Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, April 03, 2023

The haters are now demanding Trader Joe's stop selling matzoh made in Israel

This Mondoweiss article reads like a parody:

Trader Joe’s prides itself on delivering great products at fair prices. And we agree that they deliver on that promise. So, when we saw that our favorite food store is now selling Passover Matzo made in Israel we had to act.

Trader Joe’s also has a reputation for being responsive to customers, so we started this campaign to tell them how disappointed we are in their decision to sell house branded Matzo prominently marked as a “product of Israel” or any other products labeled as “made in Israel.”

In support of the Palestinian Civil Society’s call to boycott all Israeli products, we never purchase Israeli-made products at Trader Joe’s or anywhere else, but that no longer feels like enough. It is important that we tell stores, and the good people who work in them, why we boycott Israel and how badly it reflects on stores when they sell products made in Apartheid Israel.

We hope that many people will join us by printing out this note to Trader Joe’s, signing it, and giving it to a manager in every Trader Joe’s that you shop in:

The funniest part of the Mondoweiss article was a selfie of co-author Seth Morrison smiling in front of the matzoh display with his "Palestine 1948" T-shirt. His smile makes it look like he is promoting the matzoh, not boycotting it!

This is way beyond activism and well into obsession territory. No one on Earth thinks that Palestinians are helped one iota from these ridiculous stunts, and it is obvious to all who care to think about it that this is not animated by concern for Palestinian human rights but visceral hate for the Jewish state.

Trader Joe's sells other Israeli products, including their own branded Bamba snack and "Israeli Feta Cheese." Horrors!

I can't wait for Sukkot when the haters start a campaign to boycott Israeli etrogim.

(h/t Roger K)

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!

04/03 Links Pt1: The tactical alliance that made Europe a terror paradise; King Abdullah: ‘Duty of every Muslim to deter Israeli escalations’ against holy sites

From Ian:

The tactical alliance that made Europe a terror paradise

Pakistan is not just a safe haven for terrorist groups, it also manages to outsource its most selling product: terrorism. The Pakistanis have a wide network of people across Europe, including labor migrants and organizations helping fund their activity.

In February 2022, Spain arrested five Pakistanis who were affiliated with the radical right-wing party TLP in Pakistan for allegedly helping the 2015 attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris. That party has many supporters in Spain, France, Italy, and Greece. Europe, in effect, had become a Pakistani terrorist paradise.

Several months after the horrific attack on the Chabad House in Mumbai in 2008, two Pakistani suspects were arrested in Italy for allegedly providing logistical support to the perpetrators. In October 2021, a man in Cyprus of Pakistani origin was arrested over allegedly plotting to assassinate two Israeli businessmen. In the most recent plot in Greece, both suspects arrived illegally from Turkey and are not Greek citizens, but it is important to understand that the massive immigration to Europe helped proliferate such cells across the continent.

Iran has good ties with Pakistan's spy agencies. Although the conventional wisdom is that the two countries are rivals because of their diverging Islamic character, the two have managed to maintain productive collaboration when it comes to fighting the insurgents in Balochistan. This was also evident in the case of the Indian citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was sentenced to death in Pakistan over espionage.

Pakistan and Iran are close on a whole host of issues, including Kashmir. Pakistani-sponsored terrorist groups see Israel as their ultimate enemy despite the lack of direct hostilities. This tactical alliance between Tehran and Islamabad against Israel and the Jews is a very reasonable outcome. My familiarity with the Iranian conduct suggests that Tehran wants Jewish blood to be shed, and is willing to collude with any organization that is willing to help, even if the perpetrators are amateurs.

From my remarks for @The_ILF in @Europarl_EN, calling out European silence on Palestinian antisemitism.

"#EU cannot say they are committed to peace and make such eloquent speeches every Holocaust Remembrance Day, but turn their backs to Palestinian #antisemitism & incitement." pic.twitter.com/SGvwWx4JKB
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) April 3, 2023

The @NewIsraelFund and the EU fund a @HaMokedRights, a group devoted to defending terrorists who kill Israelis. $40 million in the past decade alone. All for terrorists. https://t.co/i7Rq4LXfls
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) April 2, 2023

The Case for Designating Samidoun a Terror Organization in Europe

Founded in 2012, Samidoun serves as an affiliate for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has been designated as a terror group by the EU, as well as the United States, Canada, Israel and others.

Samidoun claims to be “an international network of organizers and activists working to build solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for freedom.” They operate globally, with a strong presence in Europe and headquarters in Brussels. The reality however is that Samidoun, and key Samidoun leaders, serve as an inseparable arm of the PFLP and are inextricably tied to the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In 2021, the Israeli government designated Samidoun a terrorist organization, on the basis of overwhelming and compelling evidence of the group’s connection to PFLP. A 2022 Berlin Appellate court decision reaffirmed the link between Samidoun leader Khaled Barakat and PFLP, a connection he has not denied.

The key question is for how much longer will the European Union keep turning its back and allow Samidoun to continue operating unabated, while Iran further spreads its tentacles of terror in Europe?

The following report and research by the ILF makes the case for the European Union to take immediate steps to designate Samidoun and key Samidoun leaders to the EU Terror List.

#DesignateSamidoun

How much longer can Europe tolerate #PFLP terrorist-linked Iranian-supported organisation #Samidoun calling for the violent overthrow of our European Union?

Thanks@Ostrov_A @NGOmonitor @The_ILF @ACOM_es
for calling it out.#DesigateSamidoun pic.twitter.com/AvTOBWoAm9
— International Movement for Peace and Coexistence (@IMPACoexistence) April 3, 2023

Imam Chalghoumi - Samidoun's propaganda is poisoning our youth

Germany's Leftist Government Refuses to Confront Islamism

Germany's parliament has rejected two legislative proposals aimed at clamping down on political Islam in Germany. The sponsors of the proposed bills argued that Islamism is subversive and must be opposed because it poses a growing threat to liberal democracy and social cohesion. Lawmakers representing Germany's left-wing coalition government countered that measures to curb Islamism would unfairly single out Muslims.

The legislative setback comes just six months after Germany's government dissolved a high-profile expert working group on political Islam — opting instead to fight "Islamophobia."

A number of German analysts (who preferred to remain anonymous) told FWI that the government's refusal to confront Islamism stems from its obsession with woke ideology, which posits that Muslims are an oppressed group and need protection. They asserted that this stance and the policies that result from it represent a security threat not just for Germany but also for the rest of Europe.

Germany's violent and non-violent Islamism problem is colossal. In its latest annual report, Germany's domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV) estimated that the country is home to at least 30,000 hardcore Islamists, although the actual number probably is much higher.

The BfV report listed more than 20 Islamist groups active in Germany including: al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, Hamas, Hezbollah, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Islamic State, Milli Görüs, the Muslim Brotherhood, Tablighi Jamaat, and the Taliban. The groups have ties to — and are believed to receive funding from — governments and Islamist organizations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Lebanese-Canadian Academic on Trial in France for 1980 Synagogue Bombing

The trial of a Canadian academic accused of involvement in the 1980 bombing of a synagogue in Paris that killed four people and injured more than 40 began in a French court on Monday.

The Lebanese-born academic, 69-year-old Hassan Diab, is being tried in absentia after French authorities declined to issue an international arrest warrant for him, leaving him free to decide whether to attend the proceedings.

Diab was first accused of involvement in the bombing by French intelligence agencies in 1999. Several years of legal wrangling resulted in Diab’s arrest in 2008 and his extradition from Canada to France in 2014. Four years later, Diab was released and returned to Canada after French prosecutors concluded there was not enough evidence against him for a trial. In 2021, the charges were reinstated following an appeal.

France’s case rested on the claim that a man who checked into a Paris hotel before the bombing using a Cypriot passport was in fact Diab. Eyewitness evidence and analysis of handwriting samples led the French authorities to conclude that the individual in question was Diab, despite the sociology professor’s insistence that he had been in Lebanon at the time. France alleged that Diab was a member of the special operations branch of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which was believed to be responsible for the attack.

The Ontario judge who approved Diab’s extradition in 2014 had rejected most of the evidence against Diab was unreliable, but said as well that the low threshold of Canadian extradition law – that a requesting state’s summary of its evidence is presumed to be reliable, unless shown otherwis — meant that the French request could not be denied, the Globe and Mail reported. Commenting on the handwriting evidence specifically, Judge Robert Maranger argued that while it was not “manifestly unreliable,” it was “convoluted, very confusing, with conclusions that are suspect.”

Palestinian site Amad reports:

Hebrew sources announced, on Sunday evening, that Israel is considering increasing the number of work permits from the Gaza Strip, and the number of regular work permits may reach about fifty thousand in the coming months.

An informed Israeli security source indicated that the number could be increased as well, and this contributes to improving the economic situation of the residents of the Gaza Strip.

I didn't see this in Hebrew media, but there is little reason to think this isn't true.

And it is representative of the type of story that the news media isn't interested in.

Israel spends a great deal of time and money trying to ensure that Palestinians' lives can be as good as possible while not compromising the security of Israelis.

It is a very difficult job.

Another recent example of Israel taking great efforts to help ordinary Palestinians is that Israel is starting to operate the crossing into Jordan for 24 hours a day to make things easier for Palestinian travelers.

A nation's first priority is the safety of its own citizens. There have been countless cases of Palestinians taking advantage of Israeli efforts at being humane - suicide bombs smuggled in by hospital patients, for example.

In this case I cannot blame the media completely for avoiding stories where Israel acts humanely towards Palestinians. Bad news is news and drives ratings; good news doesn't.

But when coverage of Israel is so unrelentingly negative, no one even considers that the truth is not what is being reported. People who do not follow news in Hebrew and Arabic are left completely in the dark.

Gaza is a mess, and giving Gazans jobs is the single most important thing that can be done to help them out. Gaza is also run by a terrorist organization.

The line between helping people who haven't done anything wrong and not helping their leaders who openly preach genocide against the Jewish people is one that is a real news story. And it is one that the media is not interested in covering.

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!

You can learn a lot from this Palestinian press release

The website of the Palestinian National Council published a warning:

The head of the National Council, Rawhi Fattouh, warned of the call made by the criminal extremist and the extremist National Security Minister Ben Gvir, in which he called on all Jews to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Jewish Passover holiday.

Fattouh said in a statement issued on Sunday evening that the incitement of the fascist government and its ministers against the danger of the storming, and the so-called extremist groups of the Temple Mount, erecting an altar on the southern wall of the walls of Jerusalem, and conducting exercises to offer the "oblation" of the Jewish Passover, and the ceremonies that It will be held near Al-Aqsa Mosque, and will ignite the region and plunge it into a religious war for which the fascist far-right government bears responsibility.

He added that the volume of incitement, oppression and abuse against the worshipers of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and what extremist groups are planning, fears that the massacre of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron will repeat, or that an insane act will be carried out and the burning of Al-Aqsa Mosque will be repeated.

Fattouh called on the international community to immediately intervene to curb this terrorist madness led by the fascist occupation government, whose impact will not be limited to the occupied Palestinian territories only.

First of all, what is the Palestinian National Council?

The Palestinian National Council (PNC) is the legislative authority within the PLO, and is responsible for formulating the organisation’s policies. It acts as a parliament that represents all Palestinians, except for Palestinian citizens of Israel.

A full quorum of the PNC convened between 30 April-3 May 2018 in Ramallah to elect a new Palestinian Central Council (PCC) and PLO’s Executive Committee (EC). This was the first meeting of the full PNC since 1996. This meeting was boycotted by the PFLP, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, and was seen by analysts as an effort by Mahmoud Abbas to consolidate his hold on power by promoting supporters, while marginalising his political rivals. During the meeting, the PNC reportedly transferred its legislative powers to the PCC.

In January 2021, Abbas issued a presidential decree announcing that a new PNC (formally including Hamas) would be formed by 31 August.

It is a puppet organization, controlled by Mahmoud Abbas, that reportedly gave up all of its powers - its entire reason of existence - to another puppet organization. And then Abbas created his own law, which never seems to have been implemented, to create a brand new PNC - proving once again that Abbas is a dictator who manipulates the many political organizations he controls to make things appear slightly more democratic.

The website appears to be nothing more than a sounding board for Rawhi Fattouh, since there are no PNC meetings. I'm not sure who elected him but it sure wasn't a transparent election.

Now, let's look at Fattouh's warning: that Jews play-acting a Passover sacrifice outside Al Aqsa "will ignite the region and plunge it into a religious war."

It isn't the Jews who are threatening violence. It is the Arabs inciting against the Jews who are threatening violence. The message, which we have heard so many times from Palestinians of all ranks including dictator Abbas, is that Palestinians are animals who have no self-control, and the sight of Jews doing Jewish rituals fill them with so much rage that they can ignite the region into a new war, or new wave of terror, or sometimes to get all Muslims to join in to start a world war.

Palestinians spend a great deal of time telling the West that they cannot control themselves against becoming violent. For over a century they have tried to manipulate the West by warning of impending jihad that would turn the region into a bloodbath - a jihad that they cannot control (when they don't declare it themselves) because their people are so inherently violent.

At the same time they tell Westerners that they are savage beasts who cannot be expected to adhere to normal social mores, they claim that the West is guilty of "orientalism" by stereotyping them as those same savage beasts they tell the West that they are.

One more detail about this press release. It is accompanied with this photo:

They took a regular photo of Jews visiting their holiest site and removed the color from the Jews. It is a subtle but unmistakable attempt to dehumanize Jews as unworthy beings who are swarming the sacred Muslim site like cockroaches.

These three absurdities are not anomalous. They are seen every day in Palestinian media. And no one calls it out. Palestinian antisemitism and hypocrisy are accepted as normal and the Bizarro world where the rules are different for Palestinians becomes more and more mainstream in the real world.

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!

Arab media knows that the Waqf agreed no overnight stays in Al Aqsa - but refuse to report it

For the second Sunday night, Palestinian Muslims attempted to stay overnight in the Al Aqsa mosque in a ritual known as i'tikaaf - and Israeli forces politely removed them without incident.

As I have been reporting, the reason there has been a call for i'tikaaf this year when it has hardly ever been demanded in the first weeks of Ramadan in the past is because the Muslims want to disrupt Jews visiting the Temple Mount the next morning. This is explicitly said in Islamist media calling on herds of worshipers to "defend" the mosque from the Jewish "stormers."

Israel and Jordan, along with the Jordanian Waqf, agreed that there would only be i'tikaaf on Thursday and Friday nights, and the last ten days of Ramadan, when Jews are not allowed to ascend the next day.

Last weekend the Waqf agreement was not well publicized and there was widespread anger at Israel removing the worshippers. But during the week, Arabic social media turned its anger at the Waqf, and they published the Waqf's memo stating that no i'tikaaf would be performed until the end of Ramadan.

Everyone knows about the agreement now.

But Palestinian media reporting on Sunday night's removal of female worshippers (by female Israeli police officers) do not say a word about the Waqf agreement.

Which is just more evidence that Palestinian media cannot be trusted to report anything accurately. They are propaganda sources, and any truth that they publish is purely coincidental.

Even the official Palestinian Wafa news agency is reporting about the removal of the worshippers without mentioning the agreement that those worshippers are violating.

They are trying to incite violence - when the entire purpose of the ban on i'tikaaf is to minimize the chances for violence.

Isn't that a problem?

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!

Egypt never considered its Jews to be "real" Egyptians

Every Ramadan, there are lots of competing TV miniseries competing for attention. One of this year's is a crime drama from Egypt called The Canto Market.

An Egyptian newspaper describes the history of this real-life market in describing the plot:

Wekalat Al-Balah market is one of the oldest markets in Cairo. It was established in 1880, by 15 merchants from Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. With the passage of time and the increasing popularity of the market and the increase in the number of its merchants, it has become a landmark of Cairo.

During the 1930s, Egypt was hit by an economic stagnation that made these merchants sell their shops to the Jews, and at that time the market increased the used clothing trade and called it the “Canto” market, and it remained under their control until the 1950s when they decided to migrate to occupied Palestine...

The Jews that they sold the stores to were Egyptians - but in recounting the history, they are just Jews, not at all considered citizens of the nation, who then for completely unknown reasons "decided to migrate" to Israel.

There is no way an Egyptian newspaper would say that Copts bought or sold shops to Egyptians, implying that Copts aren't Egyptian themselves.

I found another description of the market's history at Egyptian Geographic:

The Al-Balah Market, which was established at the end of the nineteenth century by a number of Arab merchants coming from Syria and Palestine, witnessed a great boom at its beginning, then its glow diminished with the decline of the country’s economy in the middle of the nineteenth century until the Jews owned most of its markets and called it the “Canto Market.”...After the departure of the Jews from Egypt, the ownership of the agency returned to the Egyptians.

A similar description is given in this site, although the religion of the shop owners is a bit more relevant there because the merchants would talk to each other using Hebrew words so customers wouldn't understand (and this pidgin-like language is still used in the market today.)

When you have three articles, written at three different times, about the same topic that clearly considers Jews not to have been normal Egyptian citizens, it is pretty clear that Egyptians never considered their Jews to be full members of their society.

This has been the situation of Jews in most countries. And that is the reason Jews need their own country.

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!

04/02 Links: Hijacking the Narrative: Inside Israel’s Domestic Protests; Police thwart Hamas Temple Mount shooting plot; Speaker at funeral of terrorist: “We love death like our enemies love life”

From Ian:

A crisis of judicial proportions explained, Part I: Reforming the Supreme Court

For the last several weeks, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to protest a highly controversial package of judicial reforms being rapidly advanced by the recently installed right-wing and religious coalition led by Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

In addition to the protesters, economists, businessmen, foreign governments and leaders of the Jewish Diaspora have joined the calls to oppose the reforms. They claim that should the reforms pass, Israel will suddenly be on the road to becoming a fascist dictatorship and that the country is teetering on chaos. Leaders of the protest movement have repeatedly stated that the protests may lead to violence.

So why was the government rapidly advancing such judicial reforms while protests and domestic chaos among reform opponents were simultaneously brewing at unprecedented levels?

The proclaimed purpose of the reforms is to correct a decades-old imbalance between the powers of Israel’s aggressive and activist high court and the government. For those trying to understand what gives the court in Israel more power than the elected government, it is useful to compare Israel’s judicial system to that of the United States.

Everything Is Justiciable
In the early 1990s, Israel went through a self-proclaimed “judicial revolution” led by then-Supreme Court president Aharon Barak. Barak wanted the Supreme Court to be an “activist court,” meaning that the court would not wait for issues to come to its benches, but rather, the court would increase its power and reach to enforce policy according to its own interpretation.

According to Barak, “everything is justiciable,” meaning that no law, policy or commercial dealing was out of the purview of the court. In cases in which there are no laws or policies, the court can order the parliament to pass a law on a particular issue within a court-stipulated time limit or can order the government to carry out a specific policy.

Standing Not Required
In the United States, a plaintiff can only bring a case before the court if they are an injured party. And even then, a case must start in a lower court and advance through a court of appeals before reaching the Supreme Court.

In Israel, a case may be brought directly to the High Court. Further, the plaintiff does not need to have standing. As such, in Israel, NGOs (non-governmental organizations), some of which receive foreign government funding, are often the parties petitioning the court on any law or policy they want the court to review.

Principle of ‘Reasonableness’
In the absence of a constitution and in a system in which “everything is justiciable,” the court has established its own principle of “reasonableness” to determine whether a law, policy or contract is legal. Reasonableness in each case is determined by the court.

The court has used “reasonableness” to negate laws and to overrule government policies. In addition, court rulings can force a government to take particular actions, including demolishing homes (both Jewish and Arab) that the court rules were built illegally, even when such actions are highly controversial and not politically expedient.

The court has also used the “everything is justiciable” and “reasonableness” combination to overturn commercial contracts, including contracts signed by the government.

A crisis of judicial proportions explained, Part II: Precursors to the protest

Demography, not democracy
For Netanyahu’s left-wing opponents, their stunning electoral defeat represents a deeper and worrying demographic turning point.

Religious and traditional right-wing voters typically have more children than secular left-wing voters, a trend that is not likely to change in the years to come. And for the first time, right-wing voters out-totaled left-wing and Arab voters combined to form an exclusively right-wing government.

While the right is now free to implement the policies it has long sought to, the left fears that if the right governs successfully, it may be in power for many years to come, leaving the left glued to the backbenches of the Knesset opposition.

Right-wing policy outline
The Israeli right seeks to continue building housing and infrastructure for growing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. They insist on personal security for Israeli citizens in the face of growing terrorism. They prefer to isolate the Palestinian Authority, and reject the prospect of negotiations.

On complex and controversial religion-and-state issues, they seek to preserve the integrity of religious institutions and long-held norms, including a ban on public transportation on Shabbat. For Netanyahu in particular, neutralizing Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is a primary objective.

In order to advance their agenda, they first seek to strike a new balance of power between the government and the judicial branch of government.

The right asserts that the court for years has consistently meddled in governmental affairs. They claim the court is a self-selecting, elite left-wing oligarchy that has effectively served as a check on right-wing policies.

The left asserts that the court must remain the protector of democracy and through its rulings maintain governmental checks and balances in the absence of a constitution.

The right is effectively calling the court’s bluff.

Historical turning point
Historically, for the first 30 years of the state’s existence, until the election of Menachem Begin in 1977, the left controlled the government. In those three decades, they established all of the state’s major institutions. And while the right has been the principal force in the government over the last 30 years, the major institutions, including the judicial system, top echelons of the military, labor union, academia, medical establishment and the media remain dominated by the left.

While the left has had no choice but to concede the government to a shifting voter base that favors right-wing policies, the left is unprepared and unwilling to give up on its control of state institutions.

And as Netanyahu, his allies and his voters are learning, those institutions are not only extremely powerful, but together, can be significantly more powerful than the government.

It is this complex web of political developments over the past four years that immediately preceded, and hangs as a dark cloud over the rollout of judicial reform legislation.

"Jewish Voice for Peace" says to symbolically burn US and Israeli flags on Passover eve

From Jewish Voice for Peace's Facebook page:

Nationalism is chametz, during Passover and always!
Freedom only for some is never enough. This Passover, at a time when violence against Palestinians by the Israeli state, military and settlers continues to escalate, we gather to demand and dream liberation for everyone.
For anti-Zionist Jews, this holiday can be a challenging time. For some, it can feel impossible to separate our holiday traditions from Zionist propaganda advocating ethnic cleansing and land theft. Many of us feel reluctant to even celebrate the holiday as Zionist terror escalates in Palestine. And many of us may be facing yet another holiday where our beliefs and politics are not welcome.
This year, bring your whole anti-Zionist self to our virtual seder! Our beloved community is coming together to set the Pesach table for you. Our seder will feature joy and rage and hope from our Havurah, BIJOCSM and student networks, our campaigns, our rabbis, and from JVP members from near and far—all gathered for collective liberation for us all.

They never seem to have a problem with Palestinian nationalism. I wonder why.

Their latest "Haggadah" is just as twisted in its interpretations of what Passover is about. I looked at a previous version in 2012, which was 28 pages long and included an essay on "pinkwashing."

Apparently that was way too much for the current TikTok generation that JVP wants to attract, so this new one is a mere 14 pages long, deleting nearly all of Maggid, Hallel and Nirtzah. it doesn't even describe the overstuffed seder plate of the previous editions that included an olive (for Palestinians) and an orange (for feminists and LGBTQ+.).

This one still includes the third cup of wine celebrating BDS, though.

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!

"Palestine" ranks better than most countries in "multidimensional poverty" and "human development index"

The UN Human Development Reports of the UN Development Program defines a "Multidimensional Poverty Index" (MPI.)

The MPI looks beyond income to understand how people experience poverty in multiple and simultaneous ways. It identifies how people are being left behind across three key dimensions: health, education and standard of living, comprising 10 indicators. People who experience deprivation in at least one third of these weighted indicators fall into the category of multidimensionally poor.

The MPI score is based on these metrics:

How do Palestinians do?

Pretty good, actually.

While Western nations are not listed in this chart, the Palestinians are shown to be in far better shape than over 100 countries that are listed. I call out some of them.

Anti-Israel activists like to pretend that Palestinians have "no choice" but to turn to terror, and one of the reasons they like to trot out is how impoverished they are.

If that was the case, then why are we not seeing the same support for terror in the 100 countries who have a higher poverty score than they do?

Until COVID, Palestinians had also been steadily getting better scores every year in UNDP's Human Development Index, but even after a brief setback they are ranked "high" in various metrics.

Israel haters hate context like this. Because by any metric, Palestinians aren't in nearly as bad shape as people in over a hundred countries - but Palestinians get far more aid per capita than every single one of them.

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!

Tabia Lee was the Director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education at De Anza Community College in Cupertino, CA, and was recently fired from that position because she didn't adhere to the standard DEI orthodoxy. She describes her experiences in Compact:

What made me persona non grata? On paper, I was a good fit for the job. I am a black woman with decades of experience teaching in public schools and leading workshops on diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism. At the Los Angeles Unified School District, I established a network to help minority teachers attain National Board Certification. I designed and facilitated numerous teacher trainings and developed a civic-education program that garnered accolades from the LAUSD Board of Education.

My crime at De Anza was running afoul of the tenets of critical social justice, a worldview that understands knowledge as relative and tied to unequal identity-based power dynamics that must be exposed and dismantled. This, I came to recognize, was the unofficial but strictly enforced ideological orthodoxy of De Anza—as it is at many other educational institutions.

One section of her essay is relevant for this site:

The conflicts were not limited to my tenure-review process. At every turn, I experienced strident opposition when I deviated from the accepted line. When I brought Jewish speakers to campus to address anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, some of my critics branded me a “dirty Zionist” and a “right-wing extremist.” When I formed the Heritage Month Workgroup, bringing together community members to create a multifaith holiday and heritage month calendar, the De Anza student government voted to support this effort. However, my officemates and dean explained to me that such a project was unacceptable, because it didn’t focus on “decentering whiteness.”

When I later sought the support of our academic senate for the Heritage Month project, one opponent asked me if it was “about all the Jewish-inclusion stuff you have been pushing here,” and argued that the senate shouldn’t support the Heritage Month Workgroup efforts, because I was attempting to “turn our school into a religious school.” The senate president deferred to this claim, and the workgroup was denied support.

I looked up what she did for Jewish Heritage Month, and from what I can see, it was incredible.

The first event in 2022, I believe, was this one on defining antisemitism, with panelists Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder, Esq. from the National Jewish Advocacy Center and Alyza Lewin from the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. They both explain the logic behind the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism and explain why the "3D" test is an accurate description of when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism. Rabbi Goldfeder spoke specifically about why labeling Israel as an apartheid state, as the then-recent Amnesty report did, is in fact antisemitism.

Dr. Lee even went through a breakout room exercise where students could take real world examples of "anti-Israel" slanders and identify whether and why they were antisemitic.

No wonder the hard Left on campus was upset about this!

This video is nearly two hours long, but it includes not only excellent presentations by Goldfeder and Lewin, but also a video by the later Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explaining why anti-Zionism is often antisemitism.

I don't know how many people attended this, but it is astonishing that this was shown on any campus today.

There are many other videos of different events celebrating Jewishness, moderated by Dr. Lee, that interview Jews who are unabashedly woke but also often unabashedly Zionist. One example: This one interviews Dr. Brandy Shufutinsky, a Black Jewish social worker who disagrees with critical social justice and intersectionality theory, and features rap videos by her quite proudly Jewish son "Westside Gravy."

I am fairly certain that De Anza will not have another Jewish Heritage Month.

Tabia Lee appears to be a principled warrior against all kinds of racism and bigotry, and as such she couldn't survive on that campus. I hope that there might be a larger university that actually cares about real equality and anti-racism that hires her and gives her the resources she needs to lead the students, not be led by the extremists.

Her dismissal is a huge loss for the De Anza community. I hope some other campus can gain her expertise.

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!

04/01 Links: Big business: the monetization of antisemitism; Thanks to Biden Administration, Iran's Mullahs Winners of Russia Invasion of Ukraine; Three Israelis injured in car-ramming attack in Judea

From Ian:

Big business: the monetization of antisemitism

In a 2020 report, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a British non-profit organization with offices in London and Washington, DC, found that “Facebook and Instagram [were] hosting dozens of accounts that sell neo-Nazi merchandise to fund far-right extremism.” Both social media behemoths are owned by Meta Platforms and the organization accused “tech giants” of providing purveyors of hate with “a platform to reach mainstream audiences and generate funding.”

Similarly, Cooper warned in December 2022 that “the monetizing of antisemitism” was one of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s greatest concerns regarding the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment.

“We have to fight very hard to make sure [monetization] doesn’t become mainstream, so that someone’s going to get on a United Airlines flight wearing the swastika and say what’s wrong with that?” he said at the time.

“The sale of goods with antisemitic messaging and Nazi memorabilia is an issue of deep concern for Jewish communities,” European Jewish Congress Executive Vice-President & CEO Raya Kalenova tells The Media Line, calling it a “rising and lucrative phenomenon” with uneven responses that need to be regulated more tightly across countries and retail organizations.

“In some EU member states like Germany, Austria and France, it is illegal to sell Nazi ‘collectibles’,” she says. “In some other countries, there is a gray area to the advantage of large online retailers. Therefore, we must call for a systematic legal framework banning the sale of National Socialist symbols or other objects with clear antisemitic messages across Europe.

“Famous auction houses like Christie’s or Sotheby’s refuse to sell Nazi memorabilia; eBay also has an ‘offensive materials policy.’ It is important that giants like Amazon or smaller online retailers enforce clear guidelines regarding the sale of these forbidden items, using efficient AI searches and trained employees to remove them swiftly. At a time where hate speech and hate crimes are on the rise, it is up to the online marketplaces to ensure that their platform is not used to promote racism and antisemitism,” according to Kalenova.

Rich says that most of the mainstream payment services such as PayPal have done “a lot of work” to make sure that their services are not used by such sellers, but concedes that some will have “slipped through the net because it's just such a big ecosphere.”

Cooper also argues that the internet has enabled antisemites to monetize their hate. “Whenever there's a new tweak in internet technologies, you can be sure the antisemites will be there,” he says.

According to Rich, it is not just through merchandising that antisemitism and hate make money in the darker recesses of the internet, but also through ad revenue created by clicks on videos and other online media.

He gives the example of British extremist Tommy Robinson, founder of the xenophobic and Islamophobic English Defense League, whom he says has made a “pretty enormous income stream” from online videos.

“These people are content creators,” Rich says, “and they're following the same economic model as all content creators who make money that way, but that content is hate.”

Kalenova also accuses the media of benefiting from antisemitic expressions through “sensationalist” reporting that draws readers in. This increases traffic on their websites – and potentially ad revenue as well.

“Some news outlets serve as a daily clickbait platform for recognized antisemites to share their opinions and thoughts in an unrestricted way,” Kalenova tells The Media Line.

“The internet is a breeding ground for the spread of antisemitic rhetoric and certain media outlets take advantage of this dynamic to share all kinds of sensationalist articles,” she says. “Just recently, a lawsuit has been brought against French newspaper Le Monde for spreading a negative image of Sephardic Jews.”

Cooper argues that the only way to combat the current rise in antisemitism, including its monetization, is for Jews to stand firm and stand together and “find creative ways to hold internet companies accountable.”

“As long as there's no price to pay, this is just going to expand and expand and expand,” he said.

Thanks to Biden Administration, Iran's Mullahs Winners of Russia Invasion of Ukraine

Russia also reportedly wants to buy ballistic missiles from Iran, which has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. The Iranian regime therefore should officially be considered an accomplice to Russia's war crimes.

The Iranian regime, probably because it knows that the Biden administration will not take any action, is ratcheting up its engagement and weapons exports to Russia.

"President Biden's leadership is non-existent.... Look at what's happening right now with unemployment — eight million jobs are unfilled right now, and President Biden just ushered through a partisan bill to pay people billions of dollars not to work when eight million jobs are unfilled right now. We're paying people not to work, and they're borrowing money from our kids and our grandkids to do it.... We're seeing inflation starting to go through the roof. Our country is less secure. Look at what's happening around the world — the Middle East, Iran — who the President wants to let back into an agreement to get a nuclear weapon. [The Iranians are] helping funnel these bombs that are being shot into Israel. I mean where is the President's leadership on any of these crises?" – US Rep. Steve Scalise, Fox News, May 2021.

US indictment: Russian spy sought to gather intel on Israelis, including party head

A Russian intelligence operative who entered the US under a fake identity to gather information on American citizens also visited Israel with the same aim and managed to meet with the leader of a political party, according to an indictment filed by the US Justice Department earlier this month.

Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, 37, moved to the US under the guise of attending graduate school at Johns Hopkins University in 2018 under the alias Victor Muller Ferreira, the charge sheet released last Friday said. He had previously established the alias in Brazil, where he pretended to be the son of a deceased Brazilian national.

While in the US, Cherkasov allegedly connected with a State Department employee, a Capitol Hill staffer, an “Israel expert,” a US Naval Academy professor and others to gather intelligence about US policy regarding a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine in the months and years leading up to the war, the indictment alleges.

“I was working with my contacts… to find out what the academic community, political advisers and analysts think about the recent Russian military build-up near the Ukrainian border,” the indictment alleged he wrote in one message to his handlers.

In January 2020, Cherkasov visited Israel as part of a trip with a university. The indictment said while there, he texted his handler a list of names of people he met. These included “literally every single” staffer at the US Embassy, including its “LGBTQ adviser,” in addition to a security expert identified as “N.G.” along with the head of an Israeli political party who he described as a “kingmaker” with the initial “L.”

The visit came ahead of the March 2020 Knesset elections, when Yisrael Beytenu chair Avigdor Liberman was seen as a kingmaker because his party held the balance of power between the rival political blocs. The Times of Israel contacted Liberman’s office for comment but has not yet received a response.

‘April 1 absurdity’: Russia takes over rotating presidency of UN Security Council

Russia assumed the rotating presidency of the United Nations’ Security Council on Saturday for a month, a move decried as an April Fool’s Day joke by critics.

“As of 1 April, they’re taking the level of absurdity to a new level,” said Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s permanent representative, according to The Guardian.

“The security council as it is designed is immobilized and incapable to address the issues of their primary responsibility, that is, prevention of conflicts and then dealing with conflicts,” said Kyslytsya.

Ukraine is not a member of the council but has been called to speak on matters related to the Russian invasion, however the envoy said Kyiv would not be represented at the body except in the case of an “issue of critical national security interest.”

Russia will be permitted to hold its own sessions at the council, and The Guardian said Moscow was planning to hold three.

The first will be on “risks stemming from the violations of the agreements regulating the export of weapons and military equipment,” at which it is expected to attack allies for supplying arms to Ukraine.

In addition, it will hold two sessions on “effective multilateralism” and on the situation in the Middle East, to be led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry is reportedly concerned by a hardening of Moscow’s rhetoric toward Jerusalem after Israel was said to have authorized the sale of defensive military equipment to Kyiv for the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The United Nations is more worried about Israel ???? and our protests of hundreds of thousands peacefully expressing their views than the fact the Islamic regime in Iran has murdered 500 protesters, beats women and children and poisons schoolgirls.

Think about that.

The hypocrisy… pic.twitter.com/703hzmcql6
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? ????? ????? (@emilykschrader) April 1, 2023

03/31 Links Pt2: The “Good Jews” Are Never Good Enough; UN Testimony: UNRWA Teachers Call to Murder Jews; How the Palestinians got their name

From Ian:

We must keep the memory of the Holocaust alive

THESE DANCING, Bavarian coopers receive applause from the delighted crowd. I stare at the figurines. No longer are they 16th-century coopers but 20th-century hassidim, pious Eastern European Jews who are dancing and singing themselves into ecstasy to come closer to God. The sound of the chimes starts to warp into a distant rumbling that seems to be coming closer.

I hear the staccato of machine gun fire. Its volume increases with each chime. I hear the cries of the dancing Jews as they fall into the pits they have dug with their own hands. I see my distant relatives in Pinsk being shot by the drunken officers of the mobile killing units, the Einstazgruppen, in July 1941. I hear the machine gun fire, the screams and the sobbing of one million victims of the four Einsatzgruppen.

The chiming continues as the coopers dance and the screams continue as old photographs I have seen return from memory: Jews, young and old, being led to their execution in Ponary, the ninth Fort, Babyn Yar and Lvov, as SS men laugh as the victims attempt to cover their nakedness. I hear the screams of Jews in Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Chelmno and the cries of terror from death by gas. The screams and the chimes of the Glockenspiel fuse – they are one. A feeling of shame passes over me: my own vague nightmare seems to belittle the suffering of one million Jewish children, five million Jewish adults and millions of other humans whom the Nazis murdered.

The chiming of the Glockenspiel pauses and the horrible cries leave me. The uppermost level of the balcony presents its lone, small figurine: a crowing cock. The sound of the chime changes slightly and mimics the sound of a bird at cockcrow. Yet, I can only hear the whistle of trains packed with human cargo.

I can only see 300,000 Warsaw Jews being loaded like cattle onto trains for Treblinka by smiling SS men brandishing truncheons. I see 400,000 Hungarian Jews destroyed in Birkenau in 10 weeks during the summer of 1944. The mouth of the bird opens but it is not his crowing chime that I hear, only the whistle of trains heading for the death camps of Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka.

The whistling disappears. The chiming stops. The tourists applaud and begin to disperse. In envy, I look at them and ask myself: Can’t a Jew in Munich who stands at Marienplatz 8 listening to the chimes of the Glockenspiel simply enjoy the beauty of the colorful figurines, the aesthetics of the Rathaus facade and the clarity of the chimes without thinking of mass graves, gas chambers and crematoria? No.

For the destruction of European Jewry – the systematic murder of one out of every three Jews living on earth – took place in our epoch, a minute span in the history of mankind. Memory must overcome the ravages of time. We must see photographs of the Holocaust period and read the accounts of those who lived through it.

The “Good Jews” Are Never Good Enough

Jewish Anti-Zionist Excuses
Diving into the most plain assertion of Jewish Anti-Zionist tokens, we can also unpack further. Many of them today may assume innocence by repeating the talking point that “Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism” (a foundational lie for token Jewish opponents to the majority-consensus [IHRA] definition of antisemitism). Similar to the concept of “racial colorblindness”, it is problematic to assert that Zionism and Judaism have no connection (even if coming from ignorance, fear, or good intentions). Zionism: the belief in the Jewish right to revive self-determination in [at least part of] the indigenous, ancestral homeland of the Jewish people is an inherent element of Jewish heritage, not only because half of the world’s Jews live in and rely on the State of Israel for refuge and freedom, but because there would be no Jewish people without the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel, over 3,000 years ago. Zionism isn’t only part of Jewish heritage. It is a moral value to embrace — not an abstraction to feign estrangement from.

To drive the point home, out of 613 laws in Judaism, only around 270 can be practiced today outside the land of Israel. Observant Jews worldwide have prayed for return (some even attempting return) to Israel from forced exile by many empires for centuries (secular and religious alike). The hypocritical, numerically microscopic ultra-Orthodox faction of Neturei Karta (less than a third of one percent of world Jewry) have only around 100 members who actively protest against Israel and have many more who’ve returned to live in Israel — only denying the State of Israel’s right to exist until the arrival of the Messiah.

For thousands of years, Jews have practiced land-specific Israelite rituals, including in diaspora for holidays like Sukkot, Shavuot, Hanukkah, Tisha B’Av, Pesach (Passover), and more, focusing on our connection with the land of Israel, its sacredness, the capital of Jerusalem, and our return. Among many more reasons, we can confidently affirm that Zionism is intrinsic to Jewish heritage.

Some Anti-Zionist Jews who actually recognize these innate ties, try to eliminate these parts of Jewish identity or try to fabricate new traditions in their place. Saying the mourner’s kaddish for neutralized armed Palestinian terrorists, performing justice Havdallah ceremonies in daylight while widely known to be meant for nighttime, manipulating the traditional Passover seder to omit the Exodus and the age-old saying “L’shanah ha’ba’ah bi’Yerushalayim” (“Next Year in Jerusalem!”), redacting mentions of the word “Israel” in Jewish siddurim (prayer books) and texts are but a fraction of losing practices. Ultimately, these are all losing practices because there is nothing that can save “The Good Jews” from antisemites.

What we’ve learned is that Anti-Zionism, like many fads of antisemitic and totalitarian conformity, is futile. No matter the alibi at the time or the place in question, to the antisemite, it’s not just about our insistence on specific elements of particularity and peoplehood that will never be acceptable, it’s about our existence at all. (h/t L_King)

How the Palestinians got their name

Before Israel was founded, several prominent Jewish and Zionist organizations used the name “Palestine.” These included The Palestine Post newspaper and the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, which are now The Jerusalem Post and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

At the time, many Arabs in British Mandatory Palestine considered themselves part of Greater Syria rather than “Palestinians.” In 1937, a local Arab leader told the Palestine Royal Commission, “There is no such country [as Palestine]. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented! Our country for centuries was part of Syria.”

Arab historian Philip Hitti echoed this sentiment shortly before Israel declared independence, saying, “There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not.”

The watershed moment for the “Palestinian” national movement came after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel won control of Judea and Samaria from Jordan. The words of author Walid Shoebat of Bethlehem sum up the profound shift in local Arabs’ identity: “On June 4, 1967, I was a Jordanian, and overnight I became a Palestinian.”

Since 1967, a whole national mythology has been created around the terms “Palestine” and “Palestinian.” For example, the Palestinian Arabs have claimed to be descendants of the Canaanites who preceded the ancient Israelites and Philistines in the Holy Land.

In 2018, Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas told the United Nations’ Security Council, “We are the descendants of the Canaanites that lived in the land 5,000 years ago and continued to live there to this day.”

But most Palestinians trace their origins to prominent tribes in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Egypt. Yasser Arafat was born in Egypt. Even the Kanaan family in Nablus (Shechem) traces its ancestry to Syria. In any case, the Canaanites had disappeared more than 1,600 years before the Arabs first arrived in the Holy Land.

Preposterously, Palestinians have even asserted that Jesus was a Palestinian. In a 2013 Christmas message, Abbas called Jesus a “Palestinian messenger.” In 2019, Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour posted on Twitter, “Jesus was a Palestinian of Nazareth.”

We beg the pardon of Mr. Abbas and his fellow fantasists, but Jesus was a Jew from Judea, which was named Judea because it was and still is the homeland of the Jewish people.

While the Arabs of the region are free to call themselves whatever they want, they are not free to hijack the 3,000-year history of the Holy Land for themselves. In the end, the name “Palestine” represents the Jews’ original dispossession of their homeland 1,900 years ago.

Saudi, Tunisia, Sudanese and Somali delegates meet in Israel for security conference

From i24 News:

More than 20 guests from different Arab Gulf and African countries arrived in Israel on Wednesday for a historic visit to Jerusalem, where they will discuss a range of issues that pertain to regional links with the Jewish state.

Among these guests, some of whom were from countries with which Israel does not have diplomatic relations, were representatives of think tanks, institutes of applied diplomacy, and journalists, Ynetnews reported. They participated in a three-day conference, initiated by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, focused on Israel's relations with the countries of Africa and the Gulf region.

Representatives of Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Djibouti, Tunisia, Mauritania, and Sudan - states that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel - were among those at the forum, as well as envoys from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Somaliland, South Africa, South Sudan, and Uganda.

To have delegates from Tunisia and Saudi Arabia is not a small thing.

Arab media and social media are filled with these photos of the delegates:

Topics discussed included the war on terrorism and radicalization, water desalination, food safety and the war on hunger.

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!

03/31 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: America’s outrageous attack on Netanyahu’s right to govern; IDF: 1 year of Operation Break the Wave; Arabs Chant in Support of Hamas at Temple Mount

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: America’s outrageous attack on Netanyahu’s right to govern

Whatever one thinks about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, any true Israeli patriot will surely react viscerally to U.S. President Joe Biden’s outrageous attack on Israel’s right to govern itself without foreign interference.

On Monday, Netanyahu announced he was suspending his coalition’s judicial reform legislation in order to negotiate a compromise with the opposition.

The next day, Biden told Netanyahu to “walk away” from the legislation, saying he was “very concerned” about the health of Israeli democracy. Warning that Israel “cannot continue down this road,” he added for good measure that he wouldn’t be inviting Netanyahu to the White House “in the near term.”

It is deeply disturbing that the U.S. should brazenly and insultingly interfere in the internal affairs of another country and tell its prime minister how to behave. Biden was supposedly speaking as Israel’s friend, but he sounded like a colonial administrator barking at the natives to fall into line.

While Likud politicians hit the roof, left-wing and centrist politicians and commentators got behind Biden and kicked Netanyahu even more viciously in the head.

After three months of mass protests, incitement to hysteria and ludicrous hyperbole about the end of democracy that have caused Israel untold social, financial and reputational damage, those who shared responsibility for the crisis took their cue from Biden and blamed Netanyahu instead.

Benny Gantz, leader of the National Unity party, called Biden’s comments “an urgent wake-up call for the Israeli government,” which he accused of delivering a “strategic blow” to Israel’s ties with the U.S.

One of his MKs, Gideon Sa’ar, declared, “Never has any government caused such immense damage to the country in such a short time.” He called Likud politicians’ objection to Biden’s unprecedented foreign interference “a total loss of judgment.”

This is all straight out of the Palestinian Arabs’ Orwellian playbook: Subject Israel to aggression and then blame Israel for causing that aggression by choosing to exist.

Matthew Continetti: Biden’s Mideast Mess

Think it’s impossible to screw up two countries at once? You’ve never seen President Joe Biden in action.

On March 27, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his government would pause the progress through the Knesset of a controversial judicial bill until later this spring. Netanyahu’s decision came after weeks of mounting street protests over the reform, which would allow the legislature to rein in the judiciary. Military reservists stopped reporting for duty. Israel’s largest union declared a general strike. U.S. officials were critical.

So, when Netanyahu suspended the measure, U.S. ambassador to Israel Tom Nides welcomed the move. Asked when Netanyahu might visit President Biden in the White House, Nides said: "I’m sure he’ll be coming relatively soon."

Nides didn’t check with his boss. He extended an open hand to Israel’s elected leader. Biden slapped it down. On March 28, during a visit to North Carolina, the president spoke to reporters. Calling himself a "strong supporter of Israel," Biden said he was nonetheless concerned that Israelis "get this straight. They can’t continue down this road"—the road, presumably, of a democratic majority following due process of law. A reporter asked Biden if he’d be welcoming Netanyahu in Washington. "Not in the near term," Biden replied.

Some friend. No matter your opinion of the judicial reform—and there are plenty of committed Zionists who are leery of it—there is no question that Biden’s rebuke of Netanyahu was a breach in U.S.-Israel relations. Americans and Israelis scrambled to repair the damage. Netanyahu posted a Twitter thread underscoring his commitment to the alliance, while reminding Biden that Israel is a sovereign nation that will determine its own course. Or, as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir put it: "Israel is an independent country, not another star in the American flag." On March 29, White House national security spokesman John Kirby played down the differences as best he could.

Caroline Glick: A new phase in U.S.-Israel relations

Israel may be better off paying for U.S. military platforms out of its own pocket and transforming its relationship from that of a client into one of a partner in defense technology development. On March 13, the U.S. Air Force conducted another unsuccessful test of one of the two hypersonic missiles it is developing. Washington may or may not want Israel’s help with its hypersonic missile program, which is lagging far behind China and Russia’s programs. But Israel is probably the only U.S. ally capable of helping. Certainly, under the present circumstances, Israel’s relationship with the United States will be more secure if it is based on collaboration in areas of mutual interest rather than dependence.

With the U.S. position on issues of critical importance to Israel—first and foremost, Iran and the Palestinians, changing completely depending on the president’s partisan affiliation— Israel needs to stop relying on America on issues that require continuous, high-intensity cooperation.

Building interest-based partnerships with other nations
This brings us to the second difference between the new phase we have entered in U.S.-Israel ties and de Gaulle’s breach of Franco-Israeli ties in the 1960s. When the French leader turned on Israel, Israel had the United States more or less at the ready, willing to replace France as Israel’s superpower ally. Today, Israel has no alternative waiting in the wings.

But it may not need one. Israel is much more powerful today than it was in the 1960s. It doesn’t need a protector; it needs partners. Beginning in 2013, Netanyahu began a process of building interest-based partnerships with nations across the region and across the world. These relationships with states in the region and worldwide already form the nucleus of a strategic posture that can secure Israel’s position.

Biden’s statement on Tuesday was roundly applauded by Israeli leftists hell-bent on overthrowing Netanyahu’s government. They would do well to think this through. Sure, Biden has issues with Netanyahu. But the policies Biden pursues vis-à-vis Iran and the Palestinians work to Israel’s strategic disadvantage regardless of who is in power, as his strong-arming of Lapid on the Hezbollah gas deal made clear.

Biden is not de Gaulle, in stature or in influence. American support for Israel is diminishing in some quarters. Still, it remains strong overall. Much can be done to change the situation for the better. And Israel is a powerful, wealthy nation with viable alternatives to strategic dependence on the United States.

This has been a bad week for Israel-U.S. relations, but it isn’t cause for despair. Rather, it is cause for a sober-minded reassessment and rearrangement of Israel’s relations with America to bring them in line with current realities.