Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, March 01, 2023

Givat HaTurmosim: The Place God Designed with the Lupine in Mind (Judean Rose)

Givat HaTurmosim or Lupine Hill is what everyone calls it. But that’s not its proper, biblical name. That would be Tel Socho in the Elah Valley, where David fought Goliath:

The Philistines assembled their forces for battle; they massed at Socho of Judah, and encamped at Ephes-dammim, between Socho and Azekah.

Saul and the men of Israel massed and encamped in the valley of Elah. They drew up their line of battle against the Philistines, with the Philistines stationed on one hill and Israel stationed on the opposite hill; the ravine was between them.

A champion of the Philistine forces stepped forward; his name was Goliath of Gath, and he was six cubits and a span tall. (1 Samuel 17:1-4)

The history is reason enough to make a pilgrimage to this scenic spot, located in the Beit Shemesh area. But there’s another reason to visit, and that’s the lupines, which bloom here in profusion from approximately late February to early March. The lupine, Lupinus pilosus, derives its name from the Latin lupus, or "wolf,” an allusion to the ancient (false) belief that the plant destroys the soil in which it grows, rendering the earth henceforth infertile. The second part of the botanical name of this flower, “pilosus,” refers to the velvety plant’s covering of long, soft hairs.

Lupinus pilosus, the blue lupine

The purplish-blue flowers are picky. They grow on this hill, and just a few feet away, they won’t, except for a few rogue lupines here and there, a tantalizing clue to the view that awaits one up ahead. Even at the top, prime lupine location, the flowers decide where they will and won't live. In some places the lupines grow on one side of the well-trampled path, but not on the other. Lupines like nitrogen-rich soil, and will scorn the earth a stone’s throw away should it lack this essential nutrient.

Somewhat mirroring this phenomenon, I live 35 minutes away from Givat HaTurmosim, but never managed a visit until last Friday. That’s when my husband and I finally made it over there, arriving while the morning dew still glistened on the flowers. The leaves and wild grasses were slippery, wet, and treacherous. We didn’t know what we were doing and took the most difficult path we might have chosen, believing it to be the only one that would take us to the top and the storied blue flowers.

The vertical path we took to the top. I was reminded of what Ernie Pyle said about the city of my birth: “Pittsburgh is the cockeyedest city in the United States,” he wrote. “Physically it is absolutely irrational. It must have been laid out by a mountain goat.”

I was dubious as we stumbled our way up that vertical dirt pathway, strewn with rocks straight up and down the middle from top to bottom. Would we actually make it up there: me with my cane, and Dov with his spine condition? I kept saying to him, “Do you think we’re going to make it? Maybe we shouldn’t do this. What if we can’t get up there—and even if we do make it to the top--how will we get back down??”

In the end, we were lucky (or you wouldn't be reading this). We made it to the top and when we did, we discovered we were not the only ones to take a hike that morning. There were young lovers picnicking; Russian immigrants snapping photos, and a group of helmeted bike riders from Tel Aviv. The latter, once consulted, were kind enough to tell us of an easier path for our return.

Yay. Now I could stop worrying and just enjoy.

The waving of the Terrible Towel at Givat HaTurmosim.

First there were only a few lupines, scattered here and there. Soon, they were everywhere we looked, interspersed with other wildflowers: patches of wild cyclamen in various shades of pink; lots of red poppies; and the pollen-rich yellow mustard flowers--just looking at them makes one sneeze. No matter. It was lovely and it was a lovely day. We heard birdsong and foxes calling to each other from their dens. Some hikers had brought their dogs along, and the dogs were happy to be running free. The vibe, in general, was happy, peaceful.

This time of year, the kalaniot are everywhere. The red poppies are protected flowers.

Cyclamen (rakefet)

It was like the Swiss Alps up there, and I kept expecting to see Heidi, her grandfather, and Peter the goatherd—or at the very least Maria Von Trapp.

But no. We were not in Switzerland or Austria, but on a small hilltop with a delightful microclimate that a loving God designed with the lupine in mind.

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This morning, ahead of a planned press conference at the Watan Media Network in Ramallah, Palestinian security services in plainclothes stormed in and shut it down.

According to Watan, the security forces, some of whom were armed, tried to expel a number of journalists who were present to cover the press conference. They also attacked Watan employees when they objected to the intrusion, which they say was done without a written order.

The press conference was going to include criticism of the Palestinian Authority for working with the US in trying to calm down tensions, as well as for not working to hold elections.

Since this is a dog-bites-man story, don't expect to see any op-eds decrying the lack of freedoms under Palestinian rule.

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

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03/01 Links Pt1: Judge the Jewish rioters, but don’t rationalize Arab murderers; Israel Police thwart plot to assassinate Ben-Gvir; IAEA confirms Iran on verge of weapons-grade enrichment

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Judge the Jewish rioters, but don’t rationalize Arab murderers

On the contrary, the post-Oslo Accords era has made clear that the Palestinians have no more interest today in ending their century-old war on Zionism now than they had in the past, when they rejected repeated Israeli attempts to forge a compromise based on the now-discredited “land for peace” formula that would have created an independent Palestinian state.

Yet as much as the left is determined to establish a moral equivalence between the Palestinians and the Netanyahu government and its supporters in the territories, this is a false narrative.

Even at the worst of times, support for violence against Arabs is limited to a tiny segment of Israeli opinion. It is not merely condemned by a broad sector of the public and the Knesset; those who engage in it are subject to prosecution. Belief in the “purity of arms” and a policy of restraint that seeks to avoid civilian casualties even when fighting terrorism is baked deep into the political DNA of Israel and its culture.

On the other side, terrorism against Jews and Israelis is not only widely supported by Palestinian Arabs but embraced by their political parties. This includes the supposedly moderate Fatah Party that runs the Palestinian Authority, as well as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, whose public support is rooted in their record of violence rather than state-building or bettering the lives of their constituents. Financial support for those who kill and wound Jews is official P.A. policy; terrorist murderers and their families benefit from their crimes.

Just as bad, the support that the P.A. retains in the international community and the willingness of the Biden administration to resume aid to it—regardless of its legal obligations to cut it off because of the 2017 Taylor Force Act that ties assistance to the Palestinians to their ending this “pay to slay” policy—demonstrates the world’s indifference to anti-Jewish terror. The United States has never demanded that the Palestinian factions pay reparations to the families of those Israelis or even Americans like Ganeles, that they murder.

That doesn’t justify lawless actions by Jews. But it does help ensure that this conflict will continue until a sea change in Palestinian thought and politics occurs. Until that happens, Jews should condemn extralegal violence and/or acts of revenge that will do nothing but aid the cause of their enemies. But as long as terrorism is cheered by Palestinians, don’t blame the Israeli right for the continuation of the conflict or the Israeli people for feeling frustrated by the free pass the murderers get from those who dare to lecture terror victims about morality.

Yisrael Medad: Saving Israel’s Arabs, despite themselves

The Taub Center for Social Policy Studies published a report in June 2022 titled “A Picture of the Nation.” According to the findings, whereas between 2011 and 2021 the number of murders in the Jewish population declined (despite a population growth of 20%), in contrast, from 2016 to 2021 the number of murders within the Arab population doubled. Although Arabs represent 21% of Israel’s total population, 80% of all murders in Israel in the years 2020-21 occurred in the Arab population. Why is that?

The Taub Center sees as critical influential factors a “youth bulge” that is “socially disengaged.” These youth are “underemployed and not in higher education.” There is also a gender element involved with the Taub Center finding that in the 2020/21 academic year, 74% of all master’s degree students and 68% of those in a Ph.D. program are women among the Arab population. Parallel to that, between 2004 and 2019, there has been an increase of more than 50% in the divorce rate among Muslims and Druze (and more than doubled among Christians). Muslim marriages are becoming significantly destabilized, and half of all femicide cases in Israel’s Arab society remain unsolved.

Perhaps, oddly, TikTok has been reported to be an element in Israel’s Arab crime epidemic. The social-media site amplifies conflicts and crime in the Arab community, police confirm, with video clips glorifying illegal actions including shooting guns in the street, drug and weapons possession, high-speed driving and threats of murder. The Baladna NGO now researches this aspect of promoting violent messages in the context of crime. The nationalist violence of May 2022 in mixed cities and neighborhoods was fed by this as well, as is the protection racket in the north and south.

Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote in a 1926 pamphlet, “What the Zionist-Revisionists Want,” that after the establishment of the Jewish state, “a considerable Arab population always will remain … if things fare badly for this group of inhabitants, the entire country will fare badly. The political, economic and cultural welfare of the Arabs will thus always remain one of the main conditions for the well-being of the Land of Israel.”

This government is headed by the successors of the Jabotinsky legacy. It behooves it both to confront the attempts by Israel’s Arabs to obtain an out-of-state cultural and redefined political identity on the one hand, while on the other, assisting them more actively and efficiently to solve their internal social difficulties, even in spite of themselves.

Teenaged perpetrators of terror

Within the last month, three teenage boys carried out terror attacks against Israelis in Israel’s capital. What is motivating children to pick up deadly weapons? The official Palestinian Authority (PA) school curriculum demonizes Jews and promotes martyrdom.

Last month, 13-year-old Mahmoud Aliwat, from the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, ambushed a small group of Israeli pedestrians outside of Jerusalem’s Old City, shooting and injuring two. Then, just a few hours apart on February 13, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy stabbed a Jewish teenager in the Old City, wounding him lightly and a 13-year-old Palestinian stabbed an Israeli police officer at a checkpoint near the village of Shuafat. The officer was subsequently hit by friendly fire and died from his wounds. Each teen terrorist was apprehended and will stand trial in Israel.

Impact-SE, an international research and policy organization that monitors education around the world, has done extensive research into the Palestinian Authority curriculum. According to Impact-SE research, the PA published its reformed curriculum for grades one to 11 in 2016 and 2017. It is saturated with incitement to violence, glorification of terror against Jews and Israelis and promises of heavenly rewards for heroes who commit acts of martyrdom.

The curriculum describes Israel as satanic and is rife with antisemitic tropes including Jewish manipulation of global events. It praises Dalal Mugrhabi, the woman who murdered 38 Israelis, including 13 children, on an Israeli bus in 1978, as a “female Arab jihad warrior.” Palestinian children are taught to sacrifice themselves for their homeland and “redeem it with blood.”

The miseducation of Palestinian youth is leading them to extremism
The child terrorists, all residents of Israel’s capital, were likely victims of this kind of miseducation. The Palestinian Authority (PA) school curriculum is taught to more than two million Palestinian children in Gaza, the West Bank and the vast majority eastern Jerusalem schools. In PA texts, Israel doesn’t exist, peace isn’t even an option and the only way to obtain fame is through jihad. It is no surprise that these children chose to emulate the acts of terrorism glorified in their classrooms, taking the violence to the streets of the city where they were indoctrinated.

Two stories the mainstream media will miss from Knesset's death penalty bill

A death penalty bill for terrorists passed a preliminary hearing in the Knesset today, and we can expect the normal outrage to ensue.

I don't think that such a bill would serve as a disincentive to terror - after all, terrorists expect to be killed during their attacks - but there are a couple of subplots to this story that are more important than the story itself.

One is that the chances that the bill actually passes is fairly low - and that is because the religious parties in the coalition are against the death penalty. As JPost writes:

Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef has ruled that the death penalty violates Halacha. The Shas Party, which represents the Sephardi haredi (ultra-Orthodox) electorate, said it would support the bill only in its preliminary reading at this point, out of coalition obligations, but that it would follow Yosef’s ruling in the future, which is unlikely to change, according to Yishai Cohen, a reporter for the Kikar HaShabbat news site.

Supporters of the law, without Shas and UTJ but with Yisrael Beytenu, would likely have 52 votes. Assuming that Shas and UTJ abstain and the opposition parties oppose the bill, there would be 50 votes against it. This means that if either of the haredi parties, or even if any of the two factions that make up UTJ – the Lithuanian Degel Hatorah and the hassidic Agudat Yisrael – vote against the law, it would not have a majority in the Knesset.

The parties that are decried as the most extreme factions in Knesset may be the ones who block the bill. This violates the Western media narrative, where the extremists could never agree with the "progressives."

So they almost certainly will not report that.

Another story is the Palestinian reaction to the bill. See what Hussein al-Sheikh, Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the PLO, tweeted:

He calls all of the potential targets of the death penalty "freedom fighters."

Even though the bill is aimed only at murderers.

Most of the murderers in Israeli prison are members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad or other groups opposed to the PLO. But when given a choice, the leaders of the Palestinians always side with the terrorists against Israel.

Meaning, even the most moderate Palestinian leader is a de facto supporter of terrorism, and considers the most heinous murderers of Jewish children to be "freedom fighters."

Good luck finding a word of criticism against Al Sheikh or any Palestinian leader in the mainstream media. That is a story that must be silenced, at least until antisemitism is so normalized that the Palestinian position supporting terror becomes itself mainstream.

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Cartoon with article in The New Arab

MSN, like most media outlets, enters into syndication deals so they can publish articles from other news sources legally.

Apparently, republishing and amplifying hate doesn't bother them.

Today, MSN published an article by Wael Kandil in The New Arab that calls all Jews in Israel thieves - and worse:

The fact that groups of Zionist settlers attacked the town of Hawara and other Palestinian villages south of the city of Nablus brings the conflict over Palestine back to its roots at the beginning of the last century: gangs of foreign looters coming from abroad attack lands and homes to forcibly seize them from their original inhabitants, expel them from them, and make them their home and residence.

Burning is a creed of the Zionist colonizers, burning people, trees and stones, as they did recently, on the evening of the Aqaba summit, by attacking the towns and villages of Hawara, Burin, Qaryut and Za’tara south of Nablus, under full guard and support from the occupation army.

Pictures of the most recent Holocaust send footage of old Zionist massacres and holocausts from its archives, to find a perfect match between the atrocities of the Stern Gang, the Haganah, and the Irgun against the Palestinian people ...

Every Israeli settlement is a confiscated Palestinian village, and every dwelling of an Israeli is a stolen Palestinian house, and every civilian is a more brutal and ferocious fighter against truth, against justice, and against logic, and then every meter of Palestinian land remains a house of war, imposed by the occupiers, and set its barbaric laws and conditions.

He doesn't say "Jews," but he doesn't have to. With a wink, he says all "Zionists" who returned to their ancestral home are arsonists, looters, and thieves who are inflicting a Holocaust on Palestinians.

Kandil has 1.7 million followers on Twitter.

Hate for Jews is mainstream in Arabic media, and now Microsoft is adding fuel to the fire.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The riots of religious Jews in Huwara on Sunday night were unforgivable. Nothing justifies targeting innocents, burning down houses, and leaving one dead. The Huwara celebrations for murdering two Jewish brothers are not and cannot be an excuse for such behavior. The Jews were, in this case, terrorists by any definition of the term.

But it's even worse.

Perhaps the most disgusting part was this video showing these religious Jews praying towards the fires they set.

This perversion of Judaism is unbearable.

This is the definition of chilul Hashem - the desecration of G-d's name - making all Jews look bad because of the actions of a few.

We religious Jews cannot fall back on the "no true Scotsman" logical fallacy to say that these aren't real Jews. They are. And their immoral, gleeful actions represent a catastrophic failure on the part of religious Zionism, no matter how tiny a percentage of that community they represent. Not to mention their attacks on the IDF, putting them solidly on the same moral plane as Palestinian terrorists..

While I am not happy with the use of the word "pogrom" to describe the rampage, but it is understandable.

However, there is one word that some Jews (and Arab MKs) are using to describe the violence that is unconscionable. And that is "Kristallnacht."

That is the word used by Nachum Barnea at Yediot Aharonot, and by Yossi Melman of Haaretz.

As immoral and violent as the mass terror attack in Huwara was, calling it Kristallnacht is false, irresponsible and disgusting. Being rightly angry at the rampage cannot excuse using a Holocaust analogy. There is no comparison between this riot, as sickening as it was, and the day that Nazi Germany officially started their policy of genocide. It is not remotely similar in scale, in intent, in effect, nor in the complicity of the government.

And one must wonder if that last point was the real reason that Barnea and Melman used that term.

I do not believe Israel has ever been as divided as it is now, and instead of working towards solutions, both sides are playing political games - and they are not above comparing their political opponents to Nazis. There is almost a glee on the part of the Leftist media that the hated "settlers" finally "proved" how awful they are and now those people who hated them the entire time feel they can finally compare them and their allies in the government to Nazis.

MK Zvika Fogel's support for the rioters is beneath contempt. But Yair Lapid's using them as a weapon against the entire government is not a whole lot better. (And when Bibi led the opposition, he was just as bad and divisive as Lapid is now.)

Much of the objection to the proposed judicial reforms comes from honest concern, whether real or misplaced. There has been far more heat than light in the coverage and reactions to the proposals. A lot of it is the same political opportunism, and the over-the-top rhetoric makes it sound like reforms that most reasonable people agree must happen to some extent are the ultimate evil. And, again, the blame goes on both sides - Netanyahu should have done much more to make these reforms bipartisan, not demonizing the other side.

The political opportunists, like Israel's enemies, don't want solutions. They want to win at any cost, and even more so - they want to see the other side lose at any cost. That cost is very high, indeed - to the point of trying to get Jews in the Diaspora to publicly oppose Israel. This is the zero sum mentality that both sides of the political spectrum are happily borrowing from Israel's enemies.

The people stoking hate for their own selfish purposes are no better than J-Street or Jewish Voice for Peace.

This fragmentation that started in Israel is now normalized throughout the Jewish world. Mainstream non-religious Jewish organizations are now routinely publicly criticizing Israel. These irresponsible Huwara terrorists are even dividing up the religious Jewish community to an extent, although the vast majority of Orthodox organizations have condemned the violence.

These divisions are the biggest danger to Israel's future - more than Iran, more than Palestinian terror, more than the prospect of a US that might turn against it as so many antisemites want. And if anything can turn the US against Israel, it is Huwara-type activities. Antisemitism spreads by playing on unconscious bigotry and the scene of religious Jews on an orgy of destruction has a huge psychological impact. The damage wrought by these Jews is incalculable.

JVP poster

Palestinian and anti-Israel media and organizations are loving all of this. This op-ed from Al Quds (UK) uses Nachum Barnea's use of "Kristallnacht" as carte blanche for Arabs to compare Israel to Nazis without any guilt. The Guardian eagerly reports Barnea's words, which will justify future Holocaust analogies in that paper and other mainstream media.

Make no mistake - just as the antisemitic "apartheid" slur got normalized, the antisemites who have been using the Holocaust analogy just gained several years in their quest to make that normal as well..

All because of the contemptible Jews in Huwara and the Israelis who cannot resist using them to score political points, on both sides.

Even though there is still no comparison between the immorality of Palestinian society and the worst of Israeli society - Israelis raised money to compensate Huwara victims while Palestinians celebrate dead Jews - the rioters have given those who spread incessant anti-Israel propaganda a priceless gift.

Palestinian political cartoon

Israeli extremists and opportunists are doing more damage to Israel and world Jewry than the antisemites could ever dream of doing themselves.

The only winners are the world's antisemites. And they are very, very happy with what they are seeing.

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

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02/28 Links Pt2: The Two-State Solution Hoax; Ben & Jerry’s Boycotted Israel While Using Child Labor; Beyond the ‘Day of Hate’; The New York Times’ Jesus problem

From Ian:

The Two-State Solution Hoax

For Israel to survive as an independent Jewish state it is necessary to carry out an exchange of population — which the Palestinians will reject, and the reason is simple: they flow like tributaries into all areas of the State of Israel, which they reward by vandalizing it and assassinating its innocent civilians, whether within their country or in one of the Palestinian villages adjoining Israel. (There is a real tangle of roads which allows the Palestinians to commit such crimes with impunity. We have witnessed the lynching of travelers who had the misfortune of taking the wrong route.)

The danger Israelis encounter in their daily life is due to Palestinians’ infiltration into major Israeli cities. But it is also due to a viral collaboration of Israeli Arabs with their Palestinian brothers.

The cantor of a two-state solution, Yair Lapid would take us back into a trap, an ignominy resulting from a virulent lack of scruples, conscience, and integrity.

Israel is already mired up to its neck in a swamp of Arab-Palestinians holding Israeli identity cards, for which they have neither respect nor love, but which they use to enjoy the benefits of democracy while fighting in all ways to undermine Jewish state foundations.

The great danger in this dead end is that Israel ultimately risks becoming a bi-national state.

The only solution for Israel to survive as a Jewish state is to separate from the Palestinians, whether in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria, or within Israel. The burgeoning Palestinian demography is a challenge that no one can counter. The West suffers the consequences of its open borders and diversity, and Israel is no exception.

I leave you with a burning question: why create a so-called Jewish state if it is to be a state for everyone? Because this is what the Israeli Left seeks to impose on all those who believe they are Jews and have won a homeland of their own at the cost of their children’s blood, as opposed to those who are Jewish in name only.

Patriotism and nationality have gone astray. For Israel, there can only be the Jews or the Arabs.

Daniel Greenfield: Ben & Jerry’s Boycotted Israel While Using Child Labor

Ben & Jerry’s claimed that it supported open borders because of the company’s “social mission” and “values”. Those values were measured in the dollar and cents bottom line. The milk that went into the company’s ice cream depended on the cheap labor of those same migrants. Open borders wasn’t an abstraction, it was a steady source of labor to be churned into ice cream.

When the Biden administration rammed open the southern borders, flooding the country with millions of migrants, adult migrant workers were quickly supplemented by children.

A New York Times investigation found that Ben & Jerry’s was among the corporate brands benefiting from child labor. Of the various companies, Ben & Jerry’s was the most shameless about the use of child labor with Cheryl Pinto, its head of “values-led sourcing”, stating that “if migrant children needed to work full time, it was preferable for them to have jobs at a well-monitored workplace.” It’s an argument that sounds straight out of Oliver Twist.

Pinto, a former risk manager for its Unilever parent company, had been dubbed “Ben & Jerry’s sorceress” who focused on positive social impact. The sorcery turned out to be of the Hansel & Gretel variety with children being lured to the ovens of an ice cream gingerbread house.

Behind all the buzzwords about “equity” and “climate justice” are the children working so that Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield can get even richer while distracting us with virtue signaling.

Ben & Jerry’s has a lot of experience with “well-monitored workplaces” for child labor. The company, which has boasted of its support for Black Lives Matter, had been previously accused of benefiting from the slave labor of 8-year-olds on cocoa plantations in Africa, vanilla plantations in Madagascar, and palm oil on Indonesian plantations.

The open borders that Ben & Jerry’s had advocated for brought child labor to America.

In 2021, a Ben & Jerry’s franchise owner in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina was caught employing 12-year-olds, but the latest revelations about the company are a good deal worse.

The New York Times story describes a 14-year-old migrant boy who had his hand crushed in an industrial milking machine on a dairy farm. While the paper does not name the company, Ben & Jerry’s sources milk from farms in Middlebury VT where the accident took place.

Beyond the ‘Day of Hate’: The best strategy to keep American Jews safe over the long term

The tactics that the American Jewish community uses to fight back against antisemitism are often ineffective on their own and do not constitute a meaningful strategy in the composite. One is that American Jews join in a partisan chorus that erodes our politics and fixates on the antisemitism in the party they don’t vote for. This exacerbates the partisan divide, which weakens democratic culture, and turns the weaponizing of antisemitism into merely a partisan electoral tactic for both sides.

Another tactic comes from a wide set of organizations who have declared themselves the referees on the subject and take to Twitter to name and shame antisemites. This seems to amplify and popularize antisemitism more than it does to suppress it.

A third common tactic is to pour more and more dollars into protecting our institutions with robust security measures, which no one thinks will defeat antisemitism, but at least seeks to protect those inside those institutions from violence, though it does little to protect Jews down the street. Richer Jewish institutions will be safer than poorer ones, but Jews will continue to suffer either way.

A fourth tactic our communal organizations use to fight antisemitism is to try to exact apologies or even fines from antisemites to get them to retract their beliefs and get in line, as the Anti-Defamation League did with Kyrie Irving, an approach that Yair Rosenberg has wisely argued is a no-win proposition. Yet another tactic is the insistence by some that the best way to fight antisemitism is to be proud Jews, which has the perverse effect of making our commitment to Jewishness dependent on antisemitism as a motivator.

And finally, the most perverse tactic is that some on both the right and the left fight antisemitism by attacking the ADL itself. Since it is so hard to defeat our opponents, we have started beating up on those that are trying to protect us. What could go wrong?

Steadily, like a drumbeat, these tactics fail, demonstrating themselves to be not a strategy at all, and the statistics continue to show a rise in antisemitism.

Perhaps we are too fixated on the idea that antisemitism is continuous throughout Jewish history, proving only that there is no effective strategy for combating this most persistent of hatreds.

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

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Muntasir Al-Shawa, above, was a 16-year-old child soldier of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

On February 8, when religious Jews were going to visit the Joseph's Tomb shrine to pray as they do every couple of weeks, he decided to fight the Israeli soldiers protecting them.

He expected to, and wanted to, die. And he indeed got injured and died a couple of weeks later.

Palestinian Media Watch quotes his mother when he told her his plans to become a "martyr."

The day before [my son’s] injury [from which he died], he told me: ‘I want to go to the Balata refugee camp [near Joseph's Tomb], and I'll come back to you as a Martyr.’ I laughed at him and told him: ‘Do you think being a Martyr is something trivial? Go bathe, pray, bow down to Allah, and then there might be a chance that Allah will agree to accept you [as a Martyr].’ The following night he came back to me as a Martyr. Praise Allah.

[Official PA TV News, Feb. 21, 2023]

What kind of a culture has mothers encouraging their children to die - and giving them advice to accomplish that goal?

Palestinians have a sick, depraved and perverted culture.

Once again, I am more than happy to have anyone who disagrees to find me an article in Arabic by a Palestinian who objects to this mindset. Just one.

I've been waiting for years.

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!

02/28 Links Pt1: The real ones to blame for the rioting in Huwara; The US does nothing about another American murdered by Palestinians; Thousands of Israelis donate to Palestinian victims of settler riots

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Israelis and Palestinians won't achieve peace through vigilante attacks

When is retaliation considered "too much"?
According to the IDF, the terrorist opened fire in broad daylight from close range at an Israeli-owned car driving past the Palestinian town of Huwara on Route 60, deep in the northern West Bank, killing brothers Hallel Yaniv, 21 and Yagel Yaniv, 19, residents of nearby Har Bracha.

They’re only the latest victims of terror who were murdered simply because they were Israeli. Before the impact of the atrocity could be fully comprehended, however, a large group of settlers converged on Huwara and, in what can only be labeled as a pogrom, set alight dozens of vehicles and homes in the village.

The rampage lasted for hours until Israeli security forces restored order, but not before one death and a number of injuries were reported in addition to the massive damage in the village.

The onslaught was the worst case of “price tag” retaliation that most people could remember. Some responses, including that of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, attributed the harshness of the revenge attacks to the positions of the more extreme members of the government, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Ben-Gvir was slow in condemning the settler attack. However his Otzma Yehudit Knesset colleague Zvika Fogel – a former IDF general – praised the Jewish attackers, saying, “Huwara is closed and burnt. That is what I want to see. Only this way can we obtain deterrence.”

Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called on Israelis not to take the law into their own hands, stressing that the riots harmed the operations of security forces who were hunting for the terrorist who carried out the attack.

But their reasoned voices are not enough. The government must act as one body in grave times like this. With ministers like Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – who called on the Israeli delegation in Aqaba to return to Israel immediately after the attack – giving their quiet support for vigilante attacks or at best, turned a blind eye to them – Israel appears to be losing its sense of right and wrong.

When there should have been national unity in mourning the deaths of the Yaniv brothers on Sunday, extremists hijacked the day with their illegal and deadly acts. The government, as one voice, must unequivocally condemn their acts and take measures to ensure that such vigilantism does not take place.

If that can’t happen, Netanyahu should draw the necessary conclusions and fire the ministers who side with the extremists who are doing untold damage to this country and its moral fiber.

The real ones to blame for the rioting in Huwara

If we are honest — which most of the world is not when it comes to Israel and Jews — we need to recognize that Jewish rioting in Huwara is against the law.

But if we continue being honest, we need also to recognize that the blame for those riots must fall primarily on the past 50 years of Israeli governments who have failed to provide adequate security to the Jewish residents of Samaria and Judea. And, because there is little value in blaming the dead prime ministers and defense ministers who have been at fault, the focus of blame falls on the living who can rectify their failures, including but not limited to the longest-serving Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his Likud party that falls into lockstep behind him.

We cannot and could never have expected much from Labor, Meretz, Gantz, Lapid, Sa’ar, and the Bennett who sold out his voters. The focus and blame must fall squarely on Bibi.

Fair people cannot sit in judgment of Jews who are sitting ducks, getting shot down on Samarian and Judean roads like at a carnival, while the Likud governments issue statements that they will not stand for it anymore — “and this time we mean business . . . or else”

Gimme a break.

Arabs are not idiots. They know what’s what. The more evil they are, the better they gauge what they can get away with. They have watched prisoner exchanges of 1,150 Arab murderers for three deceased Israelis. They see and hear that they get paid by the illegitimate Abu Mazen entity for murdering Jews, or even just for trying. They hear that Arabs in Israeli prisons get good food, a free degree education, excellent television choices (internet?), free gym membership, and even get to have intercourse with Israeli women who practically have gotten pimped-out by security superiors.

Who in fairness can condemn Israeli Huwara rioters unless he has been in their shoes, driven the same road every day and night where Huwaran Arabs wait to shoot Jews dead? It is so easy to sit comfortably in Tel Aviv or the Knesset or Washington, D.C., or in other international cities and condemn Jewish rioters who are beyond exasperated and desperate — and for darned good reason.

If someone believes that Jews do not belong in Judea and Samaria in the first place, OK. That person has laid his cards on the table. Such a person will condemn Jews for acting — even legally — to defend themselves because, under their world view, Jews have no one to blame for the anti-Jewosh murders except themselves.

The IDF abandoned West Bank wall security - Israeli state comptroller

In addition, the report said that the IDF drew down its security forces in the West Bank by 70% at the time.

The report said, “the significance was total abandonment of the barrier and loss of control of the area without presenting a different solution to prevent illegal crossing into Israeli territory.”

This led to around 1.4 million Palestinians breakthroughs of the West Bank barrier in 2021 with some periods of time reaching 6,000 illegal Palestinian breakthroughs per day.

Moreover, the report said that the IDF presented the problem of losing sufficient volumes of IDF forces in the area as well as a spike in Palestinians breaking through the barrier to the Defense Ministry and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from 2017 and onward.

Despite this, the report said that Netanyahu and his cabinet “did not hold hearings regarding how to improve the effectiveness of the barrier and related defensive border obstacles” until the killing of 11 Israelis by Palestinians in March and April 2022.

At that point, then-prime minister Naftali Bennett and his cabinet shifted gears, though they also had not dealt with the issue since taking power in mid-2021.

The Defense Ministry and IDF responded stating that the comptroller report statistics are incorrect even for part of the 2017-2022 era that they discuss, saying that for most of the West Bank areas, the barrier was 82% effective even before 2022.

There is an unclear part of the ministry’s response on this issue where it says 82% effective “except in areas where it was decided operationally not to fix breakthroughs.”

The ministry does not explain on the record what these areas were or why the decision was taken.

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!