Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 23, 2023

Kids posing for Eid photos with masked Hamas terrorists

Here are photos of Gazan kids posing for photos with masked Hamas terrorists for Eid al-Fitr.

And some lucky kids in Jenin get to play with real weapons!

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Haaretz has an exclusive: One of their reporters, Hagar Shezaf, managed to visit Joseph's Tomb along with Jewish pilgrims last November.

It is unclear why it took five months to write this report. Perhaps to make the religious pilgrims look as racist as possible while the residents of Nablus are hapless victims.

The headline is, "A Nighttime Trip to Joseph’s Tomb, Where Jewish Prayer Means a Military Raid" with the subhead, "Bus passengers coming from Jerusalem were greeted with empty streets in Nablus – but that’s how it always is when Jewish worshippers visit Joseph’s Tomb in the West Bank city, where the Israeli army forces Palestinians to put their lives on hold "

The military operation that was necessary to provide security for this “field trip” (or “entrance” as they are called) was impossible to see through the bus’ windows. The passengers couldn’t see the hundreds of Israeli soldiers deployed around Nablus, the entire streets that were placed under curfew and the Palestinians living there. But they may have gotten a whiff of the residents’ protest – mainly from the smell of burning tires.

Seven Palestinians were killed last year during such “entrances,” though this hadn’t disturbed the sleep of the passengers. From their viewpoint, the sterile road they were on, as if traveling through a ghost town, was simply routine.

Hate for the Jewish worshipers permeates the piece:

“Welcome to the Lion’s Den, pun intended,” Rivka jokes, referring to the local militia group that has regularly clashed with Israeli security forces in the city. There was applause and singing: “Thanks to Joseph the righteous, Ephraim and Menashe.” A few passengers quietly added: “May [the Arabs’] village burn.”

Yes, there are Jewish extremists who curse Arabs. But one almost has to read between the lines to understand that the Nablus militants aren't just cursing the Jews - they are trying to murder them.

The reporter does indeed bury this mention:

The Oslo Accords recognized Joseph’s Tomb as a holy site for Jews and stated that its protection and that of its visitors would rest with the Palestinian police – but that Israeli security would also be allowed within it.

Yet this is the most important fact. Under existing agreements, Jews should have free access to Joseph's Tomb. The Palestinians want to kill them instead, and in the past, they have. those very Palestinian policemen who are supposed to protect Jewish visitors killed Ben-Yosef Livna in 2011, and there are regular gunshots aimed at the Jewish worshipers.

While the words of the Jewish pilgrims are parsed to find evidence of their racism, Palestinians who are interviewed are not subject to any skepticism whatsoever:

The tomb is located in an eastern neighborhood of Nablus, near the Balata refugee camp. A school is located on the street leading to the tomb, and there are shops in the vicinity. However, when worshippers visit the tomb, the shops close early – some two hours before the visitors arrive.

“By 8 P.M., we start taking in our merchandise and get ready to close. The young people begin burning tires and erect barriers such as stone and iron,” one 24-year-old neighborhood resident told Salma a-Deb’i, a researcher for the Israeli anti-occupation human rights organization B’Tselem.

The article notes that the buses normally arrive at 11 PM - specifically to minimize any disruption to the lives of the residents. How many shops are open at 11 PM?

As this snippet shows, the problem is not the visitors - it is the Palestinian terrorists who are determined to stop Jews from peacefully visiting. The IDF must protect the visitors from the terrorists. But to Haaretz, Palestinian terror is a given, and the "militant youth" cannot be held responsible for disrupting the lives of the residents of Nablus by erecting makeshift roadblocks and shooting towards the buses.

There are two choices: Protect a Jewish holy spot, or surrender to the demands of Palestinian terrorists who demand that the site be Jew-free.

Haaretz says that Palestinian demands trump Jewish ties to our sacred spaces. To Haaretz, the most violent Palestinian armed thug should have veto power over anything Jews do, Oslo or no Oslo.

So by that logic, Jews should never visit the Temple Mount, or Tomb of the Patriarchs, or indeed any Jewish holy place that was also claimed by Muslims many centuries later - which is all of them.

It may be a strange concept, but the people responsible for violence are the people who engage in violence, not those who defend the would-be victims.

If the Palestinians weren't by and large antisemitic, there would be no issue of Jews visiting Joseph's Tomb.

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!

By their own success criteria, BDS has been a massive failure

The website for the BDS Movement has a FAQ section that asks, "What has the BDS movement achieved so far?"

The very top achievement is listed as:

BDS was a major factor behind the 46% drop in foreign direct investment in Israel in 2014, according to a UN report.

How have direct investments in Israel done since then?

If BDS is taking credit for the 46% drop in direct investment in 2014 then the 255% increase since then must be viewed as a huge BDS failure.

Also, the UN report did not say what BDS claims. It quoted a Newsweek article which in turn quoted a YNet article where one of the authors of the report said:

"We believe that what led to the drop in investment in Israel are Operation Protective Edge and the boycotts Israel is facing," Dr. Roni Manos of the College of Management and one of the authors of the report's summary told Ynet. According to her, these are only conjectures that can explain the sharp decline, but there is another reason. "In the past there were large transactions such as Waze and ISCAR Metalworking which boosted investment, but over the past year there were not enough such deals.

So BDS is not only trying to hide the statistics since 2014 that disprove its "victory," it even lied about the reason for the 2014 anomalous decline itself.

The BDS Movement FAQ goes on:

A Rand Corporation study predicts BDS could reduce Israel’s GDP “by 1 to 2 percent” annually over the next 10 years.

That Rand study says, "Historical evidence from other countries suggests that financial and trade sanctions associated with boycott, divestment, and sanctions could reduce GDP by 1 to 2 percent. "

In other words, it was a wild guess for the purposes of making economic forecasts based on various scenarios, not a prediction for Israel.

Rand wrote that in 2015. How has Israel's GDP done since then?

Israel's GDP increased from $314 billion in 2014 to $488 billion in 2021, an increase of 55% and an average increase of nearly 8% a year.

It doesn't appear that BDS has hurt the Israeli economy at all. On the contrary, Israel has thrived and BDS has not affected it in the least.

By the Israel-haters' own standards, on their own FAQ today, BDS has failed.

Now, I have said that economic damage is not really BDS' aim - demonization of Israel is. By that criterion, they have been successful. But part of that success is because they have been lying about Israel to the world and too many people are believing them.

Here we see that they lie repeatedly to make themselves look successful, when by any economic criteria they have been an abject failure.

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!

04/22 Links: Paris court hands Canadian life term in absentia for 1980 synagogue blast; s trial to start, Pittsburgh Jews find renewed purpose in mourning synagogue attack

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: Israel at 75: How the Jewish state compares to other countries

In 1851, 75 years after the US Declaration of Independence, a crowd gathered in the shadow of the US Capitol. They had come to lay a cornerstone for the expansion of the building. An architect had been chosen by president Millard Fillmore. Thomas U. Walter, a Philadelphia architect, was chosen. A cornerstone would be laid to mark the beginning of construction of the new part of the building, at the northeast corner of the House wing.

This would be an extension of the building first begun in 1793. Supposedly, the same trowel that president George Washington had used back in the day, was used in 1851 to mark the occasion.

Several men who had served in the Revolutionary War were in attendance. They must have been only teens in the war. That might not have been so rare; Andrew Jackson had served in the war as a kid. He’d been president in the 1830s and died in 1845. This was only a few years later.

America must have seemed at peace in those days. A year before a crisis in the country had been averted by a major legislative compromise.

California, recently acquired from Mexico by the war of 1846-48, wanted to join the US as a new state. It did not want to have slavery, and this created a dispute among the states that had slavery and those that did not. A compromise enabled California to join and called to abolish the slave trade in Washington, DC. But the deal also strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act, which required slaves to be returned from free states to the South. The compromisers were hailed as having averted some kind of civil war. So in 1851, when the Capitol was being extended, all seemed well. But in fact they had only postponed the inevitable; a civil war between the states was coming, and it would arrive by the end of the decade.

In Israel the country recently experienced mass protests over the government’s attempt to overhaul the judiciary. There were rumors that the recent protests could lead to a real national crisis and civil conflict. The defense minister warned of the fissures growing in society.

Now it appears that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has climbed down temporarily from the judicial reform. This may lead to a compromise, but as the lessons in the US show, we must be wary of a compromise that only puts off worse to come. On the other hand, we should acknowledge that 75 years after Israel’s founding in 1948, the country is incredibly secure and powerful compared to what has befallen many other countries in their first 75 years.

House group introduces bipartisan bill honoring 75-year US-Israeli partnership

Four House members introduced a bill recognizing the longtime partnership between the United States and Israel in promoting peace in the Middle East.

Reps. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Kathy Manning (D-N.C.)—who are Abraham Accords Caucus leaders—co-sponsored the bill. “Every time we work with Israel, both of our countries are better off for it, including with the transformational Abraham Accords,” stated McCaul.

Wagner added that Israel is one of the closest allies and friends of the United States.

“We are committed to strengthening that vital bond,” she said.

“For 75 years, the United States and Israel have built an extraordinary and enduring alliance based on our shared interests and fundamental values” added Manning. “Israel is our most important, most reliable and only democratic ally in the region.”

Remembrance Day: How can Israel eradicate terror? - opinion

DO YOU remember the circus act where a juggler is balancing numerous plates on sticks? The plates are all spinning, and the juggler rushes from one plate to another to keep them spinning so they don’t all crash to the ground. That pretty much describes our current situation: We are indeed a strong country, but we live in a very fragile environment with lots of plates spinning.

We are surrounded by hostile neighbors and must keep them at bay, all the while seeking alliances with our more friendly neighbors. We must cultivate relationships with nations in the West, whose support we need, while at the same time retaining our independence and our national pride. We have to satisfy the secular, the religious, the Sephardim, the Ashkenazim, the wealthy and the poor. We have to keep salaries high, and the cost of living low. We must be everywhere, all at once.

But if and when the spinning plates start to fall, the frenzied juggler can do little to save them. And that is our situation; the plates are crashing all around us. The world’s leading economists, in Israel and abroad, declare that the proposed judicial reform will have disastrous consequences, as indicated by the lowering of our credit rating this week. Interest rates rise as the value of the shekel plummets, and hi-tech companies – a major source of our collective wealth – seek safer shores to house their products and invest their funds.

Meanwhile, our relations with other countries, both near and far, are fast eroding. We have caused rifts between ourselves and the US, Britain and the EU; Jordan is upset at the ill-conceived statements foolishly made about them; Saudi Arabia has turned away from reconciliation with us and moved closer to Iran; Turkey’s President Erdogan is again demonizing us after a short lull; and even our newest friends, the Emiratis, are thinking twice about doing business with us. All the while, the terror groups within and outside Israel gather together to plot our demise, God forbid.

Most threatening of all, of course, is the unprecedented sense of disunity and distrust of government that today permeates every corner of the land. And it shows no sign whatsoever of easing.

The ancient (some would say modern!) Chinese were ruled by all-powerful emperors, who had absolute control of the country and everyone in it. But there was an unwritten yet unbreakable covenant that held fast: If the basic needs of the people – their security, their safety, their ability to provide food and shelter for their family – were not met, then the emperor was deposed by the masses (and generally executed).

Similarly, even in democratic countries, if the needs of the people are not satisfied, if push truly comes to shove, the people will persevere, and change will inevitably be made, for survival trumps even democracy.

As we face yet another Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel’s Wars and Victims of Terrorism and mourn the 24,068 fallen soldiers and 4,216 victims of terror, we must pledge to honor these holy neshamot (souls). We must act so that their deaths were not in vain, doing everything in our power to eradicate terrorism and its adherents. We must project to the world our vitality and unique character. Most of all, we must diligently seek compromise and conciliation with one another, placing the nation and its citizens above any individual person or party.

Then let each one of us pray to the Almighty for peace and prosperity in our wonderful, Old-New Land and State of Israel. Am Yisrael chai!

04/21 Links Pt2: Don't 'All Lives Matter' the Holocaust; Lawsuits are key to fighting antisemitism; Yom Ha’atzmaut echoes in ‘The Mandalorian’

From Ian:

Don't 'All Lives Matter' the Holocaust - opinion

IT IS a basic human instinct to seek ways to connect events that appear, on the surface, to be similar to one another. But to do so when it comes to collective memory is to risk diminishing the uniqueness of each group’s experience.

In 2022, the White House issued a well-intentioned but poorly-worded statement about Holocaust remembrance that recalled “the six million Jews who were systematically and ruthlessly murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators,” as well as “the millions of Roma, Sinti, Slavs, disabled persons, LGBTQ+ individuals, and political dissidents who were killed during the Shoah.”

This past Tuesday night, after I tweeted about Yom Hashoah, a South African Twitter user with a timeline full of antisemitic tweets responded with a screenshot of the Wikipedia entry for “Holocaust victims.” On that page is a table that lists 12 different groups defined by the crowdsourced encyclopedia as victims of the Holocaust.

They include Soviet POWs (2.8-3.3 million), Freemasons (80,000-200,000), and Spanish Republicans (3,500), alongside Jews. Taken together, the 11 non-Jewish groups vastly outnumber the six million Jews noted on the page – which is, of course, exactly the point. My Twitter interlocutor’s message was clear: the Jews weren’t even the primary victims of the Holocaust, so they should really stop harping on about it.

This needs to be said: the Holocaust, the Shoah, was the mass murder of Jews. That the Nazis also murdered millions of other people – whom they viewed as racially inferior, sexually deviant, politically incompatible or simply undesirable – is a series of horrors of stunning magnitude that took place in parallel to, not as part of, the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was an event without parallel in human history and the Nazi drive to murder Jews was singular and obsessive. The entirety of the Nazi state was dedicated to the erasure of the Jewish people from the face of the earth. The German nation – a highly advanced society at the pinnacle of cultural, scientific and intellectual achievement – was fed a steady diet of poisonous propaganda meant to dehumanize Jews and condition their non-Jewish neighbors to support, facilitate and participate in their murder.

The murder itself was mechanized and methodical, carried out on an industrial scale and with staggering precision. Even toward the end of the war, as supplies dwindled and German commanders clamored for materiel to enable them to make a last stand, Nazi leaders continued to dedicate enormous resources to rounding up, transporting and murdering as many Jews as they possibly could.

That combination of factors, coupled with the millennia of pervasive antisemitism that led to them, set the Holocaust apart from both concurrent atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis and other acts of mass murder that have taken place throughout history. There had been nothing like the Holocaust before it happened and there has been nothing like it since.

But the Jews are far from alone; every group that has experienced collective trauma is entitled to the uniqueness of its pain. The Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, the Darfur genocide, the Yazidi genocide, and every other genocide in modern history has had its own unique characteristics and constitutes a unique source of pain for the people it sought to destroy. Similarly, every act of mass murder perpetrated by the Nazis against any of the groups they despised should be understood in its own unique context and remembered as such.

Phyllis Chesler: Lawsuits are key to fighting antisemitism

For the last 20 years, many of us have been documenting the overwhelming rise of hostility on American campuses towards Israel, Jewish students and professors who do not toe the party line.

The hostility seems to be based on the extraordinary effectiveness of long-term propaganda online, in mass media, at the United Nations, among NGOs, in textbooks about anti-racism (which do not include Muslim Jew-hatred), in countless campus-wide spectacles such as Israel Apartheid Week and BDS campaigns, biased curriculum, textbooks on prejudice (which do not include Jew-hatred in general), well-funded anti-Israel speakers and extraordinarily vulgar and vicious rhetoric against Israel and Jewish students from both activists and professors.

How does one dismantle Big Lies that are believed to be living truth? How does one open minds—if not hearts—when reason no longer prevails and “free speech” is expressed by shouting, rioting, overwhelming the platform and trying to hold speakers hostage, when chaos is utilized to eliminate opposing ideas?

One way is by bringing lawsuits that demand an end to such sub-par education and that the documented humiliation, harassment and persecution of Jewish students and professors be remedied.

I reviewed ten such lawsuits brought from 2018-2023 by the American Center for Law and Justice (City University of New York, 2022); the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (University of Southern California, 2020, the University of Vermont, 2021 and SUNY New Paltz, 2022), StandWithUs (University of California Los Angeles, 2020, Hunter College (CUNY), 2021 and George Washington University, 2023), student Sasha Westrick (Temple University, 2022), the law firm Winston & Strawn, LLP and the Lawfare Project (San Francisco State University, 2018) and private attorneys Joel Siegel and Neal M. Sher (New York University, 2019).

The grounds for the lawsuits were diverse: Students being expelled or refused membership in student groups based on their pro-Israel and/or Zionist viewpoints. Exclusion from campus events. Social media posts that read “all Zionists [need] to die,” leading to the closure of the campus Jewish center. Physical injuries to Jewish students and desecration of Jewish centers. Professors and students espousing, cheering and clapping for pro-Palestinian views that falsely label Israel a “white supremacist” nation that engages in “ethnic cleansing.” Hijacking a Zoom class background by posting Palestinian flags. The vandalism of a Jewish student’s campaign posters.

Yom Ha’atzmaut echoes in ‘The Mandalorian’

Eagle-eyed fans of the Disney series “The Mandalorian” and television writers have noted several instances when the show (the third season ended on April 19), which develops characters similar to those in “Star Wars,” recalls Jewish content.

The series is a production of Golem Creations that recalls the Jewish folklore figure associated with 16th-century Rabbi Judah Loew, Prague’s Maharal. Its producer and lead writer, Jon Favreau, is Jewish.

The Mandalorian warrior culture, whose most “Orthodox” members never remove their visor-helmets, evoke kippot and head coverings that many married, observant Jewish women wear. The more “liberal” Mandalorians only don their headgear in battle, just as many Jews only cover their heads in synagogue and ritual contexts.

Others have noted what JNS observed in the show, too—that the Mandalorian mantra “This is the way” could be a translation of the Hebrew halachah; that a character Bo-Katan Kryze’s given name is Hebrew for “come small”; and that her father, a Mandalorian Duke, is named Adonai (one of God’s Hebrew names). And that Mandalorians have a despised profession as bounty hunters, as Jews throughout history served as money-lenders.

The tribal leader, The Armorer, has the show’s protagonist, bounty hunter Din “Mando” Djarin, repent for uncovering his face by bathing in Mandalore’s “living waters,” which recalls Jewish mikveh practices. And when Mando saves a child named Grogu—fans call him Baby Yoda—from scientists who want to experiment upon him, others, too, have noted parallels to Josef Mengele and Nazis.

The eighth and final episode of the show’s third season is the culmination of the Mandalorian reclamation of its homeland after years of exile. That plot development happens, coincidentally, days before Israel’s Independence Day, Yom Ha’atzmaut, and the prior episode, where the Mandalorians undertook the reclamation, transpired on Passover.

The show is not literally Jewish, but readers of Jewish scripture will be reminded of Moses bringing the Israelites to the Promised Land after crossing the Sinai Desert in the Mandalorian “Wandering Jews,” who have sought to find their way home after dispersing across the galaxy.

The Mandalorthodox

Beyond the lore, there is plenty of specific language — presumably written by Favreau — with deep, and specific, Jewish resonances.

Early in the show’s run, Michal Schick was struck by the “use of the phrase ‘this is the way’ in connection with the lifestyle-observance of keeping the helmet on. This obviously recalls halacha” — which can be translated as the Way as well as the Law.

And then there was the division between Djarin’s sect of Mandalorians and less observant Mandalorians, who took their helmets off.

Schick, a Stern College graduate who is a writer for the Netflix animated series “The Dragon Prince,” will be hosting a panel on YouTube on Sunday, April 23, at 7 p.m., called “Mandalorthodox: Jewish History and Modern Practice in the Mandalorian.”

You can expect to hear about how after taking off his helmet, the Mandalorian had to immerse in “living waters” to atone — a clear parallel to the Jewish mikveh practice.

And you can hear about the thematic relevance of the verses from Exodus that were revealed when a tablet with “Mandalorian” writing that appeared in a recent episode was decoded.

“I suppose this is just supposed to be an Easter egg, not sure why they would put a Bible verse in Star Wars, but here it is,” wrote the Reddit user who first decoded it — and clearly hadn’t gotten the memo that this is the Jewish Star Wars show. Nor the memo that, as per National Jewish Book Award winner and former Star Trek showrunner Michael Chabon, when we find such Jewish tidbits hidden in space drama, we don’t call them Easter eggs (goyish!). Refer to them properly, and perhaps reverently, as afikomen.

Cartoons for the weekend

Three cartoons in the three styles I do.

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!

Let's look at some anti-Israel lies: US aid to Israel

The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights has created a website that pretends to calculate how much your community would benefit if the US stopped funding Israel.

It is a useful example to show just how much these guys lie.

They write:

Every year, the U.S. government writes Israel a blank check for at least $3.8 billion to fund Israel’s violence against the Palestinian people. The Israeli military then uses your tax dollars to kill Palestinian people, destroy their homes, and steal their native land, in violation of U.S. laws.

How many lies are here?

#1. There is no blank check. Every dollar is earmarked and audited.

#2. None of the money goes towards "violence against the Palestinian people." Unless you consider all Palestinian people to be terrorists; perhaps USCPR does.

#3. None of the money is earmarked for offensive operations against Palestinians altogether.

#4. It is the native land of the Jewish people.

#5. Nearly all of the $3.8 billion goes towards missile defense, joint research projects, F-35 fighter jets, in-air refueling tanks for planes, energy and water conservation research, joint homeland security programs, and above all loan guarantees (which Israel hasn't used for 18 years.) The claim that the full amount is used to attack Palestinians is a ludicrous lie.

Beyond that, the USCPR tries to make $3.8 billion sound like a huge amount. However, it is 0.06% of the federal budget. There is plenty of waste in the US budget - but these modern antisemitic liars want you to focus on Israel alone. The US gets a great deal back for its investments in Israel (missile technology and improvements in the F-35, for example.)

The US gives well over $5.5 billion annually to Arab nations: Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. That's a lot more than $3.8 billion. Where are the websites that count how much those cost the US taxpayer?

Here is some further deception:

How much of this annual $3.8 billion in military funding do people in your city pay through federal tax dollars? What community needs could be funded instead? Find out below on our interactive map.

See all those rows of things that Kalamazoo's portion of the $3.8 billion could pay for? Each line costs $3.8 billion, not the total. If you buy the respirator masks, there is no money left for public housing. Get the teachers and say bye bye to healthcare. It is a hugely deceptive infographic.

But that barely covers how deceptive. If the US government should suddenly receive a windfall of $3.8 billion, you know what they would do if they were responsible at all? They would use it to make a microscopic 0.02% dent in the national debt! It would never go to teachers!

This entire website is meant to pretend to use real numbers but it is all an appeal to emotions and prejudice. These people don't give a damn about the US taxpayer. And they know that no one will look at their numbers and see how wildly inaccurate their information is.

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!

04/21 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: Israel’s protests are now crossing sacred red lines; Italian lawmaker calls for dismissal of UN envoy accused of antisemitism

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The ruling class must regain its senses

President Joe Biden has shown through his policies and statements on Iran, the Palestinians, Jerusalem, progressive anti-Semitism and a host of other issues of strategic importance to Israel that his Middle East policies are predicated on ideological positions that are hostile to Israel’s core national and strategic interests. Under normal circumstances, Biden’s hostile posture would place him in an uncomfortable position vis-à-vis the overwhelming majority of American Jews who are pro-Israel.

But with the likes of Lapid, Barak, Olmert, Ya’alon and their many partners demonizing the government and calling for American Jews, Democrat and Republican lawmakers and the Biden administration to boycott the government, Biden’s effective declaration of Netanyahu persona non grata last month went over with barely a word of protest among American Jewish leaders. He was applauded by Israeli leaders.

In this week’s “Caroline Glick Show,” Tony Badran from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies explained that Iran’s decision to escalate its aggression against Israel in recent weeks is predicated in part on Biden’s declared shunning of Netanyahu. Biden’s statement was interpreted by Iran as an invitation to attack Israel at will.

Likewise, in recent weeks, the Iranian regime-controlled media have given banner headlines to statements by retired IDF commanders like Barak and Ya’alon and politicians like Lapid declaring that Israel is doomed. And rather than join Netanyahu when he warns Iran not to believe the propaganda, Lapid, Barak, Ya’alon and their elitist comrades blame Netanyahu for failing to protect the country from the forces their insurrection has emboldened.

This week, the son of the former Shah of Iran Reza Pahlavi made a historic visit to Israel. He participated in the official Yom Hashoah ceremony at Yad Vashem. He visited the Western Wall. He went to a desalination plant and spoke of the assistance Israel can offer a post-ayatollah Iran that will seek to repair the environmental devastation the regime has inflicted on the land.

Rather than praise Netanyahu and Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel who hosted Pahlavi, leftist commentators attacked them and Pahlavi. Former ambassador Daniel (“Danny”) Shek panned Pahlavi and Netanyahu for hosting him. In an interview on i24 News, Shek said the son of the former monarch “is not a force to be reckoned with” and that “Israel has nothing to gain from him.” Parroting Iranian regime propaganda, Shek insisted that no one in Iran supports Pahlavi.

Maariv columnist Yossi Melman attacked the government even more forcefully calling it “stupid” for hosting Pahlavi and inviting him to attend the Yad Vashem ceremony. Parroting the pro-Iran anti-Israel lobby in Washington, Melman wrote, “It’s counter-productive to topple the terrible regime.”

Why? Because.

Other members in good standing of the Clinton’s “pro-peace” Ashkenazi, sabra, Likud-bashing club joined the chorus of elitists standing with the Iranian regime and pillorying Netanyahu for hosting Pahlavi and Pahlavi for not hating Israel and Netanyahu.

With our ruling class in full revolt, Israel’s most important institutions—first and foremost, the IDF—are reeling. Our ability to defend ourselves on the battlefield and in diplomatic circles is constrained as never before. With our elites declaring our government illegitimate, and lobbying American Jews and politicians to boycott our leaders and reject the morality of the public that voted them into office, the government must fight against our enemies, against anti-Semitism, against BDS campaigns and anti-Israel propaganda machines with both hands tied behind its back, its mouth gagged while hopping on one foot. This situation is unsustainable.

As we approach Remembrance Day for Fallen IDF Soldiers and our 75th Independence Day next week, we must find a way to restore sanity and a sense of common destiny to our national life. We don’t have a spare country. Our ruling class needs to return to its senses and remember this obvious fact.

Melanie Phillips: Israel’s protests are now crossing sacred red lines

Israel’s three-month-old protest movement, which has repeatedly brought tens of thousands into the streets, is now crossing an increasing number of red lines.

There are serious anxieties that protests will disrupt next week’s Remembrance Day for Fallen Soldiers and Independence Day ceremonies.

At a Holocaust Remembrance Day synagogue service this week, anti-government participants forced Likud MK Boaz Bismuth to leave after they shouted at him to get out and started to become physically violent.

The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, announced that because the government had “divided society,” he would boycott the traditional torch-lighting ceremony that ends Memorial Day and opens Independence Day.

It was hitherto unthinkable that Israelis could desecrate those three sacred days. It was similarly unthinkable for soldiers of the IDF to refuse to serve their country, as did a group of elite Air Force pilots in protest against the government.

Even the memory of the Shoah is being traduced. On an El Al flight from Tel Aviv to New York on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the pilot announced, “Things like [the] Holocaust are potentially carried [out] in a dictatorship, and we are fighting in Israel to remain a democratic country.”

On the same day, in another obscene equivalence, a ceremony at the Mateh Asher Regional Council displayed pictures from the Holocaust alongside photographs from the protests.

It should be apparent to rational observers that this has gone way beyond the issue of judicial reform. That particular agenda is now all but dead in the water. The government has retreated. Yet the protests are not only continuing but are becoming increasingly disturbing.

This is because judicial reform is a flashpoint for profound divisions that have previously escaped attention but have now erupted.

Arabic media is reporting:

The Moroccan singer, Fatima Zahraa Al-Arousi, caused anger among activists, after she performed a concert in Israel.

Activists shared footage of Fatima Al-Zahraa Al-Arousi's performance, which was organized by the Moroccan Liaison Office in Tel Aviv, on the occasion of the Mimouna festival held by Jews of Moroccan origin at the end of Passover.

It seems that Al-Arousi was expecting the angry reaction, so she did not previously announce the event through her accounts on social networking sites.

However, the Moroccan artist lost thousands of followers from her fans after the footage circulated of her concert in Israel .

Here's the short clip being circulated:

So did she lose her fan base?

Her detractors are circulating this graphic:

According to this, Al-Arousi lost abut 11,000 followers in the three days after the news broke, and based on that, about 60,000 followers until today.

It sounds like a lot, but it is only 3% of her fan base. And her Instagram has a bunch of people criticizing her but really not that many, considering how many followers she has, and many defending her as well. Other social media is decidedly mixed, with plenty of people saying that Morocco and Israel have a peace treaty and she can do whatever she wants. Also, the critics don't have the usual kind of vitriol one usually associates with anything to do with Israel.

It looks like the people who she lost were not her biggest fans anyway. More importantly, the reactions I'm seeing are far saner that the crazed reactions one sees in Arab countries like Algeria, Egypt and Jordan. Usually by now the artists would be accused of being complicit in mass murder or something.

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There are thousands of Palestinians still living in Iraq with essentially no rights. They have been attacked, and many killed, by Iraqis since 2003. They are not recognized in Iraq as a refugee group. Other Arab countries refuse to allow them to immigrate.

The Safa news agency interviewed Baghdad-based journalist Hassan Al-Khaled who said that there are some 6,000 Palestinians in Iraq, 70% of whom live below the poverty line. He aid that there is no joy this Eid al-Fitr for them.

In 1948, many Palestinians were forced by Iraqi forces to join them and fight against Israel. After their defeat, they were allowed to go to Iraq, where they were treated decently. That all changed after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein, who had given them huge privileges.

In 2020, UNHCR dropped their rent subsidies for the Palestinian families, throwing them into an even deeper crisis.

Al-Khaled complained about the lack of relief associations or organizations that help Palestinians in Iraq, saying, "If there are any, the amount assistance they provide to the refugees is not enough for everyone."

Think about that. There are hundreds of NGOs in the Palestinian territories, and hundreds more that claim to aid Palestinians worldwide - and this journalist is not aware of a single NGO that provides aid to Palestinians in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Arab countries refuse to allow them to enter, even as hundreds of thousands of other refugees from Iraq have been allowed in. They use Israel as an excuse to keep Palestinians in misery in Iraq. HRW wrote in 2006:

The PLO and the Arab League have rejected in principle and actively discouraged in practice local integration or third-country resettlement of Palestinian refugees. Their view is that local integration or resettlement would negate the right to return of the resettled refugees. The Arab countries hosting large Palestinian refugee populations point to Israel's legal obligation to permit the refugees' return to justify their refusal to integrate the Palestinian refugees and afford them rights equal to their own citizens.

Jordan and Syria have (with some exceptions) refused entry to Palestinians who attempt to flee Iraq, in violation of the international legal prohibition against refoulement. When these two countries made temporary exceptions to their policies of refusal, they conditioned admission of Palestinian refugees on their confinement to camps, for example al-Ruwaishid camp in Jordan in 2003, and al-Hol camp in Syria in 2006. Because of the widely observed policy against resettlement of Palestinian refugees, these camp residents have already waited longer than other refugees fleeing Iraq, such as the Iranian Kurds, for access to third-country resettlement.

Just as with Lebanon, when Palestinians are brutally mistreated by an Arab nation, all of the "pro-Palestinian activists" are suddenly silent. The reason is because they are not pro-Palestinian at all, but anti-Israel. And using Israel as an excuse to actively keep Palestinians in misery - policies that are meant to hurt Palestinians because doing so might indirectly, one day, help weaken Israel - proves that this "anti-Israel" attitude is really antisemitism.

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Remember a couple of years ago how people were so upset that Israeli Gal Gadot was playing Cleopatra in a biopic (now set to be released sometime in 2023)? She was accused of "whitewashing" the role, with some claiming that Cleopatra was black or part Arab, and others responding that she was of white Macedonian ancestry, and it was not at all inappropriate for a Jewish woman to play someone else whose ancestry was Levantine.

There was more than a little antisemitism in that controversy - Gadot being from Israel was the real issue, as we saw with the protests in the Arab world about her Wonder Woman role.

Now, Egyptians are turning this issue on its head, thanks to an upcoming Netflix documentary series that casts a black woman as Cleopatra, and claims that she was indeed black.

A Netflix docudrama depicting Queen Cleopatra as black has sparked an uproar in Egypt.

‘Queen Cleopatra’ stars British actress Adele James, who is of mixed heritage, as the title character.

But Egyptian academics insists that Cleopatra, who was born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 69 BC, was light-skinned and of European descent, not black.

So intense is the backlash that an Egyptian lawyer has reportedly filed a complaint in an attempt to prevent the show from airing in Egypt, accusing the film of violating media laws and aiming to “erase the Egyptian identity”.

This doesn't come close to describing the pure racism coming out of Egypt, far out of proportion to just complaining about Cleopatra's origins.

Asharq reports:

Representative Saboura El-Sayed, a member of the Egyptian Parliament, submitted a request for a briefing to the Speaker of Parliament, Counselor Hanafi Jabali, calling for a ban on broadcasting the Netflix platform in Egypt, in light of the promotional advertisement for the documentary film “Queen Cleopatra”, which is scheduled to be broadcast on the digital platform next May 9.

Saboura explained to Asharq that..."this incident is an attempt to steal and distort history, as there are major plans seeking to undermine, demolish and steal the Egyptian state."

She pointed out that Netflix's promotion of Cleopatra as a queen of African descent feeds the ideas of the "Afrocentric" movement, which adopts the idea that all civilizations of the world included people of African descent before their dispersal, stressing that the film is trying to change the history of ancient Egypt and falsify established historical data.

But while the Gadot issue complained she was too white and this one says the actress is too black, there is one thing in common: both of them have elements of old fashioned Jew-hatred.

One Egyptian expert went off into a crazed antisemitic conspiracy theory:

Egyptologist Dr. Wassim El-Sisi said, "This film is a scheme that carries political goals, which is the expulsion of Jews of African descent from Europe and America to Egypt."

Al-Sisi continued, to Asharq, "They want to convince Jews of African descent that their ancestors are the owners of the Egyptian civilization, and that those present in Egypt are the sons of the invaders, Arabs, Ikhshidids and others, but it is their misfortune that scientific research has proven that more than 86% of Egyptians carry the genes of Tutankhamun.

(Update): There is a variant on that conspiracy theory in popular Egyptian site Al Masry Al Youm, where they say that Zionists are trying to expel Blacks from America by convincing them that Egypt is really theirs and they should return there and get rid of the Arab invaders.

El-Sisi is a well-known figure in Egypt, an antisemitic nutcase who says that Jews control all aspects of the United States - and that Mohammed was Egyptian, not Arab. But his craziness gets airplay in Egypt.

He isn't the only racist and antisemite weighing in on this in Egypt. Al Masry al Youm said the idea that Cleopatra was black came from Jewish "pressure groups" for their own nefarious but unstated purposes.

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04/20 Links Pt2: David Hazony: Israel at 75: The Rebirth of Israel?; Where Is the Palestinian Equivalent of Haaretz?; New Ben & Jerry’s Limited-Edition Flavor for Lab B’Omer in Israel

From Ian:

David Hazony: Israel at 75: The Rebirth of Israel?

Every nation faces the breaking point in its own way, and no outcome is predetermined. America bled and was reborn, while the USSR vanished as a living idea long before it disappeared from history.

There’s another example of this dynamic — from our own history. In ancient Israel, the golden age, the great Israelite monarchy, was founded by King David, the hungry poet-warrior who conquered Jerusalem and planned the great Temple. King Solomon, his son, followed him, building great cities and expanding and firmly establishing the empire.

Then came the third generation. Rupture and division — the kingdom split in two, Israel to the north and Judea, with Jerusalem, to the south. It took some time, but this split led, eventually, to weakness and destruction of both kingdoms, and exile.

The prospect of such a biblical collapse lurks in the back of every Israeli’s mind.

The coming months will be filled with tension, turmoil, negotiations halted and restarted, and tactical disinformation. So yes, I am scared that things could get much worse before getting better.

The coming months will be filled with tension, turmoil, negotiations halted and restarted, and tactical disinformation. Weapons will be drawn, perhaps even used, and then put back down again. Actual blood may yet, God forbid, be shed.

So yes, I am scared that things could get much worse before getting better. But I am also deeply optimistic that we will come out on the other side with a nation reborn. Not just because my analysis of the politics says it’s in everyone’s interest to pass a consensus-based constitution for Israel, but because of the incredible things I’ve learned about Israelis: The dramatic demonstrations filling the streets and highways with Israeli flags all point to an utter lack of apathy. And it’s apathy, not acrimony, that destroys nations from within.

This wild, immense Zionist spirit is the key to the nation’s success, and it’s not going anywhere.

We fight because we care. The love in this country surpasses that of any nation on earth. This wild, immense Zionist spirit is the key to the nation’s success, and it’s not going anywhere.

To me it is clear: Israel, the glorious miracle of Jewish rebirth, now celebrating its 75th Independence Day, is not nearing its end. On the contrary, it is just getting started.

New website memorializes terror victims with no Wikipedia pages

Israeli victims of terror attacks who do not have dedicated Wikipedia pages will be honored in a new collaboration memorial online platform.

The Remember project, created by Rachel Meth, and OneFamily launched the commemorative website remember.bio in advance of Remembrance Day and against the backdrop of deepening social rifts in Israeli society in order to help commemorate victims of terrorism from all corners of the political sphere.

Meth offered to commemorate Border Police St.-Sgt. Barel Hadaria Shmueli, who was killed in clashes on the Gaza border in 2021 on the platform. Meth, who initiated the memorial page project together with the OneFamily non-profit organization, contacted Nitza Shmueli, Barel's bereaved mother.

They met shortly before Israel's Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism, where they agreed that this was the appropriate place to memorialize her son.

Wikipedia editors previously deleted a page dedicated to Shmueli. The editors said that the article had "no enduring historical significance." They further clarified that Wikipedia "is not here to record everyday events, even if newsworthy, or to memorialize the death of a non-notable person."

The decision to delete the page was not taken lightly with discussions between editors lasting six months, before ultimately deciding that his killing was not historically significant enough.

"We woke up one morning and simply didn't see Barel's Wikipedia page. We were so hurt and angry. I felt like my son was being murdered for the second time," said Shmueli.

Local Wine, T-Bone Steak, and the Pioneer Spirit, in the Shadow of Hizballah

During a recent trip to Israel, James Panero spent a few days touring the Golan Heights. He reports on what he saw:

Wildflowers now grow around the rusted barbed wire that crisscrosses the hillside and the numerous signs that read “danger mines!” Mustard flowers, poppies, and tall grasses provide abundant food for the mix of bees, cattle, and wild animals that now call these slopes home. Beef from the Golan is free-range, save for the minefields, and results in some of the most flavorful steak you can find—one evening I dined on a local T-bone and Golan wine at a horse ranch just north of ancient Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee.

This frontier attracts settlers with the same pioneer spirit that you might have found in Oklahoma Territory over a century ago. These are times when Israel resembles nothing less than a young and vibrant United States. Today the settlers vary in their politics. Some are old leftists, the secular holdouts of the kibbutzim. Others are religious idealists, fulfilling what they see as their own manifest destiny. What they share is a spirit for Zionism, the civic virtue that has propelled this nation, despite its conflicts and divisions, to astonishing heights in under a century.

For anyone who doubts the strategic necessity of the Golan to Israel, just visit the old Jewish settlements clinging to the hillsides to the west of the Jordan River. Before 1967, the Syrian border ran right in front of them, straight down the middle of the Hula Valley. The line split the region in two and placed Israeli villagers within sniper range of the militarized Syrian positions overshadowing their settlements from the east.

As it is, the region can still be besieged by rocket fire from Lebanon and was under heavy bombardment as recently as 2006. At the time, Hizballah was firebombing Israel with over 200 rockets a day. Israel’s aerial fire brigade flew out of Maḥanayim airfield, just down the hill from our bed-and-breakfast in Rosh Pina.

New Ben & Jerry’s Limited-Edition Flavor for Lab B’Omer in Israel

Israeli ice cream lovers, rejoice!

Ben & Jerry’s Israel has announced it will offer a brand-new flavor – in a limited edition – for the upcoming Lag B’Omer holiday.

The new flavor, “S’mores” will reprise the long-beloved sweet, created annually by countless children at summer campfires, using sweet crackers, chocolate bars and gooey, roasted marshmallows.

The name “s’mores” is an abbreviation of the phrase “some more.”

The Ben & Jerry’s version – only in Israel and only for the Lag B’Omer holiday, will feature ice cream that combines marshmallow with cookie crumbs, chocolate cookie crumbs and pieces of fudge.

The new flavor will be available in all the Israeli food chains, convenience stores and supermarkets where Ben & Jerry’s is sold.

What the media doesn't tell you about Huwara

The New York Times has an article about how awful things re for residents of Huwara, living with a huge IDF security presence:

Huwara, a town of about 8,000 people, sits on the only major road connecting the West Bank’s north and south, and is traversed regularly by both Palestinians and Israeli settlers. That has long put it on the front line of Israel’s expanding settlements in the West Bank, and it is a target of frequent attacks and harassment by settlers driving through.

But on Feb. 26 the violence reached new levels, traumatizing the residents of Huwara and leaving them fearful for their safety, as attacks by settlers surge and Israel’s right-wing government vows to assert greater control over the occupied West Bank.

That day, two settlers were shot and killed by a suspected Palestinian gunman as they drove through Huwara, prompting an angry mob of hundreds of Israelis from the hillside settlements to rampage through the town and neighboring villages, throwing rocks and burning homes, businesses and vehicles. In the wake of the attack, in which a Palestinian man was killed, the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, a settler himself, called for Huwara to be “erased” by the state.

Hundreds of Israeli soldiers are now deployed on its streets, occasionally shutting roads and intersections, forcing businesses along the main road to close and seizing rooftops and entire buildings.

While I'm not at all excusing the violence done by settlers there, the article spends 95% of its time discussing the response to a double murder in Huwara and very little about the terrorism that prompted the response.

Reading the article, one gets the impression that there is a major road passing through Huwara. Looking at Google Maps, one gets the same impression of a highway slicing a corner of the town:

Photos from this "major road" show the reality: a crowded, car-filled road where Jewish drivers can be easily stopped in traffic and become sitting ducks for any angry Palestinian with a gun.

And there are hundreds of angry Jew-hating Palestinians with guns.

Of course the army has to be there. There is no other way to secure the non-Arab population that pass through the area. And, last I checked, Jews still have human rights not to be murdered, even by Palestinians.

Even "settlers."

Instead of balancing the stories of two populations in fear, the NYT - as it virtually always does - humanizes the Palestinians and positions the Israelis as faceless, inhuman aggressors.

The dangers of driving through Huwara have been known for a while. To reduce friction, since 2019, Israel has been building a bypass road specifically to avoid this problem.

This is a sign advertising the upcoming bypass road:

It says that the project is expected to be completed by...February, 2023. It is now scheduled for completion in March 2024.

The Yaniv brothers were murdered on February 26.

If this bypass road had been completed, not only would the Yanivs be alive - but the Palestinians in Huwara would not be living in fear of the IDF and angry Jewish residents looking for revenge.

Wouldn't that be a win-win?

The New York Times would never publish that information - because the road makes life more livable for "settlers." The NYT would rather see Jews (and Palestinians) killed and radicalized than help entrench the "occupation." They want to see 700,000 Jews being forced out of their homes as the highest moral imperative.

So even though this bypass road would have saved lives, it is a Bad Thing that must not be discussed until there is an angle found to say that it hurts other Palestinians somehow. In fact, I predict that by 2025 there will be articles in the mainstream media about how awful the bypass is for some random person who is inconvenienced by it - and not a word about the lives it is likely to save.

(h/t YMedad)

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Gozer Begs Enlil Not To Be Sent As Marshmallow Man To Israel On Lag BaOmer (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Nippur, Sumeria, April 20 - A Mesopotamian deity known as "The Destructor" beseeched his superior in the pantheon to remain away from the Jewish State despite a mission tasking him with a visit there this coming May 8-9, having discovered what happens across the country to the constituent material of the god's "Traveler" form on the corresponding Hebrew date every year.

Supernal witnesses described a fearful, contrite, yet determined Gozer the Gozerian pleading his case again today before Enlil, who sits atop the Sumerian divine assemblage. Gozer assumed his Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man form for the encounter, to drive home the danger to him at time when every open space in Israel is expected to feature multiple bonfires, some large enough to reduce the god's entire physical essence to gooey, caramelized deliciousness.

"My Lord," implored Gozer, "I must importune His Divine Supremacy to reschedule the visit to the of the land of Canaan. His Excellency no doubt can see that the inhabitants of that barbaric locale have a festival during which it has become customary to build enormous fires and roast marshmallows. Venturing into such an environment on that day will pose a serious hazard to the success of my mission, and I humbly request to postpone or suspend it until the flames subside."

Gozer referred to the festival of Lag BaOmer, the thirty-third day of the Omer period from Passover to Shavuot. Scattered ancient and medieval Jewish sources discuss the significance of the day; over the centuries it has evolved into a celebration, using fire as a sign of spiritual and intellectual illumination, of the reestablishment of Torah education following the devastation of losing an entire generation of scholars during the second century CE.

Without the religious overtones, secular Israelis have embraced Lag BaOmer as a cultural phenomenon and an expression of pride at the final show of robust Jewish military prowess and resistance - the Bar Kokhba Revolt - before the reassertion of Jewish sovereignty in the land in the twentieth century, and therefore more in line with Zionist sensibilities regarding independence, assertive national pride, and self-defense that they contrasted with the "typical" Diaspora submissiveness of Jews in the intervening millennia.

Enlil appeared unmoved by Gozer's petition. "You show unbecoming weakness," the elder god declared. "If you cannot complete this mission, I will assign it to someone more worthy. Summon 'Uggatg'bhina, the god of cheesecake, and tell him I expect him to visit Canaan on the twenty-sixth of May!"

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