Thursday, June 30, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
1894, 1903, 1906, 1912, anti-Zionist not antisemitic, antisemitism, Arab antisemitism, kill jews, Morocco, Muslim antisemitism, pogrom
Thursday, June 30, 2022Elder of Ziyonhumor, PreoccupiedOur weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.
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Jerusalem, June 30 - Progressive American NGOs have dispatched researchers to examine the activities of Zionist programs for children in Israel during July and August with an eye toward documenting the myriad ways in which attendees learn and practice militant dispossession of Palestinians, as those NGOs have described the programs, but, unable to find real examples of that pedagogical phenomenon, the researchers have felt forced to fulfill their investigative mandate by depicting innocuous everyday activities in violent, tendentious terms such as counselors urging children to "attack defenseless sandwiches with their bare teeth."
"Each morning the children are indoctrinated to storm the facilities in which their day camps take place," wrote one IfNotNow researcher. "The program calls for parents to send the children with a 'second breakfast' or late-morning snack of a sandwich, disrupting the native comestibles of the local ecology and imposing their own culinary sensibilities on the indigenous environment."
"Staff encourage the children to cultivate a dehumanizing attitude toward Palestinian ground," another wrote, "with games such as 'tag' and 'Capture the Flag' inducing them to trample the land with their youthful - and therefore unhygienic, 'filthy,' if you will, feet, violating the sensibilities of Palestinians everywhere."
Another researcher documented the camps' disregard for Palestinian public health. "The children, as well as their supervisors, maintain a high level of physical activity that increases their carbon dioxide output, adding to climate change woe for Palestinians," she attested. "During these dry summer months, dust kicks up easily from the ground with every step. The running, stomping, skipping, and other physical activities in which these campers engage pushes particulate matter into the air that can enter the lungs of vulnerable Palestinians already weakened by Israel pumping dihydrogen monoxide into their once-bucolic villages."
Beyond the physical violence, the researchers also recorded numerous instances of ideological indoctrination, such as instilling in the children positive associations with love for their country, people, communities, and society. One researcher reminded the sixteen expected readers of his report that societies, as a rule, contain people who engage in violence.
The activists will submit their completed research to their parent organizations at the end of the month. The NGOs will then use those reports to develop promotional materials for fundraising from antisemites and for and the thus-lucrative demonization of Jewish Israelis and of those who agree with the notion that Jews have a right to exercise sovereignty in their ancestral homeland.
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As exposed in the report, UNRWA teacher Hana’a Daoud in Jordan called on Muslims to “fight against the Jews and kill them”; UNRWA teacher Elham Mansour in Lebanon repeatedly called to “slaughter Zionists”; and UNRWA computer teacher Nihaya Awad in the West Bank glorified Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.UN Palestinian Refugee Agency Puts Six Educators on Leave Amid Accusations of Hate Speech, Incitement
Nevertheless, the suspensions provoked a sharp response from Palestinian groups, which falsely portrayed the teachers’ open calls to slaughter Jews as “instilling Palestinian national pride.”
A coalition that includes the PA, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, known as the Joint Committee for Palestinian Refugees, has called on UNRWA “to immediately rescind its procedure of suspending six employees, and not to respond to US-Israeli pressures and dictates.”
In an additional statement, Walid Al-Awad, head of the Palestinian National Council’s refugee committee, said UNRWA’s suspension of six teachers was “unacceptable and must be dropped immediately.”
He described the decision as “dangerous” because it “aims to extract the teacher from the heart of the cause of his people.”
Likewise, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union, demanded the teachers’ suspensions be reversed.
“The UNRWA administration’s reliance on a report issued by UN Watch to take these measures confirms its complicity and identification with the state of incitement practiced by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people, especially the employees, just because they are biased towards their cause, and express their adherence to national principles and rights on social network pages and websites, and participate in various national events and activities.”
“Our people will not in any way allow this decision to be implemented, and it will respond with full force to the administration’s acquiescence to Zionist pressure and incitement,” said the PFLP.
UNRWA has refused to provide even minimal transparency as to which of the perpetrators it has suspended.
In the announcement to donor states, Stenseth pointed out that similar allegations against UNRWA employees last year resulted in staff receiving “written censures, significant fines, deferment of eligibility for promotion, and in the case of daily-paid staff, up to two-year prohibitions on working for the Agency.”
Stenseth pledged that the agency would uphold UN humanitarian principles and its “zero tolerance of hate speech and incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence.”
Commenting on the decision, Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, said that “teachers who call to murder Jews must be barred from the classroom for life, while these temporary suspensions are just a slap on the wrist.”
“UNRWA is trying to pretend the problem is now gone, while at the same time signaling to Palestinian staff — and to terrorist organizations like Islamic Jihad which pressed UNRWA to reject the UN Watch report — that they don’t really object to the virulent antisemitism of their teachers, which UNRWA and its donors know pervades the agency,” said Neuer.
“We have now exposed more than 120 UNRWA teachers and other staff who praise Hitler, glorify terrorism and spread antisemitism, and UNRWA has not given the name of a single one who has been fired,” he lamented.
In response to the dozens of antisemitic statements by UNRWA teachers detailed in the UN Watch report, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, last week called on member states to freeze donations to the agency until all workers responsible were dismissed.
Thursday, June 30, 2022Elder of Ziyonclan clashes, family feuds, murder, No Jews No News, Palestinian Independent Center for Human Rights, Palestinian society, security chaos
Thursday, June 30, 2022Elder of Ziyonanti-Zionist not antisemitic, antisemitism, apartheid lies, Israel is Apartheid, jew hatred, US Presbyterian Church
The US Presbyterian Church voted to declare Israel an apartheid state and establish a Nakba Remembrance Day, as well as passing two other resolutions highly critical of Israel on Tuesday at the American religious body's 225th General Assembly.The resolutions are pure antisemitism.
The US Presbyterian Church's International Engagement committee voted overwhelmingly to recognize that "Israel’s laws, policies and practices regarding the Palestinian people fulfill the international legal definition of apartheid," as they had determined that Palestinians were systematically oppressed through inhuman acts for the objective of racial domination.
"After World War II when the horror of the Nazi Holocaust was revealed, Jews around the world said 'never again,'" read the resolution. "Christians too vowed that never again would they be silent if a government passed laws establishing and maintaining the domination by one ethnic group over another ethnic group through systematic separation, oppression and denial of basic human rights. Silence in the face of evil was wrong then, and it is wrong now."
The Racial Equity Advocacy Committee supported the resolution with the recommendation that it replace mentions of antisemitism with "anti-Jewish" as it believed that antisemitism " encompasses other people groups in addition to our Jewish siblings."
The International Engagement Committee unanimously passed a resolution directing Church leadership bodies to designate May 15 as "Palestinian Nakba Remembrance Day" and to commemorate it annually as part of the Presbyterian Planning Calendar....The new resolution described[the Nakba] as the "expulsion by terrorism and force of 750,000 Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim."
Another item unanimously passed by the church's International Engagement Committee was a recommendation on the church's concern about Jerusalem."The face of Jerusalem has been changing rapidly in the direction of a heightened Zionist-Jewish identity, with intensified restrictions on the movement, residency and human rights of Muslim and Christian Palestinians," read the statement. "The State of Israel’s policies steadily increase inter-religious tension with their disregard for the historic claims and freedom of worship of Muslims and Christians."
Beyond religious tolerance, the church rejected the Trump administration's move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, saying that it damaged peace prospects.
Thursday, June 30, 2022Elder of Ziyon"pro-Palestinian", anti-Zionist not antisemitic, defending terrorism, Freedom of Religion, glorifying terror, Joseph's Tomb, kill jews, Nablus, Oslo Accords, Palestinian antisemitism, tsunami of lies
Palestinian gunmen opened fire during clashes with IDF troops guarding worshipers at a Jewish shrine in West Bank early Thursday, lightly wounding three Israelis.The clashes erupted as hundreds of Jewish worshipers under military escort arrived to pray at Joseph’s Tomb on the outskirts of Nablus. According to the Israel Defense Forces, armed Palestinians directed “massive gunfire” at the compound.
Particularly disturbing is the conspiracy of silence on the part of other countries, the international media, and international human rights groups. Not only do they perpetually turn a blind eye to these violations – which they know about – they mainly pin the blame obsessively on the "Israeli occupation." Indeed, the issue of torture in Palestinian prisons is nothing new. As early as 2015, the Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center filed a detailed complaint on the matter to the ICC.Gil Troy: Anti-Zionism in academia: An illuminating debate
Despite the complaint, the matter evaporated into thin air when the prosecutor announced the issues she was willing to investigate. Torture in the Palestinian Authority was not one of them. Topping her list of priorities were "crimes against humanity" perpetrated by Israel. From the perspective of other countries, the world would keep on spinning: The PA would continue its gross violations of human rights, continue receiving hundreds of millions of dollars annually, keep opening embassies and consulates across the globe as if it were a country, and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, would continue being greeted by honor guards on official visits. From their point of view, the hundreds of people murdered and tortured to death by the PA aren't worth one Jamal Khashoggi.
This conspiracy of silence exposes the hypocrisy of other countries, the ICC, the international press, and human rights organizations – all derelict in their duties and willing to sacrifice their principles on the altar of slandering Israel, so long as not one hair falls from the head of Mahmoud Abbas. For them, those disenfranchised, defenseless people in Palestinian society are just a minor inconvenience.
Zionophobia
Foisting these incorrect concepts on Israel is cultural imperialism, I charged. In today’s academic context, such delegitimization is also an incendiary act of demonization. If not overtly antisemitic, it certainly lubricates and fuels contemporary Jew-hatred as expressed in one of its most popular forms – what Prof. Judea Pearl calls “Zionophobia.”
Zionophobia spotlights the obsessive attack on what Israel is, not what Israel does. As another panelist noted, even when Israel does something good, opponents label the act evil, covering up some crime. Zionophobia also raises the question beyond Jew-hatred, asking how Israelis are treated – isn’t a systematic obsession targeting them and their country bad enough?
I explained that last year, following May’s mass pile-on against Israel, Natan Sharansky and I labeled these insider-libelers of Israel, Zionism and the Jewish people, “un-Jews.” We defined the term to mean influential Jews – rabbis, academics – trying to undo the defining consensus since 1948 linking the Jewish people, the Jewish national movement – Zionism – and the democratic Jewish state... Israel.
“Let me be clear,” I declared, framing the debate as being about wisdom and scholarly integrity, not rights, “I am not here to cancel anyone. I have no power. I am here, however, to challenge everyone by asking, if this association champions 'scholarly inquiry about... Israel,’ how does such rank propagandizing fit that mission statement?”
The applause suggested that last year’s dozens of petition-signers don’t represent Israel Studies.
A vigorous, respectful, illuminating debate followed. True, we left with more questions. But, from left to right, panelists and audience questioners, we all defied common stereotypes. We proved that in today’s academic world, it is still possible to have a debate that is vigorous and passionate, yet civil and constructive, even about Israel and Jew-hatred.
Anna Rajagopal may be confused about when she converted
to Judaism (was she 10, 11, or 12?), but about one thing she is certain: Rajagopal hates
Israel. She also hates any Jew who believes in the right of the Jewish
people to self-determination in the Jewish homeland. Which is funny for someone
who converted through a Temple that has always been Zionist.
But let’s back up.
Of her conversion, Rajagopal wrote in a blog
entry:
I converted to Judaism as a child, when I was around ten years old, but my conversion journey began at age nine, when I felt an inexplicable tug at my very being that I attribute to my Neshama (soul) being present at Har Sinai (Mount Sinai) when G-d revealed Themself to the Jewish people. For me, conversion was G-d calling me home, after thousands of years in exile. Where's the shame in that? (Spoiler alert: There is none).
Converting as a child was by no means easy, so I understand how difficult, overwhelming, confusing and even upsetting this process, and subsequent life can be.
One month later, writing for Hey
Alma, Rajagopal had moved up the age of her conversion from “around ten
years old” to “around age 11.”
I converted to Judaism around age 11, coming from a multicultural household with both Christian and Hindu influences.
Not a huge difference, for certain. Except that neither
version of the Anna Rajagopal conversion story is true. From these two
accounts, dated one month apart, the reader might have inferred that Anna
converted alone, on her own, as a young child. According to a 2013 temple newsletter,
however, we learn that the entire Rajagopal
family converted when Anna was 12.
Anna Rajagopal did not convert as a lone brave child because
of something tugging on her soul, but alongside her parents and brother, a
decision made and taken as a single family unit. At the time, Rajagopal was not
around 10 or 11, but age 12, the age of Jewish womanhood, when a girl becomes
fully responsible for her choices and actions.
Is this stress on the small difference of a year or two or
three in a personal narrative important in the scheme of things? Yes. Because conversion
would have been something momentous, something Rajagopal would have remembered
with all the details, including her age, intact.
Of course, if Anna Rajagopal were otherwise a person of
integrity, we might have looked the other way. We might have shrugged and said,
“Big flip, so she got the age wrong by a year or two (or three).”
Rajagopal however, is not a person of integrity. How do we
know this? Because of her visceral dislike of certain Jews—really all Jews—expressed
as remarks about, for example, their physical appearance. In March 2022, for
example, Rajagopal tweeted:
"sometimes I sit here and just wonder why zionists are
so physically unattractive. it's very interesting to me how every zionist is
just extremely ugly. like actually very unpleasant looking. it’s like you have
to be horrifically grotesque to be part of the genocide club.”
This is not Rajagopal’s sole antisemitic tweet, but in a
nutshell, it is certainly one that should disgust all humanity, no matter what they
think about Jews and Israel. Let’s flip it for a moment and rephrase her tweet in
terms that might make this blatant example of bigotry easier for the world at large to comprehend and
digest:
"sometimes I sit here and just wonder why BIPOCs are so
physically unattractive. it's very interesting to me how every BIPOC is just
extremely ugly. like actually very unpleasant looking. it’s like you have to be
horrifically grotesque to be part of the genocide club.”
If reading the above shocked you, it should. Good people do
not generalize about the appearance of another people, no matter their identity. We
learn this at our parents’ knees. But then again, when someone raves like this,
it has nothing to do with looks, Zionist or otherwise. It’s just a bigot ranting
on Twitter. If Rajagopal had something substantive to say, she’d say it,
instead of resorting to baseless insults that generalize about the physical
characteristics of a people.
Instead she says Zionists are ugly. And she didn’t say it
only the one time. In an earlier tweet, for example, Rajagopal wrote, “Zionists are
genocidal freaks. If there’s ever a circus show for ugly, sunburnt, violent
outcasts, that’s where you’ll see them.”
Where does this hatred for Zionists, really Jews, come from? Not from the
temple that converted Anna Rajagopal, her father, mother, and brother. Billed
as the first Reform Jewish congregation in North Texas, and the largest
synagogue in the South, Temple Emanu-El of Dallas is a member of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ). Under Israel Engagement, the
URJ website states that: “Reform Zionism accepts and supports the foundational
aim of Zionism: the establishment of a Jewish State in Israel, the homeland of
the Jewish people.”
Foremost among the goals of URJ’s Reform Zionism work is “To
increase each Reform Jew’s relationship with Israel and make Israel a core
component of every Reform Jew’s identity.” To that end, the URJ website links
to its affiliate branch, ARZA (Association for Reform
Zionists). The acronym “ARZA” is a Hebrew imperative: “To the Land.”
It is no coincidence that Temple Emanu-El
of Dallas, under whose auspices Anna and her family embraced Judaism, is
affiliated with URJ/ARZA. The temple is nothing if not Zionist. In fact, the
synagogue just completed not one but two group trips to Israel.
It’s not just the trips to Israel that mark Temple Emanu-El of Dallas as Zionist. The Reform congregation also provides adult education classes in Zionist philosophy. As recently as 2019, for example, Temple Emanu-El offered a course called The Zionist Ideas.
Here’s the course description:
"The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland—Then, Now, Tomorrow” will be the textbook for the class exploring the vision of Israel as a democratic Jewish state. Author Gil Troy profiles more than 170 Jewish visionaries from the 1800s to today in this book, which builds on Arthur Hertzberg’s “The Zionist Ideas."
Temple Emanu-El is Zionist both by nature
and by deed. How does Rajagopal feel about this? How did she feel during
services as a “child convert,” seeing the “horrifically grotesque” congregants
sitting all around her?
And why would Rajagopal convert if the people are so ugly, er
Zionist?
While attempting to join the Nation of Israel, did Rajagopal
somehow miss the fact that there’s an actual, physical location associated with that nation? And if she thinks the idea of Jews having land or wanting to live in it and
govern themselves is so bad, then why did she sign on?
Like all antisemites, Rajagopal has tried hard to cut
the indivisible ties that bind the Nation of Israel to Israel the nation. She
does this “as a Jew,” using the fact of her Reform conversion to lend
legitimacy to her rejectionist views on the Jewish State. She assumes her Jewish persona at
will when convenient to the ultimate purpose of eradicating Israel.
When Rajagopal talks about her Neshama being at Har Sinai and how for her, "conversion was G-d calling me home, after thousands of years in exile," we wonder: of what nation were we to imagine her becoming a part? To where was she being called home? Was her soul’s presence at Sinai, her being called home from exile, meant as some sort of metaphor for something else?
Perhaps so, since her actions since that time have been directed toward the purpose of ethnically cleansing the Land of Israel of its entire Jewish population, as per her tweet: “Free Palestine by any means necessary: Decolonization is not a metaphor but a call to immediate action in which any form of resistance or rebellion is deemed moral under any immoral circumstances.”
We need not wonder about the borders of Rajagopal’s would-be Jew-free
Palestine. The borders would be the borders of Israel. Zionists, according to this “child
convert” are not to be allowed to live in any
part of their ancient, biblical homeland, or in fact to live. Rajagopal’s
“call to immediate action” is a call to murder Jews.
What is it about Zionism that so disturbs Rajagopal? Is it
the aspiration to have a Jewish state, or is it the actual fact of Jews living in Israel? Is it Jewish self-determination on Jewish soil that bothers her? What is the real Zionism in her Rajagopal's eyes? Which aspect of Zionism is it that
makes us Jews so ugly to her?
Who knows? But the Avodah Institute for Social Change must agree with Rajagopal’s antisemitic* views because they hired her for their social media team. That can only mean that her prospective employers monitored her Twitter and liked what they saw. Else they would not have hired her to assist in the running of their own Twitter account.
The Avodah website describes itself as “[providing] Jewish
leaders the tools, experience, and networks they need to create change.” If
Avodah likes what Rajagopal is tweeting out, this mission statement must be some kind of code. Based
on the hiring of Rajagopal, “creating change” is likely code for getting Jewish
leaders to stop being Zionist, to stop standing up for Israel and the welfare
of the Jewish people
A truer Avodah mission statement, one not couched in code,
might have said, “We agitate for and support the murder of Israeli Jews by Arab
terrorists and the annihilation of the Jewish State by any means.”
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| Note that there is nothing about Israel in the Avodah values statement, because Israel is not a value for them. |
The kind of people who found groups like Avodah, and those who work for them, all use coded language. They can’t come right out and say they hate Israel and want to annihilate its Jewish presence. Not yet. Not as an organization.
Instead, they encourage people like
Rajagopal to say it for them until it becomes a natural part of the
conversation. Lucky for us, this time Avodah was stymied in its efforts to amplify views that would appear to mirror those of Rajagopal. The Avodah tweet announcing her hire is gone. So is the page devoted to Rajagopal on the Avodah website. This is because Rajagopal was caught out for her tweets and the buzz went out until Avodah likely had to fire her in order to save face for what will probably be its next salvo against the Jewish State
As a people, we need to learn how to see and interpret anti-Israel, antisemitic code. There’s the code of Avodah regarding Jewish leadership and the unsaid need to change the way the leadership feels about Israel. There is the code of Rajagopal excusing
murder, as long as the Jewish victims love and/or want to live in Israel. All of this is in code. The code is necessary because the aims are wrong and immoral, so they
dare not voice them aloud.
At least not yet.
It is inevitable that some readers of this column will assert that Rajagopal is not really Jewish. They will say that Reform conversion
is not the same as Halachic conversion performed according to
Jewish Law. I will go a step further.
Could Anna Rajagopal and perhaps even her family, have
duped the people of Temple Emanu-El regarding their sincerity in wanting to be Jews? Did she/they trick the rabbis who performed the Reform conversion into thinking that some or all the members the Rajagopal family shared the Jewish
dreams and aspirations of this so-Zionist congregation? As a “child convert” could 12-year-old Anna have already been poisoned about Israel and the Jewish people? Could she have absorbed this lesson at home?
We might also ask: what was the group conversion about? What is the real reason the Rajagopal
family sought conversion? Was the conversion genuine
for some, not so much for other members of this family? Could the conversion have represented a bid to be upwardly mobile, to angle for a portion of what they might have seen as outsized Jewish power? Or was there
some other dark, nefarious political purpose to the family conversion, an infiltration,
perhaps, of enemy lines?
At this point, we cannot know. There is no backstory to hint at the answers. There is only the backstory supplied us by Anna Rajagopal, in which her age at conversion changes on a
whim and the conversion of her family is entirely omitted. Rajagopal's Twitter rants
reveal more, showing signs of a highly disturbed personality filled with
antisemitic loathing.
Without a backstory all we have is what we know of Rajagopal,
and what we know of Rajagopal tells us all we need to know about Avodah, the organization that hired and subsequently fired her.
Despite the Jewish-sounding name of this organization, Avodah is clearly a hornet’s nest--one filled with hate-filled hornets like Rajagopal, brimming with hate for one specific people:
The Nation of Israel.
The Jews.
*From the IHRA
examples of antisemitism: “Denying the Jewish people their right to
self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel
is a racist endeavor.”
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Wednesday, June 29, 2022Elder of Ziyongaza, Hemaya Center for Human Rights, kill jews, Palestinian culture, UN Watch, unrwa, UNRWA hate
The UN agency that runs schools for Palestinians announced to donor states yesterday that it has just placed six employees on administrative leave after a report on Thursday by UN Watch exposed UNRWA teachers who publicly call to murder Jews.
Today, Wednesday, Hemaya Center for Human Rights sent a letter to the UNRWA Commissioner-General regarding arbitrary administrative measures against a number of Palestinian UNRWA employees.The Center expressed its disapproval of the position of the Administration of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees (UNRWA) against ten of its employees in its various areas of work, due to their expression of their adherence to national principles and rights on social media pages and websites, and participation in national events and activities.
Unilever on Wednesday announced the divestment of its Ben & Jerry’s interests in Israel to its local licensee, allowing the ice cream maker’s products to be sold throughout Israel a year after its controversial move to end sales in eastern Jerusalem and in the West Bank.
The decision follows a months-long legal dispute between Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, and Avi Zinger, owner of American Quality Products Ltd. and the current licensee of the ice cream maker in Israel.
Last July, the independent Ben & Jerry’s’ board resolved not to renew a licensing deal with its Israeli partner at the end of 2022, saying it was “inconsistent” with its values to sell products in “the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
Zinger thanked Unilever for resolving the issue and for the “strong and principled stand it has taken against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.”
“There is no place for discrimination in the commercial sale of ice cream,” stated Zinger. “It has always been important to me to ensure that all customers — no matter their identity — are free to enjoy Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.”
According to the deal, Zinger will be Israel’s exclusive producer and distributor of Ben & Jerry’s and sell the ice cream under its Hebrew and Arabic names throughout Israel and the West Bank.
My only worry is that American Jews will boycott Ben & Jerry's now that they'll sell to Israeli Jews.
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) June 29, 2022
Avi Zinger, Ben & Jerry’s Israeli licensee, has settled the federal lawsuit filed on his behalf by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and co-counsel, following Ben & Jerry’s refusal to renew Zinger’s 34-year-old license to manufacture and sell Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
The settlement prevents Ben & Jerry’s from boycotting Israel and ensures that Zinger will continue selling Ben & Jerry’s ice cream throughout Israel and Judea and Samaria without interruption. The settlement signals a major defeat for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement which had pressured Ben & Jerry’s to stop all Ben & Jerry’s sales in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.
In March, Brandeis Center client American Quality Products (AQP), Zinger’s company, sued Unilever and its subsidiary, Ben & Jerry’s, for unlawfully terminating its multi-decade business relationship to boycott Israel. The lawsuit requested the U.S. federal court deem Unilever’s termination illegal, enabling AQP to continue selling Ben & Jerry’s products throughout Israel. Today, Unilever and AQP announced an agreement that resolves the legal dispute and defeats BDS efforts to keep the premium ice cream out of Israel. Under the agreement, Zinger and AQP will continue to manufacture and sell Ben & Jerry’s ice cream products to all customers in all parts of Israel, Judea and Samaria, and Gaza. Unilever has sold its Ben & Jerry’s business interests in Israel to Zinger to enable him to continue selling the same Ben & Jerry’s ice cream consumers have been enjoying for 35 years with its Hebrew and Arabic name.
“I thank Unilever for resolving this matter and for the strong and principled stand it has taken against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. There is no place for discrimination in the commercial sale of ice cream. It has always been important to me to ensure that all customers – no matter their identity – are free to enjoy Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. BDS lost. I now have the right to sell Ben & Jerry’s using its Hebrew and Arabic name to all our Israeli and Arab customers throughout Israel and Judea and Samaria – forever. This is a victory for those who seek cooperation and coexistence, and a resounding defeat for discrimination. It is particularly significant for those who have stood united against BDS,” stated Zinger.
“On behalf of myself and my employees, I am grateful for the support we received from Israeli Knesset members across the political spectrum; from the Foreign Ministry under the leadership of Foreign Minister Yair Lapid; for the efforts of governors and state attorneys general from numerous states in the United States who initiated severe sanctions in response to the boycott; and for the individuals and Jewish organizations from around the world who on their own initiative spoke out against BDS and contributed to this successful resolution. Thank you also to Alyza Lewin and her team from the Brandeis Center, Marc Zell, and Nathan Lewin, who worked tirelessly to help me. It is the support we received from all corners of the globe that made this resolution possible. I am grateful to once again be able to focus on what I do best – making high-quality premium ice cream for all to enjoy,” added Zinger.
Zinger was represented by attorneys at the @brandeiscenter - we applaud their amazing efforts! ?? https://t.co/2wu2DDSZLo
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) June 29, 2022
Morningstar, Inc., the Chicago-based financial services firm that came under fire earlier this month for providing analytical tools that were found to have a bias against Israel, committed to addressing concerns that the company harbors anti-Israel attitudes at an Illinois investing board meeting last week, according to two individuals present.
In last Tuesday’s meeting, the Committee on Israel Boycott Restrictions subdivision of the Illinois Investment Policy Board (IIPB) voted not to place Morningstar on the state’s “prohibited investment list,” subject to the firm’s implementing of recommendations put forth in a report published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a separate independent report commissioned by Morningstar and conducted by New York City-based law firm White & Case LLP.
The unanimous vote cleared Morningstar from penalty under an Illinois law requiring the state pension fund to divest from firms that support the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel.
The concerns raised in the two reports focus on Sustainalytics, a Morningstar subsidiary firm that rates companies based on Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) criteria, metrics that have recently become popular among investors who desire to understand companies’ social impact.
Critics assert that Sustainalytics unfairly targets Israeli companies in its ratings and that it supports the BDS movement.
The White & Case recommendations focus on transparency, internal consistency and addressing conflicts of interest. The FDD proposals go further, calling for ending Morningstar’s reliance on reporting from “anti-Israel sources” in addition to a request that Morningstar “address [the] unfair policy of punishing businesses just for operating in Israel.”
Morningstar did not acknowledge that the board vote was conditional on responding to the FDD-recommended reforms, and told Jewish Insider, “ultimately, the IIPB voted not to place Morningstar on the Prohibited Investment List.”
Wednesday, June 29, 2022Elder of Ziyonanalysis, Daled Amos
By Daled Amos
The media is very big on speculation.
With the Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade last week, doomsday
predictions are already available: Fall of Roe will have immediate economic ramifications, experts say:
"Abortion rights are economic rights, and this decision means the loss of economic security, independence, and mobility for abortion seekers. Low- and middle-income people, especially Black and Brown women, will bear the brunt of the impact."
Speculation is one of the services the media provides -- it is a handy substitute for reasoned argument and debate.
Twenty years ago, before fake news became a thing, the author Michael Crichton called out the media on its penchant for speculation and cast doubt on its value. In a talk he gave to the International Leadership Forum, entitled Why Speculate, he referenced a front page article in the New York Times about then-president George Bush raising tariffs on steel. The New York Times speculated on the friction tariffs would cause with allies -- especially those allies Bush was relying on in the fight against terrorism. Crichton dismissed the drama:
Isn’t it reasonable to talk about effects of current events in this way? I answer, absolutely not. Such speculation is a complete waste of time. It’s useless...The reason why it is useless, of course, is that nobody knows what the future holds.
The fact that the future is so difficult to predict is often lost on people because of the credibility that the media has, not only when claiming to predict the future, but also when explaining the present. Today, we smirk at the suggestion that the media retains some level of credibility, but the fact remains that what Crichton called the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is still at work:
You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. [emphasis added]
It was at this point that I thought it would be interesting to write about Crichton's view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Or of Israel in general.
Or of the Middle East.
But it seems Mr. Crichton was more interested in Jurassic than Jews.
However, he did have a lot to say about the news media, and that is worthwhile taking a look at. Crichton will get no argument from us when he writes that "media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved." And what goes for the media goes for academia as well.
Periodically, Elder of Ziyon exposes academic papers that are completely off-the-wall:
o The Transnational Palestinian Self: Toward Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Thought, where we learn that "Zionism is intricately and inextricably linked with and haunted by a Palestinian identity, which it fundamentally works to negate...interpolating all identities through its racialized social and class hierarchy."o Palestine and the Will to Theorise Decolonial Queering, which reveals "Abu Hanna is the perfect embodiment of a sexed and gendered other, whose racialised [oriental] essence makes it possible to demarcate the necessity of Zionist conquest, with its moral modern and civilizational attributes. "
o Veganwashing Israel’s Dirty Laundry? Animal Politics and Nationalism in Palestine-Israel, which exposes how "the contemporary cultural politics of veganism in Israel circulate and reinforce national myths of exceptionalism tethered to a Zionist exclusionary ideology, including claims to unique victimhood, pioneering achievements and moral rectitude, which further entrench Jewish Israeli belonging and Palestinian unbelonging."
Crichton pointed out this pseudo-intellectual exploitation in academia:
Most areas of intellectual life have discovered the virtues of speculation, and have embraced them wildly. In academia, speculation is usually dignified as theory...This is in part aping science, but it’s also an escape hatch. Your close textual reading of Jane Austen could well be found wrong, and could be shown to be wrong by a more knowledgeable antagonist. But your theory of radical feminization and authoritarian revolt in the work of Jane Austen is untouchable.
This brand of unassailable speculation, he writes, has found a secure home today in the information age because "it is perfect for the information age, which promises a cornucopia of knowledge, but delivers a cornucopia of snake oil." (There is a reason that today no one refers to the Internet as the information superhighway anymore.)
Crichton was writing 20 years ago and things have only gotten worse.
He wrote:
We need to start remembering that everybody who said that Y2K wasn’t a real problem was either shouted down, or kept off the air. The same thing is true now of issues like species extinction and global warming. You never hear anyone say it’s not a crisis. [emphasis added]
Of course, this kind of censorship was before Twitter, so it was not quite so obvious.
When it comes to speculation, the media is notoriously bad at it -- just as everyone else is. Crichton points out how a major reason for voting for Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater was to keep the US out of Vietnam. But it was Johnson who, once elected, sent 200,000 troops there. Some in the media learned their lesson better than others. The Wall Street Journal gave up endorsing candidates long ago:
The Wall Street Journal last gave its imprimatur to a presidential hopeful in 1928, when it endorsed Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover over New York Governor Al Smith. A vote for Hoover, the paper said, was “the soundest proposition for those with a financial stake in the country.” But when the onset of the Great Depression made it clear that Hoover had been the wrong man for the job, the Journal learned its lesson. It has never again endorsed any candidate. [emphasis added]
The problem is that speculating about the future is not only a great way to attack a political adversary or opponent in a debate. It's a natural reaction to current events. And everyone likes to try their hand at it.
Including Michael Crichton. And he wasn't any better at it than the media he criticized.
In 1993, ten years before he gave his talk on the ineffectiveness of speculating, he wrote an article, Mediasaurus. In it, he confidently predicted the future of the media:
To my mind, it is likely that what we now understand as the mass media will be gone within ten years. Vanished, without a trace...According to recent polls, large segments of the American population think the media is attentive to trivia, and indifferent to what really matters. They also believe that the media does not report the country's problems, but instead is a part of them.
But let's face it: what passes for "information" is devoured by people who welcome the simplicity and emotional manipulation of the media. It is one of the reasons that "news" that puts Israel in a negative light is so popular.
It is news, but is it "information"?
A quick Google search will tell you that information is "facts provided or learned about something or someone." -- But the second definition is more accurate: "what is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things."
Which is why Crichton could write about the need for improving the quality of the news and in the same breath write that "there have been some positive innovations, like CNN and C-SPAN."
Writing in 1993, he wondered aloud:
Who will be the GM or IBM of the '90s? The next great American institution to find itself obsolete and outdated, while obstinately refusing to change? I suspect one answer would be The New York Times and the commercial networks. Other institutions have been pushed to improve quality. Ford now makes a better car than it has any time in my life; we can thank Toyota and Nissan for that. But who will push The New York Times?
The answer, I think, is technology. [emphasis added]
True, social media is considered a more powerful force today -- but not because it is more factual. The technology that Crichton saw as part of the solution has merely become an extension of the same sloppiness. Sure, people want real quality information, but that is only for what they need in order to live, for practical purposes. When it comes to the news, however, people are too used to accepting it as a form of entertainment, as something that gets the emotions going:
This is one reason why so many people who regularly interact with the press come to view it as an anomaly. They go about their daily work, which is specific and complex, and then they meet with the press, where interactions are general and oversimplified.
Another anomaly shows itself in human discourse.
Crichton likes the model of the parliamentary debates in Great Britain. No matter how determined they are to attack and even insult each other, the opponents in a parliamentary debate will address each other as "the right honorable gentleman" or "my distinguished friend." And writing in 1993, Crichton believes he has found the one place where civil debate is still possible:
And where can you find this kind of debate in today's media? Not in television, nor in newspapers or magazines. You find it on the computer networks, a place where traditional media are distinctly absent. [emphasis added]
Which just goes to prove Crichton's point that speculating really doesn't hold much weight.
It also seems to show that the much-vaunted quality media that Crichton thought he saw coming over the horizon was just a pipe dream after all.
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