Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, July 11, 2022

The @Amnesty T-shirts that prove anti-Zionism is antisemitism

According to this tweet by Amnesty International UK Campaigns Manager Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty-UK will soon be selling "End Israel Apartheid" T-shirts.

I looked through the Amnesty USA and Amnesty UK website ad could not find any other merchandise that attacks a single nation.

No anti-Russia or anti-China or anti-Myanmar items. Nothing being sold against Afghanistan or Syria or North Korea.

But the issue isn't only that Amnesty decided that Israel should be given this unique treatment. It is that Amnesty knows that some people would proudly wear such a T-shirt.

Wearing a message T-shirt is a social activity. No one buys one to wear alone at home. They are meant to be seen. More importantly, they are meant to be responded to, if only subtly. People wear message T-shirts to feel the thrill of people agreeing. People want to wear messages that get those who read them to say "Yeah!" or "Clever!" or "Me too!" or just a smile and a nod.

In the case of anti-Israel T-shirts, the wearer gets the positive feedback thrill because there are enough fellow haters that would respond positively.

The reason you don't see "End Chinese Genocide" or "End Myanmar Persecution of Rohingya" T-shirts is because they wouldn't elicit the same positive response. No one wants to hang out with those T-shirt wearers; their message is fundamentally anti-social. Anyone who reads them are likely to be offended, too, because real human rights abuses are trivialized when placed on T-shirts.

But publicly proclaiming you hate Israel brings a thrill that would usually be amplified by the positive reactions of other haters. It is like being part of a club - just like the appeal of the German "League of Antisemites."

The only nation that is is socially acceptable to publicly hate is the Jewish state. So the only T-shirts that Amnesty would ever sell that call out a specific nation would obviously be anti-Israel T-shirts.

Just like the only nation called out for hate in Amnesty's children's book is also Israel.

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!

07/11 Links Pt1: Honoring Joe Biden, dishonoring Taylor Force; Parents of Malki Roth, seek to meet Biden on extraditing terrorist; Half of Jerusalem Arabs Say They Would Prefer to Become Israeli Citizens

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Honoring Joe Biden, dishonoring Taylor Force

Taylor Force was a 28-year-old American grad student and U.S. Army veteran who was murdered on the evening of March 8, 2016 by a Palestinian terrorist on a stabbing spree. During his 20-minute rampage, spreading from the Jaffa Port area to the Tel Aviv promenade, 21-year-old Bashar Masalha from Qalqilya wounded 10 other innocent people. He was shot and killed by police after being stopped by a musician who hit him with a guitar. As part of the Palestinian Authority’s “pay for slay” practice, Masalha’s family subsequently received a monthly stipend well above the average salary in the P.A.

It was in response to this travesty that Stuart and Robbi Force instigated the campaign that would lead to the legislation, named after their son, to stop American economic aid to the P.A. until it ceases its encouragement of terrorism by funding surviving perpetrators and keeping in clover the parents of those “martyred” while in the act.

Ironically, just as Force was being killed, then-Vice President Biden landed at Ben-Gurion Airport, so close to the scene that the ambulance and police sirens could be heard blaring in the background. The purpose of Biden’s Mideast trip was to meet separately with Netanyahu and P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas, to fan the flames of Obama administration fantasies of reigniting a non-existent peace process.

As soon as Biden finished shaking hands with all the Israeli dignitaries on the tarmac, he was whisked off to the Peres Center for Peace in Jaffa—right near the very place that Masalha launched the lengthy attack that ended Force’s life—to have a friendly meeting with Peres.

While the buddies were engaging in delusional thinking about Israeli settlements constituting an obstacle to their shared dream of the New Middle East (that Trump would come to realize two and a half years later, without Palestinian participation, through the Abraham Accords), Biden must have been hoping that Abbas would condemn the day’s bloody events.

Since both Biden and Peres secretly—and not-so-secretly—held Netanyahu responsible for a lack of progress on the land-for-peace front, they really needed to show that Abbas was an actual partner in the endeavor.

Abbas, of course, didn’t follow their script. He was too busy producing and directing the passion play that came to be dubbed the “lone-wolf intifada” or, as the Palestinians were referring to it, the “knife intifada.”

Upon assuming his post in the Oval Office in January of last year, Biden embarked on a concerted effort to reverse Trump’s policies, and not only that relating to the JCPOA. He also overturned the freeze on aid to the P.A., despite Abbas’s vow that if he had only a single penny left, it would be paid to families of the martyrs and prisoners.

When Biden arrives in Israel on Wednesday, it is doubtful that Lapid will raise this issue. There is a far greater probability that he will be faced with news of the latest Palestinian assaults on innocent people going about their business. The only difference this time is that Peres, who died six months after Force was killed, won’t be around to welcome him, other than in spirit.

Herzog, on the other hand, will be there with bells on, giving him a warm embrace along with his medal, while Abbas presents a slew of demands, all of which involve accusing Israel of war crimes.

Parents of Malki Roth, slain at Sbarro, seek to meet Biden on extraditing terrorist

The family of an Israeli-American girl killed in a 2001 Palestinian suicide bombing in Jerusalem is seeking a meeting with US President Joe Biden in hopes of forcing Jordan to extradite a woman convicted of orchestrating the deadly attack.

The parents of Malki Roth turned to Biden on Sunday asking to meet with the president when he comes to Jerusalem this week. They want the president to put pressure on Jordan, a close American ally, to send Ahlam Tamimi to the US for trial.

“We are bereaved parents as you are, sir. We have a burning sense that injustice in the wake of our child’s murder is winning,” Frimet and Arnold Roth wrote in their letter. “We ask that you address this as only the leader of the United States can.”

The Roths have been waging a campaign for the extradition of Ahlam Tamimi since she was released by Israel in a 2011 prisoner swap with Hamas. Under that deal, Tamimi was sent to her native Jordan, where she lives freely and has been a familiar face in the media. Jordanian authorities have rebuffed calls to extradite her.

On Aug. 9, 2001, a Palestinian bomber walked into a Jerusalem pizzeria and blew himself up, killing 15 people. Two American citizens, including 15-year-old Malki Roth, were among the dead.

One of the most important features of antisemitism is that it morphs over time to make Jews villains as circumstances change.

Jew-haters of the 18th century - where Jews were primarily considered Christ-killers (or the Islamic equivalent of "killers of prophets") - would not recognize the "scientific" antisemitism of Wilhelm Marr asserting that Jews were racially inferior and criminal. They would be mystified at the idea of the traditionally weak Jews in ghettoes being the Elders of Zion controlling the world.

Jew-hatred is insidious because it changes with the times, to claim that Jews are guilty of whatever the worst crimes of the age are. Today, that would be racism, violation of human rights, white supremacy, and colonialism.

But to Peter Beinart, in a discussion in Germany last month, antisemitism is exactly the same as it was in the 1940s, as he defines it here:

"By antisemitism I mean a kind of classical definition that says you don't like Jews because they're Jews, right, you say they have too much power, they stick together too much, you know, they're trying to rip everyone off, whatever."

As a master propagandist, Peter first frames the argument before he makes it. But he uses a false framework, and he knows it. He repeatedly says "classic antisemitism" because he knows that antisemitism does change, and today's antisemitism is as different from that of a hundred years ago as that one was from a hundred years before that.

The examples that he uses are telling as well. Beinart doesn't mention that classical antisemitism also says that Jews enjoy killing Christian children, that they poison the wells of the non-Jews, that they control the world politically. But he doesn't want to mention those examples in his definition, because the audience might realize that modern antisemites on the Left say that the Jewish State enjoys killing Palestinian children, that Israel poisons Palestinian water supplies, and that Zionists control the Western world.

Modern antisemites accuse the Jewish state of everything the "classic" antisemites accused Jews themselves of doing. Mentioning that fact would undercut Beinart's thesis that anti-Zionism has nothing to do with antisemitism.

His absurd extrapolation that Zionists are themselves antisemitic itself fits the pattern of how antisemitism morphs. After the Holocaust, antisemitism became a major social crime. So of course, anyone who supports Israel must be guilty of that crime, because Zionists and Israelis are guilty of every social crime, by the Left's definition. Beinart then twists reality to ensure that Israel is guilty of antisemitism just as Jews have been guilty of every social crime in history.

Beinart's selective definition of antisemitism is itself proof that anti-Zionism is modern antisemitism.

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!

There's been a "Marshall Plan" for Palestinians for decades. It didn't work.

World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder made a splash earlier this month when, in Arab News, he suggested a new "Marshall Plan" for Palestinians to help bring peace.

It might seem counterintuitive, given the decades of failed peace efforts, but I believe this is exactly the right time to offer the Palestinians a new initiative — one that they cannot turn down. What I am suggesting is a “Marshall Plan” that would offer the next generation of Palestinians a future of wealth, success and self-reliance, rather than the dismal prospects of the past.

Just as the Marshall Plan put Europe on a sound financial footing, the Palestinian plan should focus on the creation of small businesses, home building, hotels, restaurants and job creation that would offer a positive future to the next generation.

A fixed sum of money could be given to young entrepreneurs to create new businesses, which would be closely monitored. If they prove to be viable but need a financial boost after a year, another small infusion could be given. In other words, provide Palestinians with all the things that made Israel and other countries financially viable, which would help create a new and successful Palestine.

Within three-to-five years, I believe per capita wealth would double annually. The wealthier a future Palestinian nation becomes, the more likely it is that it could be the viable, successful country it should be — and every country in the region would benefit from this change.

This is short-sighted, for a number of reasons.

First of all, for decades, the per-capita aid to the Palestinians has dwarfed that of every other nation. In other words, they have already been the recipients of the most extensive "Marshall Plan" in history - and it has not moderated them one bit.

Notice that even in 2019, when the US has sharply reduced aid to the Palestinians under Trump, they still received nearly double the aid per capita of the next highest recipient and quadruple that of #3.

In 2009, they received some six times what the next highest recipient was. But that didn't stop three more wars from Gaza.

Throwing money at the problem doesn't solve anything when it comes to Palestinians.

Secondly, while the PA budget is in very bad shape, a lot of that is because the government itself insists on giving a significant percentage of its budget to reward terrorism. As long as that is happening, the PA cannot and must not be a recipient of aid, directly or indirectly. The message from the world must be that this is unacceptable - not that we will send yet more money.

Thirdly, the Palestinians themselves ridicule the idea. They want Jerusalem and Hebron to be Judenrein, they demand "return" to destroy Israel demographically, they think that the ICC and UN and "human rights" NGOs will destroy Israel given enough time so they can sit back and wait.

What about aid to individual entrepreneurs, as Lauder suggests? That is also already happening. The US, Canada and private initiatives are already investing tens of millions to help Palestinian businesses. And it is not a bad idea. Palestinians high tech teams are already partnering with their Israeli counterparts. Israel is expected to increase 4G wireless networking in the territories during Biden's visit, which should help Palestinian high tech firms find partners worldwide. The Palestinian Authority does not seem to recognize that services that could be done remotely like coding should be a national priority.

Creative Palestinians will find ways to build up their businesses anyway. But they aren't the problem that needs solving.

The main problem is that the majority of Palestinians think that terrorism is the best Palestinian strategy, as the most recent poll shows.

Throwing money at people who believe in terrorism is not how to bring peace. The PA, Hamas and those who support the goals of destroying Israel should be getting less money, not more. The linkage should be explicit.

Which is what Israel is already doing. It links work permits to calm. When there is relative peace, more Palestinians can enjoy the benefits of being neighbors with an economic powerhouse. As soon as a rocket is shot towards Israel or a Jenin terrorist stabs someone in Tel Aviv, the borders get sealed - an obvious and logical response to a country under attack. Palestinians can see the linkage between their actions and consequences, and they don't want to suffer the consequences. Even Hamas has been acting to keep things calm.

This is not peace. With the current Palestinian mindset, it will never bring peace. But it brings calm, and that is the best we can hope for.

Throwing money at the problem gives a disincentive for Palestinians to cooperate with Israel. It gives the false impression that they don't need to think about working together with Israel because the cash is coming in anyway.

Linking their actions with immediate consequences - both positive and negative - is the best and most effective way to save lives, and, ultimately, to allow both sides to prosper.

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!

Watanserb reports:

A picture has spread on “Twitter”, showing the logo of the Zionist entity being publicly displayed in a famous market in the Farwaniya area in Kuwait.

This reflects the great acceleration in the course of Gulf efforts to normalize with the Israeli occupation, at various levels, in conjunction with US President Joe Biden's being conducted in the region, including a visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The Kuwaiti writer and Zionist, Jassem Al-Jurid, had claimed that the majority of the Kuwaiti people support normalization and peace with the occupying state, claiming that communication with peoples is a “human instinct.”

He denounced the rule of those he described as religious extremists who impose their guardianship on the people, he said.

In an attempt to justify his position, he said: "Israel has not harmed me as a Kuwaiti... it has harmed the extremist brothers in Palestine and the people affiliated with them like Hamas."

It is highly unusual for an article like this to quote someone who supports normalization with Israel.

We have no idea if the sneakers have anything to do with Israel. For all we know, a Chinese manufacturer just thought a six pointed star would look good there.

However, as I was looking for a brand thst looks like this, with what appears to be the words "Fashion Sport," I found s Chinese company with that name - but while I couldn't find any Star of David sneakers, I did find...keffiyeh pattern sneakers!

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!

As the Mufti forbade selling land to Jews, Transjordanian sheikhs WANTED Jews to buy their land

In the early 1930s, the antisemitic Mufti of Jerusalem convened a series of meetings where Arab sheikhs pledged not to sell their land to Jews - a policy that continues today with the Palestinian Authority.

November 21,1934 Palestine Post:

January 1, 1935 Palestine Post:

But as this was happening, landowners in Transjordan compared their poverty with the prosperity in neighboring Palestine, and concluded that Jewish investments was what Transjordan needed.

JTA reported on January 18, 1933:

The Hebrew paper “Davar” discloses today that Transjordanian tribe heads have for some time been approaching the Jewish Agency with offers for the sale of land. The miserable situation of Transjordania as compared with the prosperity in Palestine convinces them that the salvation of Transjordania can come only through the Jews, the tribe leaders are reported to have said. These same leaders have urged Emir Abdullah to encourage the Jews to settle in Transjordan, the paper writes.

From JTA, February 6, 1933:

Permission to sell Transjordan land to foreigners is requested in a petition signed by twenty-one of the most influential Transjordan tribal leaders and members of the Legislative Assembly, which has been submitted to the Palestine Government and Emir Abdullah.

The petition emphasizes that the precarious condition of the country calls for such action.

The petition, which was drawn up following a meeting of Arab chieftains, in Amman, adds a new chapter to the Transjordan matter which was apparently closed on January 25th when Emir Abdullah announced the cancellation of an option he had granted to a Jewish company for the lease of 70,000 dunams of his personal domain in Transjordan.

The Arab chieftains at their meeting in Amman discussed Emir Abdullah’s communique announcing the cancellation of the lease to Jews. The majority of those present, however, found that the sale of land to Jews is the only solution for the present acute situation.

Seventy percent of the cattle owned by the Arabs in Transjordan have perished from starvation, it was stated.

Transjordan and Palestine had similar climates, similar resources, and the Arabs were from similar tribes. The only reason Palestine was thriving and Transjordan was failing was because of Jewish energy and investments. This was obvious to everyone at the time, including Arabs.

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!

07/10 Links: The Other Special Relationship; Palestinians never cared about Shireen Abu Akleh; Twitter Debates Whether Anne Frank Had 'White Privilege'

From Ian:

The Other Special Relationship

REVIEW: 'The Arc of a Covenant' by Walter Russell Mead
The implication that Jews deserve a home of their own, but at a safe distance, helps explain the historical resistance of most American Jews to the Zionist movement. Among the paradoxes of the "special relationship" is that it often seems to connect American Christians with Israeli Jews, leaving their American cousins out of the picture. Before the Second World War, the American Jewish establishment distanced itself from Zionism, insisting that the United States was the modern promised land. It was only after the exposure of Nazi horrors and the recognition that the United States would not accept large numbers of Jewish refugees that many American Jews embraced Zionism—usually at the level of abstract principle rather than as a personal goal. Some of the old resistance has even returned in recent years. Inclined to religious and political liberalism, the American Jewish community has drifted away from an increasingly Orthodox and hawkish Israeli society.

Mead is not naïve about the geopolitical incentives that drew the United States closer to Israel around the middle of the 20th century. The book's most original chapters explain how American strategists came to regard Israel as an ally in the Cold War. This process was slower and more tentative than conventional accounts suggest. When Kennedy offered his dramatic assurance to Meir, Mead notes, France and West Germany were still Israel's major suppliers of weapons. And Kennedy's goal was not to unleash Israeli power, but provide security assurances that might dissuade Israel from pursuing nuclear weapons.

Still, Mead mounts a compelling critique of what he calls "Vulcan theory"—a reference not to Star Trek but to the 19th-century theory that irregularities in the orbit of Mercury were caused by a hitherto unknown planet (dubbed "Vulcan" by the French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier). Mead adopts the term to describe a different way of accounting for the apparently disproportionate role of Israel in American foreign policy. In this view, cultural affinities and overlapping priorities are not sufficient explanations of the close, though not codified, alliance. There must be some sinister explanation, often linked to the dual loyalties of Jews or eschatological hopes of evangelical Christians.

But there's no need to make such dubious assumptions. American support for the state of Israel since 1948 is sufficiently explained by mainstream public opinion, including a predilection for the perceived underdog. Nor are these views limited to the right, which now dominates the "pro-Israel" issue. Before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in fact, enthusiasm for Israel was more characteristic of the American left, which saw the Jewish state not only as the haven of an embattled minority but also a model of democratic socialism. This perception of Israel was somewhat mythological—as is the image of a Jewish Sparta that has largely replaced it. But that doesn't mean it wasn't sincerely believed by many ordinary Americans—or the politicians who took their opinions seriously.

But Mead's riposte to Vulcan theory isn't limited to Middle East policy. This large, somewhat ungainly book exceeds the boundaries of its nominal subject in mounting a case against any attempt to reduce American foreign policy to the mechanistic calculation of quantifiable interests. This kind of Vulcanism—more like Spock than Le Verrier—simply fails to understand the influence of ideas, culture, and history on America's intensely moralistic politics. Although it's unlikely to change any readers' views about U.S. relations with Israel, The Arc of a Covenant sheds welcome light on why they have been—and remain—so distinctively, often frustratingly, special.

Biden: My Flight from Israel to Saudi Arabia Symbolizes a Budding Normalization

President Joe Biden on Saturday published an op-ed in The Washington Post (Joe Biden: Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia) describing his upcoming visit to the Middle East this week as an effort “to start a new and more promising chapter of America’s engagement there.”

Arguing that “the Middle East I’ll be visiting is more stable and secure than the one my administration inherited 18 months ago,” (a debatable statement) Biden revealed: “In my first weeks as president, our intelligence and military experts warned that the region was dangerously pressurized. It needed urgent and intensive diplomacy.”

“With respect to Iran,” Biden wrote, “we reunited with allies and partners in Europe and around the world to reverse our isolation; now it is Iran that is isolated until it returns to the nuclear deal my predecessor abandoned with no plan for what might replace it. Last month, more than 30 countries joined us to condemn Iran’s lack of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency on its past nuclear activities. My administration will continue to increase diplomatic and economic pressure until Iran is ready to return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, as I remain prepared to do.”

He better hurry. In May 2022, the head of the UN’s atomic watchdog IAEA, Rafael Grossi, warned that Iran has been dragging its feet on information about uranium particles found at old undeclared locations in the country. On June 9, 2022, according to Grossi, Iran inflicted a near-fatal blow to the chances of restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal when it began dismantling virtually all of the IAEA monitoring equipment put under the agreement. For the record, Iran has several research sites, two uranium mines, a research reactor, and uranium processing facilities that include three known uranium enrichment plants. Depending on whose estimate you choose to believe, Iran is weeks or months away from having a nuclear device or already has one.

On June 30, Reuters reported, citing a senior US official, that the chances of reviving the 2015 nuclear deal were worse after indirect US-Iranian talks in Doha, Qatar. The Iranians keep moving goal posts, and, according to the official, “their vague demands, reopening of settled issues, and requests clearly unrelated to the JCPOA all suggests to us … that the real discussion that has to take place is (not) between Iran and the US to resolve remaining differences. It is between Iran and Iran to resolve the fundamental question about whether they are interested in a mutual return to the JCPOA.”

So that the president’s notion of reaching a resolution any time soon through increased diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran is a bunch of malarkey, as he himself would have put it.

Biden moved on: “In Israel, we helped end a war in Gaza — which could easily have lasted months — in just 11 days. We’ve worked with Israel, Egypt, Qatar, and Jordan to maintain the peace without permitting terrorists to rearm. We also rebuilt U.S. ties with the Palestinians. Working with Congress, my administration restored approximately $500 million in support for Palestinians, while also passing the largest support package for Israel — over $4 billion — in history. And this week, an Israeli prime minister spoke with the president of the Palestinian Authority for the first time in five years.”

The $4 billion sum Biden cited includes the annual portion of the 10-year, $38 billion military aid package signed under President Barack Obama in 2018, plus a one-time, $1 billion Iron Dome emergency aid to Israel the administration passed through Congress in March. It brings to mind once again the fact that with its $481.59 billion GDP, Israel should stop its dependence on American handouts and pay for the stuff it needs. And then be completely free to sell its fantastic military merchandise to everywhere else for much, much more than $4 billion a year.

When Jenin terrorists thought they shot an IDF soldier, and other Abu Akleh updates

One piece of evidence that I had not noted previously was that Jenin militants had claimed that they had injured an Israeli soldier.

Here's video of where militants to the south got the news with translation from Palestinian Media Watch:

What makes this more compelling is the timeframe. The false news that a soldier was down spread quickly throughout Jenin, as this screenshot from the (pro-terrorist) Jenin camp Telegram channel shows.

The second message is the same video shown above.

This was minutes after Abu Akleh was shot, so she is the only person who the militants could have been referring to. (It takes a couple of minutes to upload the video and type in the caption. Abu Akleh was shot between 6:30 and 6:35.)

This is a strong indication that the Jenin terrorists thought that the crowd of journalists (with helmets) were IDF soldiers, and shot in their usual wild manner without verifying what they were doing, and then celebrated their "successful" hit before realizing that the hit one of their own heroines.

_____________________

Meanwhile, very, very slowly, the idea that Palestinians killed Shireen Abu Akleh has started to percolate into the media.

CAMERA's Karen Bekker noted at JNS that the two main journalist witnesses to her death initially said that the gunfire came from a building, when the IDF was in their vehicles.

Fox News reports that Shurat HaDin filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court saying that the Palestinians were responsible for Abu Akleh's death, although they do not cite any of my evidence.

I made a new poster with all the latest evidence in one place:

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 BDS Cult protesting Israeli team at Tour de France

It turns out that the BDS movement has been energetically calling for the Tour de France to ban an Israeli team, with multiple protests at different venues of the event.

Outside BDS social media, no one has noticed.

BDS France has been spending hours on protests that are not noticed by anyone, at each stage of the event.

Their major "victory" was to paint their message where the cyclists would speed by at the start of the race in Copenhagen:

They placed a Palestinian flag on a beach adjacent to another stage in Calais on July 5, where again no one noticed.

In fact, they are planning protests every day at different spots:

July 8: 7th stage Tomblaine – La super Planche des Belles Filles, 176.3 kmJuly 9: 8th stage Dole – Lausanne (Switzerland), 186.3 kmJuly 10: 9th stage Aigle (Switzerland) – Châtel, 192.9 kmJuly 11: rest in Morzine12 July: 10th stage Morzine – Megève, 148.1 km13 July: 11th stage Albertville – Col du Granon, 151.7 km14 July: 12th stage Briançon – Alpe d'Huez, 165.1 km15 July: 13th stage Bourg d 'Oisans – Saint-Etienne, 192.6 km16 July: 14th stage Saint-Etienne – Mende, 192.5 km17 July: 15th stage Rodez – Carcassonne, 202.5 km18 July: rest in Carcassonne19 July: 16th stage Carcassonne – Foix, 178.5 km20 July: 17th stage Saint-Gaudens – Peyragudes, 129.7 km21 July: 18th stage Lourdes – Hautacam, 143.2 km22 July: 19th stage Castelnau-Magnoac – Cahors, 188.3 km23 July: 20th stage Lacapelle- Marival-Rocamadour, 40,7 km (individual time trial)July 24: 21st stage Paris La Défense Arena – Paris Champs-Elysées, 115.6 km

Each of these actions take hours to organize, all for a few seconds of shouting, as can be seen in this video:

One gets the impression that the point of these protests isn't so much to attract people to the cause, or even to garner news coverage.

It is to keep their members in their cult.

Psychology Today describes how cults work:

Cult leaders want people who will be obedient to them and their rules. They look for ways to “break” people; they want people who will work hard and long hours for little or no pay. They want “willing” slaves.... When the mind is controlled, a victim may appear happy and willing to suffer for the profit or benefit of the leader/group.

For members, happiness comes from "good" performance within the group, along with elitist thinking—believing they have the "truth" or the the best way of life. But strict obedience is required.

Cult leaders must spend at least as much time keeping their members from defecting as they do in attracting new members. To do this, they need to use mind control techniques, such as forcing their members to work hard at activities that keep them from thinking about anything else but their cause and having them engage in repetitive chanting.

When you look at these protests from that perspective, it all makes sense. Latent antisemitism helps recruit people to the cause, but cult techniques keep them there.

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!

CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations, released a poll of American Muslims ahead of the midterm elections.

The poll asked them, "What are the most important, Muslim-related, foreign policy issues to you in this election year?" They could choose as many topics as they wanted.

Here were the results:

Israeli occupation of Palestine 90.5%

Chinese Genocide of Uyghur Muslims 87.4%

Oppression of Muslims in India 80.8%

Burma Genocide of Rohingya Muslims 75.8%

Starvation in Afghanistan 67.4%

Discrimination against Muslims in France 61.9%

Conflict in Yemen 59.6%

Conflict in Syria 54.5%

Indian occupation of Jammu and Kashmir 37.5%

Civil war in Libya 31.6%

Security in Somalia 29.1%

Presidential Coup in Tunisia 24.2%

Tens of thousands of Muslims have been killed in Myanmar (Burma), Libya, and Yemen, and hundreds of thousands in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been ethnically cleansed from Myanmar. A million Muslims are incarcerated in China. A million Muslims are on the verge of starvation in Afghanistan. Yet when American Muslims only have to check a box to say they are concerned about these issues, they claim that the Palestinian issue is more important to them than direct physical threats to the lives of millions of Muslims.

Moreover, look at the questions they didn't ask: Palestinians are discriminated against in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are still refugees from Syria, living in camps in Lebanon and Jordan. But these issues are so unimportant to CAIR that they are not even asked about!

The American Muslims polled don't care about Palestinians - unless their oppression can be blamed on Jews.

These priorities cannot be explained by concern about Muslim lives, or by concern about Palestinian lives.

The only explanation for this twisted set of priorities is Muslim American antisemitism.

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!

07/09 Links: Putin perverts historical truth about Nazism; Owner of Toronto Kosher Store Reports Death Threats from BDS Activists; Wanting the Iran Nuclear Deal for the Wrong Reasons

From Ian:

Putin perverts historical truth about Nazism - analysis

Similarly, you would think by listening to Putin’s ubiquitous war propaganda that the Russian people alone were the targets of Hitler’s hatred and that only the Russians – and not every ethnic group of the old Soviet Union certainly, including the Jews – did any fighting in the war and ultimately defeated Germany.

And so Nazi crimes against everyone else except ethnic Russians go unmentioned. And, since Nazism was an ideology specifically directed against the Russian ethnicity, it makes sense that Ukrainians, whom Putin accuses of harboring aggressive plans against Russia, are Nazis.

In this picture, the antisemitic nature of Hitler’s ideology disappears and it becomes possible for Zelensky, a Jew, to become a Nazi. At the same time, since Nazism in this conception was an ideology of aggression against Russians, then invading “Nazi” Ukraine makes perfect sense and is merely a continuation of the Great Patriotic War. Reportedly Putin was planning to announce that Nazism in Ukraine was defeated at the May 9 Victory Day parade.

While hollowing out the judeophobic substance of Nazism and wantonly throwing around the term itself, Putin is adopting Nazi modus operandi. Hitler, an Austrian born in Austria-Hungary, could not accept the dissolution of the empire; for him Czechoslovakia and Poland, which became independent as a result, were pseudo-states. Putin, a KGB colonel born in the Soviet Union, similarly considers Ukraine a pseudo-state. His propaganda maintains the genocidal lie that there is no Ukrainian nation.

The Kremlin legerdemain of writing Nazi crimes against the Jews out of Nazism is only too familiar to Jews born in the former Soviet Union. At the same time, having escaped the iron clutches of the Soviet empire we can’t help but sympathize with the Ukrainians who are valiantly defending their own right to live free of the bear hug of the big Russian brother.

Lawmakers Want To Know Why Biden Made It Easier for Terrorists To Enter the US

Congressional Republicans on Friday launched a formal probe into the Biden administration over its decision to alter federal law so that individuals tied to terrorist organizations can more easily enter the United States.

The investigation, led by House Armed Services Committee member Jim Banks (R., Ind.), comes on the heels of a Washington Free Beacon report last month that detailed how the administration amended federal immigration law to permit foreigners who provided "insufficient material support" to designated terrorist organizations to receive "immigration benefits or other status" inside America.

The State Department said the law was altered to make it easier for vulnerable Afghans who might have worked with terror groups to find refuge in America, but current and former U.S. officials who spoke to the Free Beacon said the rule is so broadly written that it could also apply to those who worked with al Qaeda or Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the country's paramilitary fighting force that has killed hundreds of Americans.

"These loose and overly broad definitions will open the floodgates for supporters of terrorism to enter the United States," Banks and three Republican colleagues wrote in a letter to the White House that was obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon. "Such a general waiver, if implemented, would create additional difficulty in immigration vetting process, have catastrophic consequences on border security and put American families at increased risk from terrorism."

The lawmakers—Banks and Reps. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.), Greg Steube (R., Fla.), and Rob Wittman (R., Va.)—want the administration to provide Congress with information about whether this rule change was implemented as a concession to Iran meant to entice the country into inking a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear accord.

"This order was also released just weeks before negotiations with Iran over restoring the nuclear deal recommenced," they write. "Your administration may be trying to entice Iran back to the nuclear deal by using broad executive authorities to weaken the penalties connected to the [foreign terrorist organization] designation without requiring the IRGC and other Iran-supported terrorist organizations to verifiably cease their terrorist activities."

These Dem Activists Want To Save Biden’s USAID Nominee Who Criticized Israel Peace Accords

A group of Democratic consultants, think-tankers, and activists is soliciting signatures for a letter to the U.S. Senate defending President Joe Biden's embattled USAID nominee Tamara Cofman Wittes and arguing that she is a strong supporter of the Abraham Accords — a peace treaty between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that she previously belittled.

The Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA), an activist group that bills itself as pro-Israel, is circulating the letter, which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon and is expected to be submitted next week to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Jewish group has a spotty track record on calling out anti-Israel members of its own party and once endorsed a candidate who claimed the Jewish state was not a democracy.

"We write today to convey our strong support for Dr. Tamara Cofman Wittes's nomination to serve as assistant administrator for the Middle East at the United States Agency for International Development," said the group.

The letter is a signal Democrats are concerned that Wittes's stance on the Abraham Accords—Israel's diplomatic agreement with the United Arab Emirates—could hurt her chances of confirmation. Some of the Democrats who signed on to the letter are the same ones who stepped up to save Biden Pentagon nominee Colin Kahl after Republicans expressed concerns about Kahl's involvement in crafting the Iran Nuclear Deal and his incendiary partisan Twitter posts.

Wittes in 2020 promoted articles denouncing the Abraham Accords on social media and cautioned other Arab countries against signing similar agreements, the Washington Free Beacon first reported last month.

But she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that she supports the accords, a position that prompted skepticism from Republicans.

"I get that that's the right political answer to say now. But it's not what you said then," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) during a hearing.

07/08 Links Pt2: Misogyny and Antisemitism in the Contemporary Western Left; Presbyterian Church (USA) Scrapes the Bottom of the Antisemitic Slippery Slope

From Ian:

Fathom: Fathoming the Intellectual Revolution of our Time (1) | ‘Punch a Terf’ and ‘Smash the Zionists’: Misogyny and Antisemitism in the Contemporary Western Left

Series Introduction: Huge waves of intellectual change are sweeping the Western world at an astonishing speed. Liberal democratic societies are being transformed by Postmodernism, Gender Identity Ideology, Critical Race Theory, ’Whiteness Studies’ ‘Postcolonial Theory’, ‘Intersectionality’, and related upheavals in the realm of ideas. Some see in these changes an exciting new Critical Theory and a necessary and welcome extension of the liberation struggles of recent decades. Others see a new ‘Cynical Theory’ – as a recent book by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsey dubbed it – a dangerous new irrationalism, polarizing anti-racist racism, woke homophobia, and Wars on Women and the West. Whatever position one takes, it is inconceivable that this intellectual revolution will leave untouched the form taken by the ‘oldest hatred’ because, as David Nirenberg’s monumental study Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition showed us in exhaustive detail, no intellectual revolution ever has. Radically new paradigms of thought have always seen antisemitism shape-shift again, new notions of Jewish malignity and new anathemas emerging out of the ferment. Over the next two years Fathom will explore the ramifications of the intellectual revolution of our time for the shapes taken by antisemitism and for global perceptions of Zionism and Israel, so often understood within the emerging intellectual orthodoxies as ‘White’, ‘Western’, and ‘Racist’, and so marked down for ‘cancellation’. We anticipate the series will provoke debate, but here is one old idea that we hope still has some life in it: rather than seek to cancel the debate, why not join it? We begin the series with this critical reflection on Gender Identity ideology by Kathleen Hayes. (Alan Johnson)

Essay Introduction: Misogyny and antisemitism are very different things, with different aetiologies and histories, but there is an interplay between the two in the contemporary Western progressive left, argues Kathleen Hayes. Today’s bien pensant is permitted to hate both women and Jews with a deliciously clear conscience. Jews are fine people, some of my best friends, the leftist will declare—it’s the Zionists who are racists and must be driven from the planet. I love women, he’ll say; of course they deserve equality and dignity—it’s the TERFs who are fascists and must be cancelled and assaulted. Even as he congratulates himself on his lack of prejudice, progressive and identity politics allow him to indulge in a socially sanctioned variety of … antisemitism and misogyny. Hayes warns that ‘once truth is up for grabs, all truths are up for grabs’ and ‘a mind that rejects the reality of biological sex is one unlikely to recognise basic facts about the Holocaust, or about living Jews.’

A few decades back, without a vote being taken, a handful of intellectuals decided to roll back the Enlightenment. Holding hands and chanting ‘Down with grand narratives,’ they dismissed as hubris the paradigmatic Western belief that it was possible to know anything approximating truth. Equating the Enlightenment with slavery, colonialism and women’s subjugation, they declared positivism the greatest sin and announced they were post everything. They burned an effigy of Universal Man and amid the ashes erected an elaborate new scaffolding comprised of everyone he was not. Because Universal Man had been an oppressive lie—a white, able-bodied heterosexual man who was far from being universal—they deemed that henceforth, history’s unrepresented would cohere around, and fixate on, their isolated individual identities. The universal is dead; long live the particular.

As these specific identities were arrayed against one another in practice, it was necessary to differentiate between them on the basis of their respective victimhoods. By tacit agreement, a points system was created in which some were deemed worthy of respect as victims while others were not. With the advent of ‘intersectionality’ the points system became ever more elaborate, determined by layer upon layer of victimhood. Those who failed to rack up the requisite points were declared privileged and told to accept their places on the bottom of the pyramid. This was done in the name of historical justice. What unfolded was a grotesque parody of it.

This essay seeks to explain how ideas so absurd that—as Orwell put it—only an intellectual could believe them became the basis for a seismic shift in public policy around the world, with devastating consequences most immediately for women; lesbians, gays and bisexuals; and distressed children and their parents. It describes how the flagrantly anti-materialist, ostensibly progressive but actually deeply retrograde set of ideas called ‘gender ideology’ took root far outside academia, and how it became an unchallengeable cult. Because social and intellectual turmoil inevitably means increased targeting of Jews (who are often labelled ‘white’ and ‘privileged’ and ‘powerful’ in this new intellectual orthodoxy), I will draw attention to how these ideas impact Jews, even though they may seem at first to have little or nothing to do with us. Finally, I will gratefully invoke the Frankfurt School’s writings about authoritarianism to argue that if today’s madness cannot easily be fought, it can at least be better understood.

Presbyterian Church (USA) Scrapes the Bottom of the Antisemitic Slippery Slope

In 2014, the Presbyterian Church (USA) became the first Protestant mainline denomination to call for divestment from Israeli companies. When the PCUSA reversed itself in 2016, we at the Simon Wiesenthal Center cautioned against too much optimism.

The goal of the anti-Israel lobby, we said, was not just to punish Israel economically, but to put the Jewish state on the defensive about its policies, its self-defense, and its very existence. The PCUSA introduced all those elements into their church’s conversation. Since then, it has been a fast track down the slippery slope of antisemitism.

We wish that we were wrong in our prediction about PCUSA. Sadly, we were not.

No Jews were invited to committee meetings in preparation for the PCUSA’s upcoming General Assembly, but “Jews” were very much in evidence. A raft of anti-Israel resolutions, all of them unthinkable just eight years ago, were discussed and passed. And it’s not a huge surprise.

Over the last several decades, PCUSA has lost hundreds of thousands of members, and many dozens of churches.

When it comes to Israel, the PCUSA initially focused on the alleged evils of “the occupation.” Now its hate has vastly expanded, from discussions on withholding military aid from Israel, to labeling Israel as “apartheid” and supporting the Kairos Palestine statement — a pseudo-theological document that denies the connection between Jews and the land to which they were attached since Biblical times. PCUSA also gives a moral pass to Palestinian terrorism.

PCUSA’s fig leaf self-description as supporting both sides in a complex dispute has been dropped, leaving PCUSA’s naked anti-Israel worldview on full display.

Over the years, the PCUSA would mourn the destruction in Gaza without mentioning the thousands of rockets launched from Gaza into Israel. Throughout, however, PCUSA was careful not to attack Jews. At most, it was “Zionists” who were guilty.

But now, they’ve dropped the pretense. The commissioners who spoke at recent meetings spoke openly, not about Israelis, but about “Jews,” and things “Jewish” — such as, “The Israeli regime … advances one group, Jews, over another, Palestinians.”

When the IRS Targeted Jewish Activists

FBI agents gathered background information from what they called “persons in New York City who are familiar with Israelite matters.” They also eavesdropped on the Bergsonites’ telephone conversations, opened their mail, went through their trash, and planted informants in the group to steal documents from Bergson’s office. The FBI hoped to find proof the Bergson Group was secretly assisting the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the underground militia in Palestinethat was headed by Menachem Begin. They found no such evidence.

The authorities’ second goal was to find a link between Bergson and the Communist Party. One FBI memo approvingly quoted a rival Jewish organization’s description of the Bergsonites as “a group of thoroughly disreputable Communist Zionists.” In a private letter, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover referred to the playwright Ben Hecht and six other leading Bergson activists as “fellow travelers.” But the FBI’s spying on Bergson did not turn up any evidence of a Communist link, either.

At the same time, the IRS launched a full-scale inquiry into the Bergson Group’s finances, seeking to revoke its tax-exempt status. For nearly a year, IRS agents repeatedly visited the group’s New York City headquarters, once for a stretch where they stayed from morning until night for more than two weeks.

Louis and Jack Yampolsky, a father-and-son accounting team that handled Bergson’s finances pro bono, had to dig out and reconcile every piece of financial information in the group’s records. “There were no photocopy machines in those days, so we had to hand-copy every disbursement and every receipt that was given for every donation,” Jack Yampolsky told me in an interview some years ago. “And because the Bergson Group had enormous grassroots appeal, it received literally thousands of one-dollar or two-dollar donations from people all over the country.”

In the end, the IRS investigators were unable to find evidence of any wrongdoing. In fact, as the IRS team became familiar with the group’s work, they came to sympathize with it, and “when they finished, [they] made a contribution between them–every one of them gave a few dollars,” Bergson later told Prof. David S. Wyman.

The sympathy expressed by the IRS agents contrasted sharply with the sentiments expressed in some of the FBI documents which I obtained. One FBI report about Bergson activist Maurice Rosenblatt derisively referred to the leftwing Coordinating Committee for Democratic Action, in which Rosenblatt was active, as “this Semitic Committee.” The FBI memo complained that Rosenblatt and his colleagues were trying to “smear” Nazi sympathizers in New York City.

“When there is a genuine threat, governments sometimes have to do things like eavesdrop,” Jack Yampolsky conceded. “But in our case, they were doing it for political reasons, and antisemitism also played a role. The fact that we vocally disagreed with U.S. government policy regarding the Holocaust and Jewish statehood was not a valid reason for the Roosevelt administration to enlist the FBI and the IRS in a war against the Bergson group.”

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!

Even in 1951, it was obvious that the UN was useless for solving any Middle East problems

This is a fun article from JTA in 1951 describing how useless the UN had been in the Middle East - -and how the Arab enemies of Israel were hijacking it for their purposes even then.

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!

07/08 Links Pt1: Former PM Shinzo Abe Assassinated, Was Friend of Israel; The defeated do not make demands, the victors do; What Were the Abraham Accords Keys to Success?

From Ian:

Israeli Prime Minister Lapid Leads Jewish World’s Tributes to Assassinated Former Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid led a slew of tributes from Israel and the Jewish world to the former Japanese premier Shinzo Abe following his shock assassination on Friday.

“The State of Israel mourns the death of former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe following today’s horrific attack,” Lapid tweeted. “He was a fierce and distinguished leader and a key architect of modern Israel-Japan relations. Sending condolences to his family, loved ones and the Japanese people.”

The 67-year-old Abe was shot in the back as he gave an election speech while on the campaign trail in the city of Nara in western Japan. Doctors were unable to revive the former premier, who was taken to hospital in cardiopulmonary arrest and showing no vital signs. He was declared dead at 5:03 p.m. (0803 GMT), about five and a half hours after being shot. The accused assassin, 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, was taken into police custody and has admitted to shooting Abe with a homemade gun.

The longest-serving prime minister in Japan’s history, Abe was widely regarded in Israel and by Jewish leaders internationally as a pioneer of improved relations between Japan and the Jewish people. During his second term in office, from 2012-20, trade between Israel and Japan grew from $20 million to over $6 billion, bolstered by two official visits by Abe to the Jewish state.

Abe was also devoted to commemorating the memory of the Nazi Holocaust, energetically raising awareness of the actions of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, the country’s wartime consul in Lithuania who defied the authorities in Tokyo by issuing transit visas to thousands of Jews who escaped Nazi persecution by fleeing eastwards.

“The courageous and humanitarian action of Mr. Sugihara provides us with guidance as to how to we should survive in this world, where rule-of-law-based international order is being challenged in various forms,” Abe told reporters while on an official visit to Lithuania in 2018. During a visit the following year to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national memorial to the Holocaust, Abe spoke of his “great solemnity in the face of your forefathers, who overcame profound grief to found the nation of Israel.”

Gilad Cohen, Israel’s Ambassador to Japan, said on Friday that he had been shocked by the news of Abe’s assassination.

“Being one of the most prominent leaders of Japan, Abe san was amongst the architects of modern relations between Israel and Japan, [who] served as a major catalyzer for the flourishing ties we see today,” Cohen tweeted.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he had been “horrified” by Abe’s “despicable murder.”

“We met when I chaired Israel’s opposition and I was deeply impressed by his leadership, vision and respect for Israel. Grieving with his family and the whole Japanese people,” Herzog tweeted.

Statement by President @Isaac_Herzog and Prime Minister @yairlapid of Israel, on the assassination of former Prime Minister of Japan, #ShinzoAbe. He was widely acknowledged as a true and warm friend of the Jewish state. pic.twitter.com/dqJhTfTh5Y
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 8, 2022

Japan’s Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Assassinated, Was Friend of Israel

During his time in office Abe visited Yad Vashem in Israel, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the former home of Sugihara Chiune, “the Japanese Schindler,” in Kaunas, Lithuania. Abe’s administration made a concerted effort to publicize the story of Sugihara, a diplomat who served as an imperial consul for the Empire of Japan in Lithuania during World War II, and helped some 6,000 Jews escape German-occupied Poland and Lithuania.

During his visit to Kaunas, Abe said in his remarks, “The courageous and humanitarian action of Mr. Sugihara provides us with guidance as to how we should survive in this world.”

During his visit to Yad Vashem, Abe said, “Today I find myself [fully] determined. Ha-sho’a le’olam lo od. The Holocaust, never again … I felt great solemnity in the face of your forefathers, who overcame profound grief to found the nation of Israel.”

Abe backed up those words. When Japan’s population re-elected Abe as prime minister in 2012, Japanese investment in Israel totaled about $20 million. By 2019, investments had surged to over $6 billion. The number of Japanese businesses in Israel increased three-fold.

In 2020, despite the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, there were 18 new investment deals by Japanese financiers, adding another $853 million, following two official visits, in 2015 and 2018, during which Abe encouraged senior Japanese industry leaders to do more business in the “Start-Up Nation.”

Abe told his business leaders that he saw “no reason for Japan, which positions ‘innovation’ as the engine of economic growth, not to cooperate with Israel, which produces innovative technologies.”

Dylan Adelman recalled a few years ago that in February 2014, more than 300 copies of Anne Frank’s diary and other books pertaining to the Holocaust were vandalized in Tokyo public libraries. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga described the antisemitic incident – a rarity in Japan – as “extremely regrettable and shameful.” The following month, then-prime minister Shinzo Abe visited the Anne Frank House Museum, making him one of the most prominent world leaders to have ever done so. Abe shared that he had read the diary of Anne Frank as a child and said he he wished to “reiterate lasting and profound friendship between Japan and the Jewish people around the world.”