Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, July 30, 2022

07/30 Links: The Holocaust was not just another genocide; Financial Giant Says Any Company Working in ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories’ Violates Human Rights

From Ian:

The Holocaust was not just another genocide

It is the ideological diversity of modern antisemitism that makes identifying and countering it exceedingly difficult. Its home in the far left has added to its mainstreaming, making tackling some manifestations politically unfashionable.

Assaults on Jews have come from all directions. In 2018, in the largest attack on the Jewish community in US history, neo-Nazi Robert Bowers killed 11 people in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, pro-Palestine marches in London saw the Israeli flag burned and dragged behind a car to loud cheers, not to mention the abuse shouted at Jews through megaphones.

And this year, British citizen Malik Faisal Akram held four hostages inside a Texan synagogue for 10 hours demanding the release of Islamist terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, who is suspected of having ties to al-Qaeda and was convicted of trying to kill US officers while in prison in Afghanistan.

Three antisemitic attacks, three differing ideologies.

For me, it was the experience of leading classes in schools about conspiracy theories and, in particular, 9/11, that opened my eyes to how all these strains of antisemitism have infected British education. In 2016, after I had delivered training to sixth-form students, a teacher let me know his concerns about the session. He felt we should be more open to “evidence” that 9/11 was organised by Jews.

I am sure that this school, as with all British schools, teaches the Holocaust. I am equally certain that the teacher who pulled me to one side did not realise that he was engaging in a perspective that underpinned Nazi thinking and drives modern-day antisemitism. Many teachers know what far-right, Nazi-style antisemitism looks like, but when Israel is blamed for nefarious power, corruption and murdering Palestinians, identifying antisemitism and why it is a problem is often lost. Rather than being historic, antisemitism is on a steep and terrifying incline. I recently authored a report into antisemitism in schools, reported in the JC earlier this month. It showed a 173 per cent rise in antisemitic incidences over a five-year period, and a 29 per cent increase between 2020 and 2021 alone.

Our schools have a distinct lack of resources when it comes to modern-day hostility towards Jews. Only 3.4 per cent of schools have a policy in place that specifically handles safeguarding students against antisemitism.

Look at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s website and you see material on several genocides: Rwanda, Srebrenica, the Holocaust. The message is that we are never free from the risk of genocide. But education about the generalities of prejudice will never be enough. We must also teach our children — and those entrusted with protecting them — about the nature and hallmarks of modern antisemitism. Sadly, little is taught about the persistent threat posed to the Jewish community today.

Learning about the Holocaust is invaluable but we must avoid being all revved up with nowhere to go. How would the level of antisemitism in the country be affected if every Holocaust lesson was concluded with an understanding of modern antisemitism and the present threat? Would we see a more concerted effort to tackle antisemitism if we could identify it better, knowing that the threat did not end with Hitler? I am sure we would.

Nothing in history compares to the Holocaust - opinion

Which brings us to the Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This museum was founded by Dr. James Cameron, after visiting Yad Vashem some years ago. In his words, Cameron says he “admired how Jews value their history, teaching their children and other groups about it, which gives Jewish communities strength and hope.” He wanted blacks to similarly learn about their own trials and tribulations, from the 1600s until today. The museum’s galleries examine the roots of slavery, the civil rights movement and the infamous Jim Crow laws, and also features a memorial to the victims of lynching.

America, as we all know, is currently brimming with attention to the black cause. Black Lives Matter and other advocacy groups are widespread; movies and television give special consideration to black actors; many sports figures wear slogans of black pride, and even a new national holiday – Juneteenth, celebrating the final emancipation of American blacks – was recently added officially to the American calendar.

There is absolutely no question that blacks have suffered tremendously in America and other countries. Stolen from their homes, brutalized and stripped of all human rights for centuries, more than 12 million slaves were shipped under the most horrible conditions out of Africa, the vast majority to the Americas. Even when the law theoretically protected them – the 13th Amendment to the Constitution outlawed slavery in 1865 – discrimination, vilification and persecution continued unabated.

It would be difficult to minimize the tragedy the blacks have endured and, in some ways, are still enduring. In the “hierarchy of suffering,” there are surely some similarities between the history of the blacks and that of the Jews during the Shoah. Slave labor, denial of basic necessities, no protection under the law and pervasive prejudice are common to both. But to label the black experience a Holocaust?! That clearly crosses a line. Nothing in human history can be compared to what the Jewish people encountered in the Holocaust.

There have been genocides and massacres and widespread murders of various communities throughout history – the names and numbers, sadly, are simply too many to list. But never before did a regime like the Nazis engage in a worldwide effort to systematically wipe out an entire people wherever they might be found – from Oswiecim to Oslo – in the cruelest fashion imaginable. To use the name “Holocaust” to refer to anything other than the war against the Jews from 1933 to 1945 is to subvert history and insult the memory of the many millions who were murdered.

Thank God, there is a fourth event in our historic journey that brings us full circle. We have repudiated the counsel of the spies and once again entered the Land of Israel, this time never to depart. Let us hope that the term “Holocaust” will never again be used – by Jews or any other people – and that racism of all types will be eradicated.

Melanie Phillips: Critics of this act of communal myopia will not be silenced

What was truly appalling was Dorfman’s spiteful, and what I believe to be utterly groundless, claim about the objectors’ motives, and his implication, from my interpretation of his words, that any Jew opposing the project was a traitor to the Jewish people.

The objectors have in fact raised important issues. Not only would the structure’s 23 tall, bronze fins spoil this small green oasis, but in addition Lord Carlile, the government’s former counter-terrorism reviewer, said siting the memorial there would constitute a security threat.

Even more importantly, objectors noted that the project would equate Holocaust victims with “the victims of subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur”. In other words, it would relativise, and thus diminish, the extermination of the Jews.

Baroness Deech said further that Holocaust memorials were increasingly used to promote “a self-congratulatory and sometimes self-exculpatory image of the country that erects them”.

Like other memorials, this one would fail to record how, during the Holocaust, the British government blocked the entry into Palestine of desperate European Jews in flagrant repudiation of the British Mandate to settle Jews there, thus facilitating their extermination.

Deech said: “The more the national Holocaust Remembrance Day events are packed out, the more the calls for sanctions on Israel that would result in her destruction, and the more the Holocaust is turned against the Jews.”

Deech thus articulated a vital insight into the deep limitations of Holocaust memorialising. For Dorfman to imply that Carlile and Deech were not only talking “nonsense” but that this was particularly reprehensible because they were Jews, was as obtuse as it was pernicious.

07/29 Links Pt2: Inside the Anne Frank Trust: how the charity lost its way; NBA’s Enes Kanter in Israel to Run Jerusalem Basketball Camp With ‘Jewish Jordan’ Tamir Goodman

From Ian:

As the Holocaust raged, US newspapers buried reports on Hitler’s Final Solution

On June 29, 1942, the Chicago Daily Tribune devoted one paragraph to Germany’s “Final Solution” in Europe:

“The British section of the World Jewish Congress estimated today that more than 1,000,000 Jews have been killed or have died as the result of ill treatment in countries dominated by Germany,” read an Associated Press brief on page six.

Like other US newspapers that summer, the Daily Tribune allocated a bare minimum of inches to reporting on the annihilation of Europe’s Jews. Literally burying the story, dailies placed news of the slaughter away from their front pages — and usually mixed in among other news briefs.

“If the news in June 1942 about 1 million Jews being slaughtered was considered sufficiently credible to publish, then according to conventional editorial standards, it should have been treated as front-page news or something close to it,” said Rafael Medoff, author of the book “America and the Holocaust: A Documentary History,” published this year.

Like the Chicago Daily Tribune, The Los Angeles Times published the “1 million killed” Associated Press brief at the end of June. However, the milestone in Germany’s “Final Solution” was placed on page three, underneath a story about British soldiers taken captive by Germany: “Nazis Kill Million Jews, Says Survey.”

By this point in the Holocaust — the summer of 1942 — the American Joint Distribution Committee had issued a report, based on local sources, about the massacre at Babyn Yar (Grandmother’s Ravine) outside Kyiv. In graphic detail, the report described how the earth moved for days after the execution, even with the mass grave of 33,771 victims covered by several feet of sand.

“In the spring of 1942, as the reports of mass murder multiplied and many additional details were relayed to the Free World by reliable sources, a new and disturbing picture began to emerge,” wrote Medoff, who directs the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

“But instead of questioning Roosevelt administration officials about the emerging genocide, journalists usually avoided the subject altogether,” Medoff told The Times of Israel, adding that many reporters and public officials believed reports of the slaughter were exaggerated.

This September, PBS International will air “The US and the Holocaust,” a three-part series directed by Ken Burns. Voice actors in the documentary include Hope Davis, Werner Herzog and Meryl Streep. In addition to then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the series will depict broadcaster Dorothy Thompson, a notable exception to the rule regarding American media coverage of Nazi Germany.

“Few American journalists ever questioned president Roosevelt or his senior aides about their no-rescue policy during the Holocaust,” said Medoff. “That was both an abdication of their responsibility as journalists and a moral tragedy.”

Jewish History Soundbites: Jewish Saviors of the Holocaust Part I: Monsieur & the Belgian Orphans

Jewish History Soundbites is proud to launch a special series entitled ‘Jewish Saviors of the Holocaust’. It will explore the narratives of Jews under Nazi occupation risking their lives to save others during the Holocaust. Each unique profile will explore another story, angle and individual (or group of individuals) who though their own lives were at risk still did everything in their power to save others.

The series opens with the story of Yona Tiefenbrunner, known to the orphans he saves as ‘Monsieur’. Born in Germany, he arrived as a refugee in Belgium shortly before the war’s outbreak. He initially opened an orphanage at his own expense in order to assist German Jewish refugee children. With the Nazi occupation of Belgium and the subsequent deportations in 1942, his Brussels orphanage emerged as an island of rescue, as the Nazis miraculously allowed the orphanage to operate and spare the children from deportation to the east. Maintaining a semblance of normalcy under increasingly challenging conditions, Yona managed to care for the orphans' physical and religious welfare until liberation. Following the war, the orphanage relocated to Antwerp and cared for children survivors until its closing in 1960.

Jewish History Soundbites: Jewish Saviors of the Holocaust Part II: From a Tunnel in Novogrudok to the Bielski Partisans

On the night of September 26, 1943 232 Jews escaped through a tunnel from the Novogrudok Ghetto. Nearly 170 survived, primarily by joining the Bielski partisans who operated nearby in the Naliboki forest. This was likely the greatest escape in Nazi occupied Europe throughout the entire war and Holocaust.

The tenacity and courage of the last Jews of the Novogrudok ghetto to dig a 250 meter tunnel leading to the forest, combined with the capability of joining Tuvia Bielski and his partisans, facilitated one of the most astounding stories of Jewish survival during the Holocaust. Tuvia Bielski famously said that he prioritizes saving lives over killing Germans. The result was that his partisan unit was a family camp which saved over 1,200 Jews, among them the escapees of the Novogrudok tunnel.

Jewish History Soundbites: Jewish Saviors of the Holocaust Part III: The Sobibor Revolt

Within the framework of Operation Reinhard, the Nazi extermination of Polish Jewry, the SS built three death camps in Eastern Poland - Belzec, Treblinka & Sobibor. The latter was the smallest of the three, and a quarter of a million primarily Polish and Dutch Jews were killed in its gas chambers during its year and a half of existence. It was at Sobibor that on October 14, 1943 a great prisoner escape took place. Led by the son of a Polish rabbi named Leon Feldhendler & a Soviet Jewish Red Army officer named Sasha Pechersky, these two unlikely leaders joined together to formulate a plan to save not just themselves but to give all of the 600 inmates at Sobibor an equal chance to escape.

The revolt killed several SS officers, 300 Jewish prisoners made it to the forest and nearly 50 survived the war. As they broke for the fences, Pechersky demanded that anyone who survive should tell the world what went on in Sobibor.

From their website:

Operation Benjamin is devoted to preserving the memories of American-Jewish soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice while defending the cause of freedom during World War II. Our aim is to locate Jewish personnel at American military cemeteries all over the world who, for various reasons, were buried under markers incorrectly representing their religion and heritage. Our mission is to correct these mistakes and provide, these many decades later, comfort to the families of the fallen. We work quietly and with dignity, without any cost to the families involved.

100 years ago, some wanted the graves of all World War I fallen soldiers to have a consistent marker - a cross. The Jewish Welfare Board jumped into action to keep the Stars of David that were being used for known Jewish soldiers.

In 1923, JTA reported that Jewish graves were still marked with Stars of David, at least in France:

Graves of American soldiers of the Jewish faith in the national American cemeteries in France are being photographed for the fallen soldiers’ relatives in the United States to see where their dead have been laid to rest.

The work is carried on under the auspices of the Jewish Welfare Board in the United States. The Jewish graves are distinctive, the headstones being surmounted by the Shield of David.

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!

07/29 Links Pt1: UN Official Running Investigation Into Israel Defends Colleague Who Said Jewish Lobby Controls Social Media; Children in Houston sing religious anthem associated with Iranian regime

From Ian:

UN Official Running Investigation Into Israel Defends Colleague Who Said Jewish Lobby Controls Social Media

The United Nations official in charge of an investigation into Israel is standing by a colleague who came under fire this week for claiming social media platforms are controlled by a "Jewish lobby."

Navi Pillay, chairwoman of the U.N. investigation into alleged Israeli human rights crimes, says her colleague, Miloon Kothari, is being unfairly accused of anti-Semitism after he stated in an interview this week that social media are controlled by an all-powerful "Jewish lobby" that throws around "a lot of money."

Pillay defended the remarks, saying in a letter sent Thursday to the president of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which helms the Israel investigation, that Kothari was "deliberately misquoted." A copy of the letter, which was written after the UNHRC's president raised concerns about the comments, was provided to the Washington Free Beacon by U.N. officials.

Kothari was "deliberately misquoted to imply that ‘social media' was controlled by the Jewish lobby," Pillay says in the letter, though she does not specify how Kothari was misquoted. Pillay also said that those critical of Kothari's comments are attempting to discredit the U.N. investigation into Israel, which has been dogged by accusations it is biased and fueled by animosity toward the Jewish state.

"The commission takes great exception to personal attacks against individual commissioners appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Such attacks have been continuously directed against all three commissioners throughout our tenure, and it is to this that Commissioner Kothari was making reference," Pillay wrote.

Kothari in an interview with the anti-Zionist website Mondoweiss said the "Jewish lobby" is behind social media efforts attempting to discredit the ongoing probe into Israel.

"We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by whether it's the Jewish lobby or it's the specific [nonprofit groups]," Kothari said. "A lot of money is being thrown into trying to discredit us."

Kothari also questioned Israel's membership in the United Nations.

"I would go as far as to raise the question of why [Israel is] even a member of the United Nations," he said. "The Israeli government does not respect its own obligations as a U.N. member state. They, in fact, consistently, either directly or through the United States, try to undermine U.N. mechanisms."

Kothari's comments were labeled anti-Semitic by pro-Israel groups, the Free Beacon reported on Wednesday.

Important thread on Navi Pillay's extreme bias, and her failed attempts to deny it: https://t.co/A4XVfGjJ8a
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) July 29, 2022

Navi Pillay: "I can't tell you who the lobby is..."

TONY EASTLEY: The Federal Government will soon have to make up its mind on whether to attend a controversial United Nations conference on racism next month. Already the US, Israel, Canada and Italy have announced they will boycott the forum in Geneva.

The first conference, held in Durban in 2001, ended up with the US and Israel walking out, upset over the behaviour and anti-Semitic statements of some delegates. While the final declaration at the Durban conference condemned anti-Semitism, it wasn't enough to calm the waters, then and now.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay spoke to me from Geneva this morning. I asked what she thought about the calls for a boycott of the Geneva conference.

NAVI PILLAY: The original conference was marred by abusive or hurtful remarks against Israel, but in a small section of the NGO parallel forum. But it seems that those who have been hurt have continued this kind of fear that there will be a repetition of the anti-Semitic behaviour.

Now I can assure all Australians this is not a repetition of the Durban conference and we need Australia's voice here.

Pretty big slap-down! @FVillegasARG, President of @UN_HRC, responds to Commission of Inquiry Chair Pillay, slamming Kothari’s antisemitic comments (“the Jewish lobby”) and demanding clarification, while reiterating requirement of impartiality of Commission members. pic.twitter.com/YtTPfgK2nc
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 29, 2022

“Possibly poorly chosen words?”

This is UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinians. Her colleague Kothari flat-out claimed “the Jewish lobby” controls the media.

I guess like him, @FranceskAlbs too is a Jew hater to the core? Must be pre-requisite of a @UN_HRC appointment! https://t.co/wm5rFAK4jG
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 29, 2022

100 years ago: New York Jews fined for working on Sundays

The newspapers in Brooklyn in 1922, when reporting on all of the court cases, listed quite a few violations of the "Sabbath Laws," where it was forbidden to keep businesses open on Sunday.

And a large percentage of the people fined were Jews.

This happened throughout the decade; here's an article from 1925.

Like some speed traps today, it looks like this was used as a revenue generator.

Jews at the time would close their shops on Saturday, and Sunday was the most lucrative day available for them, and their customers were mostly Jewish as well, so it seems that many of them took the chance and paid the fine if caught.

One Jew in 1922 tried to fight back by claiming that he indeed closed his shop on the Sabbath, but the judge ruled that the Sabbath of the Bible wasn't the Sabbath of America:

One Jewish newspaper responded to this story with a joke considered old at the time:

The Sabbath laws, later known as Blue Laws, remain in force even today in many states although most have been repealed. The US Supreme Court has ruled that they are not religious and merely enforce a day of rest for the social good. The fact that Jews (and Seventh Day Adventists) are economically hurt by this was not enough to say that storeowners should be allowed to decide which day of the week to close.

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!

Yesterday, the relatives of Shireen Abu Akleh held a press conference along with several anti-Israel members of Congress.

The levels of hypocrisy and lies of these politicians is off the charts. Even if you discount all the evidence that Abu Akleh was killed by Palestinian terrorists, they have no compunction about lying and exhibiting hypocrisy.

The first politician to speak was Representative Andre Carson of Indiana.

He said, "I believe that this was an attack on the Fourth Estate, the Free Press, which is vitally important to our society. You know we need answers to hold the perpetrators fully accountable. From day one, the Israeli Government has denied Shireen's murder. There is no reason for them to be conducting an investigation. You may not like that. But that's the truth. It makes it more important for our government to conduct our own investigation."

So at the outset, without any evidence, he says that Israel murdered Abu Akleh. Without any evidence, he is accusing the Israelis of being liars. Without any evidence, he is accusing Israel of not being able to conduct an impartial investigation.

Just this one statement proves that Israel is more trustworthy than Andre Carson.

He goes on: "Shireen needs justice. Every American killed abroad is entitled to our protection. Every human killed American or not, deserves justice, Palestinians included. Black folks included. "

What about Americans like Malki Roth, killed by a Palestinian who is proud of that fact and who has escaped justice? Apparently, she isn't included. Apparently, no Jewish Americans are included when killed by Palestinians.

What a hypocrite.

The next liar to speak was Rashida Tlaib, who said, "When Americans are killed abroad, it is more or less standard procedure for our government to open an investigation. But when the murders wear Israeli uniforms, there's complete silence. "

Actually, when the murderers are Palestinian, that's when no one knows their names.

The list of Americans killed by Palestinians is long. Yet who has spoken on the steps of the Capitol about Pinchas Menachem Prezuazman, killed in 2019 by a Gaza rocket? Or 13-year old Hallel Yaffa Ariel who was stabbed to death in her bed in 2016? Or 18-year old Ezra Schwartz, from Massachusetts, who was killed when a Palestinian started spraying bullets at cars stuck in a traffic jam in 2015? Or 76 year old US citizen Richard Lakin, killed in a bus attack the same year? Or 3 month old US citizen Chaya Zissel Braun killed in a car ramming attack in 2014?

There are scores of others - none of whom Rashida Tlaib or any of the liars and hypocrites at this event give a damn about.

The lies any hypocrisy don't end there.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez claimed, "Multiple human rights groups, including the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem and a number of news organizations, including the Washington Post, CNN, and the New York Times have conducted investigations that echoed what eyewitnesses have said, that an Israeli sniper shot and killed Shireen....An American journalist was killed abroad by a foreign army by a sniper."

None of the investigations used the language "sniper." The IDF didn't have snipers on the ground in Jenin that day. No one claimed as a certainty that the IDF deliberately targeted Abu Akleh.

AOC is a liar.

Ilhan Omar, in one sense, was even more disgusting. She said, "Starting with the Nuremberg trials, Americans have supported accountability and justice for international crimes, especially crimes that take the life of American citizens." In this way, Omar tried to compare Israeli soldier to Nazi war criminals - pure antisemitism.

It wasn't long ago that members of Congress would try very hard to keep their statements just truthful enough so as not to be able to be called direct liars. Those days are gone. These representatives know very well that there is no political penalty for lying about Israel, and indeed for some of them these lies are a means to gain more publicity - and more votes.

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!

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization sponsored a day camp for children in Hebron, called "The Buds of Construction and Liberation camp.”

One of the first activities was for each camper - many appearing to be as young as 9 - to pose in front of a poster of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

With an AK-47.

This isn't a Hamas or Islamic Jihad camp. This is Fatah, Israel's supposed peace partners.

There are hundreds of photos of kids in this pose on the Fatah Hebron Facebook page.

In case you weren't certain that these are meant to recruit kids to be terrorists, here is a poster from the camp, showing the children with masked militants.

(h/t PMW)

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!

07/28 Links Pt2: Half of All Jews Now Live in Israel and That Is a Source of Strength; Condoleezza Rice: "Israel Is the 800-Pound Gorilla on Technology"

From Ian:

Half of All Jews Now Live in Israel and That Is a Source of Strength

A hundred years ago, in 1922, there were 14,400,000 Jews in the world. The centers of Judaism outside the U.S. were in central and eastern Europe - Berlin, Warsaw and Budapest. There seemed grounds for optimism. In 1922 the League of Nations awarded Britain the Palestine British mandate, which confirmed the legitimacy of Britain's promise in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 of a national home for the Jews. "The wandering Jews will at last have a home," the London Times declared in April 1920.

By 1939, the world Jewish population had increased to 17 million. But Jews on the Continent faced a precarious future with the spread of anti-Semitism and the rise of Hitler. Many sought to emigrate, but most countries closed their doors. And in 1939 the British government in its White Paper severely limited immigration into the national home, proposing to end it entirely.

In Chaim Weizmann's words, the world was now divided between countries in which Jews were not allowed to live and countries which they were not allowed to enter. By 1945, after the Holocaust the world's Jewish population had fallen to 11 million.

Today it is just over 15 million. Jews have not made up the losses of the Holocaust. Between 1939 and 2022, by contrast, the population of the world has increased by 250%. In the absence of the Holocaust, given a natural increase of population, there would perhaps have been a world Jewish population of 40 million.

Following the creation of Israel, the geographical balance of the world Jewish population has altered radically. In Palestine in 1939, there were only 450,000 Jews - 3% of the world's total. Today, nearly seven million Jews, almost 50% of the total, live in Israel. In 1948, Jews emerged from powerlessness to become authors of their own destiny.

Last night I met with Arieh Itamar a passenger of the Exodus ship sent back to Germany by the British. Arieh was 8. I was also honored to meet Hugh Kitson @joydmarshall @Colrichardkemp creators of documentary https://t.co/FZVvNXao3h which shares the facts and truth about Israel. pic.twitter.com/gIG7ALhiUu
— OshyEllman (@oshyellman1) July 28, 2022

Last night at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem we had the premier screening in Israel of the documentary we made a few years ago, Whose Land?, delayed until now by Covid. https://t.co/H1z78ixpal pic.twitter.com/UZ1mwIqw3a
— R?????? K??? ? (@COLRICHARDKEMP) July 28, 2022

Whose Land - Trailer

As the propaganda war against Israel's legitimacy as a modern nation state has increased in intensity and ferocity in recent years, so the need to challenge the misinformation and untruths has also intensified. Whose Land is a Two Part film, directed by Hugh Kitson, which considers the legal right of Israel to exist, under international law, as a reconstituted nation state, within the geographical boundaries of the ancient homeland of the Jewish People.

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!

Candidates Struggling To Articulate Vision for Israel Other Than 'Not Bibi' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Netanyahu Jerusalem, July 28 - Party leaders, campaign consultants, and aspiring legislators continued this week to prepare for parliamentary elections later this year, with some of the largest parties settling on the one message they must convey to voters, but one that they fear might not resonate with the electorate in a way that generates inspiration, a shared sense of purpose, or a compelling reason to vote for them in particular: just don't vote Binyamin Netanyahu back into the premiership.

The Knesset voted to disperse last month, triggering new elections scheduled for November 1. That contest brings back to prominence many of the phenomena that characterized the other four contests in the last five years. Chief among those phenomena, political rivals of Netanyahu failing to develop positive platforms of their own, to the point that the essence of several different parties' campaign messages have focused in the main on bringing down the man who has dominated Israeli politics for thirteen years, and not on any vision for Israel's future that differentiates each party from any other.

Polls show a familiar deadlock between the "will sit in a government under Bibi" and "will not sit in a government under Bibi" factions, neither of which can muster a parliamentary majority of 61 seats that allows a coalition to form. That stalemate prevailed through several previous contests after the last coalition under Netanyahu collapsed, but until last year when anti-Netanyahu factions cobbled together a diverse coalition just big enough, none could form a government to displace him. Mixed results from the current Bennett-Lapid government and associated political machinations reasserted the fractured and fractious nature of the polity the government purported to represent, restoring the status quo ante of Bibi vs. anti-Bibi factions not broad enough to secure governance, and neither faction with enough coherent positive vision that voters rally to them in sufficient numbers.

"In a word, inertia," explained one analyst. "Netanyahu sat at the top for so long that he entrenched himself in enough minds as the status quo, and others must convince voters of any necessity to change. Enough elected officials convinced themselves last time around that they had done so, and formed a Bibi-less coalition. But the folly of that effort has now become evident, and the anti-Netanyahu faction has also readopted the status quo ante: making everything about Bibi Bibi Bibi and refusing to articulate a word about what their parties actually stand for."

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!

07/28 Links Pt1: Jerusalem Slams UN Official Who Questioned Israel’s Membership, Railed at ‘Jewish Lobby’; U.N. rebukes Israel only for violating women’s rights

From Ian:

Jerusalem Slams UN Official Who Questioned Israel’s Membership, Railed at ‘Jewish Lobby’

The Israeli Mission to the United Nations (UN) in Geneva has expressed outrage following a UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) investigator’s comments about the undue influence of a so-called “Jewish lobby” on media, and whether Israel should be a member of the body at all.

“We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by whether it’s the Jewish lobby or it’s the specific NGOs. A lot of money is being thrown in to trying to discredit us,” Miloon Kothari — a member of the UNHRC’s “International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel (COI)” — said on the latest episode of The Mondoweiss Podcast.

Formed by the UNHRC after the 2021 hostilities between Israel and Hamas, the COI was tasked with issuing annual reports on any human rights abuses committed during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has previously drawn scrutiny from Israeli and US officials for its unusually broad, open-ended focus.

“One of our mandates is to look at the role of both humanitarian law, human rights law, criminal law,” Kothari continued. “And on all three counts, Israel is in systematic violation of all the legislation. And in fact, I mean, I would go as far as to raise the question as why are they even a member of the United Nations, because they don’t respect — the Israeli government does not respect its own obligations as a UN member state. They, in fact, consistently, either directly or through the United States, try to undermine UN mechanisms.”

On Wednesday, Israel’s Permanent Mission in Geneva called the interview “disturbing,” and said that the Jewish state — recognized as a UN member in 1949 — will continue to participate in the body and “work with truly independent mechanisms and on promoting and protecting human rights for all.”

“Israel already questioned [Kothari’s] suitability for the role, given previous comments regarding Israel, and given the fact he is subject to a formal complaint for violating UN regulations and ethical standards,” the Mission said in a statement.

Mark Regev: The evolution of Israel-Greece ties, from enemies to allies - opinion

The Ottoman shadow
Undoubtedly, Israeli-Hellenic ties have been affected by the behavior of Ankara’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose neo-Ottomanism and political Islam have exasperated Turkey’s neighbors and brought them closer together.

Of late, Turkey has been striving to improve its relations with regional players, the invitation to President Isaac Herzog to visit Ankara earlier this year is an indication of Erdogan’s desire for rapprochement with Israel.

The scope and pace of any improvement in Israeli-Turkish ties remains uncertain. What is clear is that the newly found partnerships between Israel, Greece, and Cyprus are here to stay.

Some believe that a threat to relations could come from an unexpected political victory for the radical Left in the coming Cypriot elections. Yet, in this context, Greece provides a reassuring example.

When, in the 2015 Greek election, Alexis Tsipras and his militantly socialist Syriza Party assumed power, there were initial fears that a Corbynist-Melenchonist type anti-Israelism could undermine ties. But not only did the Athens-Jerusalem relationship continue to flourish under Tsipras, it also expanded to include a strengthened trilateral framework with Cyprus. And Israel’s ties with Greece continued to prosper after the election in 2019 of the moderate-right New Democracy Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

All this demonstrates the remarkable resilience of the new Hellenic-Israel partnership. Perhaps next time the Hanukkah candles are lit, we should also celebrate that.

Israel and Morocco are rooted in justice - our relationship will only grow

With the founding of the State of Israel, cooperation between the two countries was natural. We maintained close security relations that continued and strengthened under the reign of His Majesty, King Mohammed VI (even without maintaining public relations, due to the general Arab-state boycott of Israel). Yet, even the boycott of Israel did not prevent Morocco from serving as a major contributor in brokering the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.

In 1977, King Hassan brought Israel’s defense minister Moshe Dayan to meet with Egyptian president Sadat’s emissary and personal advisor. This enabled a diplomatic breakthrough, ultimately leading to direct contact between Israel and Egypt, culminating in president Sadat’s historic visit to Israel.

The diplomatic relations between Israel and Morocco between the years 1994-2000, following the peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, were extremely warm. In 2022, we now see amongst our nation a strong desire to fill these relations with content and to give them shape and form.

These warm and deep relations are based on mutual respect, a common understanding of the world and shared interests. These relations and the warm welcome Israeli tourists receive have brought forth an abundance of Israeli tourism in Morocco.

These two countries share a core common goal: to partake in the international community and its core values. Together, they take a stand on the side of maintaining regional peace and stability, and the fight against extremism and terror.

Above all, the place that Judaism and the Jewish community have had in Morocco, over such a long period, facilitates good relations with Israel and warm ties between the peoples themselves, and not just between the leadership and governments.

Gideon Sa'ar speaks to i24NEWS from Morocco

From Times of Israel:

An alleged Israeli spy network made up of five individuals has been arrested in Iran, an Iranian media outlet claimed Thursday, the second such group detention announced within a week.

The semi-official Iranian Labour News Agency said the five suspects were the leader of the cell and four associates, all of whom were “affiliated with the Israeli regime” and had allegedly been in contact with the head of Israel’s Mossad.

The report said Iran claimed the alleged spies had told the chief of the Israeli spy agency that they would “collect information from important and vital areas.”

Maybe they caught some spies and maybe they didn't. But you can be certain that whoever Iran arrested was not in direct contact with the head of the Mossad!

That is not how any organization works, let alone an intelligence operation!

And if the absurd story was true, Iranian spy agencies are idiots, because they could use these spies to directly send misinformation to the head of Israel's Mossad! That is a lot more valuable than exposing them.

This alone is enough to make one think that the entire story is fabricated.

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!

I came across this 2021 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Kubin et al: "Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts."

People believe that facts are essential for earning the respect of political adversaries, but our research shows that this belief is wrong. We find that sharing personal experiences about a political issue—especially experiences involving harm—help to foster respect via increased perceptions of rationality. This research provides a straightforward pathway for increasing moral understanding and decreasing political intolerance. ....In moral and political disagreements, everyday people treat subjective experiences as truer than objective facts.

The paper makes the assumption of goodwill; if you want to convince someone of the truth of your position, enhance your facts with personal experience. The authors suggest that narratives can increase political tolerance.

But it doesn't consider how malicious people weaponize this knowledge in order to lead people away from the facts to begin with - and how propagandists can use this to increase intolerance.

A commentary on the paper in PNAS does touch on this:

The power that story has over facts to capture the imagination and create respect for an individual’s position is easily exploited. ...Narratives are easily weaponized by propagandists and other bad actors. From this perspective, Kubin et al. may not have uncovered a feature in human discourse that might bridge moral divides but rather a bug that could be easily exploited. While presenting facts garners more respect than claims with no backing at all, these studies still find that narratives beat out facts in creating a greater perception of rationality and even perceived truth. Yet, a position backed by one personal anecdote is no more objectively true than one backed by no anecdote or facts at all. More crucially, a position backed by a personal narrative is not more true than a position backed by facts.

While both narratives and facts can be cherry-picked to support a position, personal narratives, as the authors point out, are unimpugnable. A conclusion drawn from facts, on the other hand, can be disputed and disproven and, thus, science and society should prefer fact-based positions. Yet, when it comes to respect, feelings are prioritized over facts. As these studies show, what is true gains less respect than what one might feel to be true.

Are we to get into a battle of cherry-picked narratives of harm to promote our policy positions, amplified by social media and the ease with which these narratives can spread? How can such narratives be combated? The counter to a story of harm is, by definition, a story of lack of harm (e.g., a vaccine that reduces future infection). However, the larger problem is that the real counternarrative for any anecdotal evidence is found in the data (e.g., a peer-reviewed paper showing the benefits of vaccination for the treatment condition). As such, a troublesome implication of this work is that a false personal story will have more power to create respect than facts, including those facts that would serve to correct the narrative.

This is accurate - but it doesn't go far enough, either.

If narratives are more effective than facts, and personal narratives about being harmed are most effective of all (because no one wants to impugn a personal story about how someone was harmed,) then over time the cumulative narratives of alleged harm by a specific certain group will create hate for that group.

The original study hoped that using personal narratives would increase tolerance. It didn't anticipate that large groups were already weaponizing that as a propaganda method that increases intolerance - towards Jews. Because the Palestinian propaganda machine promotes antisemitism with a torrent of stories about humiliation at the hands of the Jews.

When a Palestinian goes through a Jordanian checkpoint, they are angry and upset. But when they go through an Israeli checkpoint, even though they are treated with more respect, they claim they are humiliated - because they resent Jews on what they consider their land to begin with. So the only stories the world hears are those of humiliation, whether true or not. And over time the followers of that topic start to believe that Jews are deliberately humiliating Palestinians, because that is what the Palestinian stories say.

NGOs also weaponize this propaganda tool against Israel. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch reports against Israel are far more detailed and longer than those on other countries. I once did a comparison between two Amnesty reports released around the same time:

Amnesty reports	Israel/WB	Syria/Yarmouk
Title of report	Trigger-happy	Squeezing the life out of Yarmouk
Number of pages in the report	87	39
Number of civilians killed according to Amnesty	22	194
Time period covered	12 months	8 months
Circumstances of their deaths	Mostly while participating in or near violent acts	Starvation, sniper fire, bombings
Number of extensive personal stories given for victims	At least 18, some three pages long	Zero
Number of photos of victims (dead and injured)	At least 14	Zero
Video produced to support report?	Yes, 4 minutes	No
Placement on Amnesty webpage	Linked from front page two weeks after report issued	On front page only the day it was released

Palestinians are humanized and their stories are told. Those stories are detailed and centered on showing how they were harmed and at creating empathy for them.

Meanwhile, to Amnesty, Syrian victims are just statistics.

Along with the empathy for the subjects of heart-rending stories comes anger at the victimizers. This is especially true when the storytellers themselves are angry at their supposed tormentors. Just as the audience wants to identify with the victim, they want to share in the anger the victim has towards those they blame for their pain.

So it is no surprise that the Western narrative about Israel, over time, has become more explicitly antisemitic. These same NGOs are now completely at ease in claiming that Israel has a policy of "Jewish supremacy," meant to evoke white supremacy, one of the most evil crimes possible. Singling out Israel as the only current state practicing (a made up definition of) apartheid is another example of normalizing antisemitism in the name of supporting the victims of Jewish greed. Gaza children are only victims of Israeli war crimes; their being cynically used as human shields by terrorists who were the target of the bomb is not mentioned.

The decades of favoring narrative over facts has created conditions ripe for increased Jew-hatred.

Also, in this world where narratives are favored over facts, there is little penalty for lying. After all, the victims are describing the facts as they claim that they experienced them, and arguing with that is considered to be adding to their victimhood.

One of Israel's reasons for existence is so that Jews will no longer be hapless victims of a world that doesn't care about them. Israel has helped achieve that goal - so now Jews are at a permanent disadvantage in the discourse about which side is in the right exactly because we can no longer claim the same degree of victimhood. And victimhood is the coin of the realm.

There is no defense. Ben Shapiro's famous quote "facts don't care about your feelings" may be true, but facts cannot argue with feelings, either. People want to empathize with and support the real or imagined victims.

Israel's success at protecting Jews is itself its unforgivable crime, and the Israel-haters are using that success as a reason to try to destroy it.

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!