Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 16, 2023

Cartoon of the Day: Indigenous language

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Cat Can't Believe It Wasted Sixth Life On Trying To Cross Betzalel St. (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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cat Jerusalem, February 16 - A local feline met its grisly demise today on a stretch of wet roadway where drivers often fail to spot the traffic signal in either direction, witnesses reported, causing the animal to regret at once the profligate use of one of its previous remaining incarnations in a fatal effort to reach a part of the neighborhood with more or less the same trash in and around the dumpsters as anywhere else in the country.

The intersection of Bezalel and Nissim Bachar Streets saw ramming death of a feral cat late Thursday morning when the driver of a car barreling westward down Betzalel disregarded or failed to discern a red light and did not spot the animal on its way across the busy road; its mangled carcass adorned the side of the rainy road for some hours afterwards, pending action by the municipality's sanitation department. While awaiting its third-to-last embodiment in a new corporeal entity of fur, claws, and at least one soon-to-be-missing eye, the creature's lifeforce acknowledged the stupidity of trying to cross the Nachlaot neighborhood's hazardous major central artery at its most hazardous transition spot, all for the dubious purpose of finding better scavenging in the trash piles of the north side than of the south.

"OK, that was dumb," the anima admitted. "Really, really dumb."

The cat-soul found the incident its most embarrassing demise yet in the series of six, and eventually nine, lives. The grisly Thursday occurrence topped in its retrospective cringe even the animal's first death, dying at the ignominious hand of an infectious pathogen following an ill-advised confrontation with another feline whose numerous bald spots, scraggly fur, and numerous secretions from various orifices should have served as ample warning against approaching the diseased rival, despite the tantalizing morsel of day-old Moroccan tilapia it was protecting. "In my defense, I was hungry at the time," the now-veteran dead cat remarked. "Not this time. No excuse. Just stupid."

In terms of cringe, the incident even edged out the feline's previous death: being eaten by its mother within a day or two of birth. "Yeah, I'd rather forget that one, too," it conceded. "But at least in that case it wasn't my fault I was too scrawny to appear worth the expenditure of resources."

The intersection in question has proved dangerous to humans as well as cats: its unusual configuration causes eastbound drivers not to notice the stop line before the crosswalk, such that even when the red light is visible - during one stretch of winter it sits squarely in the sun's glare at 7 AM - drivers continue through the crosswalk before deciding to stop at some random point thirty feet on. Westbound, the downward slope of the artery has contributed to many drivers failing to notice the light in that direction, as well.

Municipal workers dismissed concerns over the intersection, noting that both pedestrians and cats need to be culled.

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02/16 Links Pt1: Why keep pretending that Jews building homes prevents peace?; When Is Terror Not Terror? When the Victims Are Jews; Pompeo calls Abbas a ‘known terrorist’

From Ian:

The “Two-State Solution” and the Arab Palestinians: Partition or Politicide?

“Justice for Palestine” and the Strategy of Phases
At present, the main advocates of the idea of “territorial compromise” are Israel’s enemies, along with well-meaning outsiders and “progressive” Israelis. For the Arab Palestinians, the basic objective is to achieve “justice” by means of “armed struggle.” One need only consult Article 21 of the Palestinian Covenant:
The Arab Palestinian people, expressing themselves by the armed Palestinian revolution, reject all solutions which are substituting for the total liberation of Palestine and reject all proposals aiming at the liquidation of the Palestinian problem, or its internationalization.4

Further, one cannot overlook the PLO’s “authentic genocide message.” For example, Daniel Pipes published a reader’s comment in the Middle East Forum stating that the PLO’s first chairman, Ahmad al-Shukeiri (Shuqayrī) (1908–80), coined the phrase “Driving the Jews into the sea,”/“Throwing the Jews into the sea.” The contributor [who most likely was Prof. Barry Rubin of the IDC, Herzliya] observed: “After the Six-Day War, realizing the great damage it has done to Arabs, Arab propagandists, including Shukairy himself, tried somehow to ‘transform’ his statement from the meaning of annihilation to the meaning of ‘transfer’ of Jews (or ‘ethnic cleansing’), but it was too late, the clarity of his authentic genocide message was already publicized.”5

Indeed, in a 1972 interview with Oriana Fallaci, and, later, in 1980, Yassir Arafat stated the Palestinian position succinctly: “Peace for us means the destruction of Israel and nothing else.”6 During a visit to Venezuela in February 1980, he elaborated on this theme:
Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war that will last for generations …. We shall not rest until the day when we return to our home, and until we destroy Israel …. The destruction of Israel is the goal of our struggle, and the guidelines of that struggle have remained firm since the establishment of Fatah in 1965.7

Over time, intransigent pronouncements and terrorist attacks, such as Black September (1970) and the Munich Massacre at the Olympics (1972) harmed the Arab Palestinian cause. Consequently, the PLO needed to repair its image in order to achieve its political goals. On the prompting of the Soviet Union, the Politbureau of North Vietnam coached a PLO delegation.

As early as February 1970, Salah Khalaf, a.k.a. Abu Iyad, led a PLO delegation to Hanoi where they met the legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap. Their political experts advised them how to manipulate the Western media and transform their public image from terrorists to “moderates.” Abu Iyad described this important encounter in his book, My Home, My Land, a series of interviews with Eric Rouleau published in 1978.

Jonathan Tobin: Why keep pretending that Jews building homes prevents peace?

Biden and even his European allies know that the places where new homes will be built in Judea and Samaria will never become part of even a theoretical Palestinian state. Already, more than 500,000 Jews live in the parts of Judea and Samaria that were labeled as “Area C” in the Oslo Accords, plus another 250,000 who live in Jerusalem but who are also considered to be “settlers” by the world, if not by most Israelis.

None of them are going to be chucked out of their homes to create a Palestinian state that would also include “Area C.” Still, the more the world continues to act as if that were a possibility, the less likely it is that the next Palestinian leadership, which will eventually succeed 87-year-old P.A. head Mahmoud Abbas (currently serving the 19th year of the four-year term he was elected to back in 2005), understands that if they want sovereignty over any part of the country, they’ll have to concede the areas where Jewish communities exist.

It’s not just the fact that no one complains about Palestinian construction in this area, which is just as much an effort to create facts on the ground as Israel’s housing starts. It’s that the branding of “settlements” as illegal and subject to eviction is a standing incitement to more terrorism, as well as intransigence.

The existence of these communities hasn’t prevented a two-state solution, and they won’t stop one in the future if the Palestinians want it since they can have their own state without also taking the places where Jews currently reside.

If foreign governments and so-called human-rights groups really wanted to end the cycle of violence, then they would ditch the cycle of diplomatic condemnations of Israel that help reinforce the Palestinian mindset that Israel is an illegitimate nation that can eventually be destroyed. It may be too much to hope that the foreign-policy establishment ever acquires the wisdom to understand just how mistaken it is about the conflict. But if they did, they’d know that their supposedly well-intentioned advocacy for two states is a far greater obstacle to peace than any housing plan.

When Is Terror Not Terror? When the Victims Are Jews

In the aftermath of the shooting of seven people near a synagogue in Jerusalem, one of the deadliest mass shootings in over a decade, many media outlets including the New York Times carefully avoided the word "terror." In 2022, the Times mentioned Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hizbullah in its headlines only eight times throughout the entire year. Only one mention of Hamas and Hizbullah was negative. Islamic Jihad was mentioned negatively twice. By comparison, 192 headlines mentioned Israel in a negative or critical tone.

In total, 53% of New York Times' news coverage of Israel was negative in tone, compared with 11% that was positive. Between January and October 2022, before the new government was elected, 60% of op-eds were negative towards Israel. After the election, the negative tone became more extreme.

According to the Israel Security Agency (ISA), there were 2,618 terror events in 2022, 204 of them significant (shootings, bombings, stabbings, or intentional car ramming). Another 472 significant attacks were thwarted. The Times has stressed that most of the Palestinians killed were not terrorists, whereas IDF data shows the exact opposite.

The Times is obsessed with Israel but offers the world a monochromatic picture of the situation. Its journalistic failing contributes to the growing hatred of the world's only Jewish state, and the global rise in antisemitism that comes with it.

Lately, Palestinian social media has been including the hashtag "Cubs of Revenge" (#أشبال_الثأر) on social media. (Palestinians refer to child militants as lion "cubs.")

They are celebrating and encouraging children to attack Israelis.

The poster above is not a memorial to children tragically killed - it is a tribute to how wonderful these children are, both dead and alive, for attacking Israelis.

Al Resalah gushes, "In the squares of Al-Aqsa and Damascus Gate, and in every neighborhood and alley of the towns and camps of Jerusalem, a new generation is growing that sees in Israel nothing but an enemy that will only be defeated through resistance and jihad."

Other articles in Palestinian media are also praising the child terrorists.

And, still, silence from "human rights" NGOs, including those that are specifically meant to protect children.

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Palestinian PM claims Israeli law to strip citizenship from terrorists is illegal under international law. Of course he is lying - and a hypocrite.

From Times of Israel:

The Knesset approved a law on Wednesday to strip convicted terrorists with Israeli nationality of their citizenship — provided they receive funding from the Palestinian Authority or an associated organization.

The law, an amendment to Israel’s 1952 Citizenship Law, applies to both Israeli citizens and permanent residents incarcerated following a conviction for terror, aiding terror, harming Israeli sovereignty, inciting war, or aiding an enemy during wartime, and enables the interior minister to revoke their status after a hearing.

The law enables citizenship to be revoked even if the person lacks a second citizenship, provided they have a permanent residence status outside of Israel. Once citizenship is revoked, the person would be denied entry back into Israel.

The Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh reacted angrily, claiming the law is "racist" and illegal:

Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh said in a statement that this decision is a racist practice and a flagrant violation of international law and international humanitarian law. calling on the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union to denounce the resolution, and to put pressure on Israel to force it to cancel it .

Is it illegal to revoke citizenship of terrorists? Of course not. Western nations do it all the time. The US Department of Justice has an entire section for pursuing denaturalization for terrorists and other criminals. The UK, France and Britain have laws to strip citizenship away from terrorists, and the European Court of Human Rights has upheld their decisions.

There are two potential arguments against stripping citizenship.

One is that this law is discriminatory, since it only applies to Palestinians and not Jewish terrorists. But that is only because the only recipients of Palestinian Authority payments are Arabs - if Jews would be convicted of terrorism for the Palestinian cause, and if the PA would pay them, the law would apply to them as well. Similarly, any Israeli Arab in prison can refuse to accept payments from the Palestinian Authority and therefore be immune from being denaturalized. The fact that they accept money from those who want to see Israel destroyed is a pretty good argument that they are not good citizens.

The second argument is that stripping nationality, leaving someone stateless, is illegal altogether. There is a UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness written in 1961 that never received a majority of UN votes - but even many of its signatories included reservations that made it clear that they maintain the right to revoke citizenship for specific acts by citizens. For example, Austria said, "Austria declares to retain the right to deprive a person of his nationality, if such person enters, on his own free will, the military service of a foreign State."

Shtayyeh's calling denaturalization "illegal" and "racist" is especially hypocritical. Only a day beforehand, he called on Western nations to revoke the citizenship of Jews (and only Jews!) who live across the Green Line. Arabs who moved across the Green Line are, of course, not "settlers."

There would be a further irony if critics refer to the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness to claim that this is illegal. Because nearly all Arab states refuse to sign that convention - if they did, they would be required to provide citizenship to children born to Palestinians there, and the Arab League says that Palestinians should remain stateless!

Once again, we see that "critics of Israel" aren't basing their critiques on international law, or morality, or really any framework that doesn't prove that they are hypocrites. The only consistency they show is antisemitism.

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Palmach soldiers

The Palestine Post, February 13, 1948, describes a despicable war crime in Jerusalem that has been all but forgotten.

A group of four Haganah members in Jerusalem were arrested by a British Army patrol that was manned by Arabs.

Hours later, their bodies were found, riddled with bullets.

Their names were Eliyahu Kessler, Shimon Nissani, Naftali Schul and Shalom Leon.

This is really a double war crime. One is that the Arabs effectively used their British army uniforms to perform an illegal attack, and the other one was to slaughter prisoners in custody.

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02/15 Links Pt2: The Truth Behind the Palestinian ‘Catastrophe’; Irwin Cotler: To combat antisemitism, we must first agree how to define it; Moral idiocy: Academics fuel Palestinian terror against Israel

From Ian:

The Truth Behind the Palestinian ‘Catastrophe’

ON AUGUST 5, 1948, not quite three months after the new state of Israel was invaded by five Arab armies, a short volume titled Maana al-Nakba (later translated as The Meaning of the Disaster) appeared in Beirut to popular acclaim. The author was Constantine K. Zurayk, a distinguished professor of Oriental history and vice president of the American University of Beirut.

Zurayk was the wunderkind of the Arab academic world. Born in Damascus in 1909 to a prosperous Greek Orthodox family, he was sent off at 20 to complete his graduate studies in the United States. Within a year he had obtained a master’s from the University of Chicago. One year later, he added a Ph.D. in Oriental languages from Princeton. He then returned to Beirut and the American University.

Zurayk soon became one of the leading advocates of the liberal, secularist variant of Arab nationalism. After Syria won its independence in 1945, he was chosen to serve in the new nation’s first diplomatic mission in Washington, D.C., and also served with the Syrian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly.

Zurayk’s book reflected the sense of outrage among the Arab educated classes over the 1947 UN partition resolution and the creation of the Jewish state. Zurayk’s anger was even more personal, since he had participated in the UN deliberations on the Palestine question. His 70-page book then became a reference point for future pro-Palestinian historians and writers. Yoav Gelber, a prominent Israeli historian of the 1948 war, cited Zurayk’s work when he told me he didn’t think there was much new in Arafat’s 1998 Nakba Day declaration. “The Nakba was at the basis of the Palestinian narrative from the beginning,” Gelber said. “Constantine Zurayk coined the phrase in 1948.”

In previous writings about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, I wasn’t able to comment on Zurayk’s book. A limited-edition English translation of Maana al-Nakba appeared in Beirut in 1956, but it was never published in the United States. It was only recently that I found a rare copy in a university library and finally read the real thing.

It was not what I expected. The Meaning of the Disaster actually isn’t about the tragedy of the Palestinian people. According to Zurayk, the crime of the Nakba was committed against the entire Arab nation—a romantic conception of a political entity that he and his fellow Arab nationalists fervently believed in. And, it turns out, Zurayk was no champion of an independent Palestinian state.

In an introductory paragraph, Zurayk writes about “the defeat of the Arabs in Palestine,” which he then calls “one of the harshest of the trials and tribulations with which the Arabs have been afflicted throughout their long history.” Zurayk’s only comment about Palestinian refugees is that, during the fighting, “four hundred thousand or more Arabs [were] forced to flee pell mell from their homes.” (All italics added.)

Zurayk predicted that all Arabs would continue to be threatened by international Zionism: “The Arab nation throughout its long history has never been faced with a more serious danger than that to which it has today been exposed. The forces which the Zionists control in all parts of the world can, if they are permitted to take root in Palestine, threaten the independence of all the Arab lands and form a continuing and frightening danger to their life.”

Irwin Cotler: To combat antisemitism, we must first agree how to define it

The IHRA definition provides examples of both forms of antisemitism. The examples addressing older forms include stereotypes of Jews as controlling the media, world governments and the economy. Examples of newer forms include denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel.

These latter examples have provoked some opposition, with opponents alleging that the IHRA definition will stifle criticism of the actions of the Israeli government, as well as advocacy for Palestinian human rights. This claim is as misleading as it is unfounded.

In fact, distinguishing between what is and what is not antisemitic enhances and promotes free expression and peaceful dialogue. In particular, the IHRA definition explicitly states that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”

Accordingly, the definition serves to protect speech that is critical of Israeli policy — which I have myself engaged in — so long as it does not cross the delineated boundaries into antisemitism. Conversely, using this definition, genuine antisemitism, such as those examples listed above, can be defined and recognized.

The IHRA definition therefore sets the parameters for a healthy, democratic, tolerant debate and dialogue. It fosters non-hateful communication, and prevents both actual instances of antisemitism as well as unjust labelling of antisemitism. In doing so, it aligns with Canadian values of equality, diversity and human rights.

My hope for 2023 is that the Canadian jurisdictions that have not yet adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism will do so, and that the ones that have adopted it begin to implement and use it. The IHRA definition is an indispensable resource in helping to identify, recognize and define antisemitism, and adopting it is the critical first step towards Canada’s collective effort to combat the rising tide of antisemitism.

Gil Troy: Moral idiocy: Academics fuel Palestinian terror against Israel - opinion

Imagine the hate required to overrun fellow humans at a bus stop. Imagine the super-sized evil required to keep accelerating when you notice six- and eight-year-old brothers standing there, innocently chatting with their dad. And imagine the perversity involved in celebrating such murders. Friday proved – again – how deep anti-Jewish demonization has been drilled into too many Palestinian hearts, deforming their souls.

Until the world acknowledges this wickedness – which on Friday ended three lives – more such murderers will be mass-produced – with Western dollars, progressive encouragement, and, in modern Jewry’s sickest trend, some Jews’ validation too.

Too many Blame-Israel-Firsters discount this cultivated ugliness which mocks their delusions that peace will descend once Israel retreats, creating a Palestinian dictatorship – er, state – next door. These pie-in-the-skiers keep deciding that Palestinian abominations confirm Israeli iniquity. They theorize that only desperate individuals driven by evil “occupiers” would act so viciously.

Jews have often been blamed for their enemies’ enmity. This Palestinian addiction to violence, however, reveals more about the killers than those killed.

This, the real cycle of violence, with Palestinian rejectionism and antisemitism fueling terrorism, poses the biggest obstacle to peace. The terrorist rot infects Palestinian identity. Contrast Israel’s army, which will abort legitimate missions to minimize civilian casualties, with Palestinians’ death cult, which targets kids and often blackmails the most vulnerable Palestinians into terror.

The Terrorist-Intellectual Complex
An academic recently challenged some other centrists and me for attacking the Netanyahu-Deri corruption yet ignoring the “occupation’s corruption.” Actually, I’m struck by many critics’ corruption, judging us long-distance through ivy-clouded lenses.

Their “Terrorist-Intellectual Complex” perpetuates violence. Palestinians keep deluding themselves that terrorism works, emboldened by ever-accumulating stacks of UN resolutions, academic treatises, “human rights” proclamations, and student petitions – amplified by retweets and likes.

Many have long noted that only intellectuals could figure out how to call themselves “progressive” while supporting sexist, homophobic, Jew-hating, murderers. Today, “woke” parents training their kids in self-abasement and cravenness to dodge confrontations, even in self-defense, nevertheless cheer Palestinians’ killing cult. And self-proclaimed “Social Justice Warriors” justify this most unjust movement, forgiving the Palestinian Authority and Hamas autocracies.

Judicial reform is a hot-button topic right now in Israel, or at least the media wants us to think so. You can practically hear the slavering of journalists on the left as they write their reports. They paint the new right-wing Israeli government as “far-right” and even criminal, and pretend that the “mass” protests are massive.

NPR, for example, pretends that the Israeli government wants to reverse Supreme Court decisions:

The most controversial element of the proposal would give the government the power to override the Supreme Court and, with a simple majority vote in parliament, re-legislate any law that the Supreme Court strikes down as an unconstitutional infringement on rights and freedoms.

In fact, the exact opposite is true. The High Court has the power to override any and every action, law, or decision made by duly elected government officials. Israel has no written constitution, but a set of basic laws with semi-constitutional status. The basic law regulating Israel’s judiciary includes a section marked “Judicial review of acts of government - section 15(d)(2)” which states:

This section of the Basic Law authorizes the HCJ to order state and local authorities and officials, (including other persons carrying out public functions under law), to act or refrain from acting in the lawful exercise of their functions, including if they were improperly elected or appointed. This section reflects the major traditional role of the HCJ; exercising judicial review over the standard operations of the executive branch, when it acts according to its statutory authority.

In practical terms this means that the High Court rules the country, and not the government. There’s almost no point in voting—and many Israelis no longer do. Because the government doesn’t decide policy. That remains within the purview of the court.

NPR, in other words, has it exactly backwards. It’s not that the government wishes to overturn Supreme Court decisions, it’s the other way around. The Israeli High Court rules by fiat. The elected government of Israel is prevented from reflecting the will of the people.

A right-wing government, for example, may okay a settlement, but the High Court will always countermand that decision. Israelis on the right do and don’t understand this: we think that if we vote for a Smotrich or a Ben Gvir, the right-wing government we elect may actually enact right-wing policy, for instance build new settlements or declare sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. But without judicial reform, the hands of Smotrich and Ben Gvir are tied. There is not a thing they can do that the court cannot reverse, and the court is dedicated to preventing the enactment of right-wing legislation and policy despite the will of the electorate.

Writing for Fathom, Russell A. Shalev explains that:

Israel is unique among Western democracies – it has a self-appointed judiciary that is at the same time legislator, executive as well as drafter and creator of Israel’s constitution. This enormous power functions without any effective checks, balances or supervision. As a result, reforms that have been discussed for close to three decades are coming closer to fruition.

Well, actually not. As of this writing, efforts to reform the Israeli judiciary have already stalled (and will likely grind to a halt, if history is any indication):

The coalition has decided to postpone the preliminary vote on the controversial "Deri Law" and freeze the legislative process on one out of two versions of the "Override Law," coalition whip MK Ofir Katz announced in the Knesset plenum on Wednesday, marking a possible turn towards negotiation with the opposition over the government's highly contested judicial reforms.

The effect of judicial reform would be to rein in the court, and put the power instead into the hands of the government and those who voted for it. This, of course, does not sit well with those who voted against our current government, and their response has been to protest in supposedly unprecedented numbers, which are not actually unprecedented at all. From Daniel Greenfield:

The media and assorted opponents of Israel’s current coalition are hyping the leftist rallies in Tel Aviv against the government’s judicial reform efforts as being unprecedented.

They’re not.

While Israel is a small country, getting 100,000 protesters, on any side, to take to the streets is really not very hard.

Greenfield brings several examples of previous protests that topped that number. Perhaps the most striking example goes back almost a decade:

Even the haredim, who comprise only about 13% of the overall population, managed to turn out some 250,000 in 2014 to protest against government school regulations.

The right to protest, of course, is the cornerstone of any democracy. Which makes it ironic that any Israeli would protest against judicial reform. Back in 1998, Evelyn Gordon wrote a lengthy piece about Israel’s judiciary for Azure, against the backdrop of attempts by the High Court to squelch debate and dissent:

In August 1996, two haredi newspapers published editorials highly critical of the Israeli Supreme Court and its president Aharon Barak, assailing the court's increased involvement in matters outside its traditional purview. The editorials triggered a torrent of denunciations from Israel's political, legal and journalistic establishments: Complaints were filed with the police against the papers and their editors charging them with sedition, incitement and defamation of the court; there were calls in some quarters for the papers' closure, while prominent politicians from almost every party vied to produce the most vicious castigation of the crime. Then-finance minister Dan Meridor, in a typical example, branded the editorials "a severe incitement campaign that is unprecedented in the state's history, aimed at damaging not only senior justices but at undermining the basic values of society and the public's confidence in the justice system."

After a brief lull, the issue resurfaced in late November, when an interview appeared in which Dror Hoter-Yishai, chairman of the Israel Bar Association, blasted the court for its intrusion into matters that were properly the province of the Knesset. Again, across-the-board denunciations were accompanied by police complaints and demands that Hoter-Yishai be removed from his chairmanship of the Bar and his position on the government committee that appoints judges. The Bar's Ethics Committee recommended that he face disciplinary charges on account of his remarks.

The Israeli public is probably unique in the sanctity it affords its judiciary, and in its bilious intolerance to attacks on the court. Yet it is not for disrespect of the judiciary that many other democracies, most notably the United States, have assiduously protected debate over judicial activism. The question of the judiciary's proper role in explicating the basic values and principles that shape a nation is of vital importance to any democracy-especially one such as Israel, whose governmental structure is still somewhat in flux, and whose Supreme Court has over the past two decades dramatically increased its involvement in public life. By suppressing debate on one of the most vexing questions of democratic theory today, the political, legal and journalistic communities managed to bilk the Israeli public of one of its founding democratic privileges-the ability to define the role and powers of the institutions of government.

Anyone who wants to understand the issue of judicial reform in Israel, would do well to begin with a thorough reading of Gordon’s essay. Gordon makes it clear that Israel is not alone in its efforts to determine where the rights of the courts should begin and end:

While there is a broad consensus in western democracies about the legitimacy of judicial review-the right of courts to overturn laws that expressly violate a written constitution, or to annul government decisions that contradict laws-there is no such agreement on whether courts should be allowed to overturn laws or government decisions that violate principles whose protection under the law is only implicit.

In most of the western world, the debate over court activism has been held not only in scholarly journals of jurisprudence, but in the political arena as well. In the United States, for instance, activist Supreme Courts have been the source of controversy for over a century. In 1857, the famous Dred Scott decision prohibiting Congress from outlawing slavery in the western territories became a major political issue that featured prominently in the 1860 presidential elections. Republicans and abolitionists denounced the decision as "the greatest crime in the judicial annals of the Republic" and "entitled to just so much moral weight as would be the judgment of a majority of those congregated in any Washington bar-room." President Abraham Lincoln blasted the court's activism in his first inaugural address in 1861:

[T]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government to that eminent tribunal.

Europe, too, is no stranger to the problem of judiciary overreach, and has had to anticipate how the courts will react to legislation and adjust its policies, accordingly.

Elsewhere in the democratic world, judicial activism-which at one time was considered a uniquely American phenomenon-has increasingly come to characterize the behavior of high-level courts. As one scholar has pointed out,

[J]udges in the United Kingdom are increasingly involved in reviewing the discretionary acts of the administrators of a wide variety of government programs, contrary to their tradition.... French and German legislators and executives now routinely alter desired policies in response to or in anticipation of the pronouncements of constitutional courts, and ... member states of the European Community are beginning to alter domestic policies as a result of rulings of the Court of the European Community.... In Russia the legislative-executive confrontation over the constitutional distribution of authority and Boris Yeltsin's economic policies regularly wended its way in and out of the Constitutional Court....

Gordon goes on to explain the issue of justiciability, or “the determination of whether a particular question is capable of being settled by court action.” Originally, says Gordon, justiciability was defined narrowly in Israel, “such that wide areas of government policy were simply considered beyond the court's purview.”

But then things got out of hand:

In the mid-1980s, the Supreme Court, under the stewardship of President Meir Shamgar, undertook to ease substantially the restrictions on standing and justiciability. In the landmark 1986 Ressler case, for instance, the court agreed to hear a petition against the exemption from military service that yeshiva students had traditionally enjoyed. Petitions had previously been filed twice on this issue, and both times the court had ruled that the matter was not justiciable. In 1986, however, a three-judge panel including then-justice Aharon Barak held that the issue was justiciable, while rejecting the case on its merits.

At about the same time, the court issued a landmark ruling on standing limitations. In 1987, Citizen Rights Movement MKs Shulamit Aloni and Dedi Zucker petitioned the court against the justice minister's refusal to extradite William Nakash to France, where he was wanted for the murder of an Arab. Justice Menachem Elon, in his dissent, upheld the court's traditional position that the petitioners had no standing. However, the other four justices, led by President Shamgar, asserted a new standard: Since no one else in the country had a more direct interest in the case, and it was a matter of genuine public interest, the court would hear the petition. Since these rulings, the erosion of standing and justiciability restrictions has continued unabated.

Gordon predicted that the argument over the rights of the courts versus those of the government would continue for decades:

Israel has reached the stage where it can ill afford to stifle the judicial activism debate. Yet last year, Israel's leading public figures demonstrated an eagerness to do just that. But the topic has at long last been broached, and the nation now finds itself at a crossroads, compelled to decide whether the values underlying the laws of the land will continue to be decided by a small group of unelected judges, or whether such vital questions will be returned to the public forum. Few decisions will be more fateful in determining the shape of the country over the coming decades.

In hindsight, twenty-six years later, Gordon’s words appear prophetic. What was true in 1998 remains true today—even if the names of the main characters in the debate over judicial overreach and reform have changed. Today’s protests against judicial reform are just more of the same. And it’s all engineered by Israel’s version of the “old boys club,” the unelected judges who oppose the democratically-elected government of Israel, and its electorate, at every turn.

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Inspired by this tweet:

He didn't merely "criticize Israel." He accused a member of Congress of being bought and controlled by the Jewish lobby.

This is not the first time that blatant antisemitism was justified as mere "criticism of Israel." And when people like Cavallaro and Ken Roth explain the reasons they didn't get the positions they wanted, the media doesn't bother to wonder - hey, maybe there is a conflict of interest here in the description of the reasons they give.

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02/15 Links Pt1: PA seeking UNSC resolution condemning Israel’s assertion of rights in Judea and Samaria; After Biden sent $1 billion to the PLO, Israeli deaths rose 900%; France looking for successor Abbas

From Ian:

Yishai Fleisher: Three Muslims and a settler

The third Muslim I met on my trip was working at the airport in Houston. I flew in for a tight 15 hours to attend a commemorative hilula gathering in honor of the saintly “Baba Sali”—Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira. Upon landing, I hit a snag: My bag was not coming out of the chute and I really, really did not have time for that. So, I went over to the baggage claim counter and approached a representative named Huma. I asked her about my bag, produced a tag and she started clicking on her keyboard. She announced that it was coming out soon. In the meantime, we got to talking.

A middle-aged woman, Huma’s accent and look gave away her origins in the Indian subcontinent. I asked her if she was Hindu or Muslim, to which she replied that she was a Muslim from Pakistan. She asked me where I was coming from. I wear a kippa and have a beard and my luggage tags show I fly internationally, so she was not surprised that I was from Israel. But what she said was surprising to me: “I love Israel—I have visited twice!” Warmth entered her eyes as she described the amazing congeniality of the people, how safe she felt and how clean it was.

Sadly, Huma told me about her son’s Jewish business partner, who before her first trip urged her not to visit Israel. He bizarrely warned her that she would be kicked and spat at in the Jewish state. Both she and I were dismayed at his warped sense of reality. Thankfully, she went to Israel anyway and had a great time.

I asked her what places she had visited. She mentioned Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and that she had seen Al-Aqsa and the Tomb of Abraham. “You went to Hebron?” I asked. She said, “Yes, absolutely!” I produced my business card with a picture of the Tomb of the Ancestors and gave it to her. A visible shudder went through her. Her eyes widened: “Do you pray at the Tomb of Abraham every day?” Yes, I said, most days. “Would you pray for my sons to get married?” she asked earnestly, clutching my card. I answered, “Yes, I will” and asked for their names. She thanked me profusely.

At no point did she seem to mind that I was a Jew, an Israeli and a “settler” who works in Hebron. All that mattered was that I was connected to Abraham and that Israel was a welcoming place. Here again, there was no mention of Palestine. As a woman who had left Pakistan for Texas, she had chosen liberty over a restrictive form of Islam. To her, Israel is a place where you can connect with religion and identity, and do so in freedom. In fact, she specifically mentioned her amazement and pleasure at being able to walk freely in Jerusalem at night. Although she did not say it, I guessed that Palestine is more like the oppressive Pakistan of her past.

I often meet people during my travels who have respect and love for the Jewish state. Israel’s authentic culture, military strength and economic growth are respected in the region and many see Israel as an example of liberalism and humanity—a leader in the battle against tyranny and jihad. Millions see Jerusalem as a spiritual capital they aspire to visit.

Palestine, on the other hand, is not attractive to many Muslims. They know all too well that the P.A., PLO and Hamas are the same corrupt jihadists who have destroyed so many Arab and Muslim states. These Muslims see the Abraham Accords and Israel’s normalization in the region as a source of hope and they are watching and praying for the success of the Jewish state—inshallah!

Daniel Greenfield: After Biden sent $1 billion to the PLO, Israeli deaths rose 900%

When U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas last month, he boasted of the over one billion dollars in aid that the Biden administration had programmed for the terrorist territories.

That aid has come with a very heavy price.

In Feb. 2019, President Trump’s total cutoff of aid to the Palestinians became official. That year, 10 Israelis or people in Israeli controlled areas were killed in stabbings, shootings, rocket and other attacks, down from 12 the previous year, 15 in 2017 and 16 in 2016.

In 2020, however, only three Israelis were killed.

These numbers reflected the diminished capacity of the Islamic terrorists. The reduction in numbers was not due to the pandemic. The year still saw attacks, including firebombings, rocket launches and stabbings, but the success and lethality rates for these attacks were lower.

The numbers turned around dramatically once again in 2021.

In April 2021, the Biden administration restored aid to the PLO. Terror incidents, reflecting attack attempts, shot up sharply, from 91 in February and 89 in March to 130 in April.

By May, major fighting had resumed, with 13 Israelis, including two children, killed.

By the time the year was over, 17 people in Israeli areas had been killed. The over 400% increase in deaths was only the beginning. In 2022, 31 Israelis or people in Israeli areas were killed, up from only three in 2020, for a massive 900% increase in casualties since the restoration of foreign aid to the terrorists. This was the worst death toll since 2015 under Obama.

But in January and the first half of February, 10 Israelis have already been killed, including a 6-year-old boy and his 8-year-old brother.

Mahmoud Abbas Rejects Efforts of Biden Administration to Secure Quiet

Abbas’ Reading of President Biden
Abbas’ working assumption is that the Biden administration is preoccupied with its confrontation with Russia over the war in Ukraine and the economic conflict with China. Biden, according to this assumption, does not want a U.S. confrontation with the PA. Therefore, Abbas allowed himself to ignore Biden’s request. After all, Biden has not invited him to the White House for a visit, and from the PA perspective the White House is not ready to get its hands dirty and offer the Palestinians a political horizon.

In conversations with his associates, Abbas says that the American administration cannot be trusted because it is biased in Israel’s favor.

The refusal of the PA chairman is a blow to the Biden administration. Terrorist activity is expected to increase toward the month of Ramadan (March 22 – April 20, 2023) and force Israel to defend itself through intensive military activity, which could result in Palestinian casualties and regional instability.

President Biden is wrong in refusing to apply levers of pressure on Abbas, as President George Bush did at the time on Yasser Arafat to fight terrorism. Abbas did not hesitate even for a moment to thwart the American security plan, knowing that the continuation of the existing situation may encourage terrorism and cause more victims on both sides.

Abbas’ reluctance to have the PA fight terrorism emphasizes the fact that he has finished his role as a possible partner for negotiations with Israel. He has only one thing that interests him: to survive in his position of power.

Here are videos from the TikTok channel of a Palestinian kindergarten showing the kids play-acting being attacked and then attacking Israeli soldiers, and a funeral complete with the "mother" kissing her "martyr" son.

And another showing the kids as masked terrorists.

This is not the kids play-acting. This is the teachers of a school telling the kids to do these performances - so they grow up to do it in real life.

They are depraved.

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Edy Cohen writes in Israel Today:

Tunisian Jews are again in the eye of the storm. The arrest of a local Jewish merchant has shaken the peace of the island community of Djerba that dates back to the times of King David.

Today there are only about a thousand Jews left in Djerba, a quiet Mediterranean island just off the coast of Tunisia. There is almost no crime or politics on this idyllic refuge, where most of the Jewish residents observe the Sabbath.

The event that shocked the Jewish community in Djerba took place on Tuesday of last week, when the police, accompanied by large forces of undercover officers, arrested a 60-year-old Jewish merchant named Mishleh Bitan. According to the authorities, he was accused of smuggling gold. The Jews of Djerba have been dealing in gold for generations and many of them own gold shops on the island.

Police planned to apprehend the wife and son of the Jewish merchant, but dozens of Jews showed up to protect the family and physically prevented the arrest.

In a conversation I had with a number of Jews in Djerba, it appears that every two or three weeks the police come to the neighborhood and try to harass them under the pretext of hunting smugglers. Sometimes they conduct searches and force the Jews to report their sales and tax statements. Other times the police show up for random inventory and often steal gold during the count. No one dares say a word because of the fear of further harassment.

Life has turned upside down in recent years for these Jews. Everyone I spoke with expressed deep concerns and even disbelief at the harassment that has suddenly descended upon this ancient Jewish community.

Police took Mishleh in a police car to the capital of Tunis, a journey of about seven hours. Then unexpectedly, and following pressure exerted by various parties both in Israel and in other countries, Mishleh was released after less than a day in detention.

Another Jewish source told me: “We didn’t stay. We first of all prevented the arrest of the family’s mother and son. They wanted to arrest them to put pressure on Mishleh to make a confession. But we prevented that. For the whole day after the arrest, we sat and waited and closed the shops. In protest we put up signs saying ‘We will not be silent any longer.’”

This is the only place I could find the story, although Cohen has been tweeting about it from the time of Mishleh's arrest.

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In 2018, the World Council of Churches website wrote about how arduous the journey through checkpoints was for Palestinians going to Israel to work or find jobs:

At 4.45, the Qalandiya checkpoint is already crowded, as thousands upon thousands of Palestinians try to make their way to Jerusalem each day.

Qalandiya is the main checkpoint between the northern West Bank and Jerusalem, and ecumenical accompaniers (EAs) from the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (WCC-EAPPI) visit regularly in the early mornings.

“If you live in East Jerusalem outside the wall, or in Ramallah for example, and you work in Jerusalem, you need to be at the checkpoint early if you want to get to work on time. Getting through the checkpoint can take anything between one and several hours,” one of the EAs explains.

It was definitely not an enjoyable experience to go through the checkpoint then, and the WCC wanted to make sure the whole world knew it.

Now in 2023, the WCC revisited the checkpoints, and found things are quite different:

Machsom Watch was founded in January 2001 by three Jewish Jerusalemite women who saw military checkpoints around Jerusalem and in the West Bank and decided to do something about it. Now 88, Barag pursues human rights as energetically as ever.

Over the past five to ten years, she has noticed big changes at checkpoints: there are no more long lines of people. In fact, thousands of people come, they cross quickly, and the whole process is computerized.

This sounds great, right? Israel has cut the wait time for the Palestinian workers by hours every day. What could be wrong with that?

When your job is to demonize Israel - plenty!

“The Israeli military will tell you: look what we have done to make life easier for Palestinians, but in reality, the system is much more difficult and complicated, but you cannot see it,” says Barag. “There are over 100 types of permits.”

“As human rights people, we must do something about this inhumane system of control,” she says. “We do not want to make the situation easier.”

She realizes this seems like a contradiction—but what she is saying, is that the occupation should not become easier to administer because humans are increasingly less visible in the process. “Let us not open the space for soldiers to operate a machine—one that is bureaucratic—and where the gates open and close remotely,” she says. “We do not want to make the occupation more palatable; we want to see an end to the occupation.”

If the "occupation" would end and there would be two states - there would still be a border crossing between the two states! It would probably be harder for Palestinians to go to work in Israel than it is today.

And the World Council of Churches will be there to condemn that, too.

Because the problem isn't that Israel is unfair to Palestinians. The problem is that Israel exists, and the WCC is doing everything they can to remedy that situation.

(h/t Simon Wiesenthal Center)

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02/14 Links Pt2: Sarah Idan: Don’t Buy Into The Anti-Israel Movement’s Pack Of Lies; Graduate suing uni after essay criticising Hamas was failed; Remembering Marc Chagall and the Righteous Rescuers of the Holocaust

From Ian:

Disturbed Frontman Tells Artists to Ignore Pressure From BDS Supporters About Performing in Israel

Disturbed frontman David Draiman said in a new podcast interview that he gives no attention to supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and they’ve in return come to realize that they’ll never be able to convince him not to perform in the Jewish state.

“F__k them. I don’t care. They know I don’t care, that’s why they don’t bother me,” the Jewish musician said during his guest appearance last week on the Sarai Talk Show, a new podcast hosted by human rights activist and former Miss Iraq Sarah Idan. He added, “I have 2,000 relatives living in Israel. I have parents, my brother, uncles, aunts, cousins — you’re really gonna try to say something to me about BDS? It makes no sense.”

Disturbed will embark on a world tour in April for its new album Divisive and will make a stop in Israel for a concert. It will be Draiman’s second time performing in the country and the heavy metal musician, whose maternal grandmother has Yemenite Jewish roots, said he is “excited” to visit Israel again.

Draiman is an avid supporter of Israel and also a member of the non-profit organization Creative Community for Peace, which promotes efforts to use the arts as a means to create peace and coexistence, as well as support against the cultural boycott of Israel.

Idan further asked Draiman about BDS supporters pressuring many artists in the past to not perform in Israel as a show of solidarity with Palestinians. The Sound of Silence singer expressed his own frustration by noting how ironic it is “that there’s not a single band that has played in Israel that has seen a negative impact whatsoever other than a whole lot of people being loudmouths online. It hasn’t negatively impacted their ticket sales [or] their record sales. If anything it increased them.”

He told Idan he thinks Israeli fans are “amazing and dedicated” and said he believes that music “should be the entity that brings people together, not continues to separate. It should build bridges and it’s not supposed to be something you withhold from people.”

Sarah Idan: Don’t Buy Into The Anti-Israel Movement’s Pack Of Lies

As Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid has poignantly written, “the BDS movement in its determination to oppose Israel is prepared to fight to the last drop of Palestinian blood. As a Palestinian who actually lives in east Jerusalem and hopes to build a better life for his family and his community, this is the kind of “pro-Palestinian activism” we could well do without.”

How can we understand a society that pursues such upside-down goals for its people? Like North Korea or Cuba, the PA-ruled West Bank is a broken society where all the rules are upside down. This is a society where the families of terrorists — including the killers of Americans like the young Afghanistan and Iraq veteran Taylor Force of Lubbock, Texas — are awarded huge stipends from the government itself that far exceed the average Palestinian monthly salary.

The Council of Foreign Relations has exposed that the total annual amount for Palestinian salaries for the ranks of major general, brigadier general, colonel and lieutenant colonel in 2016 reached over $66 million per year (USD), equivalent to the yearly salary of 13,000 Palestinian soldiers, although the total number of officers in the ranks is only 5,672. This is a society so dominated by corruption that even though the economy subsists largely on foreign aid, former PA Chairman Yasser Arafat reportedly died with a massive net worth of $1.3 billion (USD).

Those who seek peace in the Middle East should look to the changemakers of the next generation. Real Palestinian human rights activists have remained focused on the deeply corrupt autocracy around PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, currently serving the 19th year of his original four-year term after suspending both the Palestinian Legislature and Constitution, as well as years of elections.

The gaggle descending on Los Angeles this month, with their desire to destroy and expel their “enemies,” must represent the past and not the future. To ensure that outcome, Americans must not buy into BDS’s pack of lies. BDS is simply BS.

A Secular Jew Raises His Head and Doesn’t Like What He Sees

A mentally unstable celebrity finds inspiration in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion for his tweets. A former president whose daughter converted to Judaism dines with a rabid antisemite and insists that there’s nothing to see here, move along. In the grand and eternal scheme of antisemitism, these are mere blips. And yet … I can’t stop thinking about them. Why?

For most Jews, it makes no sense to ask why. Shouldn’t all manifestations of antisemitism make all Jews, not to mention all people of goodwill, worried and uneasy? Maybe, but the taxonomy of the genus “Jew” is complex, comprised as it is of species with different mixes of religious, social, and political identities. In my own cohort, reactions to episodes like these are suffused with an uncomfortable self-consciousness that blunts what might otherwise be an immediate and outraged response.

The fact is that I’m such a perfect example of a secular Jew that I could be the standard against which all other secular Jews are measured. My parents were Jewish but never went to temple. Our family celebrated Christmas with gifts for the children. During my brief, obligatory fascination with religion—the phase that all pre-adolescents go through, Jewish or not—we lit menorah candles at my insistence but recited no prayers. The fever passed. Passover was celebrated with a meal that sometimes included relatives but never the Haggadah.

In adulthood, I have been professionally successful in a world that, until just a few generations ago, would have been closed to me. I attended an elite, Eastern college, graduated from medical school, and became a tenured professor at Harvard. I’m now married to a wonderful woman who, in full disclosure, is half Jewish; my previous wife, who died after 30 years of marriage, was a blond-haired, blue-eyed echt WASP. I have, in a word, by the standards of my own tribe, or subtribe, arrived.

Although I cannot cite a single experience of overt antisemitism during my long march to assimilated respectability, and despite my background and elevated status within the secular “establishment,” I am acutely aware of my Jewish identity. I have always assumed that my position is tenuous, that my credentials can be revoked at any moment because of my religion. Several of my Jewish colleagues share this mindset. We make knowing comments to each other about watching for the boxcars whenever the antisemitic heat is turned up.

This disconnect between disinterest in any exercise of my Jewish identity and my anticipatory dread of Jewish victimhood manifests in other ways. I have a compulsive need to revisit antisemitism’s greatest hits, particularly National Socialism and the Holocaust. My bookshelves reflect this obsession. In the past few years alone, I’ve read two multivolume biographies of Hitler (Ian Kershaw’s and Volker Ullrich’s—spoiler alert: they both have the same ending) along with a dramatic history of the first hundred days of the Thousand Year Reich. Nicholas Wachsmann’s KL, an exhaustive and masterful detailing of the concentration camps, is there, too, waiting for me. On the shelf below is the four-volume History of Anti-Semitism next to Amos Elon’s The Pity of It All.

An op-ed in Al Quds, a UK-based news site for Palestinians, says, "The uprising this time must start from a clear political vision of how to coexist in peace and avoid internal strife, as the region is full of boiling factors, and there is enough misery and suffering because of them. With all that is happening, there is nothing left for the Arabs, except for a little face, which may be shed cheaply in front of the world's ridicule and the laughter of time.

'What is left of face can be preserved by a third intifada, led by youth in the spring of life, and boys whose buds have not yet blossomed, chanting the words of Ghassan Kanafani: “Beware of natural death, and do not die except between showers of bullets.' "

To this Arab writer, seeing children attacking Israelis, and dying, is a point of pride. He wants Palestinian children to die, as long as it makes Palestinians feel honorable. And honor comes from attacking Jews.

This is mainstream thinking among Palestinians and many other Arabs - this writer is from Egypt.

One cannot emphasize enough how sick the culture of Palestinianism is.

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