Tuesday, February 22, 2022

  • Tuesday, February 22, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,

Elder Comix: Who are the privileged whites?

A couple of days ago, Hillel Neuer of UN Watch tweeted:

Also, last year a report found that Amnesty International has a culture of white privilege.

That inspired this cartoon:






Hamas Is Getting Ready To Compete With Fauda (Daled Amos)

by Daled Amos

I recall listening to my rabbi speak on Shabbos -- years ago, when I was just a kid.

In order to illustrate a point, my rabbi mentioned an article that a German actor, dressed as Hitler for a movie he was appearing in, went out on the street in character. According to the report, the actor was astounded at how Germans on the street came up to him and greeted him warmly.

I looked online for some record of this, but did not find it.

What I did find was an article from 2015 about a different German actor and his experience when he went out in public as the Nazi dictator:

An actor dressed as Hitler on the streets of Germany was begged to bring back labour camps, kissed and made to feel like 'a pop star' - casting an uncomfortable light on growing support for right-wing extremism in the country.

Oliver Masucci plays the Nazi leader in 'He's Back' ('Er ist wieder da'), a biting social satire by author Timur Vermes which was released in German cinemas this week.

From the preview on Youtube, it was clear that while no one could have been fooled into thinking that the Nazi dictator had actually returned, there were clearly a lot of Germans who would not pass up the chance to be seen with him.


...and thought there was nothing too outrageous that couldn't be said in order to commemorate the moment.


On the other end of the spectrum, people who masqueraded as Jews got a very different kind of reception.

In that same year, a non-Jewish Swedish reporter walked around the city of Malmo while wearing a kippah just to see what the response would be. He was hit once, cursed multiple times and finally had to flee, out of fear that things would get worse.

A similar experiment was done in France -- again in 2015 -- with similar results: being called names and being spit at. By contrast, when the experiment was imitated in London, the person doing it was basically ignored.

I'm writing about this because of a TV show that Hamas is making.

According to AFP, Hamas is jealous of the success of Israel's hit show Fauda -- about an Israeli counter-terrorist squad. The idea is "to broadcast a drama about the spirit of our resistance," in this case to depict a botched 2018 Israeli operation in Gaza in which 7 Hamas terrorists and one Israeli officer were killed. The operation, which was uncovered in Gaza and required a quick retreat back to Israel, was apparently either an information-gathering mission or related to captives/missing persons in Gaza. One of the 7 Gazans killed was a Hamas commander, but Israel denied the operation's goal was assassination. It is likely though that that is exactly how the Hamas TV show will portray it.

But AFP is not interested in the operation or what its purpose was.

Instead, AFP wants you to know about how much Gazans hate the Arab actors depicting Israelis:

One of them is Jawad Harouda, aged in his early sixties and with a husky voice, who portrays the head of Israel's Shin Bet domestic security service in the new TV series.

To get into character, Harouda said he "soaked up the script", but added that being too convincing can lead to trouble.

"Some women look at me and pray that I die," he said, leaning back in his boss's chair in the fake Shin Bet office.

"I'm happy when people insult me. It means I've succeeded ... The actor is a chameleon, he must be able to act out all colours."

..."In one series, I played a Jewish woman," said one actress, Kamila Fadel, who added that she may have been just a little too convincing for her own good.

"After the series was broadcast, a woman tried to strangle me," she recounted.

"She told me: 'I hate you, you are hurting us so much'. On another day a 13-year-old boy threw a stone at my head thinking I was Jewish... This means I played my part well." [emphasis added]

So in order to convince their audience that they are Jews, these actors have to be a "chameleon," "act out all colors" and "play their part well?"

Big deal.

Anyone walking down the street in Malmo, Sweden -- which has a large Muslim population -- can get the same reaction from complete strangers, without saying a word, just by wearing a kippah. No acting necessary.

Given the children shows in Gaza that teach kids to hate Jews, the summer camps where children can learn to act out attacking Jews and the other forms of incitement that Hamas uses -- hatred of Jews is so systemic that it is hard to see what all the fuss is about actors being attacked for being identified as Jews on TV.

And these attacks that these actors look upon as a source of pride is seen elsewhere as hatred that needs to be combatted.

The AFP article itself misses the point as well.

It describes Fauda as nothing more than a show that "portrays a military unit...that launches raids inside Palestinian territories" and against which Hamas wants "to flip the equation, to show the Palestinian point of view, to broadcast a drama about the spirit of our resistance."

The description by the Associated Press of the first season of the show gives a little more context, describing the show as "the adventures of an undercover Israeli commando team who immerse themselves in the heart of Palestinian society to capture a terrorist behind a wave of suicide bombings."

By taking their cue from Hamas and reducing the Israeli and Gaza TV shows as a propaganda war, AFP completely overlooks one of elements of Fauda that has made it so popular:

In addition to the shootouts and chases, it also delves into the politics and personal drama of the commandos and terrorists, depicting their motivations and family lives, often in a sympathetic manner.

The creators, though they identify as Zionist Jews, don’t shy away from showing the uglier sides of the West Bank occupation and the struggles of the other side. They even look to smash one of the greatest taboos of all, exploring the possibility of an Israeli-Palestinian romance.

That may be one of the reasons why, as AP points out, Fauda has fans among Arabs and even among Palestinian Arabs. And that may be what actually has Hamas worried, since they see Gazans watching the show as a form of normalization with Israel.

Neither AFP nor Hamas seem to realize that one of the strong points of Fauda is that it does not present the conflict as black and white, that it is willing to portray the other side sympathetically. 

And that would take real acting.




02/22 Links Pt1: On Amnesty’s car-crash interview in Israel; Anti-Israel Bias and NGO Links of UNHRC’s Gaza Committee of Inquiry Members; Israel crosses grim 10,000 death mark

From Ian:

Amnesty International’s Problematic Israel Report
Eugene Kontorovich, director of the Center for the Middle East and International Law at George Mason University Scalia Law School, believes “there is clearly a coordinated campaign by far-left NGOs to mainstream the apartheid accusation, with an eye o[n] getting it adopted and ‘made official’ by the ICC [International Criminal Court] and the UNHRC.” Kontorovich continued, “Having a U.N. agency, even a discredited one like the UNHRC, accuse Israel of apartheid will certainly give diplomatic momentum to those who seek to destroy Israel.”

Herzberg sees Amnesty’s report as “timed to feed into a March 2022 report where U.N. Human Rights Council Rapporteur Michael Lynk will accuse Israel of apartheid, which in turn will serve [as] the basis for the Human Rights Council's Commission of Inquiry on Israel levying of the charge. They also hope their reports will influence the ICC to indict Israelis for a crime against humanity.”

Schanzer said, “This [report] was designed to be ammunition, and it will be.” Schanzer concluded, “All of this could potentially build in a dangerous direction.”

That direction isn’t an entirely new one. This effort recalls the United Nations’ declaring in 1975 that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” While the United Nations finally repealed that resolution in 1991, Soviet-style anti-Zionism lives on.

Izabella Tabarovsky, senior associate with the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center and research fellow with ISGAP, told me, “Soviet antizionist propaganda deeply influenced [the] Western left back [in] the 1960s-1980s. Soviet propaganda was comparing Israel to South Africa already in the 1960s and applying the apartheid label regularly ... These comparisons were as baseless then as they are today, but they fulfilled a political purpose.”

Anti-Israel activism remains a popular and unifying cause among leftists; it can also imperil local Jews. Tabarovsky observed: “Demonization of Israel and Zionism creates an atmosphere of antisemitic incitement that endangers Jews in the diaspora in very real ways—we saw it last May. ... In my research, numerous people told me that demonization of Israel by Soviet press in the run-up to the Six Day War created such an antisemitic atmosphere that they feared for their personal safety. ... They were sure that there would be pogroms,” because inflammatory rhetoric has consequences.

Even before releasing this report, Amnesty was an organization whose members voted against actively combating rising antisemitism in Britain in 2015. So Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty USA, can’t be taken seriously when he tweets, “We want to be very clear—it is unacceptable and inappropriate for this report to be used as justification for any recrimination against the Jewish people. We condemn antisemitism in the strongest possible terms.” Indeed, that tweet’s no more credible than Amnesty’s report on Israeli “apartheid.”


On Amnesty’s car-crash interview in Israel
Their responses to simple questions were, for the most part, a mix of exasperation, ignorance, self-contradiction, and conspiratorial magical thinking. Luther in particular was almost comically unprepared for the most obvious of questions, and he seemed genuinely resentful at being asked them.

The most obvious question, of course, is why the obsessive and disproportionate focus on Israel in the human rights community. There are a few coherent, even if not terribly persuasive ways, to deal with the question. One would be to argue that all of the attention of Amnesty, HRW, the UNHRC and others is completely justified because Israel truly is a unique evil on the global scene and much worse than all other countries combined. Another would be to deny completely that there is a disproportionate focus on Israel. And a third would to be acknowledge it, maybe claim that it is a problem of other organisations, but argue that in this specific case it is not what is happening.

What is incoherent is trying to do all three, which is precisely what Luther does. He wants to ‘push back’ on the idea that there is a large focus on Israel. Two sentences later, he tacks in the other direction: ‘I’m not sure what the problem is.’ And later again ‘I don’t think there evidence for that.’ When confronted with the specific example of the UNHRC, which year after year passes more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined, Luther is flatfooted. He avoids the question, isn’t sure about the facts. He seems unaware of the ‘permanent item’ dedicated to Israel on the Commission’s agenda, when no such item exists for any other country.

No one expects an Amnesty director to sound like AIPAC speaker. But it is not expecting too much for someone whose entire professional life is dedicated to the topic of human rights in the Middle East to have an opinion of some kind on the matter.

And it’s jarring that people who believe so fervently in human rights don’t see something amiss in this. Let’s imagine a village with 193 families in it, and the local police assigns one of its only cops to follow only one family’s car and constantly measure its speed, and the tax department goes over every receipt of this same family looking for irregularities, and a grand jury sits permanently to investigate any possible crimes of this same family, and the local paper has a reporter permanently assigned to sniff out any infidelities or disputes inside the family. You don’t need to be an expert with 20 years experience (as Luther reminds us in the interview he has) in the field of human rights to understand what is wrong with this situation.

When Berman comes back to the UN issue one last time, Luther gives perhaps the most astonishing response. He says Israel has actually managed to ‘shut down scrutiny using the power of its relationships’ and charges that the UN is actually a locus of inaction because Israel ‘has influence over powerful allies who then manage to stop it, stop the scrutiny.’

And that of course is the appeal of anti-Israel activism in the West: the sincerely held belief that by engaging in it you are somehow standing up to dark powerful forces at home. There’s a word for this pathology.
  • Tuesday, February 22, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon

Abbas now has power to issue diplomatic passports to allies and revoke them from enemies. And that's exactly what he is doing.



Earlier this month, a new Palestinian law was published that granted president Mahmoud Abbas powers to issue or revoke the red diplomatic passports pretty much at will, with no regard as to whether the recipients are diplomats or not. 

In essence, it is yet another way to control his people.

Indeed, yesterday Abbas revoked the diplomatic passport of his Fatah rival Nasser al Kidwa, who is a former Palestinian envoy to the UN and also former foreign minister - pretty much the definition of a diplomat. But Kidwa created a rival faction within Fatah last year, so he is an enemy of the Palestinian dictator.

Kidwa even said that it makes no sense for him to go through the Palestinian judicial system to protest this ruling, since it is all rigged by Abbas anyway.

Similarly, Abbas withdrew the diplomatic passports of many members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, which is dominated by Hamas, even though the law used to be that they can use these "VIP" passports for life.

This is a clear violation of the right of movement - by the Palestinian leadership. Yet Gisha, the Israeli NGO that supposedly is dedicated to promoting the right of Palestinians to have freedom of movement, has not said a word about this law that passed on February 6.

Gisha, which has embraced the word "apartheid" to describe Israel, suddenly doesn't care about freedom of movement -- its entire purpose -- when Israel cannot be blamed.

Similarly, the non-Arabic media has been silent on this very clear unilateral and dictatorial move by Mahmoud Abbas.

People really care about Palestinian human rights - as long as they can blame the Jews. Without that critical precondition, these same caring human rights professionals don't care about Palestinian human rights at all. 





  • Tuesday, February 22, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon

The fatal mistakes in South Africa's ruling on antisemitic speech



Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh thanked the the Constitutional Court in South Africa, which - he claimed - ruled that anti-Zionism is not considered anti-Semitism.

He said, "We demand that the rest of the countries adopt this decision as a reference and a legal precedent."

The court said no such thing. It ruled that in some circumstances, it can be clear that an anti-Zionist statement can be antisemitic, and it obliged someone whose antisemitism was couched in "anti-Zionist" terms to apologize.

I read the full ruling. It attempts to balance the imperatives of free speech against those of combating hate. Although I cannot find the full submission, the ruling praised the amicus curiae of the South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation (SAHGF) which, it says, helped it distinguish between anti-Zionism and antisemitism:

 [I]t is noteworthy that the preceding analysis and this Court’s jurisprudence, most recently detailed in Qwelane, reveals that words cannot always be taken for their plain meaning.  The first amicus aptly emphasised that there exists a long narrative of anti-Jewish rhetoric.  This has dominated world history for thousands of years, and culminated in the Holocaust.  Due regard to this context and history must be observed when dealing with expressions that are allegedly anti-Semitic, because many socially acceptable words may become a proxy for anti-Semitic sentiments.  Focusing on the plain text and ignoring the objectively ascertainable subtext would be ignorant, inappropriate and antithetical to what our Constitution demands.
This is accurate, and it describes perfectly why anti-Zionism is antisemitism. There are no comparable movements against any other sort of nationalism as there are against Zionism. Very few critics of China call themselves "anti-Sinoists." The very existence of the phrase "anti-Zionist" as a unique expression of opposition to self-determination of Jews is what proves its is fundamentally antisemitic, and it is exactly a proxy for modern antisemitism.

The main problem with the South African ruling can be seen in this parenthetical phrase:
In response, Mr Masuku relied on the expert evidence of Prof Friedman to show that there was a distinction between anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of the State of Israel (anti-Zionism).
I don't have the text of Prof. Friedman's testimony but the judgment text here indicates that the Constitutional Court accepts a definition of anti-Zionism is "legitimate criticism of the State of Israel." That is the opposite of the truth: legitimate criticism of Israel is in no way "anti-Zionism." It is the obsessive, lie-filled, hateful and illegitimate criticism of Israel that is anti-Zionism. That same hate behind anti-Zionism has animated antisemitism for millennia.  

It is noteworthy that the testimony of Pref. Friedman, here referred to as "expert," was openly derided in the earlier Equality Court case at which he gave that testimony:

 The evidence of the respondents’ expert witness, Friedman, is of course, opposing that of the Commission’s witnesses. I deal with the contrasting views below. First, the trite approach to such opposing views.  Expert witnesses are usually required to assist the Court, and not the party for whom he/she testifies....

[It] is difficult, in the circumstances of this matter, to accept the evidence of Friedman. I say this for the following brief reasons:  the opinion does not demonstrate convincingly that Friedman is indeed an expert on the issue of anti-Semitism, and its proper inter-relationship with anti-Zionism in the context of the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Although the evidence shows that Friedman has immense interest in these matters, these have not been the focus of his academic career. In addition, he somewhat showed that he is partisan which on its own, offends the approach and principles to expert testimony described in the preceding paragraph of this judgment. 
Whether the Constitutional Court was quoting Friedman or added the parenthetical phrase on its own, if the court has an incorrect definition of anti-Zionism, it will sometimes rule incorrectly.

There is one other major flaw in the judgment. 

It quotes an earlier case to determine whether a statement is racist:  it is “accepted that the test to determine whether the use of the words is racist is objective – whether a reasonable, objective and informed person, on hearing the words, would perceive them to be racist or derogatory.” 

This definition excludes the use and power of dog-whistles - statements that include meanings that would be clear for a specific, intended audience but which would go over the heads of most "reasonable, objective and informed persons."

Dog-whistles are not always intended as hidden messages for one's supporters. Sometimes they are intended to cause pain to one's opponents.

There were three statements that  Masuku made at an anti-Israel rally at Wits University that the court ruled did not cross the threshold into hate speech and direct threats against the Jewish community:

 “COSATU has got members here even on this campus; we can make sure that for that side it will be hell.” 

“[T]he following things are going to apply: any South African family, I want to repeat it so that it is clear for anyone, any South African family who sends its son or daughter to be part of the Israel Defence Force must not blame us when something happens to them with immediate effect.”  

“COSATU is with you, we will do everything to make sure that whether it’s at Wits, whether it’s at Orange Grove, anyone who does not support equality and dignity, who does not support rights of other people must face the consequences even if it means that we will do something that may necessarily cause what is regarded as harm.”  
Orange Grove is a Jewish neighborhood. But the court ruled that Masuku's might not have meant that as an attack on the Jewish community using this tortured logic:

  In these statements, Mr Masuku cajoles that he would confront his opponents whether it was at Wits University or whether it was at Orange Grove.  The HRC contended, and the Equality Court accepted, that the reference to Orange Grove was meant as a reference to a predominately Jewish neighbourhood.  Mr Masuku contended that his reference to Wits University and Orange Grove was simply because these were the sites of the most recent marches and rallies, and of the offices of two major defenders of Israel’s actions in Gaza (which are also prominent Jewish associations).  It is not conclusive either way that a reasonable reader who would have known that Orange Grove was a predominately Jewish suburb would also not have been aware of the march to the offices of the SAJBD and SAZF which are in Raedene, a small suburb between Orange Grove and Linksfield.
If the offices of those two organizations aren't in Orange Grove itself, how much more evidence do you need to realize that Masuku's reference to Orange Grove was specifically towards Jews? This was a clear dog-whistle to threaten Jews in a way that Jews (and antisemites!) would immediately recognize, yet that a "reasonable reader" might not understand.

This shows that the "reasonable reader" test is not enough for determining whether a statement is hate speech. 

While it is welcome that the court ruled that Masuku must apologize for his statement where he compared the Jewish community to Hitler, these two flaws could hurt future judgments on similar cases.


 


  • Tuesday, February 22, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon

Saudi-American academic couldn't visit the Al Aqsa Mosque because of Palestinian hate

Najat Al-Saeed is a Saudi-American independent academic researcher who teaches in Dubai and writes for Israel Hayom.

Earlier this month she tweeted details about her trip to Israel, causing much discussion in Arab media.


Now she has written about her experiences during her short trip to Israel for Al-Hurra. It was virtually all positive.

The one slight discomfort that she felt came not from Israelis - but from Palestinians.

Ever since the Abraham Accords, Palestinian Muslims on the Temple Mount have been harassing and intimidating any Muslim with a Gulf accent who wants to visit Al Aqsa Mosque.

Here is how Najat describes her visit to Jerusalem and the third holiest site in Islam:

My impression before my visit to Jerusalem was that it is a small and religious city, but I was surprised that it is larger than I expected, and it is not only a religious city, but also a contemporary city.  I saw the religious side of the city I saw when I visited the Old City of Jerusalem with the wonderful tour guide, Shaked Berry, who coordinated with Sharaka (an NGO that supports peace between Israel and Gulf stets)  and I saw a true incarnation of the three major Abrahamic religions: the Temple Mount and the Western Wall for Judaism, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for Christianity, the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque for Muslims. The Old City is divided into the Muslim Quarter, the Christian Quarter and the Jewish Quarter.   

The confusion I found on my trip like many Muslims is that we always imagine the Dome of the Rock, a holy Islamic shrine, to be the Al-Aqsa Mosque....

Therefore, the moment I stood in front of the Al-Aqsa Mosque was solemn, because I saw myself in front of a long history, and the truly touching moment was when I heard the call to prayer for the Maghrib prayer while I saw people of different faiths walking in the square. But what struck me was that I could not go inside the mosque because of security warnings, especially after there were several incidents against Gulf Arabic-speaking visitors, especially when the visitor knows that they are from the Gulf countries, so I preferred not to speak in Arabic and go immediately to the Christian neighborhood and then the Jewish one. 
Palestinian antisemitism is so entrenched that they not only try to discriminate against Jews, but also against Muslims who have the audacity be be friends with Jews. 

 


Monday, February 21, 2022

02/21 Links Pt2: Jewish history is under attack; 59% of Israelis hide being Jewish when traveling abroad; Ultra-orthodox Jewish group funding escape for abused Afghan refugees

From Ian:

Jewish history is under attack
This was illustrated when in the same week as Whoopi’s comments, Amnesty International published a report claiming that Israel is an apartheid state. The report, which is chock full of lies, doesn’t once mention Palestinian terror or Israeli security considerations, nor does it recognize the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancient homeland. Amnesty made sure to omit these facts to ensure that the world perceives Israel as a colonialist, apartheid state so that it can legitimize BDS and attacks against Israel.

Even more disturbing, an increasing number of Jews have fallen prey to this false narrative. Jewish progressive organizations like IfNotNow, J Street, and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) promote a revisionist history that denies the Jewish people’s indigeneity to Israel and perceives Zionists as white colonialists. They don’t even recognize their own history.

In George Orwell’s dystopian fictional society of 1984, he says, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

Let’s be clear about the Jewish story - the Jewish people are not victims. We are a people that thrived despite the persecution and oppression we have faced. We are a resilient nation that loves life, a people rooted in faith and traditions. We cannot allow the haters to erase our history and take control of our heritage of nearly 4,000 years. We must learn about our remarkable story of who we are and where we come from so that we can ensure the world knows the truth.

Mark Twain famously asked in his essay ‘Concerning the Jews,’ “The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

Our secret is and has always been our commitment to remembering our extraordinary past, treasuring our traditions, and passing them on to future generations. When we remember, we can ensure the world never forgets.
Israeli American and Israeli Arab couple go to YouTube to defend Israel
Yoseph Haddad, CEO of Together Vouch for Each Other, a nonprofit which seeks to unite Jewish and Arab Israelis, remembers the instantaneous connection he had with his fiancé, Emily Schrader, CEO and cofounder of the digital marketing firm, Social Lite Creative and former digital director of StandWithUs.

“When we met, we immediately clicked,” he said. As Israeli activists, they came up with the idea of hosting a YouTube series together where they discuss breaking news stories, events and politics directly affecting the Middle East.

They want to present the side of Israel to a Western audience that doesn’t always get accurate facts about what is really happening from mainstream news. The first episode debuted February 2.

Haddad, an Arab Israeli Christian, was born in Haifa and raised in Nazareth.

“I did grow up in Nazareth, but most of my family, grandparents and cousins, were in Haifa, and Haifa is the biggest mixed city in Israel. So you would see Jews, you would see Druze, you would see Arab Muslims, Arab Christians in this wonderful big city. I used to play football there with my friends. We grew up Jews and Arabs together. we didn’t care that this guy is an Arab and this guy is a Jew.”

On October 4, 2003, a female suicide bomber blew up Maxim, an Arab-Jewish-owned restaurant in Haifa that Haddad and his family used to frequent. Twenty-one civilians were killed.

“This could have been me,” Haddad stated. “So when a terrorist comes and attacks like this, there’s no discrimination between Arabs and Jews... an Arab from Israel, and a Jew from Israel, it really doesn’t matter, because if you’re an Israeli, you are a target for terrorism.

“This is our country. We’re born here. I hold an Israeli passport, I have an Israeli identity. We work in order to bridge gaps and live in partnership or we don’t have a brighter future for both people, Jews and Arabs.” Haddad was a commander when he served in the IDF from 2003-2006, and also participated in the Second Lebanon War in 2006.


  • Monday, February 21, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • ,

Elder Comix: Self determination for some






  • Monday, February 21, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon

Hamas aiming to increase the number of Gazans working in Israel

Hamas official Issam Al-Dalis revealed on Monday that a plan to help Gazans economically.

Part of the plan includes negotiating (indirectly) with Israel to provide an additional 30,000 work permits for Gazans to work in Israel.

Palestinians and their allies tell the world how awful the Jews are and how they want everyone to boycott Israel, but at the same time even Hamas wants Gazans to have jobs with the hated enemy that supposedly wantonly kills Arabs.

In the end, even Hamas and Fatah don't believe their own propaganda. But credulous Westerners do, which is the intent all along.



02/21 Links Pt1: Amnesty’s Israel chief criticizes group’s report accusing Israel of apartheid; First Arab Muslim, Mizrachi woman appointed to Supreme Court

From Ian:

Amnesty’s Israel chief criticizes group’s report accusing Israel of apartheid
The executive director of Amnesty International Israel has sharply criticized the umbrella international organization over its report earlier this month that accused Israel of practicing apartheid against the Palestinians, saying the document is not helping the situation, and may even be making things worse.

In an interview with Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site, Molly Malekar aired her grievances over the report, which was rejected by Israel and has also divided her own organization.

She described the accusation that Israel engages in apartheid, as well as other elements of the Amnesty report, as a “punch to the gut.”

According to Malekar, many others who campaign for Palestinian rights, both in Israel and in the West Bank, feel the same way.

Amnesty’s report, released February 1 at a press conference in Jerusalem’s Bab A-Zahara neighborhood, found that Israel applies a form of apartheid against Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and around the world, and, most significantly and controversially, against Arab Israelis.

Malekar said that what bothered her most was not the claim that Israel engages in apartheid according to international law, about which, she said, there is a “serious debate.” Rather, she said, Amnesty, as an organization whose goal is to promote human rights, shouldn’t be concerning itself with theoretical definitions.

When Amnesty publishes a paper, “the only important question is what are you trying to achieve by it,” she said.

Malekar said she had stressed to Amnesty administrators and branches in other countries that within Israel there was a struggle between “nationalist forces and humanitarian forces.”


Israel Has Worked since 1948 to Make Peace with the Palestinians
Amb. Dore Gold interviewed by Tovah Lazaroff (Jerusalem Post)

In February, Amnesty International alleged that Israel has been guilty of the crime of apartheid since its inception in 1948. For Dore Gold, Israel's ambassador to the UN from 1997 to 1999, the Amnesty report and others have little to do with matters of law and much more to do with anti-Semitism and the delegitimization of the State of Israel.

"What Amnesty has done is to advance their narrative about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by using a loaded term like 'apartheid' and then insisting that it is a legal term," said Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

"This method of slandering Israel by coating phony narratives with legality is something which Israel's adversaries do all the time," Gold said, adding that this "is a case of 'fake law.'"

It is standard practice for anti-Semites to "seek accusations which they know will ignite hatred against the Jewish people....Today the most effective instrument in the hands of anti-Semites is to say that Israel is an apartheid regime."

Article 7 of the Rome Statute, that is a common reference point for the ICC, refers to an apartheid regime as a "permanent arrangement." That is hardly the case, even if Israel adopted South African practices, which it did not.

The narrative relies on a false claim that Israel, from the start, intended to continuously oppress the Palestinian people, Gold said. In reality Israel has worked from the start to make peace with the Palestinians. Israel negotiated with the PLO for the creation of the Palestinian Authority as a self-governing body over territory in the West Bank, effectively not disempowering the Palestinians.

"It may not be ideal," but the arrangement is not one of "an apartheid regime" and, "most of all, it is not a permanent arrangement. Israeli governments have been trying to negotiate with legitimate representatives of the Palestinians for a way out. The only reason the PA lacks additional autonomy is because of the hard line taken by Abbas and his supporters."
First Arab Muslim, Mizrachi woman appointed to Supreme Court
The Judicial Selection Committee appointed four new justices to the Supreme Court on Monday, reordering the 15-justice body that sits atop the judicial branch.

The four are Judge Khaled Kabub, Judge Ruth Ronen, Judge Gila Kanfei-Steinitz and private-sector lawyer Yechiel Kasher. Kabub is the first Arab Muslim appointed to the Supreme Court, and Kanfei-Steinitz – Likud MK Yuval Steinitz’s wife – is the first female judge of Sephardi descent.

Kanfei-Steinitz and Kasher are both viewed as moderate conservatives, ensuring Sa’ar has placed his stamp on the judiciary and moving it slightly to the Right again, given that three of the four justices being replaced were affiliated with the activist or moderate activist wings.

Ronen was the main pick of Supreme Court President Esther Hayut, and is expected to follow her moderate activist approach.

Kabub has spent most of his career handling economic crime issues and has less well-known constitutional views.

He is replacing Justice George Kara to fill the “Israeli-Arab seat” on the court, and is expected to be somewhere on the moderate activist spectrum.

Kabub will also be the first permanent Muslim Israeli-Arab justice on the court. Prior Israeli-Arab justices were always Christian.
  • Monday, February 21, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon

Even South Africa recognizes that some "anti-Zionism" is antisemitism

Bongani Masuku

In 2009, Bongani Masuku, the international relations spokesperson of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) issued this statement:

Bongani says hi to you all as we struggle to liberate Palestine from the racists, fascists and zionists who belong to the era of their Friend Hitler! We must not apologise, every Zionist must be made to drink the bitter medicine they are feeding our brothers and sisters in Palestine. We must target them, expose them and doo all that (sic) is needed to subject them to perpetual suffering until they withdraw from the land of others and stop their savage attacks on human dignity

Despite the fact that Masuku didn't mention Jews and used the tired formula of saying "Zionist" as a proxy for Jews, the South Africa Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) complained about the obvious antisemitism in his statement. 

They first complained to the SA Human Rights Commission, which agreed that the statement was antisemitic. The SAHRC found Masuku’s statements to have been of “an extreme nature that advocate and imply that the Jewish and Israeli community are to be despised, scorned, ridiculed and thus subjecting them to ill-treatment on the basis of their religious affiliation”, and therefore they are “offensive and unpalatable to society”.

They then got an equivalent ruling from the Equality Court, which ordered Masaku to apologize in 2017. He refused. 

Now, the Constitutional Court of South Africa has also ruled on the matter. It upheld the Equality Court's finding that a reasonable person would understand the statement as being based on Jewishness as an ethnicity and not on anti-Zionism.

"This was primarily because of the statement's reference to 'Hitler', because a reasonable reader would have noted that a reference to Hitler to a group which was predominately Jewish was used because of their Jewish ethnicity and identity. After all, Hitler's anti-Semitic extermination campaign was not limited to people of the Jewish faith or ethnicity who identified as Zionists," said the court in its media summary.

Even South Africa, which is as anti-Zionist as any state short of Iran, recognizes that some speech that modern antisemites call "anti-Zionist" is really hate against Jews. 

The courts did not seem to rule on Masuku's statements made shortly afterwards in March 2009 at an "Israel Apartheid Week" event at Wits University which even more explicitly targeted South Africa's Jewish community without saying the word "Jew":

During that speech, Masuku made other statements including that Jews who continued to stand up for Israel should “not just be encouraged but forced to leave South Africa”. He said that COSATU would do everything to ensure, whether at Wits University or ‘Orange Grove’ (a historically Jewish suburb) that those who did not support equality and dignity must face the consequences, even if it meant “something that may necessarily cause what is regarded as harm”.
Cosatu and the Palestinian Solidarity Committee continue to support this bigot.

Bongani Masuku has 30 days from the date of the ruling last Wednesday to apologize to the SA Jewish Board of Deputies.



  • Monday, February 21, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon

The EoZ definition as a taxonomy of antisemitism



Last year I came up with my own definition of antisemitism that I believe is simple and more accurate than any of the ones that others have come up with.

Antisemitism is
hostility toward, 
denigration of
malicious lies about or 
discrimination against 
Jews 
as individual Jews, 
as a people, 
as a religion, 
as an ethnic group or 
as a nation (i.e., Israel.)

It occurs to me that this is more than just a definition: this is a taxonomy for categorizing different types of antisemitism.

There are twenty permutations here between column A and column B. Any antisemitic incident should be able to be categorized as at least one from each column. 

Let's put letters in each column:




So, for example, the popular Arab claim that there are no Jewish archaeological artifacts in Jerusalem is a malicious lie about Jews as a people and a nation. We can call that AS-LPN.

Not allowing Jews in hotels in the early 1900s was discrimination against Jews as an ethnic group, AS-AE.

The myth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is hostility towards and malicious lies about Jews as a people, religion, ethnic group and nation, so it is an AS-HLPREN.

Amnesty International's recent "apartheid" report is filled with malicious lies and discrimination against Jews as a nation, AS-LAN. 

Nazi Germany included everything in both columns: AS-HDLAIPREN.

Ilhan Omar's statement that Zionist money controlling Congress is an AS-LPN, and her claim that Israel is "hypnotizing the world" is AS-HLN. 

Roger Waters' claim that Sheldon Adelson was a "puppetmaster" who believed that non-Jews are less than human was clearly AS-HDLI, but the larger context was clearly that he got his ideas about Adelson from antisemitic literature about the Talmud, so we can add a R on that taxonomy. 

One of the things I want to accomplish with this definition is to also say what antisemitism is not. Often, stupidity is mistaken for antisemitic acts. So under this taxonomy, Whoopi Goldberg's statement about the Holocaust having nothing to do with race was quite false but it wasn't a malicious lie nor was it derogatory, therefore it wasn't antisemitic.

Attacks on George Soros would only be considered antisemitic if they tie into his being Jewish. If they are only about his politics then they don't fit into this taxonomy.

On the other hand, I would argue that Marjorie Taylor-Greene's theory that a California utility was working with the Rothschilds on a satellite that redirects sun rays to Earth to create wildfires is AS-LI - the Rothschilds as individuals but we don't know enough to know if she believes that they are proxies for the Jewish people. However she also shared a video saying that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation” to replace white Europeans with Muslim immigrants, which is a AS-HLN, at least.

There are of course judgment calls here, and often we cannot know whether the hostility towards Jews are based on the idea of Jews as a people or religion or ethnic group without more context. 

The most difficult examples are when antisemitic tropes or dog-whistles are alleged. We cannot know for sure whether the person accused of antisemitism invoked those tropes deliberately  - Jeremy Corbyn's posting of a mural with antisemitic tropes, or Donald Trump' posting an anti-Hilary Clinton graphic that used a six pointed star. Those stories often follow the politics of the accusers more than the actual facts of the case. The artist of the mural clearly had some antisemitic intent but that doesn't mean that Corbyn necessarily had that in mind. Unless there is other clear evidence, I prefer to err on the side of caution - and this definition and taxonomy can help reduce the number of times antisemitism is invoked not out of genuine outrage but to score political points against an opponent. When that happens, Jews are not being defended - they are simply props.

That doesn't mean that both Corbyn and Trump shouldn't have realized how insensitive both of those social media posts were. It just means that without additional evidence they cannot be considered antisemitic.

Similarly, the use of the word "neocon" cannot be considered antisemitic in a vacuum, but in some contexts it clearly is. 

I think that my definition, and applying the taxonomy, does a far better job as reflecting what is truly antisemitic than the other definitions out there. It can never be a science, but this definition makes it less of a free-for-all. 








  • Monday, February 21, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon

Nothing scares Iran more than Muslims normalizing relations with Israel

The Iranian ABNA News Agency, which is geared towards the worldwide Shiite community, has many articles about the evils of normalization with Israel.

Half the time it denounces Muslim countries who have normalized relations or seem to be on the path of normalizing relations - and the other half of the time it touts interviews with low level officials of countries that hate Israel, swearing that they will never normalize relations.

The thing is, their protests against normalization show how successful normalization has been!

We see headlines like:




Do you think they are protesting a bit too much? Headlines like this would have been unthinkable two years ago. Now, seeing officials deny any chance of normalization with Israel makes it look like this is something that some people are seriously considering.

You can get the best news in Iranian media. 







Sunday, February 20, 2022

  • Sunday, February 20, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon

EoZTV: A discussion of my new book PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism

I tried out Twitter streaming on this morning, talking about my new book. I didn't like how Twitter did it very much, so I edited it and put it up on YouTube along with my other streaming videos. 

Enjoy!






02/20 Links: Tzipi Livni opens up about her Gulf visits before the Abraham Accords; Hamas doesn’t need Sheikh Jarrah or Jerusalem to start a war

From Ian:

Tzipi Livni opens up about her Gulf visits before the Abraham Accords
Long before “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem, played openly in Abu Dhabi or Manama, long before Israeli military jets took part in training exercises with Gulf countries, and long before normalization agreements were signed at the White House, there was one Israeli leader engaging in quiet, and very secret, diplomacy with the Arab world: Tzipi Livni.

Livni, 63, who served in a variety of Israeli government positions, including deputy prime minister, foreign minister and justice minister, between 2001 and 2014, also led the country through several rounds of peace negotiations with the Palestinians. It was this role – where she worked opposite the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator, the late Saeb Erekat – that led her to forge warm ties with multiple Arab leaders, some of whom are now at the forefront of the Abraham Accords, the U.S.-mediated normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab countries.

In a recent interview with Jewish Insider, the former Israeli lawmaker downplayed more than a decade of covert meetings and conversations with country leaders, foreign ministers and other representatives of the Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, even Saudi Arabia. And while former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner has twice been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize as one of the architects of the Abraham Accords, it is possible that this entire process might not have happened if not for the groundwork laid by Livni.

“Truthfully, I didn’t think that Kushner could do this; it’s really a huge achievement. I mean, to have these agreements without the Palestinians, it really surprised me when I saw the news. It is a real game-changer,” Livni said during the interview at her Tel Aviv home. “[Kushner] deserves all the credit he is getting.”

Today, relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco are out in the open, even flourishing. Just this week, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made history as the first Israeli premier to travel to the Gulf state of Bahrain. In January, Israeli President Isaac Herzog proudly met with Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, following similar visits by Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid to the United Arab Emirates.

Livni said that she was as surprised as anyone when the White House announced the agreements in August 2020, although, she noted, there were some signs of a regional sea change. She recalled two key incidents several months before that momentous announcement, and the subsequent signing of the Accords on the White House lawn in September 2020, that made her realize attitudes were shifting.

“In 2019, not long after I quit politics, I was invited to attend a conference in Bahrain,” Livni said. “It was an international conference, but the event was sponsored by Bahraini officials, and I arrived there openly with an Israeli passport.”

“For the first time ever, I held a public meeting with [Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed] Al Khalifa, and we even took a photo together,” she continued. “It felt very normal and that was something I was not used to.”
Jewish Life More Visible in Gulf Countries as AGJC Celebrates First Anniversary
Rabbi Elie Abadie, spiritual leader of the AGJC, says, ‘Education is practically the number one priority of any Jewish community. ... The establishment of a school is of utmost priority for us.’

Jews have resided in the Arab Gulf region for centuries – in parts of the region, for millennia – but their recent history has seen a sea change with the establishment, in 2021, of the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities. While each country has its own flavor and experience, suddenly, Jewish community services are now more readily available throughout the region than they ever have been before. The Media Line’s Felice Friedson sat down with Rabbi Elie Abadie, the United Arab Emirates-based spiritual leader of the AGJC, and AGJC President Ebrahim Daoud Nonoo, who lives in Bahrain, for an extensive interview. This is followed by an interview with Rafael Schwartz, an AGJC board member who lives in Kuwait. The organization is active in Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, as well.

The Media Line: We’re a region which prides itself on longevity and its ancient roots. Much has happened in the modern Gulf. The Abraham Accords was a game-changer in creating an environment to expose Jewish life in the Middle East. One year ago, the AGJC – the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities – was inaugurated. Joining me today is Rabbi Elie Abadie, the senior and resident rabbi from the UAE. And also with me is Ebrahim Daoud Nonoo, who is the president of the AGJC, and chairman of the board of the House of Ten Commandments. Rabbi Abadie, in the UAE, and of course, Mr. Nonoo in Bahrain, thank you gentleman for joining me today!

Ebrahim Daoud Nonoo: Pleasure! Pleasure!

Rabbi Elie Abadie: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you, Felice!

TML: One year later, [it’s] very exciting. No one would have thought that we would have seen this moment. Many people in the world probably thought that the Jewish community has dwindled [and] there’s no news, but what can you share. Let’s start with Rabbi Abadie.

Rabbi Elie Abadie: Well, certainly at least here in the UAE, the Jewish community has doubled in size since the Abraham Accords, and those are the number of people that are active in the community. There’s certainly many more Jews living in the UAE that are not very active in the community, and so the actual number is not very well known, but there’s certainly … the active amount of people has really doubled since the Abraham Accords.
Call Me Back (podcast): With all eyes on Putin, enter Iran — a conversation in Jerusalem
“Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power”:https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadow-strike-yaakov-katz/1129520355

“Weapon Wizards – How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower”:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-weapon-wizards-yaakov-katz/1123749307
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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