Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 02, 2023

Ancient, Historic Palestine Magically Never Exceeded 1916 Borders (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Sykes-Picot Jerusalem, February 23 - Since time immemorial, the indigenous people of Palestine have lived in their native land, bound on the west by the Mediterranean Sea and to the north, east, and south by frontiers established by the British and French in the waning days of the First World War, beyond which Palestine never existed.

Ancient texts and modern lore speak of a bucolic Palestine that saw conquest after conquest, its native population anchored to the land through thick and thin and defining themselves as the children of it, so thoroughly that the term "Palestine" never passed their lips. From the Biblical era to the premodern, as empires and administrative boundaries shifted, and as populations migrated, never did a parcel of land beyond the lines drawn by Sykes and Picot answer to the term "Palestine," except for the eastern two thirds of the British Mandate for Palestine that became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and thus retroactively disqualified from the descriptor "Palestine" back into history.

The cultural, demographic, and ethnic spectrum that characterizes modern-day Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan seldom shifted in any appreciable way upon traversing the 1916 borders of Palestine; the Levantine cuisine, religions, mores, and customs of Palestine have defied, for millennia, outsiders' attempts to impose nomenclature and geographic definitions, except for the British and French at the end of World War I and their respective defeat of the Ottomans establishing the ancient border between Palestine and Lebanon at the point where the British and French zones met, and except for the Ottomans not considering "Palestine" an entity at all, since the term featured primarily in European Christian use since Roman times.

Ancient Palestinians inhabited the south of country as defined by the 1949 armistice lines between Israel and Egypt and between Israel and Jordan; if they existed, ancient sources would speak of the strong blood, commercial, and cultural ties between the Palestinians of south Palestine and their healthy relations with the inhabitants of Jordan, established in the 1920's, to the east, and Egypt, sovereign since 1946, to the west. Many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip boast of ancestry and family in Egypt, which controlled the Strip from 1949 to 1967, during which time the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip never felt the need to assert their belonging to Palestine, so secure was their identity as Palestinian.

Palestinian scholars speak with similar reverence of the holy Islamic shrines in Jerusalem, which as recently as the 1920's they touted as undoubtedly built on the same site as the Temple of Solomon, that famous Palestinian ruler.

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

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03/02 Links Pt1: Israel can't let debate drown out the red alert sirens; Stop subsidizing the murder of Americans, Mr. President; Glick: What the Battle Over Judicial Reform in Israel Is Really About

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The real threat to Israeli democracy

Universalism deems the nation to be inherently exclusive, bigoted and oppressive. National laws therefore need to be subordinate to universal principles.

When universal human rights law was created, some lawyers warned that such laws, not being anchored in any national jurisdiction, could pose a potential risk to justice.

The warning was ignored. But that is precisely why human rights law has been weaponized against Israel.

It’s why human rights NGOs have been able to position themselves as the conscience of the world, even while they maliciously defame Israelis as human rights offenders and excuse the Palestinian Arabs’ genocidal attacks.

It’s why the U.N. Human Rights Council disproportionately and unjustly targets Israel while sanitizing tyrannical regimes—some of which are even members of the council.

It’s why the Palestinian Arabs can foment vexatious actions against Israel in the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court.

Human rights culture has created “lawfare” against Israel, against justice and against democracy. It has transformed judges from custodians of the rule of law into perpetrators of rule by lawyers.

The threat to democracy in Israel isn’t coming from the Netanyahu government, but from the thousands in the streets. Ultimately, it’s an attack on the very idea of a nation state governed by the consent of the majority expressed through democratic laws.

That’s why it’s no surprise that these protests are being backed by the New Israel Fund, whose current attempt to bring Israel’s government down is of a piece with its relentless undermining of Israel itself.

And it’s why this battle is, in fact, the third such war over the idea of the nation in the West.

The first was Britain’s vote in 2016 to leave the European Union, when the British people voted for national independence and democracy against universalism.

The second was the election later that year of U.S. President Donald Trump, when Americans voted to restore American exceptionalism against those who sought to undermine their nation.

Now the third such convulsion has erupted on Israel’s streets as universalism challenges democracy once again, and turns language, truth and reason upside down.

Israel can't let debate drown out the red alert sirens - opinion

The current public debate in Israel is more polarized than ever before. As Jews and proud supporters of Israel, to see such turmoil in the world's only Jewish state is painful. We are extremely anxious by the way in which Israel's enemies are crowing, arming themselves with every criticism and rejoicing in our public disagreements.

As Israel's brothers and sisters abroad we make one request as non-citizens: let our disagreements strengthen us, not divide us. Respectful debate has always been our strength, from the days of the Talmud onward. But division and disunity has always been our downfall, from time immemorial.

Today, external challenges remain. Iran continues its march toward nuclear weapons while continuing its malevolent activities across the region. A further threat is the increase in Palestinian terror on Israel's streets. During our recent mission to Israel, we were all issued a timely reminder of the threats we face, as the red alert sounded and more rockets from Gaza targeted Israeli civilians.

Another increasingly deadly threat is antisemitism. The global rise of Jew-hatred is increasingly prevalent in the U.S. and Europe, on the street, on campus, and online. These threats should not only bind us together but also remind us why Israel is so important as a safe haven for all Jews.

We believe in the resilience of Israeli democracy and know that it will be able to deal with the challenges it faces. But however fervent the debate, we cannot afford to be distracted from the threat we all face. We cannot allow the debate to drown out the perpetual red alert.

Stop subsidizing the murder of Americans, Mr. President

One of those Palestinians whom the U.S. State Department keeps telling us wants a two-state solution murdered yet another Israeli, this time an American citizen. Elan Ganeles, a 27-year-old in town to attend a friend’s wedding, was shot dead by a Palestinian terrorist on a highway between Jericho and the Dead Sea.

I’m not sure how many people are aware of the number of American victims of Palestinian terror. Since 1970, at least 80 Americans have been killed and 87 wounded in Israel and the disputed territories. During that time, nearly 2,300 Israelis were murdered.

Remember the Oslo Accords, which were supposed to usher in an era of peace? You know, the agreement predicated on Yasser Arafat’s recognition of Israel and commitment to renounce “the use of terrorism and other acts of violence.”

Since Oslo, more than 1,600 Israelis have been slain. Of those, 71 have been American citizens. Another 81 have been injured. The fatalities include men, women and children as young as three months.

Mr. President, you are subsidizing these killers.

Rep. Ronny Jackson on U.S. Victim of Palestinian Terror: ‘More Blood on President Biden’s Hands’

Following the murder of an Israeli-American by Palestinian terrorists earlier this week, Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) blasted the Biden administration, arguing that the president had “more blood” on his hands owing to his foreign policies.

In an exclusive statement to Breitbart News on Wednesday, Jackson slammed the president for his role in funding Palestinian terrorists.

“Another heartbreaking tragedy took place and there is more blood on President Biden’s hands after Elan Ganeles, an Israeli-American citizen, was murdered by radical Palestinian terrorists in Israel,” he said.

Ganeles, a 27-year-old Columbia University graduate from West Hartford, Connecticut, was killed in a terror attack in Israel on Monday, after Palestinian terrorists opened fire at his vehicle.

While the “highly disturbing act of terrorism should be an issue of concern for every American official,” Jackson stated, the Biden administration “continues to put American interests last.”

“Since his inauguration, President Biden has signed off on more than half a billion dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority which gets funneled to terrorists, a direct violation of the Taylor Force Act,” he added.

The Taylor Force Act, which was signed into law by former President Donald Trump, was named for an Army veteran killed by a Palestinian terrorist while visiting Israel in 2016.

We've discussed the transparent hate that "UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories" Francesca Albanese has towards Israel many times, yet she somehow continues to outdo herself.

UN Watch published a well-researched article that showed that Craig Mokhiber, head of the New York office of the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, has a history of anti-Israel bias to the extent of accusing Israel of “genocide,” “large-scale atrocities” and “right-wing white ethno-nationalist terrorism.”

Albanese responded with something that really goes beyond her previous anti-Israel statements:

Shooting the messenger is the only card left to those whose sole purpose is to shelter Israel from accountability. Unfortunately for them - and for Palestinians- Israel's brutal occupation has grown out of control. It can no longer be whitewashed by smearing human rights voices.

How, exactly, is quoting Moktuber's own words "smearing" him and "shooting the messenger"?

If Albanese considers him the "messenger" that means that she agrees that Israel is engaging in "genocide," a truly sickening and antisemitic position. Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race. Accusing Israel of the worst human rights crime - a crime that Jews have been the most prominent victims of over the past century - is not meant to protect Palestinians but to cause pain to Jews.

(The Genocide Convention has a much looser definition which could be twisted to apply to nearly every nation that has ever been in a conflict; using it against Israel and not against the Palestinians who specifically target anyone Jewish they can find is further evidence of antisemitic double standards that apply only to Israel.)

In this tweet, Albanese is herself accusing Israel of genocide, and she is defending anti-Israel bias. Given that her job description demands impartiality, this means that she has dropped all pretense of objectivity herself.

It would be refreshing if the UN would act according to its own standards and dismiss her. But the UN doesn't adhere to its own standards of objectivity, so this is clearly not going to happen.

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 official Palestinian Wafa news agency describes a new book written by the Palestinian Liberation Organization Research Center.

The Palestine Liberation Organization-Research Center has issued a new book, entitled: "Zionism, Israel and Anti-Semitism: Exploiting the Suffering of the Jews to Persecute the Palestinians," by the researcher and journalist specializing in Israeli affairs, Khaldoun Barghouti.

In the book, Barghouti discusses the motives and stages of developing the definition of antisemitism from “racism against Jews on an ethnic and religious basis” to new definitions, mainly targeting those who adopt anti-Zionist positions as a colonial-settler idea, and those who criticize Israel as a country that practices military occupation and apartheid against the Palestinians. They are accusing them of being racist against Jews, "that is, antisemites," with the aim of suppressing and silencing these voices.

The book focuses on the IHRA’s Working Definition of Anti-Semitism, which was adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA in 2016, after it was issued in 2005 by a European organization that cooperated with Israeli and Western academics and Zionist organizations, with the aim of suppressing critics of Israel’s policies against the Palestinians during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which began in 2000.

The book also reviews the most prominent areas in which this definition is used by Zionist organizations defending Israel, especially in the United States and Europe, and some forms of using this definition, with a review of the most prominent countries that adopted it through membership in the IHRA organization .

Its importance lies in its being the first Palestinian and Arab in dealing with the process of developing the definition of anti-Semitism in order to divert it from its original and historical context, and exploit it for political purposes, causing injustice to the Palestinian victims of Israel on the one hand, and to the Jewish victims of anti-Semitism in its classical concept on the other hand, by conflating their suffering with the . Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and its exploitation to suppress critics of the occupation.

The cover betrays the mission of the book: not to analyze the IHRA Working Definition but to oppose it, and the arguments within are not sober analysis but a polemic masquerading as an objective look at antisemitism.

Palestinian and other Arabic media are filled with antisemitism every day. Just today, Jordan's Al Ghad has an article responding to a piece by Robert Satloff arguing that Arabs should learn about the Holocaust. "Who says we don't know about the Holocaust?" Al Ghad writes, saying that Palestinians live through a much worse holocaust every day, and adding for good measure that the "six million" figure is certainly an exaggeration.

If Holocaust denial and minimization isn't antisemitism, nothing is.

The official position of the PLO is that anyone who points out endemic Palestinian antisemitism is a liar who supports their persecution. We've seen this position before, mostly among the Left, and certainly they provided this author with the underlying arguments he uses. It is an inversion of the truth: Anti-Zionists attempt to silence discussion of Arab antisemitism to justify Palestinian incitement, hate and terrorism.

IHRA, for all its faults, accurately notes that much of modern anti-Zionism is simply a repackaging of the same hate we have seen for thousands of years.

There is a direct line from the explicit Arab antisemitism of the 1940s and the attempts to hide it as a mere political position today. The hate hasn't changed, but because groups like MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch started publicizing Arab Jew-hatred the Palestinians became embarrassed and started obfuscating the hate a little more by substituting "Zionist" for "Jew," with sometimes absurd results where one can see articles about how "Zionists" have been the source of evil since Biblical times.

Arab antisemitism is undeniable. The PLO has written an entire book to not to combat it but to support it as a valid political position.

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!

Arabs accuse Israel of taking over a building at a historic vantage point overlooking the Temple Mount

Arab News reports:

Dozens of Palestinian parents staged protests in East Jerusalem on Saturday over plans by Israeli authorities to merge two schools in the Old City.

Parents joined protests at the Omariya and Mawlawi schools to speak out against what they said was an unjust and dangerous decision that might lead to an emptying of schools in the Old City.

Jerusalemite activist Ahmed Al-Safadi said the Israeli move is designed to turn the Al-Qadisiyah school building near Bab Al-Sahira into a school for settlers.

Jerusalemites have condemned Israeli education proposals as “racist.”

Israeli authorities have threatened to withdraw the licenses of some schools and forced principals to sign a petition obliging them not to teach the Palestinian curriculum.

Abu Ziyad, a lawyer, writer and former minister of Jerusalem affairs in the Palestinian government, told Arab News: “If the goal of the Israelis is to control the Omariya school, then it is an ancient building and an Islamic Awaqaf, and it forms one of the borders of Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

It is possible to control the northern squares of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock through this step, he said.

The school is administered by Israel's Education Ministry, as a virtual walk using Google Street Maps shows.

I cannot say if or why Israel might be consolidating the two schools. Perhaps attendance is down; according to this article, only one floor of three is used for classrooms.

The school was built on top of the remains of the Antonia Fortress built by Herod to protect the Second Temple from the north.

In 1996, deadly riots broke out when Israel opened up an ancient tunnel whose exit was directly under this school.

The main floor is built into the northern wall surrounding the Temple Mount. The upper floors have a stunning view of the Mount:

In the 19th century, when Jews and Christians were banned from the Mount by the tolerant Muslims, this would be the spot from which non-Muslims would view the Mount:

View of the Temple Mount. Painting by William Henry Bartlett from 1843

I don't know the legal issues of ownership. Muslims say this is Waqf property, Israeli apparently says it belongs to the Jerusalem Municipality. A close look at the school sign indicates that it does belong to Jerusalem.

If the latter is true, this would be an awesome spot for a shul!

One very interesting footnote: While the Muslims are saying that any Jewish presence at the school is unthinkable, the school accepts lots of money from The Jerusalem Foundation for upkeep and renovations.

. The Jerusalem Foundation renovated the school auditorium, which served as a venue for school and larger community cultural events, in 1972. It later supported renovations to the school library (which opened as a public library branch in 1968) and renovations to the school courtyard. It undertook a major renovation project that included repair of the building’s electrical system, installation of the school’s first central heating system, improvements to the courtyard and installation of play equipment in 1992.

The donors to repair and improve the school? Nehemia and Naomi Cohen, and William and Lisa Wishnick, both American Jewish philanthropists.

The Muslims might not want Jews to be there, but they sure have no problem with Jewish money.

(h/t GnasherJew)

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!

03/01 Links Pt2: When Palestinian Terror Struck Khartoum; The Vanishing: The erasure of Jews from American life; Was Medina a model for peaceful coexistence?

From Ian:

Israel Is About to Turn 75; We Must Stop the ‘Lawfare’ Strategy Used to Attack It

In May, the State of Israel will celebrate its 75th birthday. Yet attacks on the very idea of a Jewish state continue, predominantly in the form of “lawfare.” Below we explain what lawfare is, and how Israel and its supporters must respond to this threat to the Jewish State.

Lawfare is conducted through legal machinery, deploying tactics that misuse international laws by applying them in extraordinary ways, in order to isolate, demonize, and persecute the Jewish State.

For example, a Hamas lawfare tactic is to deliberately place civilians in harm’s way in armed conflict. The Israeli military — when targeted by this lawfare tactic — must either harm the innocent or abort combat. Of course, placing civilians in harm’s way undermines the purpose of international humanitarian law, which is intended to limit battlefield suffering of civilians. Hamas places its citizens in danger, and perverts the course of justice. However, the lawfare tactic works, as it diminishes Israel’s ability to respond to terror attacks and offensive attacks, and is used to demonize Israel when civilians are accidentally killed, despite Israel’s best efforts to prevent this.

Lawfare also occurs in trade and human rights law. For example, when the law is leveraged to draw a court into political matters (i.e. anti-Israel matters) outside of a trade or human rights mandate, a court’s legal authority is politicized, undermining its own integrity as a neutral arbiter.

Nevertheless, judges who spend a lifetime analyzing international law are inclined to take even tenuous opportunities to apply it. For anti-Israel activists who try to use any tactic they can to demonize the Jewish state — and have many supporters in the international field — lawfare is usually a winning strategy.

MEMRI: When Palestinian Terror Struck Khartoum

March 1, 2023, is the 50th anniversary of a Palestinian terrorist attack in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. One could say that it was actually a Palestinian terrorist attack on Saudi soil since the target was the Saudi Embassy in the Sudanese capital.

The group was Black September, by this time notorious for the 1972 attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Earlier still, in November 1971, Black September had assassinated the Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi Al-Tal in the lobby of the Cairo Sheraton. One of the Palestinian hitmen had notoriously bent down and licked the blood on the marble floor after that shooting.

The March 1, 1973 attack in Sudan targeted a reception held by the Saudi ambassador in honor of a departing American diplomatic colleague, George Curtis Moore, who was the American Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM). Ten hostages were taken by the gunmen, six of them were Saudis: the ambassador, his wife, and four children. The other four were two Americans, newly arrived Ambassador Cleo A. Noel, Jr. and Moore, Belgian Charge d'Affaires Guy Eid, and the Jordanian Charge d'Affaires Adli Al-Nasser.[1]

As some may remember, after making grandiose hostage demands (including calling for the release of members of the German Baader-Meinhof gang, Robert F. Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan, plus many Palestinian detainees in Israel and Jordan), the eight gunmen surrendered to Sudanese authorities days later. Before surrendering they had killed the Belgian and the two American diplomats. Before their murder, they were allowed to write farewell messages (written on Saudi Embassy stationary) to their families. Moore wrote: "Cleo and I will die bravely and without tears as men should."

We now know, of course, that Black September was a subsidiary of Yassir Arafat's Fateh organization.[2] The attack was carried out with the full approval and knowledge of Arafat from his headquarters in Beirut. Both the killings and the hit team's surrender were coordinated with Arafat. The Sudanese government of Jaafar Al-Nimeiry, initially furious about the attack, handed the gunmen over to the PLO for punishment (so it handed them over to the organization that had carried out the attack). Sudan was reportedly pressured towards leniency by Qaddafi's Libya, a great patron of the Palestinians at the time and a major influence on Sudan (in 1976, Qaddafi bankrolled a land invasion by Sudanese rebels that almost overthrew Al-Nimeiry). Some of the Palestinian gunmen served prison time in Sadat's Egypt, three of them escaped from Egyptian custody. In response to the Sudanese actions, the U.S. suspended economic aid to Sudan for three years.

The immediate aftermath of this terror attack is kind of a snapshot, a scene caught in amber of the region half a century ago. You have Black September, forged in the wake of the PLO's failure to overthrow the Hashemites in Jordan. You have Arafat sending the team out from his safe haven in Beirut, capital of a Lebanon the PLO would help destabilize and destroy. You have the enabling of Palestinian terror by Qaddafi and Sadat, both of whom would come to a bad end. Finally, you have a Sudan at the mercy of others, fearing Qaddafi and punished by the Americans.

Farrakhan Predicts Another Holocaust, Espouses Antisemitism and Bigotry in Saviours’ Day Speech

The Nation of Islam (NOI) held its annual Saviours’ Day conference in Chicago the weekend of February 24–26, serving once again as a platform for vitriolic antisemitism and anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry.

Saviours’ Day 2023 marked the annual event’s return to a large-scale arena setting for the first time in three years; the NOI held smaller, semi-virtual conferences during the intervening pandemic-era years. NOI speakers injected familiar antisemitic and conspiratorial rhetoric into the weekend’s activities, capped off by longtime NOI leader Louis Farrakhan’s keynote address on Sunday afternoon.

The NOI has targeted Jews extensively during Farrakhan’s 40-plus-year tenure as the group’s leader and repeatedly dismissed accusations of antisemitism. The NOI made this focus particularly clear in recent months as the organization sought to insert itself into the national debate over antisemitism following the Ye and Kyrie Irving controversies, promoting content about Jews and antisemitism in their social media posts, weekly sermon broadcasts and newspaper articles.

Farrakhan directly addressed the NOI’s long history of antisemitism in his speech on Sunday, demonstrating his obsession with Jews and affirming the NOI’s position as a leading promoter of antisemitism in America today.

Farrakhan’s keynote address
Farrakhan’s wide-ranging, hours-long address, titled “The War of Armageddon Has Begun,” featured a relentless stream of antisemitic commentary accusing Jews of controlling world governments, the media, and financial institutions. He promoted the false idea that Jews seek to manipulate and exploit Black people, deceive and destroy America, and engage in other nefarious or illicit activities.

Throughout his speech, Farrakhan spoke about the “Synagogue of Satan,” a phrase from the Bible that the NOI and other antisemites often use to refer to Jews in a derogatory manner. Much of the speech read like a laundry list of age-old antisemitic tropes and conspiracies about alleged Jewish power as Farrakhan decried the nature and activities of this so-called Synagogue of Satan. “The Synagogue of Satan has destroyed the country,” he said.

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.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

This morning, 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!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

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.

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!

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!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

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.