Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, July 06, 2022

Jews Building Homes: If the Thought Makes You Nuts, Congrats! You’re an Antisemite (Judean Rose)

What is it about Jews building homes that gets under peoples’ skin? We know what they claim. They say that building homes for Jews in disputed territory is an “obstacle to peace.” That, however, is an obvious lie. The real reason the world does not want Jews to build homes in Israel is Jew-hatred: antisemitism.

How do we know that the “obstacle to peace” mantra is a lie providing cover for hate? We know this because of history and precedent. The 600 homes of the Jews of Yamit proved no obstacle to peace with Egypt. The 2,530 homes in Gush Katif and the 270 residences in Samaria did not stand in the way of the great Gaza giveaway. And the 450,000 Jews in Judea and Samaria did not stop Oslo and local Arab autonomy.

Despite the thousands of homes built to shelter Jews in their holy, indigenous territory, Egypt still received the gift of Sinai, while the UNRWA “refugees” were given de facto states in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

Construction, even of Jewish homes in ancient Jewish land, did not prevent any of this from happening. Where Jewish homes once stood, today there are no Jews. These areas have been ethnically cleansed of any Jewish presence, with the exception of a handful of captives held by Gaza in the years since 2005, two of them almost certainly dead.

Jewish homes don’t get in the way of peace negotiations or Israeli concessions because Israel doesn’t let them. Instead, the Jewish State simply expels thousands of its own people, Jews themselves, and flattens their homes with bulldozers.

It really is that straightforward. Thousands of Jewish homes go up and come down. Sinai gets Egypt. The rest get autonomy and Gaza.

None of this truth is reflected in the July 1^st letter sent by 29 Democratic Congressmen to Anthony Blinken, on the eve of Biden's trip to Israel. The letter writers do not care that Israel anyway destroys the homes before handing over the land. They demand that the President pressure Israel to STOP BUILDING HOMES FOR JEWS!

We write to express our alarm over the Israeli government’s renewed effort to build settlements in the West Bank area known as E-1.

The writers, in their own words, write to express their “alarm” over Israel’s “renewed effort to build settlements” in parts of the Jewish homeland they don’t want us to have.

Note the EU symbol on this illegal Arab structure in "disputed" Israeli territory. The EU finances these illegal homes for Arabs while, like the 29 Democratic congressmen, it condemns legal Jewish construction. If that's not an overt expression of antisemitism, what is? (photo courtesy of Regavim)

As legislators committed to the goal of a just and secure peace between Israel and the Palestinians, we are grateful to this administration for its previous work to prevent harmful actions that move us further from this goal, including the successful prevention of E-1 settlement plans that were under consideration last year.

The 29 legislators call the building of Jewish homes, “harmful actions” and laud the President for preventing such construction in the past. They say these things, they claim, because they are committed to a “just and secure peace." This is a demonstrable lie. If they were committed to a just and secure peace, they would speak out not about Jewish homes, but Arab terror. Especially considering that according to a 2015 article by Batya Medad, 15 percent of the home-building Jews are American citizens, with all the right to the protections that citizenship affords.

Note the EU stickers on the solar collectors and homes of this illegal Arab shanty town. The world is happy to finance ARABS building (illegal) homes. (Photo courtesy of Regavim)

(Photo courtesy of Regavim)

Everywhere you find illegal Arab building on Jewish land, you will find evidence of world support. (Photo courtesy of Regavim)

We ask that you continue holding firm on this issue, especially as you prepare for President Biden’s forthcoming visit to the region.

The letter is by way of reminding Blinken that his job, as a court Jew, is to continue to hold firm against Jews building any more homes on their land.

As 26 Members of Congress wrote in a letter from November 2021, efforts to advance settlement construction in E-1 “pose an irreconcilable challenge to a lasting peace solution between Israel and the Palestinians… [and] have been referred to as ‘doomsday settlements’ because they would threaten the territorial contiguity necessary for a viable independent Palestinian state by dividing the north of the West Bank from the south, as well as the West Bank from East Jerusalem.”

The writers, from the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party, point us to the fact that their numbers are growing. In November there were 26. Now there are 29 of them, all demanding that Jews stop building houses. This letter, write the congressmen, echoes the November letter which states that Jewish homes “pose an irreconcilable challenge to a lasting peace solution.”

The homes themselves, are referred to as “doomsday settlements” without a hint of irony or any recognition that it is antisemitic to characterize a Jewish town in this manner. The 29 are quite frank in stating that there will be no peace if a Jew builds a home anywhere in Judea, Samaria, or Jerusalem. Which means that should Jews build homes, as far as these members of congress are concerned, they can be murdered by Arab terrorists with impunity and it will be the Jews' own damned fault.

Preserving this territorial contiguity is vital to the prospects for peace and a two-state solution, and we remain strongly opposed to any such effort to entrench the occupation of Palestinian territory.

The antisemitic letter signed by the 29 Democrats uses all the familiar catchwords to cover their hate. Peace, blah blah blah, Two-state solution, blah blah blah, Occupation, blah blah blah. But the end game remains the same, the goal is no Jewish presence. And no building homes in the meantime. They don’t want the Jews to be comfortable.

How do we know the shibboleths of peace, two-state solution, and occupation are meaningless doublespeak? We know it because neither Jew nor Arab wants two states for two peoples. There are a million polls to attest to this fact. And here's another, quite salient fact: Jewish homes are always destroyed by Israel when the Jewish State cedes Jewish territory to Muslims.

We were heartened that the Biden administration shared Congress’s concerns and upheld the strong stance held by previous administrations of both parties in opposing settlement construction in E-1. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides has called the proposed settlements a “disaster” and has described the Biden administration’s efforts to prevent it as going “full bore.”

The congressmen were “heartened” to hear that Biden also wants Jews to stop building homes. They want to remind Blinken that even Nides, also a Jew, fell into line, calling Jews building homes a “disaster.” They are saying they want Biden to come down on the Jews “full bore” to make them stop. building. homes.

This administration has demonstrated the progress that serious diplomatic engagement on these sensitive issues can lead to, and we are looking forward to the President’s first visit to Israel this month. Despite this administration’s clear commitment to preventing settlement construction in E-1, the Israeli government has recently reversed its position and announced plans to move ahead with E-1 settlements once again, scheduling the final hearing on the objections to the project within days of the President’s planned visit. United States intervention at this pivotal moment is critical. In recent months, there has been an increase in violent clashes, and we are hopeful that the President’s visit will help ease tensions and reassure both parties of the United States’ commitment to a negotiated peace.

They are so looking forward, say the letter-writing Dems, to the President giving Israel a good diplomatic thrashing over Jews building homes. The Jews know that Biden doesn’t like Jews to build homes, yet the Israeli government has announced brazen plans to even build MORE Jewish homes. The Democrats speak of the causal effect of Jews building homes to “an increase in violent clashes” AKA Arab terror.

We are encouraged by reports that the Biden administration has pushed the Israeli government not to move forward with the planned hearing on E-1 settlement construction, and we hope you will continue to prioritize this issue with the current interim Israeli government and any future coalitions.

The 29 Democrats say they are encouraged by the fact that Biden is pushing Israel to stop all these conniving Israeli plans of building more homes for Jews. They hope, as well, that Jews building homes will be treated as a major issue on Biden’s agenda for his Israel visit.

We urge you to continue emphasizing in the lead-up to this visit that settlement construction in E-1 remains a red line for the United States, and to use every diplomatic tool at your disposal to ensure that Israel does not further advance these devastating plans.

In conclusion, the signees “urge” the President to keep “emphasizing” that when Jews build homes, it crosses a “red line," and suggest he should use “every diplomatic tool at your disposal” to ensure this building of Jewish homes, comes to a stop. Their message to Biden is that the very thought of Jews taking shelter in their historic homeland--actually LIVING there--is in their opinion, a “devastating” thing.

Sincerely

They mean all this. Sincerely.

We know it to be true: antisemites and antisemitic congressmen come and go. They each in turn, get the chance to lend authority to the antisemitic hate they spew. They will say, for example, that no Jew has the right to build a home on his land, and that no wonder the Arabs get violent at the very thought of it. The truth does not matter to them. If the truth mattered a damn to them, they'd realize that violence derives not from building homes, but from hatred for those who seek shelter therein.

A Jew building a home is a harmless thing. Bricks and mortar, red tiles and heavy machinery, they matter not. There is no natural relationship between construction and violence. Violence comes from hate. The building of homes for Jews no more invites Arab terror than the rape victim's choice of clothing provokes sexual violence.

The 29 congressmen should be ashamed of blaming Jewish victims for being attacked and murdered by vicious Arab terrorists. But the 29 are not ashamed. They are proud to reveal their naked antisemitic hatred, before the entire world.

Here are their names:

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!

Mounir Chafiq (born 1936) is a Palestinian politician and is described as an intellectual. His books include Islam in Struggle for Civilization (1992) and Islam and the Challenges of the Contemporary World (1995.) He is coordinator of the Islamic Nationalist Congress.

He writes in Al-Binaa what Israel's goals are:

Anyone who does not reach an absolute conviction that this entity [Israel] represents absolute hostility to Palestine and its people is mistaken, as he considers Palestine "the land of Israel", and its people, all its people, must be uprooted from it and completely Judaize it. Anyone who does not reach a certain conviction that this entity wants to tighten the Zionist control over all the Arab countries, based on the overwhelming military superiority over them, collectively and individually, is mistaken. Anyone who does not reach an absolute conviction that this entity wants to demolish the Al-Aqsa Mosque and build the alleged temple in its place, and denies any religious right of the Muslims of the world in Jerusalem and Palestine, because it is the “Land of Israel” and that the non-Jews on it are “strangers” and what is considered sacred Islamic mentioned in the Qur’an, or in Islamic history, is not sacred. Some of them are considered Jewish holy places, as they claim.

It is not right for a member of the Third World, or the global left, or the free people of the world, not to consider the Zionist entity an industry of colonialism, and global racism that was practiced against the Palestinian people, as it was not limited to the military invasion to seize Palestine, but rather uprooted its people, And he is practicing a policy of extermination and displacement against him, to be replaced by racist settlers, who were brought in from all parts of the earth.

That is why it is not right for those who do not acknowledge all these facts, old and new, and those who come from its nature after it, to deal with the issue of the Zionist entity in any way that contradicts, or ignores, this hostile nature as an absolute hostility to Palestine and its people....

For this reason, it is absurd for anyone to imagine the possibility of coexistence with the Zionist entity, far from its conditions and nature.

As always, there is no Palestinian who publicly disagrees.

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!

07/06 Links Pt1: In Highland Park’s Jewish Community, Few Are Untouched by Deadly Mass Shooting; The bullet that doesn't matter; Iranian Pulls Out of Jiu-Jitsu Competition After Refusing to Play Against Israeli Opponent

From Ian:

In Highland Park’s Jewish Community, Few Are Untouched by Deadly Mass Shooting

Bright Bowls was open for July 4 in Highland Park’s main commercial district, and its owners, Lindsay and Matt Meltzer, were prepared for a busy day.

Lindsay had left her job at the Jewish United Fund of Chicago to open her dream business, a vegetarian smoothie shop and wellness studio, in June 2020. This would be the first year since the pandemic began that her suburb would hold its annual Independence Day festivities, including a parade, and the Meltzers were eagerly anticipating lots of foot traffic.

The Maxwell Street Klezmer Band began playing in the parade lineup, performing the joyful Jewish standard “Freylekhs fun der Khupe” (Happiness under the Chuppah). A parade observer, local Jewish entrepreneur Candice Crane, laughed and took pictures with her husband and two of her young children.

“We were joking, ‘Only in Highland Park does the Klezmer band come,’” Crane said.

Then everything changed.

“I was standing at the register, and all of a sudden, I see the Highland Park High School band running up the street,” Lindsay Meltzer said. “The first thought I had was that there was an active shooter.”

Moments later, a police officer rode up on his bicycle and told everyone to get off the street.

“We just opened our door,” Lindsay said. “We have a basement that’s about the size of our entire store, and we were able to house over a hundred people safely, away from windows.”

Her husband stood at the front door, keeping watch, while Lindsay guided everyone else, mostly families with young children, to hide downstairs. A teacher with some active shooter training, herself Jewish, played games with the children and helped keep everyone calm.

Meanwhile, Howard Prager, a tuba player in the band, said he thought he saw the shooter flee the scene. “We saw a lot of people running,” he said. “We saw the panic and terror in their eyes.”

Jewish toddler orphaned at Highland Park Fourth of July parade massacre

A deadly massacre at a Fourth of July parade in a Chicago suburb has left a Jewish toddler an orphan. The parents of a two-year-old found wandering alone after Monday's attack were among the victims of the latest US mass shooting.

At least two Jewish community members, including the boy's mother, were among the seven fatalities in the mass shooting that took place in Highland Park, Illinois.

Irina McCarthy (Levberg), 35, and Kevin McCarthy, 37, were killed when a rooftop shooter fired on the July Fourth parade on Monday. About 50 people also suffered gunshot wounds and related injuries, police and hospital officials said.

The toddler, Aiden, survived because his father shielded him with his body, local media reported. He was eventually separated from his parents in the ensuing chaos and was later returned to grandparents by police, according to a fundraising page.

"He will have a long road ahead to heal," said Irina Colon, who organized the GoFundMe page with the family's permission, adding that Aiden's grandparents Misha and Nina Levberg will raise the boy.

The Levbergs are immigrants from Russia who raised Irina, their only child, in the Chicago area, the Chicago Sun Times reported.

Misha told the Times that Irina met her husband Kevin – who worked for a gene therapy startup – through her job in pharmaceuticals. He said that he picked Aiden up at the police station after a neighbor showed him a photo of a lost boy.

The fund has raised over $827,000 by Tuesday night.

Along with Irina, the other Jewish victim identified in Monday's attack was Jacki Sundheim, 63, the events and b’nei mitzvah coordinator at a nearby Reform synagogue, North Shore Congregation Israel. She had attended the synagogue and worked there for decades.

Dalia Hatuqa is a well-regarded and award-winning Palestinian journalist, who has published in Time, the Washington Post, The Economist and elsewhere.

She wrote a Twitter thread yesterday about her frustrations at the delay of crossing the border between Jordan and Israel - blaming Israel for the delay.

There is currently a three hour wait at the Jordanian side of Allenby Bridge. Many of the people here are American citizens. Now tell me why the US is busy working on a visa waiver for Israel while we rot in literal hell at the border crossing

Still waiting. Been here since 11. Just been told by the Jordanian side that the number system they have doesn’t apply to people whose names are put on the list by a “minister” or someone “high up”. Some guy just told me he didn’t get a number and he already left for the Israeli side.

Everyone is feeding off Palestinian misery and desperation. We pay $110 a person just to get on a shared bus to go through the bridge. And wait for three hours just so the Israelis can fuck with you. This is the quintessential Palestinian travel experience.

To anyone following my bridge drama— I’ve finally made it home. What’s supposed to take 3 hours max took me 7 hours. That’s basically half way from Amman to Washington DC. I’m tired, hungry, thirsty but mostly angry and sad that this is what it takes to come home.

I haven’t tasted this kind of humiliation since the second intifada. I am so emotionally and physically exhausted I slept from 9pm last night and woke up at noon today. Friends are on the bridge as we speak and they waited 5 hrs at the Jordanian side. The whole thing breaks you.

You see, the evil Israelis are intent on humiliating Palestinians, and that's the reason for the delay, according to this award-winning journalist.

When someone commented to her, "Chill lady. I queued 3 hours at Heathrow yesterday." she responded, "Shut up. Queuing at Heathrow is a whole other ball game. You have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t usually respond to nobodys but it’s obvious you’re privileged and have never tasted humiliation like this."

For Palestinians, every slight is a "humiliation" that is directed at them. No one else has problems, no one else suffers, and every Palestinian who is inconvenienced is a victim of a direct attack on their Palestinianism.

The problems at the Allenby Bridge crossing have nothing to do with "humiliation." It is very simple: the number of travelers is too high for the facilities to handle at peak times. (Ironically, Arabs call the crossing "Karama" - which means "dignity.")

UltraPal has an article about the delays at the crossing. It mentions that this is an issue every year during summer vacation - a crossing that normally takes one hour now take more than 8 (more than Hatuqa's journey.) It is worse this year as people want to be with their families for the upcoming Eid al Adha holiday.

The article highlights something that Hatuqa only alludes to: the delays prompt people to bribe Jordanian officials, who let some people go through first, and this exacerbates the problem for the rest.

UltraPal is not a pro-Israel publication but at no point does it claim that Israel is the reason for the delays. It does mention that Palestinian officials who are also at the crossing add to the delays themselves by searching travelers for smuggled cigarettes before they go on buses to the PA-controlled areas.

To Palestinians, Israel is the yin and yang of all evil, therefore all their troubles are Israel's fault. This has the benefit of not allowing them to take responsibility for their own problems.

Hatuqa could use her platforms to publicize the bribery and favoritism on the Jordanian side of the crossing. She could mention how inadequate the facilities are. That could shame Jordan into cracking down on the problem. But instead she does what Palestinians are conditioned to do: blame Israel, which can do little to solve the problem on its own, and therefore ensure that Palestinians will be perpetual victims.

That is the role they have chosen, and it is a role that they relish.

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!

The official Palestinian Wafa news agency writes:

Israel is using withheld corpses of Palestinians for use in laboratories of medical schools in flagrant violation of human rights, today said Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh.

“The (Israeli) occupation authorities are augmenting the pain of the families bereaved at the loss of their children by withholding the corpses of their children and using them in the laboratories of medical schools in Israeli universities in flagrant violation of human rights, values, principles and scientific ethics,” said Shtayyeh in remarks at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting held in Ramallah.

He called on universities around the world to boycott those Israeli universities involved in the withholding and the exploitation of the corpses of Palestinians killed by Israeli army gunfire in order to put pressure on the Israeli occupation authorities to show respect for the dead Palestinians and to immediately release the dozens of withheld corpses so that their families can bid them farewell in a manner that befits them and respect their feelings.

This is fiction. And it is being repeated in media worldwide.

Usually, Palestinian fantasies about Israel are based on a wild misreading of a tiny kernel of truth, and this is no exception.

Israel withholds the bodies of Palestinian terrorists for various reasons, often to prevent violent riots at their funerals. The main site that the bodies are held is the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute,whose official name is the L. Greenberg National Institute of Forensic Medicine.

The institute is a department of the Israeli Health Ministry and affiliated with the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tel Aviv.

That affiliation is probably the source of Shtayyeh's blood libel, as there have been previous calls to boycott Tel Aviv University for its affiliation with the forensics institute. Shtayyeh has added the idea that the university uses the corpses in its laboratories, and from there it is easy to expand the lie to all Israeli medical schools.

Normally, when a prime minister is caught in such an obvious lie, the media would be merciless in calling it out. The leader would be chastened and would be more careful in future statements to avoid embarrassment.

But Palestinian leaders have no such fear. Even though Israel has more foreign journalists per capita than any other country, and even though this story was reported in English in the official Palestinian news site, there is no media interest in a top public official spouting antisemitic lies.

The Israeli government rarely comments on these fabrications, because they know how the media would handle it. Instead of emphasizing that a Palestinian leader is blatantly lying, the media would detail stories from the 1990s when Israel did remove corneas and other tissues from a small number of bodies of Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers, a practice that ended decades ago. Readers would end up with the impression that there is something to the story, and probably Israel is doing really bad things to these bodies today, and how awful it is to withhold bodies of terrorists anyway.

This underlying hate for Israel is the reason that Palestinian leaders can lie with impunity.

UPDATE: A Palestinian medical examiner refuted the allegation on PA TV - not that it matters.

Acting Director-General of the PA Ministry of Justice’s Forensic Medicine Administration Dr. Ashraf Al-Qadi: “Of course, all the Martyrs we have checked and seen, none of them had any theft of their organs. I don’t know about the Martyrs from before, whom we did not check as a Palestinian side or authority.”

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!

Ben and Jerry's sells to lots of countries that commit human rights abuses

Ben and Jerry's is suing its own parent company Unilever for selling rights to manufacture its products to an Israeli company.

When the Unilever announced the deal, Ben and Jerry's said that "We continue to believe it is inconsistent with Ben & Jerry's values for our ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. "

Here is a list of countries that Ben and Jerry's happily sells its products to up until last year:

I did a quick survey of the human rights records of some of these countries, based on NGO reports and the US State Department. Here are some results, and the list of human rights abuses is far from complete.

Australia	Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people comprise 29 percent of Australia’s adult prison population, but just 3 percent of the national population.
Austria	Excessive use of force by police; asylum seekers deported
Bahamas	Death penalty, mistreatment of migrants, discrimination against LGBTQ+
Belgium	Racial profiling by the police, inhumane prisons
Brazil	In 2020, police killed 6,416 people. More than half of the victims were young Black men.
Czech Republic	Roma children experience discriminatory segregation in schools
Dominican Republic	Unlawful or arbitrary killings by government security forces; criminalization of abortion
Estonia	Highest gender pay gap in the EU
France	Violent police attacks on peaceful protesters. Anti-Muslim speech by officials.
Jamaica	Unlawful and arbitrary killings by government security forces; life-threatening conditions in prisons; law against homosexuality
Mexico	Police, prosecutors and the military regularly commit human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial killings.
New Zealand	Asylum seekers are placed in prison and mistreated by criminals while being processed.
Philippines	ICC investigating crimes against humanity in "war on drugs"
Poland	Laws banning abortions
Singapore	Death penalty, government goes after freedom of speech and assembly
Thailand	Torture, no freedom of assembly or speech
Trinidad &Tobago	Death penalty, unlawful or arbitrary killings by police

Even the countries universally considered the leaders in human rights - Finland, Sweden and Norway - have been accused of discriminating against the Sámi people in various ways, such as attacking their culture and limiting their land rights.

Not to mention Ben and Jerry's home country of the United States, which according to Amnesty has the death penalty, excessive police brutality, armed forces throughout the world that often kills civilians, and limited access to abortions in some states.

Is Ben and Jerry's OK selling to countries where homosexuality is illegal? Where abortions are illegal? Where the government security forces torture detainees, and violently break up public peaceful demonstrations? Where minorities are not protected and actively discriminated against? Where incarceration of minorities is way out of proportion to their population?

It sure sounds like this is not a problem for them.

No, the only country that Ben and Jerry's publicly says is so reprehensible that it won't sell there without it changing its own laws is Israel, where the crime that is so reprehensible to justify this singular treatment is that Jews build houses in their ancestral homeland, nearly all of it on land that no human being ever lived before.

Anyone can dissect any country's human rights record, in order to find excuses to be prejudiced against that country - while pretending that it is really a righteous position.

If people decided that they want to cancel, say, Trinidad and Tobago, they could find lots of human rights abuses to justify their decision. But the hate comes first, the justification comes later.

Which is exactly the case with Israel. The hate, which is by definition modern antisemitism, comes first; the justification comes later. This is why Israel is accused of such a huge variety of human rights abuses in so many areas - not because Israel is guilty of them, but because there is such an intense desire to demonize Israel that literally thousands of people are paid full time to scrutinize Israel from every angle to justify animosity towards the Jewish state. And when they run out of things to accuse Israel of, there is an academic cottage industry to create new ones.

The many real human rights abuses listed above do not get the publicity that the mostly imaginary abuses attributed to Israel get.

When you look hard enough, you can find a reason to justify hating any country. And when the bulk of that effort goes towards the only country that has a Jewish majority, it is pretty obvious that human rights is not the real reason for the scrutiny.

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!

07/05 Links Pt2: Antisemitism envoy Lipstadt sees Jew-hatred declining in Mideast, rising in US; Lessons of Ben & Jerry's: Boycotting Israel isn't low-risk

From Ian:

Antisemitism envoy Lipstadt sees Jew-hatred declining in Mideast, rising in US

On the heels of a landmark trip to Saudi Arabia, the newly sworn-in United States special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, Prof. Deborah Lipstadt, said Tuesday at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University that “there is a change afoot in this region.”

She made her comments at the forum “New Tools in Combating Contemporary Antisemitism,” which was jointly held by the US Embassy in Jerusalem, Israel’s Foreign Ministry, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Diaspora Ministry.

“For too many decades, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia was a great exporter of Jew-hatred, but what I found is something quite different, something that has changed there dramatically in the last few years,” Lipstadt said, noting that the kingdom has also begun to implement changes in religious laws and the position of women in the country.

“I met with the heads and staffs of embassies focused on combating violent extremism, focused on interfaith dialogue, including the Muslim World League, whose secretary-general visited Auschwitz in 2020,” Lipstadt said. “We heard from a number of people who seemed willing to divide between the geopolitical crisis as it stands here in Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians and the fact that antisemitism is something separate and apart.

“These are important first steps. There was a clear willingness to continue this conversation. There is room to move things forward.”

Among the panelists at the forum were US Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides, Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai, and CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League Jonathan Greenblatt. The forum was moderated by Hebrew University vice president and former Israeli ambassador Yossi Gal.

Lipstadt spoke about the qualities of antisemitism that set it apart from other forms of racism and prejudice. She cited antisemitism’s ubiquity, its appearance on both the right and the left, and the conspiracy theory that Jews are using their wealth and knowledge to control the world.

“In 2021, 84% of online antisemitism was anti-Israel.”@NoaTishby, Israel’s Special Envoy on Combating Antisemitism and Delegitmization, explains why it’s so important that the official title of her position recognizes these connected phenomena. https://t.co/lQI0Rg3eYC pic.twitter.com/mNrvWyibua
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) July 5, 2022

Anti-Israel Academics Attack the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism in Hate-Filled Webinar

On May 8, 2022, the Institute for Holocaust Studies, Genocide and Remembrance at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, posted a discussion on their official YouTube channel that contained unfounded allegations about the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.

Hosted and moderated by Alon Confino, chair of the Institute for Holocaust Studies and a history professor at Amherst, the webinar also featured Amos Goldberg and Raef Zreik, professors at Hebrew University and Ono Academic College, respectively. The three academics boasted about their anti-Zionist activism, and promoted their campaign against adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

Professors Confino and Goldberg spent much of their time on the webinar denouncing the IHRA definition, and echoing the sentiment of an article where they jointly argue that, “The IHRA definition is nothing but a document used by Israeli propagandists to protect Israel against any harsh criticism regarding its attitude toward the Palestinians.”

In December 2020, Professor Zreik signed a petition that claimed: “The IHRA is used to delegitimize the Palestinian cause and silence defenders of Palestinian rights,” a bald-faced lie that he reiterated throughout the webinar.

Zreik also complains about the semantics of the term “antisemitism,” but fails to acknowledge the history of the world’s oldest hatred.

Zreik’s attempt to redefine antisemitism is an age-old attempt to trivialize the Jewish experience. For thousands of years, Jews have remained the target of systemic discrimination and intense pressure to erase their culture, language, and identity. These experiences have come to be known as antisemitism. It is disrespectful and intellectually dishonest to appropriate this term to describe something completely unrelated.

Contrary to Confino, Golberg, and Zreik’s mischaracterization, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is an intergovernmental organization that makes it clear in its working definition that criticism of Israel, in and of itself, is not antisemitic.

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!

Amnesty USA maintains a Twitter account with the name IOTPA and the Amnesty logo. It describes itself as an unofficial account: "Amnesty International USA member leader team for Israel/OPT/Palestine. Views our own. Re-tweets should not be construed as a position of Amnesty International."

It might not be official, but it sure shows how anti-Israel Amnesty USA is. Beyond that, it uses Amnesty's name and logo, without any apparent pushback from Amnesty International, so its tweets are tacitly approved by the larger organization.

Over the past several months, Israel has experienced a terror wave where innocent civilians have been slaughtered in the streets. The victims are the sort of people that Amnesty claims to want to protect.

IOTPA has not said a word about any of these attacks.

In fact, one would need to look very hard to find any condemnations of any attacks on Israelis. The few attacks on Israelis I found were couched in terms of "but Israel is far worse." I found one condemnation of a Hamas bus bombing - in 2016.

Not only that, but when these "human rights professionals" deign to mention any criticisms by Zionists, they usually dismiss them as "hasbara smear language."

The folks at Amnesty USA are not shy about admitting that they are anti-Zionist. They just redefine it to mean "critical of Israel." But in reality it means that they oppose self-determination for the Jewish people. Which is pretty antisemitic.

The account consistently dismisses any pro-Israel viewpoint as a lie by definition - and accuse anyone who supports Israel of being trolls paid by the Israeli government. In one exchange, they wrote to a critic, "R u one of the paid trolls by #Israel? Wonder what a person's soul sells for nowadays." And "R u a paid troll perhaps?" And "Do you get paid to troll? How much do you make?"

They actually said that no one should believe a word that the Israeli government or pro-Israel people says: "Don't believe the 'hasbara' (propaganda) being spread by Israeli military and supporters. They always try to control the narrative so their statements should never be taken at face value."

They've never said this about the Palestinian Authority. Or Hamas. Only supporters of Israel are accused of being liars by definition.

Yet they insist that they aren't biased.

Judge for yourself.

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!

07/05 Links Pt1: Iran bought illicit German tech that violated nuke deal; Russia orders Jewish Agency to stop all operations in country; I felt safer near Gaza than Highland Park -Israeli survivor of shooting

From Ian:

Russia orders Jewish Agency to stop all operations in country - exclusive

The Russian government has ordered the Jewish Agency to cease all operations inside the country, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The order was given in a letter received from the Russian Ministry of Justice earlier this week. Officials in the Jewish Agency confirmed that the letter was received but would not comment on the response that is currently under consideration in the organization’s offices in Jerusalem in consultation with the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office.

"As part of the work of the Jewish Agency's delegation in Russia, we are occasionally required to make certain adjustments, as required by authorities," the agency said in response to a query from the Post. "The contacts with the authorities take place continuously, with the aim of continuing our activities in accordance with the rules set by the competent bodies. Even nowadays, such a dialogue takes place."

"People from the Jewish community have been feeling the Iron Curtain setting on them and they fear they won't be able to escape the country."
Senior sources

Israeli-Russian tension
The order comes amid growing tension between Israel and Russia over Jerusalem’s stance regarding the ongoing war in Ukraine and its policy of standing with Kyiv and its embattled leader Volodymyr Zelensky. On Monday, Russia's foreign ministry called strikes on Syria that have been blamed on Israel unacceptable, and demanded an unconditional cessation of the attacks.

An order forcing the Jewish Agency to stop work in Russia is dramatic and could directly undermine the ability of Russian Jews to make aliyah and immigrate to Israel. Thousands of them have finished their aliyah paperwork and have been waiting for flights to become available to Israel, but the sanctions on Russia have caused most international airlines to stop flying to the country and therefore, Israeli officials explained, future olim are "stuck" in Russia.

NATO states sign entry protocols for Sweden and Finland, further isolating Russia

The 30 NATO allies signed off on the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland on Tuesday, sending the membership bids of the two nations to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals — and possible political trouble in Turkey.

The move further increases Russia’s strategic isolation in the wake of its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February and military struggles there since.

“This is truly a historic moment for Finland, for Sweden and for NATO,” the head of the alliance, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, said.

The 30 ambassadors and permanent representatives formally approved decisions made at a NATO summit in Madrid last week, when the leaders of member nations invited Russia’s neighbor Finland and Scandinavian partner Sweden to join the military club.

Securing parliamentary approval for the new members in Turkey, however, could still pose a problem even though Sweden, Finland and Turkey reached a memorandum of understanding at the Madrid summit.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Ankara could block the process if the two countries failed to grant Turkey’s demands for the extradition of people it views as terror suspects. The people wanted in Turkey have links to outlawed Kurdish groups or the network of an exiled cleric accused of a failed 2016 coup in Turkey.

He said Turkey’s Parliament could refuse to ratify the deal. It is a potent threat since NATO accession must be formally approved by all 30 member states, which gives each a blocking right.

Stoltenberg said he expected no change of heart. “There were security concerns that needed to be addressed. And we did what we always do at NATO. We found common ground,” he said.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has given the process added urgency. It will ensconce the two nations in the Western military alliance and give NATO more clout, especially in the face of Moscow’s military threat.

Russia Condemns ‘Irresponsible’ Israeli Airstrikes in Syria

Russia on Monday issued its latest rebuke of Israeli airstrikes aimed at curbing Iran’s military build-up in Syria.

“We strongly condemn such irresponsible actions that violate the sovereignty of Syria and the basic norms of international law, and we demand their unconditional cessation,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, according to Reuters.

On Saturday, Syria accused Israel of carrying out airstrikes against targets south of the coastal city of Tartus. Two people were wounded in the strikes, which caused “massive material damage,” according to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

According to Israeli media reports, the strikes targeted advanced air defense systems that had been smuggled into Syria by Iran. These systems would have threatened Israeli aircraft operating along the Syrian coastline, according to the reports.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that Syrian air defenses “did not appear to have been deployed” during Saturday’s strike.

Russia last month expressed “serious concern” to Israel’s ambassador over airstrikes on June 10 that damaged runways at Damascus International Airport.

By Daled Amos

Last week, Israel announced plans to build an industrial zone next to Gaza, creating thousands of new jobs for Palestinian Arabs. This news comes at a time when the number of Palestinian Arabs working in Israel has been increasing.

In an article for The Algemeiner, Elder of Ziyon notes data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics indicating that the number of Palestinian Arabs working in Israel has jumped:

The number of Palestinian workers in Israel and the settlements skyrocketed from 153,000 to 204,000, an increase of 33% in a single quarter. Of those, the number of workers in settlements — which the Palestinian Authority opposes — went up from 22,4000 to 31,000, an increase of 38%. [emphasis added]

Despite the PA's official disapproval of Arabs working in Judea and Samaria, historically they have had to admit that they cannot offer an alternative to employment in the settlements. Already in 2011, Shahar Saad, Secretary-General of the Palestinian Workers' Union

stated that despite the desire to implement the decisions of the PA leadership regarding the boycott of products and workers in the settlements, the implementation of that decision is difficult. According to him, the Palestinian Authority does not produce enough alternative jobs. [adapted from Google translation from Hebrew]

For Israel, creating jobs and providing employment for Palestinian Arabs makes sense, though the motivation differs between creating jobs for West Bank Arabs and Arabs from Gaza.

Last year, The Times of Israel reported that Israel was distributing 16,000 new work permits, in an effort to support the Palestinian economy which faced reduced international aid and a difficult year due to the pandemic. But more than shoring up Abbas,

“This measure will strengthen the Israeli and Palestinian economies, and will largely contribute to the security stability in the area of Judea and Samaria. Economic stability is the key to preserving security in the region,” said COGAT head Ghassan Alian in a statement.

That's all well and good for Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, but is Israel creating this new industrial zone in order to shore up Hamas in Gaza?

Back in 2020, The Associated Press reported that Israel was increasing the number of work permits for Gazans from 5,000 to 7,000. According to the article, this was part of an unofficial truce negotiated by Egypt between Israel and Hamas in exchange for a reduction in rocket fire from Gaza and in the number of weekly protests along the border.

But the following year, when additional permits were distributed, the rationale was different. There were 3,000 more work permits made available, bringing the number of permits up to 10,000. And this time the reason for the new work permits was clear:

COGAT said the permissions are “conditional upon the continued preservation of the region’s security stability for the long term.” [emphasis added]

Haaretz puts this into perspective.

In April, the paper claimed that according to Israel's military intelligence assessment, Hamas was not prepared for war and was unlikely to respond with its own violence in response to clashes between Arabs and Israeli forces in Jerusalem. But the reason for Hamas's reluctance was more than just because it was still recovering from the fighting last year. There are approximately 15,000 Gazans working in Israel, providing important support for the Gazan economy. But there is more to it than that:

These workers have become a powerful lobby in Gaza, and Hamas' leader in the enclave, Yahya Sinwar, is said to take their position into consideration. Any hasty action by Sinwar against Israel could prompt harsh criticism from this group.
...Sinwar, who was nearly deposed in an internal vote for Hamas' leadership last year, is now also taking credit for major infrastructure projects in Gaza. A war would endanger any progress the Gazan economy has made, and therefore, Israeli officials say, Sinwar would like to refrain from escalation. [emphasis added]

This would explain Sinwar's change in tactics, from inciting Gazans against Israel to inciting Arabs in Israel, claiming that Hamas is the defender of Al Aqsa and calling on them to attack Jews in order to defend it.

But Gazan employment in Israel is apparently not the only source of pressure on Sinwar.

Last week, Hamas announced that the health of one of the 2 Israeli hostages it holds is in danger. The terrorist group is trying to use them as bargaining chips to gain the release of terrorists and the periodic updates about their health is psychological manipulation towards that end. However, both of them suffer from mental illness, and because of the sympathy that creates, the Hamas exploitation of the hostages is not getting the leaders the response they expected.

And that is another problem for Sinwar:

Hamas needs a deal because of the important status of the security prisoners in the eyes of the Palestinian public, and because of a pledge that hasn’t been fulfilled: When Sinwar was released from prison in 2011, in the Shalit deal, he promised his associates who remained behind that he would help get them freed. [emphasis added]

When it was first suggested that Hamas should be included in the 2007 elections in Gaza, it was suggested that having the responsibilities of government would have "a moderating influence" on the terrorist group. The current situation is not a confirmation of that suggestion. The issue of Gazans working in Israel is not a moderating influence -- it is pressure applied by Israel on Sinwar to maintain calm in order to protect his position and stay in power, even as he tries to take credit for this boost to the economy. His "campaign promise" to his fellow terrorists, on the other hand, applies pressure on Sinwar to foment violence.

Al-Monitor claims that Israel is in fact taking a degree of risk every time it takes steps to either create new jobs for Palestinian Arabs or distributes additional work permits. According to this view, these workers could potentially be recruited to carry out attacks inside Israel. Such concerns are all the more credible in light of the violence we have seen Hamas instigate.

The same article also claims that while Hamas instigating attacks on Israel could threaten the employment opportunities for Gazans in Israel and ultimately harm the Gazan economy, there is an external threat to those jobs as well. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there has been an influx of Ukrainian immigrants to Israel. In March, Interior Affairs Minister Ayelet Shaked said in an interview with Al-Monitor that "between 100,000 and 200,000 Jews could immigrate to Israel in the coming months.” It remains to be seen if Ukrainian immigration will put a dent in the number of jobs available for Palestinian Arabs, though that industrial zone being built in Israel adjacent to Gaza would indicate it might not.

For years, Hamas terrorist leaders have been exploiting Gazans as human shields for protection in order to evade the consequences of their actions. Yet, regardless of how they feel about Israel, Gazans are practical enough to work there in order to make a living -- and they expect Sinwar and the other Hamas leaders not to mess up their opportunity to support their families, something that Hamas on its own is consistently failing to do.

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!