Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Iran, Where They Out-BDS the BDS Movement (Daled Amos)

The fight to undermine the IHRA definition of antisemitism continues.

This battle has been brought to the UN, where HRW and other self-proclaimed human rights groups insist that this particular definition of antisemitism is unfair because it puts a damper on free speech by holding those who demonize Israel and hold it to a double standard to account. Specifically, these groups claim the IHRA definition muzzles the free expression of "Palestinian rights" by preventing those kinds of "criticism" of Israeli government policies.

This attempt to claim to condemn hatred of Jews on the one hand while protecting outright demonization of Israel on the other is not something new. And it did not start with BDS.

An article in i24News quotes Ramin Parham, an Iranian writer living in France, who traces this attempt to differentiate between hatred of Jews and hatred of Israel to the Iranian regime and its propaganda:

Parham points out that the strategy of disassociating hatred of Israel from hatred of Jews is distinct from anti-Semitism was not invented by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) or the radical left, but was developed by the fathers of the Islamic revolution with the aim of reassuring the western world.

"The mullahs are above all good communicators, who quickly understood that the credibility of the regime on the international scene relied on its respect for the Jews and other minorities in the country. But it is only a question of saving appearances," Ramin Parham told i24NEWS. [emphasis added]

While this is not strictly true - Muslims in Arab lands have been claiming since at least 1947 that their opposition to Zionism had nothing to do with Jews, by falsely insisting that Jews had lived in peace and harmony with them for centuries before Zionism and conveniently forgetting events like 1033 Fez Massacre or the 1790 Tetuoan Pogrom - the Iranians have taken pains to give a public face to their supposed philosemitism.

This is a strategy that antisemites have picked up on, claiming that it is not Jews they oppose -- it is the evil Israeli regime. But it is also a strategy that cannot work effectively if the demonizing of Israel and the fabrication of accusations against the Jewish state are undercut by a definition that illustrates the association between demonizing Jews and demonizing Israel.

Thus the attempt to undercut the IHRA definition.

But the Iranians seem to have had success in keeping up appearances, and their claim to be opposed only to Israel and not Iranian Jews was accepted to an extent.

Years ago, New York Times journalist Roger Cohen accepted this claim and wrote about how well the Jews of Iran were treated -- and in 2009 boasted of his perceptiveness, "Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words":

It’s important to decide what’s more significant: the annihilationist anti-Israel ranting, the Holocaust denial and other Iranian provocations or the fact of a Jewish community living, working and worshipping in relative tranquillity.

...I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran, its sophistication and culture, than all the inflammatory rhetoric.

Cohen was reassured. In fact, he was reassured to the extent that Cohen could write about the Iranian regime itself:

Totalitarian regimes require the complete subservience of the individual to the state and tolerate only one party to which all institutions are subordinated. Iran is an un-free society with a keen, intermittently brutal apparatus of repression, but it’s far from meeting these criteria. Significant margins of liberty, even democracy, exist. Anything but mad, the mullahs have proved malleable. [emphasis added]

Yet the evidence of what was really going on inside Iran was available.

In 2007, Ariela Ringel Hoffman wrote an article for the October 3 edition of Yedioth Achronot about the precarious situation of Iranian Jews, as described by Iranian Jews who managed to leave.

o One Iranian Jew interviewed by Hoffman said that Jews in Iran know they are sitting on a powder keg--at least half of them think that either Israel or the US will attack Iran's nuclear reactors. And when they do, the Jews of Iran will pay the price. Even without encouragement from the government, the Iranians on the street will take it out on the Jews.

o  Another Iranian Jew tells Hoffman that it was not the threat of war that brought him to Israel, but the desire to live as a Jew. "There, it is difficult to keep Mitzvot, to keep Kosher, to pray and to learn about Judaism. On Shabbat the children have to go to school--everything there is more difficult. [A 2021 article quotes Iranian Chief Rabbi Yehuda Gerami that in recent years Jewish schools are allowed to be closed for Shabbat]

o  He continues, saying that it is the Israeli government that Iran hates--and not the Israelis themselves. He believes that things are better than they were 10 years ago--when there was a water fountain in the marketplace in Tehran with 2 faucets: one for Muslims and one for Jews. If a Jew dared to drink from the faucet for Muslims he would be beaten up. Today it is different.

o  Another Iranian Jew describes how most of his friends at the university were Muslims--some of whom expressed the wish to visit Israel. He draws a distinction between the Iranian on the street and those in the university, where instructors openly question Iran's need for a nuclear reactor. He believes that Anti-Semitism is something encountered only on the street, where calling someone a Jew is the equivalent to someone in Israel calling someone a Nazi. Yet he admits that Jews cannot hold government posts.

o In Iran, serving in the army is mandatory. Many Jews avoid service by paying someone off -- something that is not limited to the Jews alone. One who ended up serving in the army recounts how the Iranians who served were religious and treated him like someone impure, and gave him the hardest jobs. Though service is for 24 months, after 20 months he got disgusted and deserted.

o One Iranian Jew told Hoffman:
I can tell you, based both on personal experience and on what I hear from friends, that there are places [in Iran] where Muslims have already divided among themselves the homes and property of their Jewish neighbors. They say that if there will be a war, the first thing they will do is slaughter the Jews.

Keep in mind that just 3 months after the Iranian Revolution brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power on February 11, 1979, Habib Elghanian -- a prominent Jewish Iranian businessman -- was executed by firing squad after being accused of being a spy. He was a prominent Jewish leader and philanthropist. His death led to over three-quarters of Iran’s 80,000 Jews fleeing the country.

Eventually, Cohen begrudgingly admitted he was wrong about Iran:

I’ve also argued that, although repressive, the Islamic Republic offers significant margins of freedom by regional standards. I erred in underestimating the brutality and cynicism of a regime that understands the uses of ruthlessness.

Better late than never?

Now and then, the media has reported on the status of Jews in Iran as second-class citizens under the regime. VOA reported in 2021 that Jews are treated like other Iranian minorities, such as Christians and Zoroastrians -- which isn't saying much:

But Iran’s Jews and other recognized minorities are barred by law from serving in the judiciary and security services. They also cannot hold authority over Muslims in the armed forces.

When Jews and other recognized minorities seek “blood money” as restitution for various crimes, Iranian law reduces the value of that blood money to half of what a Muslim is entitled to.

But it's more than that. The previous year, in May 2020, a fire broke out at the burial site of Esther and Mordechai. The only thing more suspicious than the fire was the way the report was disappeared:

An investigation has revealed that a person was caught in CCTV footage trying to enter the holy site through an adjacent bank and “perform a series of actions” but “failed,” opposition news sites said, citing a report in the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

The report said the cameras had registered the person’s face, but “information about the person’s motives and identity cannot be provided until they are arrested.”

The IRNA report was deleted from its website two hours after its publication Saturday morning, the Radio Farda and Iran International websites said.

And that brings us to Pesach this year and reports that the Iranian regime pressured Jews not to celebrate the last days of Passover (actually a Mimouna-type festival the day after Passover celebrated by Persian and Kurdish Jews) so they could participate in the annual al-Quds Day demonstration calling for the destruction of Israel. The Jerusalem Post reports:

Iran’s Jewish community announced on Monday on its social media platform Telegram to its estimated 9,000 members: “Please do not go for picnics or enjoyable activities on al-Quds Day.”

The Jewish community said that Iranian Jews should “care about Muslim sensitivity” and celebrate Passover a week later. [emphasis added]

There was a second message, inviting the Jewish community to participate in al-Quds Day demonstration:

According to our holy bible, every Jew has to stand against oppression against human beings. When we are approaching al-Quds Day, the Jewish community of Iran will participate in demonstrations against the Zionist regime and will declare their disgust with the Zionist policies against human beings. The Iranian Jewish community is separated from the Zionists. We are with Iranians and Muslims.

Beni Sabti, an expert on Iran at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security is quoted in the article, saying that some Iranian Jews "really are against Israel," a phenomenon we see among some left-wing groups Jews in the US.

Antisemitic pressure on the Jewish community takes a toll.

By the same token, not all Iranians are being swept up in their leaders' hatred of Israel, let alone of Jews. Here is a video from 2020, where the vast majority of Iranian students went out of their way to avoid stepping on the images of the flags of both the US and Israel, which had been painted on the ground to encourage them to dishonor both countries.

And just this week, Reza Pahlavi, the oldest son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran -- who was overthrown during the Islamic Revolution in 1979 -- became the most senior Iranian figure to make a public visit to Israel.

He announced that the purpose was to "deliver a message of friendship from the Iranian people," adding:

I want the people of Israel to know that the Islamic Republic does not represent the Iranian people. The ancient bond between our people can be rekindled for the benefit of both nations...Millions of my compatriots still remember living alongside their Jewish-Iranian friends and neighbors, before the Islamic Revolution tore the fabric of our society apart.

Considering the courage of the Iranian people in opposing the regime, it is not surprising that the government has not been able turn the entire population against the Jews.

It still remains to be seen in the US if Jews will find support among the general population as antisemitic attacks increase.

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 Nazi idea of "Judah" is identical to the anti-Zionist conception of "Israel"

Yom HaShoah is not only about remembrance, but about ensuring that such atrocities will never again happen.

Yet we are seeing the groundwork for it happening in front of our eyes.

Nazi antisemitism did not only rely on racism against individual Jews as untermenschen. They also railed against Jews as a nation.

And their propaganda against the nation of "Judah" bears a chilling resemblance to the anti-Israel rhetoric that is becoming mainstream today.

From United Press, December 1938:

Is this any different from current accusations that the "Israel Lobby" controls America?

The "Judah" terminology was used in the earliest days of the Nazi regime. And some of those exactly mirror the anti-Israel rhetoric of today.

In 1933, Hitler partially justified boycotting Jews - by accusing "Judah" of racism against Germans! (Dayton Daily News, 31 Mar 1933):

There is no difference between saying "Judah is racist" and "Zionism is racism." The modern antisemites may pretend they are anti-Nazi, but they sure mimic Nazi rhetoric.

One of the early Nazi slogans, which was enthusiastically taken up by Western antisemites, was "Perish Judah." It spread quickly from 1935 in Berlin:

...to 1936 in London:

The British Fascists used the "Perish Judah" phrase so much that they began marking Jewish houses and shops with the initials "P.J." to encourage others to smash the marked doors and windows as late as 1943.

"Perish Judah" has morphed into today's "Death to Israel."

The connection between "Judah" and Israel is seen even more explicitly in this report from 1935:

There is a clear line between Nazi railing against "Judah" and today's obsessive hate of Israel. Boycotts of Jews in the 1930s are now called BDS.

Then, Jews were accused of controlling Western nations politically; today Zionists are accused of the same thing.

Mobs screaming "Perish Judah" in Berlin have become mobs screaming "Death to Israel" and "Death to Jews" - still in Berlin.

No, we are not at the death camp stage. We are merely at the stage where Jews are being murdered for being Jews in Israel and some Westerners are justifying those terror attacks as well as laying the ideological groundwork to make such attacks appear legal and moral. The Western antisemites of the 1930s didn't need to convince the larger British and US populations to hate Jews - they only needed to to associate Jews with theft and malice and Jewish supremacy enough so that casual observers would start to believe a little of it. They were able to sow enough doubt as to whether Jews were worth the effort of defending - when public defense of Jews could subject one to attacks. They wanted to sow some doubt as to whether Jews were worth the effort of saving.

Today's anti-Zionists insist that they are not antisemitic. You know who else made that claim in 1933?

Nazis.

Just because the analogy isn't perfect doesn't mean it isn't valid. As the expression goes, history doesn't repeat itself - but it does rhyme. The parallels between classic antisemitism and today's obsessive hate to Israel is obvious to anyone who opens their eyes. If Israel wasn't filled with Jews, it would get roughly the same worldwide criticism that Belgium does.

We might not be at 1939 yet, but we are in the same decade. And while today's antisemites might not be building death camps, some of them are building a nuclear bomb - with the same lack of response by the West as during the Holocaust, partially because of the constant stream of antisemitic propaganda that ends up affecting national leaders enough to favor inaction over action.

Never Again shouldn't be an empty slogan. So far, it has been.

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!

Last week, I reported (in an English-language exclusive) that Tunisians were upset at some of their scholars planning to attend a Paris conference called "The Jews and the law in Tunisia From protectorate to independence (1881-1956) - Between historical progress and religious resilience."

The reason? Because some Israelis are giving talks.

Last Monday, a protest took place in front of the headquarters of Tunisia's Ministry of Higher Education, expressing the protesters' rejection of “academic normalization with Israel.” They called on authorities to criminalize normalization, and others denouncing the “normalizers” with the Jewish state.

One of the participants in the conference is a former dean and distinguished professor at La Manouba University, Habib Kazdaghli. The Scientific Council of the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Humanities of that university held an extraordinary session to strip Kazdaghli of his "distinguished " professor status because of is supposed "normalization."

Professors, academics and intellectuals in France signed a letter of support for Kazdaghli.

For his part, the professor denied supporting normalization with Israel, and says he is "against the racist and colonial policy of the Israeli occupation state."

This has turned into a major story in Tunisia, with the professor going on multiple TV shows to defend his position and reiterate his opposition to Israel.

No one would ever boycott a conference with participants of any other country but Israel. The entire episode is yet another example of how anti-Zionism is just an obsessive modern formulation of antisemitism.

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!

04/17 Links Pt2: Dani Dayan: The power of human spirit; ‘Anti-racist’ Yale hosts a cheerleader for Jew-killing and racial hatred; Visibly identifiable Jews most targeted by antisemites in West

From Ian:

Dani Dayan: The power of human spirit

The central theme of Holocaust Remembrance Day this year is "Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust: Marking 80 Years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising."

Resistance encompasses a wide range of actions and, contrary to popular belief, does not necessarily involve taking up arms. Jewish resistance during the Holocaust could be a Shabbat Kiddush, staging a play in the ghetto, or even applying a little rouge to the cheeks – any action, simple or complex, that preserved the human spirit in the face of the Nazi German extermination plan that sought to destroy the Jewish people and its culture.

Eighty years later, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising remains a symbol. It was a popular insurrection: While the fighters of the Jewish Fighting Organization and the Jewish Military Union fought the Nazis in the streets of the ghetto, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto barricaded themselves in bunkers and fought for their lives for a whole long month. Many perished in the flames and smoke of the Nazi siege. News of the uprising spread quickly and reached the free world; it became a symbol of the battle of the few against the many, a symbol of the freedom and power of the human spirit.

During the Holocaust, there were other uprisings in the camps and ghettos, while thousands of Jewish partisans fought in the forests of Eastern Europe and were a significant force in the battle against the Germans and they also saved thousands of Jews who fled to the forests. There were many other cases where Jews rescued other Jews, even though they themselves were being pursued.

Other forms of resistance during the Holocaust included documenting the terrible events in secret, forging papers, hiding Jews, operating an education system, maintaining cultural life with performances, art, and underground libraries – all of which were acts of resistance that could not be taken for granted in the horrific reality of persecution and destruction.

These acts of resistance fueled a hope among the Jews, albeit desperate, that they would live to see the end of the war. Although the widespread resistance was not able to save the millions of Jews, its scale and diversity bequeathed a Jewish legacy for generations, symbolizing the power of the human spirit and humanity's fundamental values.

As Elie Wiesel wrote, "The Jewish soul was a target of the enemy. He sought to corrupt it, even as he strove to destroy us physically. But despite his destructive force, despite his corrupting power, the Jewish soul remained beyond his reach."

Jonathan Tobin: Where Holocaust commemoration succeeded and where it failed

Contrary to the universalizers, who feared that the Shoah would be marooned in history if it was not enlisted in the laudable cause of making everyone nicer to each other, Jew-hatred is not an ordinary form of prejudice. It is, as the Holocaust and the current campaign against Israel illustrate, a way of organizing intolerance for a political cause. Stripped of this context, Holocaust education becomes just one more anodyne call for civility. As such it not only fails to counter garden-variety bias but actually winds up ignoring actual antisemitism when it appears in the guise of appeals on behalf of “human rights” that deny Jewish rights and the right of Jews to defend themselves.

The popularization of Holocaust education became so embedded in Western culture that it morphed into more of a metaphor about something awful than a specific crime whose purpose was to rid the world of the Jews. The “anyone I don’t like is Hitler” rule even applied to many liberal Jews, who were quick to label American political opponents like former President Donald Trump as the moral equivalent of the Nazis. Some on the right are also willing to play the same game, comparing anything they don’t like to the Holocaust. Such analogies are always wrong even though few on either side of the political aisle are willing to condemn them when they are spread by their allies.

Even many of those who were contributing to the demonization of Israel and using the tropes of traditional antisemitic discourse to do so thought that they, too, were entitled to speak reverently about the Holocaust. Nothing illustrates the absurdity of this trend more than the devotion of a United Nations that is a cesspool of antisemitism to Holocaust memorialization. That Jew-haters like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) have no shame talking about the need to remember the Shoah is shocking but nevertheless tolerated, even by many Jews who ought to know better. As writer Dara Horn memorably articulated it in the title of her book, People Love Dead Jews. It’s the living ones, especially those who are willing to defend themselves and the sole Jewish state on the planet, who are not so popular.

The attention on Holocaust memorialization also often failed to acknowledge the way Israel and its supporters had become the stand-in for traditional antisemitic scapegoats. Indeed, the resistance, even among some Jews on the left, to the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism centered on its acknowledgement of the way that falsely smearing Israel, especially by accusing it of Nazi-like crimes, had become one of the principal expressions of Jew-hatred in our era.

Those who labored to create and fund all the museums, archives and ceremonies deserve our gratitude. They are important in and of themselves. But it turns out they don’t do much to answer contemporary threats, even when it concerns issues like Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons to create a new Shoah.

The way many Jews view the Holocaust as the sum total of the Jewish experience in a way that ignores or downplays the richness, beauty and joy of our heritage, has had the unintended consequence of undermining communal life. This has also had the effect of legitimizing those who think that remembering the Shoah should have nothing to do with the fight to preserve today’s Jews.

This Yom Hashoah as we honor the victims, we need to remember that the only proper memorial to the Six Million is a thriving Jewish state that was created too late to save them. Now that we’ve ensured that the past is not forgotten, it’s time for Jews to concentrate their efforts on defending live Jews with as much fervor and dedication as was demonstrated on behalf of the memory of the Holocaust.

Daniel Gordis: Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) before there was a state

Tonight, in Israel and throughout the world, begins the observance of Yom HaShoah, technically called Yom Ha-Shoah ve-ha-Gevurah, which roughly translates as Memorial Day for Victims of the Holocaust and their Bravery.

Yom HaShoah has been part of the Jewish calendar for so long that we often forget that it wasn’t always there. It did not even follow immediately after the war. The date was officially selected by the Knesset in 1951, while the law that made the holiday “official” was passed in 1953.

The selection of the date was actually a complicated process. The rabbinate wanted the Knesset to choose the date of the Tenth of Tevet, which was already a general “day of mourning” in the traditional Jewish calendar. But the survivors, understandably, wanted a unique date—so the Knesset chose a date tied to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

That, itself, is significant, as the yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine) and the citizens of early Israel struggled to honor the Holocaust victims, many of whom live today in Israel under the poverty line. In those early days of Israel, the victims were seen as weak and passive, precisely the opposite of the “new Jew” the yishuv was trying to fashion. So the Knesset chose a date tied to resistance, not to death—it fit better with the Jewish narrative Israel was seeking to transmit.

Tommy Lapid, the father of the now central Yair Lapid and a survivor of the Budapest ghetto who ultimately became a well-known Israeli journalist and successful politician, recalled years after he’d come to Israel how veteran members of the yishuv essentially accused the survivors for what they had endured. “‘Why didn’t you fight back?’ they would ask. ‘Why did you go like sheep to the slaughter?’ They were First-Class Jews who took up arms and fought, while we were Second-Class Yids whom the Germans could annihilate without encountering resistance.”

"Thousands of Jews massacred. Story on page 3."

Here is a sample of newspaper articles that show that the scope of the Holocaust was quite well known in 1942 - but newspapers hardly ever put the stories of mass murder on the front pages.

Boston Globe, September 19, 1942, page 2:

Kansas City Times, October 23, 1942, bottom of page 3:

Great Falls Tribune, November 25, 1942, page 4:

Daily Telegraph, December 4, 1942, page 5:

Liverpool Echo, December 19, 1942, page 3:

I found exactly one front page story about the Holocaust (looking for the words "Massacre" and "Jews") in hundreds of newspapers from 1939-1943 (outside of Jewish newspapers.)

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!

A way to remember the victims of the Shoah

The number six million is simply unimaginable.

But there is something that you can do to make the Shoah feel a lot more personal to you.

If you are Jewish, or have a Jewish last name, you can search the Yad Vashem Shoah Victims Database and look for someone with a name identical, or similar to, yours. Chances are very high that anyone's Hebrew name will generate a match, or several.

To give an example, I searched for David Schwimmer, the actor from "Friends." Even though it is not exactly a common name, there were dozens of matches with various variants of the name.

Find your own doppelganger. For most victims, the details are sparse but you can usually find out their birthdates, their relatives' names and where they lived.

It is even more emotional to enter in the name of a loved one and see the people with that name that were murdered.

You may be the only living being who cares about or remembers those specific people. So many entire families were wiped out by the Germans that there are many victims who have no living relatives.

Light a candle for 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!

04/17 Links Pt1: What articles on Israel's 'one-state reality' get wrong; Islamic dictatorships are trying to buy the UN agencies; Reza Pahlavi, son of Iranian Shah, to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: What articles on Israel's 'one-state reality' get wrong

A recent article at Foreign Affairs argued that Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are living under a ‘one-state reality’ and that ‘it is time to give up on the two-state solution.’

This argument has been gaining traction among some human rights groups and commentators over the past few years, though the overall theory advocating for one state does go back many decades, to the last century.

What is the premise behind Israel's 'one-state reality'?
The premise behind it is that Israeli rule has gone on for so long that the two-state solution seems too far-fetched; “one state” is what exists now. But the argument is predicated on a basic flaw thematic of all the proposals: Those advocating “one state” claim that Israel continues to occupy the Gaza Strip to portray Israel as controlling millions of Palestinians who are denied rights in Israel – this completely ignores the fact that Gaza is run by Hamas and that there is little to no evidence that Palestinians, under Palestinian Authority or Hamas, want to be integrated into Israel.

The bait and switch of the “one state” story are to force Israel to re-invade Gaza, control it and extend Israeli rule back into Palestinian cities, despite decades in which Palestinians governed cities in Gaza and the West Bank themselves. It’s unclear why anyone thinks this would work, considering that Israel can’t even fully control parts of Jerusalem when it comes to violence. Is there anything to the theory?

In January 2021, B’Tselem published a report claiming that a “regime of Jewish supremacy” exists “from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea,” calling it “apartheid.” The report said that “more than 14 million people, roughly half of them Jews and the other half Palestinians, live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under a single rule.”

It added that “the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is organized under a single principle: advancing and cementing the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.” It said that even though Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel continues to control “nearly every aspect of life in Gaza from outside.” It also noted that “Palestinians from Gaza must go through Egyptian-controlled Rafah Crossing – provided it is open, the Egyptian authorities let them through, and they can undertake the long journey through Egyptian territory.”

The War on Terror: Offense or Defense?

Islamic and Palestinian terrorists consider Israel to be a critical beachhead—and proxy—of the United States in the Middle East, and a significant collaborator with the pro-US Arab regimes. They perceive the war on “the infidel Jewish state” as a preview of their more significant war on “the infidel West” and attempts to topple all pro-US Sunni Arab regimes.

Therefore, Islamic and Palestinian terrorists have been engaged in intra-Arab subversion, while systematically collaborating with enemies and rivals of the United States and the West (e.g., Nazi Germany, the Soviet Bloc, Ayatollah Khomeini, Latin American, European, African and Asian terror organizations, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba). The more robust Israel’s war on terrorism, the more deterred the terrorists in their attempts to bring the “infidel” West to submission.

Islamic and Palestinian terrorism has targeted Jewish communities in the Land of Israel since the late 19th century, adhering to an annihilationist vision as detailed by the Fatah and PLO charters of 1959 and 1964 (eight and three years before 1967), as well as by the hate-education system installed by Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas in 1993 following the signing of the Oslo Accord.

Neither Palestinian (Hamas and the PA) nor Islamic terrorism (Iran and Hezbollah), are preoccupied with Israel’s size, but rather object to its very existence; they seek to erase the “infidel” Jewish state from “the abode of Islam.”

Both Palestinian and Islamic terrorism are inspired by 1,400-year-old Islamic values, still being spread today via K-12 hate education, mosque incitement and official and public idolization of terrorists.

Islamic dictatorships are trying to buy the UN agencies

Testimonies collected by the New York Times within the International Labor Organization (the UN labor agency) speak of a payment of 25 million dollars by the Doha government into the agency's coffers, which would have led to a softer attitude on workers' rights in the emirate, in view of the football World Cup. The agency denied that.

In 2021, Saudi Arabia - another flagship country of workers' rights - was elected to the executive committee of the International Labor Organization.

Wonderful news can be read on the websites of UN agencies. Like this one: “The director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Ghada Waly, and the chairman of the Saudi Arabian Anti-Corruption and Control Authority, Mazin bin Ibrahim Al-Kahmous, signed an agreement of 10 millions of dollars to fight against corruption”.

In fact, the Saudis know how to fight drug trafficking: they behead it.

In 2018, Qatar promised 500 million dollars to UN agencies.

The truth is that Islamic dictatorships are buying up the UN agencies. What interest do some of the world's least populated and most repressive countries, from Qatar to Saudi Arabia, have in becoming the world's largest donors to humanitarian causes? This was explained to Le Figaro by the distinguished philosopher Pierre Manent, director of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. He quotes Brexit and a great scholar of Machiavelli: "We have allowed the establishment of a discipline of words and feelings which forbids us to defend and, so to speak, to love what we are, the form of life which is our own, but which , on the other hand, imperiously commands us to welcome with avidity everything that accuses us, everything that disturbs us, everything that offends us. We were a people who claimed to govern themselves and to be part of history. We have given up on this ambition and declared it unjust. Our nation separates us from humanity, it is urgent to dissolve it in humanity, such is our new political religion”.

In the same hours that the New York Times accused the labor agency of corruption by Qatar, the head of the UN refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, was in Qatar to sign an agreement with the emirate worth 18 million dollars. The UN secretary, Antonio Guterres, was also in Qatar to inaugurate the "House of the United Nations". The Emir of Qatar is funding numerous UN agencies, from Unicef to WHO to FAO. One of the smallest states in the world is among the top ten international donors to UN agencies. Saudi Arabia is the third largest donor in the world. What was the UNWTO, the UN agency for tourism, doing in Saudi Arabia?

A report by the Adenauer Foundation tells how Gulf countries use humanitarian donations to promote political Islam.

AP wrote about the Palestinian teacher's strike a couple of weeks ago.

Palestinian public schools in the West Bank have been closed since Feb. 5 in one of the longest teachers’ strikes in recent memory against the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority. Teachers’ demands for a pay raise have escalated into a protest movement that has vexed the increasingly autocratic Palestinian self-rule government as it plunges deeper into an economic crisis.

The self-rule government, limping along as it struggles with an economic slowdown and soaring debt, argues it cannot afford to pay all its employees. Earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government further crippled the authority when it decided to deduct an additional 50 million shekels (over $14 million) each month from the tax revenues it collects on the Palestinians’ behalf, among other punitive measures.

“We are facing dangers from declining donor support and an enemy that denies our existence and perpetuates our financial crisis with unfair cuts,” said government spokesman Ibrahim Melhem. “We have done everything we can.”

Middle East Monitor reports that the EU has expressed concern:

The European Union (EU) called for an immediate solution on Friday to the ongoing two-month-long Palestinian teachers' strike.

"We are aware of the teachers' demands, as well as the chronic financial crisis facing the Palestinian Authority. We will continue our communication with the Palestinian government, and we will discuss the possibility of accelerating the disbursement of European contributions to help the Palestinian Authority in this critical situation," [the statement said.]

Seven percent of the PA budget goes to terrorists and their families. That is about $350 million a year. Those hundreds of millions of dollars would easily cover the teachers' demands for a 15% pay hike, which would cost only about $60 million a year. (Articles say that about 40,000 teachers are on strike and they average about $870 a month salary.)

If the Palestinian Authority would stop financially supporting terror, the teachers could be paid and a million students could return to school. And the PA would have hundreds of millions of dollars more for other essential services.

Yet no one dares suggest this.

Why not?

The EU is very concerned about the strike. They are in talks with the Palestinian leaders about it. Yet they don't even mention the simplest solution of ending "pay for slay" - instead blaming Israel for withholding tax revenue that is going towards terrorists and their kin.

For its part, the Palestinian government is telling its people that paying terrorists is an infinitely higher priority than educating children. And the children are getting the message loud and clear.

Additionally, some of these bored children decide to liven things up by attacking Israeli soldiers, with predictable results. Why not? School is for idiots - the adults say martyrdom is more important, and murderers make far more money than the suckers who stay in school and get a regular job when they graduate.

This is a deeply sick society that rewards murdering Jews and doesn't care about educating their own children. But that support for terror is so embedded in Palestinian life, and so accepted as normal, that its main funders don't even consider broaching the subject.

Neither does the World Bank. Neither does the International Monetary Fund. And the media simply calls this monetary support for terror "welfare payments."

Its much easier to blame Israel for the budget crisis than to blame the PA, since no one expects the PA to act like responsible adults with their money anyway.

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!

"Human rights orgs" give the world permission to hate Jews again

In 2001, Barbara Perry wrote a book called "In the Name of Hate: Understanding Hate Crimes." Chapter 7, "Permission to Hate: Ethnoviolence and the State" says:

[H]ate-motivated violence can flourish only in an enabling environment. In the United States, such an environment historically has been conditioned by the activity-and inactivity-of the state. State practices, policy, and rhetoric often have provided the formal framework within which hate crime-as an informal mechanism of control-emerges. Practices within the state-at an individual and institutional level-that stigmatize, demonize, or marginalize traditionally oppressed groups legitimate the mistreatment of these same groups on the streets. This chapter examines the ways in which state rhetoric, policy, and practice provide the context for violence against minorities.

She brings examples of how political figures, by invoking or dog-whistling tropes against oppressed groups, enable hate crimes against the same groups.

The theory seems to have merit. After all, when bigotry is normalized, then the environment is riper for people who want to act in a bigoted way. They don't feel like they are outliers and they believe that there would be fewer consequences for their actions.

There was a cottage industry of people warning that Donald Trump's alleged bigotry would increase hate crimes, and then magically finding such correlations. (The increase in hate crimes began in the second term of the Obama administration, but for some reason no one seems to blame him.)

Relatively few people noted that there was a similar increase in hateful speech from the Left in the same time period - much of it directed at Trump voters.

To be sure, hate from the Left doesn't usually translate into direct hate crimes, while far-Right hate sometimes does. But hate is always directed at the Other - and it is just as reprehensible when the Other is black or gay, or whether The Other is Republican or live in flyover states.

A major barrier to having feelings of hate is that no one wants to believe that they are bigots. They want to believe that their hate is a righteous hate towards a group of people who richly deserve it. It just so happens that groups like Black people, gays, or women are easily categorized and hate towards them is more easily analyzed than hate for political opponents. However, the emotions are the same, and just as destructive - the same feeling of superiority versus the Other and the same imperative that the Other not have the same rights as those of the hater.

Which brings us to modern hate of Jews.

Jews are indeed a defined group with a rich history of victimhood. Outside of the fringe that are white supremacist or neo-Nazi, people don't want to think of themselves as having the label "antisemite.". The Holocaust is still in living memory and no one wants to be on the side of the Nazis.

But lots of people are itching for an excuse to hate Jews without being called antisemitic, indeed while claiming that they are against antisemitism. They want someone to give them permission to hate in a way that they can still look themselves in the mirror - or better yet, to consider themselves paragons of morality.

The UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other "human rights organizations" have been happy to jump in and provide exactly that permission.

Have you ever noticed that the thorough, multiple debunkings of the "apartheid" slander against Israel get no attention? It is partially because the modern antisemites aren't looking for real reasons to hate Israel and Israeli Jews - they are looking for permission to act on the hate they already had beforehand. Once an Amnesty or a UN gives them that permission, by giving Israel a label of "racist" or "Jewish supremacist," they can pretend that their hate is not toxic Nazi-style bigotry but righteous moral indignation. They have no desire to look beyond the modern slanders of accusing Jews of moral crimes - they have "experts" on their side, and that is all they need to legitimize this new bigotry. The 200 page papers don't need to be read or analyzed; they are meant to simply give permission for the masses to hate Jews eight decades after Auschwitz.

This is the same permission that Barbara Perry noted for bigotry on the Right. NGOs fulfill the functions of the Perry's state-supported hate - in fact, they are in some ways more respected because they position themselves as having no political agenda, only a moral one.

Apologists might argue that this Leftist antisemitism, if they even admit it exists, is still much less serious than far-Right antisemitism. The neo-Nazi antisemites are more likely to have guns and to directly murder Jews, while the Leftist antisemites are merely boycotting Israel. If you define the consequences of antisemitism merely by counting the bodies killed directly by the bigots, they would have a point.

However, we have seen in recent years that while the Leftist version of the world's oldest hatred might not directly attack Jews, it encourages Palestinians and Iranian proxies to attack them - and gives them their own moral cover.

They have created an additional false intellectual framework that claims that Palestinian terrorism is legitimate self defense, and that Israel has no right to defend itself or its citizens from Palestinian terror. They push lies that US military aid to Israel has no oversight and that US arms are being used for war crimes - with the intent to destroy Israel's ability to defend Jews from Palestinian terror. They fund "charities" and Palestinian NGOs that are tightly tied to, and often fronts for, terror groups like the PFLP.

This is simply another layer of looking for, and finding, permission to hate and dehumanize.

Jews killed by right-wing crazies in a synagogue in the US are just as dead as Jews killed by Palestinian Jew-haters while driving in their cars in Judea or exiting their synagogue in Jerusalem. But the Left doesn't consider the latter to be victims of antisemitism - the cognitive dissonance would be too painful So they construct yet another castle in the sky, backed up by academics, pretending that the Palestinians who openly admit and publish their hatred for Jews don't really hate Jews and that they are the victims, not the dead Jews.

The entire house of cards of Leftist justifications for hating Jews (and only Jews) in Israel would collapse in an instant if the "progressive" anti-Zionists would spend five minutes looking at the critiques of the "apartheid" slanders and absurd arguments justifying murdering Jews. Or ten minutes to compare Israel's supposed "crimes" with the acts of any other country in the history of warfare. But truth isn't their goal - they only want to have permission to engage in the same kind of bigotry that they claim is exclusive to the Right. Facts get in the way of their deep desire to put those uppity Jews in their place.

Today, in the streets of London, you can get a crowd of thousands to openly cheer the idea that Palestinians have the right to target and murder Jews, and only Jews, in Israel. They just change the word "murder" to "resistance" and terrorism magically transforms from a crime against humanity into a heroic action.

These bigots have permission from the UN, from Amnesty and HRW, from The Nation and Electronic Intifada, from Peter Beinart and Marc Lamont Hill and dozens of other "intellectuals," to hate Jews - and from there to incite the murder of Jews.

People wonder how the Holocaust could have happened. How, centuries after the Age of Enlightenment that normalized the concepts of human rights and equality, could an entire country be so brainwashed to hate Jews? How could such a hate be not only accepted but enthusiastically promoted by ordinary Germans?

The intellectual groundwork for such an event is being put in place in front of our eyes today.

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!

There was a most interesting communication between Israel's Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli and Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories.

Albanese had recently tweeted that "Israel has a right to defend itself, but can't claim it when it comes to the people it oppresses/whose lands it colonizes." The clear implication is that Jews who are killed by Palestinians have no right to self defense as long as the murderers can claim that they are oppressed by Israel.

Chikli wrote a pointed and detailed response to the UN, demanding that Albanese be fired.

Over 3000 years ago, the moral imperative not to kill was established as the most fundamental commandment given to humanity within the framework of the Ten Commandments - one of the most authentic human rights charter. Throughout history, the importance of the right to life and the prohibition of murder have been developed by philosophers such as John Locke, and has been incorporated into many official documents. One of the most prominent milestones in this context is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, whose Article 3 declares that ''Everyone has the Right to life, liberty and security of person."

Against the background of this long process of establishing the universal right to life for all individuals, I am writing to express my profound shock, condemnation and dismay at the recent comments made by formal UN employee and special rapporteur, Ms. Frances. Albanese. Ms. Albanese's reprehensible, irresponsible and terror-inciting remarks made earlier this week called into question Israel's very right to defend the lives of its citizens.

Ms. Albanese's statement is not only outrageous but also explicitly denies the right to life and personal security of many Jewish citizens of the State of Israel. Her comments contradict the basic core foundational human rights upon which the United Nations is built, setting a dangerous precedent. It is also unacceptable for a UN representative to make such a statement, even if she thinks that part of the country is disputed territory.

I would like to draw your attention to a concerning matter regarding Ms. Albanese's recent remarks. It appears that her words may have been intentionally influenced by the recent horrific terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians: Just last week, a British-Israeli mother, Lucy Dee, and her two teenage daughters, Maia and Rina Dee, were brutally murdered in the Jordan Valley by a Palestinian terrorist who deliberately rammed their vehicle and then shot them at point blank range. Ms. Albanese's statement seems to suggest that Lucy Dee and her daughters, three innocent human beings driving on a holiday, were not deserving of the right to be protected by the State of Israel.

This statement is especially troubling, as it casts a dark shadow on Ms. Albanese's basic human compassion, and her ability to uphold the principles of the United Nations and carry out her duties as a representative on its behalf.

Regrettably, this is not an isolated instance of Ms. Albanese's relentless, systematic and irrational bias against Israel and display of antisemitism. As a representative who should be applying intemational law equally for all, irrespective of their faith, background or geographic locality, this is deeply concerning.

A particular, troubling example is her speech at a Hamas-sponsored conference in Gaza in November 2022, during which she urged her audience to "resist". Moreover, in recent years, Ms. Albanese has also accused the "Jewish Lobby" of controlling United States and Europe, supported the BDS campaign against Israel, compared Israelis to the Nazis and refused to condemn Palestinian terrorism.

Ms. Albanese's actions and statements clearly violate the impartiality and objectivity requirements outlined in the UN Code of Conduct for Special Rapporteurs. Her clear and persistent display of antisemitic rhetoric, hostility and prejudice towards Israel demonstrates that this particular rapporteur does not uphold these values. The United Nations is failing to uphold its own commitment to protecting fundamental human rights for all and applying equal treatment of all its member states by allowing Ms. Albanese to continue to spew hatred, antisemitism and incite violence. Her blindly one-sided anti-Israel mandate is unacceptable and clearly goes against the principles of the United Nations.

Therefore, I strongly urge you to take prompt action and terminate Ms. Albanese, position's permanently. It is s essential that the United Nations uphold its own principles and convey a resolute message that antisemitism and support for violence and terrorism have no place within its organization. In this context, I would like to refer to Chaim Herzog's powerful speech at the United Nations General Assembly on November 10, 1975, stating that "It is indeed fitting that the United Nations, which began its life as an anti-Nazi Alliance, should, 30 years later, find itself on its way to becoming the world center of anti-Semitism". We very much hope that it is still possible to change this sad situation.

Yours respectfully,
Amichai Chikli
Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism

Albanese did not respond to any of these points. Instead, she composed the equivalent of a schoolyard taunt:

I wonder how the 3000-year-old "moral responsibility [sic] not to kill" can be reconciled with the thousands of Palestinians killed since 2007 in oPt (4k out of conflict; 4.4k in-conflict, i.e. in Gaza: 2008/9, 2012, 2014, 2018/9, 2021, 2022).

She is saying that Israel is hypocritical on two levels: one by not adhering to the same human rights standards that Chikli is saying she is guilty of violating, and secondly of not upholding Jewish laws itself in killing Palestinians.

Even though Albanese has already distinguished herself with her blatant bias and tacit support for Palestinian terror, this is fairly astonishing. By not defending her own words justifying Palestinian "resistance," she is saying that Palestinian terror is not even worth discussion - because Israel is worse.

In her moral universe, two wrongs make a right.

It is clearly a false charge. The vast majority of those killed by Israel were either legitimate targets or collateral damage when Israel was attacking legitimate targets in wartime. Some were tragic accidents.

One is not liable for those deaths under either Torah law or the Geneva Conventions.

Palestinian terrorists, including the killers of the Dee mother and daughters, are guilty of murder in their deliberate targeting of uninvolved civilians; And Palestinian terror is illegal under both of them.

Albanese ignores or condones Palestinian murders while condemning Israel's defensive wartime actions - and she cynically invokes Jewish law to make her case, including that Jews (and only Jews) do not have the right to defend themselves against those who claim "oppression."

In Albanese' perverted moral calculus, Israeli Jews cannot claim to be oppressed by those who daily call for them to be ethnically cleansed from their homes. Only Palestinian lives matter and Palestinian murders are "legitimate resistance;" Jewish Israelis do not have the right to claim either self defense or oppression, which is the golden ticket needed to kill anyone on the other side.

This is another case where Albanese's own words cross the line from "anti-Zionism" into antisemitism.

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!

Central Council of Palestinians in Germany caught displaying "Protocols" in shop window

From Juedische Allgemeine (Germany):

The Central Council of Palestinians in Germany has apologized for displaying a copy of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion".

The book had been in the shop window of the Central Council's association center in Berlin-Schoeneberg, where it was photographed by employees of the Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism.

When asked by the Jewish General, the Central Council of the Palestinians declared: "This display was a mistake." We apologize for that. "The book was disposed of." The organization is "a non-profit association that does not pursue any political purposes" and "only promotes culture and art".

The club also said on Twitter that they "resolutely reject" the protocols and "expressly distance themselves from this atrocity". The organization explained the incident as follows: “We are constantly receiving donations in the form of books for our library. The newest ones are then displayed. This book was interpreted by someone who cannot even read Arabic."

And if you believe that one....

Here's this edition of the book, which is sold today at a UAE book chain called Magrudy's:

The Arabic-deprived window display designer can easily see a skull embedded within a Star of David, another Star of David with an octopus tentacles emerging and strangling people and institutions, and the words "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in English, which in German is "Protokolle der Weisen von Zion," which would not be a hard thing to translate for a native German speaker.

In other words, they are lying because they don't want the German authorities to shut down their store.

Just like they are lying when they say that they are not a political organization, only cultural. This is on their Facebook page:

Sure looks political to me.

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!

04/16 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

From Ian:

Israel’s Worst Mistake

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.