Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

" Palestinian suffering today is much worse than the Holocaust"

Another day, another example of outrageous antisemitism in Palestinian media.

Dr.. Mustafa Youssef Al-Lidawi holds a Ph.D. in political science and is a frequent writer. He has also been (and probably still is) a member of Hamas. He was deported by Israel to Lebanon in the early 1990s, where he still lives.

He writes in Shms.ps that the real victims of the Holocaust are...Holocaust deniers!

They ask the countries and peoples of the world to recognize the massacres they were subjected to during the Second World War, and they hold the international community responsible for the consequences of the Holocaust, in which they claim that “millions of Jews” were exterminated unjustly and aggressively, and they force them to apologize to them and compensate them, and they blackmail and embarrass regimes and rulers, and put pressure on peoples and organizations ....

The Israelis weep over what befell them, claim injustice for what befell them, punish anyone who denies the Holocaust or questions it and refuses to recognize it, declare war on him, prosecute him, harass him, expel him, strip him of all his characteristics and deprive him of his most basic rights, and consider silence about it a crime, and many European thinkers and historians suffered from their intellectual terror and racial tyranny, some of whom were afraid, retreated and cowardly, and narrated their story and accepted it, while those who insisted on their position were punished and exiled, and were expelled from their jobs and deprived of their rights.

Then comes the point we all knew was coming:

What the Israeli occupation is doing in occupied Palestine, against its people, their land and sanctities, and their homes and properties, is greater than the crime of the "Holocaust" with which they cracked the heads of the world, and forced them to express permanent remorse and regret because of it, and perhaps they plan every day to commit more of these crimes.

This is hardly unusual.

What would be unusual would be if the media reported it.

Even more unusual would be if a single Palestinian would criticize this article in Arabic.

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!

Former Palestinian prime minister and Oslo negotiator Ahmed Qurei, known as "Abu Alaa'", died last week in Ramallah.

He is being praised as a brilliant negotiator and peacemaker.

Mr. Qurei’s Israeli and American interlocutors remembered him as a trustworthy, creative, shrewd and often humorous negotiator.

“Together we’ve tried to bring peace to our peoples in an understanding that it’s our responsibility to make a better future to our children,” Tzipi Livni, a former Israeli minister and peace negotiator, wrote on Twitter after Mr. Qurei’s death.

Dennis Ross, a Middle East envoy and the chief peace negotiator in the administrations of presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, recalled Mr. Qurei as “someone who was engaging and often brilliant as a negotiator.”

“He knew how to acknowledge Israeli concerns about security to gain acceptance of Palestinian needs,” Mr. Ross wrote in an email.

There is no doubt that, compared to Palestinians in general, Qurei was a moderate. He spoke out against the second intifada's terror attacks (although not against the intifada altogether.)

Yet even his comparative moderation proves how immoral Palestinian leaders are.

If you read his words carefully, he - along with all other "moderate" Palestinian leaders - never objected to suicide bombings or blowing up pizza shops on moral grounds, even when he claimed he was.

This is from his quarterly report on his government's activity to the Palestinian Legislative Council on March 31, 2004:

We believe that the blood of [Hamas leader] Sheikh Yassin was not spilled in vain… The struggle against the crimes of the occupation was harmed because of the operations against Israeli civilians. These [operations] served as a pretext for the continuation of the [Israeli] aggression. We have condemned them [i.e., the operations], and we must oppose them morally. We stress again our opposition to these [operations] from this platform, because they harm the image of the [Palestinian] national struggle and create confusion and misunderstanding in the international community. These operations damage us economically and serve as a cover for the Israeli government to continue the settlements and the construction of the fence.
The opposition to operations [against Israeli civilians] comes not only because they contradict the road map option, but also because they contribute to the accumulated hatred, enmity, and lack of trust … and weaken the peace camp.

Even though he says "we must oppose them morally," in context even that means that they must oppose them for political and tactical reasons. Terrorism makes Palestinians look bad to the international community, it hurts their cause, it damages them economically, it weakens the Israeli peace camp. But he doesn't express the least bit of anger or horror at actually blowing up Israeli civilians.

And when it comes to his own Fatah faction slaughtering Israelis, he was an enthusiastic fan. Look how animated he is in this video, as he praises one of the comrades of Dalal Mughrabi and participant in her murder of 38 Israelis including 13 children, to great applause from the entire Fatah leadership at the 2009 Fatah Convention.

We have with us today the hero Khaled Abu Asba’, the hero from the [1978] operation of the martyr Dalal A-Mughrabi. We salute and welcome him, and [we say] to the martyred heroine Dalal: All glory to you, all glory to you. All our sisters here are the sister of Dalal.

Abu Alaa 'certainly had no moral qualms about that terror attack. He vigorously praised it.

This is the story that the Western media simply doesn't want the world to know. Just this past week we've witnessed this whitewashing of history in articles and obituaries about Jimmy Carter, James Abourezk and now Ahmed Qurei. (Not in the same league but equally antisemitic was the late Yossi Gurvitz.)

If they had said something explicitly racist, their obituaries would at least mention it; but when they have histories of antisemitism or support for terror against Jews - nothing.

For all the talk about how awful antisemitism is, the media sure works hard to sweep it under the rug when it comes from anyone who isn't politically on the Right.

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!

Last summer, the US government and media spent a great deal of time covering the death of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.

It wasn't because she was a journalist. 53 journalists were killed in 2022, and none of them received even one percent of the coverage that Abu Akleh did.

But at the time, those who obsessed over Abu Akleh claimed they did so because she was an American citizen.

That isn't true either. And we can know that by predicting the future.

On Monday, Elan Ganeles - a dual US-Israeli citizen - was shot and killed in an ambush while driving his car. He was not voluntarily covering a war zone. He was simply driving to visit the Dead Sea while visiting Israel for a wedding.

Here's what won't happen in the coming weeks and months:

There will be no multi-reporter investigation into his death by the New York Times. And not by AP. And not by the Washington Post or any independent forensics organizations.

There will be no 5-10,000 word articles in US media about his death, looking for eyewitnesses, digging up security camera footage, trying to do open-source forensics. No one gathering thousands of photos and videos from the scene, putting together computer models and diagrams for the trajectory of the bullets, in the name of "justice" for the death of an American citizen.

And certainly no articles tracking down the people who celebrated Elan's death by handing out sweets.

There will be no insistence that Palestinians investigate the death impartially and to share their results with the US.

There will be no calls for an FBI investigation to track down the murderers. For Ganeles' murder, Israel's own investigation - not trusted last year - will be considered fine.

There will be no insistence that Palestinians take responsibility for the crime. And no insistence that Palestinians apologize. Indeed, there will be no apology by the Palestinian Authority.

No one will investigate whether Iranian funding indirectly helped fund the murder of an American citizen. No teams of accountants from the media will trace down the money trail, or even point out that the large number of new armed groups in the West Bank coincides with the de facto loosening of Iran sanctions enforcement by the Biden administration.

Major US officials like Secretary of State Blinken will not host heavily promoted visits by Ganeles' family in Washington, and the family will not have a free forum in major media to insist that justice be pursued for the death of a US citizen. They will not be on TV as anything other than a grieving family - they will not politicize their grief to pressure the US to respond to them, taking multiple trips to Washington and hiring PR experts. There will be no anguished articles a hundred days from now demanding "accountability."

None of this will happen - because Palestinian Arabs are expected to kill innocent Jewish civilians and instead of the media being outraged, it will try to recognize their pain that prompted them to riddle any cars with Israeli license plates with bullets.

Shireen Abu Akleh didn't dominate coverage because she was American and not because she was a journalist and not because she was a woman. She dominated coverage because blaming Jews for a murder is a good way to get ratings, to sell newspapers, to get awards and to strengthen the "narrative" of an Israeli "occupation" that is the source of all evil..

Researching Palestinians killing Jews and publicly pressuring the PA would do none of those things.

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!

02/27 Links Pt2: The new antisemitism of human rights; Research Shows Media Rely on Al Jazeera for Israel Reports; El-Al makes first ever flight through Omani airspace

From Ian:

Binationalism and the misuse of Holocaust memory

The mufti asked the Nazis to help eliminate Jews from the Arab world. Hitler offered his support and the plan came close to fruition. As historian Colin Shindler writes, “Had it not been for the victory at El Alamein, SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Walter Rauff would have ordered his Einsatzkommando to liquidate the Jews of Palestine. The Nazis expected local participation in their actions.”

Indeed, the mufti was planning a concentration camp to be located near Nablus.

After the war, the Arabs welcomed Husseini as a hero. Historian Jeffrey Herf notes that Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, called the mufti a “hero who challenged an empire and fought Zionism with the help of Hitler and Germany. Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin al-Husseini will continue the struggle.”

As Herf shows, Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis has had an ongoing impact on Palestinian politics. Indeed, Nazi-style antisemitism, including the usual Nazi tropes, has continued among Palestinian officials to this day. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, widely used in Nazi propaganda, is still popular with the Palestinian Authority and is often cited in its largest daily, al-Hayat al-Jadida.

Articles in that newspaper repeatedly demonstrate P.A. anti-Semitism. For example, its editor has complained of “Shylock-style banks that empty our pockets.” Another article asserted that the P.A. must “protect its people and itself from an enemy which bares its Jewish fangs from the four corners of the earth.” One of its writers has accused Zionists of using “Russian Jewish girls with AIDS to spread the disease among Palestinian youth.”

Through al-Hayat al-Jadida, the P.A. also engages in Holocaust denial, referring to “the forged claims of the Zionists.” On its official television station, the P.A. has issued a call “to oppose the Zionist media, which dominates more than half of the media in the world.”

That should all sound familiar to anyone acquainted with Nazi ideology.

Contrary to Beinart’s rosy picture, this is what Israeli Jews can expect from the leadership of a binational state with an Arab majority. So, it’s understandable that they might not want to live in such a state. There’s a valid concern here that cannot be wished away by claiming that Jews should just get over the Holocaust.

Nor is the situation likely to improve. Palestinian students—future leaders—are being indoctrinated with the same antisemitic ideology. A 2017 report by UN Watch shows Palestinian teachers “praising Hitler and posting his photo, and posting overtly antisemitic videos, caricatures and statements.” Third-graders are taught that Jews are to be exterminated. Part of this indoctrination takes place in summer camps modeled on the Nazi youth organization the Hitler Jugend.

It’s understandable that Jewish Israelis might find this troubling.

To claim that the pursuit of peace requires Jewish Israelis to set aside Holocaust memory is just one more example of its misuse. The point is not to get over the Holocaust, but to understand it. That understanding should include an acknowledgment of the Nazi legacy of antisemitic hatred among the Palestinians. That legacy, not Holocaust memory, is the real obstacle to peace.

The new antisemitism of human rights

This is the origin of the antisemitic attack on that Jewish child in Turin. Don’t look for it elsewhere. It is in the atmosphere of contempt for Israel that one breathes everywhere from the media to dinner parties.

It is the hate that explains why tens of thousands of Jews have left Europe in recent years. In Nice, France, for example, the Jewish community has dropped from 20,000 to 7,000 and this trend is ongoing across the continent. Jews no longer wear kippas in public and every 80 seconds an antisemitic post appears on social media. Elderly Jewish women are hurled out of Paris windows and Jewish children are murdered in front of their schools.

Following the Holocaust, the old, Nazi-style antisemitic mythology was taken up by Soviet propaganda, which gave antisemitism a powerful renewed form, with its tropes of colonialist, warmongering Jews and innocent aboriginal Palestinians.

Because it was supported by America, Israel was declared an “imperialist” power, condemned by an automatic majority at the U.N., and buzzwords like “occupation” came to be applied to the entirety of Israel and all its Jews, fundamentally delegitimizing the Jewish state.

At the same time, the Palestinians were given total legitimacy, even as they made terrorism the most terrible weapon of our time, an example for terrorists all over the world, and even as they slaughtered innocents, persecuted their own people and consistently refused offers of peace.

All of this has corrupted the very idea of human rights, whose adherents have become outright antisemites—the worst human rights violators of all. They believe they are protecting human rights by attacking the Jews. Instead, they are enabling the rise of the cultural evil of antisemitism by wrapping it in the mantle of good.

Seth Frantzman: Lessons of one year of war in Ukraine - analysis

Sending arms
Western countries often have a divided between the policies of their foreign ministries and their defense ministries. In the US this is expressed by the differences between the Department of State and the Pentagon. For instance, in the Syria conflict, the US pursued sometimes conflicting goals. US Central Command backed the SDF, but at times key US diplomats appeared to also seek to distance the US from the SDF and eastern Syria and preferred to work with Turkey. This means that the US has often had problems during the global war on terror since 9/11 with the military pursuing narrow goals and not always coordinating well with bigger goals.

This kind of policy disconnect means that in the West it was common for countries to put out statements condemning things, but not do anything. For instance, that is how China was able to build bases on small atolls in the South China Sea.

Russia believed the West was weak and divided and wouldn’t do anything more than put out virtue-signaling statements. Russia was wrong.

The decision to arm Ukraine is a key part of the reason Ukraine has maintained its resistance. The West has rallied and shifted procurement to help Ukraine as fast as possible. This is a big contract with decades of western policies that have often starved some partners of arms. For instance, South Vietnam didn’t have the re-supply it needed to resist in 1976. Other key partners have not always received the weapons they wanted, or in the quantities they need. Support for Ukraine appears to have shifted this policy.

Strong defenses and a Russian paper tiger
Russia has proven itself to be much weaker than it appeared on paper. This is a lesson from the war. Sometimes authoritarian regimes look strong but they may be weak internally. China also appears strong, but is its army, navy and air force as strong as it appears? These are key questions.

Western systems generally have proven themselves very effective in Ukraine. Ukrainians have also shown that willingness to stand up against the Russians has poked a huge hole in the myth of Moscow’s abilities. This has come at enormous expense for both sides. Nevertheless, the combination of Ukraine’s willingness to resist and rally, and Russia’s apparent feet of clay, provides a lesson for future confrontations.

Ideals are better than theories
One last lesson of the war is that theories of international relations generally are hollow when it comes to dealing with reality. The “realists” and others who predicted the US could “engage” with Russia and Iran have been proven wrong.

Russia was never going to do a “reset” with the West, and encouraging trade via pipelines like Nord Stream didn’t moderate Russia. The Ukraine war has shown that idealism, such as backing democracies, is better than the cynical theorists who always believe authoritarians can be trusted.

People asked for it - and now it is available!

The audiobook version of my book "Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism" is now available for Audible customers. It is nearly 8 hours long.

You can get it on the book's Amazon page and the Audible page.

I narrated it myself.

Thanks to my audio engineer Sam to turned my recordings into something that Audible would accept, and especially to "Robert Zimmerman" for listening and pointing out mistakes in my recording.

Hope you enjoy it!

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!

James Abourezk, the first Arab American U.S. senator, died last week at 92.

AP wrote an obituary that mentions his positions, and says, "Abourezk also became an outspoken critic of Israel and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East after touring the region and visiting his parents’ hometown in Lebanon as a senator. The position lost him many political allies, and he decided to retire from the Senate after a single term. Abourezk returned to practicing law in Washington and founded the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, where he passionately and colorfully denounced Israeli aggressions in the Middle East. "

Perhaps the obituary should be somewhat expanded.

In 2007, Abourezk went on Hezbollah's Al Manar TV for an interview, in English, where he expressed his support for terror groups:

Interviewer: You also called Hizbullah and Hamas "resistance fighters."
James Abourezk: They are.
Interviewer: While the U.S. administration brands them as "terrorist organizations"...
James Abourezk: That was done at the request of Israel. That name was done at the request of Israel – that the United States calls them terrorist organizations.

He also said that the Arab hijackers on 9/11 were cooperating with the "Zionists:"

Interviewer: Here I need to ask you something, which is growing and escalating in the Western world, and particularly in the U.S., which is this immense wave of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiment, lumping all Arabs together as "terrorists." This was clearly manifest in movies and TV series, like "24." Why? Why now? Is it just after 9/11?

James Abourezk: No, it's after the Soviet Union collapsed. The Zionists were looking around for another enemy to have, because to them the Soviet Union was an enemy because they wouldn't allow Jewish emigration. So they used that as an organizing tool, basically, and when the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no more organizing about the Soviet Union. So they looked around, and they said: Well, the Muslims. Let's find the Arabs and the Muslims, and make them the boogeyman. And that's what they did.

Interviewer: But why did this sentiment of hatred increase after 9/11?

James Abourezk: Well, because the Arabs who were involved in 9/11 cooperated with the Zionists, actually. It was a cooperation. They gave them the perfect excuse to denounce all Arabs. It's a racist sort of thing, really racist – you know, picking out these 19 or 20 terrorists – they were terrorists – and saying all the Arabs are like them. So, you know, people in America don't really look at it that deeply, and they accept what the government and the press are saying.

These were not Abourezk's only outrageous comments. When Helen Thomas was fired from AP for her explicit antisemitism, Abourezk came to her defense - doubling down on her desire to ethnically cleanse Jews from the Middle East:

Helen was not necessarily done in by her statement about Israel. What she said is what I’ve been saying for years - the Zionists should get the hell out of Palestine.

Where they go when they leave there is not my concern, just as it is not the Zionists' concern where the Palestinians went when they were driven out of Palestine.

Of course, Thomas said the Jews should get out of Palestine. When she said they should go "back" to Poland and Germany it was clear whom she meant, and when the interviewer asked her to clarify that she wants the Jews to leave Israel she added other places for them to go.

Abourezk was a terror supporter, a 9/11 truther and an antisemite. An honest obituary would mention that.

(h/t Irene)

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!

02/27 Links Pt1: Brothers slain in terror attack laid to rest as parents call for unity amid the pain; PM urges 'not to take law into own hands'; Israeli shot in Jordan Valley terror attack

From Ian:

Orly Goldschmidt (Guardian-UK): Israel Was Hit by 5,000 Palestinian Terror Attacks in 2022. It Has to Defend Itself

An article published in the Guardian days after a Palestinian terrorist murdered seven innocent people near a synagogue in Jerusalem on Holocaust Memorial Day subordinates the value of Israeli lives. The article illustrates a problem in the wider discourse - the denial of, and refusal to accept, Israeli suffering.

In 2022, Israelis suffered from over 5,000 Palestinian terror attacks, including car-rammings, shootings, stabbings and bombings targeting innocent men, women and children on the streets of Israel. This is the reality on the ground.

On 10 February, for example, a Palestinian drove his car into a crowded bus stop, killing three people, including two brothers aged six and eight. Just imagine you or your loved ones falling victim to such abhorrent terror on your way to work.

This is precisely why Israel's counter-terrorism apparatus exists, because without it I dread to think how many more zeros would be added to that 5,000 total.

Israel has shown its desire for peace with the Palestinians throughout the years, including several attempts to sign peace agreements in 1993, 2000, 2008 and 2014, and we continue to reach out for peace.

For peace to happen, there must be recognition from the Palestinian leadership that incitement and violence must end.

The writer is Spokesperson of the Embassy of Israel to the UK.

Learning some painful Mideast history lessons

We have to ask ourselves: Is this experiment of “land for peace” really working?

Another important point: Are these territories “disputed territories” or “Palestinian-occupied territories?”

Alan Baker, former ambassador to Canada and former legal advisor to Israel’s foreign ministry, in a recent presentation by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs stated that although the phrase “Palestinian occupied territories” is accepted parlance, that has no basis in law.

However, it represents the majority of states that voted in favor of hundreds of resolutions, and further stated that “in the agreements between Israel and the Palestinians (the Oslo Accords and the 1995 Interim Agreement), the Palestinians themselves agreed that these are disputed territories that will be agreed upon during final status negotiations.”

Does the world remember the offers in 1936 from the Peel Commission, the November 1947 vote in the United Nations, the 1967 Khartoum Conference, and the offers by Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000 and Ehud Olmert at Sharm el-Sheik in 2008?

Each one was successively more and more generous, and all were summarily rejected by our Palestinian interlocutors. They didn’t want to share the pie; they wanted the entire thing.

Since the bar was set so high by Barak and PLO chief Yasser Arafat, and Olmert and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, it makes it very difficult for a Palestinian interlocular to accept less. And in all of the years of ensuring terrorism and violence, it makes it extremely hard for an Israeli interlocutor to offer as much or more.

Yet there are many powerful voices in the international community that refuse to learn the lessons of history. They want a precipitance withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, and try to delude themselves into thinking that Israel giving up land will bring peace. They are looking at the current impasse with the Palestinians and, as difficult as this situation is, many want to seize upon a solution—any solution—not realizing the lessons of the Gaza withdrawal or the stream of later rejected offers.

It has become a mantra, a quick and superficial solution that has really proven to be no solution at all—one that emboldens the terrorists and their Iranian sponsor.

Palestinians chose to willfully blind themselves to what their leaders say—of how their leadership from the P.A. on down is guilty of the very worst kind of child abuse by exhorting Muslim children to become shahids, or “martyrs.”

This has taken root within the Palestinian body politic for generations and has only served to radicalize the Palestinian population. It is no wonder that according to a recent poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, a majority of the Palestinian population in both Gaza and the West Bank (72%) say they are in favor of forming armed groups, such as the Lion’s Den.

It is time we finally examine some of the premises behind our glib and superficial mantras and learn the painful lessons of history.

‘Long Overdue’: Jewish Advocacy Groups Throw Weight Behind Bill Defunding Agency Linked To ‘Antisemitic Propaganda’

Jewish advocacy organizations are backing a bill introduced a bill last earlier this month by Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas and Republican Sen. James Risch of Idaho that would pause funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) until steps are implemented to ensure that funds are not used to promote antisemitism or potential terrorism.

The bill, titled “The United Nations Relief and Works Agency Accountability and Transparency Act,” would “stop the flow of U.S. taxpayer dollars to this body with a rampant history of anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda and activity,” according to a press release from Roy and Risch. Jewish groups have voiced support for the bill, arguing that the UNRWA is in dire need of accountability.

The UNRWA has been criticized for its social media having “glorified suicide bombers” in the past and its educational curriculum supporting the jihad, according to the Jewish News Syndicate. A non-public report from the State Department found that the department had issued UNRWA with multiple infractions for abetting “armed incursions,” along with “the use of weapons in or near facilities” as well two terrorist tunnels found under UNRWA schools, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Roz Rothstein, co-founder and CEO StandWithUs, a non-partisan educational organization that supports Israel and opposes antisemitism, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the bill must be a “bipartisan effort.”

Haaretz still sees itself as being more than just a newspaper that reports the news.

Under publisher Amos Schocken, Haaretz thinks of itself as a champion in shaping Israel, calling upon Israelis to follow its lead (after subscribing, of course).

For instance, last week, Elder of Ziyon tweeted about a "letter" from the publisher of Haaretz, Amos Schocken, insisting that Israelis have a responsibility to oppose the democratically elected government:

Elder of Ziyon noted what Shocken left out:

Schocken's call to arms against the Israeli government is not really unexpected. Haaretz's radicalism is part of the history of the newspaper under the Schocken family:

[Amos Schocken] had inherited it from his father and grandfather, and the legacy seems to have included an ambivalent relationship with the Jewish state. His grandfather, Salman, who had fled from Germany to Palestine, had been, according to Remnick, a supporter of Brit Shalom, an organization of Jews favoring a bi-national state rather than a Jewish one. The paper passed to Salman’s son, Gershom (née Gustav), who once wrote an essay about the need to remove the religious prohibition on intermarriage so as to encourage the emergence of a homogeneous Israeli nationality to supersede those of Jew and Arab...Gershom’s son, Amos, acquired the paper upon his father’s death in 1990 and has given it editorial direction since then. [emphasis added]

Haaretz's strong left-wing roots haven't stopped Schocken from speaking out from time to time, in fairly conservative terms, on what a newspaper in general is supposed to be. In 2008, The Jerusalem Post reported on a rumor of a "purge" at Haaretz, and a new "moderate" era at the paper. In response, Schocken told the media site The Seventh Eye:

I understand there are those readers who want Haaretz to look like a protest [manifesto] against the occupation - for example, Ashkenazi, secular and righteous, and focused on the occupation. But a newspaper is not a protest [manifesto]; it's a newspaper...If it were possible, then, I would be ready to be the publisher of a newspaper that solely campaigned against the occupation till its end. The problem is that some of those protesting against the occupation also want to know what is happening in the shops of Comme Il Faut [a clothing chain]. So we were concerned that they wouldn't take out a subscription to the newspaper that I am prepared to be the publisher of. [emphasis added]

Schocken is not actually averse per se to running Haaretz as a protest manifesto, its just that a newspaper has to be able to pay the bills and has to take into account the concerns of its readership. Here, he conjectures that a portion of his readership is concerned about what is happening "in the shops of Comme Il Faut," as opposed to what is happening in Israel.

He got closer to the mark a few years later. In 2011, Haaretz was criticized for its coverage of the Fogel family massacre, when it decided not to feature the story on the front page -- choosing instead to feature a report on the Japanese tsunami that occurred on the same day. In 2012 Schocken defended this choice to a Haredi audience, laying out the role of Haaret z as he saw it. He told them that, "with all due respect for the family at Itamar, when you compare that event, which was very grave – it was not the first time that Palestinians murdered Jews." Schocken tied this in with how he saw the responsibility of Haaretz:

The role of a newspaper as I understand it, and as Ha’aretz has understood throughout the years, even before I became responsible for the paper, even when my father was there...is not to give expression to emotionalism and feelings, but to give readers information about the important things. To set some sort of hierarchy of importance...

The role of Ha’aretz is also to provide a perspective of how important things are in the world we live in. What is the role of a newspaper, after all? To give the reader some kind of picture of reality that is as faithful to reality as is possible. [emphasis added]

That sounds like a fairly conservative approach. Yet just 2 years later, in 2014, Schocken published a call to Israelis, and in his manifesto described what Israelis could accomplish by subscribing to Haaretz:

By doing so, you will become a partner in the ongoing effort to shape Israel as a liberal and constitutional democracy that cherishes the values of pluralism and civil and human rights. You will become a partner in actively supporting the two-state solution and the right to Palestinian self-determination, which will enable Israel to rid itself of the burdens of territorial occupation and the control of another people.

Now, according to Schocken, this is all actually part of being a newspaper:

Influencing the way Israel evolves is a daily effort of news gathering, reporting developments and creating editorial positions and sometimes campaigns to prevent negative outcomes and encourage positive ones.

So the goal of Haaretz is "to give the reader some kind of picture of reality" while "influencing the way Israel evolves."

But if the picture of reality it tied to an agenda, what happens when reality does not cooperate?

David Landau, a former editor-in-chief of Haaretz and the founder of its English-language edition had his own way of dealing with the problem. In 2005, when CAMERA contacted the paper requesting a correction, an assistant editor accidentally responded with an email intended for internal circulation:

We have a quasi ‘policy,’ on orders of David [Landau], to ignore this organization and all of its complaints, including not responding to telephone messages and screening calls from [its] director.

According to an article by Joshua Muravchik in Commentary Magazine, Landau justified this by claiming CAMERA had a “vendetta,” a convenient way of avoiding having to deal with whether the criticisms from CAMERA were valid or not.

Like Landau, Schocken similarly defends his reporters. In the above Letter From The Editor last week, he wrote that, "at Haaretz, our dedicated journalists are on the ground every day working to defend a free and democratic Israel."

That includes Gideon Levy.

On October 23, 2012, an article by Levy carried the front-page headline, “Most Israelis Support Apartheid Regime in Israel.” But in fact the survey data did not support either the headline nor Levy’s own analysis. In the face of public criticism, Haaretz published an apology five days later.

Three years ago on Twitter, when this topic came up, Schocken defended Levy, claiming that "bringing this up only proves [Gideon Levy's] other work is beyond reproach. This led to a review of Levy's "other work," based on CAMERA analysis:

At that point, Schocken doubled down:

Here is the story, from Jerold Auerbach's book:

Wikipedia references a source indicating that Hass herself, instead of even attempting to dispute the other accounts, claimed she was not responsible because it was up to the newspaper editor's themselves to cross-reference sources from the IDF and Hebron community.

All Schocken's pontificating over the years about the role and responsibility of a newspaper means little if the journalists do not put his words into practice and he himself continues to support them and extol them as paragons of journalism anyway.

So much for:

Truth

Objectivity

Accuracy

Fairness

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Today's news has uncomfortable echoes in the events of 75 years ago.

On February 22, 1948, three trucks filled with explosives were exploded by Arabs in British Army uniforms on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem. Over 50 people were killed, including several children.

The "Army of the Holy War" led by Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni took responsibility for the attack several days later. He was a relative of the Nazi-allied Mufti of Jerusalem. His group was essentially the Hamas of its day.

Two British Army deserters also participated in the attack. While the Mufti of Jerusalem denied any responsibility, and his Arab Higher Committee distanced itself from it, saying that the attack was "'depravity unfit for the Arab spirit," those British soldiers said that they had been promised a huge reward from the Mufti for their part of the plot. The story is that when they went to claim that reward, the Mufti laughed at them.

As with yesterday's murderous terror attack, Jewish leaders called for restraint - but many did not listen. The Irgun and Lehi groups, blaming the attack on the British, attacked and killed a number of British soldiers in revenge, while Arab snipers killed several Jews.

The real difference between then and now, of course, is that now the Jews can defend themselves. Then, the British were still responsible for security, and they didn't hold on to their end of the bargain. Even though they knew that their own vehicles had been stolen days before this attack, they didn't inform the Jewish guards in Jerusalem, who let the bomb-laden British trucks into the heart of the city assuming they were safe. (One heroic guard challenged the "British soldiers" and was immediately murdered by them.)

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It is rare to see a completely new antisemitic libel. Most of them are retreads of older ones. But thanks to a Houthi newspaper, we can see an entirely new accusation against Jews.

The main part of the article in the news site 26Sep rails against Emirati normalization with Israel and warns that Israel will turn the UAE into a Zionist satellite nation. This is all standard antisemitic conspiracy theory stuff.

Most of the other antisemitism is nothing special, such as the assertion that "the nature of the Jewish personality does not tend to harmonize and interact with others" or that a kosher restaurant in Dubai is a sign of an impending Jewish takeover of the emirates.

But then we see something news. The author, Mahmoud Al Hashemi, compares Israel's supposed manipulation of the UAE to how Jews supposedly manipulated Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain in 1492:

Jews persuaded the Spanish Queen Isabella at that time to finance the journey of discovering America, convincing her of gold, silver and minerals in this land. Five of the Jews accompanied the trip. After the discovery of America, the Jews deliberately exterminated the original people, so that everyone would be immigrants and no one would claim that this land belongs to his ancestors. Indeed the Jews dominated America, and they considered New York as the "promised land."

Jews have been blamed for every other awful thing in history, so of course they must be responsible for the native American genocide as well.

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02/26 Links: Israeli brothers killed in Samaria terror shooting; Israeli Ministers Approve Bill Allowing Death Penalty for Terrorists; PNG to open embassy in Jerusalem

From Ian:

Israeli brothers killed in Samaria terror shooting

Two Israelis were killed in a terrorist attack near the village of Huwara, south of Nablus, in Samaria on Sunday.

The IDF said a terrorist drove to the Einabus junction and opened fire on a passing Israeli vehicle on Highway 60. The gunfire hit two civilians who were evacuated to the hospital for medical treatment, where they were pronounced dead.

They were subsequently identified as brothers Hillel Menachem and Yigal Yaakov Yaniv, both from the nearby community of Har Bracha.

Israeli forces blocked roads in the area of the attack and initiated a manhunt for the perpetrator.

An initial IDF probe found the gunman took advantage of a traffic jam to carry out the attack.

“On behalf of all citizens of Israel, I send from the bottom of my heart condolences to the Yaniv family from Har Bracha over the murder of Hillel Menachem and Yigal Yaakov—may their memory be for a blessing,” said Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Our answer to terrorism is to strike at it with force and to strengthen our hold on our country,” he added.

Huwara terrorist still at large after killing two, manhunt underway

Two Israelis were murdered on Sunday in a terrorist shooting attack in the town of Huwara in the northern West Bank.

The terrorist used a car to ram into an Israeli vehicle that was driving through the town, before shooting and critically injuring the two passengers who later succumbed to their wounds. The terrorist escaped from the scene and the IDF is conducting searches in the area for the suspect.

The two victims were confirmed to be brothers Hillel Menachem and Yigal Yaakov Yaniv.

The brothers were residents of the Har Bracha settlement near Nablus and Hillel had just completed his service in the Israeli Navy.

The Yizhar Hagedola junction and the Tapuah junction were temporarily closed to traffic after the attack as security forces searched for the terrorist.

Magen David Adom paramedic Gil Bismuth who arrived at the scene stated that "When we arrived, we saw the two wounded lying near the vehicle as they were unconscious. Along with an IDF medical force, we gave them initial medical treatment in the field, we put them in military intensive care vehicles and they were evacuated to the hospital in severe condition."

2 Israelis killed in terror shooting in West Bank village near Nablus

Israeli Ministers Approve Bill Allowing Death Penalty for Terrorists

In the wake of the deadly terrorist attack earlier in the day, Israeli ministers on Sunday approved a bill allowing the capital punishment for terrorism offenses.

The proposal has to pass several votes in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) before it can be ratified into law. Currently, the Jewish state doesn’t have the death penalty.

Earlier on Sunday, a Palestinian gunman shot dead two Israelis driving in the West Bank town of Hawara. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which came as Israeli and Palestinian security officials met in Jordan to discuss ways of lowering tensions. The victims’ identity was not made public at reporting time.

The Israeli military said it was pursuing the gunman.

Mufti of Oman is upset that they opened their airspace to Israeli flights

From Reuters:

Oman said all airlines could overfly its territory as of Thursday, joining neighboring Saudi Arabia in providing a corridor for the national carriers of Israel, which neither Gulf state formally recognizes.

While Saudi Arabia is staying out of the accords, the regional powerhouse has signalled tacit support by letting Israeli airlines overfly it en route to Abu Dhabi, Dubai or Manama.

In July, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that Riyadh would allow unfettered Israeli overflights. But implementation had been on hold pending the agreement of Oman, as the Saudi corridor extends over its territory for easterly routes.

I hadn't realized that Oman's permission was needed for all Israeli overflights of Saudi Arabia, which was announced to much fanfare last year. So this is indeed a big deal as it cuts the times for Israeli flights to India and further east significantly.

The Mufti of Oman is displeased, though:

The Grand Mufti of the Sultanate of Oman, Sheikh Ahmed bin Hamad al-Khalili, said, "We were surprised by the decision to open the airspace in a way that enables the Zionist entity's aviation to use it."

He added, “We never took that into account, but rather we hoped that the steadfast stance would continue, rejecting any relationship with that entity from our proud authority; How proud we were of that [stance].”

Sheikh Al-Khalili expressed his fear that “this step will be followed by other steps. Whoever retreats a step will soon take another step back.”

He continued, "We kindly request that you review the account in this matter, and it is a national demand that all the proud Omani people adhere to."

It appears that Oman may have been prompted to change its rules because it hosted a meeting last week of a Task Force of the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation. It would look bad for them to host the meeting while they were violating one of the articles of that convention by barring flights from Israeli airlines, so this decision might have been a precondition for them to hold the meeting in Oman.

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In response to the Nablus operation last week that left 10 Palestinians dead, 7 of them terrorists killed by the IDF and the other three possibly killed by wildly firing Palestinian gunmen, Palestinian groups called for a "day of rage" on Friday.

It turns out that the "day of rage" had already been declared before the events in Nablus. Palestinian prisoner solidarity organizations had already called for "day of rage" protests for Friday because of Israeli actions against cushy prisoner benefits, like unlimited hot water for showers and the ability to bake their own bread.

The National newspaper (UAE) went to Jerusalem to cover these planned protests. They found - nothing.

A Day of Rage planned by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem passed largely without incident on Friday.

The response to an Israeli military raid that killed 11 Palestinians a few days earlier was expected to flare up after Friday prayers at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

But hundreds streamed out of Bab Al Silsilah, one of the compound’s main entrances, in the same quiet manner that they entered about an hour earlier.

In half an hour, just one worshipper remonstrated briefly with Israeli guards directly outside the entrance to the compound, perhaps the most historically contested site in the decades-long conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

An owner of a nearby cafe told The National he still expected protests, “maybe in half an hour, maybe in a couple of days. We don’t know”.

The PFLP-linked Samidoun NGO managed to get one small protest going - in Berlin. It doesn't look like it attracted more than a 15 people. As of this writing, even the video of the protest has only been watched a couple dozen times.

You can see that Berlin residents pass right behind them without even a glance of curiosity. (Notice also that they routinely write their signs in English.)

Yet even this tiny demonstration seems to have been larger than anything the Palestinians themselves managed to put together.

As with the right-wing "day of hate" on Saturday that does not seem to have materialized, these events are, more often than not, duds.

They get more publicity from the announcements than from the actual protests.

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There is no inoculation for the virus of Jew-hatred

My post about Jimmy Carter's antisemitism last week prompts a question: but what about all the wonderful things he has done?

One cannot argue that Carter has not been sincere when he works with Habitat for Humanity, for example. His Middle East work may be influenced by his antisemitism, but he has worked on many other worthy causes. How can those things fit together?

But one can ask the same thing about lots of other antisemites. Alice Walker is a gifted poet and storyteller, but that doesn't make her immune from antisemitic attitudes. Roger Waters was a good songwriter in the 1970s, but that doesn't mean he doesn't harbor antisemitic attitudes. Roald Dahl wrote fantastic children's books, but also hated Jews.

Then again, we can go back in history and ask the same questions. Voltaire was a groundbreaking philosopher, but he was also a racist and antisemite. Martin Luther was a brilliant theologian and an obsessed Jew-hater.

If theology can coexist with hate, perhaps that invalidates the theology. But pioneers in theology and philosophy and humanitarianism and progressivism and socialism and science and even medical ethics have been found to be antisemites - and these are all fields that, in theory, if you believe their self-definitions, should be immune to antisemitic thought.

Obviously, theory is very different from practice.

Some people say that antisemitism is a conspiracy theory. Or that it relegated to the Right. Or that is is a form of bigotry that is part of a larger group of discriminations against race or sexual preference or age.

Yet it fits in no clear category. It morphs into new forms every few decades.

It is a virus with new strains coming out all the time.

Viruses have only one imperative - survive by adaptation. Right now the most virulent strain of antisemitism spreads by pretending to be outraged at how Jews act in Israel - and it cloaks itself by insisting that this current hate of Jews in Israel has nothing in common with the previous instances, despite the obvious parallels.

This is hardly the first time antisemitism pretended to be the opposite. In 1873, the Southern Baptist Convention issued a resolution on antisemitism that pretends to be philosemitic - but ends up wishing that all Jews should convert to Christianity.

Is this any different than modern antisemites who wish just as fervently that the Jewish state be destroyed, that Jews should live as second class citizens in a Muslim majority state and most of them should be ethnically cleansed? Is the Southern Baptist desire that all Jews see the light different from those who want all Jews to be "good Jews" who shed all nationalism and all attachment to the land of their ancestors?

And both of them claim to be doing it because they care so much about Jews.

The other strains of the antisemitic virus didn't die out. The Middle Ages strain is still there, the Christian strain still thrives in many places, the Nazi strain stays stubbornly alive and spreading. Social media has been a huge boon to the virus, allowing it to spread at the speed of light. People can work very hard for years to come up with a way to minimize the threat of one strain but another one can emerge and propagate in days.

Today, we hear people arguing against accusations of antisemitism. How can Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch be antisemitic when their entire organizations are based on human rights? How can Jeremy Corbyn be antisemitic when he is an avowed anti-racist?

The virus doesn't care what philosophy you have. Whatever you hate most in life can be linked to Jews, and usually is.

Instead of reflecting on the history of antisemitism that shows that anyone can catch the virus of antisemitism, many pretend that they are immune. Worse, they pretend that their progressivism or humanitarianism or anti-racism inoculates them from antisemitism - that they aren't and cannot be antisemitic because their worldview does not allow it.

On the contrary, the virus can grow in any medium. The anti-racists become antisemites by accusing Jews/Israelis of racism. The humanitarians become antisemites by accusing Jews of inhumanity. The very ideas that people believe make them immune to infection are the ones that spread it.

Just like before, they justify their hate as being based on facts, unlike all of their predecessors. even though those predecessors said the exact same thing. They write their articles and posts and tweets that show the exact same kind of irrational, obsessive hate that previous centuries of antisemites had.

As we know from recent experience, viruses are hard to eradicate. We still need to try. But we need to understand that the virus does not avoid anyone because of their belief system. On the contrary, it often uses that very belief system as a means of spreading further.

Beware of anyone who says they cannot be antisemitic because of their worldview. Instead, teach them about the history of antisemitism, and show that they have very prominent Jew-hating forebears, who were the world's leaders in theology, the arts, philosophy, science and the Enlightenment.

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