Louisville Metro Council. Among his stated policy goals were "freedom, reparations," and "full employment."

Brown had been a student at the University of Louisville, where he was an MLK scholar studying philosophy and Pan-Africanism, a controversial ideological movement whose advocates include Malcolm X, Robert Mugabe, and Muammar Gaddafi. His social media bios called for "the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism."

Brown also served as opinion editor for the student newspaper, the Cardinal, and was a former intern and biweekly columnist for the Louisville Courier Journal, where he wrote extensively about how law enforcement and other "institutions in society work together to maintain the status quo of the spectacular Black death."

An active participant in the so-called racial justice protests of 2020, Brown's journalistic output and social media posts reflect a radicalized individual who was skeptical of representative democracy and believed Marxist revolution was the most viable path to achieving racial justice.

Days before the alleged attack, Brown urged his followers to join the Lion of Judah Armed Forces, a black supremacist militia whose ideas are aligned with those of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement. Adherents of the latter group were charged in the 2019 murders of four Jewish people at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, N.J., which authorities described as a "targeted attack."

Quintez Brown (@tez4liberation), the black nationalist & #BLM activist who allegedly tried to assassinate a Louisville mayoral candidate, was recognized by the Obama Foundation & got to meet the former president. He was also championed by race hustlers @JoyAnnReid & @TheRevAl. pic.twitter.com/T0LlNxNFZo
— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) February 15, 2022

Here is @JoyAnnReid interviewing the shooting suspect/BLM activist/black nationalist accused of trying to assassinate a Louisville mayoral candidate in a shooting. Quintez Brown was an anti-gun advocate in the March for Our Lives protest. pic.twitter.com/1yPM4qr1ek
— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) February 15, 2022

The BBC gave a podcast to the BLM activist who tried to murder a Democratic candidate on Monday with a 9mm Glock. Also appearing with him was Nadine White, the Independent’s Race Correspondent. Funny that! https://t.co/bMRmkPb4J4
— LaoCaiLarry (@michaels_willis) February 16, 2022

Louisiana Dem Senate candidate admitted supporting anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan 'forever'

A leading Democratic Senate candidate running to challenge Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., appeared on the podcast of antisemite Louis Farrakhan’s spokesperson in 2020, where he lavished praise on Farrakhan and admitted to being a longtime "supporter."

Gary Chambers Jr., an East Baton Rouge activist running for the Senate, appeared on the Elevated Places - "Ask Dr. Ava" podcast of Dr. Ava Muhammad, who is listed as the national spokesperson for Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has a long history of antisemitic comments, including calling Jews "wicked" and comparing them to "termites."

The podcast’s co-host Terence Muhammad, who has tweeted several times about his support for Farrakhan and has a profile picture with Farrakhan on his Twitter and Instagram, introduced Chambers by saying Chambers "loves the honorable Louis Farrakhan" and "loves his work."

"So first of all let me say to the Honorable Louis Farrakhan that I have been listening to him since I was a young man with my father," Chambers said. "He used to come on TV here in Baton Rouge and my dad kicked me to the game at about 13 or 14 and I’ve been listening ever since because when a Black man stands up for Black folks it makes a Black man want to stand up."

"I have been a supporter [of Farrakhan] from the distance forever, so let me say that first," Chambers continued.

Last week, Chambers attended a New York City fundraiser for his campaign, which was hosted by disgraced former Women's March leader Tamika Mallory, who also has ties to Farrakhan, and Stephen Green, an activist who supports abolishing the Senate and abolishing police.

Mallory has received backlash in recent years for her ties to Farrakhan, which includes her attendance at several of his speeches over the years and calling him "the GOAT" or "Greatest of All Time" in a caption for an Instagram photo of her and Farrakhan. (h/t jzaik)