Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 07, 2022

10/07 Links Pt2: Spanish top court says Israel boycotts are always discriminatory; Leftists Most Likely To See Judaism As ‘Incompatible’ with French Values

From Ian:

In landmark ruling, Spanish top court says Israel boycotts are always discriminatory

Over the past several years, dozens of Spanish courts have rejected Israel boycotts by nonprofits, municipalities and other groups. Now, the country’s top court has ruled that the movement to boycott Israel represents “discrimination” that “infringes on basic rights.”

Separately, the Spanish parliament on Wednesday passed legislation that bars public funding for organizations that “promote antisemitism.” The law uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which cites as examples of antisemitism some forms of Israel criticism.

The ruling by the Supreme Court of Spain, which was issued Sept. 20 and published on Tuesday, was about an appeal that a pro-Palestinian nonprofit, Associacion Interpueblos, filed contesting a lower court’s 2020 ruling that called a specific action to boycott Israel discriminatory.

ACOM, a Spanish pro-Israel nonprofit that has sued multiple entities for discriminating against Israel, claimed the ruling as a major win. Spain was once a hotbed of efforts by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, known as BDS. A slew of lower-court rulings in Spain had curtailed that trend, but they had pertained only to individual cases and thus had a limited impact, the group said, but the Sept. 20 ruling will function as a legal precedent applicable to all cases going forward.

Prior to the appeal, pro-Palestinian groups in Spain had not escalated appeals to the top court for fear of losing and creating precedent. “Also, it was a risk for us, but our legal team worked hard and turned that risk into an historical opportunity,” an ACOM spokesperson wrote in an email to JTA.

This judicial policy is similar to the one practiced in France, where attempts to boycott Israel resulted in the 2003 adoption of a law that declares any attempt to single out countries discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Leftists Most Likely To See Judaism As ‘Incompatible’ with French Values

A survey has found that those who support left-wing parties in France are far more likely to believe that Judaism is not compatible with French values, while also being the most likely to claim Islam is compatible.

The “French Fractures” survey, which was carried out by the polling firm Ipsos and the consulting firm Sopra Steria for the newspaper Le Monde, the Jean-Jaurès Foundation and Cevipof, found that those who support leftist parties were far more likely to find that Judaism is incompatible with the values of French society.

Among supporters of the far-left France Insoumise (FI) party, only 75 per cent stated that they believed Judaism was compatible with French values, while every other party saw 80 per cent or more believe that Judaism was compatible with French society, including 90 per cent of the supporters of the centre-right Republicans.

When the same question was asked of Islam, the left-wing FI supporters were the most likely to state that Islam was compatible with France, with 64 per cent agreeing, while those on the right overwhelmingly disagreed as just 17 per cent of supporters of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally believe Islam is compatible with France, and just eight per cent of the supporter of conservative pundit Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest! party.

Overall just 40 per cent of the respondents stated that Islam was compatible with French society, with people under the age of 35 being far more receptive to the idea than those over 60.

More than 90% of slanted articles in top U.S campus papers were biased against Israel—report

Between 2017 and 2022, 92.82% of the articles in leading U.S. college newspapers that strayed from journalistic objectivity were anti-Israel, according to a report from Alums for Campus Fairness.

ACF surveyed 75 leading college and university newspapers. Of all the articles about Israel exhibiting a bias, 181 were biased against Israel and 14 portrayed it positively.

Coverage spiked during periods of tension between Israel and Hamas, including in November 2018, May 2019, November 2019 and May 2021. There is an intense fixation on Israel, with nearly 1,500 stories on the topic, the researchers found.

Avi Gordon, executive director of ACF, told JNS that the increase in “hatred towards Jewish and pro-Israel students standing up for the truth” reflects the fact that Israel has become a “divisive topic.” Israel is always considered newsworthy, which fosters a culture of saturation coverage in which bias against the Jewish state is popular, he explained.

Large public universities produced the most content about Israel. While liberal arts colleges produced less, small private colleges exhibited the most anti-Israel bias. The Claremont Colleges, a consortium of seven private institutions in Claremont, California, and Swarthmore College in Pennslyvania, for example, produced 31 articles over a five-year period.

Gordon said there has also been a shift in the general discourse on Israel. “Whereas it used to be, ‘I am not anti-Semitic—I am anti-Israel’ or ‘anti-Zionist,’” this distinction is increasingly becoming meaningless.

“Jewish students are more afraid to share their Judaism or their love for Israel” openly, he noted, describing instances of people who are scared to wear a yarmulke or IDF shirt on campus, or to share their culture and faith.

Man Who Plans Fringe Party 'Protest' Vote Talks Up Nonexistent Impact It Will Have (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Israeli ballot Jerusalem, October 7 - A voter who finds that none of the parties likely to garner enough votes in Israel's next parliamentary elections dovetail with his political and social agenda voiced his intention again today to cast a ballot for one of the alternative lists that stand no chance of meeting the electoral threshold, a move he describes as "a statement" and "a protest against the corrupt people who control the system," and believes, against all evidence, that the statement or protest will somehow make a discernible difference.

Guy Shoham, 30, informed relatives, coworkers, and friends at multiple points over the last several months of his plan to vote for one of the small, special-interest parties that stand no chance of meeting the electoral threshold, a figure that sits in the tens of thousands. He has told anyone listening, and several more who were not, that he has had it "up to here" with the established political parties, the cookie-cutter way in which politicians attempt to attract votes, the consistent triumph of form over substance, and the system's chronic cowardice to address the core challenges that Israel faces. The best way to effect change, he has argued, involves voting for one of the fringe parties that no sane oddsmaker sees reaching the threshold, instead of giving one's precious vote to parties that will continue to favor their careers and positions over the long-term public good.

"It's the right thing to do," insisted Shoham. "Only if I vote out of the box will the powers that be get the message that I'm not interested in their games or self-contradictory agendas. Only by taking completely futile measures that no one of any consequence will even notice, let alone respect, can I hope to convey my frustration and disappointment to them."

In previous elections, Shoham has preferred the strategy of placing a blank ballot in the envelope, signaling his distaste for any of the parties registered for that contest. In the interim, however, he acknowledges what he calls a maturation of sorts. "I can't just say nothing when my voice gets a personal invitation to speak," he admitted. "So I bit the bullet, ideologically, and this time around I've found at least two parties with narrow enough areas of concern to match my own sensibilities, and I'm prepared for the complexities of one of those parties making into the Knesset, the compromises that might be necessary elsewhere, ideologically speaking, to get those issue areas addressed. Let's see what happens when the Legalize Prostitution Party falls only 27,000 votes short of the threshold."

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!

10/07 Links Pt1: PA summer camps - terror training camps for kids; Blame Biden’s disastrous Iran and energy policies for Lapid’s Lebanon fiasco

From Ian:

PMW Special Report: PA summer camps - terror training camps for kids

In recent months, many young Palestinians have died as “Martyrs” while carrying out terror attacks against Israelis – be it throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks, stabbings or shootings. What is it that make kids want this? The answer is what Palestinian Media Watch has pointed out for years: That the PA and its leading party Fatah – both led by Mahmoud Abbas – as policy encourage kids (and adults) to carry out terror and seek Martyrdom - and thereby become heroes.

Now that the summer holiday is over it is important to examine the values the PA and Fatah decided to bestow on Palestinian kids via their summer camps – one of the “tools” the PA uses to inculcate the ideals of terror against Israel and Martyrdom.

One distinctive PA message was that terrorist murderers are heroes. Being presented with this strong role modeling for decades impacts on kids, and many young Palestinians set out to die as Martyrs, seeking to earn the ultimate glory in Palestinian society.

Announcing the opening of the summer camps, PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports Head Jibril Rajoub explained that 42,000 young Palestinians were to participate in 600 camps. Rajoub stated that:
Fatah Central Committee Secretary and Head of the PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports Jibril Rajoub: “The goal of these camps is to serve as a melting pot and formulate the consciousness of these children according to the Palestinian national ideology.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 19, 2022]

Same Rajoub strongly hinted at the content of the teachings in the PA/Fatah summer camps when he in his opening speech singled out terrorist murderer Thaer Hammad who killed 10 Israelis as “deserving of blessings”:
Jibril Rajoub: “[Silwad] is the town of Thaer Hammad (i.e., terrorist, murdered 10), who deserves blessings, and who constituted a milestone in proactive national action. Blessings to him, his family, and our prisoners from Silwad and from throughout the homeland.”

[Facebook page of Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, July 18, 2022]

Prior to Rajoub’s opening of the camps, a Fatah “registration announcement” for participation in a camp under Fatah’s military unit Al-Asifa explained the camp activities which clearly sound like military training and combat, among them: “military order and discipline, infantry, combat skills and Shooting live ammunition at a shooting range”; (emphasis added)

Melanie Phillips: Democracy’s watchdog has abandoned its role

It has often been said that the media is a pillar of democracy because it keeps our politicians honest.

Lifting the veil of secrecy in which authorities like to cloak themselves, revealing inconvenient truths that expose the inadequacies and worse of government actions and subjecting all politicians to forensic questioning without bias—this is how the media acts in the public interest.

But when the media doesn’t deliver, truthfulness goes out of the window, propaganda and ignorance take over and democracy stumbles.

We see this in much Western coverage of Israel, with newspapers often delivering nothing more than thinly disguised Palestinian propaganda. So, people with no knowledge of Israel or Jewish history get a wholly false impression.

It’s in America, however, that we see most graphically and frighteningly the media’s abdication of its professional role.

The most influential mainstream media outlets have turned into brazen shills for the Democratic Party and became willing accomplices in the attempt to remove President Donald Trump via the bogus Russian conspiracy smear, which involved elements of the FBI, Justice Department and the Democrats.

At same time, the media refused to report troubling revelations of corruption involving President Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s dealings with Ukraine, which implicated Biden senior as well.

And they have left Americans largely in the dark about the acute peril into which Biden’s policies are putting America, Israel and the West.

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Biden’s disastrous Iran and energy policies for Lapid’s Lebanon fiasco

Unfortunately, however, the Americans clearly hope that strong-arming Israel in order to help Iran-proxy Hezbollah—which will presumably profit, directly or indirectly, from Lebanon’s natural-gas business—will influence its masters in Tehran to stop stalling and sign a new, and even weaker, nuclear deal with the West.

If this happens after more humiliating U.S. concessions to Iran in the negotiations that will likely resume after the midterms, it ought to get Iranian oil flowing freely to the West. That could impact the price of oil in the long term and help the Democrats’ efforts to hold onto the White House in 2024, even if it also guarantees that the Iranians will eventually obtain a nuclear weapon. It will also constitute a betrayal of the courageous demonstrators who have taken to the streets in Iranian cities to resist the theocratic regime.

Lapid walked into this trap because he is committed to a strategy of avoiding public disputes with Biden at all costs. For months, as the Americans moved closer to an agreement with Iran that he knew was antithetical to any notion of protecting the security of Israel or its Arab allies, he spoke of trying to influence the U.S. not to go down the path of appeasement.

Iran’s hardline stance in negotiations momentarily seemed to vindicate him. Yet, when Biden gave him his marching orders on Lebanon, he appeared to have believed that he had no choice but to blindly obey.

Seen from this perspective, it’s clear that Lapid was not so much surrendering to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as he was to Biden, though the blow to Israel’s national interests was much the same.

It remains to be seen whether Biden will tolerate, even if only for the five weeks until the election, Lapid’s act of political survival in moving away from the Lebanon pact that the U.S. administration has ordered him to accept. What is obvious, however, is that Lapid has not yet learned what Netanyahu came to understand during the course of his 15 years as prime minister.

Managing relations with Israel’s sole superpower ally is the nation’s top foreign-policy priority. And though doing so is vitally important, Washington can’t be allowed to dictate to its small Israeli ally. The true measure of an Israeli prime minister’s diplomatic acumen is not how close he can stay to an American president. The real test is showing that a premier can say “no” to the Americans when it’s absolutely necessary, as it was with respect to the natural-gas-fields dispute.

Lapid failed that test. Biden and his team now understand how far they can push him, even when Israeli security is on the line. That’s a fatal flaw in any leader.

Behnam Ben Taleblu: You cannot stand with Iran’s women while seeking a deal with Tehran

By Daled Amos

Just two weeks ago, I wrote about how in May last year, the violence by Hamas terrorists resulted in increased antisemitic attacks on American Jews. In its report, the US Commission on Civil Rights put the anti-Zionism of protesters in context:

The Commission recognizes that individuals have a right to be critical of Israel and the Israeli government; however, anti-Semitic bigotry disguised as anti-Zionism is no less morally deplorable than any other form of hate. [emphasis added]

It's not clear if many noticed this point, that anti-Zionism can be just another form of antisemitism. Universities, for their part, appeared to miss the point entirely -- and still do.

In 2019, as a result of a lawsuit brought by the Lawfare Project alleging discrimination, San Francisco State University agreed to issue a statement affirming

it understands that, for many Jews, Zionism is an important part of their identity.

This apparent landmark development did not stop the president of SFSU the following year from defending the invitation of the terrorist hijacker Leila Khaled to speak there on the grounds of "academic freedom" and "free speech" -- while noting in passing the importance of Zionism to Jewish identity.

The required statement was no magic formula and the words had no effect. There have been no attempts to bring similar lawsuits to encourage recognition of Zionism at other university campuses.

Instead, the situation on campus gets even worse as anti-Jewish groups have gone from toxic speech against Jews to attempts at ostracizing Jews on campus.

Here are 2 examples in the news.

University of Vermont

The Department of Education Office for Civil Rights opened a formal investigation into claims of discrimination and harassment of Jews on the University of Vermont campus:

o May 12, 2021, in response to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza, UVM Empowering Survivors posted on Instagram that it would “follow the same policy with zionists that we follow with those trolling or harassing others: blocked,” going on to say that “we will not be engaging in conversation about . . . Zionism.”
o On May 1, 2021, UVM Revolutionary Socialist Union book club's first Instagram post stated that “No racism, racial chauvinism, predatory behavior, homophobia, transphobia, Zionism, or bigotry and hate speech of any kind will be tolerated.” The complaint further stated that the club’s bylaws “require every RSU member to pledge ‘NO’ to Zionism.”
o On Sept. 24, 2021, a group of “rowdy, intoxicated students” reportedly vandalized the university’s Hillel building for close to 40 minutes by throwing rocks at the upper, dorm portion of the building, and hurled “items with a sticky substance” against the building’s back. UVM administrators did not categorize the attack as a “bias incident,” even though it took place where a large number of Jewish students were known to be.

o The complaint also named a university teaching assistant who repeatedly targeted student supporters of Israel on social media. In a series of tweets on April 5, 2021, she wrote:
is it unethical for me, a TA, to not give zionists credit for participation??? i feel its good and funny, -5 points for going on birthright in 2018, -10 points for posting a pic with a tank in the Golan heights, -2 points just cuz i hate ur vibe in general.
The following month, the TA wrote:
“the next step is to make zionism and zionist rhetoric politically unthinkable,” (adding that it should be) “worthy of private and public condemnation, likened to historical and contemporary segregationist movements.”

University of Vermont Responds

Suresh V. Garimella, president of the university posted a denial on the university website and AP summarized his response:

After investigating the complaint made Sept. 30. 2021, that two groups excluded from membership students who supported Israel as the homeland for Jewish people, the university determined the groups were not recognized student organizations, received no university support and were not bound by the university’s policies governing student organizations.

The university also investigated allegations that an undergraduate teaching assistant made anti-Semitic remarks and had threatened to lower the grades of Jewish students. The university determined that no grades were lowered and no student reported they had been discriminated against.

Finally, after learning that rocks had been thrown at a campus building where Jewish students lived, police determined small rocks were thrown at the building to get the attention of a friend, and there was no evidence it was motivated by antisemitic bias, Garimella said. [emphasis added]

Garimella missed the point, claiming everything was fine and that the real problem was the investigation itself which "has painted our community in a patently false light."

The action that the university president took with the 2 groups is laughable:

To ensure an inclusive environment within recognized UVM student organizations, student leaders were reminded of university policies prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion, national origin, or any other protected category. [emphasis added]

There was no condemnation of the exclusion by the groups. Instead, they were "reminded" of the university policies -- policies that Garimella claims the groups don't have to follow anyway.

In his online response, he dismisses the posts by the TA, claiming:

The university took prompt action to ensure that the objectionable statements did not adversely impact students in the classroom and further, to perform a thorough review to ensure all grades were awarded on a non-discriminatory basis. [emphasis added]

So Garimella claims that the comments by the TA are irrelevant as long as grades were not altered. He argues that the hate expressed and the discrimination encouraged by the TA "did not adversely impact students in the classroom" as long as the threats were not carried out.

Garimella's description of the Hillel incident, claiming it was an innocent attempt to get someone's attention fails to address the allegation reported by The Lewis D. Brandeis Center that

When one student whose window had been pelted called out asking the perpetrators to stop, one of the students responsible for the rock throwing shouted, “Are you Jewish?”

Garimella's insistence that the intent was innocent is also contradicted by the claim that a sticky substance was put on the wall of the building.

University of California, Berkeley

The Jewish Journal reports that Berkeley Develops Jewish-Free Zones:

Nine different law student groups at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law, my own alma mater, have begun this new academic year by amending bylaws to ensure that they will never invite any speakers that support Israel or Zionism. And these are not groups that represent only a small percentage of the student population. They include Women of Berkeley Law, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Law Students of African Descent and the Queer Caucus. [emphasis added]

The article is by Kenneth L. Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center. He describes this current development as going beyond the anti-Jewish discrimination that has long been proliferating on college campuses. Instead of toxic speech being aimed at Jews who stand up for their pro-Israel identity, now Jews themselves are being targeted on campus.

In response to the claim that these groups are allowed to exclude pro-Israel Jews as an expression of the groups' free speech, Marcus quotes Berkeley's dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, who said that the exact opposite is true because these groups have deliberately included anti-Zionist bylaws which themselves limit the free speech of Zionist students.

Marcus goes further, writing that discriminatory conduct -- excluding students who support Israel -- is not protected free speech:

While hate speech is often constitutionally protected, such conduct may violate a host of civil rights laws, such as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is not always the case that student groups have the right to exclude members in ways that reflect hate and bigotry. In Christian Legal Society [CLS] v. Martinez, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of another Bay Area University of California law school, Hastings College of the Law, to require student groups to accept all students regardless of status or beliefs. Specifically, the Court blessed Hastings’ decision to require Christian groups to accept gay members. [emphasis added]

A Washington Post article at the time quotes Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who made a comment on the case that seems prescient today:

"Although the First Amendment may protect CLS's discriminatory practices off campus, it does not require a public university to validate or support them," Stevens wrote separately.

CLS forbids those who engage in "unrepentant homosexual conduct," Stevens said, but the same argument could be made from groups that "may exclude or mistreat Jews, blacks, and women -- or those who do not share their contempt for Jews, blacks, and women. [emphasis added]

A university has no obligation under free speech to support a group that discriminates and excludes Jews who support Israel.

University of California, Berkeley Responds

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky was widely quoted as making the point that under the exclusionary criteria of these groups he himself would be banned from the groups as well as 90% of his Jewish students.

Yet despite this, he defended the groups against Marcus.

Chemerinsky claims that the Law School has an "all-comers" policy, meaning that every student group and all student-organized events must be open to all students. He claims he knows of no case where this has been violated or that Jewish students have been discriminated against.

He goes on to complain that Marcus exaggerates the extent of the exclusion of pro-Israel speakers:

But what [Marcus] does not mention is that only a handful of student groups out of over 100 at Berkeley Law did this. He also does not mention that in a letter to the leaders of student groups I expressed exactly his message: excluding speakers on the basis of their viewpoint is inconsistent with our commitment to free speech and condemning the existence of Israel is a form of anti-Semitism.

Finally, it is important to recognize that law student groups have free speech rights, including to express messages that I and others might find offensive.

Like Garimella of UVM, Chemerisnsky plays down the impact of the anti-Zionist actions taken by student groups on his campus.

In response to his numbers game that only a relatively few groups have an exclusionary policy, Marcus responds:

Would it be okay for only 5% or 10% of the campus to be segregated? What percentage of the Berkeley campus should be open to all? Shouldn’t it be 100%? And what is the right number of doors that should be closed to students of any race or ethnicity: isn’t it zero?

On Chemerisnsky's claim that these student groups have a free speech right to exclude Zionists, Marcus draws a key distinction:

Excluding Zionists is not like excluding Republicans and environmentalists. It is not just viewpoint discrimination. If a Democratic club amended their bylaws to prohibit Republican speakers from appearing before them, we could accept their right to do so. We might regret that they are restricting the possibility of dialogue. We might prefer the approach of those law student groups that seek balanced presentations, in order to advance civil dialogue and promote learning. But we wouldn’t consider this to be a civil rights issue.
When persons are excluded on the basis of their ethnic or ancestral identity, however, we must respond differently. [emphasis added]

University indifference to the increasingly virulent exclusion of Jews on campus is compounded by the spread of this new attempt to ostracize Jews to other universities:

Last month, the Brandeis Center and JOC filed a similar complaint with OCR [Office of Civil Rights] on behalf of two Jewish State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz students who were also kicked out of a sexual assault awareness group and then cyberbullied, harassed and threatened, over their Jewish and Israeli identities. Currently OCR is investigating complaints filed by the Brandeis Center against the University of Illinois, Brooklyn College, and University of Southern California (USC). And the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating a Brandeis Center employment discrimination complaint of anti-Semitism in the DEI program at Stanford University.

1930's Poland

Rafael Medoff writes about a historical analogy to the exclusion of Jews at Berkeley in an article on Berkeley's Version of "Ghetto Benches":

In many universities in pre-World War II Poland, antisemitic faculty and students humiliated Jewish students by forcing them to sit in the back of classrooms. Those areas came to be known as the “ghetto benches.” In some instances, the benches were marked with the first letter of the name of the Jewish student group on campus—a kind of precursor to the Nazi practice (first instituted in German-occupied Poland, in fact) of identifying Jews via a badge or i.d. card bearing a Star of David and the letter “J” or the word “Jude.”

If there were insufficient seats in the back of the Polish classrooms, the Jewish students were made to stand, even if there were empty seats elsewhere in the room. Jewish students who ignored the regulation were often assaulted, and those who boycotted classes in protest were severely penalized. [emphasis added]

In a 1964 article in The Jewish Quarterly Review, "The Battle of the Ghetto Benches," H. Rabinowicz writes about Endek -- the fascist anti-Semitic National Democratic party of Poland. Endek influenced the creation of an anti-Jewish "Green Ribbon" League and pushed for an "Aryan paragraph" that would limit membership and rights to members of the "Aryan race," thus excluding Jews.

Many students succumbed to Endek influence. Warsaw's anti-Jewish "Green Ribbon" League developed rapidly. The nationalists proclaimed "A Week Without Jews", and the Aryan paragraph figured in the new Statute of the Warsaw Polytechnic. It placed the Jews outside the student Code of Honour as persons with whom non-Jews were to have no dealings and who could not even be challenged to duels. [p.154]

Back then, white supremacy was used to exclude Jews on campus.
Today, Jews are accused of being white supremacists.

Anti-Jewish student groups are not picky about the excuses they use to ostracize Jews.

After years of disrupting Jewish and Israeli speakers, and pushing the idea of boycotts, it was only a matter of time before student groups on campus would gravitate towards one more tactic that was successfully implemented in the furthering of Jew-hatred.

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!

German Twitter censors EoZ tweet spoofing Nazi propaganda

Twitter's algorithms don't understand irony.

I recently re-posted on Twitter a poster of mine showing how there is little difference between classic antisemitism and modern anti-Zionism:

I then received a notice from Twitter:

Hello,

We have received a complaint regarding your account, @elderofziyon, for the following content:

Content ID: 1575269945289719813
Reported Content: WAY different. [media]
Reported Content URL: https://twitter.com/elderofziyon/status/1575269945289719813

In accordance with applicable law and our policies, Twitter is now withholding the reported content in Germany, specifically for sections of German law related to hate speech or unconstitutional content, §§ 86, 86a 130 StGB.

For more information on our Country Withheld Content policy, please see this page: https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169222.

Of course the poster on the left is Nazi-era antisemitic propaganda. That's the entire point. Dressing up antisemitism as "anti-Zionism" is trivial, and we've seen so-called anti-Zionists do it every day - often using the exact same sources that the Nazis did.

Similarly, right-wing antisemites get their new material from left wing "anti-Zionist" websites.

Antisemites and so-called "anti-Zionists" now live in a feedback loop where each supports and builds on the other's "discoveries" about how evil Jews/Israel are.

Twitter Germany should get its act together. And the world must realize that modern antisemitism is no different, and draws on the same hate, from the kind that murdered millions.

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!

Times of Israel reports:

A gay Palestinian man living under asylum in Israel was murdered and beheaded Wednesday in the West Bank city of Hebron. The unnamed suspect, who was arrested by Palestinian Authority police near the scene of the crime soon after committing it, recorded the act in a video that he uploaded to social media before his capture.

The victim was 25-year-old Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, who according to reports on Ynet and Channel 12 had been living in Israel for the past two years as an asylum-seeker after authorities acknowledged his life would be in danger if he returned to Palestinian territory.

It was not immediately clear how or why the young man ended up in Hebron. Friends of Abu Murkhiyeh in Israel alleged he was likely kidnapped to the West Bank before his murder, though it was not clear that they had evidence of this.

Rita Petrenko, founder of Al-Bayt Al-Mukhtalif, a non-profit organization for the empowerment of the Arab LGBT community, said that she had helped to arrange for Abu Murkhiyeh’s asylum papers in preparation for his eventual resettlement in Canada and that he’d actively participated in LGBT discussion groups. Describing the young man as “hard-working and intelligent,” Petrenko regretted that he had not been transferred to safety in Canada before his life was brutally taken from him.

Now, here is how the story is being reported in one of the few Palestinian news sites that even mention a gruesome murder:

Today, Thursday, Palestinian police spokesman Colonel Louay Erzeigat revealed some details of the horrific crime that took place in Hebron yesterday evening, where the headless body of the victim was found, after the perpetrator deliberately cut off his head and placed it next to the corpse.

Ajyal Radio quoted Erzeigat as saying: "Unfortunately, a complex crime and a crime of a new type that the Palestinian territories are witnessing, and this is not the first crime that has occurred during the past few days.

Erzeigat added: "This crime, which reached to separate his head from his body, after he killed him with several stab wounds, and the most dangerous is the process of filming this crime and broadcasting it on social media, which disgusted citizens, so we call on citizens not to transmit these images."

It seems to be missing something, doesn't it?

This is an honor killing, the exact same mentality where men kill women who they believe have done something to dishonor the family.

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!

10/06 Links Pt2: Phantom Fantasia in the Middle East; New Nobel laureate repeatedly supported BDS; Film lauds WWII partisan chief who found Hitler’s V2s, died in Israel in obscurity

From Ian:

Phantom Fantasia in the Middle East

Decades of impeccable PR and global gullibility have enabled many to bizarrely believe there once was an Arab nation called Palestine, with the people in it known as Palestinians. Yet there never has been an Arab nation-state called Palestine. At the time of Israel's founding, in 1948, the word Palestinian did not describe a distinct Arab people. In fact, the word, created by the ancient Romans, referred to Jews. Jews have been living continuously in what is today Israel since the time of the Jewish patriarchs of the Old Testament.

Palestine is more an idea than an actual place, the magical thinking of a country that never existed. Hocus-pocus political history. Palestinian inclusion within the vortex of intersectional grievances is laughable given how Sharia-observant Palestinians, especially in Gaza, feel about women, gays, the transgender, cultural and academic freedom, religious diversity, free speech, and the rule of law. Palestinian rejection of five separate offers of statehood since 1947 is never mentioned.

Nothing was stolen from the Palestinians. They are stateless because they never had a state - not because they were denied one, or had one taken away. Indeed, it's not at all clear whether they actually want one. For a people with no national currency, political history, sustained leadership, defined borders, or even a gross national product aside from terrorism, Palestinians have nonetheless created the illusion of a homeland lost to Jewish land-grabbers. But hate does not a nation make.

We grew up from childhood hating, cursing Jews

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ensaf Haidar. I am the wife of Raif Badawi, a prisoner of conscience who is now serving his seventh year behind dark, cold prison walls in Saudi Arabia.

We were taught in the Arab world that the Holocaust was just a big lie. It was only when we grew up and opened ourselves to the world of ideas and humanity that we discovered Jews are in fact human beings, and good people, too.

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ensaf Haidar. I am the wife of Raif Badawi, a prisoner of conscience who is now serving his seventh year behind dark, cold prison walls in Saudi Arabia.

Two days after the horrific Charlie Hebdo massacre, my husband was dragged from his jail cell in Jeddah, brought to a square in front of Al-Jafali Mosque, and administered the first phase – 50 lashes – of a public flogging.

His crime? His indictment says he was guilty of “insulting Islam” and “producing what would disturb public order, religious values and morals.” His real crime, in fact, can be summarized in one sentence: He believed in his fundamental right to express his opinion.

Freedom of expression is at the heart of Raif’s case.

Also central to his case is Raif’s vision of a different future for his country and region; a future based on our shared humanity; one based on acceptance, respect and mutual understanding; one that aspires for peace in the region.

Central to this vision is an end to the discourse of hatred that we have learned in our childhood, mainstreamed by extremist religious dogmas and cynical governmental exploitation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

New Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux's repeatedly supported BDS

French writer Annie Ernaux, who won the Nobel prize in literature on Thursday, has been a staunch supporter of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement.

In May 2019, Ernaux signed a letter along with over 100 other French artists calling for a boycott of the Eurovision song contest as it was being held in Tel Aviv. The artists also called for the France Television to not broadcast the event. Ernaux opposed French-Israeli cultural cooperation

In 2018, the author signed a letter alongside about 80 other artists expressing outrage at the holding of the Israel France cross-cultural season by the Israeli and French governments. The letter claimed that the season helped to "whitewash" the image of the State of Israel.

"It is a moral obligation for any person of conscience to refuse the normalization of relations with the State of Israel," read the letter.

Ernaux called for Lebanese terrorist to be released from prison
Ernaux has also signed a letter calling for the release of Georges Abdallah, a Lebanese militant who co-founded the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions in 1980 and was sentenced to life in prison for the 1982 assassinations of US military attaché Lt.-Col. Charles R. Ray and Israeli diplomat Yaakov Bar-Simantov.

The letter the French author signed describes Ray and Bar-Simantov as "active Mossad and CIA agents" and Abdallah as "committed to the Palestinian people and against colonization."

“Litvaks!” commented a friend on Facebook in response to a meme I’d posted making fun of people with no sense of humor.

“Watch it, Galitz,” I shot back, and then neither of us ever said another word about it.

There was no need.

I knew he must have been mortified at his unintended gaffe, and knew also, that it was not his intention to insult me. In fact, he meant it as a compliment. A Litvak was one of the worst things he could imagine and he never imagined, therefore, that I could be one.

I actually felt bad for him because who hasn’t made a similar faux pas—really stepped in it—in a social context? Friends look the other way when stuff like this happens, and that’s what we are, my Galicianer friend and I, despite the Gefilte Fish Line that divides our ancestors into those who liked their food sweet (his), and those who decidedly, did not (mine)!

This was not the first time that someone had assumed I could not possibly be one of those (gadzooks!) Litvaks. Once, during an important negotiation, the man sitting across from me said, “Let’s not be like one of those Litvaks who fight over the price of every leg of every chair and table,” words which caused me to kick my negotiating partner under the table—in the shin—hard.

That’s okay. Because as I am sure you well know, these things work both ways. For example, when I first became aware at the age of 13 or so that there was something called a “Galicianer,” I went to the one who knew all regarding these things—my mother—and asked her, “Mom? What’s a Galicianer?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “But Grandma said never to marry one.”

Later, when I became consumed for a time with family research, I learned a great deal about the communities and countries that comprise the wanderings of the Ashkenazi Jew in Europe. I became so aware of the distinctions between these regions and communities that I could often surprise someone by guessing where their ancestors were from, just from the way they pronounced “kugel.” I had a good laugh when one of my siblings married a lovely someone of Hungarian ancestry. My mother embraced this new family member wholeheartedly, having absolutely no clue that Hungary was in that unimaginable (to her) European region from whom spousal connections were proscribed by my Grandma, may she rest in peace.

Many years ago, a driver we hired to take me to the hospital to have yet another one of my babies got to talking about family roots. When he mentioned the town in Poland from whence his grandparents came, I said, “Ah, Galicianers!” to encourage him to tell me more—I love hearing about Jewish roots.

“Yup,” he said, “In my family, the men went out in the morning with a rope, and came back at night with a horse!”

My husband and I busted out laughing (which wasn’t so great for my contractions). Our driver had touched on the very thing that people not from Galicia (i.e. Litvaks—though never MY family) say about Galicianers, but NEVER to their faces: “Galicianers are horse thieves.”

Bully for our driver. These distinctions: do they really matter anymore? We have (both his family and ours) all come home to Israel—we can laugh at the prejudices that once kept our communities distinct throughout our long sojourn in the Diaspora. The poverty stricken Jews of Galicia had to be canny to make a living in order to survive. They had to have something to keep their spirits up, which they found in Chassidus. They lived in a land of sugar beets, so they put sugar in their food.

The “kalte” (cold) Litvaks, on the other hand, survived Europe (but in most cases didn’t survive at all—94% of Lithuania's Jews were wiped out by the Holocaust) by remaining dryly unemotional, rejecting Chassidus, and burying their heads in their books. It’s difficult to pinpoint how these ancestral survival behaviors manifest in either community today, but I often catch myself doing something particularly “Litvish,” something my mother or grandma might have done, too.

My mother used to say that if my grandma entered a home and there was something she didn’t like about the house—I dunno, maybe she saw a sock on the floor in the hall—she wouldn’t let anything pass her lips, nary a drop of water or bit of biscuit. Grandma’s lips stayed sealed shut, and she would not said why.

Mom had her own way of expressing her inner Litvak. Growing up, we were expected to pass things at the dinner table without being asked. My beloved late mother would literally have starved before saying, “Could you please pass the potatoes?”

She would sit, head held high, not looking at you, yet you knew you were guilty of something. Eventually it would occur to you, “Oh, she wants the potatoes.”

With me, it’s the stupid things like netiquette that make me revert to ancestral traits perceived by some as common to the Lithuanian shtetl. If, for example, you send a mass email and put every email address—including my own—in the CC line instead of obscuring them in the BCC line, it burns me up. It literally makes steam come out of my ears—though I work hard on myself.

When someone did this to me (note: did this to ME—exposed MY address to 15 strangers) only recently, I said to my husband, “I can just feel the Litvak coming off me when this stuff happens,” and he laughed.

Nu. Dov can laugh. He has no skin in the game.

After all, his family's Prussian.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Cartoon of the Day: Objective NGO reports to order

I was looking at the Amnesty YouTube channel, and saw one video that was quite anomalous.

It was a 2019 video, attempting to be snarky, attacking TripAdvisor for including Jewish-owned destinations in Judea and Samaria.

I couldn't find any other video on the site on any other topic that attempted to have that same sarcastic tone. And it didn't do a very good job. But it illustrates how, for Amnesty, Israel is uniquely evil - only Israel is treated that way. Only for Israel do they spend the money to try to reach audiences that might make their videos go viral.

On the other hand, they also prove how their obsession with Israel has nothing to do with the seriousness of the human rights abuses that they claim Israel is guilty of - because Amnesty would never attempt to make light of real human rights abuses in the same jokey way.

Anyway, this cartoon shows how "research" can be subverted: when the conclusions are decided before the research is done; everyone knows what the report will say and the researchers are tasked with reaching a specific conclusion ahead of time. That way they can only include the "evidence" that supports their thesis and ignore or downplay any counter-evidence.

That's what Amnesty, HRW and other "human rights" NGOs do, all the time.

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!

10/06 Links Pt1: The Palestinian Authority cannot meet the most basic requirement for statehood; Lapid rejects Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution

From Ian:

The Palestinian Authority cannot meet the most basic requirement for statehood

The supreme test for a stable, sustainable and legitimate state is a monopoly on the use of force within the territories it controls. In the case of the P.A., this territory is currently composed of Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria—constituting around 40% of the area. The P.A. does not have the capability or willingness to confront the armed factions in these areas, never mind an expanded area provided for a Palestinian state. Moreover, the P.A. does not control an inch of the Gaza Strip, which is under the control of the terrorist entity Hamas, which sometimes appears to hate the P.A. and its chief Mahmoud Abbas even more than the Jews.

According to Melanne Civic and Michael Miklaucic in their book Monopoly of Force, “While no state has an absolute monopoly of force, to be accountable for actions taken within its borders, a state must have at least a preponderance of force; it must be able to prevent hostile acts toward other states. This is a minimum assumption of effective sovereignty.” The belief that the P.A. would be capable of this minimal level of sovereignty is wishful thinking.

The current unrest in Judea and Samaria is a perfect example of the P.A.’s ineptitude. The cities of Jenin and Nablus in Area A and B are lawless spaces controlled by a toxic mixture of armed elements of Abbas’ Fatah Party, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, among others. If Israel were not doing the P.A.’s dirty work, these groups would not only attack citizens of the Jewish state but, within a short time, overthrow the P.A. itself.

According to Efraim Inbar, the president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, “To a significant extent, the P.A. is a failed state, defined by the lack of a monopoly on the use of force. … Abbas shied away from confronting the armed gangs and failed to centralize the security services. Indeed, the P.A. lost control of Gaza to Hamas and has continuous difficulties dismantling militias in the territory under its formal control.”

Ordinary Palestinian citizens are responding to this by arming themselves—a logical decision under the circumstances. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said, “We need to recognize that in an imperfect world, we cannot blame a man for wanting to maintain his arms for the protection of his family, land and community when all around him is chaos, lawlessness and corruption, with little or no opportunity.” This is the environment created by an impotent P.A. The vacuum is being filled by terrorists, thugs and Islamist fanatics.

The willful delusion that the P.A. would have a monopoly of force in any proposed state would be laughable if it were not so dangerous. Indeed, the most likely outcome of the creation of a Palestinian state is a Hamas coup. One can support the two-state solution, but refusing to acknowledge that there is no entity capable of a monopoly of force in a Palestinian state—except perhaps for Hamas—is a danger to Israel’s existence and undermines American interests, which depend on a stable Israel. For the foreseeable future, the only realistic option is the status quo.

Jordan Is the Reason There Is No Palestinian State and Minorities Are Threatened

Clearly, the Jordanians have a poor record when it comes to safeguarding the rights of non-Muslims. Thus, it is quite hypocritical for the current Jordanian monarch to criticize Israel’s policies on religious freedom, especially since the Jewish state lifted the aforementioned discriminatory laws imposed on non-Muslim religious minorities once it assumed control over the West Bank and reunified Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, King Abdullah II’s hypocrisy is not limited to the matter of protecting religious freedom. The Hashemite ruler also used his speech at the General Assembly to call for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying that the Palestinians “cannot be denied the right to self-determination.” But who has been denying the Palestinians their right to self-determination? Not Israel, whose leaders have offered the Palestinians statehood on several occasions, only to be turned down and met with terrorist violence at the urging of the Palestinian leadership. In fact, if anyone has been standing in the way of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, it is King Abdullah II’s Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The Palestinians could have had a country of their own as far back as 1921, when the British literally handed the territory of their Mandate of Palestine east of the Jordan River to King Abdullah II’s Hashemite clan, instead of giving it to the Palestinian Arab population for which it was originally intended. Then, during the 1948 war, the Jordanians captured what they labeled the West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem and all its holy places. But did they end up giving this territory to the Palestinians so that they would have a country of their own? Nope. Instead, the Jordanians annexed the newly-conquered territory — an annexation that was not even recognized by the other Arab states.

The bottom line is that King Abdullah II and his Hashemite clan have stood in the way of Palestinian statehood, not Israel. The king’s diatribe about a two-state solution is as hypocritical as his argument that the Jewish state threatens the rights of Christians. Besides, without Israeli support, the Jordanian monarch would probably not have his kingdom, so I think it’s time he stopped biting the hand that feeds him.

David Singer: Lapid rejects Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution

The emergence of the Saudi Solution offered these reticent politicians a real choice – yet not one of them has had the intestinal fortitude finally – if belatedly and unrealistically – displayed by Lapid.

The Saudi Solution – in distinct contrast to the United Nations Solution – offers Israel the following concessions before negotiations are even commenced on implementing the proposal:
· -Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel only
· - No new State will be created between Israel and Jordan
· - The right of return by Palestinian Arabs to Israel will be abandoned
· -Jewish sovereignty in part of Judea and Samaria ('West Bank') will be recognised for the first time in 3000 years
· -Saudi Peace proposals made in 1981 and 2002 that were unacceptable to Israel will be superseded.

The universal silence by Israeli politicians on the Saudi Solution since its publication almost four months ago is shameful.

One cannot expect every Israeli politician to embrace the Saudi Solution, but then they should publicly state their opposition.

But is there not one Israeli politician – Jew or Arab – other than Lapid - prepared to express his own opinion on conducting negotiations to determine if agreement can be reached on the Saudi Solutions’ groundbreaking proposals?

In particular why have the leaders of sixteen of the major Israeli political parties contesting the elections – Netanyahu, Gantz, Sa’ar, Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, Deri, Litzman, Gafni, Shehadeh,Odeh, Tibi, Michaeli, Galon, Abbas, Shaked, Liberman and Hendel - refused to comment on the Saudi Solution since its publication?

Hopefully these leaders - like Lapid – will break their silence on the Saudi Solution well before November 1.

Leaders lead from the front – not cower and huddle silently together behind the voters whose votes they seek.

The New York Post published on October 1:

Brooklyn College — which was recently ripped for campus anti-Semitism — scheduled “implicit bias training” for staffers on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year when many of the faithful do not work.

The training is mandated for those who serve on job search committees with one of the four Zoom sessions set for 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, the morning of Yom Kippur.

“This biases the process against observant Jews and secular Jews who typically attend services on this one day of the year. Such Jews are afforded only three meeting opportunities, while all others are afforded four,” one Jewish professor said. “That sounds like implicit bias to me. Imagine, if that was done to a group that is viewed as a disadvantaged minority.”

A Brooklyn College spokesman said an additional training session was being offered on Monday.

“While classes are not held on Yom Kippur, the college is open on that day. In addition to these dates, staff or faculty can request an individual training session,” said spokesman Richard Pietras.

Is this antisemitic, or tone deaf, or not even an issue?

I am unclear whether the mandated training is to attend one of the sessions, or to attend all of them. If it is only to attend one session, and Jews still have a choice of three sessions (now four) )to attend, this does not sound like a problem at all to me - that choice of sessions should be plenty and from the Jewish perspective, the college is simply offering an additional session for those who have a free day on Yom Kippur and want to take advantage.

If attendance at all sessions is mandated, however, then this is saying that any Jews who go to synagogue on Yom Kippur would have automatically failed the requirement. The Jewish Press makes that assumption but I am not sure where they got that from. If I'm right, though, this is an artificial issue.

This Brooklyn College page that mentions the training indicates to me that only one session is needed for the mandatory training and it is normally offered three times a semester, meaning the Yom Kippur session is simply taking advantage of a day that non-Jews are probably free.

Brooklyn College has lots of problems with antisemitism. But when the charge is made, let's make sure it is warranted.

Before the 1970s, Jewish students were routinely faced with mandatory exams on Saturdays or holidays. Those days seem to be mostly over. If the college offers a reasonable alternative for Jews, then that's all that should be required. In this case, Brooklyn College added the Monday session after the complaint, so Jews are not excluded at all even if they must attend all four sessions.

There is plenty of real antisemitism to be dealt with. If my interpretation is correct, this is not one of those cases. And publicizing trumped-up charges of antisemitism will cheapen the cases when real antisemitism occurs on campus.

I think that the bigger issue is that Brooklyn College mandates classes that appears to insist that all white people - and presumably all "white-passing" Jews - are inherently, unavoidably and perpetually biased.

Assuming that Jews are racist and oppressors really is antisemitic.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

A photo of Hosam Salem from his Facebook page

Yesterday, Gaza photojournalist Hosam Salem tweeted that his contract with the New York Times had been terminated. Here's his thread:

After years of covering the Gaza Strip as a freelance photojournalist for the New York Times, I was informed via an abrupt phone call from the US outlet that they will no longer work with me in the future.
I began working with the newspaper in 2018, covering critical events in Gaza such as the weekly protests at the border fence with Israel, the investigation into the Israeli killing of field nurse Razan al-Najjar, and more recently, the May 2021 Israeli offensive on the Gaza strip
As I understood later, the decision was made based on a report prepared by a Dutch editor - who obtained Israeli citizenship two years ago - for a website called Honest Reporting.
The article, which the New York Times had based its decision for dismissing me, gives examples of posts I wrote on my social media accounts, namely Facebook, where I had expressed support for the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation...
... My aforementioned posts also spoke of the resilience of my people and those who were killed by the Israeli army - my cousin included - which Honest Reporting described as “Palestinian terrorists”.
The editor later wrote an article stating that he had succeeded in sacking three Palestinian journalists working for the New York Times in the Gaza Strip, on the basis of us being "anti-Semitic”.
Not only has Honest Reporting succeeded in terminating my contract with The New York Times, it has also actively discouraged other international news agencies from collaborating with me and my two colleagues.
What is taking place is a systematic effort to distort the image of Palestinian journalists as being incapable of trustworthiness and integrity, simply because we cover the human rights violations that the Palestinian people undergo on a daily basis at hands of the Israeli army

He doesn't link to the Honest Reporting article that shows that he praised the massacre of four rabbis and a Druze policeman in 2014, that he has repeatedly praised suicide bombers that killed 10 in 2004, and he has continued to explicitly support terror attacks even after starting his work with the Times:

On November 18, 2014, Hosam Salem again used Facebook to express his joy over the massacre of four rabbis and an Israeli-Druze police officer in a synagogue in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof.
Citing the Quran, he encouraged his followers to “smite the necks” of unbelievers, adding: “[This is the] summary of the Jerusalem operation [sic] today.”
There’s more. In 2015, Salem applauded two acts of terror (see here and here); a shooting at the Gush Etzion Junction that killed an American teenager, an Israeli man, and a Palestinian bystander; and a Jerusalem stabbing that killed three.
Some three years later, after being hired by The New York Times, Salem called for more violence following an attack that killed two IDF recruits in the West Bank. “Shoot, kill, withdraw: three quick operational steps…to bring peace to the hearts of sad people like us,” the inciting post read.
Finally, he has repeatedly eulogized Mohammed Salem and Nabil Masoud. The two were responsible for a 2004 suicide bombing that killed ten workers at the Ashdod port, Israel’s second-busiest harbor (see here and here).

(It is possible that suicide bomber Mahmoud Salem was a relative.)

Now let's look at Salem's words defending himself again. "I had expressed support for the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation..." That is an admission that he considers praising murdering innocent people to be "supporting Palestinian resistance."

And he concludes by saying that "What is taking place is a systematic effort to distort the image of Palestinian journalists as being incapable of trustworthiness and integrity..."

Salem is positioning his explicit support of terror as being a mainstream view among all Palestinian journalists. He says that exposing his praise of terror attacks is an attack on all Palestinian journalists.

In other words, he is saying that his opinions are mainstream, not anomalous.

If a Zionist would say that all Palestinian journalists cannot be trusted to be objective because they all support terror, the Zionist would properly be branded a bigot. Each journalist must be judged on their own merits and their own words. Stereotyping them is wrong.

But what does it mean when a Palestinian journalist insists that all Palestinian journalists like him support terror? When he claims that his noxious support for murdering rabbis and others is simply the same "covering human rights violations" that all reporters supposedly do? He isn't apologizing for his views - he is claiming that he, like all Palestinian journalists, is just covering the news. Praising the murders of Jews is indistinguishable from journalism.

He puts all Palestinian journalists in the same bucket as himself. (And so does Al Jazeera.) Does that make him a racist?

The reality is that support for terror is a mainstream Palestinian opinion, across multiple surveys for decades. Sometimes the majority support terror, other times is drops to less than 50%, but it is always an accepted, popular opinion. Assuming that all Palestinians support terror is indeed racist, but understanding that there is a high chance that a random Palestinian who is hired for a position at a major Western media outlet might indeed be a terror supporter is prudent. As the New York Times has learned, vetting one's social media posts before hiring anyone is essential.

As far as the many who are claiming that Salem is the victim of anti-Palestinian racism, they are the ones who are racist - because they are claiming that all Palestinians support murdering Jews.

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!