Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, March 05, 2023

03/05 Links: Concept of Palestinian state is employed for sole purpose of destroying Israel; Israel Under Attack: Biden's Coup to Get Iran the Bomb; The NYTs’ ‘Non-Threatening’ Terrorists

From Ian:

Deconstructing the Israeli Genocide Libel

One of the most pernicious lies that continues to be spread about Israel is the claim that the Jewish state has committed (and continues to commit) the crime of genocide against the local Arab population, including the Palestinians.

Whether it’s being advanced by Hollywood superstars like Mark Ruffalo, noted legal scholars, or United Nations officials, the genocide claim is one of the most popular and harmful libels about Israel to be spread in the 21st century.

Here we deconstruct the genocide libel.

What is Genocide?
The term “genocide” was coined in 1944 as a means of describing the atrocities that were then taking place in Nazi-controlled Europe as well as other instances of ethnic annihilation, such as the Armenian Genocide in 1915.

In 1948, the newly-formed United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, codifying the crime of genocide.

According to Article II of the Convention, genocide refers to a number of acts that are “committed with an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

The acts, as enumerated by the Convention include killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, inflicting conditions of life that would bring about the group’s physical destruction, imposing measures to prevent births within the group, or transferring children out of the group.

The Legal Genocide Libel
Those who accuse Israel of committing genocide tend to focus on a number of claims:

Claim: The exodus of 700,000 Palestinian refugees in 1948 (along with the killing of Palestinians during the Israeli War of Independence) is tantamount to genocide.

The charge is inapplicable as:
- There is no intent to destroy (in whole or in part) an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group;
- Any limited expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from certain areas was strategic and not motivated by genocidal intent; and
- Furthermore, the vast majority of Palestinian refugees evacuated those areas of their own accord (whether out of fear or at the behest of Arab leaders) and were not expelled by Israeli forces.

Claim: Israel is guilty of “incremental genocide” (slow genocide over a long period of time).

Once again the facts belie the accusation.

For Israel to be guilty of “incremental genocide,” the Palestinian population would have to be purposefully decreased by Israel.

However, a look at the population figures for Israel’s Arab citizenry as well as the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza shows a marked increase in these populations.

As one analyst put it, for Israel to be accused of genocide while the Palestinian and Arab Israeli populations are continually increasing would mean that the Israelis “appear to be the most incompetent genocidaires to ever walk this earth and are responsible for the only large-scale annihilation campaign in history where the victim population actually increased.”

Israel Under Attack: Biden's Coup to Get Iran the Bomb

"U.S. support for demonstrations in Tel Aviv isn't about the future of Israel's judiciary. It's about handcuffing Israel while Iran gets the bomb." — Lee Smith, Tablet Magazine, March 2, 2023.

In reality, Iran's mullahs will most likely blackmail the Biden Administration for billions of dollars not to use their new bombs "on my watch", as then President Barack Obama put it in 2015. With a new administration, there can be a new blackmail.

The Palestinian Authority's "pay-for-slay" jobs-program, paid for by "over $200 million" fungible U.S. taxpayer dollars in funding reinstated by President Joe Biden, incentivizes and rewards the murder of Jews.

Abbas' Fatah faction boasted of carrying out 7,200 terror attacks in 2022 against Israel, while criticizing Hamas for not attacking Israel.

Many Israelis have no illusions anymore. They see that the Palestinian Authority incites Jew-hate, whips up terrorism and tells Arab children and adults that to be a martyr for Islam allows them direct access not only to paradise, but also to generous funds for the terrorists and their families.

Israelis can also see that the Biden Administration has continually made decisions hostile to Israel, including once again funding the Palestinian Authority without even requiring that it renounce terrorism. The Administration also brought back the goal of a "two-state solution": if a Palestinian state were to emerge, it could -- and most likely would -- be used as a launching pad from which to attack Israel, as promoted in the Palestinian "Phased Plan": Get whatever land you can, then use that to get the rest.

Mainly, Israelis saw that the Biden administration never gave up trying to enable to enable the mullahs' regime in Iran to have unlimited nuclear weapons -- all while the mullahs have made the genocidal destruction of Israel their overriding goal.

Accordingly, on November 1, 2022, millions of Israelis elected Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel's Prime Minister, heading a broad coalition government. The coalition also pledged to restore the balance between the Knesset and the Supreme Court.

Opposition rejects calls for judicial reform negotiations without preconditions

Judicial reform negotiations may commence at the president's residence on Tuesday but without preconditions, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, Religious Zionist MK Simcha Rothman, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a joint statement in response to Sunday open letter by major labor associations calling for talks.

"From the first day, we said we were in favor of dialogue in an attempt to reach an understanding on the reform, and at least to reduce the controversy," said the judicial reform leaders on Sunday.

"We believe that reform is essential for democracy, human rights and the economy. We respond to the call for talks without preconditions, and call on others in the opposition to respond to the initiative and attend talks with the president on Tuesday."

Manufacturers Association of Israel Federation of Israeli Chamber of Commerce, Israel Builders Association and the Israeli High-Tech Association issued a call for opposition and coalition leaders to "be brave" and meet at the president's residence for negotiations without preconditions.

"Heads of the Israeli political system, it is your duty to show bravery, to sit around the table together, and advance to a solution that will get us out of the economic and social spiral we've fallen into and could get worse without an agreed solution," said the statement. "End the crisis!"

MK responses were not received well by the opposition
The joint response by Levin, Rothman and Smotrich was not well received by opposition members, decreasing the likelihood that talks would occur on Tuesday.

Yesh Atid decried the coalition statement as misleading, reiterating calls to stop the legislative process before they met at President Isaac Herzog's table.

"On the same day that the members of the failed coalition instead of the state issue a false announcement about negotiations, they bring to the Knesset the override clause, the impairment law and the promotion of a law to appoint a serial criminal as a minister," said Yesh Atid, referring to a bill that had passed revision vote in Rothman's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, and the bills in the Special Committee for Amendments to Basic Law: Government for a law changing terms for when the prime minister is medically unfit for service and a law preventing the High Court from interfering in ministerial appointments.

El Al finds alternative crew after pilots refuse to fly Netanyahu to Italy

Israel's national airline El Al pilots left Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, high and dry after no one volunteered to fly Israel's first couple out to Rome for a state visit to Italy scheduled later this week, El Al Airlines said on Sunday.

The deadline of a tender issued by Israel's national airline, as is required when the prime minister is set to depart on a commercial airline, expired at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday and was met with indifference by El Al pilots and flight attendants, who refused to take up the opportunity.

Later on Sunday evening, El Al announced that it had finally found a crew to fly the Netanyahu couple out to Italy.

El Al: Shortage of qualified pilots for Netanyahus' flight to Rome
In a statement issued following the deadline's passing, El Al said that "the issue of manning the prime minister's flight is yet to be resolved due to a shortage of qualified pilots in our Boeing 777 squadron, among other reasons.

"We are working to man this flight...in accordance with company procedures, as we have done countless times before," El Al wrote. "Since its establishment, El Al has flown heads of state for important national missions and will continue to do so in the future, as it is required."

As per El Al protocol, the squadron's commissioner is obliged to pilot the prime minister's flight. However, the planned flight still lacks a cabin crew and a co-pilot, as El Al's staff appeared unwilling to fly Netanyahu out.

Netanyahu is expected to fly out on Thursday to meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who last publically spoke with her Israeli counterpart in November to send her congratulations for his election victory.

In 1940, American Jews were urged to purchase land in Eretz Israel despite antisemitic British restrictions

The most infamous section of the 1939 British White Paper was the part that severely restricted the ability of Jews to immigrate to Palestine - on the eve of the Holocaust.

Not as well known is that the White Paper also prohibited or restricted Jews from purchasing lands from Arabs for much of the area of the Mandate:

The Administration of Palestine is required, under Article 6 of the Mandate, "while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced," to encourage "close settlement by Jews on the land," and no restriction has been imposed hitherto on the transfer of land from Arabs to Jews. The Reports of several expert Commissions have indicated that, owing to the natural growth of the Arab population and the steady sale in recent years of Arab land to Jews, there is now in certain areas no room for further transfers of Arab land, whilst in some other areas such transfers of land must be restricted if Arab cultivators are to maintain their existing standard of life and a considerable landless Arab population is not soon to be created. In these circumstances, the High Commissioner will be given general powers to prohibit and regulate transfers of land.

This was official antisemitism.

In 1940, the specifics of what land was allowed to be sold was first published, as described by the 1946 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry:

[The] Land Transfers Regulations, published on 28th February, 1940, divided Palestine into three zones.

In Zone A, consisting of about 63 percent of the country including the stony hills, land transfers save to a Palestinian Arab were in general forbidden. In Zone B. consisting of about 32 percent of the country, transfers from a Palestinian Arab save to another Palestinian Arab were severely restricted at the discretion of the High Commissioner. In the remainder of Palestine, consisting of about five percent of the country-which, however, includes the most fertile areas- land sales remained unrestricted.

Here is a map, published in American Jewish newspapers shortly afterwards, showing the different zones as best understood at the time.

It appears that the map is wildly inaccurate - and hugely optimistic. The white areas where there should be unrestricted ability for Jews to purchase land is shown as far more than the 5% that the Anglo-American Commission determined, and Zone A forbidden for Jews to purchase as shown is far less than 63% of the entire land.

The real map shows that Jews could only purchase (without restriction) within the red-bordered areas, nearly all along the Mediterranean coast plus Jerusalem:

But while the Jews reacted negatively to this official discrimination against Jews by Great Britain, the Zionist leaders used this map as incentive to get American Jews to purchase land in Palestine, saying there was plenty of land available to legally buy:

The above map of Palestine, tentatively drawn, is based upon an unofficial analysis of the Palestine land edict which divides the country into three zones for the purpose of land purchase. The tentative map gives an inkling into the meaning of the message cabled to Dr. Israel Goldstein, President of the Jewish National Fund, by Menahem Ussishkin, World President of the Keren Kayemeth in Jerusalem, that "Large opportunities for land buying (in Palestine) are still available."

The free zone embraces, including the land holdings already in Jewish possession, an area of approximately 7,000,000 dunams exclusive of the Negeb. Final clarification of the limits of the respective zones is awaited.

"Do not despair," Mr. Ussishkin declared in his message. "We will persist in our opposition with all means at our disposal to the new policy threatening to convert our Homeland into a ghetto. Large opportunities for buying land are still available." He is confident that American Jewry, center of Jewish hope, will rise to occasion and assist the Jewish Agency in its political struggle and the Keren Kayemeth in its practical work to win the struggle.

Even in the face of these immoral and bigoted restrictions, the Zionist leaders wanted to redouble the chance for legally purchasing what little land they still could.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

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!

Another Palestinian has been shot dead during clashes.

Although this happened last week, it is barely mentioned in Palestinian or international media. His name is not published in lists of Palestinians killed this year. In fact, his name has not been published at all.

Because it happened in Lebanon.

One person was killed and several others wounded in overnight clashes in south Lebanon's restive Ain al-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp, a Palestinian official said Thursday.

The clashes pitted members of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement against Islamist groups in the camp, located near the coastal city of Sidon, said senior Fatah official Mounir Makdah.

"One person was killed and seven wounded," he told AFP, adding that "all Palestinian forces are working to put an end" to the violence.

Clashes between rival groups are common in Ain al-Helweh, which is home to more than 54,000 registered Palestinian refugees who have been joined in recent years by thousands of Palestinians fleeing the conflict in Syria.

An AFP correspondent said shooting had mostly subsided around dawn but that sporadic gunfire could still be heard later in the morning.

The situation remained tense and armed men deployed to the streets of the camp, while schools run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, were closed.

By long-standing convention, the Lebanese army does not enter Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, leaving the factions themselves to handle security.

So here we have an area completely controlled by Palestinians, effectively a micro Palestinian state, and where they regularly shoot each other.

Imagine what a Palestinian state would be like!

Not only has the victim not been identified in the media, but also which faction shot him. All those details are not important when Israel isn't involved.

Here's video of what they camp sounded like during the clashes:

As of today, UNRWA schools and health clinics in the camp remain closed because of the tension. The media doesn't seem too upset over that, either. And the UNRWA Twitter feed hasn't mentioned a word.

It is almost like a conspiracy of silence when Jews aren't involved.

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 Institute for Science and International Security wrote an article summarizing Iran's violations of nuclear agreements with the IAEA.

It's even worse than the media are reporting. There is little doubt that Iran is actively hiding its nuclear enrichment program, and there is no non-military reason to do what Iran has now been proven to do.

Excerpts:

Iran can now break out and produce enough weapon-grade enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 12 days, using only three advanced centrifuge cascades and half of its existing stock of 60 percent enriched uranium. This breakout could be difficult for inspectors to detect promptly, if Iran took steps to delay inspectors’ access.

Using its remaining stock of 60 percent enriched uranium and its stock of near 20 percent enriched uranium, Iran could produce enough weapon-grade uranium for an additional four nuclear weapons in a month. During the next two months, Iran could produce two more weapons’ worth of weapon-grade uranium from its stock of less than five percent enriched uranium, meaning that Iran could produce enough weapon-grade uranium for five nuclear weapons in one month and seven in three months.

The IAEA detected uranium particles enriched to 83.7 percent from environmental sampling taken during a monthly interim verification (IIV) at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP) on January 22. Iran’s answers about this anomaly did not satisfy the IAEA, which has continued probing Iran for more credible answers.

The IAEA took the environmental samples that detected the presence of near-84 percent enriched uranium a day after inspectors detected an undeclared interconnection between two IR-6 cascades at Fordow, which Iran should have informed the IAEA about under its safeguards obligations. That change likely led the IAEA to take environmental samples at the product sampling point.

This development amplifies concerns that Iran is undertaking covert experiments that add to its ability to more rapidly break out. Worrisome possibilities include that Iran tested a way to produce near weapon-grade uranium without IAEA detection, or to syphon off a small amount of near 84 percent enriched uranium.

If the high enrichment level was unintentional, as Iran claims, Iran should have reported the unprecedented enrichment level following the interconnection of the two IR-6 cascades, in line with its reporting of previous fluctuations in the enrichment levels encountered by Iran with the advanced centrifuge cascades dedicated to enriching to 60 percent at the pilot plant. If Iran did not know that the enrichment level reached almost 84 percent, it appears to be operating cascades in a dangerous way, somewhat oblivious to criticality concerns.

Despite the increase, during this reporting period, in the amount of uranium enriched between two and five percent, Iran has not prioritized stockpiling of this material, during the last two years. This is at odds with its contention that its primary goal is to accumulate 4-5 percent enriched uranium for use in nuclear power reactor fuel. Instead, Iran has used this stock extensively to produce near 20 percent and 60 percent enriched uranium, far beyond any of Iran’s civilian needs.

Iran is now reported to be willing to cooperate with the IAEA, although they have made that promise before and lied. And, the Institute notes that this wouldn't help at all for undeclared Iranian sites:

Another risk is that Iran will establish additional centrifuge manufacturing sites unknown to the IAEA. Iran is fully capable of moving manufacturing equipment to new, undeclared sites, further complicating any future verification effort and contributing to uncertainty about where Iran manufactures centrifuges.
...
Concern about Iran’s installation of advanced centrifuges at an undeclared site is magnified as its 60 percent HEU stocks grow. Such a scenario becomes more worrisome and viable, since it requires a relatively small number of advanced centrifuge cascades to rapidly enrich the 60 percent material to weapon-grade. This hybrid strategy involves the diversion of safeguarded HEU and the secret manufacture and deployment of only two or three cascades of advanced centrifuges. With greater uncertainty about the number of advanced centrifuges Iran is making, there is a greater chance of Iran hiding away the requisite number of advanced centrifuges to realize this scenario.

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!

03/04 Links: Gil Troy: The Huwara Riot Was No ‘Pogrom’; Thirty years on, Schindler’s List should never have been made; When is journalism antisemitic?

From Ian:

Gil Troy: The Huwara Riot Was No ‘Pogrom’

Anti-Palestinian violence comes from the margins of Israeli society. Anti-Jewish violence comes from the Palestinian mainstream.

As a Russian correspondent for the Times of London explained on Dec. 7, 1903, pogrom ”is a national institution” and is “not a massacre in the ordinary sense of the term.” Rather, pogroms are “directed against Jews.” Local and national authorities “encouraged” the thunderous destruction. The Times emphasized: “from the very first pebble thrown by a small boy to the last murder committed, all is absolutely under the control of the Government.”

By contrast, pictures from Huwara showed Israeli soldiers saving Palestinians from the flames. Mainstream Israeli leaders condemned the violence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Don’t take the law into your own hands.” Israel’s army is trying to find the rioters, with 14 suspects already arrested.

Pogroms came from the center of Eastern European society, while the anti-Palestinian violence came from the margins of Israeli society. Meanwhile, anti-Jewish violence comes from the Palestinian mainstream. Palestinian leaders openly call for the destruction of the Jewish state and sponsor “martyr’s funds” to pay the families of those that carry out attacks against Israel. Palestinians celebrated the murder of the Yaniv brothers, Hillel, 21, and Yagel, 19, by joyously distributing sweets. By contrast, the Hurawa riots outraged most Israelis. Yair Fink, a liberal and Orthodox Israeli politician, raised more than $300,000 for Hurawa’s victims overnight. No Cossacks ran post-pogrom charity drives for Jews.

Words matter. Calling this despicable revenge attack by Jews against Palestinians a pogrom is like calling any black-on-white violence in the George Floyd riots a “lynching.” Misappropriating words fraught with historical and emotional significance wrenches them from their context. It cruelly alleges that the once-innocent victims of bigotry have themselves become bullying bigots. Scavenging a people’s past pain to weaponize it against them today is no way to work through conflict toward a healthy future.

Jonathan Tobin: Biden isn’t serious about opposing Palestinian terrorism

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) knows that even if Biden were trying to stop the Palestinians rather than covering for them, Abbas and his Fatah Party will continue to use foreign aid to pay those who murder Israelis and Americans. So he is planning to introduce a bill that will put more teeth in the legislation. His bill would prevent any bank that processes or facilitates payments to terrorists from doing business in the United States or using dollars in any transaction. It would also restrict any financial institution that did or does business with Hamas.

Given the global commercial network that connects most fiscal institutions large and small throughout most of the world, this would inflict considerable hardship on the P.A. That’s because it needs its banks to have connections to the West in order for it to receive the massive payments it gets from international bodies and European governments, much of which is lost due to the rampant corruption in the P.A. that extends all the way up to Abbas and his family.

Cotton first tried to pass this bill back in 2021, but it failed in the Senate due to opposition from Democrats and indifference from some establishment Republicans. The latter may still be an obstacle. According to Jewish Insider, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who was the original principal sponsor of the Taylor Force Act, thinks it isn’t necessary. Graham actually thinks the act is working well.

That is a typical congressional reaction. Having passed a law that was supposed to deal with a challenging issue, Graham, who spends most of his time lately promoting more U.S. involvement in Ukraine’s war with Russia, considered the problem solved once his bill was passed. That’s true even if, as with Palestinian terrorism, the law isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do because of loopholes and the executive branch’s unwillingness to enforce it.

Though the odds are still against him given the lack of Democratic interest in stopping Palestinian terrorism, Cotton is still to be commended for trying. But as long as Biden is committed to evading the Taylor Force Act, Washington will still be part of the problem rather than the solution.

With the intersectional left largely calling the tune in a Biden administration that has been in thrall to so-called “progressives” and their even more radical allies in the congressional “Squad” since it took office on a host of issues, the issue goes deeper than mere indifference. In a party and administration where adherence to toxic left-wing myths like critical race theory is pervasive, the labeling of Israel as a state benefiting from “white privilege” and oppressing “people of color” is routine. Among such people, genuine concern about terrorist murders of Israelis isn’t terribly likely. That’s why despite lip service being paid to the memory of Elan Ganeles, the Biden administration has become a principal obstacle to efforts to end Palestinian terrorism.

Biden Admin Awards Grant to Palestinian Activist Group Whose Leaders Hailed Terrorist as 'Hero Fighter'

The Biden administration gave a $78,000 grant to a Palestinian activist group whose leaders attended an anniversary event celebrating the founding of a terrorist group and praised the murderer of a U.S. military attaché as a "hero fighter," according to a funding announcement.

The Community Development and Continuing Education Institute (CDCEI), an activist group based in the West Bank of the Palestinian territories, received the grant to promote "youth participation and accountability in local governance," the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced in November.

But an anti-terrorism watchdog group is raising concerns about the funding, after finding that the activist group's board chairman participated in a celebration for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group, while other board members lauded convicted terrorists as "heroes" and applauded Hamas missile attacks on Israel.

NGO Monitor, a watchdog group that investigated the CDCEI funding, questioned the federal government's vetting process for grantees. The news of the USAID grant comes as the Biden State Department has faced criticism from lawmakers for funding a Gaza-based journalist training program run by another charity, Fares Al-Arab, that has worked with terrorists and has promoted anti-Israel views.

"These findings reinforce the need for USAID to consult a wide array of publicly available sources when vetting potential grantees, to ensure that taxpayer funds are not provided to organizations led by individuals that glorify violence, espouse anti-Semitic rhetoric, or embrace anti-normalization," NGO Monitor said. "USAID grantees should align with U.S. goals and values."

USAID did not respond to a request for comment. CDCEI did not respond to a request for comment.

03/03 Links Pt2: Meet the brilliant barrister battling lies about Israel; Filmmaker Steven Spielberg Says Global Antisemitism is ‘Standing Proud,’ ‘No Longer Lurking’

From Ian:

A Second Purim Story

The application of age-old archetypes hasn’t disappeared: Many people consider Hitler to have been of an Amalekite strain. But even if we draw metaphorical language from the canon, we are not imagining ourselves within it the way medieval Jewry did.

When Haman slandered the Jewish people to King Ahasuerus, he described them as “a certain people scattered and separate among the nations.” Medieval Jewry may have been geographically scattered and forcibly separated from interacting with the gentile world due to antisemitic laws, but within their own locales, they were not separated from one another. Today, we are more universalized than ever before—constantly updated on every news event happening halfway across the globe—but we are mentally scattered, emotionally removed, superficially scrolling. While human instinct demands that we bond briefly over tragedies, our Jewish community requires much deeper coalitions to celebrate averted ones.

The original Purim story famously makes no mention of God, which many interpret as a sign that diasporic Jews must pull themselves up by their bootstraps to find the divine in the darkness. In Megillat Saragossa, however, God’s name appears multiple times. The text insists that the Jews of Saragossa are God-fearing and God-following. More importantly, these mentions of a divine presence assure its audience—Jews of Saragossa and their descendants—that God has not abandoned them.

The two Purims don’t coincide on the Hebrew calendar: The Saragossa Purim falls on the 17th of Shevat, almost a month before Purim, which falls on the 14th of Adar. But all the mitzvot of the original Purim are fulfilled on the Second Purim as well: megillah reading, feasting, gifting mishloach manot, and giving charity. Some people even fast the day before. Scholars report that the Purim of Saragossa was celebrated in several Balkan communities into the 20th century and lasted for the longest time in Jerusalem. Most recently, in 2016, Albert Haim Samuel bequeathed the Megillat Saragossa he had received from his devout Izmirian grandmother Deborah—which is written on buckskin leather—to the Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul. While the Samuel family had privately celebrated the holiday for years, Chief Rabbi Ishak Haleva declared that “as a [Turkish] community we would very much like to celebrate Purim Saragossa every year.”

This year, on the 17th of Shevat (the eve of Feb. 7, 2023), cantor Isaac Gantwerk Mayer performed a livestreamed reading of Megillat Saragossa on YouTube. Hearing the words chanted in the familiar cantillation of Megillat Esther brought the text to life in a way I had not anticipated. It was like hearing past generations tell their own story through the same song: Transcending time and space, the original Purim and the Purim of Saragossa rhymed and overlapped, adding layers of nuance to an already rich Jewish narrative.

Meet the brilliant barrister battling lies about Israel

Natasha Hausdorff’s debut radio broadcast was during the Israel-Gaza conflict in 2014.

She’d been invited onto Nick Ferrari’s breakfast show on LBC to debate Israel’s military operation codenamed Protective Edge, and she left the London studio determined to go on air again.

“It was a turning point. I was only 24 and a trainee solicitor, but I was able to tell Nick things about the anti-Israel propaganda machine that he had clearly never heard before. It felt good. Right.”

This Sunday, the 33-year-old barrister and legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel will be making the country’s case again at Jewish Book Week.

Hausdorff, who clerked for the late President of the Israeli Supreme Court, Chief Justice Miriam Naor, is taking part in a roundtable discussion entitled, “Israel: A Fragile Democracy?” with JC columnist Jonathan Freedland, fellow lawyer Anthony Julius and historian Sir Simon Schama.

The exact remit of their conversation is still to be determined, she says, but its general departure point is the new Israeli government’s planned changes to the judicial system: a proposal Supreme Court president Esther Hayut has described as “a plan to crush the justice system”, that opposition leader Yair Lapid has said is a “struggle for the soul of the country” — and which saw 80,000 Israelis take to the streets in protest earlier this year.

Hausdorff, a specialist in international law, takes a more careful, nuanced view. “Look, the idea of reforming Israel’s judicial system shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone,” she says.

“The country doesn’t have the written constitution that was envisaged at its declaration of independence because immediately thereafter it had to fight a war of survival, and people have been talking about reforming the system for decades.

"When change is implemented, I hope it is with broad political input and general common sense. But right now, the opposition in Israel is encouraging protests and letters of concern from people around the world who are commenting on the situation from an uninformed position. And who, in some cases, have been very badly misinformed indeed."

Putting the “badly misinformed” right, correcting the swathes of untruths that surround the Jewish state, is a moral compulsion for Hausdorff. And she felt the urge from an early age.

"Remember, say Zionists, not Jews"

From Times of Israel:

A pro-Palestinian activist who committed a series of attacks on Jews in New York City in 2021 and 2022 discussed bringing firebombs to a pro-Israel rally, bragged about antisemitic assaults and plotted how to evade law enforcement, according to federal prosecutors.

Saadah Masoud pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit hate crimes in federal court in November as part of a plea agreement. His sentencing for separate attacks on three Jews will be held on Friday in the Southern District Court of New York. He faces up to two years in prison.

In a sentencing submission last week, prosecutors laid out discussions Masoud held with his associates around the time of the crimes that indicated the attacks were planned and targeted people they believed to be Jewish or Israeli.

In May of 2021, around the time of a conflict between Israel and the Hamas terror group, Masoud discussed disrupting a pro-Israel rally in Manhattan in a group chat on the Signal messaging app.

The group discussed bringing weapons to the pro-Israel rally, including Molotov cocktails, prosecutors said.

One of the participants said, “Remember, don’t chant out Jews, it’s the Zionists,” apparently to evade allegations of antisemitism. Another participant in the group chat said, “Fuck all Jews.”

In a separate exchange, Masoud celebrated violence against Jews, saying, “I beat the shit out of three Zionists yesterday and didn’t even see a jail cell.”

“VIOLENT!! ONLY VIOLENCE… IN PALESTINE THEY WISHHH THEY COULD SMACK A ZIONIST AND NOT GET TORTURED TO DEATH. WE CAN THO!! And we’ll just get a [desk appearance ticket from the NYPD],” he said, according to prosecutors.

The day after Masoud and his associates held the group chat, they went to a pro-Israel protest and picked out a man wearing a Star of David while he was walking with his wife.

“Are you a fucking Jew?” Masoud asked the man, then punched him in the face. Afterward, he texted his associates, “no videos of me anywhere lmaooo. I’m Gucci. No face no case.”

... Masoud was arrested in June 2022. When he arrived at the courthouse, he asked a detective, “All this for one Jew?” Shortly after, an investigator overheard him saying he didn’t want any “Greenbergs” for lawyers, and when he received counsel, he demanded the attorney recite and spell his last name, apparently to check if he was Jewish.

... Masoud has ties to Within Our Lifetime Palestine, an activist group that regularly calls for an intifada and the destruction of Israel at rallies in New York, and urged the targeting of Jewish groups in the city, including by handing out maps of Jewish organization locations at a protest.

Funny how not one of the people on the Left who claim to be against antisemitism - Linda Sarsour, Mark Lamont Hill, Rashida Tlaib - have a negative word to say about Saadah Masoud.

Anyone still want to argue that "anti-Zionism" isn't a dogwhistle for Jew-hatred?

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!

03/03 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.

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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.

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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.

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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"?

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

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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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.

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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.