Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 02, 2023

Palestinian College Student Can't Decide Which Terror Group To Choose As Major (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Arab graduation Ramallah, February 2 - A sophomore at Bir Zeit University closing in on the deadline to select a focus for his course of study toward a Bachelor's Degree admitted today he feels too torn to decide among the options available: engineering murder against Jews by joining Hamas; engineering murder against Jews by joining Palestinian Islamic Jihad, engineering murder against Jews by joining Fatah; or engineering murder against Jews by joining one of the smaller, more niche jihadist groups vying for glory in the Resistance against Zionism.

Hamdi Halabi, 19, has already completed most of his core requirements plus a smattering of elective courses, and must now choose a major if he is to complete his degree in time - but the aspiring shahid acknowledged today that he hesitates to commit to any one course of training to kill Jews, for fear that he will regret his choice later when some other path he could have chosen proves more productive and likely to result in his achieving Palestinian immortality through the violent murder of Jews impudent enough to live proudly as sovereign Jews in the ancestral Jewish homeland, an affront that no Palestinian can take lying down.

"I'm having a hard time, weighing the pros and cons of each," he confessed. "The safe bet would be Hamas or Fatah, because they have the established reputations and the most robust resources for training and arms. Fatah, especially, pays you or your family after you conduct an operation to kill Jews. But there's stiff competition to stand out. I'm not a hundred percent confident in my ability to rise above the crowd. That's why I'm also considering one of the less-prominent groups to major in - big fish, small pond, you know the deal."

"It's too bad I'm not allowed to have a double major," he continued. "The rival departments don't like it - even though they try to claim credit for the accomplishments of students or former students from other departments. I can't even choose Fatah, Hamas, or PIJ and a major and one of the smaller organizations as a minor. I know all sorts of collaboration and cross-pollination goes on unofficially. Just not in a way that I can formally join."

Press time saw Halabi weighing the possibility of auditing some Popular Resistance Committee classes in which he couldn't officially enroll as a Hamas major. A friend also warned him that on occasion, students in rival tracks denounce one another to the administration as collaborators or homosexuals, resulting in the accused student getting expelled from the rooftop.

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!

02/02 Links Pt1: The Tragic Palestinian Children's Crusade; Biden Announces $50 Million UNRWA Funding; NGOs Blame the Victims: A False “Massacre” in Jenin and “Legitimate Resistance” outside a Jerusalem Synagogue

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: The Role of NGOs in Supporting the International Criminal Court (ICC) Investigation

On December 20, 2019, then Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Fatou Bensouda announced that she intended to investigate alleged war crimes in the “State of Palestine” and filed a request with the Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber to confirm her jurisdiction. On February 5, 2021, the Pre-Trial Chamber in a controversial 2-1 opinion confirmed the Prosecutor’s jurisdiction. On March 3, 2021, Bensouda announced the launch of a formal investigation.

This move is to a significant degree the product of consistent and heavy lobbying of the ICC for over a decade by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Throughout, these NGOs have been central to promoting the Prosecutor’s activities: lobbying the Court to accept the Palestinian Authority, filing complaints, representing “victims,” and submitting briefs. Key NGOs include Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, FIDH (France), and Palestinian and Israeli NGOs. The European Union, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and other European governments have provided tens of millions of dollars to anti-Israel ICC campaigns and lobbying. In some instances, the European funding was explicitly earmarked for NGO activities vis-à-vis the ICC.

According to the legal principle of “complementarity,” the ICC is only authorized to investigate when a country’s judicial system has proven unwilling or incapable of prosecuting cases that fall within the ICC’s jurisdiction. Even if there is evidence of alleged war crimes, the Court is supposed to respect serious local investigations.

Importantly, as part of the NGO Durban Declaration and accompanying BDS campaigns, advocacy organizations have sought to turn the ICC into a court of universal jurisdiction. Like their exploitation of the UN and other international frameworks, these NGOs seek to use the ICC for demonization and to brand Israeli officials as “war criminals.” In contrast, the ICC was created for the explicit and narrow purpose of prosecuting individuals accused of specified crimes, and not for political legal warfare.

NGO Monitor: NGOs Blame the Victims: A False “Massacre” in Jenin and “Legitimate Resistance” outside a Jerusalem Synagogue

On January 26, 2023, the IDF conducted a preemptive counterterror operation in Jenin, during which nine Palestinians – eight of whom were armed members of Islamic Jihad and other organizations – were killed. The Palestinian Authority, reviving the blood libel from Jenin in April 2002 (Defensive Shield), accused Israel of committing a “massacre” and Gaza-based terrorist organizations launched rockets at Israeli cities.

The next day (Friday night, January 27), a Palestinian murdered seven Israeli civilians outside a Jerusalem synagogue; a few hours later (Saturday morning, January 28) a 13 year-old Palestinian shot and wounded two Israelis in a separate incident in Jerusalem.

NGO responses to these incidents reflect an immoral agenda that stands in direct contradiction to the human rights mandate that they and their funder-enablers claim. Palestinian, Israeli, European, and international NGOs and their officials that commented on Jenin before the Sabbath terror attacks repeated the PA propaganda of a “massacre.”

Other NGOs appeared to justify the terror attacks in Jerusalem, or otherwise blamed Israel for the targeting of Israeli civilians. Even those groups that directly condemned the terror attacks simultaneously included condemnations of Israel. One NGO, the Rights Forum (Netherlands), bizarrely denied that the murder of Jews because they were Jews constituted antisemitism.

Importantly, several very vocal and active Israeli advocacy NGOs, including Adalah, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, and Yesh Din, appear not to have issued statements.

The Tragic Palestinian Children's Crusade

On December 12, 2022, 15-year-old Jana Majdi Zakharna was killed during an IDF operation in Jenin. The IDF's investigation revealed that the girl was shot to death on a rooftop as she stood in proximity to a Palestinian gunman who had opened fire at Israeli troops below and that she assisted the gunmen by observing the soldiers' movements.

The Telegram channel "Jenin Al-Qassam," which serves armed Palestinian groups in the Jenin region, has published instructions for "Jihad fighters" that deal with the use of children "to conduct visual observation and information gathering." The Telegram channel also noted that Jenin has a network of observation units staffed by "young people" assisting terrorist groups by documenting on video and delivering reports about the activities of IDF forces.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has written that under international humanitarian law, "Individuals whose continuous function involves the preparation, execution, or command of acts or operations amounting to direct participation in hostilities are assuming a continuous combat function."

Biden Admin Announces $50 Million in New UNRWA Funding

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday announced $50 million in new funding for a UN agency that is dedicated solely to the descendants of Palestinian refugees and which has been widely denounced for propagating antisemitism, eliciting rebuke from a top Senate Republican.

Speaking in Ramallah alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Blinken said that the money, alongside the $890 million the Biden administration has already provided to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) in the past two years, was intended to “rebuild” the relationship between the US and the Palestinian Authority.

“All of these steps are part of the longer term ambition to re-establish, but then not just re-establish, rebuild our relationship, as I said, with the Palestinian people and with the Palestinian Authority,” Blinken said. “And this will allow us to more effectively work toward the goal of Palestinians and Israelis enjoying equal measures of democracy, of opportunity, of dignity in their lives. We believe that that can be achieved by a realization of two states. President Biden remains committed to that goal.”

Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, slammed the move Wednesday.

“The Biden Administration is far too eager to give out US taxpayer dollars to UNRWA,” Risch told The Algemeiner. “I do not support a single US taxpayer dollar going to UNRWA without serious reform, in part because their textbooks continue time and again to include antisemitic content. That is why I will be re-introducing my UNRWA Accountability & Transparency Act which would halt funding to UNRWA until all of its antisemitic issues are thoroughly addressed.”

The humanistic bigotry of pro-Palestinian progressives (Hussein Aboubakr Mansour 🧵)

This is a Twitter thread from author and researcher Hussein Aboubakr Mansour that is a good follow-up to my earlier post on liberal Palestinians supporting terror.

__________________________________________

Underneath the positions of pro-Palestinian progressive Westerners lies a conglomerate of presuppositions and assumptions that are rarely openly discussed or mentioned.

One of such major presuppositions is that Palestinian terrorism, the indiscriminate murderous violence targeting mostly defenseless Jewish civilians, is a core part of the Palestinian identity and a normative Palestinian behavior to be expected. As such, this behavior can not be blamed on Palestinian society or institutions but on Israel and Israeli action, which controls the structure of power from which the Palestinian identity emerged.

In this position, highly intelligent people discover the most troubling aspect of the conflict but only to dismiss it. This form of humanistic bigotry against the Palestinians came to justify their worst inclination and disregard the lives of Israeli Jews, ending up being one of the most dehumanizing positions towards Israelis and Palestinians.

This position is not new but has become a core intellectual habit of the international left since the canonization of the works of Frantz Fanon as a Bible of decolonization. According to Fanon, the murderous rampage of the colonized man against the colonizer is the quintessential act of self-liberation. The blaze of wrath and anger that ends in murder is nothing but the birth pains of freedom. In other words, the struggle, no matter how violent or extreme, is an existential condition and an ontological urgency.

These ideas, which started in the circles of the French Left in the 1950s to justify Algerian acts of extreme violence against the French colony, became a solid part of the international left, taught in the most prestigious academic institutions to generations of leftist activists, journalists, professors, politicians, and others. These ideas, the epitome of dehumanization and pathological misanthropy, were not born yesterday and are parts of the major intellectual edifice of leftists' social and political thought.

The proliferation of such intellectual pathologies is what ultimately enables armies of American and European journalists, diplomats, aid workers, NGO officials, and others to totally accept the prevalence of violence, icons of death, and the valorization of cruelty in Palestinian culture, both popular and high, and in education. This leads to the interesting simultaneous recognition and dismissal of the most central problem of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the absolute and final negation of Zionism, by any means necessary, as the central ideological content of the Palestinian identity and its symbols.

The final result is an international behemoth made of international institutional structures established and financed to purportedly solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict while, in effect, ignoring its core issue. Palestinian media, religious, political, and educational institutions are left to daily indoctrinate members of the Palestinian society into believing that the meaning of their identity is existential victimhood which could be exited only through the total and complete destruction of Israel done by way of blood, death, and sacrifice.

Anyone who dares to examine Palestinian education, media, literature, poetry, music, etc., would not be able to ignore the unsubtle presence of such violent ideas in Palestinian national symbolism and Palestinian self-image. This is ultimately the root cause of the total insolubility of the conflict. Until this conversation becomes a central component of any efforts seeking peace and stability, the problems of terror, violence, the loss of innocent Jewish lives, and the indoctrination of Palestinian youth will continue.

I also would not be honest if I don't address the other side of the coin, the people with whom I stand on most issues, the pro-Israel camp. Many in that camp do see with clearer vision the problem with Palestinian identity and its content of terrorism. Yet, they refuse to make any distinction between the Palestinians as humans and the Palestinians as Palestinians. That is, they accept to see the Palestinians exactly the way Palestinian radicalism insists on seeing the Palestinians, walking landmines waiting to explode to totally erase Jewish existence.

They accept the Palestinian self-dehumanization as the ontological truth of the Palestinians: final, exclusive, and irreversible, and not as humans who are trapped into a terrible story made up by generations of mad intellectuals and sadistic tyrants. This leaves nothing but a security problem against which Israel must remain strong. No will, no wish, no effort, and no thought are spent about the possibility of helping the Palestinians wake up from their self-imposed nightmare and discover a different way to be Palestinian.

Just to reiterate, I'm not talking here of people who think, feel and talk only in leftist cliches. Those don't see or understand such complex problems anyways. I'm talking about the non-cliche ones who despite understanding the monumental weight of culture and identity refuse to deal with them seriously.

__________________________________________

I would like to comment on the final three paragraphs, since people like me are the target.

Speaking for myself, I know that in the past I generalized Arabs altogether as permanently imprisoned by their hate for Israel and antisemitism, based on years of reading their own media and social media. The Abraham Accords was a sea change not only for the Middle East but in my perception of hope for the future as well.

Right now, for the first time, one can see articles sympathetic to Jews in Arab media, especially Bahrain, the UAE and Morocco. Jews and Israelis can walk freely in those countries, much safer than they can walk in parts of Jerusalem.

I take Palestinian incitement and support for terror very seriously. It is clearly a problem that is based on generations of hate and lies, on media and governments and curricula that simply do not allow freedom of thought or expression or any opinions that run counter to the official lines. Changing that has to be the top priority for any possibility of peace.

But as with the Abraham Accords countries, the change has to come from within. There is nothing the West can do to change the Palestinian mindset. On the contrary, Palestinians are resentful when the EU or US insist that funds not be used to further support for terror.

I hope that Mansour is right and the environment that supports the overwhelming Palestinian support for murdering Jews can be changed. But that requires a Palestinian leadership that does not exist and is not on the horizon.

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!

Academic freedom? Harvard Crimson op-ed calls to reject Israelis from positions at the university

An op-ed at the Harvard Crimson attempts to turn the Ken Roth episode into an excuse to block Israelis from teaching there.

Because of academic freedom, of course.

Josh Wilcox, organizer for Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, writes:

It seems a couple points were absent from Dean Elmendorf’s announcement. At no point did he address the elephant in the room: what scholars like Cornel R. West ’74 have alleged as Harvard’s complicity in silencing voices that call for Palestinian freedom.

Similarly, HKS’s track record of offering positions should make us skeptical of the sincerity of its mission statement.

HKS has proudly lended [sic] its name to Amos Yadlin, a former general in the Israeli Air Force who participated in the brutal war on Lebanon in 1982. ...
Yadlin is only one of several questionable characters. As Harvard students, we cannot continue to let our University welcome agents of colonial violence while denying those who reject U.S.-backed Israeli apartheid.

Who, exactly, has Harvard denied a position to because of their pro-Israel positions? The article mentions this as a fact three times - and the links show us that there is exactly one episode that they can point to.

And that episode is a lie.

In 2021, Cornel West went on a campaign much like Ken Roth's in 2023. He went on multiple interviews claiming claimed that Harvard denied him tenure, and that the only reason he could think of was his anti-Israel position.

He had no proof.

But he lied about the entire episode. His position was not a tenure track position to begin with!

During his normal 5-year review, the faculty committee offered him a raise and a 10 year contract, which for a 67-year old man is as good as tenure. But he refused, insisting that they change his position itself into a tenured position - something that this review board couldn't do. As the Boston Globe reported, "The faculty committee was only in charge of reviewing his reappointment and does not have authority to conduct a review for tenure, [Harvard's] spokesman said."

Now, it is obvious why he wasn't granted tenure - he did not have a tenure-eligible job and one cannot make that change at the drop of a hat. West asked for the job to be changed, which is quite a different matter than being denied tenure!

West was the proto-Roth - making baseless accusations about a Zionist cabal at Harvard, blaming powerful Jews (see update to my post linked above) that were mindlessly repeated by people who share his antisemitism.

But now, Harvard's Israel haters are pretending that the Cornel West case proves that Harvard has a history of mistreating anti-Israel academics. And their proposed solution?

Deny any Israelis becoming Harvard fellows!

The people falsely claiming that Harvard denies academic freedom are the first ones to publicly call for Harvard to deny academic freedom.

Why would we expect anything else?

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!

The most progressive, liberal, Westernized Palestinians support murdering Jews

Up until Friday night's terror attack in Jerusalem, Mahmoud Abbas usually condemned terror attacks like that - usually at the urging of the US.

This time, he didn't.

And the Palestinian intelligentsia who are the face of Palestinians to the Western world got the memo.

Yesterday, we mentioned how angry Noura Erakat was that a TV producer wanted to interview her and ask her reaction to the attack. She refused, but helpfully explained on Twitter that she feels that celebrating the murder of Jews is normal human behavior, and justified the shooting of Jewish civilians as "resistance to apartheid."

Erakat, a lawyer and academic, is one of the most articulate, videogenic propagandists for the Palestinian cause - and she justified terror.

But she wasn't the only one.

At the BBC, Al-Shabaka's Yara Harawi was asked if she agrees that attacks on innocent Israelis makes peace more difficult. After ducking the question, Harawi said, "I reject the premise of the question." Meaning, she couldn't even admit that maybe murdering Israelis outside a synagogue is a bad idea for peace. Only Israelis are responsible for peace - i.e., by surrendering wholesale to Palestinian demands - while Palestinians should have the right to kill Jews without any consequence.

Even more amazing was the answer of Husam Zomlot, head of Palestinian mission to the UK, on Sky News when asked if he condemns the murder of innocent Israelis.

His answer, after trying to dodge? "No." The interviewer asked him a third time to verify that he really doesn't condemn a terror attack, and he mumbled and then tried to weasel out of saying a negative word about murdering Jews, fighting hard to bring the conversation back to how evil Israel is.

The rest of his answer was telling. He said he won't condemn the attack or even send condolences to the victims' families because Palestinians have been there, done that "all along:" - meaning that Abbas has issued pro forma condemnations for previous terror attacks (after being pressured by Washington) and it didn't help them any, so it is time to end the (obviously) fake condemnations.

This is Palestinian official who is pretty much admitting that all previous condemnations for terror attacks were just meaningless words. More than that, when Palestinian officials used to allow their arms to be twisted to mouth the fake condemnations, that was considered a major political concession that deserve a quid pro quo - not honest abhorrence at the most sickening terror imaginable. Zomlot has retroactively shown that Palestinians never, ever opposed terror.

Which we all know is true. As I've shown before, specific mass murder attacks get consistently an 80% approval rating from Palestinians over the years, far higher than the abstract "do you support armed resistance?" questions. The official Palestinian media lionizes terrorists. School textbooks tell students that martyrdom is their highest calling. The PA has said explicitly and repeatedly that paying salaries to terrorists and their families is the absolute highest priority in their budget.

All three of these are spokespeople for the Palestinians in the West, official or unofficial. They are the articulate and attractive face of Palestinian moderation and modernity. And every one of them condoned Jews being slaughtered, explicitly or implicitly.

Another prominent Palestinian symbol was in the news as well this week, and her story further proves that these examples are not anomalous, but mainstream.

Susan Abulhawa is a much praised Palestinian American writer and feminist and calls herself a human rights activist. She represents the best face of Palestinians in the West - sensitive, articulate, liberal.

She was locked out from Twitter recently causing a minor uproar among her fans. I do not know what she wrote that violated the rules.

However, Adin Haykin noticed that in one of her publicity photos she has an interesting picture on the wall of her office.

One of her icons is a terrorist who murdered 13 Israeli children.

Zomlot, Abulhawa, Erakat and Hawari are the most Westernized of Palestinians. They are the face that Palestinians want to show the world so people don't think of them as Islamic extremists (which polls show they are.)

Yet even these progressive, enlightened Palestinians support terrorism against Israelis and consider murdering Jews to be praiseworthy, not something to be condemned.

Outside of brave Palestinians like Khaled Abu Toameh and Bassem Eid, support for terror is unanimous even among the Palestinians who speak the most and loudest about human rights.

Likewise, not one Palestinian "human rights" NGO condemned the Jerusalem attack, and several of them or their leaders praised it on social media.

If the people whose jobs are to whitewash Palestinian extremism to the gullible West are themselves fans of terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi or Khairi Alqam, then it is pretty obvious that Israel isn't the obstacle to peace.

Israel cannot make peace with an bloodthirsty, Jew-hating death cult.

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 Pt2: NGO Monitor: The Links between the PFLP and the European Government-funded NGO Network; An Unholy Rant on a Day of Remembrance

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Clear and Convincing: The Links between the PFLP and the European Government-funded NGO Network

On October 22, 2021, Israel designated six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist entities due to their links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP): Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Al-Haq, Addameer, Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees (UPWC), and Bisan Center for Research and Development (Bisan). A seventh – Health Work Committee (HWC) – had been designated in January 2020. The PFLP itself is designated as a terrorist organization by a number of countries and bodies, including the US, EU, Israel, and Canada.

Since then, the NGOs, donor governments, and allies in civil society and the UN have claimed they have not seen anything to justify the designations.

The evidence presented in this report – compiled exclusively from open source materials – proves this narrative inadequate and inaccurate. Irrespective of the information possessed by the Israeli government and intelligence agencies and the criteria for designation, there is overwhelming, publicly available evidence that ties these NGOs and their leadership to the PFLP. On its own, this should have been enough of a reason for European governments not to fund and/or partner with the NGOs.

Of particular note, we found:
The PFLP has issued statements of support for the designated NGOs, and numerous other sources indicate organizational links between many of the designated entities and the terror group.
Three NGO officials – Samer Arbid, Walid Hanatsheh, Abdel Razeq Farraj – indicted and standing trial for their alleged involvement in a deadly August 2019 bombing that killed an Israeli teenager. All of them have been claimed by the PFLP as members of the terror group.
Nine NGO officials convicted for their involvement in planning or executing other terrorist attacks.
Thirty-seven additional NGO officials affiliated with the PFLP.
Five financial institutions – Citibank, Arab Bank, American Express, Visa, Mastercard – shut down online donations and accounts of PFLP-linked NGOs.
In 2022, the Dutch government announced the results of an 18-month audit conducted by a Dutch firm that identified 34 individuals who held positions in both UAWC and the PFLP between 2007-2020. As a result, the Netherlands canceled its contract with UAWC

As European sources and officials have noted, simply affiliating with a terrorist organization can disqualify an organization or individual from receiving EU support. For instance, as confirmed in a June 2020 letter from the Office of the President of the European Commission to NGO Monitor, “[EU] rules make the participation of entities, individuals or groups affiliated linked or supporting terrorist organisations incompatible with any EU funding.”
Click Here to Read Full Report

An Unholy Rant on a Day of Remembrance

A quick rule of thumb: whenever you read a sentence that begins with "The Jews," or words to that effect, it is in all likelihood the beginning of an antisemitic rant. Ever since the German ultranationalist historian and politician Heinrich von Treitschke in an 1879 essay first used the phrase "The Jews are our calamity" (Die Juden sind unser Unglück) – a phrase, incidentally, popularized and widely used by the Nazis to buttress their persecution, oppression and mass killing of European Jews – blaming "the Jews" has become the standard m.o. of in-your-face, often quite unsophisticated, antisemites.

On Friday, as International Holocaust Remembrance Day was observed across the globe, a group of five contributors to Kentucky's Courier Journal, joined this rogues' gallery with their opinion piece,"Holocaust Remembrance Day is a time to remember more than one atrocity."

This article is offensive on many levels, but let's begin with the crude antisemitism inherent in their one-sentence paragraph, "Jews do not have a monopoly on persecution and atrocities," which sets up the straw man for their insidious premise: "Jews," the authors imply none too subtly, care only about the persecution of and atrocities perpetrated against Jews and are indifferent to the plight and suffering of others.

Never mind that this is not, and has never been, the case. Never mind that major Jewish organizations—the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the World Jewish Congress, among many others—are at the forefront of condemning and commemorating genocides and crimes against humanity committed against any and all peoples, whether in Rwanda, Bosnia, Myanmar, or anywhere else.

Never mind that the 1948 Genocide Convention—the brainchild, incidentally, of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Ukrainian Jew—applies by its terms to attempts to destroy any "national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

Never mind that it was Ambassador Ronald S. Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress, who condemned the slaughter of Christians in the Middle East and Africa in a 2014 New York Times op-ed writing that "just as I will not be silent in the face of the growing threat of anti-Semitism in Europe and in the Middle East, I will not be indifferent to Christian suffering."

The antisemitic conclusion the authors of the Courier Journal op-ed want their readers to take away is that "the Jews" are only concerned about themselves. Tell that, incidentally, to the families of Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwermer, two New York Jews killed in 1964 together with James Chaney while registering African-Americans to vote in Mississippi.

We are not in competition to win a victimization sweepstakes

The Courier-Journal writers, by trivializing the immensity of Hitler’s crimes, do history no favors. Over the past couple of decades, we’ve already seen the trivialization of the Holocaust, with references to “Nazi-like behavior,” concentration camps, the gestapo, and yes, genocide tossed about with abandon for everything or everyone who may not agree with us.

The Jewish people have no reason to apologize for expecting the world to take one day in 365, to commemorate the attempt to destroy our people. At the same time, one will find many from our community that have been, and are at the forefront of calling out racism, prejudice, bigotry, violence and genocide wherever they are manifested. Indeed, listen to the speeches of those delivered on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and you will hear a similar refrain in each: “Can we not learn the lessons of the Holocaust?” To suggest we don’t care, or look away, or are interested only in pride-of-place is, pure and simple, a calumny.

I fear that the message of the Louisville Courier-Journal article will lead to a further dumbing down of history or—worse—an erasure of it. It took almost 60 years for the international community to recognize the need to remember the attempt to destroy world Jewry. That act was long overdue. Now, along with so many other tropes and canards that come our way, we are told not to be so selfish. And that the dictator who carried all of this out was no better or no worse than many others.

Holocaust education is an urgent priority today, as an escalating number of Holocaust survivors succumb to the biological clock. The editors of the Courier-Journal, and the op-ed writers, ought to begin their education by sitting down with survivors themselves, the people with the tattoos on their arms who experienced and witnessed the degradation and the brutality. Or perhaps a visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, or the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Or a guided visit through the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, or others in what was Nazi-occupied Europe.

Until then, their shocking and facile charges against the Jewish community will remain a stain on the code of responsible journalism.

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.

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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:

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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.

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