Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, March 03, 2023

03/03 Links Pt1: Israel’s democracy is not in peril; Where’s the anguish over Jews continuously murdered by Palestinian terrorists?; Hungary to Move Israel Embassy to Jerusalem

From Ian:

Lee Smith: Biden Sets Israel on Fire

Obama’s button men have made the “Get Bibi” machinery a permanent part of the Israeli political landscape: It’s how they dress their never-ending Iran deal campaigns in the garb of domestic Israeli politics. After Obama’s second term ended, his ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, stayed in country to service the anti-Bibi infrastructure while warning Israelis that no matter how good Trump was for Israel—crashing the nuclear deal, moving the embassy to Jerusalem, etc.—they better not get too close to the Republican president, for there would be a price to pay once the Democrats returned to power. And now they have.

Netanyahu brought some of this punishment on himself. His March 2015 speech before a joint session of Congress warning against the Iran nuclear deal was celebrated by Republicans at the time as a bold gesture of defiance. They likened Netanyahu to Winston Churchill, with Obama scripted as the grand appeaser, Neville Chamberlain.

In retrospect Bibi’s speech was a mistake. First, it was an announcement to the world that having gone all out—short of taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities—Bibi lost. Second, it signaled that the crucial decisions about Israel’s future were made not in Jerusalem but in Washington. This is what galvanized Bibi’s domestic opposition.

Israel’s anti-Bibi establishment was pleased to do Obama’s bidding. It didn’t matter that he was empowering Iran. If America wanted a deal with the clerical regime, they would have it. What Bibi’s domestic foes wanted was an imperial patron who would back their confrontation with the near enemy, Netanyahu, even as they continued to lose elections.

Now that there is no mistaking who is driving the coup against him, Bibi at least has a clearer picture of the game board before him. He can’t do much about the “ally” that has legitimized BDS on a grander scale than its academic proponents in the U.S. could ever hope for by filling Israeli streets with opponents threatening to take capital out of the country and shirk military service. The only way out of this mess is to reassert his freedom of action by zeroing in on the Obama-Biden faction’s favored foreign constituents, the regime in Tehran. If America wants to set fires in his backyard, Bibi can set fires, too.

Ruthie Blum: Disrupting Israeli democracy

Anti-government activists took to the streets across Israel on Wednesday to take part in a preplanned “Day of National Disruption.”

It was an apt name for the endeavor, whose purpose was to impose the will of the minority on the entire populace, most of which didn’t heed organizers’ previous attempts to paralyze the country through a general strike.

Like the other demonstrations held in the name of preventing the duly elected coalition in Jerusalem from becoming a “fascist theocracy,” this one made a mockery of the concept of democracy. And, like the rest of the ongoing protests, it was funded by foreign NGOs and dominated by the privileged classes.

Police at the protest
What caused it to be notable was its intensity, with the blocking of main highways and breaking down of police barriers. That these were erected to keep roads clear for commuters who didn’t enjoy the luxury of slacking off – and enable access to emergency-service vehicles – was of little concern to the flag-waving throngs. They were too busy denouncing the state’s leaders and the citizens who voted for them to care.

They’ve been happily highlighting the brutality of the men-in-blue on horseback, however, and showing off bruises sustained by stun grenades and trauma caused by water cannons. Anyone imagining that, as a result, they now grasp how haredi demonstrators feel in the face of even worse treatment is living in an alternate universe.

After all, being against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu means never having to say you’re sorry for hypocrisy or anything else.

A Bumbling Ambassador in Israel

Nides proudly claims spending “60% of my time trying to help the Palestinian people” – revealing that his role as Ambassador to Israel is undeserving of his attention. He proudly cites the Biden administration’s commitment to increasing financial aid to UNRWA, the United Nations organization charged with helping Palestinian refugees of the 1947-48 Arab war that was fought to annihilate the fledgling Jewish state. By now, however, UNRWA has become a scam. Nides is oblivious to the reality that there are as many UNRWA employees (approximately 30,000) as there are genuine Palestinian refugees still living.

Given Nides’ evident determination to inject himself into Israeli policy decisions it is hardly surprising that he would be sharply rebuked by Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli. “I say to the American ambassador,” Chikli advised, “slam the breaks on yourself and mind your own business.” It is unlikely that Nides will comply with Chikli’s recommendation.

Nides’ background helped to frame his current stance on Israel. After working for liberal American politicians Walter Mondale and Joe Lieberman among others, he became Managing Director of Morgan Stanley. From there he went to Credit Suisse before becoming Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources in the Obama administration. His talents in the financial world were evident. But Wall Street profits do not translate into expertise about the Middle East, least of all about Israel.

Diplomacy, especially with regard to Israel, is a different chapter in the Nides story. He realizes that the United States and Israel are bound together by “a sense of democracy and a sense of democratic institutions.” That sounds reassuring – until he says that “when we believe that those democratic institutions are under stress and strain, we’re articulating [our concern]. That’s what we are doing now.” He seems to believe that the Biden administration is the appropriate judge of Israel’s behavior.

Nides may have been successful in business. But he has yet to comprehend that Israelis are determined to define and defend their ancient homeland and modern nation – despite his discomfort and without his intrusion. As for Netanyahu’s plans and decisions, Nides should watch and listen before he indulges in more rants. He might even realize that he was appointed Ambassador to Israel, not its critic-in-chief.

Caroline Glick: Hady Amr’s transformational policy

According to Palestinian sources, Hady Amr’s visit this week to the Temple Mount marked a major shift in U.S. policy. Amr is the first U.S. official to carry out an official visit at the Temple Mount.

While Amr’s “Sheikh Azzam” isn’t directly implicated in any of the Hamas entities operating in the mosque, his web of ties to Hamas terrorists, including Kaye’s murderer, and Hamas’s central position in the Jordanian Waqf al-Khatib oversees, casts a dark shadow over Amr’s visit to the Temple Mount and over the Biden administration’s Israel-Palestinian policy that Amr leads.

None of Amr’s actions should come as a surprise to those who have followed his work over the years. Amr laid out his vision for U.S. policy in a paper he coauthored in 2018 for the Brookings Institution. In “Ending Gaza’s Perpetual Crisis: A New U.S. Approach,” Amr called for the United States to enable funding of Hamas entities by limiting the criminal consequences for U.S.-funded NGOs that work with those entities.

Amr also called for the U.S. to force Israel to stand down against Hamas by using a combination of direct pressure and European economic threats to compel Israel to cease fighting the terror group. Amr also called for the U.S. to support the establishment of a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas along with Fatah.

In 2021, President Joe Biden appointed Amr to serve as deputy assistant secretary of state for Israel and the Palestinians. Last year, Biden promoted Amr to his current position of special representative for Palestinian affairs. Judging from Amr’s actions this week in Aqaba, Huwara and Jerusalem, he has carte blanche to advance the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian terrorist vision he set out in his Brookings paper.

Issa’s letter to Blinken regarding the State Department-funded Hamas charity in Gaza exposed the tip of the iceberg. Amr exposed the iceberg itself this week. Under his leadership, the Biden administration has abandoned U.S. support for Israel in favor of support for Palestinian terrorists and their war against the Jewish state.

He wrote an op-ed supporting judicial reform. So Haaretz fired him.

Earlier this week, Daled Amos wrote about how Haaretz has dropped all pretense of journalism and objectivity, based on my tweet of a letter from Haaretz's publisher Amos Schocken:

Dear Haaretz reader,

Despite the hopes – and votes – of nearly half of Israel's electorate, Benjamin Netanyahu won Israel's last election and, since taking office as prime minister, he has spun into action together with his far-right partners, to implement a swathe of radical policies that threaten to change the nature of Israel's democracy, perhaps irrevocably.

Israel's newly empowered right wing, discarding its liberal right heritage, has swung towards nationalism, illiberalism and authoritarianism. We now have a serving prime minister who is simultaneously the subject of an ongoing criminal trial, and hoping to evade justice. We have a government pushing to undermine the rule of law in Israel, to end the separation of powers, the independence of the courts and judges, and to crush freedom of expression.

It is incumbent upon us to fight these policies and even worse proposals taking shape among members of the governing coalition. This fight must be informed by the unparalleled, and unafraid, reporting and analysis that has been our mission for over a century.

At Haaretz, our dedicated journalists are on the ground every day working to defend a free and democratic Israel-- and the work we do depends on the support of readers like you. We invite you to become a partner in this essential work by subscribing now to Haaretz.com. We must act together, and we must act now.

Thank you,

Amos Schocken

I had responded:

Missing words from Amos Schocken's description of Haaretz's mission:

Truth
Objectivity
Accuracy
Fairness

Call me old fashioned, but I don't want my newspaper to tell me what to think. And certainly not one that is hellbent to only report one side of an important issue.

I admit I was pleasantly surprised that later that week, Haaretz published a long interview with the architect of judicial reform, Simcha Rothman. The interviewer was combative and condescending, but at least Haaretz published Rothman's words.

But now we see that Haaretz only allowed that interview because they thought that Rothman's position was counteracted by the interviewer's words. Actually allowing an op-ed in support of judicial reform is way, way over the line for Haaretz.

Gadi Taub is an Israeli historian and (mostly) conservative commentator who has written for Haaretz for years. He has written in favor of judicial reform for years as well.

But this week, after he submitted an op-ed on the topic for Haaretz, they fired him.

He is interviewed by Israeli magazine Now 14:

I sent an article whose bottom line is that now there is no democracy in Israel, and therefore the legal reform is an attempt to bring it back to Israel. In response, I received a series of questions from the editor, a kind of fact checking about my article.

On the exact day that I received the list of questions from the editor, including the claim that I was wrong and misleading, I was invited to dinner with a friend of mine who is a retired judge. At the dinner there was another retired judge and two of the greatest legal scholars in Israel, an excellent opportunity to test myself.

I presented them with [Haaretz's] questions and wrote down points. At night I sat down with my friend Nissim Sofer and wrote the editor an answer to all the questions. What can I tell you? A small seminar paper, including citations and references.

The Haaretz newspaper replied, 'Thank you for the detailed answer, but we don't want to publish the article, because now democracy is on the defensive.' Basically they are saying: We wanted to claim that you are lying, but the truth is that we are lying and now it is forbidden to tell the truth, so shut up.

Alon Idan, editor of the newspaper's opinion section, wrote to Taub: "The recent change of government was accompanied by an aggressive and immediate attack on Israeli democracy, as we at 'Haaretz' perceive it. The desire to weaken the judicial system with the help of extreme moves that are done unilaterally and without restraints, forces us as a media outlet to defend ourselves against what which in our eyes will be perceived as a regime coup... in terms of a defensive democracy, we believe that now is a time of defensiveness."

Haaretz admits it: It is not interested in truth, objectivity, accuracy or fairness.

Unfortunately, while this is an extreme example, this is what we are seeing in most of the mainstream media. The people are considered too dumb to make up their own minds so the self-appointed arbiters of morality choose what the public is allowed to see.

I admit it gets frustrating sometimes trying to research and publish facts when so many seem to prefer narratives, and perception trumps the truth.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Palestinian media enthusiastically catalogues terror attacks - far more than even Israeli media

The Western media is filled with images of the IDF "invading" Palestinian cities and with statistics about how high the Palestinian casualty count in the West Bank is this year compared to previous years. The impression from the media is an inversion of the truth, where the IDF is portrayed as acting out of blind revenge while the Palestinians are helpless.

Palestinian media has a different narrative. Instead of being victims, they are the heroic instigators of these battles.

Of course, every dead Jew is celebrated, but they go way beyond that - counting every shooting attack, firebomb, Molotov cocktail, all in the context of "heroic resistance."

A Palestinian group named Maati has been keeping these statistics since January 2022. Last month they counted:

1,117 total "acts of resistance"

8 Israelis killed

144 "shooting operations"

4 "stabbing operations"

34 explosive devices

26 firebombs

Hundreds of "stone throwing" operations

January was even worse, with 1,448 total "acts of resistance" and 159 shooting attacks. 15 Israelis have been killed this year.

The number of Palestinian shooting attacks has increased dramatically over the past year, according to Maati:

This is an average of five shooting attacks a day this year - and hardly any are reported!

The Western media has their narrative, and there is no room there for the pride that Palestinians have in their "heroes" to the extent that every bullet and stone is a cause for celebration.

When you report only half the story, you aren't reporting. You are propagandizing.

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!

I looked up the history of the Shtayyeh family.

There wasn't as much online as there is from other famous Palestinian families who proudly trace their histories to companions of Mohammed in Arabia.

But about ten years ago, one member of the family seemed to go through social media to see all the the Shtayyehs he could find, and he made a slide show showing dozens of them and a very short bio on each.

While a few live now in Nablus, where Mohammed Shtayyeh was born, the home town of most of them is Damietta, Egypt.

And the Egyptian origin of the family seems likely. A monograph by the JCPA reminds us that Hamas leader Fathi Hammad once said:

Who are the Palestinians? We have many families called al-Masri, whose roots are Egyptian! They may be from Alexandria, from Cairo, from Damietta, from the north, from Aswan, from Upper Egypt. We are Egyptians; we are Arabs. We are Muslims. We are part of you [in mainland Egypt]. Egyptians! Personally, half my family is Egyptian – and the other half are Saudis.

The paper goes on to say that it is well known that Egyptians settled in major cities in Palestine in the 19th century, including Nablus. One of their footnotes says that an Israeli researcher checked the Nablus phone book in 1980 and found 70 entries for the name "al-Masri," "The Egyptian," alone.

This Arabic article on Arab family name origins freely admits that a great number of Palestinian families immigrated from elsewhere. The head of the Palestinian History and Documentation Center, Khaled Al-Khalidi, notes that original Palestinian family names came from well known Gulf Arab tribes, like Al-Ayyubi, Al-Ansari, Al-Hashemi, and Al-Qurashi. Later families took on named from where they came from, so that's why so many Palestinian families are named after Syrian, Arabian or Egyptian areas (al-Hijazi, al-Halabi [Aleppo], and al-Dimashqi [Damascus], al-Suisi, al-Gharbawi, al-Sharqawi, and al-Araishi.)

This Palestinian expert freely admits that "the Palestinian people are part of the Arabian Peninsula, and at that time there was free movement, and there were no borders between Arab areas."

To the West, Palestinians claim to be indigenous to the area. In Arabic, they know the truth that many if not most originated elsewhere - and they are proud of 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!

03/02 Links Pt2: The Aboriginal leader who spoke up for the Jews; Arab-Israelis: Where Would You Rather Live?; Mark Ruffalo – The Sorry, Not Sorry Jew-Hater

From Ian:

Howard Jacobson: Is it time for Jews to do less yearning and more living?

This week, one of our greatest living authors delivered Jewish Book Week’s keynote speech. Howard Jacobson’s address argues for a new positivity towards Jewishness and Israel. Today, the JC publishes it in full.

If asked to name what Jews were best at, I used always to say “argument”. Disputatiousness is our element, I insisted, but I don’t expect you to agree with me.

Today, less glibly, I’d say something different. Today I’d say that what defines Jews essentially is disappointment. Disappointment, the non-fulfilment of expectation, is the mournful poetry of the Jewish soul. Not only what we’re good at, but what explains — what helps explain, at least — how it is, to the disappointment of others, that we are still here.

I am not a scholar of Jewish thought, unless being an old Jew makes me one. I am a novelist: I read a bit, listen a bit, and make the rest up. The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks once told me he thought I’d make a great rabbi. I told him I thought he’d make a great novelist. We were only half-joking. Jews only ever half-joke. Which is a subject for another lecture. So I’ll add “rabbinic potential” to the list of what qualifies me to give this one.

The subject of my novel this evening is the story of ourselves we’ve been telling since we let God down at the dawn of time, five or 6,000 years ago by the Jewish calendar, an approximation that might be on the short side but is still long enough for disappointment to have become a habit.

The Aboriginal leader who spoke up for the Jews

In November 1938, Kristallnacht saw the destruction of synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses and homes and marked the first time the Nazis imprisoned Jews on a mass scale.

Historians have noted that the passivity with which most Germans responded indicated to the regime that the public would have no problem accepting more extreme persecution.

But within a month, a remarkable act of protest and solidarity would come from the most unlikely of places. A 77-year-old man — who was yet to secure his own civil rights — wanted to express his horror at the pogrom, despite living 10,000 miles away and likely never having met a Jew in his life.

William Cooper, an elder from the Yorta Yorta clan, led a deputation of the Australian Aborigines’ League that walked six miles from his home in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray to the German consulate in the city to deliver a written resolution that voiced, “on behalf of the aborigines of Australia, a strong protest at the cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi Government of Germany”.

It is believed to have been the only such demonstration by non-Jews anywhere in the world. But in the Melbourne newspaper The Argus it made just four paragraphs, and by the end of the century one Aboriginal academic said the event had been “almost completely forgotten in Australian history”.

You can’t say anything about Israel any more

So who has been silenced from speaking about Israel? In reality it is those who defend themselves from anti-Jewish hatred — mainly Jewish people in the diaspora — who are often compelled to remain silent. You can’t easily criticise the actions of the Israeli government if you’re constantly fighting off preposterous allegations that treat Israel as uniquely evil and veer into classic antisemitism. Most Jews support the existence of Israel and don’t want their views distorted, supplying cheap ammunition to those who want to dismantle the Jewish state.

Many diaspora Jews, for example, are upset and angry about the far-right elements in the latest Israeli government, to the extent that some won’t even visit until they are replaced. But where is the space to express those concerns in non-Jewish spaces, when Israel has been accused of being an illegitimate fascist or Nazi state for decades?

Getting Jews to shut up has been a particular success of anti-Zionist ideology. It doesn’t help Palestinians or pressure Israel into making reforms. It does the opposite, cheerleading hate and silencing Jewish voices because it has made it so difficult for rational criticism to be voiced.

The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) recently posted a digital pamphlet to their 18,900 followers, claiming that Zionists (almost all British Jews) are a “racist minority” who are immoral, insane and responsible for “genocide”. They called on people to get “Zionists” sacked from their jobs. This campaign of demonisation and exclusion has echoes of 1930s Germany, serving to remind us exactly why a Jewish state is necessary.

Amnesty used Valentine’s Day to accuse Israel of a “war on love”. A week later, Hulk actor Mark Ruffalo told his 8.3 million followers that Israel was “dangerous to world peace”. Yes, you can’t say anything about Israel anymore.

Here's proof positive that @Amnesty is antisemitic

(Based on a Twitter thread.)

Amnesty International tweeted:

"Human rights" organization Amnesty International is openly advocating the forcible removal and ethnic cleansing of 670,000 Jews from their homes.

Normally, that's a war crime.

They have never insisted on that in Western Sahara or Northern Cyprus or anywhere else.

Only for Jews.

The Encyclopedia of Human Rights says settlers have human rights and ethnically cleansing them wholesale is clearly a violation of those rights.

It was talking about Northern Cyprus.

"Human rights" groups are saying, of course, Turkish settlers have human rights and compelling reasons to stay where they are - but Jews don't.

And remember, there are thousands of Arab "settlers" - Israeli Arabs who have moved over the Green Line in Beit Safafa, Beit Hanina, French Hill and elsewhere.

Amnesty never calls them "settlers."

No, the only people in the WORLD they want to ethnically cleanse are Jews!

When Jews have a different set of rules than everyone else, that is the definition of antisemitism. And Amnesty is guilty.

There is another proof of Amnesty's antisemitism in Amnesty's tweet.

Even though most Jews in Judea and Samaria do not support the violence in Huwara, Amnesty wants to use the event as an excuse to collectively punish all Jews who live in Judea/Samaria.

Yes, the most prestigious human rights organization is stereotyping all Jews who live across the Green Line as if they are the same - and wants to punish the peaceful ones because of the actions of a tiny minority.

That is classic bigotry.

Organizations like Amnesty and other "human rights" organizations that insist that the only people in the world who must be forcibly removed from their homes are Jews. For everyone else, it is a crime, but to remove Jews who have lived in their homes for three generations now - it is obligatory.

How can you explain this without antisemitism? What kind of hoops must one jump through to figure out some crazy distinction that makes it a mere coincidence that Jews are the only people on Earth who must be ethnically cleansed - under "international law"?

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!

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

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

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!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

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.