Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, February 04, 2023

02/04 Links: Israel accuses UN human rights chief of blaming terror attacks on victims; Uni of Michigan dismisses calls to condemn intifada-themed rally; Has Iran accepted growth of Israel-Saudi ties under Netanyahu?

From Ian:

Netanyahu looks to cover West Bank with highway tunnels, in vision laid out by Musk

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed building underground highway systems across the West Bank to connect both Israeli settlements and Palestinian towns in order to maintain territorial continuity, The Times of Israel’s sister site, Zman Yisrael, reported Saturday.

Netanyahu is aiming for high-speed tunnels designed ostensibly to address the problems of traffic jams and congestion, per the vision of the billionaire Elon Musk, and his engineering firm Boring Company.

Netanyahu presented his plans during a conversation Friday with French investors in Paris at the hotel where he spent the weekend.

According to Netanyahu, the tunnels could refute Palestinian claims that they have no territorial continuity in the West Bank, as their communities would be linked underground.

He also said they would make it possible to travel between settlements in a matter of a few minutes, which would solve the settlement issue as in practice they would be annexed to Israel through a system of tunnels and highways. Additionally, the tunnels would provide Israeli motorists in the area with safety from Palestinian attacks.

During the conversation with the French investors, whose total wealth was estimated by the prime minister at $150 billion, he asked who would be willing to invest in such a project. Several of them raised their hands with joy, according to Netanyahu.

One of the investors told Netanyahu that he invests in Israel but has endless bureaucratic problems, mainly with the Israel Land Authority.

University of Michigan dismisses calls to condemn intifada-themed rally

In 2021, a University of Michigan music professor showed a 1965 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Othello,” which featured a white actor in blackface, in class. The professor apologized and stepped down, yet a dean at the university stated that the experience “was hurtful and upsetting to the students in the class,” and the professor’s actions “do not align with our school’s commitment to anti-racist action, diversity, equity and inclusion.”

When someone distributed racist fliers on the school’s Ann Arbor campus five years prior, the university’s president at the time, Mark Schlissel, stated, “While we continue to defend any individual’s right to free speech on our campus, these types of attacks directed toward any individual or group, based on a belief or characteristic, are inconsistent with the university’s values of respect, civility and equality.” The university has “a responsibility to create a learning environment that is free of harassment. These are core values and guiding principles that will help us as we strive to live up to our highest ideals,” he added.

When students chanted violent slogans threatening Jewish and Israeli students on campus during Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to campus three weeks ago, the university adopted a different approach. At first, it couldn’t muster a response, and then when it did respond to a letter of complaint from the Israel-based International Legal Forum, the response was “woefully inadequate, and quite frankly offensive,” Arsen Ostrovsky, the forum’s CEO, told JNS.

“It is unfathomable that the university, which purports to promote inclusion and a commitment to combating antisemitism and hate speech, refuses to even merely condemn a rally held on its grounds, calling for violence, with the most obscene antisemitic hate rhetoric,” he said.

Students chanted “there is only one solution: intifada revolution” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” among other hateful slogans, which call for the violent destruction of Israel, according to Ostrovsky.

Rather than responding that Jewish and Israeli students had a right to feel safe, and that such language constituted violence—as the university has plastered all over certain sections of its website—Rick Fitzgerald, associate vice president for public affairs, wrote to ILF that this was a matter of academic freedom.

“It is clear that many within and outside our university community heard certain chants as antisemitic,” Fitzgerald wrote. “We understand that perspective and thank you and others for sharing those views, especially during this time in our nation’s history when there has been a rise in antisemitic speech and violence.”

Seth Frantzman: Has Iran accepted growth of Israel-Saudi ties under Netanyahu?

It is clear from the report how much Iran relies on others for information, apparently due to fears of its media being seen as promoting Israel-Saudi ties; it even quotes a report from the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).

The Iranian report says that Saudi officials have concerns about their position in the Islamic world, noting other hurdles about American commitments and Saudi Arabia’s desire for new defense contracts in the US and a “nuclear agreement” between Riyadh and Washington.

“If these 3 conditions are met, Saudi Arabia is ready to shake hands with Israel next month,” the report says.

The article next mentions a Brookings report from 2022: “According to Brookings, the secret cooperation between the Saudis and the Israelis dates back to the early 1960s, when both supported the Yemeni royalists against the Egyptian republican government.”

It further notes that Saudi Arabia has permitted direct flights from Israel to the Gulf over its territory. The survey of reports then goes on to look at how Iran’s threats brought Israel and Saudi Arabia closer and how economic negotiations are taking place.

Iran’s report concludes by saying Israel has spent 75 years of “crimes, killing, occupation and encroachment of the Zionists on Palestine and illegal presence in the country.” Therefore, the author wonders how normalization will occur, considering that Saudi Arabia has supported the two-state solution.

The conclusion, from the point of view of the Iranian regime, is that this is “a plan that England and America could not implement many years ago, and today the Saudis are looking for it.”

In essence, it accuses Riyadh of being the latest part of the historical support Israel has had from the UK and the US. The overall message of a report like this one is that Iran’s regime feels it has a number of ways to prevent normalization now.

It takes, at face value, the deluge of reports in Western and local media. It used to try to threaten the Gulf regarding normalization, but now it appears to think the train has left the station.

While the Iranian threats to the region, from drones to the use of proxies in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere won’t stop, it appears that Tehran views Israel’s continued diplomatic successes with a stubborn acceptance.

02/03 Links Pt2: Dara Horn: A More Meaningful Way to Remember the Holocaust; ‘Liberated ethnic studies’ K-12 curricula target Jews, Israel; Two Eliyahu Mizrachis Ran To Help Exactly 75 Years Apart- And Were Gunned Down

From Ian:

Dara Horn: A More Meaningful Way to Remember the Holocaust

Last week, an editorial in Kentucky’s Courier-Journal newspaper went viral for its sheer absurdity. In it, a group of noble public servants explained to primitive dolts like me that International Holocaust Remembrance Day is not, in fact, a day to remember the Holocaust. Instead, it is a day when we must “remember all the hate speech and all the violence that is perpetuated against religions, races and genders, all those acts committed in the past and those that continue to this day,” because “for one group, for one person, to claim that the hate and violence towards them is more important than another’s, only encourages more acts of violence against others.” Most of all, as the authors put it in their middle-school-worthy topic sentence, “Jews do not have a monopoly on persecution and atrocities.”

I don’t need to do the work of shredding this deeply antisemitic take, because the good people of the internet did it for me—pointing out that Genocide Prevention Day already exists, for instance, or that “with Black History Month coming up, it’s good to remember there are more races than black,” or “This September 11, we should also remember all those other plane crashes over the years.”

This low-rent spectacle, part of a genre of stupidities that tend to pop up like early groundhogs every Jan. 27, reminded me of how International Holocaust Remembrance Day always takes me by surprise. Why does this day even exist, I catch myself wondering every year, when the Jewish community has its own Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah? But the difference between these two commemorations exposes the deeper problem with the non-Jewish world’s way of remembering the Holocaust, and also the idea lurking beneath the self-righteousness of articles like this one. Fortunately, this Yom HaShoah, there is a new way for American Jews to find a more meaningful path to remembrance.

Leon de Winter:'In 2048 the last Jews will leave Europe'

In the last 50 years the Jewish population in Europe has decreased by 60 percent and a similar decline is expected in the next 30 years, explained Eldad Beck in a dramatic article in Israel's largest newspaper, Israel Hayom, while the Israeli government reveals that 52,000 European Holocaust survivors have gone to live in Israel in the last thirty years.

Wistrich, who headed the International Center for Anti-Semitism Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said European Jewry still had 10 to 20 years to live. “It's over,” Wistrich said. "It's a slow death."

In France there are cities, such as Grenoble, from which half of the Jewish community fled, while in Nice, which was home to the fourth largest Jewish community, Jews dropped from 20,000 to 5,000. In Lyon, as the chief rabbi recently said, "only the Jews remain who are too old or too poor to move". In Toulouse, a large part of the Jewish community arrived after the Islamic ethno-religious cleansing of North Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. What they fled followed them into the Midi-Pyrenees and now it's time to leave again, as elsewhere in Europe. Hundreds of Jewish families left Toulouse and the president of the Jewish community, Arié Bensemhoun, advised young people to leave the city. Toulouse had up to 20,000 Jewish people. Today there are 10,000 left.

Over the past ten years, 60,000 of its 350,000 Jews have left Ile-de-France. "In France, between 2000 and 2017, 55,049 Jews made aliyah to Israel, more than between 1970 and 1999, a period during which 48,097 Jews left" recounts Mark Knobel in the magazine La règle du jeu. Since 1972, 106,000 French Jews have left for Israel. Before 2012, 500 Jews left France every year. In 2021, 3,500 French Jews emigrated to Israel (not counting those who left for other countries). A sharp increase from 2,220 departures in 2019 and 2020. More than 1,900 left for Israel in 2012, another 3,120 in 2013. In 2104, 7,200 left France and 7,500 in 2015.

In 2000, France had 500,000 Jews. Today they are 400,000. At an average of 3,500 Jews a year, another 100,000 Jews will disappear in a generation. According to a survey, 40 percent of Jews still living in France want to leave. “In a few decades there will be no Jews in France,” said Richard Abitbol, president of the Confederation of French Jews and Friends of Israel.

“I don't want to live in a country whose chancellor brings in millions of anti-Semitic Muslims who attack Jews and Jewish institutions in Germany,” wrote the chairman of the Jewish community in the German state of Brandenburg, Semen Gorelick. “You can't live in a country where you can't wear a kippah on the street”. Most Jews in Germany today are Ukrainian, Russian or Israelis looking for work. And Jews are hiding in Bonn, Potsdam, Bochum and the rest of the country.

“Norway risks becoming a country without a Jewish population,” says an editorial in Aftenposten. According to the newspaper, 20 percent of the two largest communities (Oslo and Trondheim) have left. “Norway could be the first country in Europe to become jüdenfrei,” wrote journalist Julie Bindel. The synagogues of Oslo and Trondheim are the most protected buildings in all of Norway.

Two Eliyahu Mizrachis Ran To Help Exactly 75 Years Apart- And Were Gunned Down

On a frosty night in 1948, 35 fighters set out from Hartuv, a small village near what would later become Beit Shemesh, on their way to help the beleaguered Gush Etzion communities. The heavily armed men hoped to reach the Gush, a distance of some 30 kilometers away, by daybreak. However as dawn arrived they were still below the mountains of Gush Etzion and were ambushed by a huge Arab force.

The 35 bravely defended themselves with all the means at their disposal until they were wiped out to the last man, using stones against their attackers after their ammunition was spent. The Arab attackers later praised the heroism of “the 35”, stating that they would wish to die with such courage as they had seen on them. The remains of the 35 were brought back to Israel by Rabbi Goren after the 1948 war and buried on Mt. Herzl.

The battle occurred on Friday 5th of Shvat, 5708. One of the 35 soldiers who had left his studies to defend Gush Etzion was Eliyahu Mizrachi, a young Jerusalemite who dreamed of being an actor and writer.

Fast forward to Friday, 5th of Shvat, 5783. As Shabbat entered, a savage terrorist drives into Neve Yaakov and starts shooting innocent passersby indiscriminately. Shouts for help were heard as the victims desperately tried to flee. Eliyahu Mizrachi, a 48-year-old man living in the building opposite, head the cries and felt that he could not stand by. Even as his father warned him not to go outside, Mizrachi ran to help – just as the other Eliyahu Mizrachi had done in 1948. Unfortunately Mizrachi came face to face with the terrorist, who brutally murdered him and his wife Natalie who ran out after him.

In a remarkable coincidence and exactly 75 years apart, two people named Eliyahu Mizrachi, (the same name as one of the most illustrious rabbis of the 15th century and author of the Sifsei Chachamim commentary on Rashi) died Al Kiddush Hashem while seeking to save other Jews. May their memory be blessed.

02/03 Links Pt1: What Blinken refuses to see; Daniel Pipes: Violence is not the biggest Palestinian threat to Israel; The Ilhan Omar vote is a turning point for American Jews

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: What Blinken refuses to see

In other words, the Biden administration thinks that permitting Jews to lawfully build and buy homes and communities, to buy land or lease government land in Judea, Samaria or unified Jerusalem is unacceptable.

Furthermore, as far as he is concerned, Israelis living in Judea and Samaria should be compelled to receive government services from incompetent military officers employed by the military government rather than from Israeli government ministries. This includes, for instance, sewage treatment and environmental protection, protection of antiquities and archaeological sites, building rights and licensing guidelines.

Another step the U.S. opposes, Blinken said is “disruption to the historical status quo in Jerusalem’s holy sites.” Here, Blinken sides with the Palestinians in insisting that Jews should not be permitted to freely access–much less pray at–the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most sacred site.

Blinken went on to say the U.S. opposes “demolitions and evictions.” But he wasn’t referring to demolitions and evictions of Jews—that’s fine. He was referring to demolition of illegal Palestinian construction and eviction of Palestinian squatters from state land and from apartments and buildings owned by Israeli Jews.

In short, Blinken set out a policy of antisemitic discrimination and demanded that Israel abide by it on behalf of a society organized around the demonization and dehumanization of Jews and the delegitimization and aspiration to annihilate the Jewish state of Israel.

Blinken did say, in the end, that the United States opposes “incitement and acquiescence to violence.” But, as he made clear in his next sentence, he was just joking.

Blinken announced that the U.S. is giving an additional $50 million to UNRWA, the U.N. agency most responsible for prolonging the Palestinian conflict with Israel by among other things, inciting and acquiescing to violence. UNRWA schools indoctrinate Palestinian children to hate Jews and aspire to become terrorists and destroy Israel. Hamas and other terror groups use UNRWA installations as missile launching grounds.

Those $50 million are just a drop in the bucket. Blinken bragged that since Biden entered office two years ago, the U.S. has provided $950 million in aid to the Palestinians overall.

The Biden administration doesn’t oppose Palestinian incitement and acquiescence to violence. The administration is funding it.

It’s hard to know how the Palestinian conflict with Israel will end. But two things are certain. First, demanding institutional discrimination and the denial of civil rights to Jews will not lead anywhere good. And second, we’ll know we’re moving in the right direction if the U.S., the E.U. and the U.N. stop discriminating against Jews and end their support for a Palestinian society organized around the dehumanization and demonization and aspiration to destroy the Jewish state.

Jonathan Tobin: The Ilhan Omar vote is a turning point for American Jews

Pro-Israel Democrats could have taken a stand against her and Tlaib. But, intimidated by the rise of the intersectional movement that has seized control of the left-wing base of the Democratic Party, and fearing that they will be branded as racists if they speak out, they have refused to ostracize them.

In doing so, they have essentially legitimized Omar’s views. Her anti-Zionist and antisemitic ideas are now routinely published in the pages of liberal mainstream outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post. And the ranks of the “Squad” have vastly expanded in the last two election cycles, with even more sympathizers among those who identify as progressive Democrats.

Republicans have their outliers, like Greene and others. They routinely make outrageous and often indefensible statements, although Democrats are equally guilty of the promiscuous use of inappropriate Holocaust analogies.

But they are not guilty of seeking to normalize antisemitism by masquerading as mere “critics” of Israel. And, unlike Omar, they lack the influence that comes with being part of a movement that already dominates academia and much of the media with its toxic myths about white privilege and lies about Israel’s being an “apartheid” state.

Republicans have been accused of making Israel a partisan issue. The GOP has pointed to its lockstep support for the Jewish state, and to the way Democrats are now divided on it with so much of their base embracing the myth—rooted in critical race theory teachings—that Israel is a “white” colonialist oppressor of people of color.

Hyper-partisanship is now so deeply entrenched in American political culture that many liberal Jews aren’t likely to be persuaded to be angrier at House Democrats for defending Omar than they are at Republicans for their ideology or support for Trump, who—though deeply flawed—was still the most pro-Israel president in history.

In giving Omar a pass for antisemitism, Democrats have crossed a line that no party or its supporters can transgress without being rightly accused of enabling Jew-hatred. By rallying around her, either out of party loyalty or hypocritical opposition to cancel culture that they never apply to embattled conservatives, is to make antisemitism a partisan issue. This is a historic development that may make it impossible to ever put the genie of intersectional hate for Jews back in the bottle. It’s also an unforgivable betrayal of their Jewish voters and the principles of tolerance that they claim to uphold.

Noah Rothman: Ilhan Omar’s committee removal was a long time coming

As for precedent, Omar’s defenders are on even weaker ground.

Before Republicans voted along party lines to oust Omar, some expressed reservations about the basis for it. But even those members, like Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana, conceded that it was Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who “took unprecedented actions” to remove Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar from their committee posts. Prior to the 117th Congress, the majority party typically accepted the minority party’s recommendations for committees, and even staunch critics of Greene’s and Gosar’s often inappropriate conduct warned of this new precedent’s dangers. “Democrats may regret when Republicans regain the majority,” Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., told her colleagues when Greene and Gosar were removed.

Contrary to Meeks, Republicans have policed their own on occasion. In 2018, for example, the House GOP leadership ejected Rep. Steve King of Iowa from all of his committee assignments after he wondered aloud why the term “white supremacist” is considered a slur. And like Omar, who has repeatedly and unashamedly advertised her intention to apply her worldview to the conduct of foreign affairs, Republicans had reason to believe King’s bigotry would color his policy preferences.

At no point did it occur to anyone that being deemed too bigoted to serve on committees called King’s very citizenship into question. Republicans can and should be criticized for having stomached King’s many racially provocative comments before the one that cost him his career, but Republicans’ late is better than Democrats’ never.

The decibel level at which Democrats are arguing in Omar’s favor is designed to convince you that a grave injustice is being done to her. But the relevant precedents, Omar’s conduct and the case her fellow Democrats made against her betrays the theater of it all.

The Forward has an op-ed by David Enoch, a professor of philosophy and law at Hebrew University:

If you want to support Israel, boycott its new government

....Even if the justification of boycotts has in the past been questionable, I think that American Jews owe it to Israel, and to Israelis like myself, to promote such measures now. After the disproportionate Israeli military incursion into Jenin, and the predictably tragic cycle of violence it engendered the next day in Jerusalem, Israel’s far-right government is using this as an opportunity to further their own political goals. We cannot allow this kind of illiberalism to continue.

Yes, boycott Israel out of love!

As you can tell from this paragraph, Enoch has no love of Israel.

And Enoch's desire to boycott Israel includes an academic boycott.

Im Tirtzu summarizes David Enoch's supposed love of Israel:

Signed a petition calling on EU member states to boycott “organizations and companies if they are active, directly or indirectly, in the occupied territories.”[1]
Draft-dodger.[2]
Compared the IDF’s activities during Operation Protective Edge to that of Hamas.[3]
Signed a petition in support of the Islamic Movement.[4]
Participated in a protest against the drafting of Christians to the IDF.[5]
Signed a petition in “support and appreciation” of students and lecturers who illegally refused to do IDF service in Judea and Samaria.[6]
Signed a petition advocating for the release of terrorist supporter Dareen Tatour, who was arrested and convicted for inciting violence and supporting a terrorist organization.[7]
Signed a petition in support of the anti-Zionist organization “Breaking the Silence.”[8]
Threatened to take legal measures against students who came in army uniform in support of an IDF officer who was reprimanded by a lecturer for arriving to class in uniform.[9]

Somehow, all these things happened before the current government was (democratically) elected.

Enoch wants, along with many others, to use the excuse of the current Israeli government to push their hate that existed beforehand.

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!

This morning's article at the official Palestinian Wafa news agency is pretty much identical to articles written every Friday for months:

Tens of thousands performed Friday prayers at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, despite the strict military measures imposed by the Israeli occupation authorities at the gates of the mosque and the entrances to the Old City in occupied Jerusalem .

The Islamic Endowments Department in Jerusalem estimated that about 60,000 worshipers performed Friday prayers in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Mosque, from Jerusalem and the West Bank, and within the lands of 1948 [how Palestinians refer to Israel.]

Our correspondent reported that the occupation forces deployed in the streets of the city and the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and stationed at its gates, and stopped the worshipers and checked their identity cards .

I read these every week, with the only difference being the number of estimated worshippers - 70,000 last week, 75,000 two weeks ago, 55,000 three weeks ago.

But what I hadn't noticed is that the worshippers are coming from the West Bank as well as Jerusalem and Israel.

I thought that Israel didn't allow West Bank Palestinians to enter the compound. That's how things used to be, except for Ramadan.

Apparently, Israel eased the restrictions last Ramadan - and continued easing them. From AP, April 5:

Israel will allow women, children and men over 40 from the West Bank to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday in an apparent bid to help calm tensions during the holy month of Ramadan.

The government said in a statement that it could further relax restrictions if things stay quiet.

I cannot find any articles since then on whether Israeli officials further loosened restrictions since then, but it appears that they have, even after Ramadan. In previous years articles would complain that "occupation forces prevented the entry of hundreds of citizens from the West Bank to Jerusalem to perform the Friday prayer at Al-Aqsa." That verbiage is gone. Now I'm only seeing that Israeli police are checking identity cards and not allowing a few people to enter, probably based on their inciting disturbances in the past.

If younger men from the West Bank were being restricted from coming, I think that Palestinian media would be reporting it. Probably young men need entry permits to worship, but that's it.

If this conjecture is true, that means that Israel quietly, without fanfare, allows thousands of Palestinians to enter Jerusalem every week to pray, very possibly including young men.

And no one has reported this change in policy!

This is yet another proof that there is no "apartheid." Israel is concerned about the security of its citizens. The level of restrictions against non-citizen Palestinians has nothing to do with their being Arabs or Muslims or non-Jews; it is entirely based on their potential threat to Israeli citizens and whether they are inciting violence.

The media, keenly interested in Israeli restrictions on Palestinians, loses interest when those restrictions are eased. After all, no one is rioting so why inform readers that things have changed?

If anything, Jews in Jerusalem should be concerned that there are so many more potentially violent West Bank Palestinians coming every Friday.

What are the rules? How is security done? What is done to ensure that the visitors don't stay in Jerusalem after prayers? These are the sorts of questions that Israeli media should be researching.

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!

Human Rights Watch's website was silent on the Neve Yaakov massacre last Friday night.

Six days later, they do mention it - in the context of an article condemning Israel for sealing up the houses of the family of the murderer.

The pattern, which we often see in the media as well, is predictable. When Gaza groups shoot rockets, the media only condemns Israel's reaction. When a terrorist kills Jewish civilians, human rights groups wait as long as they can to create a context where Israel is the guilty party.

In this case, murdering civilians is on the same moral plane as sealing the house of a terrorist.

Look how HRW frames the attack in Neve Yaakov:

Israeli authorities’ actions to seal the family homes in the occupied West Bank of two Palestinians suspected of attacks against Israelis amount to collective punishment, a war crime, Human Rights Watch said today.

This punitive measure, which Israeli authorities have said they will follow by demolishing the homes, comes amid a spike in violence that has cost the lives of 35 Palestinians and 6 Israelis since January 1, 2023. The violence has included Israeli army raids that unlawfully attack Palestinian cities and refugee camps, Palestinian attacks on Israelis, and attacks on Palestinians and their property by Israeli settlers, who rarely face punishment for these crimes.

“Deliberate attacks on civilians are reprehensible crimes,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “But just as no grievance can justify the intentional targeting of civilians in Neve Yaakov, such attacks cannot justify Israeli authorities intentionally punishing the families of Palestinian suspects by demolishing their homes and throwing them out on the street.”

Notice how you can never find a straight condemnation of attacks on Jews without a caveat or a "context" in the same sentence. As if sealing or demolishing a home is just as bad as murdering people.

Neither Amnesty nor Human Rights Watch had a stand-alone article condemning Palestinian terror attacks last year when there were several mass casualty events against civilians. Those attacks are also buried in this HRW article, seemingly mentioned for the first time on the site, and do not rate a full sentence: "The [Jenion] raid follows more than 10 months of intensified Israeli army raids in the West Bank, after several deadly attacks by Palestinians inside Israel in March 2022."

There were also fatal attacks in April and May and October and November, but HRW already dedicated about 10% of the article to attacks on Israelis, and that is way above their quota already.

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 Pt2: Ilhan Omar removed from House Foreign Affairs Committee; Gil Troy: Israeli Democracy Is Fine, Thank You for Asking; Jewish population in Judea and Samaria tops half a million

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The entrenchment of Western Jew-hatred

The demonization of Israel is the defining cause of the progressive left. As such, it has become the default narrative in all higher reaches of the culture.

In America, where there is still a bedrock of public support for Israel, this poison has spread through the universities into the schools and infiltrated the Democratic Party. Unlike in Britain, however, the Democrats haven’t even gotten to the Labour Party’s stage of seeking to rid themselves publicly of this moral stain.

The ousting of the Jew-bashing Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar from the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee was organized by the Republicans. The Democrats, who refused to take action against her when they governed the House, opposed the ouster, complaining that it was “revenge” for the Democrats’ removal of two GOP representatives from committees during the previous session of Congress.

Accordingly, the Democrats continue to sanitize Omar’s egregious Jew-hatred. In 2019, she tweeted that U.S. support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins”—that is, hundred-dollar bills. In 2012, before she arrived in Congress, she claimed that “Israel has hypnotized the world” and added, “May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”

Last weekend, Omar claimed on CNN that she was unaware that the word “hypnotized” and conspiracy theories about Jews and money are anti-Jewish tropes.

“I might have used words at the time that I didn’t understand were trafficking in antisemitism,” she said.

Her protestations of ignorance have drawn widespread incredulity and scorn. In fact, they imply something more unpalatable than being disingenuous.

Omar knows that there’s a prejudice called antisemitism. However, she self-evidently believed that Jews do use their money to exercise covert and harmful power and that they do hypnotize the world.

In other words, Omar thought that what others know to be Jew-hating tropes couldn’t be prejudice because they’re true. So, when she says she didn’t think these tropes constituted antisemitism, she reveals just how antisemitic she actually is.

Yet even now, the supposedly anti-racist Democrats refuse to condemn her. This is because Western progressives either support or refuse to condemn “intersectional” Critical Race Theory.

Ilhan Omar removed from House Foreign Affairs Committee

The US House of Representatives voted on Thursday to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The vote was approved along party lines, 218-211.

Republicans argued that Omar should be removed for past comments against Israel and the use of antisemitic tropes.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy defended the decision to remove Omar from the powerful committee. Speaking to the media after the vote, he said her past statements “make it clear she is unfit to represent the US on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”

“She repeatedly used antisemitic tropes” and “compared America and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban,” he said.

“She said Americans only like Israel because it’s all about the Benjamins,” McCarthy said. “And three years later, she said, ‘I didn’t know there’s a trope when it comes to referring to someone who’s Jewish with money.’ What does that say to other people around the world? We were right in our action, and she can serve on other committees.”

Omar said regardless of the vote’s outcome, she was “here to stay.”

“My leadership and voice will not be diminished if I am not on this committee for one term,” she said in a speech. “My voice will get louder and stronger, and my leadership will be celebrated around the world as it has been.”

“This debate today, it’s about who gets to be an American,” Omar said “What opinions do we have to have to be counted as Americans? This is what this debate is about.”

RJC applauds the dismissal of Omar
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) applauded the Republican-led House for passing the measure.

“For years, Democratic leadership has failed to hold Rep. Ilhan Omar accountable for her vile, hateful, and dangerous anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric,” the RJC said in a statement. “Today, Republicans, under Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s leadership, kept their promise to remove Rep. Omar from the prestigious and crucially important House Foreign Affairs Committee.”

“RJC has long advocated for Rep. Omar’s removal from this critical committee,” it said. “RJC thanks Rep. Max Miller for introducing the resolution and House Republicans for their principled votes to pass it. We are gratified that Rep. Omar will no longer be in a privileged position to influence legislation regarding US policy toward Israel and the Middle East.”

Hakeem Jeffries: Democrats “Unanimously” Support Ilhan Omar Though "She Has Used Antisemitic Tropes" (h/t MtTB)

More than 2,000 Rabbis Urge Congress To Kick Ilhan Omar Off Foreign Affairs Committee

An organization representing more than 2,000 rabbis is urging congressional leaders to keep Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) off the House Foreign Affairs Committee over her extensive history of anti-Semitism.

The letter comes as a small group of Republicans, including Reps. Nancy Mace (SC), Victoria Spartz (IN), and Ken Buck (CO) have suggested that they may not support House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) bid to kick her off the committee.

The Coalition for Jewish Values addressed the letter to McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), asking that Congress follows through on McCarthy’s pledge to remove her from the committee.

“This is not a political matter, but one of moral conscience, and a necessary step to quell the rising tide of antisemitic speech and violence now impacting Jewish communities across America,” wrote Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld, President; and Rabbi Yaakov Menken, Managing Director.

The letter also comes after Omar claimed during a CNN interview on Sunday that she had no idea that her anti-Semitic statements “were trafficking in antisemitism.”

“On three separate occasions, we wrote to the previous Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, to make this same request,” the rabbis wrote. “We were ignored all three times, while antisemitic hate crimes became ever more common in this country. Upon learning of the appointment of Rep. Omar to the Foreign Affairs committee, we wrote to express our ‘alarm, dismay and outrage,’ given that even before her election to Congress, Ms. Omar had repeatedly used antisemitic tropes.”

I am shocked. Just shocked I tell you that Peter Beinart would leap to the defense of Ilhan Omar. What’s that saying about ‘birds of a feather’ … pic.twitter.com/zlcglyrAKC
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) February 2, 2023

He can't even say antisemitism, without putting in quotations. Does Ishaan ever get tired of defending Jew haters? https://t.co/yTikne7Gy0
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) February 2, 2023

AI helped me get a terrorist in a suit, but it wasn't easy.

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!

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

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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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.