China Refuses To See That Jerusalem Is More Dear To Israel As Taiwan Is To China (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

China-Israel relations took decades to warm up, but when they did -- they really took off.

At least until last month.

On May 30, The Jerusalem Post featured an interview critical of China: Taiwan FM to ‘Post’: China preps to invade us, Israel can't trust Beijing:

Voicing concern about a possible Chinese invasion of his country, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu warned Israel – in an exclusive interview on Monday – from relying too heavily on China.

“China is an authoritarian country and they do business in a very different philosophy,” Wu told The Jerusalem Post in a video interview from his office in Taipei. “Sometimes they use trade as a weapon, and we have seen them practicing their weaponized trade relations with many other countries.

“They did it to Lithuania, they did it to the Czech Republic and they also did it to Australia. Sometimes they try to do that to Taiwan as well. So, when we do business with an authoritarian country, we need to be very careful. We shouldn’t allow these kinds of business relations to jeopardize our national security. And I understand pretty well that Israel also places national security very high on the government agenda,” he continued. [emphasis added]

Business between Israel and China is a delicate issue.

According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, Israel was one of the first non-communist bloc countries to recognize China as the People's Republic of China in 1950. As a result, Israel severed ties with Taiwan (the Republic of China). At the time, Israeli efforts to build on ties with China fell apart. The problem was not because of any desire by China to develop ties with the Arab world. At the time, those were mainly monarchies and had an attachment to the West. Instead, the problem was the US -- China was involved in the Korean War and the US frowned on countries having any relations with Peking. [Encyclopedia Judaica, 5:472]

Which means that current US efforts to curtail Israel's dealings with China is not something new.

Relations between Israel and China finally took off in 1992. Today, China is Israel’s 3rd largest trading partner, and in 2021 China eclipsed the US to become Israel’s largest source of imports at $10.7 billion.

So what was China's reaction to Mr. Wu's interview in the Jerusalem Post?

This: an email to Yaakov Katz, the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post --

So China's relations with Taiwan "is purely China's internal affair that allows no external interference" and "a basic norm?" The attempt to create "two Chinas" will never succeed?

While it may claim common business interests with Israel, especially in the areas of technology and infrastructure, China lacks an appreciation -- or simply does not care -- that Israel has a historical and cultural bond with Jerusalem that far exceeds that of the Chinese for Taiwan.

One might have thought that the Chinese attachment to Taiwan would allow them to appreciate the special Jewish attachment to Jerusalem.

Apparently not.

Instead, in keeping with their ties with the Arab world and with Iran, China supports the division of Jerusalem, and the designation of "eastern" Jerusalem as a capital for Palestinian Arabs.

I came across a post of a blogger writing about his experiences while living in China in the 1990s. He writes that he once brought up the topic of Taiwan with a Chinese official, and the response of the official was: SILENCE -- complete, total and absolute silence that would not even allow for pushing the discussion onto another topic.

He writes, "I might as well have insulted this gentleman's ancestors." And then he continues:

While a student at Beijing University, I onced asked my professor why it was that everyone from the taxi driver on the streets of Changsha to the highest government official in Zhongnanhai was uniform in their determination on the Taiwan question, it was simply put to me: "Taiwan is our Jerusalem." China, my professor explained, is simply not complete without the re-unification of Taiwan with the Mainland. He went to say that if Taiwan was to ever to formally declare its political independence Beijing would have no choice but to claim the island by force for the Chinese leadership very legitimacy would be at stake. No Chinese leader, he concluded, could stay in power overseeing the formal end to the dream of a unified country. It just won't happen he demured. [emphasis added]

But China's interests in Israel are purely a matter of business, part of its "zero enemies" policy that allows it to do business with Israel, while also doing business with Iran, supporting Palestinian Arabs and condemning Israeli actions in the UN.

According to a Pew survey, the majority of Israelis have a positive view of China. But it is not because China is cultivating any common bond with Israelis. The positive view is the result of the media campaign that China is running in Israel. It is a media campaign that China originally started running using the Jerusalem Post.

It is why China threatened that it would cut off ties with the Jerusalem Post:

But China better be careful.

The US has been very wary of Israel's deals with China, warning that some of those deals -- such as the joint venture to build the Haifa port -- might give China opportunities to spy on US naval movements. 

But the US may well have a new, unexpected weapon to deal a major blow to China's business ventures in Israel: the Abraham Accords.

An article in The Diplomat explains How the Abraham Accords Disrupted China-Israel Relations:

Washington had to realize that it cannot block its Middle Eastern partner from attracting foreign capital, thereby damaging its own interests in the Jewish state. Paradoxically, the Israeli domestic political crisis of 2019-2021 and the COVID-19 pandemic provided time for Washington to develop an alternative strategy to harsh pressure, while Israel was internally focused. The United States had to offer other possibilities, a strategy it is also employing in the Indo-Pacific region to sway away countries from China’s orbit.

The key to solving this conundrum came with Trump administration’s initiative in 2019-2020, the long-promised “Deal of the Century” entitled “Peace to Prosperity.” Under this framework, the Trump administration oversaw the normalization and peace agreements that came to be known as the Abraham Accords. A significant solution to the Middle Eastern economic problems would be the linking of Gulf capital, Israeli technology, global markets, and Arab labor. The first three aspects were largely achieved by the Accords, while the fourth pillar remains unsolved, as economic means cannot circumvent political solutions to the Palestinians’ plight.

Among the countries that signed the treaty, the United Arab Emirates is in the best position to provide the amount of capital needed in Israel, as long as Saudi Arabia remains only a clandestine partner of the Jewish state.

After the ceremonies ended in September 2020, economic deals between the Israelis and the Emiratis started to flow with great pace, the first “warm peace” between Israel and an Arab country. Economic cooperation was extended to all areas that were previously attracting Chinese capital, including high-tech companies, joint ventures, and critical infrastructure. 

It remains to be seen if in fact the Abraham Accords really will have a dampening effect on the Israel-China business deals. The article came out a year ago.

At the very least, considering that the Biden administration shares the concern of previous administrations that China will exploit its Israeli ventures to spy on US interests, one might expect Biden to finally make an effort to persuade other Arab countries to join the Abraham Accords.

Meanwhile, there is a real bond developing between Israel and the Arab members of the Abraham Accords, the kind of bond you don't hear about developing between Israelis and the Chinese.

And on the business end of things, the Abraham Accords is working out pretty well:

Maybe China needs Israel more than Israel needs the Chinese?

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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!

 

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06/08 Links Pt1: Prof. Anne Bayefsky: The UN Commission of Inquiry: An Exercise in Historical Revisionism; Col Kemp: UN Will Justify a Mirror Image of Putin's War

From Ian:

Prof. Anne Bayefsky: The UN Commission of Inquiry: An Exercise in Historical Revisionism

The Commission of Inquiry created in 2021 by the UN Human Rights Council issued its first report on Tuesday. The three commissioners appointed to conduct the inquiry were on record accusing Israel of apartheid, and urging boycotts and criminal prosecution – in advance of investigating anything. At least two reports annually may be expected to pound a steady drumbeat of modern anti-Semitism, namely, delegitimizing Israel.

The UN handed the Commission a search warrant unrestricted to any period of time, to seek “all underlying root causes” of the conflict and hunt for “systematic discrimination and repression.” So we submitted the names of 600,000 Jewish refugees and victims of Arab persecution in Middle East and North African nations in the past 75 years.

We submitted the names of 4,220 civilians – Israelis and foreign visitors – killed by unremitting Arab violence from the beginning of modern Zionism until today. We submitted the names of 24,092 Israeli military and security forces who have fallen in defense of their country against the Arab goal to eradicate the modern Jewish state.

We gave the Commission documentation that the Palestinian Authority pays bounties for killing Jews – an amount that increases the more deadly the attack. We presented irrefutable evidence that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza maintain a system of racist indoctrination demonizing Jews and inciting violence against Jews – in schools, official television programming, summer camps, public displays and public honors.

Our submissions contained evidence of the ceaseless, unrelenting, violent attacks on Jews prior to Israel’s independence and until today. War after war, terror attack after terror attack, suicide bombing, kidnapping, torture, arson; with rockets, mortars, grenades, pipe bombs, drones, firebombs, stones, bullets, vehicles, and knives, decade after decade; with one goal: the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – the ultimate violation of human rights. Yet the report finds no Palestinian terrorism.

This UN exercise in historical revisionism seeks to invent a narrative of powerless Arab victims and criminal Jewish perpetrators, invert who violated the rights of whom, and challenge the moral imperative of the modern Jewish state. It is far more than an outrage. Unless stopped, it has and will continue to breathe oxygen into a highly flammable cauldron of modern anti-Semitism.

Col Kemp: UN Will Justify a Mirror Image of Putin's War

Putin went to war to turn into reality his much repeated insistence that Ukraine is an illegitimate state that has no right to exist and is inseparable from the rest of Russia. Similarly, the UN mandate allows it to question the very existence of the State of Israel. Unlike all other UN inquiries, this one has no historic time limit and enables the commission to range right back to the foundation of the state. The commissioners won't be bold enough to explicitly declare that Israel has no right to exist, but you can be certain that will be the subtext running throughout its report.

[E]ven before the notorious 2009 Goldstone Report, the UNHRC justified and encouraged Hamas violence, and that has played a crucial role in efforts to vilify and isolate Israel as well as incite greater bloodshed in the Middle East and attacks against Jews around the world.

[L]ike Putin in Ukraine, Hamas's war against Israel aims to conquer the territory of a sovereign democratic state that it believes should not exist.

Both Hamas and Putin's Russia, like most dictatorships, habitually plead self-defence as their justification for aggression. Putin pretends that NATO is a threat to Russia, yet he understands it is a defensive alliance that has no hostile intent; Hamas claims Israeli aggression while knowing that Israel would not and has never used force except in defence of its sovereign land and people.

Hamas and Russia share totalitarian values; both are kleptocracies, both ruthlessly repress internal opposition and both readily resort to violence — be it political assassination, terrorism or all-out war.

The chair of the UN commission, Navi Pillay, has indirectly played into the Israel-Nazi theme, supporting and justifying the viciously anti-Israel UN Durban Conference at which fliers were handed out with a picture of Hitler captioned with an assertion that if he had won there would be no Israel. Durban is just one of Pillay's numerous credentials against Israel, set out in detail by the NGO UN Watch in a submission to the UN. Her indisputable anti-Israel bias is shared by her two fellow commissioners, Miloon Kothari and Chris Sidoti, as outlined in an article by David Litman earlier this month in JNS.

UN Watch: U.N.’s Pillay Report Pillories Israel, Ignores Iran

Today’s one-sided report on Israel by the UN inquiry led by Navi Pillay marks another propaganda win for Iran and its terrorist proxies, said the independent non-governmental organization UN Watch today.

The Pillay Report, to be presented on Monday before the 47-nation Human Rights Council, offers a blueprint of what is to come from the Pillay Commission, which was granted a perpetual mandate to report on alleged war crimes and discrimination in wake of last year’s Hamas-Israel war.

“The report turns a blind eye to Palestinian terrorism and embraces the Hamas narrative that Israel is the root cause of all conflict. This is exactly what we expected from Navi Pillay, who actively lobbies governments to ‘sanction apartheid Israel‘ and to condemn Israel for the very conflict that she is meant to investigate,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer.

The Pillay Commission concedes their report is “overwhelmingly directed towards Israel.” (par. 28)

“Cynically, the Pillay Commission claims to have ‘ensured the inclusion of a diverse range of perspectives’ by meeting with Palestinian organizations dedicated to condemning Israel, as well as Israeli organizations dedicated to condemning Israel,” said Neuer.

“This cynicism was taken to new heights by the Pillay Report concluding that Israel’s ‘perpetual occupation’ is the ‘underlying root cause’ of the conflict on the basis of their consultations with both ‘Palestinian and Israeli stakeholders.'”

“Claiming that Israel alone is to blame for the conflict, while saying nothing about Palestinian terrorism and their stated goal of destroying Israel, is bad enough; suggesting that this is a representative view of ‘Israeli stakeholders’ is another thing altogether,” said Neuer.

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My letter of complaint to IMPRESS regarding Bellingcat's flawed investigation of Shireen Abu Akleh's death

I sent this letter to IMPRESS and Bellingcat today. IMPRESS is an independent British organization that maintains a standards code for accuracy in reporting, and Bellingcat subscribes to their regulations. 

______________________________

Good day.

I would like to submit an IMPRESS complaint about the May 14, 2021 Bellingcat article, "Unravelling the Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh," under the grounds of being inaccurate.

The main problem with the article isn't what it says, although it does have major errors of fact. Its main shortcomings is in what it omits. By leaving out relevant facts, it violates the guidelines of IMPRESS that " a significant inaccuracy may be judged by considering whether the story, taken as a whole, was likely to create a false impression."

The Bellingcat article summary leaves little doubt as to its conclusion that the only reasonable explanation for Abu Akleh's death is the IDF shooting her, seemingly deliberately:

As the open source video evidence shows, when IDF soldiers and an armed group were engaged in fighting on the street where Abu Akleh eventually fell, the IDF position had a clear trajectory and was closer to the spot where she was shot. This is in contrast to the more obstructed and more distant positions of the armed groups. The leading vehicle in the IDF armoured vehicle convoy seen in the bodycam footage was located approximately 190 metres from the spot where Abu Akleh was shot. In contrast, the armed group seen firing down the street in Video Three was located some 300 metres away.

Preliminary forensic audio analysis of a video captured in the aftermath of Abu Akleh’s killing also appears to suggest the gunfire originated roughly 177 to 184 metres away, assuming that the weapon and round used are consistent with those seen being used by the IDF and armed Palestinian groups in the area. This estimate more closely aligns with the approximate distance between the IDF position and the site of the journalist’s killing than between the latter and the location of the armed groups.

There are some errors of fact here. 

First of all, according to the position of the IDF in Bellingcat's own map, the IDF is about 197  meters away from Abu Akleh, not 190. More importantly, the article uses the audio forensics to determine that the shooter was between 177 and 184 meters away from Abu Akleh. The difference of 6 meters is understood to be within a range of error. However, the measurement from the audio analysis must be made from the location of the microphone on the camera, not Abu Akleh's position. The camera was roughly a further 14 meters away. So now the IDF is about 30 meters outside the possible zone of a gunshot from an M16 or M4, which is no longer a discrepancy that can be overlooked of 3%, but a major discrepancy of 13% of the distance. 

An audio forensics error cannot account for such a discrepancy, meaning that the IDF's probability of shooting Abu Akleh with the information we have has gone from "the best guess we have" to "nearly impossible."

That is a significant inaccuracy.

The errors of omission are arguably more important. The article does not allow for the possibility of any Palestinian militants who can be between 177-184 meters away from Abu Akleh (really the microphone). They float the idea that a gunman in the building next to the IDF would have had line of sight but say they have no evidence of any such gunman.  

This diagram, excerpted from Bellingcat, gives the impression that there were no other known gunmen besides the two groups shown:

Yet the authors overlooked plenty of open source evidence that there were not only gunmen in the "Goldilocks zone" but that there were many Palestinian snipers in positions all over Jenin.

The evidence of militants who were southeast of Abu Akleh comes from a video and a photo. You can see the video in this tweet, with a followup tweet showing their location:

https://twitter.com/tomasyo99/status/1524343547478036481

Additionally, there is a still photo of some 15 gun toting militants on that same street, from the same morning:

There is a problem of line of sight, but Bellingcat did not even mention these people to see if there was a possibility that there was a line of sight from them to Abu Akleh to begin with. I believe that there might have been a line of sight from further south on that street, where there is a hill, but that is further than the 184 meters. Nevertheless, the cemetery has sections that have a lower wall, and across the street from Abu Akleh was mostly a tarp; as far as I can tell no one looked for bullet holes in the tarp. 

Still, not even mentioning this group, even to dismiss it, gives the impression that no one but the IDF is even potentially guilty of killing Abu Akleh. This is a major inaccuracy.

Furthermore, video evidence of witnesses show that there were many who saw snipers in buildings. I show one video here - the extended video in which one can hear the bullets than killed Abu Akleh: https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2022/05/more-information-on-abu-akleh-reporters.html The reporters, or perhaps residents, point out multiple sniper hideouts in buildings, pointing southeast. Snipers in buildings would have line of sight - and by definition they did because the witnesses could see them above the hedges to the north of the cemetery.

Moreover, the two witnesses closest to Abu Akleh themselves said that they saw snipers in buildings across from them. Shatha Hanaysha said that "we were standing across from a building with snipers." and "we were between the wall and the snipers." This indicates that the snipers were towards the east, not due south where the IDF was, parallel to the wall. 

Similarly, reporter Ali Samoudi said he heard "the sound of bullets raining down on us from the side of the occupation soldiers who were on the roofs of the buildings opposite us." 

 Again, there were no IDF snipers during this operation, and IDF snipers do not use the 5.56mm bullets that killed Abu Akleh. These journalists mistook Palestinian snipers for IDF soldiers. (At least one building southeast of Abu Akleh is both the exact distance for the audio forensics and an ideal sniper position with a clear shot down a street between the sniper and where the IDF could be expected to travel.)

There is more evidence of Palestinian snipers all over Jenin, such as this video taken from the northwest of Abu Akleh's location where gunshots can clearly be heard even though the IDF is over 270 meters away from the rooftop. 

Together, the evidence is overwhelming that trigger happy Jenin youths, amateurs with M16s from 180-190 meters away, are far more likely to have killed Abu Akleh - perhaps mistaking her helmet poking over the brush as belonging to an IDF soldier - than a professional army that has huge disincentive to kill reporters. 

Why was none of this evidence even mentioned? The reader is being misled, perhaps deliberately, to believe that there are no Palestinian militants in the area besides the two groups identified to the south of the IDF convoy.

That error of omission is the basis of Bellingcat's thesis that the IDF is the most likely culprit in Abu Akleh's death, when there are many other militants in the area at the time, many of them closer to Abu Akleh than the IDF was. 

These facts have been tweeted to Bellingcat, under the assumption that they would be at least addressed and the article updated, but that has not happened. Therefore I am submitting this formal complaint in the hopes that this additional evidence can be evaluated in an objective manner and the article updated with all the relevant information, not only the information that leads one to a specific conclusion.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Thank you,

Elder of Ziyon

__________________________________

I will keep everyone posted as to what I hear back. Bellingcat says "We will acknowledge your complaint by e-mail or in writing within 7 calendar days and will normally respond to your complaint with a final decision letter within 21 calendar days. If we uphold your complaint, we will tell you the remedial actions we have taken."

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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!

 

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Iran's Supreme Leader tweets classic "Elders of Zion" style antisemitism

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, left no doubt as to his Jew-hatred in a tweet this morning.

"Today, #Zionism is an obvious plague for the world of #Islam. The Zionists have always been a plague, even before establishing the fraudulent Zionist regime. Even then, Zionist capitalists were a plague for the whole world. Now they’re a plague especially for the world of Islam," he tweeted in a thread about his message to Iranians going on the Hajj trip to Mecca.

When Khamenei talks about "Zionist capitalists" who were a "plague for the whole world" before Israel was established, it is quite obvious he's referring to the classic conspiracy theory about Jews, not "Zionists." In fact, he is using the exact same timeline as the forgers of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

He goes on to attempt to use his Jew-hatred as a means to disrupt the Abraham Accords as he continues to use the term "Zionist" as an obvious euphemism for "Jew:" "The plague of Zionism should be exposed, in any way you can. These Arab and non-Arab states that shook hands, kissed & held meetings with the Zionists won’t benefit from what they did at all, not at all. This will only be to their loss. "

In another allusion to the Protocols, Khamenei concludes by saying that the "Zionists" are secretly exploiting the Arabs much like the Jews are said to be secretly manipulating gentiles: "Muslim nations oppose the normalization of relations with the Zionists, clench their fists & shout slogans against states seeking normalization. The Zionist regime exploits these states. They don’t realize it, but we hope they realize it before it’s too late."

The Jew-hatred is as blatant as it can be. But Iran's Supreme Leader avoids using the word "Jew" so apologists for modern antisemitism can continue to pretend that Iran isn't systemically antisemitic.

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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!

 

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Terror groups very upset at UNGA for appointing Israeli as a VP. It's really funny to watch.

Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan was elected on Tuesday as a Vice-President of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

There are 21 vice presidents. It is not a big deal. And his predecessor, Danny Danon, also held the role one year.

But watching the terror groups and their fans freak out is a wonderful thing to behold.

Hamas issued a statement saying the appointment is an affront to the feelings of our people and to those who love peace and justice in the world. It also considered the appointment an affront to the international system

Walid Al-Awad, a member of the Political Bureau of the Palestinian People's Party, said Erdan's appointment "contradicts the moral and political values ​​stipulated in the Charter of the United Nations."

Best of all was the PFLP terror group, which "considered that the appointment of the criminal representative of the Zionist entity to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, as Vice-President of the United Nations General Assembly, represented a black day in the history of the United Nations, and constituted a blow to the values ​​on which its charter was founded. "

It added that "this is clear evidence of the influence of the Zionist lobby on centers of power and influence in this world. "

According to the PFLP, antisemitism is one of the UN's core values. Which isn't really that far from the truth!

I just find it hilarious that anyone can claim that Jews have taken over the UN! 

Keep in mind that this same antisemitic PFLP is linked to numerous Palestinian "human rights" groups. And no human rights professional ever finds anything negative to say about the terrorist, antisemitic PFLP. 

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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!

 

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06/07 Links Pt2: High and Low Israel Criticism; BDS map ties police, media to Boston Jewish, 'Zionist' institutions; Oldest Concentration Camp Survivor Dies at Age 108

From Ian:

High and Low Israel Criticism

When it comes to Israel, it’s always the best of times and the worst of times. For the Jewish state, the sky’s the limit—or else it’s falling. According to its critics, Israel is on the verge of moral immolation, an apartheid regime living on borrowed time. Its boosters counter that Israel has never been stronger: The more the haters hate, the more peace agreements it signs with its Arab neighbors, and the more sophisticated the technology it develops and exports. It’s as if the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea can only be viewed through a fun-house mirror.

This schizophrenia finds expression in two recent books that read like they were written on different planets. Omri Boehm’s Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel approaches Israel as a failed state and Jewish sovereignty as a moral obscenity. As Boehm, an Israeli associate professor of philosophy at The New School in New York, puts it, “True Israeli patriots must now challenge Zionist taboos as we have come to know them, must dare to imagine the country’s transformation, from a Jewish state into a federal, binational republic.” If Thomas Jefferson believed that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” then Boehm believes that sometimes you need to cut the tree down altogether.

Yossi Shain’s The Israeli Century: How the Zionist Revolution Changed History and Reinvented Judaism argues that Israel’s success is so total that it has remade the Jewish people, reversed the misfortunes of their past, and secured their future. For Boehm, Israel is so compromised as to be ripe for demolition; for Shain, a Knesset member for Yisrael Beiteinu and professor of political science at Tel Aviv University, it is one of the greatest miracles in human history and the lodestar of the Jewish present. “Israel has consolidated its hold as the most dominant entity in the Jewish experience,” he writes. “The Jewish center of gravity—cultural, religious, political, demographic, and even economic—has decamped from New York, and is now to be found in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for the foreseeable future.” In the Israeli century, “the majority of Jews will come to live in the historic Land of Israel and enjoy the protection of the State of Israel.” Zion is where it will be at.

Like his one-state fellow traveler Peter Beinart, Boehm knows his audience: He couches his advocacy for the dissolution of the Jewish state in language intended to convince Jewish readers and non-Jewish critics of Israel that it is perfectly acceptable and desirable to overturn the country’s national identity. Even as he seeks to detonate the Israeli national project, he insists that he is more Zionist than the Zionists, selectively citing clippings by Menachem Begin, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and David Ben-Gurion to argue that sovereignty as such was never really necessary. A Jewish state—as opposed to a binational state with a Jewish minority—was a mistake, a wrong turn that has led to a dead end.

According to Boehm, Israelis have become more hardline and closed-minded than their founding fathers, who were open to a broader range of political possibilities. The book’s title refers to Boehm’s personal promised land: not contested Jerusalem or vibrant Tel Aviv, but Haifa, a city unshackled from Jewish history or yearning that in Boehm’s telling can be the model for the successor state to the Zionist entity.

Yisrael Medad: When Siegfried Sassoon was in Palestine at the Same Time as Jabotinsky

Siegfried Sassoon (1886 – 1967) was a scion to the wealthy India Jewish merchant family on his father's side with his mother being Anglican, of the Thornycroft farmers whose progeny had turned to becoming sculptors, painters and engineers. He grew up in rural Kent yet his father abandoned the family before Siegfried was five. His education was at Cambridge although he did not formally finish. He played sports, wrote poetry and developed into a homosexual.

He enthusiastically enlisted in the army when war was delcared but his war peorty became predominately critical with biting satire. While convalescing from a wound received at the Arras batle, he came in close contact with a pacifist circle and a protest of his was read out in Parliament in late July 1917 and published in The Times the following day.

And then, he returned to service and
In November 1917, Sassoon was passed fit for service. He was sent to Ireland where he served until February 1918 and was then transferred to Palestine as part of General Allenby’s army. He hated it there and described Jerusalem as ‘not a very holy-looking place’ and referred to the natives as ‘Hebrews’. His vague Jewish connections through his father meant nothing to him. After three months in Palestine, Sassoon returned to the Western Front.

Sassoon arrived in Palestine on 12 March 1918, some 3 months after Jerusalem had surrendered to Allenby. Sassoon’s unit, the 25th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, was stationed north of Ramalleh, near the Jerusalem–Nablus road; by the time Sassoon reached Palestine the unit was engaged in holding the recently-secured line.

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Palestine Jews were encouraged to visit Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan and Egypt in the 1920s-40s

The blog at Israel's National Library put out an interesting post:

Just as Jewish merchants moved between Jerusalem, Damascus, Halab, and Beirut during the days of the Ottoman Empire, citizens of Mandatory Palestine – both Jews and Arabs – continued to visit their northern neighbors while living under British rule. The local tourist industry in particular, flourished during this period. Lebanon was considered a fascinating and attractive destination: its southern shores, the vibrant metropolis of Beirut and the beautiful snow-capped mountains – a rare sight in the Middle East. The Hebrew press and bulletin boards were filled with advertisements appealing to the Jewish readers to come and relax in Lebanon.  

They show advertisements to visit Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan:

Jewish tourists were so desirable that Lebanese hotels competed by offering kosher food:

I found this 1932 article in the Palestine Bulletin about a successful trip to Lebanon and Syria:

The YWHA sponsored many of these trips, and also went to Egypt (1933):

It is possible for Israeli Jews to visit two of those countries, at least.

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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!

 

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Left wing and Right-wing antisemites agree: Jews are the center of all evil (and America is not far behind)

You know how far-Right antisemites like to churn out graphics that show that Jews are at the center of the media, or the pharmaceutical industry, or the banks?

Well, here's the "Mapping Project:"

[A] project created by activists and organizers in eastern Massachusetts, investigating local links between entities responsible for the colonization of Palestine, for colonialism and dispossession here where we live, and for the economy of imperialism and war.

To them, the Anti-Defamation League is at the center of...policing and lots of other supposedly evil things:

Same energy.

Some of the organizations that they consider to be Zionist/racist are obviously aimed at Jews. For example, here are some of who they are targeting as being recipients of funding from the Klarman Family Foundation:

The American Jewish Committee (AJC)

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL)

Facing History and Ourselves

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA)

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston

Gann Academy The New Jewish High School of Greater Boston Inc.

Jewish National Fund (JNF)

Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA)

Hadassah, The Women's Zionist Organization of America

The Shalom Hartman Institute of North America: $1,500,000 from FY17-19

Washington Institute on Near East Policy

A Wider Bridge

Brandeis University

Commentary Magazine

Harvard

Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life

JCRC of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin, Sonoma, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties

In other words, any Jewish organization that doesn't explicitly consider Israel to be satanic is on their blacklist.

This makes Joe McCarthy look like a piker.

To get an idea of how extremist these "progressives" are, here is why they hate Facing History and Ourselves:

Facing History and Ourselves develops educational materials and curricula for K-12 educators. Although educators and school districts often point to Facing History and Ourselves as a progressive option for teaching about US history, in reality the organization's materials and curricula only provide a more progressive cover for the same harmful narratives that reinforce American racism and US empire, while also celebrating Israel and propagandizing for Zionism.

Materials and curricula Facing History and Ourselves offers on slavery, colonialism, and police brutality approach these institutions of mass violence as painful episodes within an otherwise positive project of American democracy (episodes which must be "faced"), without challenging or advocating for the dismantling of the fundamentally white supremacist and colonial character of the US state, US Empire, or the US-dominated global capitalist system, which these institutions exist and have existed to uphold.

Meaning that any educational initiative that does not call for the total dismantling of the United States is hopelessly colonialist and Zionist. 

If the Mapping Project goes national, it will need to maintain a database of hundreds of thousands of institutions that accept Israel and the United States as anything other than their enemy.

There is really no difference between the far Left and the far Right. They are both obsessed with Jews. 

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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!

 

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06/07 Links Pt1: Israel says UN report on Gaza conflict 'tainted with hatred'; Who is fanning the flames for religious war? Abbas’ advisor!

From Ian:

UN blames Israel for conflict with Palestinians, to probe discrimination

Israel is largely to blame for its conflict with the Palestinians, the United Nations charged in the initial report by its highly contentious Commission of Inquiry, which plans to focus in part on issues of discrimination by the Jewish state both within and without the country's sovereign borders.

“The findings and recommendations relevant to the underlying root causes were overwhelmingly directed towards Israel, which we have taken as an indicator of the asymmetrical nature of the conflict and the reality of one state occupying the other,” Navanethem Pillay, who heads the three-member panel that conducted the probe, said. Pillay is the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The UN's report
The brief 18-page report by the UN's "Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem and Israel" posted on the UN website on Tuesday marks the first of what will be an annual report to the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The report spoke of Israel's actions in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem as a situation "in perpetuity," noting that It was unlikely the situation would end without International intervention.

"The commission notes the strength of prima facie credible evidence available that convincingly indicates that Israel has no intention of ending the occupation, has a clear policy of reassuring the complete control over the occupied Palestinian Territory and is acting to alter the demography through the maintenance of a repressive environment for Palestinians and a favorable environment for Israeli settlers," the report stated.

Israel has done this with impunity that "is feeding increased resentment among the Palestinian people" and "is fueling … an endless cycle of violence," the report stated.

The report gave a nod in the direction of Palestinian violence against Israelis. It spoke of the need for all parties, including armed Palestinian groups, to respect international law. It noted, in particular, the "indiscriminate" firing of rockets at Israel. But it did not speak of Hamas's violations of international law.

Unlike past UN probs, this one focuses not just on Israeli actions in the territory which the UN holds will eventually be part of the final borders of a Palestinian state, but it also plans to look at Israeli actions within its sovereign borders including with respect to issues of discrimination.

Israel has feared that the three-member Commission of Inquiry (COI) would charge Israel with crimes of apartheid, similar to reports that have already been issued by a number of non-governmental human rights groups.

Israel says UN report on Gaza conflict 'tainted with hatred'

Israel slammed the latest UN report on the May 2021 Gaza conflict on Tuesday and said it was heavily biased in favor of Palestinians after its authors blamed Israel's "perpetual occupation" of Palestinian areas for the flare-up.

The findings were in the first report by a commission of inquiry headed by a three-person team of human rights experts. It was set up last year by the UN-backed Human Rights Council following an 11-day flare-up between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

The commission, headed by former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay, is the first to have an "ongoing" mandate from the UN rights body. Critics allege that permanent scrutiny testifies to an anti-Israel bias in the 47-member-state council and other UN bodies.

But the report, which comprises 18 pages, contains only a few paragraphs about the indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza on Israeli population centers, with only passing references to the role played by terrorist groups such as Hamas in perpetrating these attacks. The rest of the report is almost entirely dedicated to bashing Israel with unsubstantiated allegations of discrimination and racism while going into lengthy detail on Israel's military action in the operation without the proper context of self-defense.

The Foreign Ministry rejected the report as "part and parcel of the witch hunt carried out by the Human Rights Council against Israel." The ministry further said that the report "a waste of money and effort," adding that "it is a biased and one-sided report tainted with hatred for the State of Israel and based on a long series of previous one-sided and biased reports."

The ministry accused commission members of ignoring Palestinian violence, incitement and antisemitism. "The commission members, who claim to be objective, were only appointed to their roles because of their public and well-known anti-Israel stances, in direct opposition to the rules set out by the United Nations," it said.

The report largely recaps efforts by UN investigators over the years to grapple with the causes of Mideast violence and the authors acknowledged it was in part a "review" of previous UN findings.

Statement by @IsraelMFA, in response to @UN_HRC Commission of Inquiry against #Israel. pic.twitter.com/ha5nxKVRbc

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) June 7, 2022

The biased COI report is part and parcel of the witch hunt being carried out by the UN Human Rights Council against Israel; from its mandate to its flawed methodology and false claims, it disregards years of murderous Palestinian terrorism while demonizing Israel. pic.twitter.com/zFwWaXhFwU

— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) June 7, 2022

My full statement below on behalf of @The_ILF, in response to this @UN_HRC inquisition against #Israel, that reeks in bias and only rewards Palestinian terror. https://t.co/nTxBLL9cST

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) June 7, 2022

The @UN_HRC just handed down a report of its Commission of Inquiry against #Israel.

The person adjudicating over this Inquiry is #NaviPillay.

This is Navi Pillay in her own words. YOU be the judge and see if she is fair and impartial ... pic.twitter.com/f0JsfbpeGQ

— The International Legal Forum - ILF (@The_ILF) June 7, 2022

BREAKING: UNHRC's Pillay Commission of Inquiry targeting Israel releases first report ahead of Monday debate: https://t.co/NQgLU1Q6aY

The report is a complete travesty.

Mentions of Israel: 157
Hamas: 3
Islamic Jihad: 0
Islamic Republic of Iran: 0

More: https://t.co/6Gd0i3CKZb

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 7, 2022

The report is a travesty: Israel is mentioned 157 times, Hamas 3, Islamic Jihad 0, Islamic Republic of Iran 0.

We asked you and @mbachelet: How could you name Navi Pillay—who lobbies governments to “sanction apartheid Israel”—to head this inquiry on Israel?

You had no answer. pic.twitter.com/ghbgr3lwxm

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 7, 2022

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Video/audio of another Palestinian sniper much closer to Shireen Abu Akleh than the IDF was (UPDATES - I was wrong)

Here is a video from Jenin journalist Ali Samoudi which he uploaded to Facebook only minutes before Shireen Abu Akleh's death.

Abu Akleh was killed at about 6:30 AM. This video was uploaded to Facebook at 6:22 AM.  (Update: See below, the video was uploaded to Telegram around 6:15.)

You can hear at least 9 loud gunshots (and 4 that might be echoes or might be more distant gunshots) in the 17 seconds of the video. Those 9 gunshots are clear enough, and loud enough, to indicate that they were shot from the same rooftop as the camera. (UPDATE: this is wrong. See below.)

The video shows the spot that Abu Akleh was going to be killed.

Here is the scene from the video, showing where the landmarks are on the map.

The video was taken from roof of the building on the right; the tree that she was in front of is on the left in this Mapillary photo:

This sniper did not kill Shireen Abu Akleh. He is only 75 meters away from her, and we know that the gunfire that killed her was about 180 meters away from the intersection near her.

But we can learn a great deal from this video nonetheless.

It proves beyond the witness testimony we have seen so far that there were indeed Palestinian snipers on the roofs of buildings in Jenin.

It proves that at least one of these snipers were much closer to Abu Akleh than the IDF was. Together with the witnesses we have seen pointing out or saying they saw other snipers, this is further proof that there were Palestinian snipers all over the area.  CNN and Bellingcat's investigators do not mention this fact, leading them to say that the IDF was the most likely shooter and not even mention the many other gunmen we have evidence for.

It proves that the Palestinian snipers are trigger happy. The IDF is not visible in this video, but it is in the general direction beyond where Shireen Abu Akleh was (215 meters down Street 1.) The gunmen who were nowhere near the IDF shot in that direction anyway. They are "shebab," youth, who want to prove how macho they are with their M-16s so they are firing towards anything that they feel like. Is it really so difficult to imagine that another similarly hotheaded terrorist saw Shireen's helmet poking above the brush from the southeast and fired volleys of bullets towards her immediately, imagining her to be IDF?

Moreover, the contrast between these youths with their beloved and iconic M-16s and a professional army like the IDF could not be starker. It is infinitely more likely that untrained, hotheaded and trigger happy youth would fire at anything that moves than that the IDF would target journalists in the middle of an operation. That simple fact does not even enter into the calculus of the "investigators" because they have a bias against the IDF, assuming that IDF soldiers act worse than the Jenin shebab.

I don't know if Ali Samoudi took this video himself or if he obtained it and uploaded it. He was close enough to have descended the three flights of stairs and go to the intersection in the 8 minutes or so before he himself was shot. Either way, this video indicates that Samoudi - a trusted eyewitness to the media - had either hung around the snipers himself or he is friendly with the videographer who apparently shared a rooftop with a trigger happy militant. 

What is clear is that the sniper we hear in this video was not IDF and was shooting in the general direction of where the reporters were to be.

Finally, it proves that the open source investigations of Bellingcat, AP and CNN only covered a tiny percentage of the action in Jenin during the timeframe between 6:15 and 6:40 AM. They represent themselves as if they have all the relevant information to determine that the IDF is the likely shooter, but their information is are not even close to what the actual events were, especially their assertions that there were no Palestinian gunmen closer to where the reporters were than the IDF was. The constant gunfire that can be heard in this and other videos prove that there are far more gunmen shooting wildly than have been caught on video. 

Viewed objectively, the overwhelming evidence indicates that Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Palestinians.

UPDATE: Tal Hagin points out a similar video from the same vantage point that was uploaded around 6:05 AM to the Jenin camp Telegraph group:

The Ali Samoudi video was on that same channel at 6:15 AM.

 The Ali Samoudi video gunshots are much more pronounced and clear than in this one, where they could conceivably be from other (relatively nearby) sources.  This seems to indicate that he wasn't there himself. I still think the Ali Samoudi uploaded video makes it sound like the snipers are on that roof, or very close by, and shooting from a great distance towards very unclear targets.

UPDATE 2: Some have pointed out that there is no direct evidence of gunmen on this roof, and this is true. I assumed that the clarity and loudness of the gunshots in the video indicates that gunfire was very close by, but it is possible that distant gunfire from other elevated positions might be amplified by the microphone.

UPDATE 3: I asked the Montana State University professor what he thought of the audio. He said that when a gunshot is nearby, the audio has a loud sound that fades away consistently. These were much more muddled and seemed to include echoes. He does not believe that these gunshots were very close to the mic, so in this case my assumption is wrong. 

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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!

 

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NYT hatchet job on the IDF and Abu Akleh

The New York Times published an editorial on June 3 that broadly implied that Israel purposefully murdered Shireen Abu Akleh by cherry picking facts (and highlighting a truly stupid statement by Israeli military spokesperson Ran Kochav.)

After noting that the Palestinians blame Israel and Israel admits that there is a chance that it was Israeli fire that killed her, and quoting CNN's bogus "investigation" that ignored crucial facts and trusted "eyewitnesses" who are anything but reliable, the "Paper of Record" implies that Israel wanted to silence Abu Akleh:

The Palestinian Authority, Israel and the United States would do well to agree on an independent investigator to determine who shot Ms. Abu Akleh and establish whether she was a target because of her work as a journalist.   

It is nothing short of slanderous to say that Israel intentionally murdered Abu Akleh. I've already described in detail how, when all the evidence is viewed, it is highly likely that she was killed by Palestinian fire. The only people with guns who were close enough to Abu Akleh to have fired the shots consistent with the audio forensics evidence were Palestinian terrorists - both a group caught on video to the southeast of Abu Akleh and those who the very witnesses to her death falsely identified as Israeli snipers in buildings, who were in fact Palestinian snipers. (Israel had no snipers in buildings; Israeli snipers use different bullets, and other witnesses identified the snipers as Palestinian "Shebab.")

I will add one more piece of evidence to show how utterly incompetent the media and other investigators have been in the reporting of the events around Abu Akleh's death.

The NYT says:

CNN and other news organizations have begun their own investigations. After reviewing video footage, witnesses’ accounts and audio forensic analysis of the gunshots, CNN reported that the evidence suggested that “Abu Akleh was shot dead in a targeted attack by Israeli forces.” The witnesses and videos, it said, provided new evidence “that there was no active combat nor any Palestinian militants near Abu Akleh in the moments leading up to her death.”

Note the implication - that there is no doubt that Israel killed her, but Israel is lying by saying that there was active combat or militants near Abu Akleh before her death.

If she was killed by Palestinian militants, there doesn't have to have been any active combat, does there?  But even this is wrong. One can count many gunshots in the minutes before Abu Akleh's death.

In the very video that includes the gunshots that killed her, there are other gunshots heard in the minutes beforehand. And, as mentioned, we have both eyewitness and video evidence of militants in the area, closer than the IDF was.

In my next post, I will show even more such evidence of snipers on a rooftop that were much closer to Abu Akleh - not her shooters, because they are too close, but further proof that the CNN/Bellingcat investigations either inadvertently or purposefully ignored evidence available on the morning of May 11.

CNN and the other "investigations" knowingly ignored the presence of multiple Palestinian militants all over the area. They blame the IDF based on this airbrushing of the facts. The New York Times happily goes along with this facade of the IDF being the only group with guns remotely close enough to have the audio signature to have shot her, and this is 100% false and falsified.

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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!

 

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