Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 16, 2023

04/16 Links: Israel’s Worst Mistake; Anti-Zionism as a prerequisite for antisemitism; All About the Benjamin; 80 years of renewed Jewish life in Gush Etzion celebrated

We are fast approaching Sept. 13, 2023, which will mark 30 years since the Oslo Accords were signed on the White House lawn under the auspices of then-President Bill Clinton.

It was one of the worst mistakes Israel has made over its 75 years of statehood. The Accords elevated arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat into a statesman, but he never changed his stripes. Israel has suffered immensely since Arafat and his minions were given diplomatic status and legitimized.

Since the Oslo Accords were signed, at least 1,661 Israelis have been murdered in terror attacks. Many more have been wounded. Sixty-four Americans have been killed by Palestinian terrorists as well. Not a whisper from the State Department.

The Oslo Accords were by no means accepted by a clear majority of Israelis. Shimon Peres convinced two members of the right-wing Tzomet Party, Gonen Segev and Alex Goldfarb, to vote for the Accords. They were given ministerial positions in return.

Had Segev and Goldfarb voted with the rest of their party, the Oslo Accords would have never come to be. The Tzomet Party was led by true right-winger Rafael Eitan and how Segev and Goldfarb could have broken ranks still troubles me 30 years later.

Israelis by and large see the Oslo Accords as a mistake, but Israel continues to fall prey to the same type of thinking that brought them into existence. Giving guns to terrorists is always a bad idea, but this was precisely what Israel did. The consequences have been tragic and devastating: More than twice as many Israelis were murdered from 1993 to the present as from 1967 to 1993.

Anti-Zionism as a prerequisite for antisemitism

THOSE WHO deny Israel’s very right to exist use classic, age-old, cruelly outlandish antisemitic tropes when referring to Israel or hold Israel to different standards than they hold other nations and are crossing over into antisemitism. These are clear criteria but an issue remains: many people do not even know what Zionism is.

Critiquing Israel doesn’t mean you’re an anti-Zionist. No one opposes Russia’s right to exist following the invasion of Ukraine or the United States’ right to exist following Trump’s Muslim ban. Even Iran is spared despite the regime’s danger to the world. Criticizing a country’s actions does not mean opposing its very existence and advocating for its destruction.

That is exactly what Zionism is: the belief in Israel’s right to exist; specifically, the support for Jewish self-determination in the ancestral home of the Jewish people, Israel (a.k.a. Zion). Being a Zionist does not require supporting Netanyahu or annexation of the West Bank. Nor does it require unequivocally supporting all of Israel’s actions. It simply means supporting Israel’s existence as the revived homeland of the Jews.

Zionism is the modern-day manifestation of the over two-thousand-year-old Jewish aspirations to return home. Despite what some think, it doesn’t ignore the existence or legitimacy of Palestinians. The founders of the political Zionist movement were secular socialists who deeply believed in peace and prosperity for all peoples of the land.

Many Jews and Israelis support the self-determination and aspirations of the Palestinian people, as well. Zionism has always been a diverse spectrum but the common denominator is the support for the existence of a Jewish state in the indigenous 3500-year-old homeland of the Jewish people.

Zionists get to define their own word. Just as Jews get to define when they feel threatened (antisemitism); Black people get to define anti-Black racism and Muslims get to define Islamophobia. So, if you are anti-Zionist and deny the Jewish people the right to self-determination – a right you support for all other peoples – then you are antisemitic. If more people understood that, there would be fewer people identifying as anti-Zionists and there would simply be people critical of aspects of Israel.

Anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism; not always out of ill intent but often from ignorance to a term regularly spewed but rarely defined clearly.

All About the Benjamin

There are few world leaders these days who have served in their country’s military, fewer still who have seen active service, and, as far as I am aware, just one who has taken part in a successful operation to free a planeload of hostages from a band of terrorists, getting himself shot in the arm in the process.

In case you didn’t know that, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, makes sure you’re apprised in the very first pages of Bibi: My Story, his compellingly told memoir of a lifetime in politics, business, diplomacy, and a lot of shooting wars.

In 1972 he led a group of special forces soldiers in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit of the Israeli military in a raid on a hijacked Sabena plane that had been diverted to an airport outside Tel Aviv, Israel. He recounts with evident pride how he tussled with his older brother Yoni, also in the elite unit, who wanted to pull rank on him and lead the raid himself. Bibi resisted, and prevailed.

It’s easy to see why he begins with this story. It's kinetic and cinematic, freighted with daring rescues and fraternal rivalries. (Tragically, Yoni was killed four years later in another successful Israeli operation—the rescue of the hostages on board an Air France flight at Entebbe airport in Uganda.)

But the story is a proper beginning in another sense.

"To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was 20," Napoleon is supposed to have said. Netanyahu was 23 during the Sabena operation, but he had been serving in Israel’s military for more than three years; and you don't have to be a committed determinist to see his subsequent career as a long, steady unspooling of the tightly wound fiber of the young man in those early days of conflict. Here it all was: patriotism, courage, fierce competitiveness, cunning, a not-insignificant amount of headstrong, gung-ho, screw you impetuosity: a man with few doubts about his cause, passion for his allies, and pure enmity for his enemies.

Seth Frantzman points out the hate behind the Foreign Affairs "one state" article

This Twitter thread by Seth Frantzman is too important to leave to Twitter alone.

_____________________________________________________________________

It was interesting to once again read an article about “one state” and see how it relies on the same false premises as the previous recent claims regarding this at HRW, Amnesty, etc; very similar language employed to advance the theory

The key sentence to always look for is “river to the sea” which is a classic far-right extreme national Palestinian talking point that has always asserted that Palestine must be “river to the sea” to remove Israel from the map

This is important because the “river to the sea” is not a policy Israel has pushed, it’s solely a talking point historically of Palestinian extreme nationalism. And it’s all about Gaza. The key focus is always to force Israel to reoccupy Gaza

It’s important to always be keyed into what is going on in these articles. Israel withdrew from Gaza but the goal of the “River to sea” Hamas movement and extreme nationalists was always to continue to define Gaza as “occupied”

This was a lesson of the withdrawal. It didn’t matter if Israel withdrew and kept withdrawing, because it would always be defined as “occupying” so as to keep the “River to sea” narrative.

It’s an important phrase to look for, because when we hear “one state” this is never about a one state of equality, this is solely about creating one Palestinian state from “the River to the sea” like every map used in a Hamas classroom.

The bait and switch with any article on “one state” is it pretends to be about getting rights for Palestinians, but ignores the fact that Israelis also deserve rights and Israelis don’t want to run Gaza or “the River to the sea”

What’s interesting is the article suggests the US seek to terminate Israel’s military rule…except when Israel has ended military rule, like leaving Gaza…the “River to the sea” crowd demand Israel re-occupy or define it as occupying anyway.

This is a key point. Because under Oslo the PA received autonomous areas run by a U.S.-backed Palestinian Security Force…but the goal of “River to the sea” is to make sure Israel returns to military rule in Ramallah. It doesn’t want more withdrawal.

Now look at the bait and switch…they want an end to military rule. But also say “River to the sea” and then say “equality”. How do they suggest Israel will return to rule Gaza which is run by Hamas except via military force…but then bring in equality?

Of course another part of the scam of “River to the sea” is to turn Hamas into just a random organization that “brooks little dissent” ; whereas Israel is described as having the most harsh draconian rule…of course no mention that Hamas is a far right extremist hate group

I just wonder if under the term “brooks little dissent” is included mass murder ethnic cleansing genocidal hate crimes that Hamas carried out? All the bus bombings were just “not brooking dissent”. No mention of rockets that can go 100km…

Anyway, back to the premise. To get to the “River to the sea” and reoccupation of Gaza the claim has to be made that this is all a single state, which it is not. Anyone who drives from Tel Aviv to Ramallah and Gaza knows it’s not one state

Nevertheless we get sentences like this…is the Gaza-Egypt border controlled by Israel? It’s not right? So the whole premise is based always on bad information. Israel doesn’t control all entry points to Gaza. But the whole premise is based on Israel controlling Gaza

And we can see how problematic this is by just looking at how the same publication ran an article on Nagorna-Karabakh above the same piece…but that conflict is described totally differently.

When they discuss that conflict somehow the same logic and standards about controlling the entry of goods and people isn’t applied…so we can see that the analysis about Israeli control is solely applied to Israel to force Israel to re-occupy Gaza

The irony of the push for one state today is that Israel is MORE divided from the West Bank Palestinian Authoriry areas and Gaza than in the past. This isn’t the 1980s…Gaza and the WB have been ruled by Hamas and the PA for more than a generation.

Think about it. Someone born in Gaza in 2005 is now 18 years old. And this “River to the sea” nonsense suggests that they will be under one state along with Tel Aviv? How? How would that happen?

Israel was told to withdraw. It did withdraw from Gaza and all it got was Hamas and rocket fire and endless attacks and Iran exploiting the withdrawal to send in middle tech; and it was told even if it withdraws it still “occupies”

The goal of “River to the sea” was always to prevent Israel leaving. The more Israel leaves, the more it is told it is one state. Because the goal was always One Palestinian State. Greater Palestine. Not two states.

Here is the piece in full

Let me add a few more aspects to this. When people push for one state of “equality” but without “military rule” they premise this on everyone being peaceful. These ideas, like “federation” might work in some place living in peace and coexistence, like in parts of the EU…

But how can anyone force Israel and Hamas in Gaza under one state? It doesn’t make sense, it is trying to force groups to live together that have grown apart and despise one another.

The one state people are purposely naive. They know Gaza can’t be ruled by the same polity that rules Tel Aviv and Ramallah and Jerusalem. They know this. These people would suggest turning Serbia and Kosovo into one state…

The lie of one state is like suggesting that after years of brutal war, like in Ukraine, that somehow Ukraine and Russia and Belarus will be “one state”…it’s so ridiculous…and yet the theory keeps getting play because no one has to answer tough questions

The theory is based on so many false premises, the worst of which is trying to force Israel to reconquer Gaza to force it into one state…but mostly it’s based on a lie that ignores the reality of division on the ground. It purposely ignores this

The reason they don’t mention Iran arming Hamas or rockets or bus bombings is because to get to one state one has to ignore the extremist hate rhetoric that underpins much of Hamas rule and the PA. When people are educated for hate for generations how can they be one state

These articles always are tough on Israel right wing government but they don’t ask questions about the far-right in Ramallah and Gaza, to get to one state how does anyone suggest forcibly putting together groups that viscerally oppose one another?

In essence the program is for civil war, and that’s why River to the sea was always the motto, just like in 1947…it was about removing the desire of two groups for two states to force one state on them. They didn’t want it in 1947 or today.

One could argue the one state lobby is a colonial lobby designed to create new states like in the eras of the past where lines would arbitrarily be drawn and peoples forced together, wars resulting.

Although this article falls under the overall context of opinion and analysis…it still deserved fact checking regarding who controls the Gaza - Egypt border; it’s misleading to claim Israel controls it and on this hinges a key part of the one state argument.

I also double checked the piece and couldn’t find any reference to Egypt throughout. How can you mention Gaza and not Egypt? Also Iran is mentioned only twice…kind of ridiculous considering it helped massively arm Hamas and this caused the Gaza blockade

How can anyone suggest Israel must control all this area and extend equal citizenship to everyone but not mention that a foreign power is plowing weapons in that prevent this very thing…it’s deceptive and misleading

It’s also interesting how the logic always applied to Israel is never applied to any other “occupation” like Afrin (no one demands Ankara extend equal rights there)…never used as analysis for any other disputed area or autonomous region or conflict.

Also it’s interesting how they claim Israel is one of the most “illiberal” states but of course they never see that in other states the prioritize the rights of one group over others like Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, etc. they only find this in Israel…

I’d be more willing to accept articles like this if these folk were also writing about how Kurds deserve equal rights and Ankara shouldn’t occupy Afrin and Yugoslavia should be one state again or whatever…but it’s never consistent. It’s only about Israel “River to the sea”

Also if these kinds of articles treated Hamas as the far right extremist Greater Palestine organization that it is…instead of always claiming Israel’s right is extreme but downplaying Palestinian nationalist far rightism.

Another assertion in the piece that rings hollow is critiquing the Abraham Accords and monarchies that normalized…but somehow not minding those “thrones” that didn’t normalize in Doha or Kuwait…like one monarchy bad, others good…be consistent if you don’t like monarchies

You can’t be against authoritarianism when it makes peace with Israel “but doesn’t represent the people” but then not mention the authoritarians in Syria and Iran who also don’t represent “the people”. Which is it? Authoritarians are bad only when they normalize…

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 BBC's latest article on Christians in Jerusalem is a classic example of how antisemitism has been mainstreamed in today's "civilized" world.

The title is "Jerusalem Christians say attacks on the rise."

Walking in the footsteps of Jesus, huge crowds of Christian pilgrims have this month thronged Jerusalem's ancient streets where the Easter story unfolded.

"It's very emotional, I already cried a little," says Marina, who is visiting from Belgrade and joined the Orthodox Good Friday procession carrying a wooden cross. "It's something you have to feel to be here."

Local Christians also stand out as they join the devotions, with Palestinian and Armenian scout groups leading religious processions.

But in recent months, Christians living in the occupied East of the city say they have seen increased harassment and violence.

The first crime of omission is the biggest.

Palestinian Christians belong to the most extreme doctrinal antisemitic churches in the world. The Greek Melkite Church and the Greek Orthodox Church, which make up the majority of Jerusalem's Christians, still hold on to the classic Christian supersessionist philosophy that regards Judaism itself as an aberration. The most vicious doctrinal antisemitism in pre-Zionist Palestine came from local Christians, not Muslims, and in fact their antisemitism shaped modern Muslim Jew-hatred.

The church leaders in Jerusalem have been the most extreme anti-Zionists and antisemites, and have been deathly afraid of saying anything negative about the Muslims who have indeed been oppressing them for centuries. They have enthusiastically taken on the role of dhimmi and defended that second-class status assigned to them by the larger Muslim world.

When they say they are oppressed by Jews, one must be skeptical at the very least.

The main Christian interviewed by the BBC, Bishop William Shomali of the Latin Patriarchate, was quoted in a Vatican magazine in 2012 as saying, “The Talmud, the holy book studied by the ultra-orthodox, more highly venerated than the Bible itself, invites religious hatred, speaks badly of Jesus, and even worse of Mary and, in general, of Christians. In Israeli schools love for the other is not taught but rather the destruction of the other.”

This is pure antisemitism - with a dollop of anti-Zionism on the side.

The BBC then lists some recent examples of Jewish vandalism or disrespect towards Christian sites in Jerusalem. Some of them are legitimate - and the Israeli police arrested the perpetrators. One came from an American. There is no indication that things really are worse than in previous years outside of what the Jerusalem Arab Christians are claiming, and furthermore no proof outside of speculation that this alleged increase is a result of the current Israeli government making extremist Jews bolder.

The Talmud quote above was a response to anti-Christian graffiti in 2012, so there have always been extremist Jews who have attacked church property. They were outliers then and they are outliers now. Any blanket blame of all Jews or all Israel for the actions of a minority who act in opposition to Israeli policy is just another form of antisemitism - of generalizing the actions of a few to the larger population.

But the BBC's antisemitism is not only from quoting antisemites without context, which is bad enough. The reporter shows her own bias here:

The holy city of Jerusalem lies at the heart of the Christian faith. However, the number of Christians living here has dropped from a quarter of the population a century ago to under 2%. Many have emigrated, escaping the painful daily realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and seeking better opportunities elsewhere.

The clear implication is that Israeli policies are driving an exodus of Christians, and the article goes on to say that "Many Christians feel that the growing hostility towards them is meant to push them out."

However, if one looks at the demographic history of Jerusalem, one sees that the only major exodus of Christians came under Jordanian rule - from 19% of Jerusalem residents in 1944 to only 4% in 1967, with far more than half of the Christians of Jerusalem fleeing during those years.

The reason that the percentage has gone down from 4% to 2% today is not because of Israel forcing Christians out but because Israel expanded Jerusalem to include more Jews and more Muslims. In absolute terms, the Christian population has slowly grown in Jerusalem, and the only times it has ever gone down in history have been under Muslim rule. Indeed, Israel's Christians are overwhelmingly satisfied with living in Israel.

That paragraph shows that the BBC is not interested in the truth, but in anti-Israel and indeed antisemitic propaganda.

If the BBC had included any of the context mentioned here, it wouldn't have an article. So it airbrushes Muslim abuse of Christians and Palestinian Christian antisemitism out of the picture, leaving only an ugly lie that blame Jews as a nation for persecuting Christians.

(h/t Martin)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Palestinian dictator Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech to a number of dignitaries during a Ramadan Iftar meal on Saturday night at his presidential headquarters in Ramallah.

Part of his message was that the United Nations will officially commemorate for the first time, on May 15, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nakba.

Abbas said, "Commemorating the Nakba must be at the top of our priorities in order to preserve our narrative, which we must adhere to and convey to the whole world, which has become a shining truth with which we confront all lies and false narratives that attempt to distort history and facts."

His regard for truth included his saying "What we witnessed today in terms of attacks on our people celebrating the 'Sabbath of Light' in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in occupied Jerusalem, which was preceded by attacks on worshipers in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and the desecration of its courtyards, is something condemned and rejected, and it reveals the falsity of the occupation, which claims to allow freedom of worship in the Holy places."

In truth the Israeli police were enforcing agreements with the church officials and the Waqf for both those incidents.

The Nakba narrative that Abbas espouses is as false as everything else he says. But he has no disincentive to lie - after all, the UN really will commemorate the "nakba" on May 15 which will regard the establishment of the Jewish state in the wake of 2000 years of persecution of Jews to be an unparalleled evil.

The lying antisemites are winning, and the media and academia are happily colluding with 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!

04/15 Links: Meir Y. Soloveichik: The Miracle at 75; The ‘occupation’ myth is the engine of antisemitic terror; Kamala Harris Praises Unrepentant Anti-Semite Al Sharpton

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: The Miracle at 75

In 1949, nine months after the State of Israel was formally recognized by both U.S. President Truman and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, Britain refused to acknowledge the existence of the first Jewish commonwealth to appear on the earth in 2,000 years. The Labor foreign minister, Ernest Bevin, known for his antipathy to Zionism, refused to consider that a fledgling Jewish state should be of interest when it was opposed by so many countries that seemed to matter more to Britain. In response, the leader of the opposition, Winston Churchill, stood in Parliament and delivered one of his addresses for the ages. He accused Bevin of presentism, of maintaining a stunted historical perspective.

“Whether the right honorable gentleman likes it or not,” Churchill said, “the coming into being of a Jewish state in Palestine is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective, not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of a thousand, two thousand or even three thousand years. That is a standard of temporal values or time-values which seems very much out of accord with the perpetual click-clack of our rapidly changing moods and of the age in which we live. This is an event in world history.”

Churchill’s words are worth bearing in mind as we consider the contretemps over judicial reform in Israel as the nation moves toward the 75th anniversary of its inception. In the midst of all of the rancor, it is easy to overlook how remarkable, from a historical perspective, this anniversary actually is. It should be obvious, of course, that Israel’s birth was astounding: that, as Paul Johnson reflected in these pages, while 100 states came into being in the 20th century, only Israel’s birth counts as a miracle. But as we mark 75 years of a modern Jewish state, a study of history reveals another fascinating fact: This might be the most stable 75 years of government that the Jewish people have had in Jerusalem in all of Jewish history.

Can this be? Consider: Several thousand years ago, David first conquered Jerusalem and made it his capital and was soon after temporarily overthrown by his son Absalom. David was forced to flee the city, returning only after he had conquered and defeated his son’s forces. Solomon succeeded his father and ruled in peace and prosperity, whereupon the Israelite monarchy summarily split between kingdoms north and south, which is how the Holy Land remained until its conquest by Assyria and Babylon.

Declaring Independence, 75 Years Later

Amid the sturm und Drang surrounding the judicial reform proposals put forward by the new Israeli government, which many have called a “constitutional crisis,” the words of the Jewish state’s former attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, were especially telling. In decrying the proposed reforms and what would happen if they take effect, Mandelblit said, “What remains of the Declaration of Independence? It will just become a piece of paper we can throw in the trash.” Mandelblit’s reference to Israel’s Declaration of Independence sent me back to the text itself in search of answers. Just as I had remembered from my Zionist upbringing, which included regularly listening to David Ben-Gurion’s famous reading of the Declaration on May 15, 1948, Israel actually has no constitution, despite the fact that the Declaration promises one in the future.

A fascinating new book by Neil Rogachevsky and Dov Zigler tells the story of the writing of Israel’s Declaration of Independence and offers some insights into why, 75 years after its founding, Israel still has no written constitution. Israel’s Declaration of Independence offers readers a ringside seat. As in any good story, there is a hero, in this case David Ben-Gurion. Rogachevsky and Zigler tell the stirring story of how Israel’s first prime minister wrestled with earlier drafts of the Declaration in the final hours before he declared Israel’s statehood and, mediating among competing Zionist ideologies, put his own indelible imprint on the final document.

The book builds on the work of Yoram Shachar, who discovered the earliest draft of the Declaration, written in late April 1948 by a young government lawyer named Mordechai Beham. Rogachevsky and Zigler carefully trace the development of the Declaration from Beham’s draft through subsequent versions hastily composed by Tzvi Berenson, Herschel Lauterpacht, Moshe Shertok, and finally Ben-Gurion during the frenzied days before the British Mandate ended. Taken as a whole, the various versions offer readers a tour of the diverse and often competing political philosophies that framed the modern Zionist movement.

John Podhoretz: Who’s Actually Saving Democracy Here?

I said last month in this space that the Netanyahu government had been extraordinarily imprudent in the way it pursued its agenda—trying to ram through changes at lightning speed in a country where domestic policy had been pretty much frozen in place over the previous eight years. I think that opinion was borne out by Netanyahu’s decision to suspend the judicial-reform process and enter into negotiations to calm the roiling political waters.

He did so in large measure out of fear not of the demonstrations but of the effect of the demonstrations on the behavior of the nation’s military and reservists. Here Netanyahu showed a kind of pragmatic and necessary foresight he had lacked at the beginning. Just as he was doing so, Israel found itself challenged perhaps as never before by what appears to be a four-front assault—rockets from Gaza and Lebanon and terrorist attacks from the West Bank, all of it apparently directed by Iran.

The right that wants to disempower certain aspects of the nation’s judiciary and the left that is staging a revolution against Israel’s democracy supposedly in the name of preserving that democracy got wrapped up in their own melodramas over the past six months. And both seemed to have forgotten about the existential threat Israel has faced over the past 75 years from its enemies—and still faces today. Luckily for the nation he leads despite protestors shamefully likening him to Pharaoh on the eve of Passover, Netanyahu hasn’t.

04/14 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The real lesson for Israel from Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement

From Ian:

Mark Regev: Holocaust Remembrance Day: Did the Allies do enough to help the Jews?

The US and the Holocaust
America’s vital role in the defeat of Nazi Germany is unquestionable and can be readily appreciated firsthand by touring the Normandy beaches of the June 1944, D-Day landings – as I did in 2019 together with my daughter, an IDF officer.

Steven Spielberg’s epic Saving Private Ryan, which we watched again the night before the voyage from Plymouth to Le Havre, gives cinematic expression to the enormity of the Allied effort and to the immense sacrifice of American blood.

Here too my family has a personal debt. Until his death, my father celebrated April 13, the day in 1945 when the US Army’s 102nd infantry division entered Uetz and liberated him – in his words, “a very lucky day.”

But while America was instrumental in the victory over Germany, it is sometimes forgotten that Washington didn’t declare war on the Nazis – it was Hitler who declared war on the US.

Germany invaded Poland in September 1939; Denmark and Norway in April 1940; Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and France in May 1940; Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941; and the Soviet Union in June 1941. All the while, America remained neutral.

Although president Franklin Roosevelt backed the Brits in the 1940 Battle of Britain, the US was not a combatant, and to Churchill’s great chagrin, London had to pay for Washington’s Lend-Lease support.

American isolationism ended on December 7, 1941, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Hypothetically, just as the Soviets fought the Germans without fighting the Japanese, America could have fought the Japanese without fighting the Germans. But any strategic dilemma Washington faced was solved by the December 11, 1941, Nazi declaration of war.

Throughout, America maintained strict restrictions on the admittance of Jewish refugees – the State Department consistently opposed giving any priority to immigrants fleeing racial or religious persecution.

In 1939 alone, close to 300,000 German Jews applied for US visas, creating an 11-year waiting list.

Public opinion bolstered bureaucratic callousness. A 1938 poll showed that 82% of Americans opposed admitting larger numbers of Jewish refugees.

The voyage of the St. Louis was emblematic of the situation. Carrying 937 refugees, the ship sailed from Hamburg for the Western Hemisphere, but was denied entry to Canada, Cuba, and the US. Despite a campaign by Jewish organizations, Washington refused to budge, and the vessel was forced to return to Europe, where many of its ill-fated passengers ended up in the camps.

On April 4, 1944, Auschwitz was first overflown by US reconnaissance aircraft. Over the following months, American bombers conducted a series of operations in proximity to the notorious death camp, including raids upon nearby oil refineries and industrial targets.

In parallel, from May 15 to July 9, 1944, Hungarian Jews were being transported en masse to Auschwitz: 45 cattle cars per train, 4 trains per day, 12,000 Jews in a single day – 424,000 gassed in total.

Reports about the mass murder at Auschwitz had been broadcast by the BBC (June 15, 1944) and published in The New York Times (June 20, 1944). Yet despite the activity of American bombers in the immediate vicinity, no attempt was made to destroy the extermination facilities or the rail lines leading to them.

Surely, this history also deserves a place in our national memory.

JPost Editorial: Israel must reassess its handling of Holocaust school trips to Poland

Yad Vashem issued a statement stating that the group trips must maintain “complete historical accuracy, including the role of Poles in the persecution, handing in, and murder of Jews during the Holocaust, as well as in acts of rescue... We believe that all educational visits from Israel to Poland in the future will be conducted accordingly.”

There are many educational facilities and sites within Israel that can provide excellent background material and preparation for the trips, addressing the unique relevance to young Israelis.

Care should be taken to ensure that today’s youth realize the true scope and aims of the Nazis: to destroy the entire Jewish people. Most of the Holocaust took place in Europe because it spread from Nazi Germany. The Nazis established many of their concentration camps in Poland, which it had invaded. Nonetheless, the Shoah was not only an attempt to eradicate European Jewry, but world Jewry – Jews wherever they were found. Sephardic Jews were killed in Greece, Libya, Tunisia and elsewhere, and if the Nazis had had their way, millions more Jews would have been murdered. The Holocaust was not an atrocity against Ashkenazi Jews but against Jews, period.

The role of Righteous Gentiles – those brave people, in Poland and elsewhere, who risked their own lives to save Jews – needs to be acknowledged, along with the fact that they were the minority. That is what makes their acts so courageous and commendable. The complicity of locals willing to help destroy Jewish communities and kill Jewish neighbors should not be overlooked.

Finally, the trips must be affordable for all. No student should be denied the chance to travel to see the sites where the Nazi atrocities took place for lack of funds. At the same time, there needs to be a greater effort to prevent the trips from turning into a shallow experience – they should not be considered glorified, fun school trips.

As we approach Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, we should take the opportunity to reassess how Israel handles Holocaust education and commemoration – not in response to Polish demands, but for Israel’s own sake.

Melanie Phillips: The real lesson for Israel from Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement

The Democrats appear to think that, as with Israel, they have the right to dictate a particular outcome in Northern Ireland. Despite their pieties about “peace,” that outcome is clearly a united Ireland—an agenda that constitutes a direct attack on the identity and integrity of the United Kingdom.

Early last week, Clinton and Gerry Adams topped the bill at what the Spectator described as a “grand back-slapping affair for Sinn Féin and their unnamed comrades” in New York to celebrate 25 years of the Good Friday Agreement.

The event organizer, Marty Glennon, spelled out that the true purpose of the agreement was “the reunification of Ireland.” After expressing satisfaction at the way the unionists were continuing to lose to the republicans, Clinton added that even so, “we need to finish the job there.”

For his part, after delivering in Belfast some meaningless platitudes about peace, Biden proceeded to insult Britain. After no more than a coffee with Sunak and a brief meeting with local party leaders, Biden departed for two full days in the Irish Republic where he loudly lauded everything and said he felt he was “coming home.” For good measure, he also snubbed the coronation of King Charles III on May 6 by announcing that he would be absent and that his wife would be present instead.

That’s how Biden is treating America’s most significant ally in the west. When it comes to Israel, America’s only true ally in the Middle East, arrogant magical thinking moves closer to outright malevolence.

For the Biden administration continues to ignore the Palestinians’ murderous agenda of exterminating Israel. It continues to fund the Palestinian Authority despite its “pay-for-slay” policy of rewarding terrorists’ families for killing Israelis. It refuses to hold the P.A. to account for inciting violence over fabricated threats to Temple Mount. Instead, it threatens Israel not to take the action that’s needed to protect Israeli lives and Jewish human rights.

It has displayed its disapproval that Benjamin Netanyahu is Israel’s prime minister by failing to invite him to the White House. It has interfered in Israel’s internal row over judicial reform by issuing not-so-veiled threats if Netanyahu doesn’t abandon the policy.

Privileging murderous aggressors over their victims, America continues to interfere in the affairs of other sovereign nations like high-handed colonial administrators.

The outstanding similarity between Northern Ireland and Israel is that the Biden administration is treating its two principal global allies like dirt while continuing to empower the enemies of civilization.

Joe Biden poses for a selfie with alleged IRA member and former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams - after his advisors scrambled to insist he was NOT anti-British

Joe Biden on Thursday posed for a selfie with Gerry Adams, the former leader of Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, in yet another blow to his advisors scrambling to insist that he is not anti-British.

Adams has spent his life trying to secure a united Ireland, and end British rule in the North. Despite years of rumors, Adams has always denied any membership with the IRA and has refuted any involvement in their terror campaign during the decades of the Troubles.

Biden addressed a joint session of parliament at Leinster House in Dublin, delivering a speech he said was 'to reflect on the enduring strength of the connections between Ireland and the United States, a partnership for the ages.'

Among those listening was Adams, the 74-year-old former Sinn Fein leader, who has known Biden for many years.

Adams, who stood down as Sinn Fein chief in 2018 after 30 years, posted a selfie of the pair together, captioned: 'A President Biden Selfie.'

The selfie does little to help White House aides, who insisted on Wednesday that Biden is 'not anti-British'.

This is an 1586 map of Israel.

And here is a 1588 map of Jerusalem.

Every couple of days the anti-Israel idiots find a map that says "Palestine" and not Israel, pretending that when the mapmakers wrote Palestine, they meant something other than the Land of Israel.

These maps are probably older than the ones they post, so you can respond with these.

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!

04/14 Links Pt1: Ruthie Blum: Is Hamas smelling Israeli weakness?; Orthodox Jewish group: ‘Lapid delegitimizing not just Israeli government, but Israel itself’

From Ian:

David Collier: Hate in the shadow of a terrorist attack

Whenever they occur terrorist attacks are met with global sympathy – except of course when they happen to Jews in Israel. But even for those of us who have become used to the blatant double standards, loaded headlines, and insincere commentary that regularly accompany these tragic events, the raw hate that we saw following the tragic events of last Friday still took us by surprise.

The Brutal terrorist attack
The Dee family had moved from London to Israel in 2014, and went to live in Efrat, a town situated in the Etzion bloc between Jerusalem and Hebron. The family held dual citizenship, and the father Leo, had once been the Rabbi at the Radlett synagogue in Hertfordshire.

On Friday, 7 April 2023, during the Pesach break, the family set off for a holiday to Lake Kinneret. They split into separate cars for the journey. As the car carrying the mother, Lucy and two daughters Maia (20) and Rina (15) reached Hamra Junction, it was attacked by Palestinian terrorists. Once the driver had been injured and the car had crashed, the terrorists walked up to the car and shot all three at point blank range. Maia and Rina were killed immediately. The mother, Lucy died three days later in hospital.

The natural response is heartbreak
This was a family torn apart in a brutal killing by Palestinian terrorists. Lucy and her two daughters had their lives stolen from them by hate-filled people who believe that killing Jews is a religious duty. The ideology of the terrorists is the same warped religious ideology that massacred innocent people in Manchester, London, Paris, Nice, Madrid, Brussels, New York, Berlin and 100s of other places around the world. They all had their excuses. The father, and the remaining children will somehow need to pick up the pieces and it is almost impossible for any normal person not to feel heartbreak for those that are left behind.

With the Jews it is different – even from the mainstream
Whenever terrorist attacks such as this occur there is usually a united outpouring of sympathy. Across the globe, landmarks and famous buildings are lit up with the colours of the victim country – as a means of standing in solidarity in their moment of heartbreak.

Charlie Hebdo solidarity
Except of course when it happens to Jews in Israel. At best we see a few meaningless words of condemnation from key political figures, but even these can be wrapped up in talk of ‘violence on both sides’ – thus equating Jews who are defending themselves against terrorism with the death cult of the terrorists.

Newspapers also rush to ‘blame the victim’, with most editors making sure they write the word ‘occupied‘, more often than they inserted humanising details about the innocent civilians that were murdered. Outlets like the Guardian stayed true to form and spent more time bashing Israel than criticising the terrorists.

Imagine for a minute an article about the Manchester Arena bombing focusing on what the UK and US did in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan rather than the young concert goers who were massacred at the venue. Salman Ramadan Abedi was an angry terrorist personally caught up in the devastation of Libya, but not a sane newspaper editor in the western world would have tried to rationalise his actions in the way that Palestinian terrorism is always excused. Had one done so, it is doubtful his newspaper would have survived.

The murder of Jews is treated differently. Somehow the media always finds a way to suggest we deserved it. And let us be honest here, the only reason this attack even got the limited attention that it did – is because the victims held a dual British citizenship.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar: ‘Death to Israel’: The Iranian plan to attack Israel

From the point of view of the West, the loss of Israel would not be so terrible, because in any case the Middle East turned its back on the West when Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners—countries much more important than Israel—decided to turn their backs on the weak Western coalition and join the strong and growing Eastern Alliance that includes Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and more.

The Iranian government is very impressed by the continued desire of the Americans in particular and the West in general to appease them, lift the sanctions and accept it as a respected member of the family of nations, while demonstrably ignoring the Iranian race towards the bomb. This Western behavior instills in the hearts of the decision makers in Iran the feeling that no one in the West will do anything on the practical, military level to stop an air and ground attack on Israel such as the one described above.

The U.S. forces deployed in eastern Syria are meant to protect American interests, not Israeli ones, and Iran has already demonstrated several times that it has no problem attacking these American forces with missiles and drones. The American administration knows the negative attitude of the liberal majority of American Jewry towards Israel, particularly in recent months, and therefore is not afraid it will pay too great a public and political price if it allows Israel to deal with the Iranian invasion on its own. Biden will of course declare to the cameras that “Israel has the right to defend itself,” but he will try not to take actual steps.

A coordinated missile and UAV attack is not a theory; Iran has already done this in Saudi Arabia, on Sept. 14, 2019, and this attack caused enormous damage to Saudi Arabia’s oil export capacity, reducing it for many months. This was probably the reason for Saudi Arabia’s avoidance of joining the Abraham Accords and a factor that pushed Saudi Arabia into recently abandoning the understandings it had with Israel and joining the Iranian camp. The United States under Trump’s presidency, and Europe, did nothing against Iran following the attack in 2019, so it is certain that today they will do nothing when Biden is the president.

I don’t know how realistic this scenario of an air and ground attack on Israel is, but even if the chance of it happening in the foreseeable future is only one percent, the State of Israel must act as one united entity, and it is very important that the coalition work with the opposition in order to prepare the country and military for this scenario.

If the Israeli public wants to survive, it must prepare—mentally and physically—for war with the Iranian octopus that has managed to establish its grip on Gaza and the failed countries adjacent to Israel: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen—all countries that have almost nothing to lose. Qatari money and the jihad media channel Al Jazeera are constantly pouring jet fuel on the fire of hatred for Israel and preparing public opinion in the Middle East and the wider world for the great, final campaign.

Qatari money has also bought Western politicians so that they would not see what Qatar does not want them to see, from the violation of human rights and foreign workers in Qatar to what Qatar’s ally—Iran—is planning to do to Israel.

It’s time to wake up. This dangerous scenario may be realistic.

Ruthie Blum: Is Hamas smelling Israeli weakness?

In a 2004 Israel TV interview on their newly published book about the Second Intifada, co-authors Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel recounted the purpose of the joint endeavor and what their research uncovered. Expressing amazement at their findings, show host Meni Pe’er (who died a decade later) pointed in particular to their research on suicide bombings.

“Yes,” said Issacharoff. “In The Seventh War: How We Won and Why We Lost the War with the Palestinians, we tried to examine the thinking of Hamas, not merely that of the Palestinian mainstream.”

To do this, the two Israeli correspondents and commentators on Arab and Middle East affairs spoke to senior Hamas officials. Among these was Sheikh Hassan Yousef.

Yousef, a co-founder and spiritual leader of the terrorist organization, spent several stints in Israeli prisons. Today, he is in charge of the group’s West Bank (Judea and Samaria) operations.

According to Issacharoff, Yousef explained that one of Hamas’s goals in its overall pursuit of the Jewish state’s ultimate destruction had been to foment and enhance internecine Israeli strife. Evidence of a schism on which the organization could build, Yousef told the authors, lay in calls on the part of the Israeli Left for a complete withdrawal from Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, and for IDF soldiers and reservists to refuse to serve in those territories.

It was the latter, above all, he said, that buoyed Hamas to keep up its suicide attacks on Israelis. A revelation that has eluded all trying to boycott IDF service to protest judicial reforms

THIS REVELATION, which is just as pertinent now as it was then, must have eluded all those defending current ultimatums by “conscientious objectors” to boycott military duty if the government reforms the judicial system. Furthermore, the argument that such threats aren’t emanating solely from the Left, but are voiced from a cross-section of concerned patriots, is as irrelevant as the claims that Israel is on the verge of becoming a theocratic dictatorship are false.

Ditto for the assertion that the judicial reform process is responsible for Israel’s appearing weak in the eyes of its enemies. In fact, it’s the well-oiled protest movement – commandeered by formerly prominent figures promoting the demonization of the powers-that-be in Jerusalem – that’s been signaling instability.

And Hamas, like its patrons in Iran, is paying close attention to what it perceives, or at least hopes, is Israel’s imminent implosion. The timing of its rocket barrages last weekend from launchers in Gaza and Lebanon, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, wasn’t accidental. The terror masters observed with glee as the Israeli “resistance” reacted to this move by shutting down the economy.

They were undoubtedly even more pleased to see Netanyahu resolve the problem by pausing judicial-reform legislation to enable dialogue and compromise with the opposition. Not that Hamas gives a hoot about the balance of power among the three branches of government in a democracy.

Nor does it distinguish between one Jewish defense minister, or political party, and another. Yet it definitely grasps the benefits of a deeply divided “Zionist entity,” which is why the demonstrations spurred it to test Israeli resolve and IDF strength in the face of salvos from different directions.

Issacharoff – who created the hit Netflix series, Fauda, along with its star, Lior Raz – might agree with this assessment if his antipathy for Netanyahu’s ruling coalition weren’t so great. The same applies to Harel, with whom he also wrote the 2008 book, 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah, and the War in Lebanon.