Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, November 25, 2022

11/25 Links Pt1: Phillips: The humbug of the West over murdered Israelis; New US Palestinian affairs representative bodes ill for Israel; Kanye West takes white nationalist Nick Fuentes to dinner with Trump

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The humbug of the West over murdered Israelis

To Western liberals, the suffering of Israeli victims at the hands of the Palestinian Arabs is all but invisible. So too is the suffering of Palestinians under their own leaders.

Western liberals appear not to see that Palestinian leaders jail, torture and kill their own people. They don’t see Palestinian attacks on Christians or Druze. They don’t see Hamas throwing gays off roofs to their deaths.

Last month, Ahmad Abu Marhia, a gay 25-year-old Palestinian Arab living under asylum in Israel in fear for his life at the hands of his family and residents of his village, was abducted and beheaded in Hebron.

The liberal media was mostly silent. There were no demonstrations on American campuses. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides tweeted his horror at the murder but conspicuously failed to say the victim had fled his Palestinian village for sanctuary in Israel because he was gay.

Western liberals have fixed in their heads the falsehood that Palestinians are the oppressed victims of Israel and therefore can do no wrong. In parallel, these liberals have blanked Israel out of their moral universe, so that Israelis don’t have the same right to exist as Western liberals do themselves.

How can we explain this astounding and shocking mindset?

The history of the Jewish people tells us that when cultures are beset by terrifying forces apparently beyond anyone’s control, Jews are identified as the cause. Pinning the blame on the Jews is how the simple-minded have tried to make sense of incomprehensible threats for generations.

But there’s always a catalyst: The people who actually point the finger at the Jews and incite the mob against them. In the Middle Ages, it was the Church. In the last century, it was Hitler. Today, it’s the Palestinian Arabs.

The common factor is their psychotic demonization of the Jewish people. Yet there is an even more devastating connection.

War was waged against the Nazis to defend the free world, which was duly saved from invasion, enslavement and tyranny. The war was not waged, however, to save the Jews. Indeed, the West shut its eyes to the extermination of the Jews, of which Western leaders were made well aware at the time.

Much of the West regarded Hitler as a monstrous aberration who managed to brainwash the Germans into supporting his psychotic ravings. But in the Middle East, the Palestinian Arabs were Hitler’s legion. They were led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who pledged to exterminate every Jew in the Middle East if Hitler won the war.

JPost Editorial: West Bank lawlessness is a threat to Israelis and Palestinians alike

The PA is the recipient of huge largesse internationally. Probably per capita, the West Bank has received more international financial support than any other place in the world over the last decades.

This has included European Union support for Palestinian police institutions and US support for the Palestinian Security Forces.

However, despite almost two decades of all this support for law and order and institutions, basic things like treating a victim of a car accident and not letting a body be kidnapped from a hospital elude their security forces.

This kind of lawless criminal behavior is not an aberration. Recently, Israel and the PA have been forced to take on the gunmen of the rogue Lions’ Den group in Nablus.

This is in addition to the daily raids in the West Bank under Operation Breaking the Wave that the IDF undertakes.

It was one of these raids that led to the death of Shireen Abu Akleh in a gun battle between Israeli forces and Palestinian terrorists – that has resulted in international condemnation of Israel and even an FBI investigation of Israel’s actions.

The lawlessness, therefore, is not just a threat to human life and a violation of basic rights of human dignity, such as being treated in a hospital; it is also responsible for incidents that are of international importance to Israel.

The lawlessness could also represent an emerging threat to Israel and the Palestinians. This is because it appears there is a flood of illegal firearms in the West Bank.

The images of Palestinians killed in recent gun battles with Israeli forces has illustrated that many of the Palestinians have access to an arsenal of M-16s and other types of arms.

The men who use these weapons are now turning them on the PA and seem to be taking over more areas in the West Bank, exerting more influence.

With the leadership of the PA aging and increasingly out of touch with average people, the institutions decaying and lawlessness spreading, it’s imperative for all those who care about peace and stability to focus on reducing the role that lawless gangs, armed men, militants and terrorists are playing in the West Bank.

Israeli authorities coordinate with the Palestinians on a variety of issues, as the return of Ferro exemplifies.

However, both sides, as well as the US, EU and other international players, need to take a realistic assessment of how we can improve the situation.

Ruthie Blum: New US Palestinian affairs representative bodes ill for Israel

The promotion this week of Hady Amr, who’s been serving as US deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli and Palestinian affairs since President Joe Biden’s inauguration nearly two years ago, is the latest example of Washington’s disastrous Mideast policies. But at least the heretofore non-existent role that was concocted for the Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer more accurately describes his true leanings, as well as those of his bosses at Foggy Bottom.

The only thing that this already obvious and therefore unnecessary transparency required – other than an undoubtedly handsome pay hike for the proud author of the Brookings Institution’s 2004 report, “The Need to Communicate: How to Improve US Public Diplomacy with the Islamic World”– was the dropping of “Israeli” and addition of “special representative” to his title.

It’s not a shabby career elevation for the founding director of Brookings’ Doha Center in Qatar, among whose additional works for the dubious think tank include “The Opportunity of the Obama Era: How Civil Society Can Help Bridge Divides between the United States and a Diverse Muslim World.”

NOR DID the timing of the announcement to Congress on Tuesday about Amr’s newfound position seem to cause Secretary of State Antony Blinken the slightest bit of embarrassment, despite virtually coinciding with a vile act of Palestinian aggression in Jenin against Israel’s Druze community. It also preceded by less than 24 hours a double bombing in the Jewish state’s capital, which left 16-year-old Aryeh Shechopek dead and some 20 other innocents wounded.

About the latter, Blinken declared in a statement on Wednesday: “The United States stands resolutely with the people of Israel in the face of the terrorist attacks that occurred this morning in Jerusalem. We express our condolences to the family of the deceased and wish all victims a speedy recovery. We remain in close contact with our Israeli partners and reiterate that our commitment to Israel’s security remains ironclad.”

He failed to mention the previous day’s murder of 18-year-old Tiran Fero from the town of Daliat al-Carmel in the Haifa district. The Israeli-Druze car accident victim was being treated for multiple injuries at the Ibn Sina Hospital in the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Jenin, the area of the crash, when gun-wielding terrorists stormed into his room, threatened the relatives at his bedside, pulled the plug on his ventilator and snatched him from the premises.

Caroline Glick: The face of the Palestinian war of succession

Rather than kill each other, Palestinian terrorists seek to build their power and influence by murdering Jews. The more Jews the various factions murder, the more powerful they become. This conceptual model explains both the expanded involvement of the P.A. directly in attacks, and the rise overall in attacks. It also explains why Iran has decided to get involved directly in Palestinian attacks. Iran’s regime wants its proxies to replace Abbas, and by getting involved in directing their attacks, Iran increases its chance of taking over. Indeed, the nature of the Palestinian power struggle is tailor-made for the mullahs.

Since all the Palestinian factions share the same enthusiasm for killing Israeli Jews, none of them has an ideological problem with accepting Iranian money or guidance for the operations. If Iran wants to take over the Palestinian theater, now is the time to act. So it is.

These circumstances are rife with strategic implications for Israel’s war planners. But specifically with regards to the Palestinians, they expose the utter futility of the Israeli left’s hopes of disengaging from the Palestinians by among other things, withdrawing from Judea and Samaria along the lines set out by the Oslo peace process and supported by the Biden administration.

Israel cannot stand back and watch the Palestinians kill each other because that is not what they are doing now, and it is unlikely that that is what they will be doing after Abbas dies. Instead, we are likely to see more of what they are doing now, and worse. After Abbas passes away, Palestinian factions, including the P.A., will continue to compete for power and turf by killing Israelis, wherever they are.

Given this reality, the only way for Israel to defend itself in the short and long run is by ending the conceit that the P.A. is a legitimate governing body and carrying out a military operation that will dismantle the P.A. militias along with the rest of the terror groups operating in Judea and Samaria. For a short while, Israel may need to take on functions of civil governance in the Palestinian population centers. But once it asserts its full security control over the areas, will be able to delegate those powers to local leaders.

In light of the Biden administration’s obsessive support for the Palestinian Authority, and its refusal to acknowledge either the P.A.’s central role in cultivating hatred of Israel and Jews as the central organizing principle of Palestinian society, or the true nature of the power struggle already going on among the Palestinian terror groups, such an Israeli move can be expected to provoke an angry response from Washington.

But Wednesday’s attacks in Jerusalem are a clear indication that Israel’s incoming government will have no choice but to order such an operation sooner rather than later. To this end, upon assuming power, the incoming Netanyahu government will have to embark on a two-pronged strategy. It must prepare contingency plans for taking over the Palestinian population centers by force. And to the extent possible, it must prepare the ground diplomatically for the inevitable.

By Daled Amos

In the aftermath of the recent elections in the US and Israel, something is in the air. Recent actions by the Biden administration seem to point not only to a new level of animosity towards the Jewish state, but also to new levels of double standards being applied to Israel.

The US Department of Justice recently informed Israel that the FBI is going to open its own investigation into the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. This comes after the State Department announced months ago that it was satisfied with the results of the IDF's own investigation, which found that an Israeli soldier may have inadvertently shot Abu Akleh, but unintentionally. The White House claims that this new decision was made without its knowledge and that even US ambassador Nides was originally unaware of the decision.

Putting aside the level of ineptitude this implies on the part of the Biden administration and how this leaves the US soldiers open to requests for similar investigations in the future, the question remains: why should the US request for an investigation of the death of a US citizen be limited just to Abu Akleh?

Isn't there a murder of another US citizen that the Biden administration can pursue?

So while The Washington Post claims that Accountability is justified — and needed — in a U.S. reporter’s death:

Arnold Roth asks whether it is equally reasonable to ask the same of Jordan:

Would The Washington Post publish this editorial:

The Washington Post would not publish such an editorial.
And the Biden administration has taken no interest in extraditing the murderer of this US citizen (not that previous presidents did either).

Already, another has also asked for the US to extend this newfound quest for justice to their case as well.

Last week, Tamir Avichai, Michael Ledigin and Moti Ashkenazi were murdered in a terrorist attack in Ariel. In an unusual move, the US ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, made condolence calls to the families of all 3 men, including the family of Tamir Avichai in Kiryat Netafim -- in the West Bank. The US embassy made clear that the visit did not indicate any change in US policy towards the West Bank.

Avichai's brother made use of the visit to make a special request from the US ambassador:

According to the statement, Avichai's brother, Neriya, told Nides that the family demands that the U.S. investigate the killing: "You were able to launch an investigation of the journalist [Shireen Abu Akleh], so be fair and launch an investigation here, too." [emphasis added]

Of course, since none of the 3 men are dual citizens of the US, the request will be ignored.

But by the same token, now that the White House has appointed Hady Amr as Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs, in order to "engage closely with the Palestinians and their leadership and...continue to engage with Israel on Palestinian-related issues" -- wouldn't that be a great opportunity for the US to take a more active role with the Palestinian Authority to encourage Abbas to prevent terrorist attacks and to investigate them?

Or at least to convince Abbas to stop paying Palestinian terrorists and their families, encouraging more Palestinian terrorist attacks?

Another double standard in US Middle East policy showed up in the Biden administration's condemnation of Itamar Ben-Gvir when he attended a memorial service for Meir Kahane, a week after the Israeli elections.

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price condemned Ben-Gvir's appearance there, saying that "celebrating the legacy of a terrorist organization is abhorrent."

"There is no other word for it – it is abhorrent. And we remain concerned, as we’ve said before, by the legacy of Kahane Chai and the continued use of rhetoric among violent right-wing extremists," Price said, adding that Washington has listed the group as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization.

The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), a pro-Israel group that represents over 2,000 American rabbis responded to the criticism with claims that the White House was guilty of a ludicrous double standard:

Attending a memorial for a murder victim is hardly ‘celebrating’ terror, especially as Ben-Gvir carefully said that he did not agree with the deceased’s positions. But more significantly, if the US Department of State were genuinely concerned with support for terrorism, it would not be enhancing its relationship with the Palestinian Authority, much less providing funding that ends up indirectly financing its infamous ‘Pay to Slay’ program." [emphasis added]

The Biden administration is clearly making an effort to overlook Palestinian terrorism as it increases funding to the Palestinian Authority and seeks to shore up the validity of this kleptocracy.

Similarly, last week Biden made a point of supporting Saudia Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman by backing up the idea of granting him immunity from a lawsuit for his role in the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi. US officials even went so far as to claim that bin Salman had personally approved the murder.

While on the campaign trail, Biden had no problem condemning the crown prince and promising to make him a pariah:

I think it was a flat-out murder. And I think we should have nailed it as that. I publicly said at the time we should treat it that way and there should be consequences relating to how we deal with those — that power.

Of course, now that the Biden administration needs Saudi influence and oil, the president has reversed himself.

His reversal on Saudi Arabia is not much different from the way Biden has backtracked from criticisms he made of the Palestinian Authority when he was on the campaign trail.

While campaigning in Iowa, Biden criticized the Palestinian Arabs as easily as he condemned the Saudis. In December 2019, Biden denounced the Palestinian Authority in a way that he never has since becoming president. He criticized Israel about the settlements --

But Biden had perhaps even harsher words for the Palestinian Authority, seemingly blaming them for a failure to reach new peace accords. He said they still got “98% of what they wanted” when President Barack Obama was in office with Biden as his top lieutenant.

“They continued to insist on baiting everyone who is Jewish, saying they would not sign a deal with a Jewish state, will not recognize one even if we have an independent nation,” Biden said.

Biden said that, as president, he’d continue to push Israel to accept a Palestinian state, but added that he’s “tired of everybody giving the Palestinian Authority a pass … as if they’re not continuing to foment all of this.”

Now that he is president, Biden has not repeated those criticisms of the Palestinian Authority and is contradicting his earlier words by in fact "giving the Palestinian Authority a pass."

Biden is giving a pass:

to Jordan, which is protecting the confessed murderer of a US citizen
to Saudi Arabia, whose crown prince allegedly approved the murder of Jamal Khashoggi
to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, who reward terrorists and their families

And Israel?

The Biden administration's Justice Department is ignoring an investigation in which they participated and whose results they approved -- giving more ammunition to Israel's enemies.

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

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Survey shows antisemitism is widespread in the workplace, Jews are less likely to be hired

ResumeBuilders commissioned a survey of antisemitic attitudes of hiring managers and recruiters in the United States, and the results show that discrimination against Jews in the workplace is far more widespread than has been reported.

Nearly one third of the respondents, 32%, said antisemitism is "common" or "very common" at their workplaces.

Over a quarter of them, 26%, say they are less likely to move forward in the hiring process with Jewish applicants.

23% say they want fewer Jews in their industry, and an astounding 17% say that their leadership has told them to not hire Jews.

The recruiters and hiring managers make assumptions on who is Jewish based on the applicant’s educational background (35%), last name (33%), past or current experiences with Jewish organizations (28%), and even their appearance (26%). But some also make their assumptions based on antisemitic criteria, saying their assumptions are based on the job applicant's “voice,” “mannerisms,” or even saying “they are very frugal.”

When asked the reasons for not wanting to hire Jews, the answers were a summary of why people are antisemitic altogether. They included "Jews have too much power and control" (38%), "Jews claim to be the ‘chosen people’" (38%), and "Jews have too much wealth" (35%).

Is this discrimination coming from the political Right or the Left? The reasons given above seem to indicate it is the former, but that is not necessarily so.

The report notes that antisemitism is worse in industries that tend to be more politically liberal and that people traditionally associated with Jews. 48% of hiring managers in both education and entertainment say antisemitism is common at their workplace, while 45% of hiring managers in business say antisemitism is acceptable in their workplace.

Moreover, Resumebuilder has had other surveys done recently of recruiters and hiring managers, and the results showed that they tend to lean left.

More than one-third of hiring managers are more likely to interview applicants who list their pronouns in their resumes. Additionally, 52% believe their company practices “reverse discrimination” in hiring; 1 in 6 have been asked to deprioritize hiring white men and 48% have been asked to prioritize diversity over qualifications.

It may be that the combination of companies demanding a more diverse environment and hiring managers' latent antisemitic attitudes work together to provide a perfect storm against hiring Jews, with diversity being used as a way for the managers to justify their antisemitic practices.

For comparison, studies show less than 10% bias against applicants who appear to be Black. Those results garner major headlines.

It is unclear what the geographic scope of the survey was. Resumebuilder itself is geared towards jobs in the United States. (I requested more data.)

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!

It used to be that Mahmoud Abbas, like Yasir Arafat before him, would issue a pro forma condemnation of deadly terror attacks against Israel.

As of this writing, he hasn't said a word against the twin Jerusalem attacks, nor the Ariel terrorist attacks.

He doesn't even pretend anymore to be against terror. Earlier this year he only reluctantly condemned some attacks when under pressure from Israeli and US officials.

Meanwhile, this article in Al Quds News is upset that the UAE and Turkey did condemn the Jerusalem blasts, calling it "normalization:"

The UAE and Turkey were not content with drowning in normalization with the "Israeli" enemy, in all fields, at the expense of the cause and the Palestinian people. Rather, they were quick and brazen to condemn the two heroic Jerusalem operations, which were carried out by the revolutionary Palestinian youth, in response to the crimes of the Zionist enemy against the Palestinian people and its desecration of the holy places.
...
Observers believe that these irresponsible positions come in the context of the state of submission in the positions of the current Palestinian leadership and some Arab and regional leaders, which come within the framework of the destructive settlement and normalization approach, describing the role of Turkey, which condemned the heroic operation, as "hypocritical."

They considered that the resolutions of international legitimacy affirmed the right of peoples suffering from occupation and aggression to resist it in all forms, especially armed resistance. Therefore, the response of our people and its rebellious youth to the occupation is a natural and legitimate response to the crimes of the occupation and its continuation.

As for the statements of condemnation by the normalizers with the entity of the Zionist enemy, (the UAE, Turkey and others), they are a sign and evidence of the level of weakness, humiliation, submission and shame of these countries in front of the Zionist enemy, and the total alienation from the issues of the nation and its center is the Palestinian cause, including the sanctities, especially the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is exposed by the daily desecration by settlers who do not hide their project to build the alleged Temple on the ruins of Al-Aqsa Mosque, which enemy governments are working to demolish, God forbid.

This is a mainstream Palestinian position.

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11/24 Links Pt2: Thanksgiving Reaffirms the 400-Year-Old US-Israel Nexus; Irving, Stewart and Chappelle and the Double Standard for Jew-Hatred

From Ian:

Thanksgiving Reaffirms the 400-Year-Old US-Israel Nexus

Thanksgiving was reportedly first celebrated in November 1621 by William Bradford, the leader of the “Mayflower” and the Governor of the Plymouth Colony.

He enhanced his appreciation of the Bible — and especially the Five Books of Moses — in Leiden, Holland, where he found refuge from religious persecution in England. While there, he heavily interacted with the Jewish community.

Bradford and the other Mayflower passengers perceived the 66-day-voyage as a reenactment of the Biblical exodus, and the departure from “the Modern Day Egypt,” to “the Modern Day Promised Land.”

As a governor in this new land, Bradford announced the celebration of Thanksgiving by citing Psalm 107, which constitutes the foundation of the Jewish concept of Thanksgiving, thanking God for ancient and modern time deliverance.

The epitaph on Bradford’s tombstone in the old cemetery in Plymouth, Massachusetts, begins with a Hebrew phrase — “God is the succor of my life” (יהוה עזר חיי) — as befits the person who brought Hebrew to America. He aimed to make Hebrew an official language, suggesting that reading the Bible in the original language yields more benefits.

The Hebrew word for Thanksgiving’s central dish, turkey, is “Tarnegol Hodoo” (תרנגול הודו), which means “a chicken from India,” but also “a chicken of gratitude/Thanksgiving.”

The Original Puritans

Progressive causes and Protestantism in the U.S. frequently went hand-in-hand, from Prohibition to expanded public education, as the 19th century became the 20th. Indeed, the Social Gospel movement, the inspiration for many of the reforms of the Progressive Era, was led in its early years by Congregationalist minister Washington Gladden. In his book, Rothman quotes George McKenna, author of The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism, on the art of the overlapping Gilded Age and early Progressive Era: “The Puritans’ ethic of self-discipline and austerity was reflected in the numerous paintings and sculptures of Puritans that appeared during this period.” If this seems somewhat paradoxical—the cultural exultation of sober self-reliance alongside the excesses of the robber barons—consider that the progenitor of the New Deal was the blue-blooded FDR, himself the son of a cradle Congregationalist.

Rothman has a theory behind what he sees as a shift, from the late-20th-century paradigm of conservative Republicans as the “Just Say No” party fearful that “someone, somewhere, may be happy,” to progressive “New Puritans,” who, he writes in his book, “are draining life of its spontaneity, authenticity and fun.” Contending in his book that while the Democratic Party had broadened its tent by the 1990s to include upholders of the ’60s’ revolutionary legacy, by contrast, in 2016, Republicans were nominating a three-time divorced Howard Stern Show regular. “Conservatives didn’t so much lose the culture wars as much as they simply fled the field,” he writes.

Of course, the actual spiritual descendants of the New England Puritans, who began as radicals in their native England, are Congregationalists like the United Church of Christ, who are themselves fairly progressive on social issues. And when the idealistic utopianism of the Transcendentalist movement arose in the 19th century, with a focus on the primacy of the self and individual personal experience, it did so in the old Puritan stronghold of New England. Among its most prominent spokesmen was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the son of a Unitarian (itself an outgrowth of Congregationalism) minister at the First Church of Boston, which had been founded by the Puritan John Winthrop of “City Upon a Hill“ fame. In his landmark address, Winthrop warned his fellow New England Puritans that the eyes of the world were upon them, and as such, righteous living was essential. The reward, he wrote, would be a New England that was “a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, ‘the Lord make it like that of New England.’”

“Today,” Rothman said in his message to Tablet, “as the left gravitates away from liberalism and toward progressivism, they are assuming many of progressivism’s conceits—chief among them, a messianic utopianism that views everything, even life’s most banal pleasures, through the prism of political activism.”

But contradiction is something the Puritans accepted as a fact of life. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” wrote the Apostle Paul to the young church at Philippi, and the Puritans took this charge seriously. “The [P]uritan life,” Winship writes, was “much more likely to involve protracted struggle with fear and doubt than it would a steady sense of God’s love.” They were a people ill-at-ease: with themselves, with each other, and with the wider world. That we perennially recast each other and ourselves in the New England Puritans’ story may suggest that the real mark that they left on the American character is something altogether more ambiguous than the saccharine annual depictions at Thanksgiving suggest.

The Case for Israel Celebrating Thanksgiving

Mark Twain wrote in his book Innocents Abroad about how desolate Palestine was when he visited in 1867, before the indigenous Jewish pilgrims and pioneers returned and made the desert bloom.

The success of Israeli agricultural innovation in feeding the people here, as well as in the Third World, is certainly worth celebrating. Israel’s successful hi-tech economy can be revered, as well as its unprecedented success in water conservation that would have made the environmentally conscious Native Americans proud.

Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl wrote in his 1902 book Altneuland that the Jewish state could transport water great distances. His vision and the success of the pioneers who implemented it could be celebrated on Thanksgiving in Israel.

Former diplomat Yoram Ettinger pointed out this week that William Bradford, the leader of the Mayflower and the Governor of the Plymouth Colony, interacted with the Jewish community and enhanced his appreciation of the Five Books of Moses in Holland before initiating the voyage.

“Governor Bradford announced the celebration of Thanksgiving by citing Psalm 107, which constitutes the foundation of the Jewish concept of Thanksgiving, thanking God for ancient and modern time deliverance,” Ettinger wrote. “Bradford was also inspired by the Jewish holidays of Pentecost (Shavuot in Hebrew) and Tabernacles (Sukkot in Hebrew), which highlight the importance of gratitude, and commemorating Thanksgiving for the harvest.”

Proper gratitude for the Land of Israel can be shown by eating turkey, whose Hebrew name, as Ettinger wrote, means both “a chicken from India,” but also “a chicken of gratitude/Thanksgiving.”

Thanksgiving falls this year on Rosh Chodesh, the celebration of the new Jewish month, when Jews say the Hallel prayer and its signature line Hodu LaHashem Ki Tov, which can be translated as “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good,” or “have turkey for God because it’s good.”

The final reason for celebrating Thanksgiving in the Jewish State is to remind the world and the often hostile international media that we – the People of Israel – are here in the Land of Israel, we belong here and we will always be here, even if we get bad press.

Lincoln, the Pilgrims and most of the Wampanoag are long gone, mostly due to tragic events that became part of history.

We the People of Israel have overcome countless tragedies, and yet we endure, which is clearly an excellent reason for us to be thankful.

Am Israel Chai!

The Kosher Turkey-Trot (c. 1912)

As I browse through old newspapers looking for interesting things to blog, I came across a story of a January 1916 banquet in Mexico, Missouri. One participant jokingly complained that he didn't get the chance to dance the "kosher turkey-trot."

Was that a real thing?

At first, I thought not. It seems to have been a lyric to a novelty song from 1912 called "At the Yiddisher Ball."

The lyrics:

In our neighborhood we have, what you call,
Once a year a sociable ball,
What a time, there's everything you wish
Ev'ry one is dressed from soup to fish;
You take Rifky, she looks pretty nifty,
Don't you mind to bring the lunch, it only costs you fifty;
There'll be wine and ev'ry thing that's fine
At the yiddish sociable ball.
CHORUS:
At the ball, at the ball, at the yiddisher ball,/
There'll only be class, or there'll be nothing at all,
And when that orchestra plays/ Yiddish kazotskys and Bombershays,
At the ball, at the ball, and the yiddisher ball

We'll make monkey doodles 'round the hall,
Out upon the floor I'll be Jakey on the spot,
Doing the kosher turkey trot,
At that first class yiddisher sociable,
(Remember, fifty cents admits the ladies and the gents)
At that first class yiddisher sociable ball.

VERSE 2:
I have tickets here I don't want to keep,
Say you'll come, I'll give you them cheap;
I'll sing there if you will surely come,
I'll knock them from the seats singing Chill-i-bom-bom;
A theatre won't be half so good
Don't stay away treat yourself just like you should,
Once a year, you know, you should appear
At the yiddish sociable ball.

I didn't think it was likely that this was turned into a real dance, but, apparently, it was ...at least once.

From Harvard University's Delta Upsilon Quarterly, 1912, a description of a friendly talent competition between Rutgers, New York and Columbia undergrads of that organization.

Columbia's entry:

Columbia pinned her faith on two performers, and they certainly were top-notchers! Sengstaken, at the piano, made that instrument do everything but talk, and to make up for that deficiency, "monologued" at the same time he played. Then Barrett sang two "Yiddisher" songs in true East Side style, and incidentally danced the "Kosher turkey-trot."

Columbia came in last place, behind Rutgers The New York chapter performed in blackface.

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

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Descendants Of Arab Conquerors Confused Why European Settlers In Americas Never Claimed Land Was Always Theirs (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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nice house car Washington, November 24 - The distant progeny of seventh-century invaders of the Levant from the Arabian Peninsula and of later immigrants from around the region voiced puzzlement today that the White people who colonized and eventually took over the New World have not followed the same playbook they themselves did, namely to insist that they were there since the dawn of time and therefore the only legitimate people with collective political rights in the area.

Pro-Palestinian activists and political figures wondered Thursday what might explain Europeans' collective neglect of a powerful tool in the rhetorical repertoire, namely claiming that one's people occupy the same territory since time began, and that others who make claims on that territory have no historical validity to do so - despite that claim flying in the face of all the evidence indicating that one's ancestors in fact came much later.

"It works well for us, and I can't imagine why Westerners don't do that same thing," stated Nour Erakat, a commentator and political activist. "It would be so much easier for the US, for example, to dismiss 'Indian' claims by calling those claims lies, as we do with Jewish claims to our land. My clan in particular came to Palestine in the nineteenth century, but that doesn't stop us from insisting we're the original inhabitants going back to prehistory. And that we always identified as 'Palestinian,' even though no native group ever referred to itself as such. It would be so much less complicated that the current mess those New World governments have to deal with, what with the treaties, reservations, and other hassles. Just get rid of those other people and say you were always there. What's the big deal?"

"I understand the Western reluctance to abandon the factual realm entirely," acknowledged James Zogby. "Without an anchor in documented history, the Western mind can't make coherent sense of the world. But with time, we can teach them to create narratives that do not rely on such a flimsy basis as 'facts' and 'evidence' - and that will free them to do as we have done, to deny the legitimacy of indigenous peoples restoring their political nationhood, by denying the historicity of any such nationhood."

"Also, if Muslims can claim pre-Islamic and Biblical figures as Muslim," he added, "why all the fuss over anachronism? Just call the Lenape New Yorkers and Seminole Floridians and be done with it. It works for Al-Khalil, Al-Quds, the Haram al-Sharif, and Al-Aqsa."

11/24 Links Pt1: Jerusalem Bombings Don't Mark Beginning of 3rd Intifada; Learn from the Druze and get results; Ending Jew-bashing at the UN; BBC pundit calls Jerusalem bombing 'Palestinian World Cup'

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Terror is still here, Israel needs secure government to stop it - editorial

Attacks that are carried out by lone attackers are usually more difficult to thwart. They can be perpetrated by people who wake up one morning and decide to try and kill some Jews without any prior warning. An attack like the one that took place on Wednesday is something else.

This was an attack that required the involvement of a number of people – to assemble the bombs and obtain the necessary ingredients, smuggle the bombs into Israel and plant them next to their targets.

This is already what is called “terrorist infrastructure,” the kind that likely is affiliated with a known organization, which should have been on the Israeli intelligence community’s watch list.

What this also shows is the need to focus now on establishing a government. The sooner there is a stable government in Jerusalem the sooner Israel will be able to create a clear strategy for how to stop the terrorist wave that is not going away. Fights about ministries and portfolios

Fights about ministries and portfolios might interest the politicians who are supposed to occupy those offices, but they are not of real interest to Israelis, who want to see safe streets and to know that their children – like Shechopek – are safe when they stand at a bus stop waiting to go to school.

Comments like the one made by an Army Radio reporter on Wednesday – that the attack was connected to the pending appointment of Itamar Ben-Gvir as the next public security minister – do not do any good. Neither are appearances at the scene soon after the crime by Ben-Gvir, who promised as presumptive internal security minister to wield an iron fist against terrorism.

After 75 years of statehood that has been marred by wars and terrorist attacks, we do not need to look for excuses for why Arab terrorists want to try and kill Israeli Jews. This has been part of the Israeli story since it was created as an independent state and will, sadly, likely continue as long as some of our neighbors refuse to come to terms with our existence here.

There was terrorism when there were left-wing governments in power and there was terrorism when there were right-wing governments. Israelis have not forgotten, for example, how Benjamin Netanyahu promised to topple Hamas in the Gaza Strip during an election campaign in 2009 and how through 12 consecutive years as prime minister he refrained from ordering the IDF to do so.

Netanyahu was quick to respond to Wednesday’s attack, saying his administration would once again make the country safe. What Israelis need right now is security, not boasting of how the incoming government is going to do things differently. Let’s hope they can put their actions where their mouths are.

David Singer: Ending Jew-bashing at the UN

The United Nations favourite sport – Jew bashing - was on full display this past week at the 77th Session of the United Nations Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) - which approved six draft resolutions - all highly critical of Israel.

One of these draft resolutions - approved by 98 voting in favour to 17 against, with 52 abstentions - was titled “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” (document A/C.4/77/L.12/Rev.1).

By its terms, the UN General Assembly would demand that Israel cease:
all measures that violate the human rights of the Palestinian people, including the killing and injuring of civilians,
the arbitrary detention and imprisonment of civilians,
the forced displacement of civilians
the transfer of its own population into the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”
and that:
“the General Assembly should request the International Court of Justice to render urgently an advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967”.

Vituperative verbal attacks on the Jewish State made by Bangladesh, Venezuela, South Africa, Iran, Libya, Niger, Türkiye, Algeria, Brunei Darussalam, Namibia, Indonesia, Kuwait, Japan, Qatar, Lebanon, Sudan, Malaysia and Yemen, all bastions of civil liberties, ensured Jew-bashing would continue at the United Nations whilst the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict remains unresolved.

It is unacceptable for the ICJ to deliver opinion on Israel, West Bank

THE HISTORICAL, political and legal issues are extremely complex. An Israeli take on them was set out in convincing detail in a recent study by Professor Abraham Sion, which he called, “To whom was the promised land promised?” Sion is a former deputy state attorney of Israel and is a professor emeritus of law at Ariel University. If the world were governed by reason, logic and conscientious adherence to the rule of law, Sion’s book would be a game changer.

He submitted the entire legal process leading to the establishment of Israel to meticulous forensic examination and he demonstrates beyond any doubt that judicial rulings from the UN, the EU, the ICJ and elsewhere have often been at odds with a scrupulous interpretation of their legal basis. Over the past few decades, international bodies have reached a consensus that the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem are Palestinian territories, and that Israeli towns and cities in Judea and Samaria are illegal. Sion uncovers the solid legal building blocks that have been ignored or overlooked and that prove different.

In short, he demonstrates with chapter and verse that the almost universally accepted consensus on Israel’s legal position regarding the West Bank, settlements and Jerusalem is legally flawed.

In undertaking his scrupulous legal analysis, Sion’s original purpose was to ascertain who owned the legal right to the territory of Mandatory Palestine under international law. He identified the two competitors as the Arab nation on the one hand and the Jewish people on the other. Concerned solely with the legal position and not with political or related issues, he set out to establish the legal rights under the international law of both parties.

Sion demonstrates that in concluding that Israel is illegally occupying territory, international bodies never refer to the treaties that shaped the legal structure of the Middle East. He shows that the rights derived from those binding international commitments were still valid when Israel occupied the West Bank.

Sion is not alone in reaching conclusions like these, but of course, they have never been tested openly in any international judicial forum. If in due course the UN General Assembly asks the ICJ for an opinion, how could the court possibly render a valid legal determination without having the issues raised by Sion and many others argued before it?

On the very day that the UN committee voted to appeal to the ICJ for an opinion – November 11 – the ICJ began public hearings in The Hague in a long-running dispute between Venezuela and the former British colony of Guyana on the issue of the border between them. Each party is presenting its case to the court in preliminary hearings scheduled to last until November 22. The proceedings are not only open to the public but they are being videoed and publicized widely on social media.

Times of Israel reports:

The United Arab Emirates is taking major steps to combat a regional culture of Holocaust denial in the wake of the 2020 Abraham Accords that normalized its relations with Israel.

Once entirely absent from the learning materials of children in the UAE — which also blacked out Israel from world maps and globes — the Holocaust is now set to be fully included in the curriculum, as the Gulf country moves to position itself as a regional peacemaker.

Emirates Leaks published this news with the headline "the new shame of normalization." It got picked up by Iraqi and Iranian Arabic media as well.

If teaching the Holocaust is considered a shameful act of normalization with Israel, then it follows that Holocaust denial is merely "anti-Zionism."

As always, there is no distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. And the Western anti-Zionists never, ever denounce the antisemitism in the Arab world.

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!

"Jews Need Not Apply" - antisemitic want ads from 1862-1939

New York Times, 1862:

New York Daily Herald, 1878:

Birmingham Daily Mail, 1880:

Sydney Morning Herald, 1883:

Glasgow Herald, 1884:

St. Louis Post Dispatch, 1888:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1895:

Philadelphia Inquirer, 1906:

Boston Globe, 1910:

Hartford Courant, 1923:

Asbury Park Press, 1931, in what may be the most fascinating of them all:

Kansas City Times, 1939, the latest one I could find.

The phrase "Jews need not apply" was so well known that it was the punchline to jokes, as this article in British newspapers in 1889 shows.

No major city's newspapers were immune from publishing the phrase.

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!

Often, when Israel-haters accuse Israel of some crime, they use terminology that they have given a completely different definition than it has in any other context.

This is quite deliberate. They first choose the crime they want to accuse Israel of, and then change the definition of the crime to fit (or pretend to fit) Israel.

Some examples include "apartheid," "racism," "colonialism" and "settler colonialism," "ethnic cleansing," "international law," and "occupation," which the haters have redefined at least twice.

Related is how the word "refugee" means something different for Palestinians than it does for everyone else.

These are all words with precise, legal meanings, whose very definitions are different when Israel is involved.

There are other, less precise words, that are also misused by the haters in ways that are not obvious unless one knows what to listen for. They include "justice" - no one is against justice, but only one side is allowed to seek it. Also "peace activists," "human rights activists" and "pro-Palestinian activists" that really mean "anti-Israel activists" (cf. the Mavi Marmara.)

These are the terms that have made it to the mainstream, despite their clear inaccuracies.

Palestinians themselves have plenty more absurd words they use and are trying to spread to be as mainstream as the others. They are just waiting for these terms to be used by first the far Left and eventually "human rights" organizations and mainstream media. These include "cultural genocide," "legitimate resistance," "holocausts," "peace activists," "storming," "Talmudic rituals," "settlers" (referring to any Jew in Israel,) "civilian," "child," "open air prison," "concentration camp," "Judaization," "indigenous," "struggle," "defense," "surrounded," "martyrs..." the list is really endless, and Orwell himself couldn't have come up with some of these.

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!

11/23 Links Pt2: Israel can’t ever be innocent; The Humanities and Social Sciences, Where the Antisemites Live; Did a 15th-Century Jew Beat Gutenberg to the Printing Press?

From Ian:

Israel can’t ever be innocent

Then Goldstone went and changed his mind and all hell broke loose. It took him a year and a half, but very publicly, in the Washington Post he retracted everything. “Civilians,” he wrote, “were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.” To everyone it came as a shock, to some a shock and a blow. They would not admit that Goldstone had changed his mind. Goldstone, on the other hand, could not have made himself clearer:
“I had hoped,” he said, “that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of even-handedness at the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.” (Washington Post, 1 April, 2011)

The credo, however, withstood the shock, as it had done after the hoax massacre. Amnesty would not settle for anything less than a crime. In Jenin its globe trotter wandered around looking for the corpses that Israel “hid.” Now a respected Jewish lawyer had gone and spoilt the plot. He particularly upset the resident expert at the UN Human Rights Council. Professor John Dugard took the position Amnesty had taken in Jenin: Israel can’t ever be innocent.

“He (Goldstone) could not possibly have meant that Israel did not “intentionally target civilians as a matter of policy” in the legal sense of intention. That Israel’s assault was conducted in an indiscriminate manner with full knowledge that its consequences would be the killing and wounding of civilians is a matter of public record fully substantiated by the Goldstone report and other, equally credible findings.” (The New Statesman, 6 April 2011)

The statement is interesting. Dugard is angry with captain Goldstone for saying that Israel was not guilty. Israel had not targeted civilians. Goldstone, he insists, could not possibly have meant that. Israel has to be guilty. And Dugard hits upon the oddest reason – Israel is guilty in the “legal sense.” It targeted civilians, in the “legal sense.” He could be speaking nonsense; Dugard won’t elaborate what that means. The burden of proof, in his law volumes, only requires that Israel can’t ever be innocent. Forget burden of proof, he thinks, look at the public record. For sure look – Eh, what is the public record, and where can it be found, “fully substantiated?” Retorts Dugard, ‘Where? Where else than in the report Goldstone signed, sealed and delivered. Ha, but captain Goldstone had second thoughts: no proof that Israel had done the deed. In plain English the verdict, said the captain of the crew, was mistaken. He retracts completely.

He can do what he likes, retorts Dugard. The captain did not sign the report alone. There were other signatories, not to mention “other, equally credible findings.”

The credo, ‘Israel can’t ever be innocent,’ seems to reduce the brains of a professor to pulp. Dugard the law professor is piqued into making a statement that would amuse his undergrad class. A report of an unsubstantiated crime, rubbished by a Jewish legal brain, must be treated as credible evidence of wrongdoing. Did not Amnesty declare similarly? Corpses not found are credible proof of a Jewish crime.

“In all of mankind’s history, there has never been more damage done than by people who ‘thought they were doing the right thing’.” Who said that? Lucy said it, when her pal Charlie Brown admits he took away small Linus’s blanket comforter. With that remark “Peanuts” cartoon strip creator, Charley Schulz, hit upon the dodgy ideologue and bigot that employs human rights for an excuse never to let Israel be innocent.

Clifford May: Why sic the FBI on the IDF?

The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented 13 reporters killed by the American military in Iraq. One example: In 2003, Tareq Ayyoub, a Jordanian working for Al Jazeera, was killed when an American missile struck the station’s Baghdad bureau. U.S. Central Command said that American forces were responding to enemy fire and that Ayyoub was caught in the crossfire. Al-Jazeera denied that any fire came from its building.

More recently, the United States has declined to cooperate with investigations by the International Criminal Court involving American troops and CIA officers accused of war crimes in Afghanistan. Neither the United States nor Israel recognizes the authority of the ICC.

So, why go after Israel? According to Axios, both the White House and the State Department have told the Israeli government that “they were not behind the FBI decision.”

Who was? Sen. Van Hollen has been adamant that the United States must distrust Israel. “There are a number of us that are not going to allow this to be swept under the rug,” he said at an August Senate sub-panel hearing that was intended to focus on China.

In September, he called on the United States to determine whether the IDF had “committed a gross violation of human rights” and should be denied further American military assistance as punishment.

Van Hollen even disputed the IDF’s claim—and the conclusion of the American three-star general—that Israeli soldiers were “returning fire” at militants, insisting that there is no evidence of “such firing at the time.” Perhaps he thinks Abu Akleh was in Jenin to cover peace talks?

He also might consider the root cause of this tragedy. Last week, two people were killed in Poland by what was likely a surface-to-air missile misfired by Ukrainians attempting to defend themselves from Russian missiles. Rep. Adam Smith, Democratic Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, observed that blame for the tragedy should fall on Russia for “invading and attacking Ukraine.”

As noted above, terrorists from the West Bank—members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups funded and directed by the Islamic Republic of Iran—have for months been infiltrating into Israel and murdering Israelis.

Why is Sen. Van Hollen giving them a pass? Could it be related to the fact that Israel is the world’s only Jewish-majority state? Does he believe that some lives matter less than others?

Final question: Did no one from the FBI or the Justice Department think to have a discussion with the White House or State Department before proceeding with a probe sure to damage America’s relations with its closest Middle Eastern ally?

The least bad—and perhaps most likely—end to this episode: The FBI takes one more look at the evidence, finds nothing new or surprising, and then quietly closes the case, confirming the conclusions of the USSC and the IDF.

Some of us, however, will continue to wonder: Why were Sen. Van Hollen and his colleagues so determined to sic the FBI on the IDF?

‘The Jews Are Guilty’: Christian Antisemitism in Contemporary America

Such biased thinking against the Jewish state will now be greatly enhanced through the recent appointment of the Reverend Dr. Jerry Pillay to become the general secretary of the World Council of Churches.[xxxii] A Presbyterian minister and academic dean at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, Dr. Pillay is on record supporting movements to boycott Israel and comparing what he calls ‘the exclusionary and violent character of the Israeli Zionist project’ to South Africa’s racial apartheid regime. Indeed, following a visit to ‘the Holy Land,’ in which he confesses he found nothing ‘holy,’ he reports that he and his fellow black South Africans discovered a situation there that was ‘worse than they had seen or experienced in South Africa.’ He has accused Israel of subjugating ‘the indigenous people of the land’ and urged Christians to ‘resist the empirical ambition of Israeli Jews.’ Other comments of his about Jews and Israel are in line with these, including that ‘Jewish leadership’ [helped] ‘influence European nationalism and colonization with a common desire to establish the state of Israel on the land of Palestine.’[xxxiii]

The World Council of Churches is a large organization representing an estimated 500 million Christians around the world. Never an Israel-friendly body, it is likely to become even less so under the Reverend Dr. Pillay’s leadership.

CONCLUSION
I began by referring to the defacement of a Holocaust Museum in Florida with swastikas and the words, ‘The Jews Are Guilty.’ The list of sins for which Jews are said to be guilty is long and growing. Also growing are the hostile passions that trigger heated accusations of Jewish malevolence. These passions are today widespread and intense and provoke a growing number of attacks on individual Jews, Jewish communal institutions, and Israel. In his early book on antisemitism, Jean Paul Sartre recognized the aims of such hatred: ‘What the antisemite wishes for, and prepares for,’ he wrote, ‘is the death of the Jew.’[xxxiv] We can add, ‘What the anti-Zionist wishes for, and prepares for, is the death of the Jewish State.’

To lend religious sanction to such wishes is obscene, but such obscenities, sometimes on open display, at other times dressed up in the language of religious piety, are now regularly and brutally directed at Jews and Israel. They are dangerous and must be vigorously and effectively opposed.