Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 03, 2022

FAIR - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - shows extreme disrespect towards Israeli Arabs

FAIR - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - issued a report by Nora Lester Murad that claims that books for toddlers and youngsters that introduce kids to Israel are pretty much racist against Palestinians, because - they aren't about Palestinians.

However, Murad's critique exposes her own disdain for Arabs who live in Israel as well as her own hate for Israeli Jews.

Even though the books aren't about Palestinians, and aren't meant to be, she says that they"erase" Palestinians.

First, Murad claims that they erase through "appropriation:"

Rah! Rah! Mujadara!, for example, is a 12-page board book for ages 1–4 that has an attractive tagline: “Everybody likes hummus, but that’s just one of the great variety of foods found in Israel among its diverse cultures.”

There’s a subtlety in that tagline that may be lost on some. While diversity is acknowledged, it is represented only within the Israeli sphere, without its own history and separate identity. This is a political position that jibes with Israel’s intentional deployment of the term “Israeli Arabs” to refer to Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, whom Israel wants to incorporate as an Israeli minority, fragmenting them from the larger Palestinian community and from their national identity.

To progressives, referring to someone in ways that they object to - say, by using the wrong pronoun - is an unforgivable crime. But only a small percentage of Israeli Arabs refer to themselves as "Palestinian." According to a 2020 poll from Jewish People Policy Institute, only 7% referred to themselves as "Palestinian" while 74% referred to themselves as "Arab Israeli" or simply "Israeli."

FAIR is showing great disrespect to the people they are claiming to be defending from this book. And the simple children's book is far more accurate in its depiction of Arabs in Israel than FAIR is.

The critique then veers into the absurd:

Newbies to the the Israeli/Palestinian narrative war may also not realize that food is an active battleground. Palestinians consider Israel’s claiming of hummus and falafel, among other foods, to be cultural appropriation.

Palestinians, therefore, are likely to consider both the people and the food appropriated when the same [Muslim] girl is featured behind the text:

Blow, slow.
Taste. Whoa!
Brown fa-LA-fel,
big green mouthful!

Since the state of Israel is not even 75 years old, any food with a longer pedigree must have been originated by someone else. But while Kar-Ben Publishing is surely aware of this contention, they either choose to ignore it or intentionally intend to steer readers towards the Israeli narrative—by hiding the Palestinian one.

But does the book say that falafel is an Israeli-created dish, or does it say that it is a dish that Israeli citizens of all backgrounds enjoy? Clearly it is the latter - "the great variety of foods found in Israel among its diverse cultures." It mentions bagels too - does anyone claim that they are Israeli? Other foods in the book are meant to highlight the different cultures that come together in Israeli society: nowhere does it claim that malawach, mujadara, hummus, or bourekas were created by Israelis except in the fevered imagination of Nora Lester Murad.

Murad is apparently opposed to kids from different backgrounds finding things in common that they like from different cultures. This hardly seems progressive.

Murad then says that books about Israel that show the Dome of the Rock are "erasure through deception" because, she claims, "east Jerusalem" is not part of Israel. However, Israel disagrees, and so do many international jurists. To Jews, the idea of an Israel without the holy places is anathema and extraordinarily offensive. There is no deception there - people who say that all of Jerusalem is part of Israel have that right.

But FAIR doesn't recognize that right. We must all believe as they do, or we are racists. So tolerant!

The next "erasure" is "Erasure through both-sidesism." Yes, books about Israel that go out of their way to show Arab Israelis are awful, too - and her main target is, believe it or not, Sesame Street.

Welcome to Israel With Sesame Street (Christy Peterson, Lerner Publishing, 2021)...[has a] “both sides” approach, starting by teaching children how to say hello in both Hebrew and Arabic (pages 4–5). This “both sides” approach makes a nice visual while hiding Israel’s disrespect for Arabic and Arabic speakers, which is clear in the fact that Arabic had been an official language of Israel until it was officially downgraded in the 2018 Jewish Nation State Law.

Of course, Murad pointedly doesn't mention that the use of Arabic in government documents and in the public sphere is still mandated under Israeli law. Israel still supports and funds its Arabic-language schools. There is no disrespect in reality. But why let the facts get in the way of anti-Israel soundbites?

Presenting “both sides” is a device used to appear neutral, which conjures a sense of objectivity and truth. It is also a way to stake a claim to antiracism and respect. For example, page 11 says that Jerusalem is “special to people of many religions,” over a photo of Palestinian school girls, some wearing the Muslim hijab.

But presenting Palestinians only as linguistic and religious minorities of Israel, and not as a national group in and of itself, is an Israeli narrative tactic that dehumanizes Palestinians and undermines readers’ ability to understand Israel. While appearing respectful of diversity, the text and photo cleverly omit that Israel is an explicitly, self-declared Jewish state, that enshrines Jewish supremacy over non-Jews (and the corresponding inequality of Palestinians) by saying, in law, that only Jews have the right to self-determination.

A book for children that celebrates Israel's diversity is regarded as flawed because it should show what Murad declares to be the truth, that Israel is a racist state that doesn't give its Arab citizens equal rights.

This is all a lie, of course. The same poll I mentioned above shows that virtually the same percentage of non-Jews as Jews feel comfortable being themselves as Israeli citizens. Most Arab citizens of Israel are proud to be Israelis - but Murad the racist wants them to be considered part of a different nation that the vast majority want little or nothing to do with. The bigotry is in Murad's head and in her poison pen, not in the reality of Israel's non-Jewish citizens.

And by the way, virtually every Arab state declares itself to be an Arab state in their constitutions. By Murad's logic, they are all enforcing Arab supremacy. Does anyone think FAIR will ever mention that?

In Murad's twisted mind, Israel is by definition racist, so any children's book that doesn't highlight how terrible Israel is must be guilty of racism as well. The most bizarre part of her argument is that while it is obvious to all that children's books are meant to teach tolerance, which these books are doing, she is against it. Murad is the racist. Her arguments are as racist as those of a white supremacist upset at American schoolbooks that show white children playing with children of color without mentioning comparative crime rates for different groups.

Finally, Murad freaks out over a map in the Sesame Street book:

The 1949 armistice lines are clearly drawn, and Israel is only shown inside those lines. Egypt, Jordan and Syria are not named. But Murad looks hard to find bias, and of course she succeeds:

Page 6 of Welcome to Israel With Sesame Street incorrectly displays a map of Israel (“and Surrounding Area”) including the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the same shade of yellow. The outlines of the occupied Palestinian territory are visible but not labeled.

This is her entire argument - the yellow on the map of the territories is slightly different than the yellow of other countries. The actual lines that represent borders, prominently displayed, are meaningless to Murad's bizarre brain - the shade of yellow is offensive.

Hilariously, she sent this litany of paranoid complaints to Sesame Workshop, and they properly ignored her:

Welcome to Israel With Sesame Street, however, is not harmless. It uses subtle messages to contribute to erasure and distortion of Palestinians, which should cause concern among people who care about the educational reputation of the brand. Unfortunately, Sesame Workshop failed to respond to my several inquiries about this book.

Maybe because if she was honestly being as fair as FAIR pretends to be, she would realize that every single one of her complaints is baseless.

It would be amusing to see the same methodology used for children's books about "Palestine." Do they even mention or show pictures of Jews? Do they admit that Jews have the right to live in their historic homeland? Or are Jews not mentioned at best, and called "sons of apes and pigs" at worst?

If FAIR was fair, they would have a Zionist Jew do the exact same type of analysis on books pushing the Palestinian narrative, and see how they fare. Like the alphabet book that says "I is for Intifada." How are Jews represented there? How do they represent the emotional Jewish ties to Jerusalem? How are the feelings of millions of Jews taken into account?

Which side actually tries for coexistence, and which side wants to see the other be ethnically cleansed in the books meant for children?

The books being critiqued by her show smiling Arab children, some in hijabs. Find me a single children's book about Palestine that shows a smiling child in a yarmulke or tzitzit.

Just one.

That is the comparison that needs to be made to see which side is the side of progressiveness and tolerance, and which side is both implicitly and explicitly antisemitic.

For example, this drawing for Palestinian children contrasting Arabs and Jews is not exactly sending tolerant message. Yet I suspect it is a message that Murad wholeheartedly endorses all children should be exposed to..

Pro-Israel books go out of their way to teach tolerance. Pro-Palestinian books do the opposite. FAIR promotes the former as racist and doesn't want you to look at the latter.

FAIR isn't fair, and this article is exhibit A.

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!

Booking.com Following Airbnb into Political Dead Sea? (RealJerusalemStreets)

By Real Jerusalem Streets

The reported news that Booking.com was to put a "warning" on Jewish-owned property rentals in Judea and Samaria listed on their website spurred a visit to the Dead Sea to see.

Leaving Jerusalem for the half-hour drive to the northern part of the shrinking Dead Sea, it's hard to miss the Bedouin encampments which have multiplied in the desert along the road.

The banks of the receding body of salt water are visible from an outlook at the Biankini Village Resort Dead Sea. For those like me who were unfamiliar with the name, and at first glance think of beach bikinis or burkinis, Angelo Levi Bianchini was an officer in the Italian Royal Navy. A street in Jerusalem near Hillel Street and the Italian Synagogue is named for the Zionist and Israel lover.

But that story is for another time.

I mention Bianchini because of the street where in 2001 a terrorist attempted to blow up the Biankini Pub, filled with nearly 200 young people drinking beer on a Friday night and celebrating 3 birthdays.

Biankini Pub owner Dina Dagan realized something was wrong when a man from Ramallah walked into her business after she had seen on the news that Ramallah had been closed because of riots.

He had indeed left a powerful explosive in a bag in the restroom. She was able to carry the bomb out to the street, get the police to believe her, and finally come and detonate the explosive, saving the lives of her patrons.

The episode is material also for a powerful story. But I mention it because Dagan grew up in Jerusalem and experienced the Intifada firsthand. She did not decide to leave until after the Moment Cafe bombing, where some of the same young people she saved were murdered by another terrorist's bomb.

Dina Dagan moved to the Dead Sea to find "peace" and started the Biankini Resort in the barren sand. The resort has grown into a mega-complex, with a large swimming pool and shul.

There are small family cabins with play areas and privacy and greenery she planted.

The newest of her 110 rooms are in a building named Sultan and one includes a suite with a private jacuzzi, and as in the rest of the resort, over-the-top Moroccan decor.

Dina Dagan, flamboyant down to her blue and white bejeweled fingernails is angry with the Booking.com warning. After working hard for over 20 years to build a business that provides 4 million shekel back into the local economy, where Arabs and Jews work together "in an island of peace" and hosts people from all over the world - Muslim, Christian, Druze, and Jewish.- now is dangerous she asked!

Booking.com watered down their warning on the site to properties in the area stating, "Review any travel advisories provided by your government to make an informed decision about your stay in this area, which may be considered conflict-area"

I have seen comments that this is not a serious development, will not hinder tourism, etc. in this place where Dagan says brings people together. They do not know and if see a warning will be afraid to come -"To the most peaceful place in the world."

Dina Dagan who carried an explosive device out to a Jerusalem street in 2001, calls what is happening, "Intifada Rishona." (First Intifada) A time of virtual shaming which is political and hurts us all - all Israelis. How can this be, a one-sided decision deciding on the borders of Israel when there are terror attacks around the world?

Airbnb and now Booking.com - who will be next in this war of discrimination, that hurts everyone?

Looking up on the way into the resort from the parking lot, we saw birds sheltering from the hot sun in a dinosaur's mouth.

On the way out, I looked down to see Queen Elizabeth and Albert Einstein waving goodbye.

International tourists should be warned - Biankini Resort has just about anything you could imagine - and more.

All images credit - @RealJStreets sharon@rjstreets.com

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!

10/02 Links: The importance of combating antisemitism on campus and educations; When does anti-Zionism become antisemitism? - Barbra Streisand, Twitter

From Ian:

The importance of combating antisemitism on campus and educations

On a sunny afternoon at Pembroke College, Oxford, I had the pleasure of interviewing Natan Sharansky, who is the former head of the Jewish Agency and the current president of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) on the importance of combating antisemitism on campuses and within academia. Sharansky sums up the common struggle of several, if not most, Jewish students on Western campuses today: “Many Jewish students on campus feel they have to choose between their connection to Israel and staying as an accepted part of student society.”

This choice that Mr. Sharansky proposed in his interview is the same one I had to make while completing my undergraduate degree in small-town Halifax, Nova Scotia. The same decision led to me working full-time towards combating antisemitism on university and college campuses. ISGAP's leadership management

Under the leadership of ISGAP management, I had the pleasure of co-organizing two events over the summer. First, an international conference on Jew Hatred at Cambridge followed by a two-week Summer Institute for Curriculum Development in Critical Antisemitism Studies at Oxford. Throughout the events, I had the privilege of learning from some of the world’s greatest scholars of antisemitism.

The lectures covered a wide range of topics, from antisemitism in Southeast Asia to human rights and lawfare, but the presentations I was most drawn to focused on the indoctrination of antisemitism in social sciences, particularly intersectionalism.

As a young Jewish immigrant from Brazil studying in Canada, I entered the liberal arts secure that my core values as a staunch zionist, feminist and progressive would be accepted. However, the more outspoken I became about Zionism, the less welcomed I was by my peers and professors.

The choice between Israel and acceptance presented itself to me in my final year of university, when I decided to branch my areas of study into social sciences. I met with an adviser who had been recommended to me by one of my friends due to their kindness and helpfulness in mapping out courses. In my meeting with her, I explained that I wanted to focus on certain topics to prepare myself for the master’s degree. I wanted to complete in Israel the following year.

Rather than helping me find adequate classes, the adviser provided me with a list of readings and courses she and other professors in the department taught about the Palestinian cause. Before I exited her office, she warned me not to tell the powerful Jewish lobby in Canada about the meeting, otherwise, they would hunt her down and try to destroy her career.

How normalized must antisemitism be, that upon the first meeting with a student, a university professor felt comfortable enough to make accusations about the powerful Jewish lobby in Canada?

Professor William Kolbrener from Bar-Ilan University, who presented and participated in both events, details why antisemitism has become integral in intersectionality: “It is not just an accidental or incidental exclusion [within intersectionality], the exclusion of the Jew is the basis of the thought. Anti-Zionism is the tell for being progressive.”

When does anti-Zionism become antisemitism? - Barbra Streisand, Twitter

"When does anti-Zionism bleed into broad antisemitism?"

This question was posited by Jewish-American singer and actress Barbra Streisand on Saturday in a Twitter post in response to the decision by student groups at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Law to ban Zionist speakers from the campus.

Indeed, this question reflects an often debated topic of when criticism of Israel and Zionist ideology ends and Jew hatred begins.

Several prominent members of Jewish Twitter (JTwitter) were quick to respond to Streisand's question, and many were of the opinion that anti-Zionism itself is antisemitism.

"Pretty early," noted Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Fleur Hassan-Nahoum.

"Anti-Zionism, the belief that the State of Israel should not and must not exist as a Jewish state, is antisemitism. Either in intent, in effect, or both," explained Jewish activist and recent Israeli immigrant Blake Flayton.

He also added: "When does anti-feminism bleed into broad sexism? Spoiler alert."

"Denying the Jewish right to self determination is by definition, antisemitic," tweeted the watchdog NGO StopAntisemitism.

"In the end they always come for all of us. Modern day antisemitism just has a new target: Zionism."

Said former MK Michal Cotler-Wunsh: "When Zionist = code for Jew after systematic process to demonize, delegitimize & apply double standards; & ‘traditional’ antisemitism barring individual Jew from equal place in society mutates to ‘modern’ form, barring Jewish state from equal place among nations."

The full results of the latest PCPSR poll of Palestinians has been published, and it finds a consistent pattern.

86% of Palestinians say there is corruption in the Palestinian Authority and 73% say there is corruption in institutions under Hamas’ control in the Gaza Strip.

That is truly overwhelming majority - and it is a story that the Western media continuously downplays. After all, if the Palestinian leadership cannot be trusted to take care of their own people, how can anyone expect them to adhere to agreements with Israel?

Another telling statistic: A majority of Palestinians under both Hamas and PA rule say that they cannot criticize their leaders without fear. 58% of West Bankers think people in the West Bank cannot criticize the PA without fear and 54% of Gazans say they cannot criticize Hamas without fear.

Again, Western media will uncritically quote Palestinian media and citizens without mentioning that people are likely to self-censor to parrot what their corrupt leaders want them so say. This results in reporting on the region that is inherently inaccurate.

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!

Over the weekend, anti-Israel voices tried to claim that the international community was hypocritical by condemning Russia's illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory and not doing the same about Israel's annexation of the Golan and "East Jerusalem."

Here is why Israel's annexations are legal, from a paper by Professor Eugene Kontorovich: (Italics his, bold emphasis mine.)

Whatever the current status of an absolute prohibition on territorial change resulting from war, there was certainly no such blanket prohibition in 1967, when the territory came under Israeli control. At the time, international law only prohibited acquisition of force in illegal or aggressive wars. This is evident from the source of the prohibition in the UN Charter, post-Charter state practice, and the understandings of international jurists at the time. There is simply no precedent or authoritative source for forbidding defensive conquest in 1967.

The U.N. Charter prohibits war for most purposes. When the use of force is illegal, it is natural to conclude that any territorial gains from such aggression cannot be recognized as well. Thus the illegality of conquest arises from the presumptive illegality of the use of force. But crucially, the U.N. Charter does not make all war illegal. Indeed, it expressly reaffirms the legality of a defensive war. Since defensive war is not illegal, it follows that the defender’s territorial gains from such a war would not be illegal.

The fundamental legal question is whether the law as it stood in 1967 clearly barred territorial changes resulting from the legal use of force. To answer that, we must see how the state practice, and leading jurists, answered that question after the adoption of the U.N Charter and before 1967.

1. The International Law Commission and leading scholars

The legality of defensive conquest was endorsed by the International Law Commission, a body created by the General Assembly, and tasked with providing fuller explanations of the legal significance of the U.N. Charter and related documents. Composed of some of the most distinguished jurists of the time, its work in the immediate post-War period is seen as providing highly authoritative explanations of the UN Charter. In the ILC’s drafting of their influential Draft Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1949) and Draft Code of Offenses Against the Peace and Security of Mankind (1954), the question of the permissible scope of territorial conquest came up repeatedly. The ILC repeatedly recognized that not all territorial changes in war are illegitimate. Not all annexations were bad, the U.S. delegate argued. All agreed that post-war frontier adjustments were justified to help protect the victim of aggression. There was broad consensus territorial change was only impermissible in a war of “aggression.” Thus the final document provided that states have a duty “to refrain from recognizing any territorial acquisition by another State acting in violation” of the U.N. Charter or other international law rules. But Israel’s use of force in 1967 was defensive – certainly the U.S. is entitled to view it as such – and thus explicitly lawful under the Charter. Thus there is no obligation to refrain from recognizing it.

Furthermore, the leading international law treatises immediately prior to 1967 reveal a disagreement between leading authorities such as Hersch Lauterpacht and Robert Jennings on whether defensive conquest was proper under the UN Charter. The majority opinion seems to side with the permissive view, but both sides acknowledged that the matter was disputed, and a clear rule had not emerged.

2. State practice, 1945-67

The views of the U.N’s International Law Commission and most scholars in finding defensive conquest as lawful under the U.N. Charter should not be surprising given that it simply reflected broad state practice under the Charter. In the years immediately following the adoption of the Charter, many of the victorious Allies took territory of the defeated nations. All these annexations have been recognized, without controversy by the U.S. and international community. To mention only a few of these instances, Holland unilaterally annexed parts of Germany in 1949; Greece and Yugoslavia took parts of Italy; the U.S.S.R and Poland annexed large parts of Germany. The ILC in its deliberations specifically addressed the legal basis for these annexations: because the underlying use of force was lawful (defensive), the acquisition of territory can be permitted.

... An examination of state practice and international legal opinion shows that international law did not prohibit, and may even have affirmatively sanctioned, defensive conquest as of 1967. The lack of clarity is itself important, because in international law there is a meta-principle dealing with situations where it is not clear whether a rule has emerged. Known as the Lotus Principle, the rule is that when it is not clear whether an international law rule has emerged, states remain free to act. That is, the burden of proof is on those seeking to demonstrate the existence of a rule that would limit sovereign action. That which is not clearly prohibited is permitted. It is not necessary to consider whether any norm prohibiting defensive conquest emerged subsequently to Israel’s actual conquest of these territories. Under the doctrine of intertemporal law, subsequent developments in international law do not change the status of developments that occurred before those changes. That is, international law is non-retroactive, and this is most emphatically true for questions of territorial sovereignty and conquest, where any other principle would lead to chaos in international relations.

Policy Arguments

...The policy arguments for allowing for defensive conquest are compelling. Without such a possibility, an attempted aggressor is insured against significant negative consequences. Territorial expansionism becomes a no even. In short, the lack of any self-- lose game, because aggressors will always at least break help sanctions serves as a license and inducement to aggressors, especially in the absence of a unified international security regime of the kind the Charter originally envisaged.

Of course, no one is addressing the actual international law aspects of the situations - they just make up a facile analogy and assume that the audience is too ignorant to know otherwise.

See also "International Law and the Arab-Israel Conflict" by Julius Stone, edited by Ian Lacey, which concludes that Israel's capture of Jerusalem is legal:

For those who disagree with this analysis, the question remains - who has a better legal right to Jerusalem than Israel? It cannot be Jordan (who gave up its own legal claim,) it cannot be the UN for the reasons given above and it cannot be a nonexistent Palestinian Arab state or entity which didn't even exist when Israel captured 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!

On Saturday, Hamas organized a "grand festival" in the Gaza Strip called the “Al-Aqsa is in Danger Festival”. Officials from different Palestinian factions participated.

Thousands of Gazans came to listen to speeches about how Israel is supposedly attacking Al Aqsa.

It turns out that a festival with the same title was held every year from 1996 to 2015 by the Islamic Movement -Northern Wing of Israel in the city of Umm al-Fahm.

Al Aqsa has been in "danger" for more than a century. Somehow, it still stands.

And Arabs make grand festivals to celebrate it's supposed being in danger.

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!

10/01 Links: Palestine: A story of Colonialism through the ages; The new loyalty oath imposed on Jews; Ayaan Hirsi Ali: What Western feminists can learn from Iran

From Ian:

Palestine: A story of Colonialism through the ages

I shouldn’t have to write this: others, better educated about this than me, people with deeper insight into world history and geopolitics should: historians should document this, journos should flood the internet with articles, politicos of every left or right shade, from the continent and across The Pond should clamour to support this, educators should educate on this.

Yet, here we are: this truth that needs to be said remains, apart from the odd internet article - of which this one has great chances of ending up being too - hidden, sidelined, forgotten and ignored.

Better still: we should not have allowed this atrocity to be committed, this falsehood to spread and take root, this deeply unjust thing to exist. Yet here we are: just do an internet search and you’ll see. The worst is when Israelis support it.

The thing I refer to is, of course, the notion of ‘Palestine’.

‘Palestine’ is, at core, a colonial endeavour, a malign intention of domination, control and dispossession, a false flag operation, a deception, (the oldest) piece of fake news, a grotesque masquerade of peoplehood, a trivial pursuit of individual enrichment, a geopolitical stratagem, a ruse hidden in plain sight, an unambiguous expression of fundamental disregard for humanity and for human rights, a deeply antisemitic thing, a profoundly inhumane thing.

As its apologists like to point out, the name ‘Palestine’ is ancient. Indeed this hateful thing is, probably, if not world’s oldest political machination, certainly its longest.

The name ‘Palestine’ is an English word, based on a Latin one that it turn has its roots in a Greek one. Somewhere in-between it has been adopted in Arabic and a handful of other languages.

Whatever the origin of this word may be, one thing it certainly is not: indigenous to the land it purports to describe. No political entity, local to the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea has ever - ever, ever - called itself so. It remains, from time immemorial to present day, an exonym, a name given by Greek, Roman and Arab colonial powers to the lands they conquered; and it is specific to an etic discourse of domination and epistemic violence. In every shape and form, linguistically, ‘Palestine’ is a foreign thing.

As ‘Palestine’ is a neologism to the language of the individuals who supporters say it politically represents - the Arabs - no decent person, organisation or entity can accept its claim of indigeneity. But more: the land purported to be designated by this misnomer has no natural borders but those drawn by colonial powers and are so upheld as to not impinge on their successors, particularly the Kingdom of Jordan.

The new loyalty oath imposed on Jews

On college campuses, in progressive organizing spaces, in some professional contexts, and even among friends, Americans are increasingly being told their Zionism is disqualifying. For many Jews, that means an aspect of their own identity makes them persona non grata in spaces where left-wing views are paramount. For non-Jews, maintaining until-recently mainstream, pro-Israel opinions means risking social stigmatization and professional harm. Although this problem has begun to gain some visibility, it’s time Americans understood the extent of the social pressure to self-censor or else face the mob.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jews keeping their Zionism hush-hush weren’t eager to be interviewed. However, 32 Jewish and non-Jewish students and young alumni, academics, communal and advocacy group figures, governmental leaders, activists, and creatives contributed to this article. Taken together, what follows is a portrait of profound societal changes.

These changes, it must be noted, affect all Jews in these spaces because they are greeted with suspicions and assumptions about their support for Israel that they must either dispel or confirm. And this manifests in various ways.

In 2015, University of California, Los Angeles, student Rachel Beyda was expecting to be confirmed without incident to the student council’s judicial board but was met with a bizarre question from a member of the council: “Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community,” Beyda was asked, “how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?” After a lengthy discussion of Beyda’s Jewish identity, from which Beyda was excluded, her nomination was voted down. (This was only reversed when a faculty adviser to the council stepped in.)

The incidents that make national headlines give the public a rare window into the discrimination regularly wielded in left-of-center institutions. For example, there was an explosive controversy about whether one can be both a feminist and a Zionist, which the Women’s March's then-leader Linda Sarsour answered firmly in the negative. Jewish lesbians were ejected from Chicago’s Dyke March for carrying a Pride flag emblazoned with a Jewish star because some attendees were uncomfortable with the symbol’s association with the Israeli flag. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) was “demonized by extremists as a white supremacist, as a supporter of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, [and] genocide” for condemning Hamas’s terrorism. The Washington, D.C., chapter of the environmental group Sunrise Movement refused “to participate in a voting rights rally” alongside three Jewish groups. An undergraduate at the State University of New York, New Paltz, was expelled from a “sexual assault awareness group” she co-founded over an Instagram post describing Jews as indigenous to Israel. And the list goes on.

Each time a particularly egregious case broke through, though, it quickly faded from the news, as true inclusion was quietly eroded yet again.

Support for Israel, of course, is mainstream among American Jews. In 2019, Gallup found that “95% of [American] Jews have favorable views of Israel,” and in 2021, the Pew Research Center reported that 82% of American Jews consider Israel “‘essential’ or ‘important’” to their Jewish identity, one of the highest markers of commonality among famously fractious co-religionists.

Yet younger Jews are feeling compelled to camouflage that piece of themselves. A 2021 Brandeis Center poll found that “50% of Jewish [college] students hide their Jewish identity and more than half avoid expressing their views on Israel.” A 2022 survey by the American Jewish Committee reported that “28% of American Jewish millennials say that [the] anti-Israel climate on campuses or elsewhere has damaged their relationships with friends” and “23% reported that the anti-Israel climate on campus or elsewhere has forced them to hide their Jewish identity.” These are nontrivial numbers.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: What Western feminists can learn from Iran

Is this it? Could this, finally, be the end of the Islamic Republic of Iran? As huge crowds of women and men surge through the Iranian streets, burning hijabs and calling for “Death to Khamenei!”, is an impossible dream finally about to come true?

The prospects certainly look better than in 2009, when the country’s protestors were primarily middle-class and more narrowly focused on the issue of Ahmadinejad’s election victory, rather than on dismantling the oppressive system in its entirety. Today, men and women, rural and urban, affluent and poor are all marching to bring down the Islamic Republic. Khamenei is also reported to be in very poor health, so the chants might just come true.

Yet senior US officials I have spoken to have cautioned against blind optimism. As they explained, we’ve seen many moments in recent Iranian history where the tide seemed about to turn, only to be disappointed. The same officials also warned that America is trying not to become too involved: the Biden administration isn’t supporting the protestors, but it isn’t explicitly discouraging them, either.

This isn’t an example of craven politics: I also fear that the end of the regime might not herald a brave new world, but rather a bloody mess, where Khamenei’s death is followed by internecine fighting for power between various Iranian factions. Would the overthrow of the regime lead to civil war, a military coup, or liberal democracy? Nobody knows.

None of this is to say that, faced with a possible uprising in Iran, America should avert its gaze. Perhaps more than anything, the wave of protests now sweeping the country is a perfect moment to remind ourselves of the shameful stupidity of US policy in the region in recent years. Take the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal, which gave the regime time and space and money to strengthen its morality police and security infrastructure, as well as extend its regional influence. If no deal had been signed, perhaps the regime’s current crisis would have come sooner.

Nor should we forget the fact that Iran has recently tried to abduct and kill several American citizens on American soil; or that a number of senior US officials believe Iran is to blame for the attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie last month. It’s a national disgrace that America’s politicians saw fit to break bread with the butchers of Tehran in the first place. And still too many think we can politely sit down with them again to re-negotiate the nuclear deal. I wouldn’t blame the brave men and women of Iran if they never forgave us for such short-sighted idiocy.

Still, while the response of the West should be limited to cautious optimism, there is one other conclusion we can draw, no matter what happens: the current protests are a unique, and uniquely inspiring, phenomenon. Nowhere else in the Muslim world — and I mean, literally, nowhere else — would we see what we are seeing right now in Iran: men and women, together, standing up for each other, the men demanding justice for the regime’s murder of a woman who dared to let her hair show. It bears repeating: the men of Iran are standing alongside women as they burn their hijabs.

09/30 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Why "progressives" can’t deal with antisemitism; Auschwitz Was Not Bombed Because the World Didn’t Care

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Why "progressives" can’t deal with antisemitism

Ruth Wisse, an emeritus professor of Yiddish literature at Harvard and an unfailingly impressive commentator on the Jewish world, has uttered a desperate cry about the moral and spiritual state of American Jews.

Writing in Mosaic, she ponders the effect of liberal ideologies espoused by the media and the universities which are promoting antisemitism and damaging foundational American values.

The flourishing of American Jews, she says, lies at the heart of American pluralism. But she warns: “The surest sign of an America in retreat would be a Jewish community in retreat from its own Jewish heritage”.

This baleful development is what she now sees happening, largely as a result of widespread ignorance among American Jews of their own ancient culture.

Last January, more than 200 rabbis signed a statement expressing their concerns about the “shrinking space of ‘permissible’ discourse,” self-censorship and burgeoning antisemitism and anti-Zionism. This, they wrote, had arisen from an ideology about issues such as race and gender that “in its most simplistic form sees the world solely in binary terms of oppressed versus oppressor, and categorises individuals into monolithic group identities”.

These rabbis have been left aghast by the all-too visible harm being done by the “social justice” agenda that has been embraced by the majority of American Jews. But since these are mostly rabbis from progressive denominations, it is unclear whether they also acknowledge the harm embodied by that agenda itself.

For in signing up to it, “progressive” Jews have embraced a set of values that are inimical to Judaism. More devastating still, they have convinced themselves that these are in fact authentic Jewish values updated for the modern age.

There could hardly be a more graphic illustration of this fundamental error than the current period of introspection for the Jewish world culminating in next week’s Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Zelenskyy's choice: Rectifying the crimes of Babi Yar

Today, September 29, 2022, people in Ukraine and indeed across the world will commemorate the 81st anniversary of the massacre at Babi Yar.

It will be a moment of mourning and remembrance, but also an occasion to examine the tremendous progress made by Ukraine, which today, almost a century later is able to elect by a vast majority, a young Jewish president, the descendent of a family of Holocaust victims – Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine's efforts to recall its historical crimes was the theme of the address I gave in Kyiv, in 2016, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the massacre, at the very site where it took place.

That night, I spoke after then-Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu as well as the leaders of Germany, Ukraine and Poland – the forces that make up the new Ukraine.

In the address, I used my own words, of course, but I also spoke on behalf of the president of the Republic of France, who had sent me to represent him at this occasion. Some of the reasons that drive me, a French Jewish intellectual, to support Ukraine as I do, are contained in this speech:

President of Ukraine, presidents, ambassadors, rabbis and representatives of the various religions, ladies and gentlemen.

There is always a moment in the destiny of a great nation when the darkest pages of the Book of the Dead and the Living come face to face with the light of insight and remorse. For Ukraine, such a moment has arrived today.

Eighty years after the massacre of the multitude of Ukrainian Jews at Babi Yar, in this eternally cursed and damned ravine, over three-quarters of a century after the destruction of 34,000 men, women, and children, whose only crime was being born Jewish, the time has come for contrition, repentance, and for this heinous crime to become an integral part of the great memorial of the universal consciousness. It is perhaps no coincidence that this moment has occurred on the eve of this extremely special period, referred to by Jews across the globe as the "Days of Awe."

'Uncaged Sky': How a woman survived 804 days in an Iranian prison - review

British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert is imbued with scholarly brilliance, energy and a burning desire to fight. The fire in her belly helped her survive the Iranian regime’s penal colony, where she was held hostage for more than two years – 804 days – between 2018 and 2020. Her book The Uncaged Sky: My 804 days in an Iranian prison joins the pantheon of profoundly important books chronicling the crimes of totalitarian regimes.

For those who follow Moore-Gilbert on Twitter (and I recommend that Middle East observers follow her), she writes and works tirelessly to secure the release of Iranian political prisoners and foreigners used as hostages who are tossed into the vast prison system of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In September, she joined a high group of Iranian dissidents and former Western hostages to file a federal civil lawsuit in New York City against the president of the Islamic Republic, Ebrahim Raisi.

The plaintiffs allege violations of the Torture Victim Protection Act. “Iranian President Raisi was the head of judiciary during my sham trial and bogus conviction for ‘espionage’ in a Revolutionary Court in 2019,” Moore-Gilbert tweeted. “[I] and other victims are suing him in New York under the Torture Victim Protection Act.”

Raisi, who has earned the pejorative moniker “Butcher of Tehran” because of the mass murders he allegedly carried out, is slated to speak at the UN in September. The Trump administration sanctioned him for his role in the massacre of 5,000 Iranian political prisoners in 1988, as well as his complicity in the slaughter of 1,500 Iranian protesters in 2019.

Back to Moore-Gilbert’s imprisonment and torture. I strongly suspect her book will pique the interest of many Israeli readers and Jews in the Diaspora. I hope her book swiftly finds a Hebrew publisher, for it is riveting non-fiction that conjures up the works of the legendary spymaster author John le Carré and the spellbinding interactions among governments and intelligence services. “Spellbinding” is an overused work in the world of book reviews, but it authentically applies to Moore-Gilbert’s work.

She delves into the psyche of the wild conspiracy theories that occupy the minds of the ruthless men who wield power in the theocratic state.

A film-maker comments on Ken Burns' Holocaust documentary (Martin Ostrow)

By Martin Ostrow

Ken Burns’s advance interviews for his new Holocaust film provided much material for public discussion. Now that PBS has broadcast the six-hour series, how does the film measure up?

The answer, unfortunately, is that it’s a disappointment. “The U.S. and the Holocaust” misrepresents some key historical issues and entirely omits crucial information. Ultimately, Ken and his producer partners, Sarah Botstein and Lynn Novick, have failed to deliver the kind of film that we would have expected, given their track record.

I write not as a historian, but as the producer and director of a previous PBS film on America’s response to the Holocaust, “America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference,” which first aired in 1994.

Inevitably, both my film and Ken’s cover some of the same ground. We both describe the context in which America’s response to the Holocaust evolved, such as the racism, isolationism, and antisemitism in the United States in the 1930s. Ken handles those themes and the unfolding of the Nazi genocide quite well, worthy moments of Holocaust education.

It is one thing, however, to acknowledge the disturbing trends in public and congressional opinion in those days; it is another to make it seem as if President Franklin D. Roosevelt was captive to them, as Ken does. FDR, after all, was a masterful leader. When he cared about an issue, he knew how to fight for it. But he made no real effort concerning the plight of Jewish refugees, not even to let them stay temporarily in a U.S. territory such as the Virgin Islands.

One might argue that Ken’s series is so broad and complex that it’s easy to lose Roosevelt in its massive story. Perhaps that was his intention. Ken certainly has the skill to render his subjects with vivid three-dimensional effect. Yet in this vast work, FDR is at times ghost-like—a hapless, impotent figure. The film offers excuses for the president’s inaction and shifts almost all the blame to Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long. Viewers could easily forget who actually hired Long, and who could have fired him if he had wanted to. Long served at the pleasure of the president, not the other way around.

It's a shame the series brings nothing new to understanding Roosevelt’s troubling decisions and motivations. Ken had a major advantage in making this new film. He could have drawn on significant information scholars have uncovered in the past two decades about FDR and America’s response to the Holocaust. I’m puzzled and disappointed he did not. For example:

— FDR’s Private Feelings About Jews. Historians have uncovered more than a dozen private statements made by Roosevelt in which he disparaged “Jewish blood,” advocated quotas on Jews in various professions (and college admissions), and even accused the publishers of the New York Times of using a “dirty Jewish trick” to gain a tax advantage. While President Roosevelt’s private feelings about Jews may or may not offer a clue to his policies concerning Jewish refugees, they at least need to be part of the conversation. Yet they are not mentioned in the film.

— The James McDonald Diaries. The discovery of the diaries of the late refugee advocate and diplomat James G. McDonald shed new light on his efforts to help the Jews—and the refusal of the Roosevelt administration to assist him. Remarkably, McDonald is not even mentioned in the film.

— The George McGovern Interview. In a revealing 2004 interview with filmmakers Chaim Hecht and Stuart Erdheim, George McGovern, the former senator and presidential nominee, recounted his experiences as a World War II pilot who bombed the oil factories in the slave labor section of Auschwitz. McGovern’s eyewitness recollections about the feasibility of bombing the railways leading to the camp tell us much more than Ken’s commentators, who offer confusing speculations about why neither the railways nor the gas chambers were ever bombed.

Admittedly, a disadvantage Ken suffered was that in the decades since my film, some of the remaining principal figures in the story passed away. For example, unlike Ken, I had the opportunity to personally interview John Pehle, the first director of the War Refugee Board.

Recalling the British-American conference on refugees held in remote Bermuda in 1943, Pehle told me it was “a conference set up to not accomplish anything, and the people who represented the United States there were given those instructions.” Yet the Bermuda meeting, a crucial event in the history of the U.S. response to the Holocaust, was not even mentioned by Ken.

Regarding the failure to bomb Auschwitz, Pehle says in my film, “After we recommended to the War Department that the extermination facilities at Auschwitz be bombed, we were told [that] this would involve bombers being sent from England…and therefore, it was not possible to do this. Later, perhaps after the war, we discovered at the very time we were recommending this, bombing all around Auschwitz was going on from Italy, and we had been misled.” Pehle’s powerful words should have been in Ken’s film. They are not.

As with every Ken Burns film, "The U.S. and the Holocaust” includes affecting cinematography, touching moments, and memorable music--although the decision to appropriate the precise Bach violin concerto passage from the most poignant moment of my film, is certainly questionable.

But the film's strengths do not make up for the fact that this Burns production stumbles when it comes to the most important parts of the historical record. Ken promised "The U.S. and the Holocaust" would answer many of the lingering questions about our nation’s response to the Nazi genocide. But after watching all six-plus hours of the film, I can only imagine that many people are still asking the same questions. They certainly should be.

[Martin Ostrow has been an award-winning documentary producer, writer and director for public, commercial and cable television for more than 30 years.]

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!

Independent Arabia reports that Hadash MK Aida Touma condemned Israel making injectable contraceptive Depo-Provera available to Bedouin women in the Negev. She said it is “dangerous and falls within the appalling racist policies,” adding that this Israeli policy aims to control and restrict childbirth in the Bedouin community in the Negev.

It quotes Israel's Liberal magazine:

Inside a women’s clinic in the city of Beersheba, the largest city in the Negev desert region in Israel, Fatima Abu Al-Qia’an (30 years old) and a group of her married companions are standing in queues, anxiously waiting for their turn for an urgent medical examination.

This is just like the fake controversy over Israel supposedly forcing Ethiopian Jewish women to take Depo-Provera.

As I reported at the time, in more patriarchal societies, women who want to take birth control prefer to covertly use the Depo-Provera injection without their husbands knowing. Husbands might want huge families but many of their wives do not.

Israel is giving these women the option of birth control, giving them more control over their own bodies. Which means that the "progressive" crowd will report this as the exact opposite.

What about the side effects of Depo-Provera, which Touma says outweighs any benefits, specifically its effect on bone density? Well, the Royal Osteoporosis Society of the UK quotes the World Health Organization:

More recent advice however from The World Health Organisation (WHO) 2007 recommends that there should not be any restriction on the use of Depo-Provera if you are aged between 18 and 45 nor on the length of time you can use it (if you are eligible to use this method).
It recommends special consideration if you are under 18 (when bone density is being built up rapidly) or over 45 (when you are approaching the menopause) although it is felt that the advantages will generally outweigh any concerns about the theoretical consequences (fractures) of long term Depo-Provera use. This is in part due to emerging evidence that has shown that bone density tends to recover over time once Depo-Provera is stopped. However with continuing use of this contraceptive it recommends that the overall benefits and risks are periodically reviewed.

Other pro-women measures, like anti-polygamy laws, laws promoting female employment and laws against child marriages, are also meant to empower Arab women in Israel - and they also peripherally discourage the Arab women having families as large as they were forced to when their husbands didn't allow them to work. They too have been spun as "anti-Arab,"

Israel's attempts to modernize Bedouin society and empower Bedouin women is twisted as being racist.

Because when you are an antisemite, everything Israel does is assumed to be racist.

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!

09/30 Links Pt1: ‘You little boy’: Abbas says he scolded Blinken for not pressuring Israel; PA envoy: Israel has committed most terrible massacres since WWII

From Ian:

‘You little boy’: Abbas says he scolded Blinken for not pressuring Israel

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told a group of Palestinian Americans last week that he scolded US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for failing to pressure Israel to make peace.

While Abbas has not shied away from publicly vocalizing his frustration with the Biden administration over the past year, his remarks during a private meeting with representatives of the Palestinian diaspora on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York appeared to go further and included the belittling of the United States’s top diplomat.

In a recording of the September 22 meeting obtained by The Times of Israel, the PA leader recalled a recent phone conversation with Blinken during which Abbas said he grew frustrated with what he called a recurring US practice of claiming that Israel is not interested in peace, while refusing to use the American bully pulpit to pressure Jerusalem into moving in that direction.

“I told Blinken, ‘You little boy, don’t do that,'” Abbas told the Palestinian Americans, speaking in Arabic. Some details of the meeting were first published by the Haya Washington Arabic news site.

Abbas said he then recalled to Blinken how during the 1956 Suez Crisis, Israel agreed to withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip after US president Dwight Eisenhower ordered prime minister David Ben Gurion to do so.

“I know your history,” Abbas said he told Blinken, detailing a string of phone calls that Eisenhower held with Ben Gurion at the time. In one of those conversations, the PA leader said the US president called the Israeli prime minister and asked, “David, have you gotten out of [Gaza]? Tonight, you’ll withdraw and you’ll tell me yourself that you’ve done so.'”

“Ben Gurion wrote in his memoirs that he withdrew that same night,” Abbas said, seeking to prove that the US has the power to press Israel when it wants to.

Commenting on the testy conversation with the US secretary of state, the PA president said he told Blinken: “The lesson [from this] is not to say, ‘My beloved, do this or don’t do that,'” when dealing with Israel, but rather to use the “red phone” and the authority of the president’s office to strong-arm Israel into changing its policies. He claimed the US deals with “190 countries” in this manner, but not Israel.

Abbas told the meeting attendees he used to believe US administrations that claimed that Israel does not want peace. However, he now realizes that “it’s not that the Israelis don’t want peace but the Americans don’t want peace.”

PA envoy: Israel has committed most terrible massacres since WWII

Israel has executed the worst humanitarian massacres since World War II ended in 1945, Palestinian Authority Ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi charged in a speech he delivered to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Friday.

"Israel has committed the most terrible crimes and massacres against humanity since WWII," he said.

"So, Israel is the primary [nation] responsible for the international legal chaos supported by the positions of a number of countries led by America," he said, as he accused the Biden Administration of "blind bias" toward Israel.

The UN, he said, must work to deter "Israeli aggression" and to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law.

Khraishi spoke under Agenda Item 7, during the 51st session of the UNHRC, which began on September 12 and is slated to end on October 7.

The UNHRC is mandated to debate alleged Israeli violations of international humanitarian law at each one of its three annual sessions. Such a mandate has not been leveled against any other country. Israel routinely boycotts Agenda Item 7, arguing that it is an example of UN bias against Israel.

Khraishi's speech to the council fell in line with the increasingly hostile PA rhetoric against Israel. His words were delivered in Arabic and translated into English by the UN.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas was condemned in August when he compared Israel's actions against the Palestinians with those of the Nazis, which sought to exterminate the Jewish people and who killed six million Jews during the Holocaust.

Seth Frantzman: Nord Stream sabotage will permanently shift global trade

Headlines on September 29 painted an increasingly worrying picture. CNN said that European security officials say Russian ships were in the waters near the pipeline when the leaks occurred. A fourth leak was discovered on Thursday. According to Reuters, “NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday attributed the leaks on the Nord Stream pipelines to acts of sabotage and said he had discussed the protection of critical infrastructure in NATO countries with the Danish defense minister.”

Reports say that seismic meters recorded the explosions that damaged the lines. Now there is concern that a new phase of “hybrid war” may be coming, and Russia could use these kinds of incidents to upset the global order.

It’s worth thinking about what this means globally. Nord Stream was seen as an important project worth tens of billions of dollars, mostly financed by banks in Europe and by Gazprom. Reports said that Gazprom’s investments were driven by Moscow’s interests and geopolitics.

Russia was not only working on these lines – bypassing Baltic states and trying to literally get Europe addicted to the line from Moscow directly – but Russia was also moving ahead with Turk Stream, a project under the Black Sea to Turkey. This means that Turkey was also angling with Russia to make Europe dependent.

How does this impact Israel?
This matters also for Israel and the Middle East because Israel, Greece and Cyprus wanted to partner on an East Med line. It’s not a coincidence that Iranian-backed Hezbollah has threatened the Karish gas field off the coast. Iran has exported drones to Hezbollah, which has tried to use them to threaten the infrastructure working the field. Russia is also acquiring Iranian drones and using them against Ukraine.

The threat that Hezbollah poses to offshore gas platforms – and that Russia apparently poses to undersea pipelines going to Europe – links to related aspects of this hybrid war and shows how non-Western regimes may work together to wreak havoc on energy supplies.

The realization that Russia cannot be trusted to supply gas securely to Europe is leading to an earthshaking, once-in-a-generation event. Global economies, which have been marching zombie-like in one direction toward globalization and knitting everyone together, are now moving in a new direction.

This regional protectionism is embodied not only by Europe’s shift away from relying on Russian gas, but also by forums like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, where Russia, China, Turkey, Iran and other regimes recently met. Those countries want to work together and they are almost all authoritarian regimes.

Meanwhile, the US, Europe and Western states, and their allies in Asia such as Japan, South Korea and India, also want to work together. Israel’s growing ties with the United Arab Emirates and with South Korea, with free trade talks recently resulting in a new deal, represent an important step for the global economy and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Connecting the dots between Europe, the US, Israel, the UAE, India, Australia and other countries makes economic sense – but it also showcases how global trade networks are shifting.