Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, March 08, 2023

The false choice for Jews on Israel, and the Jewish way to fix it

Thomas Friedman in The New York Times writes an op-ed with the headline, "American Jews, You Have to Choose Sides on Israel:"

Ever since Israel’s founding in 1948, supporting the country’s security and its economic development and cementing its diplomatic ties to the U.S. have been the “religion” of many nonobservant American Jews — rather than studying Torah or keeping kosher. That mission drove fund-raising and forged solidarity among Jewish communities across America.

Now, a lot of American Jews are going to need to find a new focus for their passion.

Because if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succeeds with his judicial putsch to crush the independence of the country’s judiciary, the subject of Israel could fracture every synagogue and Jewish communal organization in America. To put it simply: Israel is facing its biggest internal clash since its founding, and for every rabbi and every Jewish leader in America, to stay silent about this fight is to become irrelevant.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency just ran an article that offered a revealing glimpse into this reality. It quoted Los Angeles Rabbi Sharon Brous as beginning her sermon on Israel last month with a content warning to her congregants: “I have to say some things today that I know will upset some of you.”

Every American rabbi knew what she meant: Israel has become such a hot-button issue that it cannot be discussed without taking sides for or against Netanyahu’s policies.

As Rabbi Brous told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “You have a wonderful community, and you love them and they love you, until the moment you stand up and you give your Israel sermon.” She said the phenomenon has an informal name: “Death-by-Israel sermon.”

Death-by-Israel sermon. Never heard that before.

Unlike how Friedman portrays her, Rabbi Brous has not exactly been an "Israel right or wrong" leader before the current government. She wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 2018:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition continues to recklessly enforce its ideological absolutes, passing an anti-democratic nation-state law, denying surrogacy rights to LGBTQ Israelis, escalating personal attacks against the New Israel Fund and other progressive organizations [Brous is a leader in NIF - EoZ], and detaining American journalists at the border, interrogating them about their political beliefs and associations. As an American rabbi, I can’t ignore the message the Israeli government is sending to diaspora Jews: Stick to the playbook. Send Israel your money, your youth, your tourists and your unquestioning loyalty. Don’t talk about the occupation (now in its 51st year) or the millions of Palestinians denied equal protection, freedom of movement, the right to vote for the government that dictates their daily lives. Don’t visit Bethlehem or Ramallah, where you might hear a Palestinian narrative. Pay no attention to Breaking the Silence, Parents Circle or any other group where Israelis and Palestinians speak frankly about the challenges and the possibilities for a shared future

The maddening thing about Rabbi Brous is that she positions herself as a lover of Israel, and I have no doubt that she believes this. This op-ed started off with her description of a tour of Hebron that her family took with Breaking the Silence, and she wrote, "My daughter loves the miracle of Israel. It was time for her to see the other side." And, "We witnessed the harshest effects of the occupation: roadways forbidden to Palestinians, abandoned blocks, Jewish settlements the world deems illegal. We saw the once-thriving Casbah, dead quiet now. All of this, the direct result of Israeli military policy."

Why does her narrative go back only that far? Why doesn't she mention the attacks by Arabs on the Jews of Hebron before Baruch Goldstein that prompted the IDF to divide the old city?

This hints at the real issue.

The problem isn't that American Jews must choose to be either for or against Israel. The problem is not that one side wants debate about Israeli policy and the other doesn't.

The problem is that partisanship is poisoning any chance for a real debate to begin with.

The current discussion on judicial reform in Israel is a perfect example. Lahav Harkov described it very well from the Israeli perspective:

Reports of the demise of Israeli democracy are greatly exaggerated. The proposed changes relate to the balance of power between the judiciary, the legislative and the executive branches of government — a matter of usually staid debate among Israeli academics and wonks for nearly three decades. Today’s incendiary rhetoric on the issue says more about the vicious and polarised state of Israeli politics than the controversiality of the Supreme Court reforms.

People in Israel and Jews in America are looking for excuses to justify their politics and their hate for their political opponents. But the politics and partisanship is what drives the debate, not the facts.

When Tom Friedman describes the judicial reform proposal as a "judicial putsch to crush the independence of the country’s judiciary" he is not engaging in a debate, but in mudslinging. When Breaking the Silence makes up fake stories of IDF soldiers mistreating Palestinians for no reason, they are not engaging in debate but anti-Israel propaganda.

And when people like Sharon Brous claims that she is impartially weighing both sides and soberly informing her congregants that Israel is on the road to dictatorship, I somehow do not think she is giving them access to any articles that argue that the unelected Israeli High Court has been the side that has near absolute power over Israeli law.

Part of the reason for that is that such articles are not easy to find in the American press, which prefer the narrative of a criminal Bibi who wants absolute power to the detriment of the State of Israel.

Not that Bibi isn't a political animal as well - he absolutely is, and his conduct during this supposed debate has also been guided more by politics than by doing what is best for Israel.

So how can Jews - in Israel, America and Europe as well - act responsibly?

The answer is simultaneously simple, extraordinarily difficult and rooted in Jewish tradition.

The answer is to be dan l'chaf zechut - to judge our fellow Jews meritoriously.

This is a fundamental Jewish concept with multiple sources and extensive commentary.

We need to shed the partisanship and honestly believe that the other side is not evil, but that they want the best for Israel and the Jewish world. (This does not apply to those who are irredeemably evil, who in the case of Zionism I would define as anyone who never says anything positive about Israel. Those people, in my opinion, are not acting out of love but from hate. But that's me, and that is part of what makes this mitzvah difficult.)

How many people know that the supposed anti-Arab racist Netanyahu has done more to improve the Arab sector in Israel than any other prime minister, by far? How many American Jewish critics of Israel have spent more than two minutes seeking out the arguments for judicial reform? How many American Jews who have taken Breaking the Silence tours of Hebron have read the criticisms of that organization's methods?

We need to go beyond the reporting of mainstream media - whose entire business model is based on eyeballs that follow controversy and partisanship - and instead do our own research with the assumption that our fellow Jews want what is best for Israel. That they are not terrible people because they voted for Trump or live on the east side of an imaginary line drawn in 1949, and neither are they bad people because they chose not to report for reserve duty or spend hours every week protesting the Israeli government. Assume that they, too, want what is best for Israel and the Jewish people.

Thomas Friedman wants Jews in America to make a choice - love Israel or oppose Israel. That is a false choice, and one that is predicated on wanting to stoke division. The real alternative is to stop looking at everything through the primary lens of us vs. them, right vs. left, and assumptions of bad faith on the part of our fellow Jews who are of the "wrong" political party. Stop being defined by division and have an honest debate.

Moreover, if your political philosophy does not leave room for giving the other side the benefit of the doubt, than you should question that philosophy. (And look at the motivations of those who stoke division.)

"Tikkun Olam" as it is defined today is not a real Jewish tradition - but dan l'chaf zechut is.

People who take Judaism seriously, whether they are religious or not, must realize that dan l'chaf zechut is a fundamental part of Judaism that can and should be embraced by every Jew from the far-Right to the far-Left.

The future of the Jewish people is at stake.

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!

Hallel and Yagel Yaniv

Yesterday, the IDF killed Abdel Fattah Hussein Kharousha, a 49 year old Hamas terrorist who had murdered brothers Hallel and Yagel Yaniv.

Palestinian media are now treating Kharousha as a hero, and their description of the last time his family saw him before the murder indicates that he may have murdered the Jews for Palestinian Authority money.

In his last conversation with his wife before killing Hallel and Yaniv he told her that he was "going to the noon prayer and then looking for a job" that would provide him with a decent living.

Palestinians who kill Jews guarantee their families a handsome income for life, far more than the average Palestinian salary.

He also intended to die. He had spent some time already in Israeli prisons, most recently a 40-month sentence for planning, along with his son, a shooting attack at an Israeli bus. He told a colleague after his recent release in December that he did not want to return to prison, and he wished for "martyrdom."

It seems quite likely that if it wasn't for the "pay for slay" policy of the Palestinian Authority, Kharousha would have had less incentive to kill Jews. Without Pay for Slay, he would have left them in very bad financial shape by dying; with Pay for Slay he ensures their living in comfort as long as the Palestinian Authority exists.

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!

03/07 Links Pt2: Anti-Semitism Runs Rampant at an Australian Literary Festival; NYTs ‘Deceitful’ Coverage Fuels ‘Violent Jew-Hatred,’ Puts Jews in Danger; Cori Bush's Anti-Semitic Spiritual Guru

From Ian:

Anti-Semitism Runs Rampant at an Australian Literary Festival

Writers’ Week—an annual gathering taking place in the city of Adelaide and considered one of Australia’s most prestigious literary events—has this year been marred by the withdrawal of some prominent participants and sponsors. Provoking these withdrawals, above all, is the participation in the festival of the Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa, who has vocally expressed her support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, and called the leader of the latter country “a depraved Zionist.” Colin Rubenstein comments:

The way organizers of the partly taxpayer-funded Adelaide Writers’ Week have been defending extremist invitees . . . offers a prime example of the way anti-Semitism is excused and even defended in “woke” progressive culture, as long as it is conflated with criticism of Israel—especially if the offender is Palestinian.

Abulhawa, who [was] flown in to participate in three sessions during the event in early March, has form. She keeps a picture above her desk of the Palestinian terrorist Dalal Mughrabi—one of the perpetrators of the infamous 1978 Coastal Road Massacre, which saw the slaughter of 38 Israeli civilians—and has made social-media posts both calling Israelis “worse than Nazis” and asserting that “It’s possible to be Jewish and a Nazi at the same time. It’s called Israel,” while implying all Israelis are legitimate targets for violence.

When pressed in an interview with Radio Adelaide to defend the decision to invite Abulhawa, [the] Writers’ Week director Louise Adler [Master of Philosophy, Columbia Uni under Edward Said] said, “our business is to operate not a safe space, but an open space in which ideas that might be confronting, disturbing, provocative are debated with civility.” However, this isn’t actually true. According to Adler’s own words posted in an open letter on the Writers’ Week home page, this year’s event actually seeks to shut down debate on unspecified issues.

In this year’s festival, at least ten writers listed as Palestinians are on the program—plus the Egyptian-born founder of the Palestine Festival of Literature, and several other virulent anti-Israel activists. No Jewish Israeli writers were invited, nor, to our knowledge, any author who has defended Israel in his writing or has the expertise to offer attendees anything counter to the Palestinian narrative. It would appear that the Palestinian narrative counts as something “beyond debate” to the organizers.

New York Times ‘Deceitful’ Coverage Fuels ‘Violent Jew-Hatred,’ Puts Jews in Danger, Israeli Ambassador Says

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, accused last week the New York Times of “overt anti-Israel bias,” saying that the Times’ “deceitful” coverage is endangering Jews worldwide.

In a two-page letter to the executive editor of the Times, Joseph Kahn, the ambassador cited a yearlong study of the Times conducted by Bar-Ilan University.

“Despite Israel being a globally-renowned force for good, your publication intentionally and systematically hides the truth from its readership, depicting an utterly distorted and falsified reality in which Israel is the root of all evil,” Erdan’s letter says. “The Times deliberately ignores the facts and opts to falsely brand Israel as a flagrant human rights violator.”

Erdan backed up his claims with numerical evidence that he said demonstrated the newspaper’s “hatred against the Jewish State.”

“For every article that portrayed Israel in a somewhat positive light five demonized the Jewish State. Such staggering disparity cannot be mere chance,” he wrote. “The number of opinion columns condemning Israel was nearly double those condemning Iran, one of the world’s worst human rights abusers and the number one state-sponsor of terror. Could this possibly be a coincidence?”

“The Times actively promoted anti-Israel libels,” Erdan wrote. “The Times had no problem associating an Israeli elected official, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, with terrorism a whopping 20 times in 2022. Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the murderous terror organization Hamas, that sentences Gazans to death without trial and indiscriminately fires rockets at Israeli civilians, was referenced in conjunction with terrorism only twice and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, not even once.”

Israeli ambassador reveals family got caught in pro-Palestine ‘hate convoy'

Israel’s ambassador to the UK has spoken of her family's terrifying experience during the May 2021 Israel-Hamas war when their car got caught in the pro-Palestine 'hate convoy' in north London.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, Tzipi Hotevely, recalled how her husband, Or Alon, had been driving with the couple’s three daughters, aged four, six and eight, when they found themselves surrounded by cars making rape threats against Jewish girls.

“While my husband was driving with my daughters they were surrounded by these cars," Hotevely said. "They were saying horrible things about raping the daughters of the Jewish community, which is really outrageous.

"For him, listening to those megaphones, it was really worrying that it happened in the middle of Finchley Road in London in broad daylight.”

To date, no-one has been successfully prosecuted from the convoy.

Hotovely, a former settlements minister and deputy foreign minister in Israel, has also received extensive personal abuse during her time in London, encountering hostile demonstrators who have tried to break up meetings she has addressed. Two years ago she had to be escorted by police out of a debate at LSE as demonstrators surrounded her official car.

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!

Every year, Palestinian leaders pretend to be feminist

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas made an announcement for International Women's Day today:

The President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, said that the Palestinian woman has played a pioneering role and continues to play a pioneering role in the struggle and change for the better. About the identity of our people, their existence and their inalienable national rights.

In his speech today, Tuesday, on the occasion of the eighth of March, International Women's Day, His Excellency added that the State of Palestine has taken a number of pioneering steps to enhance women's participation in decision-making institutions, including the approval of their representation by at least 30% in all institutions of the organization, the state and local government bodies. .

The President affirmed the continuation of work to promote the right of Palestinian women to participation and equality, pursuant to the Declaration of Independence, the Basic Law and our international obligations.

Here is your reminder that the Palestinian Authority signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 2014.

So what has Abas accomplished in giving women equal rights since 2014?

Here is the last major meeting Abbas chaired, of the Fatah Central Committee, in February:

One token woman. Which was probably the same in 2014.

Abbas never had any intention to actually help Palestinian women obtain equal rights. Even Palestinians know that they sign every international convention they can just to be considered an international player so they could use that influence to attack Israel. Palestinian law is misogynist, and no one is changing that.

At least now they are paying lip service to equal rights. In the past, on International Women's Day, the entire Palestinian narrative was how Israel is supposedly mistreating Palestinian women -- for example, putting female terrorists in prison.

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!

03/07 Links Pt1: How U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides Became Israel’s Arsonist-in-Chief; Israel engaging 4 Muslim nations to expand Abraham Accords; IDF kills Palestinian terrorist who murdered Yaniv brothers

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: How Biden Subverts Israeli Democracy

The Movement for Quality Government (MQG) in Israel is the far-left organization at the epicenter of the Israeli left's war against the Netanyahu government. MQG began its current campaign of delegitimization, subversion and demonization immediately after the Netanyahu government was sworn into office on December 29. The next day, MQG petitioned the Supreme Court to prevent Shas leader Aryeh Deri from serving as a minister in the government.

There was no legal basis for the petition. But that didn't bother the lawyers at MQG.

Like MQG, the Supreme Court justices didn't bother giving a legal basis for their decision.... The justices said Deri's appointment was "unreasonable," and with a stroke of a pen, the court retroactively disenfranchised Shas voters.

Building on its success, late last month MQG submitted a new petition asking the justices to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Never mind that the justices have a conflict of interest since it is their powers the government's proposed reforms would check. Never mind that in a bid to prevent politicized judges and prosecutors from overturning the will of the voters, the law explicitly permits prime ministers to serve not only while standing trial, but even if convicted. And never mind that the charges against Netanyahu have fallen apart in Jerusalem District Court.

Someone is paying tens of millions of shekels to rent buses to transport scores of thousands of people to rallies, buy them flags, print banners and signs, rent stages and sound systems, and finance ad campaigns in every newspaper and on billboards across the country.

Whoever is footing the bill, the front group for all of it is MQG.

MQG's only named donor on its annual reports is the U.S. State Department.

Since MQG's primary activity is subverting democracy in Israel by waging lawfare and sowing chaos in a bid to block democratically elected right-wing governments from fulfilling their pledges to voters, it's fairly clear that when MQG refers to "democracy education," it doesn't mean majority rule.

Since its first day in office the Biden administration has demonized its political opponents as "semi-fascists" and threats to democracy. Biden governs without regard for his political opponents, and at least in the case of his open borders policy, in contravention of federal law.

Perhaps Biden is driven by jealousy. Two-thirds of Israelis support judicial and legal reform. Two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Biden's handling of immigration and inflation. A large majority of Americans disapprove of Biden's handling of the economy, foreign policy and crime issues. Biden could only dream of having as broad a consensus of support for his policies as Netanyahu has for his.

Michael Doran: How U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides Became Israel’s Arsonist-in-Chief

So what, precisely, is the source of the terror that these people are feeling? The reform is five conflicts in one. First, it is a debate about the proper role of the Supreme Court, which has usurped authorities that rightly belong to the Knesset. Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition, now paints any attempt to change the court as a fascist putsch, but in 2016 he critiqued the court precisely as the reformers are now critiquing it. Indeed, any observer who examines the reforms with a traditional American understanding of checks and balances, cannot but conclude that many of the demands of the reformers are not only reasonable but also desirable.

Second, it is a flash point between the two major political blocs, between the “pro-Netanyahu” and “anyone but Netanyahu” camps. Having bitterly divided over the rise of Donald Trump, Americans are familiar with this kind of tribal split. So too are citizens of Great Britain, who similarly clashed over Brexit. Four elections in two years were fought over Netanyahu’s leadership. This most recent election did not end the fight, which is now being prosecuted by means of the struggle over judicial reform.

Third, the reform is a fight over the two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the issue that, 20 years ago, used to be the dividing line between left and right in Israeli politics. Opponents of the reform argue that it will facilitate the annexation of the West Bank. “I’m a member of an ever-diminishing minority,” my friend the scientist told me, “but the occupation of the West Bank remains the top issue for me. Ruling over another people is destroying us from the inside.”

Fourth, the judicial reform plays on feelings of discrimination among the Sephardim, the Jews from the Arab world, who see the Supreme Court as a bastion of Ashkenazi European Jewish power and privilege. Like the two-state issue, the Ashkenazi-Sephardi divide is no longer the heated political issue that it once was. Intermarriage and socio-economic changes have opened up the Israeli elite, which is no longer an exclusively Ashkenazi club. But old resentments die hard. A taxi driver from Morocco, who was in his late 50s, told me, “Just a few days ago Aharon Barak said that they searched and searched but couldn’t find Moroccans qualified to be judges.” He was referring to the former president of the Supreme Court of Israel and the legal mind who laid the groundwork for the expansion of the court’s powers. The quote the driver attributed to Barak is apocryphal, but the feelings of resentment that it expresses are real and still of some importance politically. Chikli, the minister whom Ambassador Nides insulted, offered a related observation when he said that politics is 10% ideology and 90% sociology.

Fifth, and most importantly, the conflict over the judicial system pits secularists against both the ultra-Orthodox and the religious nationalists. The Israeli journalist Amit Segal sparked an animated debate when he suggested that the key indicator of whether an individual will support the judicial reform is whether he or she identifies as a Jew first or as an Israeli—the idea being that those for whom the religious tradition is most alive are the staunchest supporters of the reform. Segal’s dichotomy is perhaps too neat, but there can be no doubt that the most enduring split in Jewish Israeli politics is sociological in nature. The religious-secular split will likely define left and right in the country for the next two generations, perhaps even longer.

The greatest single source of the terror on the Israeli left is the demographic, cultural, and political rise of the religious communities. “We are going to turn into the Islamic Republic of Iran here,” a professor friend of mine said, with no hint of irony in his voice. In historical terms, what we are witnessing is nothing less than the second stage of the Mahapach, the election in 1977 that brought Menachem Begin’s Likud Party to power. Begin’s election broke the monopoly that the Labor Party had exercised over the Knesset since the founding of the state. Yet while the traditional elite—Ashkenazi, secular, and associated with the Labor Zionist movement—lost control of the government in 1977, its offspring have continued to exercise influence over national affairs through the state bureaucracies, the universities, the press, and, importantly, the judiciary. (It is perhaps no accident that the usurpation of power by the judiciary took place in the 1980s, on the heels of the Mahapach.)

Jonathan Tobin: What's worse: Threats by Smotrich or Amnesty Int'l?

Amnesty and others, including some who say they accept the legitimacy of Israel in the pre-1967 armistice lines, believe that all Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria are illegal settlements. In order to promote the fiction that the West Bank is historically Arab, they ignore not just the history of the country but the early 20th-century international agreements such as the San Remo Treaty of 1920 and the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine that both recognized the right of Jews to "close settlement" throughout all of the country.

Contrary to the mythology in which Israel is depicted as a colonial enterprise, Jews are the indigenous people of their historic homeland. That fact doesn't invalidate the rights of Palestinian Arabs. But the anomalous situation in the West Bank, whose Arab communities are autonomously ruled by the corrupt Palestinian Authority, is a function of their refusal to negotiate a peace in which they would recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders might be drawn.

To note this is not "whataboutism." Amnesty is already one of the principal authors of the "apartheid Israel" smear, a big lie rooted in antisemitism and hatred. But for Amnesty, and others in the "human rights" sector, Jews have no rights. That is the reason why they view the destruction of the homes of several hundred thousand people, including schools and synagogues in places where Jews have lived for millennia, as "justice."

If any Israeli or Jew were to suggest depopulating Arab villages and towns and expelling that many Palestinians, Amnesty would be labeling them racists who should be treated as pariahs. But say the same about Jews, and you can be considered an "anti-racist" or advocate for human rights. That's also why they treat Palestinian terrorist murders as merely a case of Jews getting their just desserts instead of crimes against humanity.

So, perhaps it is understandable that while Smotrich is roasted, Amnesty's call for the mass expulsion of Jews in response to Hawara was ignored.

None of this should get Smotrich off the hook.

The crime of "Judaizing" - what's old is new again

Times of Israel has an interesting article about how crypto-Jews in Mallorca would continue to celebrate Purim by calling it the "Feast of St. Esther."

A brave woman named Ana Cortés admitted to the Church that she was still celebrating Jewish holidays and studying (illegal) Jewish texts.

The crypto-Jews of Mallorca paid a heavy price for clinging to their Jewish faith. Pedro Onofro Cortés was burned at the stake. Ana Cortés was sentenced twice for the crime of “Judaizing” or secretly practicing and teaching Judaism, once in 1677 and again in 1688.

Indeed, historical works about the Inquisition mention the "Judaizing" charge brought against crypto-Jews.

Today, the same term "Judaizing" is still being used as an epithet - when referring to Israel "Judaizing" Judaism's holiest city.

Just as it was then, the term is used by antisemites to make it moral crime to keep Jews or the Jewish capital - Jewish.

It was an insult then and it is an insult now. And in both cases, it is only antisemites who use the term as an epithet.

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 Purim Ball at New York's Academy of Music in 1865 was one of the most extravagant events of the year - and the reviewer in the New York Herald found it extraordinary.

You can expand the illustration above from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper to get an idea of the revelry.

It had jokes and merriment, political spoofs and newspaper parodies, costumes and music, so much so that the poor writer couldn't cover everything.

Perhaps the other Academy of Music Purim balls were comparable, although I haven't found any descriptions quite like this. It did seem that the Purim balls nationwide would typically go all night. Those Jews knew how to party!

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!

Amnesty Sweden subtly calls for the destruction of Israel

Amnesty Sweden put up this pair of billboards in Sweden, this one was seen in a subway station.

The text translates to, " Women are always right. The right to choose. The right to protest. The right to study. The right to live without violence."

Notice that the girl in the photo has a necklace of "Palestine" that erases all of the Jewish state.

The girl is Janna Tamimi, a member of the Tamimi family that includes terrorists like Ahlam Tamimi, the murderer behind the Sbarro pizza shop massacre who lives as a celebrity in Jordan. The Tamimi family fully supports terrorism.

Janna uses the name "Janna Jihad" and has called herself a "journalist" since she was seven. She spreads fake photos of Palestinians supposedly killed by Israel. And Amnesty has used her in other campaigns, falsely claiming that Israel is threatening to kill her.

Every pro-Israel activist faces death threats. Amnesty doesn't seem to think they need protection.

So with the current Swedish campaign, assuming that most commuters don't recognize Janna Tamimi, Amnesty is telling the world that - at the very least - there is nothing wrong with calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. That isn't a human rights violation of Jews who live there. More likely, the subtle message is that Israel must be destroyed - because women are always right.

Even when they spread vicious antisemitic lies, apparently.

If Amnesty Sweden assumes that most commuters do recognize "Janna Jihad," they are then claiming that it is Israel, not Palestinian leaders, who are limiting her right to choose - even though abortion is prohibited in the Palestinian territories. (I cannot find a single Palestinian campaign or article that calls for Palestinian abortion rights.) And they are also saying that Israel blocks peaceful protests and that it somehow blocks her right to study.

So either way, under the pretense of a women's rights campaign, Amnesty is pushing anti-Israel and antisemitic lies.

(h/t M)

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!

03/06 Links Pt2: Evelyn Gordon: Israel's Judicial Reckoning; 78% of Israelis Support Judicial Reform; How Taxpayer Funds Are Flowing to a Group Bankrolling Anti-Netanyahu Protests

From Ian:

Evelyn Gordon: Israel's Judicial Reckoning

The final element of the judicial revolution was unique in that it enhanced the power not of the courts but of the government’s own lawyers—the attorney general and other government legal advisers. As the names themselves imply in both English and Hebrew—the Hebrew term for attorney general is “the government’s legal adviser”—attorneys general and other legal advisers were originally, well, attorneys and advisers. Their job was to advise the government as a whole and individual ministries on how to carry out policies within the confines of the law, which obviously includes telling them when a given policy would violate the law. But since there is often more than one way to interpret the law, no one during the state’s early decades would have dreamed of saying a legal adviser’s opinion must be taken as the final word. It was just advice, and a minister who disagreed with his adviser’s interpretation could enact his policy and let it be tested in court.

This began changing in 1968, when Attorney General Meir Shamgar, in a novel interpretation of his own position, asserted that his role was not advisory but “of a judicial nature.” (For a fuller explanation of his decision and the evolution of the attorney general’s role, see here.) In other words, he was no longer the government’s attorney, but a judge determining the legality of its decisions. Yet only in 1993 did this power become absolute, when Shamgar and Barak, then the Supreme Court’s president and deputy president, respectively, ruled that an attorney general’s decision is binding on the government. This turned the government into the only entity in Israel deprived of the basic right to go to court; challenging an attorney general’s decision in court would be pointless, because the court, having declared the attorney general’s authority binding, would automatically uphold it.

In 1968, Attorney General Meir Shamgar, in a novel interpretation of his own position, asserted that his role was not advisory but “of a judicial nature.” In other words, he was no longer the government’s attorney, but a judge determining the legality of its decisions. Moreover, any government that did try to do so would be deprived of the basic right of legal representation, since, under the court’s ruling, an attorney general could not only refuse to represent the government’s position but could even bar it from hiring an outside lawyer to do so. As if this weren’t absurd enough, the government also has limited ability to hire or fire the attorney general. Attorneys general serve fixed six-year terms (a government’s term is four years or less), and candidates require approval from a five-member committee dominated by the legal establishment (three members are chosen, respectively, by the Supreme Court president, the Bar Association and the deans of the country’s law schools; the cabinet and Knesset choose the other two). Both the government and committee members can submit nominees, but the committee can force the government to choose one of the committee members’ nominees by vetoing all the government’s candidates—something that has in fact happened.

Of course, since ministry legal advisers are career civil servants who answer to the attorney general’s office rather than their ministers, this change in the attorney general’s status affected them, too. If the attorney general’s decisions bind the government, then by implication, ministry legal advisers have the same binding authority over their ministries, because they are the attorney general’s representatives in those ministries. And since they are civil servants who are not chosen by the minister, legal advisers and ministers often have with very different worldviews, leading the adviser to nix policies that other legal experts with different perspectives might well uphold. This puts the government in a stranglehold that seems absurd when looked at from the outside.

Because the judicial revolution gave the court such broad powers over government policy, it also made one previously uncontroversial institution, the Judicial Appointments Committee, highly controversial. The committee has nine members—the justice minister and another minister chosen by the cabinet; two Knesset members chosen by the Knesset, usually but not always one coalition and one opposition MK; two lawyers chosen by the Israel Bar Association; and three sitting Supreme Court justices chosen by the Supreme Court president. A simple majority of the panel can appoint an ordinary judge, while seven are needed to appoint a Supreme Court justice; this means that both the sitting justices and the governing coalition have veto power.

In practice, however, the justices command an absolute majority, because the Bar representatives almost always side with them. Israel’s court system has only three levels—magistrate’s, district and supreme—and a mandatory right of appeal. Consequently, any case that begins in the district courts ends up in the Supreme Court, meaning any lawyer of sufficient stature to be on the appointments committee regularly appears before the Supreme Court and would therefore be reluctant to antagonize the justices. Thus far from being “balanced,” the committee is heavily tilted toward one side—whichever side the justices favor, in this case the liberal one. When a liberal government is in power, it can team up with the justices and lawyers to appoint liberal justices. But when a conservative government is in power, the justices generally veto conservative candidates, so except in rare cases, it can at best appoint moderates.

When the court routinely rules on major ideological and policy controversies, this system is problematic for several reasons.

Virtually no other democracy lets sitting justices be involved in choosing their own successors, much less have veto power over the choice, and for good reason. Giving sitting justices’ veto power quickly creates a court with almost no ideological diversity, because justices, like all human beings, will naturally prefer people who share their worldview to people whose views appall them—and in Israel’s case, this has meant an activist liberal worldview. If you’re a liberal, imagine a situation in which the current U.S. Supreme Court majority could ensure the appointment of likeminded justices in perpetuity by vetoing any liberal candidate any Democratic president proposed. How long would it take before all liberals distrusted and despised the court? If you’re a conservative, try the same experiment with an ultraliberal court in mind. Either way, you wind up with a court that half the country—and it doesn’t matter which half—distrusts and despises, which is exactly what you have in Israel today.

Direct Polls: 78% of Israelis Support Judicial Reform

Only 4 weeks remain until the end of the Knesset’s winter session, which is also the deadline for the passing of the first two amendments of Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s judicial reform: changing the composition of the committee to elect judges, and preventing the High Court from revoking constitutional laws.

And while the mainstream media outlets in Israel have been bombarding their audiences with reports on a massive, nationwide resistance to both bills, a Direct Polls survey published Monday morning offers an entirely different picture.

Direct Polls pointed out that the mainstream media do not feature surveys that ask direct questions about the different components of the reform.

They don’t ask, “Are you in favor of changing the composition of the committee for selecting judges?” or “Are you for or against the involvement of the High Court in invalidating laws and by what majority?” or “Are you for or against limiting the tenure of the president of the Supreme Court?” These are all issues that the reform authors plan to touch on sooner or later, so why don’t the mainstream pollsters ask the public about them?

According to Direct Polls, it’s because the answers to these questions would show a clear support of more than 60% for the vast majority of the proposed changes.

However, this most recent poll also shows some movement in the opposition camp: 1. Benny Gantz’s National Camp party gains three mandates, one from Likud, and two from Yesh Atid, which is getting weaker, contrary to some mainstream polls; and, 2. Benny Gantz’s rise as the best fit to serve as a prime minister among center-left voters. For the first time in a year and a half, Gantz is tied with Yair Lapid for the job, as Lapid loses more than 10% who switched to Gantz.

Why is Gantz rising, and why at the expense of Lapid?

Supporting Judicial Reform
Direct Polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of the public thinks that the justice system needs reform.

♦ 40%, mainly from the right, support the reform in its current form.
♦ An additional 4% would support it without the override clause.
♦ And 34% are “in favor of the reform, but only with agreements and changes that will lead to wider support in the Knesset.”

That’s a total of 78% support for changes in the judicial system, against only 22% who oppose any change and insist on leaving the system as it is.

Among the group that supports the reform “only with agreements and changes that will bring broad support,” 62% are National Camp voters, meaning at least 7 mandates that would join in supporting the reform in addition to the 64 mandates the coalition already counts on.

How Taxpayer Funds Are Flowing to a Group Bankrolling Anti-Netanyahu Protests

The U.S. government has been funneling taxpayer money to the left-wing group bankrolling protests against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Israeli funding documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The documents indicate that, since 2020, Foggy Bottom has sent over $38,000 to the Movement for Quality Government (MQG), the Israeli nonprofit stoking nationwide anti-Netanyahu protests that have seen protesters clash with police and target Netanyahu’s family members. MQG is seeking to takedown Netanyahu’s government over his support for major reforms to the Israeli supreme court that would significantly limit its power. The organization petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court earlier this year to oust Netanyahu, claiming he is unfit for office due to ongoing investigations into allegations of political corruption and bribery.

The State Department, which confirmed the funding, calls the group a nonpartisan organization, but its work opposing Netanyahu raises questions about how the group was able to obtain U.S. funding. The United States typically avoids funding foreign partisan groups to avoid claims of political meddling. Even before MQG emerged as the leading force behind the current wave of anti-Netanyahu protests, it made a name for itself as a leading critic of the Israeli right, which has long seen Netanyahu as its leader. Given the Biden administration’s chilly diplomatic relationship with Netanyahu—which includes repeated criticism of Israeli settlement construction and the decision to launch an unprecedented FBI probe into Israel’s anti-terrorism operations—the U.S. funding to MQG has come under new scrutiny.

"The State Department should never fund foreign partisan organizations in allied democracies," Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told the Free Beacon. "If the shoe was on the other foot, the Biden administration would accuse Israel of interfering in our elections. Congress should absolutely review the State Department’s potential funding of partisan politics in Israel."

Excellent column on the role Israel’s Supreme Court plays—and has misplayed as the ground shifted beneath it. https://t.co/ABtTSAuSgE pic.twitter.com/PLainlAskE
— Elliot Kaufman (@ElliotKaufman6) March 6, 2023

Massekhet Purim: Talmud parody from the 14th century

Google Books has a 19th century printing of Massekhet Purim, a Purim parody of the Talmud, along with two other Purim parodies of the Passover Haggadah and of the Selichot said in prayers before fast days and other occasions.

The Talmud parody is pretty funny, with the names of rabbis (and commentaries) all jokes.

I'm not sure about the commentaries, but the Talmud text of the "tractate" was written in the 14th century by Kalonymus ben Kalonymus, who had written a number of serious works as well.

It looks like Jews have extended his original work over the years: this version of the work sold at auction includes a fifth chapter.This handwritten version at the Internet Archive looks very different, as does this 18th century handwritten and illustrated version, even though all of them are attributed to Kalonymus b. Kalonymus.

We need an Artscroll translation!

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Jewish Insider reports from the Arab Conference at Harvard this past weekend. The headline says, "Harvard ‘perfect example’ of pro-Palestinian activism, speakers argue at Arab Conference at Harvard."

If you read the article, you cannot find a single example of "pro-Palestinian" activism. Nothing to provide Palestinians in Gaza with jobs or medicine. Nothing to help Palestinians in camps in Lebanon or Syria to live in security. Nothing to encourage Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to hold free elections.

But here is what they did have:

“When we’re talking about this youth movement for Palestine, Harvard is a perfect example,” Mohamad Habehh, director of development at American Muslims for Palestine, said in a Sunday session. Later in his address, he called Zionism “a very stupid ideology” and pledged to “end U.S. support for Israel.” Habehh said that American Muslims for Palestine would be meeting this week with officials at the State Department to urge them to deny Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich a visa into the U.S. due to recent comments he made calling for Israel to “erase” a Palestinian village.

... Speaking at the conference on a panel about Middle Eastern representation in the 2030 Census, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) urged students to fight back against what she called “the intimidation, the bullying, the targeting to silence you” from pro-Israel students. “Everybody wants to silence me. But I know, whoever comes after me, I’ve knocked at least a couple doors down,” Tlaib continued, so that another student “can come in, she can say ‘apartheid.’”

There is not a single example of pro-Palestinian activism - but several examples of attacking the Jewish state.

These are intelligent people, and they cannot distinguish between going after Israel and supporting Palestinians.

Because, indeed, the entire point of Palestinian nationalism is not to build a state - but to destroy one.

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03/06 Links Pt1: The West Keeps Subsidizing the PA's Death Culture; Remembering a CIA Coup in Iran That Never Was; The racism of the apartheid lie

From Ian:

The Biden Administration is Costing Israeli Lives

Which leads us back to the question, “Why now?”

In March 2018, President Donald Trump signed into law the Taylor Force Act (TFA). Taylor Force, a US citizen and a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was murdered in Jaffa by a terrorist in 2016. He was visiting Israel as a tourist on a school-sponsored trip with Vanderbilt University. The law that bears Force’s name stipulates that the US must withhold all economic aid to the Palestinian Authority so long as the policy of financially rewarding terrorist murderers and their families persists.

In August 2018, in the first round of enforcement, the US cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. Eventually, in February 2019, the US government announced that, as per the TFA, it was ceasing all aid to the PA. In the wake of this decision, something amazing happened. Terrorism declined. Less Israelis were being murdered.

In the 5-year period, 2014-2018, 100 Israelis (and visitors to Israel) were murdered in Israel by terrorists; an average of 20 per year, with a low of 14 in 2018, the year of the passing the TFA. In 2019, the first year of TFA enforcement, the number of murder victims fell to 11. In 2020 it fell further to 3.

But it’s not only about the money. Even before the passage of the TFA in 2018, terrorist murders in Israel were on the decline ever since Donald Trump took office. Of the 5-year period 2014-2018 cited above, the 2 lowest annual numbers of victims were 2017 and 2018. Simply put, Donald Trump’s policies and statements sent a clear message to the enemies of Israel that under his administration, terrorism would not be rewarded.

Shortly after taking office, on March 26, 2021, the Biden administration announced that it would be sending $75 million to the Palestinian Authority to be used in part to regain the “trust and goodwill” of the Palestinians in the wake of the Trump cuts in aid. The State Department made it known at that time that this payment was only the beginning of a renewed pledge to support the PA.

What happened next should not surprise anyone. 2021 saw 17 Israelis murdered by Arab terrorists, the highest number since 2015. It is worth noting that all of these murders took place after the renewal of American financial aid at the end of March, a full quarter into the year. Not surprisingly, 2022 saw yet another rise in terror victims with 31 people losing their lives to terrorist murderers. And in the first two months of 2023, 14 people have already been murdered, as of this writing.

All this leads one to wonder how this is all happening. After all, the Taylor Force Act is not merely some Trump-era policy or presidential executive order that can be reversed by the next administration. The TFA is law, passed by both houses and signed by the president. What this means, quite plainly, is that the US government under Joe Biden is in violation of the law. And yet, as of this writing, the Biden administration has given over $1 billion to the Palestinian Authority.

I will say this plainly. The current US administration, through its criminal violation of US law is empowering and incentivizing the murder of Israeli citizens. The Biden administration is indirectly, yet knowingly, funding the families of terrorist murderers.

The West Keeps Subsidizing the Palestinian Authority's Death Culture

Thousands of people attended Elan Ganeles' funeral last week in Israel. They came from every sphere of Israeli society, representing an incredible level of social cohesion around the denunciation of Palestinian terrorism. Ganeles, 27, was a proud American Jew who fell in love with Israel and served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). He was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist for the crime of being Jewish, shot and killed as he was driving to a friend's wedding. Two days earlier, brothers Hallel Yaniv, 21, and Yagel Yaniv, 19, were murdered as they drove through the Palestinian town of Huwara, because they were Jewish.

In the last year, 29 Israelis were murdered in terror attacks, while the IDF prevented an additional 2,200. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas boasted that Palestinians perpetrated 7,200 attacks against Israeli targets in 2022.

The PA invests a substantial share of its budget, and of its foreign aid, on inciting terrorism, on glorifying terrorism, and on financially rewarding terrorism. Apparently, it's perfectly okay to compensate terrorism despite this being a blatant violation of PA commitments to foreign donors, and in clear violation of U.S. and EU conditions on such foreign aid.

The West is subsidizing the Palestinian Authority to destabilize Israel by inculcating generations of Palestinian children to be venerated as "martyrs" for mass murders. The very reason the current Israeli government was elected was because of increasing Palestinian terrorism.

Bassam Tawil: The Palestinian Authority for the Rights of Terrorists!

The bill basically states that an Israeli citizen or resident who commits a terrorist act and agrees to receive payment for it from the Palestinian Authority is thereby stating a preference to receive benefits from the Palestinian Authority over those of the State of Israel. When the terrorist completes his prison sentence, he will then move to the place of his chosen alliance, the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Needless to say, this also means that re-entry into Israel is prohibited.

[Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh] is... saying that Israel has no right to defend itself or take any measures against Palestinians involved in terrorism, who are then financially rewarded by his own Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Paying for murder in lieu of negotiating is not what the Palestinians committed to in the Oslo Accords or any other agreement.

Would-be terrorists can now contemplate that choice [whether to commit murder or stay in Israel], unlike the victims of terror who will never get to "visit family" again.

In the view of the Palestinian leadership, if Palestinians murder innocent civilians simply because they are Jews, that is not racist or unlawful, but if Israelis hold those murderers responsible and imprison them, that is racist and unlawful.

[Shtayyeh] apparently wants to make sure that while he continues to fund the families of the terrorists in the West Bank, the Arab terrorists in Israel will be able to maintain their citizenship, live a pleasant life inside Israel and be able to continue murdering Jews.

In Lebanon, Palestinians, with rare exceptions, are not permitted citizenship, period.

The intriguing thing is that Palestinian officials who are upset by this bill seem extremely worried about "Palestinian rights to citizenship," but only in Israel -- not in Lebanon or Jordan.

i24News reports:

Palestinians from the West Bank could fly directly from Israel's Ramon Airport, near the southern city of Eilat to the Muslim Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia

Amid the recent spike in violence and hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians, and with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and Jewish Passover festival weeks away, Israeli officials are weighing creative ways to tamp down regional tensions.

i24NEWS learned that one of the initiatives being examined by Jerusalem is enabling Palestinians from the West Bank to fly directly from the Ramon Airport, near the southern Israeli city of Eilat, to Saudi Arabia for the Muslim Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca.

A recent meeting attended by a long list of Israeli security officials, including representatives of Israel's national Security Council, the Israeli military (IDF), transportation ministry and Israel's Airports Authority, examined the possibility of operating flights for Palestinians out of Israel's Ramon airport directly to Saudi Arabia. Such a decision would of course hinge on the approval and cooperation of the Saudi government.

I don't think the Saudis would go for this, as a direct flight from an Israeli airline landing in Mecca would be close to normalization. They might be warmer towards a one-stop flight that stops in Cyprus or Turkey.

The pilot flights for Palestinians from Ramon Airport that flew last August to Cyprus have not been repeated. Instead, Israel has been working to improve travel to Jordan so Palestinians could save time on that trip - where Jordan was the real bottleneck.

Whatever gets decided, one thing is certain: Palestinians will complain.

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Palestinians try to hijack UN Conference on Least Developed Countries

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas went to Doha to speak at the 5th UN Conference on Least Developed Countries.

As is always the case, he spent more time attacking Israel than to discuss the topic at hand.

Our Palestinian people have been living the ravages of the Nakba and the refugee catastrophe for 75 years, and they are facing the crimes of the occupation, which, since 1967, have turned into a continuous colonialism that violates the resolutions of international legitimacy, delves into practices of ethnic cleansing and racism, persists in changing the identity and character of the occupied city of East Jerusalem, and violates Al-Aqsa Mosque. It assaults the historical and legal status of Islamic and Christian sanctities, uproots Palestinians from their land, demolishes their homes, continues settlements, plunders resources and withholds Palestinian funds, and kills Palestinians in Nablus, Jenin, Jericho, Jerusalem, Hebron, and other cities, villages, and camps .

On top of that, terrorist settler gangs commit crimes of burning Palestinians and their property, as happened recently by burning dozens of homes, shops, and hundreds of vehicles in the town of Hawara, and calling on ministers in the occupation government to incite killing and destruction and to wipe this town out of existence. We call on the international community to stop and punish this Israeli terrorism against our people, and to work towards ending this occupation of the land of the State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Despite all this, our people will remain steadfast, continuing to defend their land and sanctities .

The State of Palestine will continue to confront the occupiers and their violations of international law, signed agreements, and their unilateral practices, and go to international forums and courts. We will also continue to carry out our international responsibilities, as happened when the State of Palestine chaired the Group of 77 and China in 2019, in addition to continuing our efforts to combat extremism and international terrorism .

Yes, the people who literally invented international terrorism, the people who supported Al Qaeda far longer than any Arab country, the ones who literally pay terrorists and their families as an inviolable part of their annual budget, claim to be fighting terrorism.

We look forward to continuing your support for our endeavor to defend our people's legitimate right to self-determination, and their right to freedom and independence. We will also continue our commitment to implementing the sustainable development plan and its goals, and the special situation of the least developed countries. We have succeeded in launching a very important document entitled "Atlas of Sustainable Development 2020", with the aim of documenting development efforts .

I couldn't find this Atlas of Sustainable Development 2020. One would think that if it was such an important document, it would be referenced in Palestinian websites. All I found was a video about this document, written in English, which indicates that it is one of the hundreds of reports that have been pushed by the EU or UN, mostly created so the Palestinian Authority can show the West that it is acting like a normal government that cares about its people.

Yet the recommendations in these reports are never implemented, unless more Western money is dependent on progress.

UPDATE - it is here. It is a point in time document showing how the Palestinian territories are doing against UN goals. It might be important, but it doesn't mandate any improvements. (h/t GnasherJew.)

The Palestinian Authority has never acted like a real government - for good reason. The only issues that they are passionate about are anti-Israel, not pro-Palestinian. When you look at everything it does, everything they say in international forums, every statement they issue, this is obvious. And this speech by Abbas is simply more proof that Palestinian nationalism is a cover for destroying Israel by any means possible.

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