Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 01, 2023

It’s Not a “Terror Attack.” It’s a Terror Attack (Judean Rose)

Justice Potter Stewart knew it when he saw it.

Scare quotes, according to the Oxford Dictionary, are “quotation marks used around a word or phrase when they are not required, thereby eliciting attention or doubts.” Perhaps nowhere is the use of scare quotes more galling than when used to justify Arab attacks on Jews. No one could possibly doubt that it is, in fact, a terror attack when an Arab shoots Jews dead in a Jerusalem synagogue on Shabbat. Yet despite this fact, a number of news reports placed the words “terror attack” in scare quotes, as if to cast doubts on the rightness or wrongness of the event. This malign and antisemitic practice of using scare quotes to excuse terror, is as common and familiar as terror itself.

Sometimes there is a thin line between scare quotes and just plain old quotation marks. There are also times when the intent is subjective, as in this Twitter exchange from 2016:

@epavard This is an actual quotation. These are not "scare quotes."
Did you actually read the story?
— Matt Lee (@APDiploWriter) April 18, 2016

I thought it was clear just from the title: Israel police: Explosion on Jerusalem bus was a “terror attack.” Seven years later, I still think those are scare quotes and I still don’t think I need to read the article. But perhaps I am jaded. Associated Press writer Matt Lee thought the quotation marks perfectly legitimate in that context—and I happen to like Matt Lee. He asks the most awesome, penetrating questions at State Department press briefings.

Speaking of which, the White House had no problem saying it like it is in its press release on the recent attack on a Neve Yaakov synagogue. No scare quotes in the title: "Condemning the Terrorist Attack in Jerusalem."

And none in the statement itself, which begins:

“The United States condemns in the strongest terms the horrific terrorist attack that occurred today outside of a synagogue in Jerusalem.”

Sky News, however, took the Matt Lee route, claiming the quote came from the police, as opposed to the sick and twisted mind of the writer or his editor:

Police said the gunman arrived at around 8.15pm local time (6.15pm UK time) on Friday and described the shooting as a "terror attack".

Same deal with the Independent—and oh, by the way, Neve Ya’akov is not a settlement, but a Jerusalem neighborhood:

Israeli police described the shooting as a “terror attack” and said it took place at a synagogue in the Neve Ya’akov settlement.

The BBC, of course, is always first and worst, this time suggesting that while Israel called the dude who killed Jews in shul a “terrorist,” it ain’t necessarily so:

The man who attacked the synagogue on Friday was identified by local media as a Palestinian from East Jerusalem, who police described as a "terrorist".

The BBC, of course, has a vested interest in using scare quotes in this context. They would like you to think that the shooting was in self-defense, or that a gun went off by accident, or perhaps even that murdering Jews is a mitzvah, because Jews live on land Arabs want.

What was disappointing this time was the use of scare quotes by the Washington Free Beacon, often fairer than most when reporting on Israel:

Israeli police described it as a "terror attack" and said it took place in a synagogue in Neve Ya'akov.

Here too, the quotes are subject to interpretation. The journalist can always say he is quoting the police. But the lack of context is troubling. It is too easy for the reader to conclude that the shooting was not motivated by terror and might even have been justified.

From the standpoint of the journalist, quotes from officials lend authority to a report. Here, however, the quote does no such thing, because it’s not really a quote. Like Judge Potter Stewart, I know it when I see it, in this case, a quote. Which leads us right back to scare quotes.

Any reporter worth his salt knows that the writing should always be clear and without any taint of bias. For this reason, a good writer always tries to get into the head of the reader. Here, the report needed to be unambiguous. There should have been an effort to remove all doubt from the reader's mind, because the shooting was, in fact, a terror attack, by even the most objective standards.

And of course, there is always another way for a writer to say something. If you get stuck for words, have a cup of tea and try again, for goodness sakes. Rather than sow doubt and suspicion against the yahud, be on the side of truth, and state it as fact:

Israeli police have confirmed that a terror attack took place in a Neve Ya’akov synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Pointing out the word "Palestine" before 1948 is not the win the idiots think it is

Rabid Israel hater "Rabbi" David Mivasair tweets what he considers to be a "gotcha" for Zionists:

I love this old menu on the wall of a Jewish deli in my hometown of Baltimore. It tells quite a story. "Buy Palestine Matzo"

Anyone need to have that explained?

I'm always amused when I see modern antisemites triumphantly bring pictures of old coins or stamps that say "Palestine" as if that means there was a state of Palestine before 1948.

I mean, does Mivasair think that Jews in Baltimore considered buying matzoh from an Arab country a selling point? There were lots of Jews in Egypt, Iraq and Syria at the time - but no one in the US cared about buying their matzohs!

"Palestine" was simply the English translation of "Eretz Yisrael" before 1948.

But for those who really love to see the word "Palestine" used before 1948, here are some great examples:

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!

02/01 Links Pt1: So Long as Palestinians Celebrate Bloodshed, Peace Will Remain Out of Sight; UNRWA is Part of the Problem – Not the Solution

From Ian:

So Long as Palestinians Celebrate Bloodshed, Peace Will Remain Out of Sight

When, in 1998, a Palestinian was fatally stabbed in Jerusalem—apparently by an Israeli terrorist—the country’s president visited the victim’s widow and the Defense Ministry gave his family a six-figure compensatory payment, akin to the support given to Israeli victims of Palestinian terror. Last Friday, the victim’s grandson murdered seven people leaving a Jerusalem synagogue. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to his spokesman Ned Price, hoped during his trip to Israel and Egypt this week that he could “put an end to the cycle of violence.” Stephen Daisley observes:
On Friday night, in Jenin, Ramallah, Nablus, and east Jerusalem, Palestinians gathered to celebrate the synagogue murders. Crowds set off fireworks, started bonfires, fired their weapons into the air, honked car horns, and chanted. In Hebron they handed out sweets to children while in Gaza cries of “Allahu akbar” boomed from mosque loudspeakers. . . . Hand out enough candies and pastries every time an Israeli is murdered and you will teach your children that killing is sweet. The lesson will not go unlearned.

Hello “cycle of violence,” my old friend; I’ve come to talk with you again. Except, it’s not true. It’s not a cycle of violence. It’s a choice of violence, a choice Palestinians keep making.

When Jerusalem assures foreign audiences there is “no partner for peace,” it is a well-worn talking point but it is not easily rebutted. Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, will not visit any grieving widows after Friday night’s attack. The Palestinians will pay no compensation to bereaved Israelis—they couldn’t afford to. The Palestinian Authority operates a Martyrs’ Fund that pays stipends to the families of Palestinians captured or killed while carrying out terrorist attacks against Israelis. In 2020, the fund disbursed 597 million shekels (£139 million) in such payments. Sweets for the children, shekels for their widowed mothers.

Where does this get the Palestinians? Nowhere near a state, nowhere even close to the conditions necessary to achieving one.

Gil Troy: After Jerusalem terror attacks, some in the West lack empathy for Israel - opinion

SO FAR, these Jewish Blame-Israel-Firsters remain a minority. Most American Jews I know, meet and read about in surveys remain proud and protective of Israel. Therefore, although I resent the disproportionate attention the hypercritics command within the community and beyond, I resent even more their supersized self-righteousness and the feeble pushback they increasingly receive.

I share Prof. Ruth Wisse’s consternation – and fury – that, as she wrote in Sapir in 2021, “No other minority in America is ‘in sympathy’ with the war against its members – not African-Americans, Latinos, or Asians, not Native Americans or gays. Only the Jewish Left and their liberal fellow travelers capitulate in the old ways.”

his betrayal by these un-Jews – intellectuals and leaders, often on the Jewish dole, undoing the core Jewish consensus around Israel and Zionism – is even more outrageous because the forces gunning for Israel are not just anti-Jewish, not just anti-Zionist, but illiberal, anti-American, undemocratic and totalitarian.

Let me be clear. I seek vigorous debate regarding Israel, Israeli democracy, Israeli policies, Israel’s leaders and Israel’s attitudes and actions toward the Palestinians and others. Healthy identity Zionism requires a big tent like Abraham’s, open on all four sides – or we suffocate. But just as no tent can stand without its poles, no community can survive without some boundaries.

I attack those delegitimizers who repudiate what Israel is, not what Israel does. I condemn those demonizers who inject irrelevant race-based analogies and critiques of Western actions into Zionism’s unique story. And I challenge communal leaders, living off sacred Jewish dollars, to stop building relationships with Israel only through breast-beating without cheerleading, especially because there’s a bigger, more honest and far more inspiring story to tell.

It’s a story of how our youngest, newest martyr, Asher Natan, lived – not just how he died – loving Torah, loving life, perpetually smiling. It’s a story of our latest heroes, from the anonymous officer who shot the Ir David terrorist while absorbing life-threatening wounds, to this paramedic Fadi Dekidek who explains: “Jews save Arabs; Arabs save Jews,” while calling Magen David Adom “an example for the whole world.”

I hope this violence moves our government to slow down its bulldozing ways and keep us united. I hope it challenges the sky-is-falling gloom-and-doomers to protest without shouting loudly, hysterically, democratically, that Israeli democracy is over.

But I also hope this bloodstained moment, outside a synagogue, on Shabbat, 78 years after Auschwitz’s liberation, reminds those American Jews flirting with anti-Zionism to sift right from wrong. Israel is more humane and democratic than ever. We are all stronger, safer, better, with a robust, safe Israel. And we still all are one – Am Yisrael Chai.

UNRWA is Part of the Problem – Not the Solution

The United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has once again requested international financial aid. This is the same organization whose workers have been promoting violence and antisemitism on social media.

UNRWA has since done absolutely nothing to help the "refugees" move on with their lives and seek a better future for themselves or their families.

"Almost all of [the incorrectly labeled Palestinians in Gaza] have been born in Gaza, their parents have been born in Gaza, their grandparents have been born in Gaza... they were never displaced an inch. Yet, every day they hear, they learn, and they get an official stamp from the UN agency that says: 'That's not your home. You might have lived here all your life, but your home is there, just across the fence. That's your real home [Israel], and it was taken from you." — Einat Wilf, former Israeli Member of Knesset, December 1, 2015.

The Geneva-based independent human rights group UN Watch has uncovered evidence of UNRWA staff incitement which clearly violate the agency's own rules as well as its proclaimed values of intolerance for racism, discrimination or antisemitism.

Meanwhile, in 2021, the US government confirmed its "failure to ensure that taxpayer aid dollars sent to the Palestinian government did not ultimately make their way to terrorists."

Terrorist groups in Gaza, such as Hamas, have continued to build terror tunnels under UNRWA schools, to use the children as human shields if Israel retaliates after it is attacked -- as Hamas member Abu Khaled, openly admitted in December 2021.

"UNRWA's procurement contracts suggest that funds are already flowing to PFLP affiliates," wrote foreign policy expert Julia Shulman.

"[T]he Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act (PATA).... prohibits assistance to the PA unless the administration certifies that 'no ministry, agency, or instrumentality of the Palestinian Authority is effectively controlled by Hamas'" — Matthew Zweig, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, June 2021.

Commenting on the Biden administration decision to restore the financial aid, UN Watch said that now is the time for the US to demand that "neutrality, accountability and transparency" Secretary Antony Blinken paraded.

It does not seem, however, that UNRWA has taken far-reaching and drastic measures to end the incitement to violence and antisemitism. In fact, it has not taken any at all.

It is clear that UNRWA, like many other UN agencies, has become part of the problem, not part of the solution. Instead of seeking ways to solve the problem of the so-called refugees, UNRWA has perpetuated and inflated it.... Instead of promoting peace and non-violence, UNRWA employees have been doing the reverse.... UNRWA donors might consider these evasions before they sign the next check to one of the UN's most incompetent and corrupt organizations.

What Muhammad Aliwat learned in school

Muhammad Aliwat, the 13-year-old Palestinian attacker who ambushed and seriously wounded a father and his son at the entrance to the City of David Friday night, used his school notebook to leave a message for his mother that reads: “God, or victory, or martyrdom. Forgive me, mother, you’re going to be proud of me.”

The 8th-grader, reportedly a student at the Al-Furqan Islamic School for Boys in the Shuafat refugee camp, which uses the Palestinian Authority’s curriculum, has had quite an education in martyrdom, jihad, and antisemitism this school year and last. For example, he studied comprehension through a story promoting suicide bombings, in which Palestinians “cut the necks of enemy soldiers.” In Islamic education, a textbook devotes an entire chapter to teaching that martyrdom is “obligatory,” that it brings honor, glory, and promises entrance to paradise. Those who do not sacrifice themselves are weak.

Jews are depicted as conspiratorial, powerful, evil, and impure, posing a threat to the sanctity of Islam. A teacher guide for the 7th grade teaches that Jews crushed children’s heads, set them on fire, and threw them into wells. Even the science classes Aliwat attended take advantage of the opportunity to teach hate. He learned Newton’s Second Law through the action of a slingshot aimed at soldiers, and biology through a violent clash with the IDF that asks about its effects on one’s bodily organs.

This is a small sample of some of the violent and inciteful material Aliwat was presumably exposed to in the Palestinian Authority (PA) curriculum this year and last; material taught by teachers whose salaries are supported by the European Union, Germany, and other nations. It is the curriculum taught by UNRWA, whose biggest financial supporter is the United States.

UNRWA has been caught twice in the last two years by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Education (IMPACT-se) teaching its self-produced hate material. Its response was a half-apology followed by outright denial.

Education is the imparting of a society’s common knowledge and traditions to the next generation – it is the most important task adults have, it is a core task of government, and it is strategic.

Was a 13-year-old Palestinian incited to terrorism by UN schoolbooks?

After a young Palestinians shot two Israelis in Jerusalem, proclaiming he wanted to die 'a martyr', our Calev Ben-David reflects on the issue of incitement to terror that is often found in Palestinian school curriculums — including at UN-run schools.

"Jewish settlers" taking over the UAE? US-based pan-Arab newspaper upset over a mezuzah

Watanserb is a popular US-based Arab news site. They have a new, breathless story based on a tweet by Israel in the Gulf showing UAE's Chabad Rabbi Levi Duchman:

The tweet prompted one of Watanserb's top stories:

In the manner of “soft settlement,” Jews residing in the United Arab Emirates continue to buy homes to live in, at a time when Israel is demolishing the homes of Palestinians in the occupied territories and the homes in Gaza.

The “Israel in the Gulf” page, the mouthpiece of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, published on its Twitter account a picture of one of these houses.

Rabbi Levi Duchman appeared next to a girl carrying a paper scroll, and wrote a comment saying: "Little by little, the number of Jewish homes is growing in the Emirates , the country of tolerance."

...In the past two years, since the so-called Abraham Accords that brought an influx of Jewish and Israeli tourists and businessmen to the Emirates, the local community has grown by hundreds of people, Rabbi Levi Duchman, the chief rabbi of the United Arab Emirates, told Yedioth Ahronoth .

And the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Arab countries led to the flourishing of Jewish life in the Gulf - according to the newspaper's expression - where it became possible to walk around with the "kippah" - the hat of the Jewish extremists - without fear, celebrate at Jewish weddings, and enjoy Jewish "kosher" food , and a way of life that Israelis did not dream of in the streets and cities of the Gulf before.

Their caption on the photo was "Rabbi Levi Duchman and a scroll bearing Talmudic inscriptions."

Yup, the Jews are extremist Talmudic settlers in the UAE, ready to take over!

The article even says most of the Jews living in the UAE come from United States, Argentina, South Africa, France and England, not Israel. But they are Jews, and therefore a danger to Arabs.

At least to those who read Watanserb.

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There was a very revealing thread by academic fraud Noura Erakat, who calls herself a "human rights lawyer:"

Palestinians under siege, subject to killing by world’s 11th most powerful army & deputized settlers but news producers want me to come on air to comment on Palestinians celebrating the killing of 9 Israeli settlers?
Why this pathology of Palestinians and apology for apartheid? Why exceptionalize this Palestinian expression when you know full well ANY human who lived under such devastating circumstances without an army or international protection would similarly respond to this operation?
It's the combination of absolute removal of context, together with dehumanization of Palestinians that makes media more interested in examining Palestinians as hateful, blood thirsty rather than absolutely emblematic of humanity.
Only in this context, are news media more concerned about sporadic Palestinian operations aimed at resistance to apartheid, than an Israeli government & society that has caged 2 mil Palestinians in Gaza, suffocates children with tear gas, shoots to kill over 1 Palestinian a day.
I shared this with the producer who rushed off the phone. Shocking.
We should be invited to comment on the situation and context, not to spend air time being a corrective and scrutinizing the segment itself.

Erakat is angry that a TV producer wants to frame Palestinians as hateful and bloodthirsty - and then justifies Palestinians being hateful and bloodthirsty.

She is saying that Palestinian celebrations on the death of Jews targeted outside a synagogue is perfectly normal and "human." She claims that any human would act that way.

Would they?

A Google search of "celebrate terror attack" finds that the overwhelming majority of examples refers to Palestinians. When they are filtered out, all the remaining hits are Muslims - and the only cases I can find of handing out sweets are Hezbollah supporters in Lebanon also celebrating a terror attack in Israel.

Did Jews celebrate the Allied firebombing of Dresden, Germany in 1945, killing tens of thousands of civilians? No - no one did.

Erakat's thesis is a lie. But it is one she clearly subscribes to herself - she is saying that she felt the same joy that other Palestinians did, and she is irritated that she has to explain to dense reporters why this bloodlust is normal and Israel targeting terrorists is the real crime.

Notice also that she doesn't frame the Jerusalem massacre even as something distasteful. She justifies the massacre itself as a "Palestinian operation aimed at resistance to apartheid." To her, murdering Jews is not an outrage but an act of heroism, and Jewish worshippers are themselves the enemy to be killed, no different than a soldier.

This is not what a real human rights activist or human rights lawyer would ever say. Erakat is a fraud as an academic, as a lawyer and as a human being.

(And, no, the famous photos of children in Northern Israel under rocket attack in 2006 and Sderot residents watching Israeli airstrikes in 2014 are not Israelis celebrating the deaths of civilians.)

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On Monday, Human Rights Watch's Omar Shakir - a BDS advocate who was hired by that organization not in spite of but because of his rabid hate for Israel - spoke at Yale University about Israel's "apartheid."

During the course of his speech, he predictably engaged in the usual anti-Israel lies, based on the slanderous idea that Israel's non-equal treatment of non-citizen Palestinians is meant to be a system of Jewish supremacy over Arabs.

But then, while actually speaking at Yale, Shakir said the most self-contradictory thing possible:

Shakir then transitioned into a discussion addressing the issue of the academic freedom and space to speak about Palestine on American campuses, with specific reference to Harvard Kennedy School’s fellowship offer, retraction and reoffer to leading human rights advocate Kenneth Roth.

“What happened to Ken has been happening to academics who are critical of Israel and speak out for Palestinian rights, and young academics and Palestinians are facing the worst,” Shakir said. “Things are changing [and] the conversation is changing and the arc of history is bending, [but] this is happening at the very same time that the situation on the ground is getting worse and worse everyday, so we live in this dichotomy”

If the Zionists have such a stranglehold over academic freedom, how did Shakir manage to speak at Yale?

OK, maybe it is only on some campuses - like Harvard - that the Zionist overlords ensure that the campus only allows pro-Israel, anti-Arab messages to get to the students.

Oops, nope:

Join us for this coming year’s Arab Conference at Harvard, to be hosted between March 3-5, 2023 at Harvard University.

Previously known as the Harvard Arab Weekend, the Arab Conference at Harvard (ACH) is the largest pan-Arab conference in North America, bringing together over 1300 students and professionals as well as a 20,000-strong livestream audience from across the U.S. and globally to learn from leaders in a diverse array of sectors.

Strange "silencing" of pro-Palestinian voices at Harvard.

But perhaps these events are not academic events - and professors are silenced on campus as to what they are allowed to teach; that anti-Israel academics are severely limited in their "criticism of Israel."

Nope again.

The very same Omar Shakir who is telling roomfuls of students that academics who are critical of Israel are being silenced and their careers jeopardized tweeted this the very same day:

Yes, an entire course at Bard College by a well-known anti-Israel professor dedicated to spreading a message of racist Jewish evil towards Palestinians.

That instructor, Nathan Thrall, is so silenced for his views that he wrote a huge anti-Israel article for the New York Times Magazine filled with anti-Israel and pro-BDS lies.

The idea that anti-Israel opinions are silenced is a clear falsehood. But in the milieu of the "progressive" Left, victimhood is the coin of the realm, so the Israel haters and modern antisemites have to claim that they are being oppressed while at the same time bullying and shouting down any Zionist voices on campus.

The entire anti-Israel movement is predicated on lies, and they know that no lie is too absurd to be believed if it is repeated and amplified enough.

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!

01/31 Links Pt2: Anti-Semitic Cleric Stephen Sizer banned until 2030; Muslims help shut down protest, burning of Torah scroll in Sweden; “You People” Normalizes Farrakhan’s Views On Jews

From Ian:

Yishai Fleisher Podcast: David Friedman, the fight for campus and remembering the ‘Baba Sali’

Yishai is on the road again! This week, he speaks with former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman about the state of the Abraham Accords; Rabbi Schneur Oirechman of Chabad Tallahassee who is fighting assimilation; Florida State University student David Glasser, who is dealing with antisemitism; and Joel Griffith, who celebrated Israel’s new coalition with Young Jewish Conservatives at a swanky hotel rooftop in Miami.

Plus: Exodus Torah and the Yahrzeit of the “Baba Sali,” Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira.

The Yishai Fleisher show is a popular English-language podcast exploring Israeli life, politics, and Jewish thought. Drawing on his experience as a journalist, legal and biblical scholar, IDF soldier and spokesman for the Jewish Community of Hebron, Yishai sheds light on everything from global and Middle East news to weekly Bible/Torah study, health, family and of course, the amazing rebirth of Israel.

Muslims help shut down protest, burning of Torah scroll in Sweden

In the joint statement, the Swedish Jewish communities and Amanah said that “it is with deep concern that we once again witness islamophobic hate manifestations in the streets of Sweden. Once again racists and extremists are allowed to abuse democracy and Freedom of Speech in order to normalize hate against one of the religious minorities in Sweden, by burning the Quran.”

“Our tragic European history has taught us that book burnings often signal the onset of the normalization of hatred towards a group in society,” the statement said. “Historically against Jews and currently against Muslims. Not recognizing these manifestations of hate as an expression of threats and incitement against ethnic groups constitutes neglect of history,” the statement of Jewish leaders said.

They concluded by saying that they wish to express their “support to the Swedish Muslim Community and clearly state that every action and sign of prejudice and hatred is unacceptable.”

According to Swedish DN news, an Egyptian writer is a 34-year-old man whose name wasn’t published. He told DN that he was advised against carrying out his plans by representatives from the Islamic League in Stockholm's mosque, and was quoted saying that “they [the Islamic League] say it is against Islam and I wouldn’t be representing Muslims when burning a copy of the Torah outside the Israeli embassy.” He added that “it's okay – I would be representing myself.”

According to Swedish media, the 34-year-old Egyptian writer submitted an application for a police permit to hold his demonstrations on Saturday, January 28 at 1 p.m. Yet he told DN on Thursday afternoon that he has decided to postpone his planned actions “for a couple of weeks.” According to the report, he was also approached by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who asked him to “tone it down.” According to Rabbi HaCohen, a further meeting with the author and Muslim leadership took place, through the mediation of Amanah, in which he decided to cancel the request entirely.

The 34-year-old explained to DN that he is “tired of his tax money going towards protecting right-wing extremist Rasmus Paludan's repeated Quran burnings,” most recently outside the Turkish embassy. His actions are intended to claim that Swedish law is hypocritical.

“You People” Normalizes Farrakhan’s Views On Jews

The following movie review began with angry texts I sent to friends and colleagues yesterday, as I was watching You People, the number one movie now streaming on Netflix. It premiered on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I’ve got to hand it to them on the timing: nothing says #neveragain like #rightnow.

There are numerous spoilers below, but when a movie starts out so rotten, it is impossible to ruin it. If I had to sum up the most basic problem with You People, it wouldn’t be the abundant Holocaust jokes, like Ezra buying a small diamond for his fiancé, and deciding that he’ll lie that it’s his grandmother’s “from the Holocaust.” You know, “the Holocaust” – the get out of jail free card for every Jew.

It’s also not that the Jewish parents in the film are played by actors whose families used to be Jewish, generations ago, but then assimilated into extinction. No, the main issue with You People is that everyone in the film loves Black culture and no one in the film loves Jewish culture. In fact, they hate it.

In an age of celebrating marginalized identities, how could it be that that one identity would be lauded while the other would be highlighted for its guilt (Ezra’s grandmother in the opening Yom Kippur synagogue scene (incorrectly) tells him that he can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery due to his tattoos), its shame (Ezra refuses to wear a yarmulke during Yom Kippur services after his mother asks him to), its sexual violations (after services, Ezra’s orthodontist offers to examine his genitals, other members of the synagogue say sexually inappropriate things), its big-nosed Jews (both of the Jewish women Ezra dates have prominent noses), and its money-loving Jews (in his first date with a Jewish girl, she comments how exciting it must be that he gets to work with so much MONEY everyday!)?

Because in You People, Jews are not considered a marginalized group. Instead, they are white, rich, privileged and responsible for the suffering of marginalized people in the world. And the way they get to this reality is by continuously lying and misrepresenting the Jewish past and present. So let’s jump right into the lies and misrepresentations.

Drawing by an AI tool; been using them more and more lately.

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The last time we looked at Jordanian columnist Bassam Al Yassin, he was spewing Nazi-level Jew-hatred:

The Jew is the epitome of evil and deceit, a professor of greed and deceit, a genius who plots against creation, a superman who spies wherever he is. The Jew is selfish, self-centered, and believes that God created no one but Him, and that the goyim – other peoples, were created to serve Him. That is why the Jew lives behind a false mask of oppression and the Holocaust.

He remains a columnist at Sawaleif, of course. Today he writes, "All of humanity has come together and unanimously agreed that the Jews are behind all the destruction and sabotage on earth, and the leaders of the invisible, murderous hand in the world."

So it is no surprise that he fully supports murdering Jewish civilians as he praises Jerusalem murderer Alqam Khairi:

A man who defeats an army, washes away the shame of a nation ...It is not terrorism nor an “attack on the civilized world”, but rather a sacred right guaranteed by God to the oppressed on earth.

Who else - Oh Alqam - embodied the resistance, and made the Jews taste the bitterness of bark, without slogans. You alone ignited a revolution without microphones, and exposed the security cooperation between the regimes and the Zionists, with a smuggled gun. Blessed are you in martyrdom, and the highest levels of Paradise are permissible for you. God gave you the task when the nation neglected it.

Your legitimate project: A homeland without Jews and a nation without borders... #Palestine without occupation and a citizen without humiliation. The hidden truths were revealed, and the hidden scandals spread under false names, foremost of which was the fear of the normalizers against the Jews as if they were angels, not murderers. And it was the distinguishing mark, between those who worship God and exalt His name in His exaltedness, and those whom the White House kisses, may God curse him.

Just "anti-Zionism," right?

The silence from the self-described "anti-Zionists" in the face of consistent, public Jew hatred in Arab media proves that their avowed opposition to antisemitism is mere words.

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!

01/31 Links Pt1: A tale of two massacres; Did Fatah's military wing just declare war on Israel?; Blinken laments deaths of ‘innocent Palestinian civilians’ in meeting with Abbas

From Ian:

Do Peace Negotiations Prevent Terror?

The implication of Shotter’s take is that during times when there is hope of a peaceful resolution to the conflict, the Palestinian appetite for terror will wane — a correlation that is wish-casting at best, and one, as we showed regarding the Second Intifada, that is not supported by the events of the late 90s and early to mid 2000s.

The generation that participated in the terror of the 2000s was the Oslo generation — those who not only saw their leader shake hands with Yitzhak Rabin, but experienced the fruits of negotiations in the form of IDF withdrawals from large swaths of the West Bank, and Palestinian Authority control of major Palestinian population centers. Those Palestinians of course also saw Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, a unilateral concession that resulted in the rise of Hamas, an Islamist extremist group committed to Israel’s annihilation.

None of this is to suggest that peace negotiations between the two sides aren’t extremely important. It’s meant to emphasize the absolute folly — given the last 30 years of Israeli-Palestinian history — of concluding that despair over the absence of a diplomatic horizon is what drives otherwise normal people to murder innocent men, women, and children at restaurants, bus stops, and even outside Jewish houses of worship.

Brendan O'Neill: A tale of two massacres

Western politicians who went online to express horror over the slaughter in the synagogue found themselves bombarded by ‘pro-Palestine’ people asking: ‘And what about the killings in Jenin?’ Some media outlets hinted at a moral equivalence, or at least a moral link, between the Jenin clash and the synagogue killings. In its report on the synagogue slaughter, the BBC said ‘tensions have been high since nine Palestinians – both militants and civilians – were killed during an Israeli military raid in Jenin’. Have we really lost the ability to morally differentiate between an armed confrontation between soldiers and militants and the mass murder of unarmed civilians in their place of worship? These are not the same thing. In any way.

Listen: when people are targeted in a synagogue, they are targeted because they are Jews. The slaughter on Holocaust Memorial Day was an act of racist barbarism, akin to the grim assaults on Christian churches in Sri Lanka or mosques in New Zealand. ‘Explaining’ the synagogue massacre as if it were a normal or even understandable expression of the broader tensions gripping the Middle East shows just how unhinged anti-Israel sentiment has become. It is shocking that this needs to be said, but nothing – not the events in Jenin, not Israel’s recent incursions into the West Bank and Gaza, not the Israeli settlements – makes the mass murder of Jews for being Jews a comprehensible thing.

The past week suggests that the anti-Israel fury of influential Westerners is no longer just strange and prejudiced – it’s dangerous. It seems increasingly clear to me that the reimagining of Israel-Palestine as a war between dark and light, between the world’s most wicked state and the world’s most victimised people, is helping to nurture new and ever-more crazed forms of violence in the region. After all, if you are evil, then anything done against you can be justified, right?

So committed are some in the West to the narrative of Israeli evil and Palestinian good that they hold up Palestinians as the pitiable victims of massacres in the very week when it was Israelis, Jews in fact, who were the victims of a massacre. Their devotion to the ideology of Israel-hate clearly takes precedence over everything, even truth. That there has not been more moral and historical angst in the West over the massacre of praying Jews on Holocaust Memorial Day is abominable. It is a blot on the Western moral conscience. It tells us more about us than we would care to know.

PMW: Did Fatah's military wing just declare war on Israel?

The military wing of Abbas’ Fatah Movement, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, announces “an open war”:
“We will continue the resistance, we will continue our heroic operations (i.e., terror attacks), until removing the occupier from our land. This is an open war, and tomorrow Tel Aviv will declare mourning”
“We the brigades… announce the escalation of the military activity… This is a comprehensive and open war”
“We swear that we will make the Zionist enemy and its flocks live in fear… we will turn wherever they are into a fiery hell”
“Let them prepare for the fire of rage and for the storm of the brigades, Fatah is coming to them, and not one of them will get out of it safely.
Taste the rage of the brigades – this is an open war – this is an open war, see you have been warned”
“The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades – when they speak, they act, when they promise, they carry it out, and when they strike, they cause pain”

Terror organization PFLP on murder of 7 in Jerusalem:
“May the arms that carried out this operation be blessed… May this group of Jihad fighters be blessed… May this resistance be blessed… which has turned the night of the Zionists into day, and into lava erupting before the oppressor”

Blinken laments deaths of ‘innocent Palestinian civilians’ in meeting with Abbas

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his sorrow Tuesday for the “innocent Palestinian civilians” killed over the past year in the West Bank, after meeting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Washington’s top diplomat met Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah on the penultimate stop of his Middle East tour aimed at curbing bloodshed and rising tensions, following meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, senior Israeli ministers, President Isaac Herzog and opposition leader Yair Lapid.

Israel says most of the over 30 Palestinians killed since the beginning of the year were participating in clashes with the Israel Defense Forces, though not all of them. A 60-year-old woman was shot dead during a military raid in Jenin last Thursday during which eight others were killed, most of them terror group members. Also last week, a father was shot dead by troops at a checkpoint in front of his son in an altercation that the army afterward said should not have ended in his death. More than 170 Palestinians were killed in 2022 — most of them while carrying out attacks on soldiers and civilians, though some were uninvolved civilians — making it the deadliest year since the United Nations began tracking in 2005.

“Palestinians and Israelis alike are experiencing growing insecurity, growing fear in their homes, in their communities and in their places of worship,” said Blinken.

The US envoy’s remarks alongside the Palestinian leader came a day after he met with Netanyahu, when he urged both sides to take “urgent steps” to calm tensions.

Blinken expressed “sorrow for the innocent Palestinian civilians who have lost their lives in escalating violence over the last year.” He also condemned Palestinians “who celebrate… acts of terrorism that take innocent lives,” in the wake of a deadly shooting Friday near a synagogue in Jerusalem — the deadliest terror attack against Israelis in over a decade.

In meeting with Blinken, Abbas again says Israel responsible for violence

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday again held the Israeli government responsible for the escalation of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

He also accused Israel of undermining the two-state solution and violating the signed agreements with the Palestinians.

Abbas’s latest allegations came during a meeting in Ramallah with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

A senior Palestinian official said after the meeting that Blinken did not carry anything new. “We didn’t hear new ideas or proposals,” the official said. “We also didn’t hear anything new about our demand that the US administration fulfill its promises to the Palestinians.”

Abbas lamented the absence of US and international pressure on Israel “to dismantle the occupation and end settlements.”

Abbas said the continued opposition by the US and other parties to the Palestinians’ diplomatic offensive against Israel in international forums and courts encourages Israel “to commit more crimes and violate international law.”

Who could possibly think that supporting the slaughter of Jews is antisemitic?

The reaction from "anti-Israel" cartoonists to the terror attack murdering Jews on Friday night prove, yet again, that this is pure antisemitism.

Cartoonist Emad Awwad published a cartoon Sunday showing a devil with a kippah and a menorah as a tail, with the caption "Global terrorism," to say that the real terrorists are the Jews.

He followed that up today with a cartoon symbolizing Jews being slaughtered with the caption, "Freedom for Palestine."

Carlos Latuff, who has trafficked in significantly disgusting antisemitic tropes in the past, re-posted this older cartoon to say that murdering Jewish civilians is a moral obligation.

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!

Palestinians extol murdering Jews as "art" on Twitter

Over the past day, a Twitter trend became popular where people would caption posts "The artist....The art" showing a picture of an artist and their artwork. It is a nice meme that highlights and promotes artists of all kinds and ages, and their art.

Naturally, in yet another manifestation of the sickness of their society, Palestinian antisemites extended the meme - to portray terrorists as "artists" and their murders as "art."

Here's one showing a generic Palestinian terrorist and a (presumed) bus bombing in Israel (although I am not sure that the photo is really from Israel at all.)

This one, gathering hundreds of retweets and thousands of "likes,", shows the terrorist who shot dead 7 Jews last Friday and his supposed "art" of the dead Jews he slaughtered (in reality, that photo is of the Jews who tragically died in the Meron stampede in 2021).

This one shows Uday al-Tamimi, who murdered female Israeli soldier Sgt. Noa Lazar last year, and the blood-soaked scene of his attack at a Jerusalem checkpoint.

Imagine the uproar if Israelis did this with photos of dead kids in Gaza. But for Palestinians, such a trend is not only ignored by the media, but celebrated by the Palestinians and modern antisemites themselves.

(h/t @iTiIL972)

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!

Before MEMRI, there was The Middle East Record.

Starting in 1960 (I'm not sure how long it lasted for), a group of Israelis issued detailed analysis of the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, and also translated articles and radio broadcasts from the Arab world and the general region. It's annual report was over 700 pages.

People who claim that Arabs aren't antisemitic and only anti-Zionist clearly don't read MEMRI or Palestinian Media Watch or this blog. But it would be hard for them not to admit that the examples brought here, from the Egyptian (UAR) "Voice of the Arabs" broadcast in 1961, are not pure antisemitism:

ARAB VIEWS OF JUDAISM, ZIONISM, ISRAEL

In March-April, Ahmad Sa'id, the director of the Cairo "Voice of the Arabs" broadcasts, devoted a series of talks to the "Jewish story throughout the world." Following are the major points in these talks as recorded by the BBC Monitoring Service:

The "Depravity of the Jews." Sa'id rejected the claim that Zionism was established to end the persecution of the Jews (V of A, March 4-5 [7]). The Jews, he said, had a traditional solidarity and a hostility to all that was non-Jewish; this went back to rabbinical precepts, which had urged them to disregard all moral considerations in their pursuit of riches (V of A, March 6 [8]). Jews had always been skilled in imposing conditions on the countries and peoples among whom they lived; dur-ing wars they welcomed invaders and had themselves caused many wars. (V of A, March 7 [9]) The ancient high priests of Israel (Arabic: ahbdr) introduced into Judaism things to arouse the feelings of the Jewish people and prompt them to seek means of dominating the Christians and all other peoples, particularly when the tide of belief in Judaism was halted with the birth of Christ. (V of A, March 9 [11])

The "Immoral Teachings of the Talmud." The Talmud said this to the Children of Israel, Sa'id continued:
Every Israelite should endeavour to prevent other nations from becoming sovereigns on earth; the Children of Israel must have absolute authority wherever they may be. Without this they are considered exiles and captives. When the real Messiah comes, the awaited victory will be realized. The Messiah will then accept gifts from all peoples, and reject those of the Christians. The nation of Israel will then be extremely rich, because it will have acquired all the wealth of the world.

The Talmud states, Sa'id continued, that in God's eyes an Israelite is respected more than angels, and that the difference between Israel and other nations is as that between men and animals. According to the Talmud and the high priests of Israel, theft from the foreigner is no theft, but simply a restoration of Israel's property. An Israelite may not make a loan to a foreigner except with interest. Jewish religious authorities said: An Israelite may cheat a customs inspector outside the pale of Israel's laws, and may take a false oath provided he can succeed in his lies. God commanded the Jews to take interest from the Gentile, and not to lend him anything except on this condition; "otherwise, we would be helping him, while it is our duty to harm him." The Israelites meet every week and boast among themselves about the acts of cheating and trickery they have committed.

Finally, the Talmud says: The oath taken by an Israelite in his dealings with other peoples is no oath, because he would be making an oath to an animal; and an oath to an animal is no oath. Sa'id concluded: These are a few of the main points which the high priests introduced into Judaism, revealed in the true Torah. They sought thereby to create a people devoid of moral values, who would rob other peoples of their riches and dominate their fortunes and destinies. (V of A, March 9 [11])

A prominent Shaykh of Al-Azhar attributed similar sayings to the Talmud (Akhir Sdah, Jan 11, in an article on alleged forgeries of the Qur'an). It was reported in Cairo that parts of the Talmud were being translated for dissemination in Africa; according to this report the Talmud assured of Paradise whoever killed a non-Jew. (Ahram, Jan 20)

The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" —"The Basic Zionist Document." ...At the Basle conference in 1897, Jews adopted both public and secret resolutions. The secret ones, however, had leaked out; they were "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." The Zionists decided to fight virtue and honesty, to present religion and morality as old-fashioned, to encourage the use of alcohol, to destroy moral sense, to dominate the press, to raise prices to meet wage increases, and to encourage foreign countries to fear their neighbours, so as to make them devote their resources to arms.

Zionism and the Power of World Jewry. Ahmad Sa'id said that Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, had planned that the Zionists should hold the economic and political reins of the big Powers: statistics showed that the Zionists controlled a great many newspapers and news agencies in Britain, the USA, France and South Africa. (V of A, March 15 [17]) The Jews in France had been able to gain control of the French economy, and consequently of the media of information, including three radio stations, as a result of having pretended to embrace Christianity when threatened with anti-Jewish measures by Louis XII. (V of A, March 16 [18]) In America the Jews became so powerful that as early as 1789 Benjamin Franklin, in one of his speeches, re-ferred to "the Jewish danger." (V of A, March 17 [20]) In Britain there were 450,000 Jews, who despite their small numbers dominated many commercial houses and most of the organizations in direct contact with the public. British Jews, Sa'id said, were more intelligent than Jews elsewhere; they were aware of the British people's dislike of any interference in their affairs, and therefore adopted British nationality. (V of A, March 19 [21]) Said said that Britain had acted as a guardian of world Zionism when it was administering Palestine (V of A, March 26 [28]). He said that Zionist propaganda used to allege that the Arabs had sold their land willingly, because of the high prices offered; in truth the British had collaborated with the Zionists to compel the Arabs to sell the land. (V of A, April 3, 4 [6])

"Zionist Plot For World's Nuclear Annihilation." An article in the [semi-official] Al-Gumhuriyah attributed to Zionism a plot to annihilate the world with nuclear weapons. The writer cited four "facts" in support of his theory. (1) The aim of world Zionism, the writer alleged, was to sow destruction in the world in order to dominate it. In support of this "fact" the writer purported to quote Winston Churchill from an alleged article on world Jewry in the "Sunday Herald of Feb 8, 1920" saying that this "brutal movement" intended to establish "a new world society on the basis of tyranny, hate and sucking the blood of the peoples." Also, a Rabbi had allegedly written in the "American monthly Century of Jan 1928" that the Jews were behind all the wars and great revolutions in history, had sown among the gentiles the seeds of anarchy and despair, and were still ruling them. (2-3) The Jews had originated the atomic bomb— the article mentioned Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer—and in order to make sure of the destruction of the world, the Jewish Rosenberg family had handed the atomic secrets to Russia. (4) President Harry Truman had given the order to drop the atomic bombs on Japan in "his capacity as a Zionist agent."

The more you study, the more you see that there is no distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism - the stated foci of the hate are supposedly different but both of them are genocidal philosophies centered on 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!

01/30 Links Pt2: Norway's sovereign wealth fund is engaging in antisemitism; ‘Whispered in Gaza,’ the final interviews; Why American Jewish politicians have rushed to defend Ilhan Omar

From Ian:

Silent Victims

For centuries Jews were perfect victims who harmed nobody – perfectly moral, but utterly powerless, moving from country to country as strangers in foreign lands, subjected to discrimination ranging from expulsions, pogroms, quotas in schools, clubs, the workplace and some. It may surprise many that up until the 1970’s such quotas existed in the UK and America. Eternal scapegoats for failing leaders, Jews are accused for being too rich, too poor, too foreign, too swarthy, too white.

The Holocaust is not just one of the world’s incessant wars, not just another injustice amongst many. It is the ultimate crime specifically aimed at Jews that sets it apart, not beginning in 1939, but an historic trail of Jewish persecution over two thousand years. A persecution that involved the unimaginable savagery executed by cultured criminals, humiliating and dehumanising Jews – savagery – cutting off noses and breasts, gang rape even after death – much more too vile to contemplate.

In his poem ‘In The City of Slaughter’ Bialik wrote how Jewish women were systematically defiled, assaulted, raped, mutilated, left to bleed to death in filthy cowsheds. Often their husbands were forced after such gang rape, to have public sex with their dying wives. This happened not in third world savage jungles, but in cultured Europe – Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Estonia, Ukraine – and ultimately en route to the death camps of Europe as Germany set forth to create its perfect Aryan race, not thousands of years ago, but in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, within living memory of our grandparents and parents.

That’s the fate of the silent victim, prey to the want of tyrants and savages, with a leadership that sees the solution in acquiescence. It’s the state of education about the Holocaust – teaching children about the Kindertransport only as a virtue saving children, but failing to educate why even young babies were sent by their parents into an unknown world with strangers, to be raised by foreigners speaking a different tongue, often with a different religion, never to see their parents again, parents killed, not by accident, but wilfully tortured and exterminated by the cultured savages of Europe – murderers, listening to Wagner in the comfort of their warm homes after a day’s killing, homes furnished with looted belongings of their Jewish victims, their wives adorned with Jewish jewels and furs, stuffing down sumptuous dinners as Jews slept 12 to a bunk with hardly a gangrened crust in their bellies, freezing in the midwinter snow, dying from dysentery and fear induced dementia

The Jewish martyrs of Iraq will not be forgotten

January 27, is a day with a painful memory for the Jews of Iraq. It is the day when nine Jews were executed fifty- four years ago. Their bodies were hanged from the gallows in al-Tahrir Square in Baghdad and Um al-Broom in Basra. There was also a 10th victim whose father was Jewish. Here we republish a summary of articles written by David Kheder Basson in the Arabic medium Elaph detailing the full horror of the hangings, and the subsequent murder of over 40 Jews:

In the first five years of the Baath regime (1968-1973), the remnants of the Jews of Iraq, numbering around 3,000 people, were subjected to a vicious campaign of executions, killings, tortures, kidnapping and ad-hoc arrests, aside from discrimination and persecution.

In the autumn of 1968, a frenzied campaign against the Jews of Iraq began. Dozens of Iraqi Jews from all social classes and ages were arrested again. Some of them were accused of spying for Israel and subversion. The government carried out campaign of executions and physical liquidation in prisons. The Jews were helpless in a game whose real aim was to intimidate the Iraqi people and Baath opponents by picking the most vulnerable minority in Iraq, knowing that no one will dare to object or to voice protest.

The arrest campaign began in September 1968 when four Jews were arrested and disappeared without trace. Rumors started circulating that they were in Qasr Alnihaya (the Palace of the End) – a royal palace that was used as an infamous prison and where people were tortured and killed. Weeks later we heard that seventeen Jews from Basra had been arrested and brought to Baghdad on charges of spying for Israel; ten of them were students. The number increased over the next weeks to more than thirty people.

Most of the accused who were tried in January 1969 in a revolutionary court, headed by an army guy called Watwout, were tortured and had to confess that they were spies, except for Naji Zilkha, Charles Horesh, Zaki Zitou and Abdel-Hussain Nur Gita who refused to obey the instructions and insisted on their innocence despite the severe torture they were subjected to, according to the testimony of prisoners who were with them. The court appointed a defense lawyer who was apologetic that he had to defend spies, instead of trying to show that the accusations were false and that confessions were made under torture.

Jonathan Greenblatt: Norway's sovereign wealth fund is engaging in antisemitism

Two decades ago, I co-founded Ethos Brands based on the principle that a company can do well by doing good. We sold bottled water and used the profits to bring clean drinking water to children in need around the world. Our plan was successful: not only did we raise awareness about the world water crisis and donate funds to communities in need, but we were also acquired by Starbucks.

This same philosophy drives the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement, a significant and growing segment of the capital markets. Over the past few years, the ESG movement has encountered spirited opposition from those who argue that a company’s sole obligation is to maximize profits for shareholders – not be concerned about, for example, the needs of a broader set of stakeholders.

While I disagree with much of ESG’s critics, I hope we all – ESG proponents and opponents – can agree that ESG should not be a Trojan horse for antisemitism and hate. Yet, that is precisely what is at risk with an expected decision by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, one of the world’s largest investors, to divest its holding in Israeli banks in the coming days.

Norway's sovereign wealth fund is engaging in economic warfare
Attacking the banks of a country is a form of economic warfare. It is next level – a drastic measure normally reserved for the most virulent actors on the world stage. Such a move by Norway will invigorate the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a radical campaign that aims to delegitimize and isolate Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, including by manipulating ESG.

There was a time in recent memory when Norway was an honest broker in the region. Through its sponsorship and facilitation of the ground-breaking “Oslo process” in the early 1990s – which led to the first Israeli-Palestinian agreement; the establishment of Palestinian self-governance through the Palestinian Authority; and broad acceptance for the importance of working towards a two-state solution – Norway was a creative and constructive force for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation.

Divesting from Israeli banks because they offer services in the West Bank is antithetical to this legacy. It is an act that punishes both Israeli and Palestinian businesses and consumers. Moreover, this ill-conceived and counterproductive investment decision does nothing to promote positive initiatives that could ameliorate the conflict, or improve the situation on the ground.

We do not know the personal motivations of the so-called Council of Ethics at the fund that is making this recommendation, but what we do know, is that singling out companies that happen to be located in the Jewish state is as prejudicial as singling out people who happen to be Jewish.