Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 10, 2022

05/10 Links Pt1: The Doctrine of American Unexceptionalism; 75% of Arab Israelis believe Jews have no right to sovereignty; Palestinian fashion craze: T-shirts – celebrating M-16 rifle used to murder 5 Israelis

From Ian:

Michael Doran: The Doctrine of American Unexceptionalism

The doublespeak in Biden’s World War III tweet now defines the lived reality of America’s Middle Eastern allies. The Biden administration’s zealous efforts to transform the Islamic Republic from pariah to partner are neither containing nor deterring Iran’s leaders—quite the opposite. They are emboldened, as the ballistic missile attack on Erbil (not to mention the recent rise to the presidency of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi) indicates.

In the meantime, thanks to the Biden team’s steadfast intention to empower Iran, America’s Gulf allies have become security orphans. They increasingly look for help from China, the great power with the most influence over Tehran. The list of hard power arenas in which China is now a major player is long and growing longer by the day: It manufactures military drones in partnership with both Saudi Arabia and the UAE; it builds ballistic missiles together with the Saudis, whom it is also helping to master nuclear technology; and it is selling jets to the UAE, where last year it was secretly building a military site at Khalifa Port near Abu Dhabi.

Under pressure from the Americans, the Emiratis shut down the facility in the spring of 2021, but it won’t be long before Abu Dhabi and Riyadh refuse to comply with any such demands from the United States. Deference to Washington rests on the understanding that the United States will provide security—hard power deterrence. Instead, the Biden administration is offering its allies doublespeak based on utopian theories about how giving Tehran a hug and hundreds of billions of dollars will persuade it to play nice.

Among themselves, America’s allies wonder how such a crackpot idea ever became the guiding concept of American foreign policy. Senior leaders in both Israel and the Gulf have told me personally that they find the Biden team’s policies incomprehensible and its explanations of those policies fundamentally incoherent, if not dishonest. In quiet voices in Tel Aviv, Israeli leaders are now talking about when, not if, they will have to take major military action to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

None of this is likely to change minds in the White House. The progressive foreign policy paradigm is a closed intellectual system, which can never be falsified. It is also a domestic political initiative, which readily attributes any of its failures to the behavior of its adversaries. Is Iran more aggressive now than ever before? Perhaps, but not because Obama’s nuclear deal was ill-conceived. Iran is aggressive, because President Trump abandoned the JCPOA and thus rejected Obama’s path to peace. He provoked the Iranians, so now we are all paying the price.

Of course, the Israelis will always prove a ready scapegoat. The binary choice that Obama presented to Americans—between support for the nuclear deal or catastrophic war—divided the world into two camps. His was the party of peace. Opposite it stood the party of war, which included, among others, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party, Evangelical Christians, hawkish Republicans, and the Saudi leader, Mohammed bin Salman—a cast of characters whom progressives reviled even before the deal. While this formulation does not turn Iran into a member of the peace camp, it does transform it into the object of diplomacy.

As a means of stopping Iran from getting a bomb, the nuclear deal is sadly wanting; but as a tool for branding the Saudis, the domestic rivals of the progressives, and, above all, the Israelis as warmongers, it is an effective propaganda tool. When a kinder and gentler Islamic Republic fails to arrive—and fail it most certainly will—then the Biden administration mandarins will lecture us like didactic professors. More in sorrow than in anger, they will shake their heads and lament the fact that those damned Israelis and Saudis just couldn’t learn to share the Middle East with the Iranians. We tried to tell them, but they just wouldn’t listen.

The pointy heads in the Biden administration are marching us toward a beautiful world of perpetual peace. They will never get there. But they will find plenty of people and countries to cancel along the way.

Why is Joe Biden so obsessed with Israeli settlements? - opinion

The year was 2010. Then-vice president Biden was visiting Israel. Almost exactly at the moment Biden was speaking at a press conference with Israel’s prime minister, “somebody” leaked to the press that the Israeli government supposedly had just announced plans to build 1,600 Jewish homes in “occupied east Jerusalem.”

It was not some new plan; it was an ordinary housing construction project that had been awaiting bureaucratic approval for years. And the government did not “announce” it at the moment of Biden’s visit; the old plan just happened to advance a bit through the normal bureaucratic channels.

Not only that, but the plan was not for 1,600 “homes,” which made it sound as if Israel was going to build 1,600 separate houses. It was for 1,600 apartments in apartment buildings (taking up less than one-tenth of the land that houses would require).

And they weren’t in “occupied east Jerusalem,” a term used to falsely imply that it was in some Arab neighborhood. The apartments were to be built in Ramat Shlomo, an existing Jewish neighborhood in northern Jerusalem. But alas, poor Ramat Shlomo happens to lie just beyond the pre-1967 lines, which in Biden’s eyes means it was born in sin.

So, Biden responded to the leak by publicly denouncing what he called “the steady and systematic expansion of settlements.” Even though it was within an existing Jerusalem neighborhood. Even though Israel had already frozen most construction because of pressure from the Obama-Biden administration.

Biden’s public accusation was wrong and unfair. He was condemning something that had not happened and mischaracterizing it in order to make it look like something that it wasn’t.

I don’t know what it is about the prospect of more Jewish apartments that drives Biden or his advisers to engage in such irrational behavior. All I know is that such behavior has all the classic signs of an obsession – a very unhealthy obsession.

Biden considering visit to Palestinian hospital in east Jerusalem

US President Joe Biden is considering a visit to the Makassed Hospital, the largest Palestinian medical center in east Jerusalem, an Israeli official said on Monday.

The visit, during Biden’s trip to Israel next month, would be in the framework of an American initiative regarding the hospital.

Biden would visit the hospital unaccompanied by Israeli officials, which would be viewed as not recognizing Israeli sovereignty over that part of the capital – and rolling back, to some extent, former US president Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

No previous US presidents have made similar visits. Biden’s plan to visit east Jerusalem was first reported by KAN.

Though the Biden administration has sought to strengthen the current Israeli coalition government, the visit signifying a divided Jerusalem would likely spark disputes within the coalition.

The visit would be in the framework of an American initiative regarding the hospital, which could mean renewed funding after the Trump administration cut $25 million to the East Jerusalem Hospitals Network, of which Makassed is a member.

Biden’s consideration of a visit to east Jerusalem comes amid a wave of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis and Hamas incitement over false claims about Israel making changes to the Temple Mount.

The US President had promised to reopen the US consulate to the Palestinians in western Jerusalem, but Israel opposes the move, saying it undermines its sovereignty in its capital city.

There have been a lot of articles in Palestinian and Iranian media over the past couple of days that say this:

Former Israeli premier Ehud Barak has expressed concern that Israel will cease to exist before the 80th anniversary of its 1948 establishment, Israeli media reported on Saturday.

In an interview with the Hebrew-language newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Barak predicted a doom-and-gloom scenario for Israel.

“Throughout the Jewish history, the Jews did not rule for more than eighty years, except in the two kingdoms of David and the Hasmonean dynasty, and in both periods, their disintegration began in the eighth decade,” Barak said.

Barak noted that many regimes, including those in the United States, Italy, and Russia, have experienced the curse of the eighth decade, and that Israel is no exception, drawing an analogy between the Zionist regime and fascism, nazism and communism.

Needless to say, this is not what Barak wrote in his YNet article.

Barak warned that Israel's biggest threat is internal strife, saying that many major nations suffered internal crises in their eighth decade - the split of the Davidic monarchy into two kingdoms, internal strife in Hashmonean rule, the US Civil War, Italy embracing fascism and Germany embracing Nazism after eight decades of reunification, the disintegration of the Soviet Union after eight decades.

Nowhere did he say Israel won't survive to its 80th birthday. Nowhere did he compare Israel to fascism, Nazism or communism.

Instead, Barak says:

We are not the only ones. But it is up to us to choose. Are we letting Stychia and the two precedents of destruction in the past lead us? Or we have the strength, sobriety and self-confidence to take our destiny into our own hands, which was the purpose of Zionism in the first place, and to lead Israel to new heights?

Ehud Barak is issuing a warning, not a prophecy or a curse. He wants Israelis to overcome the problems that plague many new nations as the early generations pass and to combat the complacency that can set in.

Strong nations engage in self-analysis and self-criticism. They look ahead at potential threats - both eternal and internal - and plan for contingencies. They look honestly at their strengths and weaknesses. This is what this article is about.

Iran and Palestinian media think that self-criticism and transparency is a sign of weakness. Coming from an honor/shame mindset, they believe that publicizing weakness and fear is shameful; appearances are everything and there is no difference between perception and reality. They read Barak's words and think, Israel's own leaders say it is weak and vulnerable, so it must be! It will disappear on its own! They don't realize that to be strong, one must be honest about one's weaknesses.

They are projecting their own ideas of the weakness of self-criticism to Israel, when in fact it is part of its strength.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Noor Dahri is a British-Pakistani writer and counter terrorism researcher. He is an executive director at Islamic Theology of Counter Terrorism (ITCT), which uses Islamic theology to counter Islamist extremism.

I do not know how influential the ITCT is. It does not have a strong social media presence, and looking at its team, it seems to be very light on experts on Islam whose views would sway Muslims.

Even so, any paper that shows how Islam does not approve of Palestinian terrorism is welcome, and any discussion on the topic in Islamic circles is welcome.

Dahri just released a new research paper, "The Month of Ramadan, Al-Aqsa Riots and Mischief: Islamic or Un-Islamic?" It examines the recent behavior of Palestinians on the Temple Mount from an Islamic perspective and determines that the stone throwing, arson and other attacks are forbidden according to Islam.

Dahri also says that Jews have the absolute right to live in Israel and Jerusalem according to the Koran.

The conclusion of the paper says:

Violence has no room in Islam whatsoever. One must understand that they cannot claim Islam is a religion of peace while committing a crime of violence and terrorism under the name of Islam. It is a great blasphemy to the religion and to the Lord when someone starts creating mischief on earth in their names. Israel is a land of prophets and the holy land on earth, which every religion accepts, yet some political and religious extremists commit acts of violence and terrorism in the blessed land which is mentioned several times in the holy Quran.

There is no doubt that the holy land of Israel including Jerusalem is sacred to all religions and the people of all three divine religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity) can live, work, visit the holy land but cannot claim the ownership of it at all because the ownership has already been given to the people of Israel (Jews) by Allah thousands of years ago. There is not any Quranic verse or Prophetic Hadith where such ownership has been transferred from Jews to Muslims. Instead, Allah has commanded Jews to enter the land of Israel which is given to them.

“O my people! Enter the Holy Land which Allah has destined for you to enter. And do not turn back or else you will become losers.” (Quran 5:21)

Allah also decided to gather all Jewish people from all around the world in the holy land of Israel when the end time comes closer, which means, that Jewish people can live anywhere in the world but the time will come when they will travel across the world and will immigrate into Israel.
Allah says in the holy Quran: "And we said to the Children of Israel afterwards, ‘scatter and live all over the world… and when the end of the world is near we will gather you again into the Promised Land” (Quran:17:104)

The above-cited Quranic verses show the source for the belief that this land was divinely given to the people of Israel, and Muslims have no religious or historical claim to possess this land. Those non-Jews who are living, working and visiting Israel have special privileges from the Jewish state to exercise political, domestic, social and religious rights all around the holy land but can never claim the ownership according to the Shariah (Islamic) law.

By holding politically motivated protests with violence, extremists not only break the commandments of Allah mentioned in the holy Quran but also go against the law of the land and those who commit such unlawful and un-Islamic activities should be prosecuted and punished according to the state’s law. The state of Israel has successfully given Muslims (Israeli Arabs) rights to live, educate, work, do business and practice their religion (Islam) without any prejudice and fear. There are more than 400 mosques run and paid for by the state of Israel. Therefore, Muslims have no political or religious justification to uprise against such a state. Aqsa Mosque is administrated by the Jordanian Waqf and security provided by Israel in order to maintain the peace and law and order situation. Millions of Muslims across the world are visiting Haram Sharif (Al-Aqsa) without any persecution, therefore it’s a Muslim’s duty to follow the law, keep order and maintain peace in the holy land and avoid committing acts that are violent or project terrorism. These actions can never please Allah, the Lord of the skies and earth, Muslims must think of these divine commandments before considering mischief in the holy land of Israel.

Dahri is part of a small but growing number of Muslim supporters of Israel, most of whom are regularly attacked - usually online, sometimes physically. Because the Muslim world's media is so heavily censored, officially and by massive peer pressure, there is no coverage of their support where it would make the biggest difference.

But with the Abraham Accords, there is a chance that such attitudes will spread and at least an honest debate about Israel and Palestinians can eventually occur in the Muslim world.

(h/t Melissa)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

On Monday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gavc another of his long speeches via video to election rallies in Tyre and Nabatieh.

At one point, he railed against those who want to disarm Hezbollah to ingratiate themselves with the United States and get some badly needed financial help. Nasrallah mocked those people, saying that it is a slippery slope from disarming Hezbollah to the worst possible things imaginable.

That list of awful things tells you a great deal about Hezbollah, its supporters and those who vote for it in Lebanon.

Those who demand the disarmament of the resistance, they want to sell this position to the Americans and the West in order to obtain political and financial protection. This is not a popular demand, all opinion polls said that, however. I want to address them.

Suppose for the sake of argument that you have reached this conclusion. Do you expect that the American will be satisfied with that? Take the experiences of all the Arab countries surrounding us. After the issue of the resistance, they will tell you that Lebanon must recognize the State of Israel. They will ask you for Lebanon to officially recognize Israel in the Lebanese government and Parliament.

They will ask you not only for recognition. They will ask you for normalization with Israel.

They will ask you to settle the Palestinians in Lebanon. You advocate disarming the resistance. Do you support the settlement of Palestinians in Lebanon?

They will ask you and they will demand of you. There is something with the Americans called demands. There is no final limit. There is no limit. When you surrender to the first condition, the second, third, fourth and fifth conditions will come out. Well, suppose some say that if we hand over the weapons of the resistance, our living and economic crisis will be solved. Suppose we hand over the arms and recognize Israel and normalize with Israel and our Palestinian homeland and accept the settlement of the refugees or displaced Syrians, then? Will it solve our economic and living problem?

Note how Nasrallah uses anti-Palestinian racism to make his point. "Do you support the settlement of Palestinians in Lebanon? " It is a rhetorical question - the Lebanese hate their Palestinian "guests" even while they claim to be so supportive of them.

Nasrallah pretends to be a champion of Palestinians but he stokes anti-Palestinian hatred to get support. Hezbollah doesn't want them to become Lebanese citizens, even if they want to. Nasrallah wants to ethnically cleanse them by banishing them to Israel - and he claims it is for their own good!

As far as whether normalization with Israel would bring financial benefit to Lebanon - it absolutely would. Israelis would fall over themselves to invest in Lebanon. Western nations that are reluctant to lend money would free up funds if there was a chance that it would bring permanent peace to a border that the UN has spent so much money monitoring.

Nasrallah spent much of the speech claiming that Israel wants Lebanese territory, that if Hezbollah wouldn't exist then Israel would constantly attack and annex southern Lebanon. His worst case scenario is a peaceful Middle East where Israel and Lebanon cooperate, which also happens to be a Middle East where Hezbollah has no reason to exist. Peace is an existential threat to Hezbollah.

In reality, Hezbollah holds Lebanon hostage and it is the real threat to ordinary Lebanese people, not Israel. He knows that. Hezbollah is an arm of Iran, and to Iran, Lebanon is nothing more than a critical front for war on Israel whose people are nothing but pawns towards that goal.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

05/09 Links Pt2: Dara Horn: At Harvard, Facts Are For Losers; The Roots of Israel’s Diplomatic Revolution; BDS fails, May 2022 Stories ignored by the British media

From Ian:

Dara Horn: At Harvard, Facts Are For Losers

The BDS movement, as it’s known, is old news on college campuses and elsewhere; it’s been around long enough that it no longer bothers to hide its goal of eliminating the world’s only Jewish state. But I had to hand it to The Crimson for timing, given that the editorial followed several weeks of terror attacks in Israel during which 15 people were stabbed, shot and car-rammed to death while engaging in such provocative behaviors as drinking at a bar or walking down the street. One victim was an Arab Israeli police officer rushing to the crime scene. Even Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, not known for his Zionism, condemned these attacks. Two of the attackers were apparently connected with Islamic State, a medieval-cosplay sex-slavery outfit whose genocidal goals are entirely unrelated to Palestinian national aspirations. Why after these events, one might ask, would these Harvard students change their position now?

Well, one might ask that if one knew nothing about how college students think. The editorial made clear that the editors were inspired less by events overseas than by events in front of students’ noses—specifically, a billboard-sized mural created by Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee. Its prominent placement in Harvard Yard meant that its contents were forced onto the eyeballs of every undergraduate on campus for a week, and it was apparently quite inspiring. As my old newspaper put it: “Art is a potent form of resistance, and we are humbled by our peers’ passion and skill.”

When I was in graduate school 15 years ago, such murals typically displayed news stories and grim statistics about the harsh realities of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, and back then, Gaza. The information was often presented in a tendentious fashion and frequently featured obvious distortions. (At that time I was teaching Israeli history and literature, so I was aware of many things that most people casually encountering this information would miss.) But—this is the key point—these displays were attempting to persuade people with information. They were making an argument, as Crimson editors once did every week in the Sanctum. Even if the facts were cherry-picked or taken wildly out of context, there was, at a bare minimum, a pretense toward presenting facts.

After reading the Crimson editorial’s rave review of the newest mural, I decided to take a look at the online photos of this art display. I naively expected those old-school panels of facts and figures, interspersed, as per usual, with paintings of doves. But that loserly premise of persuading people with facts turned out to be long gone, along with the doves. Instead, I saw a propaganda mural that would have been at home in any Middle Eastern authoritarian state, where it would have been painted by government lackeys to illustrate classic regime talking points that openly genocidal groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and their state sponsors in Iran have been pushing to local and Western audiences for years.

The opening panel’s “art” consisted entirely of large words, which read—wait for it—“Zionism is Racism Settler Colonialism White Supremacy Apartheid.” (Even the U.N. gave up on “Zionism is Racism,” a moldy Soviet slogan that the USSR spent decades promoting to its client states in the developing world.) Another panel featured a faceless police officer bearing a truncheon over the bodies of dark-skinned people behind bars with bullet wounds on their chests, their blood dripping onto an overturned American flag. This subtle image was nearly identical to memes circulated by Iranian-backed groups online. (If you’re too thick to get it, American police brutality is the Jews’ fault.) Two more panels included anodyne images of doctors and a pill bottle, with vaguely worded references to “health.” Those digging online for what this could possibly have to do with “Zionism” will quickly encounter long-debunked lies about Israel withholding Covid vaccines and harvesting Palestinian organs—part of a centuries-old tradition in both the Christian and Islamic worlds of accusing Jews of spreading disease and killing children. Another panel went all-in on Holocaust imagery, featuring gray-clad prisoners with a Palestinian flag behind Auschwitz-style barbed wire fencing, along with a boxcar train headed for a bricked-up destination marked with an Israeli flag.

‘Disrespectful of Jews’: 70 Harvard faculty reject student paper’s BDS endorsement

Seventy Harvard-affiliated faculty have condemned the university’s student newspaper for endorsing the boycott movement against Israel 10 days ago, a move that whipped up a firestorm of controversy and was seen as a possible omen of changing sentiment toward Israel on campuses.

An editor at the newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, and at least eight former staffers also condemned the editorial board’s endorsement of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on April 29.

The faculty statement released on Monday was signed by leading scholars including Steven Pinkner, Ruth Wisse, Jesse Fried, Gabriella Blum, and Lawrence Summers, who is also a former president of the university and was the US secretary of treasury under former US president Barack Obama.

“As members of the faculty of Harvard University, we are dismayed by The Crimson Editorial Board’s enthusiastic endorsement of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel,” the statement said.

“In seeking to delegitimize Israel through diplomatic, economic, academic, and cultural isolation, and by opposing the very notions of Jewish peoplehood and self-determination, BDS is disrespectful of Jews, the vast majority of whom view an attachment to Israel as central to their faith identity,” the faculty said.

The statement said the signatories were “deeply concerned” about the endorsement’s impact “on the morale and well-being of Jewish and Zionist students at Harvard.”

The faculty voiced support for continued ties with Israel, and acknowledged students’ right to support BDS, but said they were “firmly opposed to this movement” that “contributes to antisemitism.”

UN Watch: UN Palestine Investigator Must Return ‘Unethical’ PLO Medal, Says Watchdog

The independent non-governmental human rights group UN Watch is accusing outgoing UN investigator on Palestine Michael Lynk of violating UN neutrality rules by accepting an award yesterday from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and called on U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield and UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet to demand that Lynk return it.

“President Mahmoud Abbas has awarded the Order of the Star of Jerusalem to Professor Michael Lynk, presented by Foreign Minister Dr Riad Al Malki in Dublin,” tweeted the Palestinian embassy in Ireland, along with a photo.

Lynk only ended his term as Special Rapporteur on Palestine last week, after a 6-year term. He was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2016, despite rare objections about his lack of impartiality by the Canadian government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“For the past six years, we documented how Lynk was acting not like an impartial UN investigator, but rather like an agent for the PLO,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch. “He turned a blind eye to Hamas and Fatah terrorism, and demonized Israel. Lynk insisted he was impartial, but now he isn’t even pretending any more.”

“It is repulsive that Lynk accepted this award from Mahmoud Abbas at a time when his Fatah group participated in and praised the latest spate of Palestinian terrorist attacks that have killed 19 people in Israel.”

Abba’s Fatah-linked Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades distributed sweets in Gaza the evening after Thursday’s terrorist attack in Elad that killed three Israeli fathers, orphaning 16 children.

UN Watch says that Lynk’s acceptance of an award from one of the parties in a dispute that he was judging for the UN until last week sets a dangerous precedent.

On the services rendered to the PLO by UNHRC "independent expert" Michael Lynk during his 6-year term: https://t.co/zyBOGRF8Kh @MichaelLynk5 now joins the exclusive club of luminaries to receive awards from PLO chief Abbas which includes war criminals Vladimir Putin and Maduro: pic.twitter.com/bktJ0xs621
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) May 9, 2022

Lufthansa kicks over 100 religious Jews off connecting flight because of alleged mask violations of a few

Dan's Deals has an amazing, and well researched, story of antisemitism in the skies. A condensed version:

Last week, thousands of Jews made an annual pilgrimage to visit the grave of Rabbi Yeshaya Steiner of Kerestir, known as Reb Shayala Kerestirer, on the 3 Iyar yahrtzeit (date of his passing) in 1925.

Lufthansa flights from JFK and Newark to Frankfurt on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, were filled with Jews, mostly Hasidic.

[Many Jews booked through agencies.] Dozens of other Jews on the flight booked their own travel not as part of any group, some with cash and others using miles. It would seem that somewhere between 135-170 Jews were on the flights in total, [about 80% of the flight.]

[H]alfway through the flight, a pilot made an announcement that the flight attendants were frustrated with people blocking the galleys in prayer, and for having to repeat themselves about needing to wear a mask. He warned that people not obeying orders would have a problem with their connecting flight.

From talking to several passengers in economy, it seems like there were a couple of isolated masking issues in economy class, both among some visibly Hasidic Jews as well as non-Jews. It’s a shame that they flouted the rules, but it’s unclear why those few passengers weren’t singled out for punishment as would happen on most airlines in the world.

What happened next is just astounding.

Usher Schik was one of the first passengers to arrive at the connecting gate to Budapest. He was surprised to see police officers coming to the gate, at first half a dozen, and then two dozen armed officers. [As he] was sitting at a nearby gate, his brother-in-law ran to tell him that his name had been paged to board the flight. When he went up to board the gate agent asked if he was part of “the group from NYC.” He said that he was not with any group and had booked his own ticket with his miles, however the gate agent denied him boarding. When he asked why his name was paged to board, the Lufthansa agent had an officer push him away from the boarding area.

Yitzy [Schmidt] tried asking the Lufthansa agent if being Jewish made him part of “the group from NYC,” but police kept them away from the Lufthansa agents, while saying that they were just there to enforce what Lufthansa tells them to do. It seemed to him that Lufthansa was using the police to shy away from answering passengers’ questions.

It appears that the only Jews that made it onto the connecting flight to Budapest were first class passengers and business partners Max Weingarten and Eli Meisels.

Max tells me that when they heard individuals being paged, he quickly got in line behind them and was able to board. He has wearing a black polo shirt and didn’t look like most of the Hasidic Jews on the flight and had no problem boarding. Max readily admits that he wasn’t wearing a mask in first class from JFK to Frankfurt as the flight attendant also wasn’t masked and nobody asked him to wear a mask.

Eli tried boarding behind him, but when they scanned his boarding pass it blinked red and said do not board. The gate agent asked if he was coming from JFK, and he said yes. Eli was wearing a white dress shirt, as were most of the Jewish passengers on the flight, but unlike most of the others, he was wearing a baseball cap. His business partner Max in the black polo shirt but wearing a yarmulka, was already in the jetbridge, but came back to see what was going on. Max explained that Eli was his business partner and the Lufthansa gate agents had a discussion and then allowed him to board the flight. He recalls seeing a Hasidic Jew trying to board, but was denied and pushed away from the area.

Eli says there were 5 total people in the Euro-business class section and roughly 12-15 people in economy on the connecting flight to Budapest. After they boarded the captain announced boarding complete, the doors were closed, and the plane pulled away from the gate faster than he has ever seen a plane do so in his life. After moving away from the terminal, the plane sat for several minutes before departing. The plane should have held up to 192 passengers, but took off with no more than 20.

This video shows a Lufthansa agent pretty much agreeing that all the religious looking Jews who boarded at JFK were not allowed on the flight:

Passenger: This is gruesome.

Lufthansa: It would have been if you were African, if you were Polander.

Passenger: I was wearing a mask the entire time, why am I lumped in with them?

Lufthansa: It was one, everyone has to pay for a couple.

Passenger: What do you mean everybody, everybody from that race? Everybody else on the flight went.

Lufthansa: Not everybody.

Passenger: The non-Jewish people on the flight went. Why are only the Jewish people paying for other people’s crimes?

Lufthansa: Because it’s Jews coming from JFK.

Passenger: Oh, so Jewish people coming from JFK are paying for the crimes of a few people?

Lufthansa: No

Passenger: Jewish people are paying for the crimes of Israel?

Lufthansa: No

Passenger: Just the Jewish people on that flight?

Lufthansa: Do you want to discuss with me or no? Do you want to listen to me?

Passenger: I’m like shocked beyond, never in my adult life. I’ve never heard this.

Lufthansa: If you want to do it like this, Jewish people who were the mess, who made the problems.

Passenger: So Jewish people on the plane made a problem, so all Jews are banned from Lufthansa for the day?

Lufthansa: Just for this flight.

Plus this:

[A Lufthansa] agent told Usher that if it were up to them, everyone would have just gone. However the captain of the flight to Budapest decided that he didn’t want any of them on his plane. The gate agent said that they tried arguing with the captain twice to no avail and ultimately it was his call. But Usher points out that with two dozen police officers at the gate, Lufthansa’s intentions were perfectly clear, they had no intention of letting people fly.

Dan notes that first class passengers on the initial flight were not rebuked for not wearing masks, and indeed one of the first class flight attendants did not wear one either.

The Frankfurt airport does not require masks.

Lufthansa is saying they did nothing wrong.

This is the definition of stereotyping and bigotry.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Juan Manuel Santos, a former president of Colombia and member of "The Elders," writes an anti-Israel screed as a "friend of Israel," which ends with his hope that Israel is hauled in front of the International Criminal Court.

And he, like Palestinians, compares Israel to Russia in his "friendly"article:

The world has been horrified by Putin's invasion of Ukraine and that reaction is correct. Political leaders are turning to a rules-based international order to counter this unwarranted act of aggression. However, we must not forget that the neglect of these global rules and norms around the world has long since undermined peace and security and made impunity possible, for example, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To reverse this dangerous trend, leaders must uphold these rules everywhere and at all times. The double standard could weaken the grounds for taking justified action.

For decades, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has worsened because the international community has not denounced the systematic violation of international law. Currently, there is considerable evidence that the Israeli Government is blatantly flouting it with its rule over the occupied Palestinian lands and its oppressive practices on the Palestinian people. As a friend of Israel, I feel compelled to speak out.

Really? The international community has not denounced Israel? Has the esteemed ex-president ever heard of the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the EU, the Arab League?

This sounds like propaganda from an anti-Israel student organization or the Electronic Intifada more than the sober analysis of an elder statesman.

As friends of Israel, we are increasingly concerned that recent Israeli governments have shown no intention of applying the values of equality and freedom enshrined in their declaration of independence in the territory they have occupied since 1967. They continue to deny the basic principle of equality rights and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.

Again, this is propaganda disguised as analysis. The only official framework for peace is the Oslo process. The end goal was an independent Palestinian state, not "annexation." As part of that process, Israel voluntarily gave a great deal of land to the Palestinian Authority, a brand new government set up and agreed to by Israel. They have administrative and legal control over the lives of nearly all Palestinians.

Then, they made an active decision to not accept their own state and instead launch a terror war against Jews and Israel.

Whatever you think of the wisdom of Oslo, it is still the legal framework for everything that happens in the territories, since it is the source of all signed agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. That is international law. To suddenly claim that Israel must give equal rights and citizenship to a people whose entire legal existence is predicated on a process that is meant to give them their own state is changing the rules in the middle of the game.

The reason there is no Palestinian state - a state that Israel has offered multiple times - is because of Palestinian refusal to accept one.

Santos is pretending that the entire legal framework for the territories does not exist, and that Israel must violate the terms of Oslo in order to give Palestinians equal rights - which means annexing all of the territory and giving citizenship. A solution that literally no one wants. His statement "They continue to deny the basic principle of equality rights and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state" is not only factually wrong but internally inconsistent.

The de facto annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, through the unchecked expansion of illegal Jewish settlements, is a clear indication of Israel's intention to permanently dominate a stateless Palestinian people.

Again, this is a statement one would expect from an anti-Israel activist. There is no de facto annexation of the West Bank - much of it is off limits to Jewish Israelis and the Israeli army stays out of Area A except for exceptional circumstances to save lives. The settlement areas are virtually the same they were in 1993, and there is no "unchecked growth" by any definition. (Ask the Jews who live there!) This is anti-Israel propaganda, not a sober recitation of facts from a "friend."

And so is this:

Unfortunately, what we are witnessing is an orchestrated effort by the Israeli government and its allies to silence all criticism and persuade Israeli society and its foreign allies that such a debate is baseless, without examining the evidence. Those who exhibit evidence face being denigrated, accused of anti-Semitism and even criminalized.

Somehow, despite the (Jewish?) control of the media, Santos managed to publish this in Spain's second most popular newspaper. It is amazing how easily and widely critics of Israel can publish that they are being silenced.

On The Elders news page, the only country criticized besides Russia is Israel. When we see things like that, the charges of antisemitism are not an attempt to silence anyone - just an observation of fact that people who pretend to care about peace in the entire world are obsessed over the supposed crimes of the Jewish state.

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05/09 Links Pt1: David Collier: The Palestinian death cult – worshipping the murder of Jews; How the pro-Iran deal lobby became the Russia appeasement lobby

From Ian:

David Collier: The Palestinian death cult – worshipping the murder of Jews

Endless hate
None of this would exist without support from the west. UNWRA’s schools, Palestinian textbooks – all paid for with our tax money. Palestinian children are openly taught lies – a twisted version of history that strips from Jewish history any ethical justification. It renders Israelis as sub-human and worthy only of death. Last night I watched a Hamas propaganda film ’11 days in May’ at a picture house in London. The decontextualised narrative suggests Israelis are ‘homocidal maniacs‘. It is raw Gazan propaganda spreading freely on our streets. The movie – which does nothing but spread hate – has UNICEF’s stamp of approval on it.

While governments of third world countries cannot afford to dig wells or place solar panels – Hamas channels its money into rockets and tunnels. Why is a place that is not even a fraction as desperate as others – given so much funding – if all it does is use it to try to kill Jews? How is it possible that the money continues to flow towards them?

You’ll have to ask the myriad of NGOs who persistently set up campaigns to get people to divert their charity money towards Gaza. There are more NGOs helping Hamas build rockets than there are NGOs helping fund new wells in Niger (see Israel – Niger). And perversely, periods of Hamas-driven violence always sees more money flow into the Gaza strip. The leaders in Gaza see the material benefits of murdering Jews. This is the world that Jews have to live in.

The silent and willing allies
And then there are the death cult’s allies. Organisations, movements, and individuals. From Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to the Teachers Union, Church groups and political figures.

You know the type – each and every one of them posts endless manufactured anti-Israel propaganda when Israel kicks squatters from a tent, but there is total silence when Jews are slaughtered in the streets.
Rashida Tlaib – no tweets about Israel since the murderous violence started.
Jeremy Corbyn – no tweets about Israel since the murderous violence started
Chris Williamson – attacks Israel constantly – no mention of Palestinian violence
Russell Brand – only mention of the conflict was to promote a Hamas inspired PR documentary
Ilhan Omar – no tweets about Israel since the murderous violence started
Amnesty International – only tweets about Israel have been to attack it – no mention of murderous violence
Human Rights Watch – only tweets about Israel have been to attack it – no mention of murderous violence

It does not matter what the reasons for this are. The end message is the same – a drumbeat of dehumanised Israelis spreads deeper and deeper into the mainstream.

Hate driven – not human rights driven
As Amnesty deliberately and falsely labels Israel an ‘Apartheid state’, they turn every murdering Palestinian terrorist into a ‘Nelson Mandela’.

Those two Elad terrorists who were captured on Sunday morning, will now be financially secure for life. The PA – funded by the west – will make sure their families spend out their days in comfort. Pro-Palestinian groups, with their placards calling for the release of ‘all Palestinian prisoners’ – are going to be on the street calling for their release.

In areas under Palestinian control, children are taught to want to kill Jews – while in the west, people send money to help ‘Palestinians’ succeed in their ‘struggle’.

Let us call it what it is – a death cult.

EU Parliament condemns PA textbooks over incitement

The European Parliament has passed a decision condemning the Palestinian Authority for extremist incitement in its school textbooks, Israeli media reported on Saturday. The books are produced with EU funding.

The decision called for rapid removal of the problematic material and for urgent changes to the curriculum, according to the report.

The motion was submitted by the liberal Renew Europe Party. According to the report, it noted that the parliament had previously condemned the P.A. for failing to meet United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization standards for European funding of textbooks, as well as calls to create content that educates towards peace and tolerance.

According to the report, the latest European Parliament decision is part of an annual E.U. budget process that examines how taxpayers' money should be invested.

This is the third consecutive year in which the EU Parliament has condemned the P.A. textbooks in a decision passed with a parliamentary majority.

A recipe for explosion on Temple Mount

Recent events on the Temple Mount and the Al-Aqsa mosque, with the growing tension between Israel and the Palestinians, largely reflect the completely different ways the two sides view the reality around the Mount, particularly Israel's actions there. That disparity stems from different perceptual frameworks.

In the Israeli perceptual framework, Israel is a state that seeks stability and is committed to the status quo on the Temple Mount, the freedom of worship for all religions in Jerusalem, and maintaining public order. However, the status quo is challenged by extremist groups from both sides, and Israel is taking the necessary measures to prevent them from undermining stability, including the use of reasonable force. It is thereby exercising its sovereignty and the responsibility entailed by it.

However, many Palestinians, along with many Israeli Arabs and Muslims worldwide, plus international actors mainly on the left, see the existence of the nation-state of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel as lacking all justification. In their view, Israel's presence in eastern Jerusalem is illegal, and Israel as a state – not just the marginal messianic groups within it – seeks to alter the status quo on the Temple Mount.

This is not a worldview unique to radical political Islam, spearheaded by Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Palestinian Authority is convinced that this Israeli threat to the Al-Aqsa compound reflects the actual state of affairs, along with Jordan and many other actors in the Arab and Islamic world. Not long ago, Jordan convened a gathering of Arab foreign ministers, including representatives of the United Arab Emirates and Morocco – which, a month earlier, had taken part in the "Negev Summit" in Israel – to discuss Israel's actions.

A look at the resolutions of this conference indicates that all these actors are thoroughly convinced of the justice of their claims – that Israel is curtailing Muslims' and Christians' freedom of worship; seeks to apportion the prayer times on the Temple Mount just as in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron; is using force against Palestinian worshippers and youth far beyond what is necessary, including acts of dangerous, unjustified, and violent forced entry to the Al-Aqsa mosque; and is likely to spark a conflagration.

Some of these actors, particularly Hamas, the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Qatar and Iran, see the threat of escalation as a means to counteract Israel and also to boost their own political status. Others see it as a way of damaging Israel's international and regional status while also preventing a slide into a high-intensity violent confrontation that could jeopardize their own uncertain status as well.

Anti-Israel media continues to castigate Israel for crowd control measures during the Holy Fire ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre last month.

From Turkey's Anadolu News Agency:

[Video] Israel prevents some Christians from attending 'Holy Fire' ceremony at Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre

Orthodox Christians seeking to attend the ceremony were blocked by police in the narrow alleys leading to the church pic.twitter.com/PuZty66NvG
— ANADOLU AGENCY (@anadoluagency) May 1, 2021

I already showed that British police in 1932 also engaged in crowd control to limit the number of people in the area and allowed in the church.

What about how things were under Jordanian control - the sacred "status quo" where 19 years of illegal annexation and ethnically cleansing Jews is supposed to be the model on how to deal with Jerusalem today?

I just found this footage from a 1960 Christian children's documentary about Jerusalem, that shows a very similar scene to what is shown above, with Jordanian police forming a cordon preventing crowds from entering the church.

The dangers are obvious, especially with the fire being transferred in areas packed with pilgrims.

But only when Israel tries to make things safe do people get upset.

If someone can point to a specific difference between Israeli police barricades and Jordanian police cordons and crowd control, by all means, enlighten us.

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I became very angry on Friday when I saw yet another anti-Israel article written by a Jew.

The article was not impressive. Its lies and arguments echoed thousands of similar articles written over the years by similarly uninformed Jews. Its logic was flawed, it can't get basic definitions correct, it twists and ignored history, just like articles I read every day in Arab media as well as in Western Leftist media.

Why did this bother me so much?

Upon reflection, I realized why I am disgusted by anti-Zionist Jews: They claim to be acting under rules of Jewish morality at the very same time they are ripping apart the actual rules of Jewish morality.

In this case, the author writes that, to her, being Jewish means "always speaking the truth and following my heart in the search for justice."

This is not at all true. Justice in Judaism is based entirely on facts and not at all on what is in ones' "heart." One's heart may be an excellent source of mercy and kindness, but it is an extremely poor arbiter of justice. Jewish law goes to great lengths to ensure that those brought before a judge are treated strictly according to the facts of the case, and the judge cannot favor one side for any external reason.

Invariably, the Jewish concepts that anti-Zionists rely on are not particularly Jewish at all. They are general social justice principles that have been repurposed as Jewish attributes, often giving them the Hebrew name "tikkun olam" that has nothing to do with what the term actually means.

These critics love the accident of birth that allows them to invoke their Jewishness. But while some of them may be Jewish in the legal or self-defining sense, they are missing the essence of what being a Jew means.

To be a Jew is to be a member of a tribe. It is to be part of a family. And anti-Zionists have cast themselves out of that role.

If you have a sibling or a child who is accused of a crime, what do you do? Do you automatically believe the charges, or do you ask them their side of the story? Do you believe the media reports or what the close relatives say? Do you go to the media yourself and condemn them, or do you support them - or at the very least suspend judgment until you can find out more?

Real families/tribes stick together and don't accept what outsiders say about them. They know how easily others can misunderstand their dynamics, their motives, their emotions, their mindset, and the larger context.

A real Jewish concept is to give the benefit of the doubt to your people, not to blindly accept what the New York Times is saying before listening to what your own family members say.

The writer of the article I mentioned creates a definition of Zionism that has no relationship to what the term actually means. She writes this with a confidence of the truly ignorant or the malice of the purposeful liar. What she emphatically doesn't do is find an actual Zionist or original Zionist writing that agrees with her lies. Her hateful narrative trumps the truth.

How many of Israel's Jewish accusers have ever read an IDF Military Advocate General report? Comparing the reports of an Amnesty, an HRW or the New York Times with a report by Israel's MAG on incidents where Israel is accused of war crimes is like comparing a high school paper on the Civil War with a thousand page book written by an expert on the era. The outsiders don't understand the details of what happened and take guesses that are invariably anti-Israel; the IDF knows the circumstances but has little incentive to reveal its intelligence sources. A member of the tribe would seek out Israel's side of the story and compare it, in detail, with the accusations and find that the accusers are nearly always wrong. The Jewish anti-Zionists want the MAG reports to be buried or dismissed without being read, because they are enemies of the truth.

How many of Israel's Jewish accusers have ever read an entire Israeli High Court ruling on a topic like Sheikh Jarrah or Masafer Yatta? They confidently claim that Israel is biased, without examining the actual legal reasonings of the court and seeing if the court made an error. Israel's High Court judges are experts and not easily refuted - which is why the anti-Zionists simply dismiss them. They couldn't win an actual argument.

A real member of a tribe would seek out the answers and find out that Israel is almost invariably right against its accusers. Pretenders who have no interest in being members of the tribe invoke their Jewishness to buttress their lazy and accusatory opinions - but their real interest in Judaism is as shallow as their anti-Israel arguments are.

The Wicked Son of the Passover Seder emotionally separates himself from his tribe - but he is still part of the family at the seder.

The Jewish anti-Zionists are far worse than the wicked son. They attack their own families and denounce them to the world. They are like the Jewish converts to Christianity who spread the blood libel. Both use their Jewishness to attack their tribe and to give themselves credibility with those who want to see the Jewish people destroyed. They lie to ingratiate themselves with the enemies of Israel, hoping that this will make them accepted as one of them. (It never works.)

That is why they are loathsome.

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

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Seattle "Nakba Day" rally to celebrate axe murderers

The Seattle "Nakba Day" rally poster includes a massive dog whistle of glorifying terrorists.

The top line says, "All glory to our land and life defenders," meaning the people who they claim defend Palestine.

This means the Palestinians who, according to Palestinian media, "defend" Al Aqsa and Palestine - by targeting and murdering Jews.

One of the sponsors, Falastiniyat, describes itself as "a grassroots collective of diasporic Palestinian feminists in Seattle living & organizing at the intersection of gender justice and anti-colonialism." The title is one that would mean little to most Westerners, who would assume it refers to people who hold meals at Sheikh Jarrah or similar, but its meaning and timing is clear to Palestinians: it is support for the current murderous terror wave of Palestinians targeting Israelis and Jews that started in March.

Even though it was created before the events in Elad, there is not a question that Palestinians consider the axe murderers to be "defenders" of Palestinians and Palestinian land.

And the other sponsors know this as well.

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Palestinians, believing they are the center of the universe, even try to make the ISIS attack in Egypt about them

Eleven Egyptian soldiers were killed on Saturday in a firefight with militants presumed to be loyal to ISIS.

Naturally, Palestinians are trying to hijack this news and make it about - them.

Fatah issued a statement saying that it considers the attack "a calculated service in the interest of the racist Zionist settlement occupation regime," saying that the attackers have an "agenda against the brothers in Arab Egypt and its heroic army, and against the Palestinian people in occupied Palestine."

They added that the attack "is a deliberate service to the occupation regime and the Israeli army, and a desperate attempt to break the morale of the Arab Egyptian army."

A member of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Jihad Movement, Khaled al-Batsh, called the attack an "attempt to tamper with Egypt's security and undermine its stability in order to serve the Zionist enemy."

Meanwhile, Hezbollah echoed the same bizarre idea, saying that the attack was meant to "divert attention from Zionist terrorism in Palestine."

What is it called when someone blames everything bad that happens on Jews? I'm sure there is a word for it.

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05/08 Links: The PA rewards with one hand, condemns with the other; The DeSantis affair The disgraceful politization of Jewish institutions; The speech President Lawrence Bacow of Harvard University needs to give

From Ian:

PMW: The PA rewards with one hand, condemns with the other

The two Palestinian terrorists who brutally murdered Israelis Ben Yiftah, Yonatan Habakuk, and Boaz Gol on May 5, were arrested today. This means that the Palestinian Authority will now adopt the murderers as PA employees and start paying them a monthly salary. Assuming they live till 80 years old, over their lifetimes, the PA will pay them no less than 6,530,400 shekels ($1,919,909 / €1,820,074), simply as a reward for murdering Jews and being arrested by Israel.

The salaries the PA will pay the terrorists, aged 19 and 20, will start at 1,400 shekels ($450)/month and will increase with time spent in prison to 12,000 shekels (3,859) /month.

While the PA continues to incentivize and reward terrorists, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas issued another one of his mealy-mouthed condemnations “of the killing of Israeli civilians” following the murders on Thursday.

Incapable of simply condemning the brutal murder of Israelis, Abbas repeated his “warnings” about Israeli/Jewish “settlers” using the Palestinian attack to carry out revenge attacks against Palestinians. Almost justifying the murders of the Israelis, Abbas then condemned what he referred to as the “ongoing attacks against our people and its Islamic and Christian holy sites,” which he argued have created an atmosphere of tension and instability”:
“[PA] President Mahmoud Abbas expressed his condemnation of the killing of Israeli civilians two evenings ago [May 5, 2022] (refers to terrorists As’ad Al-Rifai and Subhi Abu Shuqeir murdering 3 -Ed.). He emphasized that killing Palestinian and Israeli civilians will only bring about an additional deterioration in the situation, at a time when we all are striving to achieve stability and prevent an escalation.

President Abbas warned against the settlers and others exploiting this condemnable event to carry out attacks and retaliations against our Palestinian people. He emphasized his condemnation of the ongoing attacks against our people and its Islamic and Christian holy sites, which have created an atmosphere of tension and instability.

He noted that the cycle of violence emphasizes that a comprehensive and just permanent peace is the shortest and safest path to achieving security and stability for the Palestinian people, the Israeli people, and the peoples of the region.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 7, 2022]

The mild language of Abbas’ “condemnation”, which was almost identical to the language of his condemnation after the terror attack in Bnei Brak, on March 29, and the language of his condemnation after the terror attack in Tel Aviv on April 7, also reflects just how meaningless these condemnations are to both Abbas and the Palestinians.

Andy Levin’s ‘Two-State Bill’ Won’t Support Middle East Peace

In the absence of any coherent concept of conflict resolution, we are instead treated to a metaphysics of occupation. The occupation looms large over the entire bill and the entire output of expert analysis that underlies it. It is always cause and never effect. An FAQ accompanying Levin’s bill links to only one news article, a New York Times piece that labels the occupation as the “heart of the conflict.”

This, too, flies in the face not just of accumulated knowledge about conflict resolution in general, but also the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The occupation, in this rendering, exists on its own and explains everything in its wake. But this is nonsense. Occupations don’t cause war; they are the result of war. When two sides clash in an armed conflict, it is not unusual that at the end of the conflict, one or both sides (usually the winner, but sometimes both) is occupying territory previously held by the other. Ordinarily, this is where negotiations begin for a diplomatic settlement (an armistice, a truce, or even a full peace treaty). And once a new line is agreed upon (sometimes even the same as the line before the war, especially if that line was an internationally recognized border, which was not the case in 1967), both sides redeploy to opposite sides of it.

But to acknowledge this truth would mean acknowledging the twin truths of how the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began and why it has lasted so long. The occupation began with the defeat of a coalition of three Arab armies in their attempt to wipe Israel off the map. The occupation’s persistence lies in the refusal, initially of the defeated Arab states and later of the self-governing Palestinians, to accept any peace deal that would require full reconciliation with the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East.

The way to end this occupation is the same way previous occupations ended, by reaching some sort of diplomatic agreement that either ends the conflict completely or at least effects some sort of agreed-upon truce.

Levin’s bill, were it enacted, would never achieve its ostensible goal. It could achieve only two things. Between Israel and the Palestinians, it would actually entrench the conflict further by incentivizing precisely those actions that have made reaching a final peace accord difficult over the past two decades. In the United States, it would merely provide a basis for further moral disengagement from Israel within mainstream liberal politics and for additional demonization of Israel just outside of it.

Jonathan Tobin: The DeSantis affair The disgraceful politization of Jewish institutions

The museum’s decision only makes sense if one is prepared to view Jewish institutions as the moral equivalent of a cable news outlet like MSNBC, where only liberal or leftist voices are heard and conservatives are treated as not so much wrong as evil. That reflects the current atmosphere inside the Democratic Party, where even a supposedly moderate figure like President Joe Biden referred this week to supporters of former President Donald Trump by the term “MAGA world” and said they were “the most extreme political organization in American history.” In other words, Republicans like the Florida governor are not fellow citizens, neighbors or relatives, but extremist insurrectionists to be shunned if not targeted as bigots and potential terrorists.

Perhaps that’s not surprising to hear from anyone involved in today’s no-holds-barred political combat in which DeSantis is himself a notable pugilist.

But for a Holocaust museum to say, in effect, that anyone like him is to be treated as unfit to set foot in their building is both outrageous and an indication that such an institution is, like an MSNBC studio segment, a place where only a certain sort of person may be heard.

Subsequently, the museum claimed that it opposed DeSantis because it didn’t host political events. But as Abrams and Cohen pointed out, the same museum welcomed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)—the leading voice of the leftist “Squad” that is deeply hostile to Israel—in 2018. Equally controversial politicians like former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and current U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who spearheaded the Biden administration’s re-entry into the anti-Semitic U.N. Human Rights Council, have also appeared there.

The museum’s hypocrisy in canceling DeSantis while welcoming controversial liberal or left-wing Democrats demonstrates its shameless embrace of partisanship. But it also shows that for those involved in this institution, remembering the Holocaust isn’t a sacred Jewish duty but just another way of manipulating history to back up the political agendas of its staff and funders.

This ought to be a wake-up call for those of this museum’s backers who don’t want an important Jewish institution exploited by woke ideologues. This should also be true for anyone else who wishes to hold the line against the toxic influence of cancel culture elsewhere in the Jewish world.

Jewish venues should remain places where open discourse is possible, and friends of Israel and the Jews are welcomed, even if some disagree with them. The alternative is to stand by and watch as Jewish interests are sacrificed on the altar of leftist dogma.

86-year old Abbas has not been seen in public for 10 days, sending proxies for public events

Mahmoud Abbas has been nowhere to be seen lately.

He was invisible during Eid al Fitr celebrations. Normally he places a wreath on the grave of Yasir Arafat; this year the prime minister Shtayyeh did it instead in his place.

Today it was reported that Michael Lynk, the former special rapporteur of the UN who was reliably anti-Israel, received the "Great Star of Jerusalem" medal, normally awarded by Mahmoud Abbas himself. In this case foreign minister Riyad Al-Maliki acted as Abbas' proxy.

The last event I can find where Abbas was seen in public was April 28, when he hosted the High Representative of the Alliance of Civilizations at the United Nations at his presidential palace.

Since then, every news release about Abbas has him making or receiving phone calls or telegrams from various politicians.

Abbas is an 86-year old chain smoker who has no designated successor. Hamas has been making moves to take over the Palestinian narrative by taking credit for wildly popular murders of Jews.

It seems newsworthy.

You'd think that the hundreds of reporters in the region would notice something like this and be asking some questions. But they know that unless there is an anti-Israel angle, no one wants to talk about it.

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

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