Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, May 28, 2023

05/28 Links: Why IHRA isn’t even good enough; Col. Kemp: While playing Nazi dress-up, Roger Waters decries antisemitic branding; Why IHRA isn’t even good enough

From Ian:

Why IHRA isn’t even good enough

The reason activism against antisemitism often fails is it focuses on debunking the words of antisemitism not the intent. Compare to any other group’s activism where the language cuts past the BS and explicitly diagnoses and opposes the intention of the racism.

The term antisemitism itself was invented by a Jew hater to make anti Jewish bigotry harder to talk about. The official definition as it stands right now shows the deception was so effective it confused the collective minds of its target. It makes it sound like we are upset because our detractors don’t like us. As if it was ever about just our feelings.

The result is rarely do pro Jew much less pro Israel advocates convince anyone because we bungle the message. Within the Jewish community’s own discourse the point is stubbornly and infuriatingly missed.

Part of the reason antisemitism is so persistent is the world’s two most populous religions teach it is a holy moral duty to kill, convert or erase Jews.

The entire Christian Bible is meant as a remedy to what it codes as Jewish moral deficiency. The Christian ideas of Jews being all-corrupting money obsessed killers of all that is holy is the foundation of all western conspiracy theories and has infected secular discourse since day one.

It dovetails nicely with left wing anti capitalist and anti colonial ideas and fermented with the KGB’s invention of liberation theology.

With Islam, the hate is because we refuse to convert and also because it sees itself as the highest evolution of world religions with the Jews at the bottom of that hierarchy. The Hamas Charter quotes the most explicit passages on the subject.

The intention is always the same. The message is always the same. “It’s moral to kill Jews.”

And it never kills only Jews. If anyone really cared about ending racism they’d be opposed to antisemitism too. If they really cared about vanquishing the systems that oppress everyone they’d understand that antisemitism is a clever misdirection by those parties so folks will obsess over murdering us instead of doing anything that would actually improve the world.

Or re Israel, by proxy. If anyone really cared about the Palestinians or anyone else they’d care about how the Palestinian leadership kills, abuses and steals from their people and how almost every nation on earth finances that scam.

If it was ever really about opposing colonialism, folks would openly oppose Arab and Islamic imperialism too. The presence of Arabs outside of the Arabian peninsula is the result of that and its victims include the Kurds, Yazedis, Amazigh, Tuareg, Copts and so on. If you don’t believe me then ask those communities yourself.

In fact, Israel is the most successful anti colonial project in recorded history and real “land back” would mean every single oppressed people would get an Israel, from that region to north and South America to the natives of what is now Japan and so on.

Why Do American Liberals Ignore Palestine's Gun Control Problem?

While the majority of Israel’s allies would like to see a Palestinian State established within the West Bank and East Jerusalem, few seem to have any preference for the internal Palestinian policies that would exist within such a state. Since the global ‘Free Palestine’ movement is largely based on liberal activists, the overlooking, or perhaps ignorance, of Palestinian internal affairs often is extremely hypocritical. For example, it would be completely normal for an American gun-control activist to be spotted at a pro-Palestine demonstration; despite the extremely irresponsible gun culture in the Palestinian territories.

Just this past Friday, an Israeli 9-year-old girl living in the Israeli community of Kochav Yaakov in Judea was struck by a stray bullet, likely from the nearby PA-controlled city of Al-Bireh. In general, it is completely appropriate to hear random gunshots in Judea and Samaria since Arab locals have developed a gun-friendly culture where shooting into the air at festivities such as weddings is acceptable and even expected.

For those unfamiliar with this ‘traditional Palestinian custom’, a quick Youtube search could confirm how wedding guests, mostly male, pull the triggers of M16 assault rifles pointed to the sky as if they are shooting toy Nerf guns. Even little kids are given the OK to shoot guns at these festivities, in one famous video a child no older than four accidentally shoots his father with the gun his father let him play with at a wedding. In addition, at virtually any political rally, which often takes place in densely-populated areas, guns are brandished by participants as a symbol of strength and importance.

Guns have become a symbol of status for Palestinians; the more your family illegally owns, the more important and rich you probably are. While throughout the Middle East and its cultures, there is definitely an understanding that strength and power are one and the same, no group of people has taken it to the extreme like the Palestinians. It is so embedded within the culture that it's fair to say the only unique quality of Palestinian culture which sets them apart from all other Arabs is not the food, music, or language, but the extreme lack of gun control. While this may be a surprise or even seem like an exaggeration to some readers, it is completely synonymous with the brief history of Palestinian nationalism. A nation that was founded by militant groups seeking to terrorize their way to “freedom”, will surely keep guns on a pedestal since it has gotten them this far.

Col. Kemp: While playing Nazi dress-up, Roger Waters decries antisemitic branding

Waters’ deliberate implication was that Jews murdered Abu Akleh as Nazis murdered Anne Frank. The fact is that nobody knows whether Abu Akleh was the victim of IDF or Palestinian terrorist bullets. And indeed if it was the former it would certainly have been accidental, the farthest possible cry from the calculated way Anne Frank met her end at the hands of the German killing industry.

In every way, the circumstances of the two women’s deaths were utterly different and only a hate-filled rabble-rousing propagandist could dream up any comparison. Abu Akleh clearly did not deserve to die, but she went to Jenin of her own volition and in search of violence, whereas Anne Frank hardly volunteered to spend two years hidden in an attic in Amsterdam, in daily fear for her life, before making her final journey to Belsen.

Waters of course has a long and vitriol-fueled track record of Jew-baiting and Israel-bashing. Magistrates in Frankfurt who tried to ban his concert there accused him of being “one of the most widely known antisemites in the world”.

He takes every possible opportunity to spread lies and distortions about Israel and uses a massive media platform to amplify his prejudiced and defamatory message. As the BBC reported, he “has also floated an inflatable pig marked with the Star of David at his concerts”.

Not content with his own petty boycott of Israel (although I doubt many Israelis would want to see him there anyway) he has been aggressive in trying to persuade other performers to keep away and then publicly vilified those who treat his admonitions with the contempt they deserve. That includes the Rolling Stones.

I was there when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards defied Waters by making their Holy Land debut at HaYarkon Park in Tel Aviv a few years ago — the Israelis loved them and it was plain to see they loved the Israelis. Waters must have been furious.

Waters denies being antisemitic, professing instead to be a defender of freedom and human rights. He blames the “Israel lobby” for the complaints against him. It seems he has been taking lessons from Jeremy Corbyn who made exactly the same claims while dragging his Labour Party into its darkest depths of antisemitism and was later expelled for refusing to accept the damning findings of an inquiry into the party’s bigotry.

In another echo of Corbyn, Waters, the self-styled “anti-fascist”, has openly justified the actions of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the nearest thing we have in Europe to fascism today, with its internal repression, imprisonment of dissidents, stranglehold on the press, wars of aggression, lust for Lebensraum, torture chambers, killing centers, mass graves and industrial scale child abduction. In a speech at the UN in February, at Russia’s invitation, he claimed that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine had been “provoked” by the West, and after the invasion berated President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife in an open letter, telling her that “extreme nationalists” in Ukraine “have set your country on the path to this disastrous war”.

Waters’ craven justification of the Russian war, as well as his antisemitic stance, have been met with publicly expressed contempt even by members of his former band.

I suspect Waters’ father, too, would have found his son’s behaviour contemptible. Eric Waters, having originally secured exemption from compulsory military service as a conscientious objector, went on to voluntarily put his life on the line to fight Nazism as an infantryman in the Royal Fusiliers. He was killed in action at Anzio in 1944.

There is another aspect to Waters’ Nazi-cloaked charade in Berlin that is perhaps even more chilling than his own fanatical actions. Aside from the cheering crowds and brown-shirted Nazi helmet-wearing stooges escorting him on stage, all of the Third Reich insignia and jumbotron messaging at the arena were designed, known, approved and put together in advance by others. It involved the carefully planned effort of many people. Nobody said anything or stopped it.

75 years ago: Jordan imprisons Jews, calls them "prisoners of war"

From the Palestine Post, May 25, 1948:

These prisoners, for the most part, weren't fighters. They were workers at the electric plant.

Which means they were hostages, not prisoners of war.

And at least some of them remained hostages until a prisoner swap the end of the year. From December 1:

I don't know if there were any Arab workers at the Palestine Electric Company, but if there were, they sure didn't become hostages. Only the Jews.

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 are at least four specific major strands of antisemitism in the US today:

* Traditional far-right antisemitism associated with neo-Nazis and white supremacism that regards Jews as both uniquely powerful puppet-masters and racially inferior.

* Black antisemitism, both the decades-old version where Jews are regarded as the epitome of "whiteness" and become lightning rods for Black resentment, and the more modern Nation of Islam type regards Jews as imposters and Blacks as the real Jews and actively incites the Black community against Jews with lies about the slave trade

* Arab and Islamic antisemitism centered on Quranic texts and hate of Israel.

* "Progressive" and Leftist antisemitism that obsesses over Israel and regards the Jewish state - and by extension, Zionists - as uniquely evil when acting as any other nation at war acts. It also divides up the nation into "oppressors" and the "oppressed" and Jews are invariably placed in the former role making them the victimizers in the only real discrimination that matters.

One would have no idea that any of these exist, save the first, by reading the US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism document.

While it says that the US "embraces" the IHRA Working Definition and "welcomes" other definitions of antisemitism, the 65-page document has almost no concrete examples of the latter three types. Indeed, while it doesn't mention it, the entire document is fully compatible with the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which was written specifically to excuse all forms of antisemitism that do not emanate from the Right.

The strategy document lumps Jews in with Muslims and Blacks as victims, but not once mentions these other groups as even potential oppressors against Jews. (The closest is when it mentions the Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis, without mentioning that the attacker was Muslim.)

The document mentions "Islamophobia" 21 times, and most of the specific policy recommendations include fighting all forms of bigotry. For example, its very first recommendation is:

Federal Agencies will incorporate information about bias and discrimination related to religion, national origin, race, and ethnicity, including information about antisemitism and Islamophobia, and about workplace religious accommodations into training programs as they carry out their obligations under Executive Order 14035 (Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce)

There is nothing wrong with workplace accommodation for religious Jews and Muslims, but DEI is part of the problem. It categorizes Jews as white by default and therefore as oppressors who need to be educated in how not to be bigots. This means that Jews are the only minority who are regarded as part of the problem DEI pretends to solve.

This is the way the entire strategy is: while the introduction notes that antisemitism is unique, the rest of the document does not.

When it comes to Israel, the best rule of when criticism of Israel is antisemitic remains is Natan Sharansky's "3D" test of demonization, double standards and delegitimization.This document does not combat any of them. This is the only section that deals with Israel in any depth:

Although antisemitism remains a pernicious global problem, the scope of this national strategy is domestic. The strategy is focused on countering the threat and manifestations of antisemitism in the United States of America. The U.S. Government, led by the Department of State, will continue to combat antisemitism abroad and in international fora—including efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel.

As we confront antisemitism, we do so with profound respect for our democratic traditions, including free expression and speech protected by the First Amendment. We also do so with an unshakable commitment to the State of Israel’s right to exist, its legitimacy, and its security. In addition, we recognize and celebrate the deep historical, religious, cultural, and other ties many American Jews and other Americans have to Israel.

But this is a sop. This strong commitment to Israel is only a foreign policy priority, but explicitly not a domestic one. It only protects Zionist Jewish students in the narrow sense of protecting their rights to free speech and belief.

The only examples of anti-Israel opinion that the document explicitly calls out are those that neo-Nazis are comfortable saying.

Part of the perniciousness of modern antisemitism is that it is hate disguised as anti-racism and justice. This allows the current Jew-haters to insist that they are against antisemitism (i.e., white supremacy) while engaging in it, and there is nothing in this strategy that calls that out - meaning that today's haters can continue to lump Zionism in with racism and homophobia as evils to be eradicated and there is little in the national strategy that could combat that except by noting that it indirectly discriminates against Jews.

This means that proving antisemitism is a much higher bar than proving racism.

And that is the real problem. The strategy is too vague to be useful. By avoiding explicitly endorsing the IHRA working definition of antisemitism it means that the strategy cannot combat:

* Saying that Jews controlled the slave trade

* Claiming that Jews have no historic connection to Israel or Jerusalem

* Charging that Israel and Zionists engage in "Jewish supremacy"

* Comparing Israeli actions to those of Nazi Germany

To effectively fight antisemitism, the strategy must be specific, not vague. There is nothing in this strategy that directly combats Black Americans being exposed to lies about Jews from their own celebrities. There is nothing that says that saying Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is antisemitic. There is not a word about BDS.

Moreover, because it doesn't recognize Black, Islamic and Leftist antisemitism, the strategy cannot combat them except in marginal and extreme cases.

Unlike other bigotries which are defined as broadly as possible, antisemitism is implicitly defined here as narrowly as possible. Whether right or wrong, burden of proof in other cases of bigotry rest on the accused, but with antisemitism it rests with the accuser.

Holocaust education and teaching employers that they shouldn't discriminate against religions Jews is fine and good, but they cover up the real issues facing most American Jews today. This strategy has some good ideas and suggestions but it fails to do what it was meant to do, and as such it feels more like a checkmark in a list of promises instead of a real tool to combat the world's oldest, and constantly morphing, hate.

The lack of a real definition, the lack of calling out specifically the threats to US Jews today, and the desire to subsume antisemitism with other bigotries makes the US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism a failure before it starts.

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!

Sama News published apologetics for Islamic Jihad, claiming it won the micro-war with Israel earlier this month:

The enemy did not expect the "Quds Brigades" to continue fighting in the "Revenge of the Free" battle for more than two days, yet that the battle would extend to 5 days. And if he had succeeded tactically in assassinating 6 leaders of the "Al-Quds Brigades", he strategically failed to predict its capabilities and the strength of its fighters.

Once it set up and burned that straw man, it goes into detail on Islamic Jihad's military doctrine, which includes:

At the heart of the doctrine of jihad for the sake of God, which makes the goal of every fighter victory or martyrdom in pursuit of God's pleasure. ...The doctrine of jihad for the sake of God is the basis of the combat doctrine from which the Mujahideen start....Jihad is the highest degree in Islam and its culmination is in the text of the Prophet’s hadith...The fighters of the "Quds Brigades" go to battle as a religious duty, just as they go to prayer. ...

Jihad for the sake of God for the liberation of Palestine is linked to martyrdom, which occupies a central position in the combat doctrine of the Mujahideen of the Quds Brigades and all the Mujahideen are on the same path, based on the concept of divine choice of the martyrs who testify with their blood and souls that the goal of liberating Palestine and the nation's renaissance is more precious than their lives under occupation and oppression....The blood that is shed from the martyrs is the fuel for liberation and the movement of the masses to revolt against the occupation in all the stages of the Palestinian revolution. ...
The role of the mujahideen in Palestine, led by the Al-Quds Brigades, remains to keep the embers of jihad burning in Palestine, and to keep the fuse of resistance burning against the Zionist entity, which means continuing the jihad and the continuation of the resistance until the conditions for complete victory over it are completed, and this is what the founder of the movement, the thinker, the martyr Fathi. Al-Shikaqi said: “Our jihad will continue, and our martyrdom operations will continue, until this cause remains alive, and until the whole nation rises towards its sacred cause, the cause of Palestine.”

When terrorist apologists speak to the West, they like to claim that the word "jihad" is misunderstood, and that "holy war" is only the "lesser jihad" while the "greater jihad" means the personal struggle to be a better person.

But I can see no mention of "greater jihad" here in Arabic. I don't see much inner struggle in this text. The word "jihad" has only one meaning in this manifesto.

And indeed, as we've seen, the default meaning of "jihad" in Arabic is invariably violent holy war. In fact, WikiIslam say that the original source cited for "greater Jihad" as an inner struggle is considered by many Islamic authorities to be fabricated or at best quite weak, and contradicts several explicit Quranic sources that say that jihad with bloodshed is superior in every way.

Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home). Unto all (in Faith) Hath Allah promised good: But those who strive and fight Hath He distinguished above those who sit (at home) by a special reward. (Quran 4:95)

A number of hadiths quoting Mohammed are even stronger, such as,

Standing for an hour in the ranks of battle is better than standing in prayer for sixty years.
(Saheeh related by Ibn Ade and Ibn Asakir from Abu Hurayrah 4/6165. Sahih al Jaami as Sagheer no. 4305)

Etymologically, "jihad" means struggle, but colloquially and Islamically, there is only one real meaning for the term.

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!

05/27 Links: Melanie Phillips: Jew-hatred struts the stage in Berlin; NYC’s public law school releases video of antisemitic commencement speech; Amnesty Board Member Shares Support for Terrorism, and Erasing Israel

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Jew-hatred struts the stage in Berlin

In his book The End of the Holocaust, Alvin Rosenfeld observed that the Anne Frank story has been re-framed to articulate the need to overcome racism and homophobia, prevent mass murder and promote tolerance and kindness.

Jews like Anne Frank, however, were wiped out not because of a lack of tolerance or kindness or through prejudice but because of a derangement beyond comprehension directed at the Jewish people.

In Mosaic in 2016, Edward Rothstein wrote that Holocaust museums flinched from emphasising the uniqueness of Jewish suffering. No such museum, he observed, could seemingly be complete without invoking other 20th-century genocides in Rwanda, Darfur or Cambodia.

If we are all guilty, though, then no-one is guilty. More balefully still, if everyone can be a Nazi, so too can the Jews. Holocaust universalism has thus led directly to the demonisation of Israel by people claiming to be anti-racist.

In Britain, this is one reason why there have been strenuous objections to the Holocaust memorial and education centre that the government wants to construct in a small park next to the Houses of Parliament.

The project has been derailed by the late discovery of a planning law that forbids any such construction in this park, a law that the government is determined to overturn.

Aside from environmental objections, significant concerns have long been expressed that the message to be delivered by this centre will relativise and thus devalue the Holocaust.

These objections have been brushed aside by the government and the project’s backers in the Jewish community leadership.

However, the government itself has now given the game away by acknowledging that the main purpose of this centre is not to commemorate the genocide of the Jews. As Housing Minister Baroness Scott disclosed earlier this month, its aim is to ensure that the story of what happened in the Holocaust “resonates with the public”.

And how will it do that? By denying the unique nature of the Jewish genocide. “The content will also address genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur,” she said.

This drew a furious response from one of the leading opponents of the project, Baroness Deech, who said it would “demote the Shoah”.

Deech, who is Jewish and whose late father, historian Josef Fraenkel, fled the Nazis, said: “It would prompt generalities about hate and intolerance and would drain the presentation of the Shoah from its antisemitic origins dating back thousands of years.”

She went on: “They are going to put forward the message that if you see something bad going on, you must not be a bystander. If it’s just ‘don’t be a bystander’, I don’t see how that helps people understand antisemitism and the plight of the Jews.”

Deech was backed by Gary Mond, chairman of the National Jewish Assembly, who said: “The main concern is that there must be no dilution to the principle that the Holocaust was totally unique and incomparable.”

But that message will be utterly diluted by this proposed memorial.

The government is being egged on by Jewish community leaders who refuse to get the point. Instead, they have bullied objectors to the project and vilified them as antisemites — despite the fact that a number of them are Jews.

These leaders are thus weaponising antisemitism to drive through a project that will instrumentalise antisemitism, in order to deliver a message that will betray the memory of Jews murdered in the Shoah by diminishing their unique fate.

Universalising the Holocaust has happened for two reasons. The non-Jewish world wants to share the protected moral status of being victims of the greatest crime in history by claiming other evils are just as bad. Diaspora Jews, desperate not to be viewed as different, are terrified of asserting Jewish uniqueness, even over this.

Meanwhile, a depraved antisemite struts the stage in Berlin.

Biden’s Antisemitism Strategy Fails to Condemn BDS, Includes CAIR

While Biden’s U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism doesn’t condemn BDS and waffles on pro and anti-Israel positions, it does take the time to bring CAIR into it.

The press release boasts that “the Council on American-Islamic Relations will launch a tour to educate religious communities about steps they can take to protect their houses of worship from hate incidents.”

That’s the same CAIR that has defended Islamic terrorism against Jews, defended Muslim terrorists like Ahmed Ferhani who plotted attacks on synagogues, and which was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial involving the funding of Hamas.

The ZOA notes that, “the Biden Strategy uses the soft phrase U.S. “has embraced” [past tense] the positive consensus IHRA definition of antisemitism – while much more strongly states Biden “welcomes and appreciates” the dangerous “Nexus” definition of antisemitism. The Biden Strategy then also “notes” other definitions, which can mean even more harmful definitions such as the JDA definition.”

It also points out that, “Third, the Biden Strategy fails to explicitly identify or deal with any source of antisemitism by name other than white supremacy. The Biden Strategy never identifies Black supremacist antisemitism such as that of Louis Farrakhan; BlackLivesMatter (BLM) antisemitism and anti-Jewish pogroms; radical Islamist antisemitism; or the hatred of Jews and the sole Jewish state promoted in Congress by Squad members such as Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Betty McCollum, Cori Bush, Bernie Sanders and Jamaal Bowman.”

The Coalition for Jewish Values also blasted the strategy, “the President’s statement also highlights the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville in 2017 and seems to tie antisemitism exclusively to white supremacy. This distracts attention from other sources of antisemitism; the vast majority of attacks upon Jews in New York are perpetrated by People of Color.”

This is the Biden administration’s betrayal of Jews in a nutshell.

Antisemitism ‘Working Definition’ Not a ‘Work in Progress,’ Say New IHRA Co-Presidents

JNS asked if the IHRA co-presidents worry that some might misunderstand the term “working definition” and think it suggests tentativeness or some other form of hedging.

“It’s called the ‘working definition’ for it to be what it is—and that is an action-based tool, a practical tool,” Lustig told JNS. “The fact that it’s called a ‘working definition’ does not mean that it’s a work in progress, so much as it’s very clear what it is and clear what it does.”

Lustig also reflected on another part of the working definition that she said people misconstrue—that it muzzles legitimate criticism of Israel. Acknowledging that an individual can criticize Israel without being antisemitic is one of the “contemporary examples” that IHRA appends to the working definition, she said.

“One of the examples is denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination by saying that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” she explained. “That’s what the definition says. I personally would say that does not stifle the criticism of Israel. All it says is that Israel is allowed to exist and have the right to self-determination. Those are two very different things.”

Gras told JNS that the working definition, like all the items in IHRA’s toolkit, “is the product of international and interdisciplinary consensus, and it provides practical, real-world guidance for educators and others who hope to understand and monitor antisemitism.”

Antisemitism is a problem “present in all of our societies and states, so we all have a responsibility to act, to really speak out when we see such forms of discrimination,” Gras added. “Much has been done, but I think there is still much more to do.”

Chag sameach!


	Ruth and Naomi, Ary Scheffer	1856

Chag sameach to all who celebrate Shavuot!

See you after Shabbat!

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!

05/25 Links Pt2: Terror-supporting NGO advises Facebook on Israel content moderation; CNN Promotes Anti-Israel Propaganda for Children; KKL-JNF unveils photos of Shavuot festivities in British Mandate era

From Ian:

Terror-supporting NGO advises Facebook on Israel content moderation

Organizations that celebrated terrorist attacks against Israelis and support boycotting Israel have advised Meta, Facebook’s parent company, on its content moderation regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A report from NGO Monitor, which researches the activities and funding of organizations active in relation to the conflict and Israel, found that Meta and BSR, a company hired to evaluate its policies, had extensive interactions – regarding making decisions about what constitutes incitement against Israel – with organizations such as Human Rights Watch and 7amleh (pronounced “hamleh”) that have documented histories of anti-Israel campaigning.

The result is a report by BSR recommending, among other things, that more leeway be given for posts praising the terrorist group Hamas.

Emi Palmor, former Justice Ministry director-general and the only Israeli on Meta’s 18-member Oversight Board – which is meant to be the company’s “supreme court” – said “there is no doubt [that Israelis’] voices are not heard,” in part because pro-Israel organizations and figures don’t take part in the process even when they are invited to do so.

HRW and 7amleh, however, are well organized in the effort to influence Meta, leading an effort accusing the social media giant of silencing Palestinians and demanding a change in content moderation. They also appealed to the Oversight Board, which led the board to recommend that Facebook commission an independent report on the matter.

The company undertook a review of its policies following the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Palestinian terrorists and rioting in mixed Jewish-Arab cities in Israel. Facebook removed content promoting violence and supporting Hamas that was in violation of its community standards, which the NGOs said means they were silencing the Palestinians.

7amleh calls itself an “advocate for Palestinian digital rights,” but regularly celebrates terrorists and attacks against Israelis. It also advocates for boycotts of Israel and campaigned to have Palmor removed from the board. 7amleh is a “trusted partner” of Meta when it comes to content-related decisions in the region and a member of Twitter’s “Trust and Safety Council.”

7amleh has a history of supporting terrorism against Israel
The NGO and its officials have repeatedly and publicly supported terrorism against Israel. 7amleh criticized Zoom for canceling an event hosting Leila Khaled, a hijacker and member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is designated a terrorist group in the US, EU and Israel. The group lauded Sabri Khalil Al-Banna, leader of the Abu Nidal terrorist organization, and deceased PFLP leader Ghassan Kanafani as “distinguished Palestinian personalities.”

Board member Neveen Abu Rahmoun called the barrage of Hamas rockets on Israel in May 2021 “the popular uprising,” saying that “all Palestinians have come together.” When the operation ended, Abu Rahmoun praised “Gaza the powerful... with their combative action, [they] surpassed the political leadership and returned to us the meaning of Palestinian togetherness.”

At High School Debates, Debate Is No Longer Allowed

My four years on a high school debate team in Broward County, Florida, taught me to challenge ideas, question assumptions, and think outside the box. It also helped me overcome a terrible childhood stutter. And I wasn’t half-bad: I placed ninth my first time at the National Speech & Debate Association (NSDA) nationals, sixth at the Harvard national, and was runner-up at the Emory national.

After college, between 2017 and 2019, I coached a debate team at an underprivileged high school in Miami. There, I witnessed the pillars of high school debate start to crumble. Since then, the decline has continued, from a competition that rewards evidence and reasoning to one that punishes students for what they say and how they say it.

First, some background. Imagine a high school sophomore on the debate team. She’s been given her topic about a month in advance, but she won’t know who her judge is until hours before her debate round. During that time squeeze—perhaps she’ll pace the halls as I did at the 2012 national tournament in Indianapolis—she’ll scroll on her phone to look up her judge’s name on Tabroom, a public database maintained by the NSDA. That’s where judges post “paradigms,” which explain what they look for during a debate. If a judge prefers competitors not “spread”—speak a mile a minute—debaters will moderate their pace. If a judge emphasizes “impacts”—the reasons why an argument matters—debaters adjust accordingly.

But let’s say when the high school sophomore clicks Tabroom she sees that her judge is Lila Lavender, the 2019 national debate champion, whose paradigm reads, “Before anything else, including being a debate judge, I am a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist. . . . I cannot check the revolutionary proletarian science at the door when I’m judging. . . . I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-imperialist positions/arguments. . . . Examples of arguments of this nature are as follows: fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism, Zionism or normalizing Israel, colonialism good, US white fascist policing good, etc.”

"US Angry at 65% Tax on Hostile Israeli NGOs Receiving Foreign Contributions"

On Sunday, the Ministerial Legislative Committee will debate a bill submitted by Likud MK Ariel Kallner that takes away the tax credit from Israeli donors to NGOs that receive donations from a foreign entity, and in the two years before or after said donations promoted a public cause by appealing to the court, the Knesset, the government, the municipalities or bought advertising space.

In addition, the NGO will lose its not-for-profit status and be taxed at a rate of 65% of its income. The bill is part of Otzma Yehudit’s coalition agreement with Likud, which committed to enacting it within 180 days of the formation of the Netanyahu government.

On Thursday, MK Kallner tweeted his reason for the bill and mentioned Sven Kuehn Von Burgsdorff, Head of “the delegation representing the EU in West Bank and Gaza and to UNRWA,” who last August participated in the reopening of Addameer, which Israel had declared to be an arm of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP was designated as a terrorist organization by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel, and according to a 2021 NGO Monitor report, many individuals employed at Addameer have links to this terror group (Addameer Employees’ Violent Social Media Accounts).

“We’re putting an end to foreign political subversion!” Kallner tweeted, adding, “The fact that the head of the European Union delegation, Mr. Sven Kuehn Von Burgsdorff, thinks that the Jews are occupying the land to which they have returned, is the small problem in the story,” although, as he puts it, saying this about the remnants of European barbarism and mass murder is a tad insolent.

“The problem is that in addition to taking the position, foreign countries, mainly from Europe, do not stop acting within the Jewish state by funding civil society organizations,” and he mentions the anti-Zionist NGOs Yesh Din, Emek Shaveh, and Peace Now – to name but a few.

This did not go over well with US Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Committee, Michele Taylor, who said publicly that “Israel must ensure that human rights organizations and other non-governmental organizations can operate freely, without economic or legal pressures being applied to them that would harm their activities.”

Ambassador Taylor should consult her government’s Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, requiring the registration of, and disclosures by, an “agent of a foreign principal” who, among other things, solicits, collects, disburses, or dispenses contributions, loans, money, or other things of value for or in the interest of a foreign principal.

Sisters Millea Kenin, Director of Returning Home, (right) and Chanah Ella Kenin, who stars as Eliana (left).

Returning Home is a short film depiction of what it is like to be an American Olah or immigrant to Israel, as a teenager. The challenges are specific. Teen Olim may have a close-knit group of friends they were forced to leave behind in the States, perhaps friends they grew up with. Teenage immigrants may feel alienated from their new, Hebrew-speaking classmates and by Israeli teen culture, in general. Language is often a problem. And sometimes, the choice to come live in Israel is not made by teenage Olim, but by their parents.

Basically, teenage aliyah is teenage angst on steroids.

Millea Kenin, a senior at Oriyah High School in Gush Etzion, made aliyah from Berkeley, California in 2019. At Oriyah, Kenin had the opportunity to choose filmmaking as her study track. The teenager attended film classes for three years, learning to make music videos, short films, and more.

As part of the curriculum for the Oriyah film elective, Millea Kenin directed the short movie, Returning Home, written and created by her and three of her classmates. Being in their senior year, the film was the students’ final project for the program. (Names of the full production crew are in the youtube video description, in Hebrew.)

Asked if Returning Home was based on the Berkeley teen’s personal Aliyah journey, Millea said, “The film was inspired by some of my own experiences, but isn’t specific to my experience. It’s made for all Olim to relate to.”

Millea was the only immigrant among the film producers. But there is another teenage immigrant involved with the film. Chanah Ella Kenin, younger sister of Millea, plays the part of lonely alienated teen immigrant Eliana. Her performance was so genuine and credible, that after seeing the film, her mom Naama—also in the film—came up to Chanah Ella and apologized for making her make Aliyah. The brave teen responded, “It’s okay. I’d totally do it again.”

Likes (at the youtube page) and shares would be much appreciated by these ambitious and talented teen filmmakers.

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!

05/25 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Israeli power is the foundation for regional peace; EU envoy: ‘No such thing as Area A and B, it’s all Palestine’; Iran unveils Khaybar missile capable of reaching Israel

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israeli power is the foundation for regional peace

In all cases, the Arab states that have made formal peace deals with Israel in the past did so because Israel had something to give them. With both the Abraham Accords and Israel’s peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt, by making peace with Israel, the Arab states received better ties with the United States.

Today, the Biden administration is moved far more by its domestic constituents who are hostile to Israel than by U.S. strategic interests as those were understood by the United States until the Obama administration. As a result, the Biden administration is adopting policies that are hostile to both Israel and Saudi Arabia, and to peace between them. Biden’s refusal to date to host Netanyahu at the White House is a graphic demonstration of his administration’s hostile bent.

Netanyahu cannot deliver the concessions Washington is demanding. If he accepts the U.S./Saudi demand to give the Palestinians security powers in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem that Israel holds, Israel will undermine its national security and endanger its national interests. If Netanyahu agrees to cancel his efforts to reform the legal system, he will destabilize his government.

Moreover, given the current anti-Saudi bent among Democrats, Netanyahu will be hard-pressed to persuade Biden to agree to MBS’s demands.

To foster peace with Saudi Arabia, Israel has to do what it has been doing all along: serve as a block on Iran’s rise. Israel’s ties with Saudi Arabia were forged in 2013 as a result of Obama’s realignment towards Iran and away from Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Saudis saw that Israel was steady in its opposition to Iran’s empowerment and that it was militarily and technologically competent to prevent Iran from becoming the regional hegemon. To protect themselves, the Saudis set aside their longtime hatred of the Jewish state and began supporting its efforts to defeat Iran’s Palestinian proxies and sabotage its nuclear program and nuclear diplomacy.

The way to transform these sub rosa ties into an above-the-table alliance is for Israel to undermine Iran’s power. Israel doesn’t need to take military action to accomplish this goal. The best way to avoid a devastating regional war with Iran’s proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and Syria is for Israel to help the Iranian people to overthrow the regime.

A “highly confidential” IRGC document leaked this week to Radio Free Europe documents concern among senior regime officials that the country is on the verge of an “explosion,” with civil unrest reaching a crescendo. Nearly every day, more industrial plants blow up. Workers strike. And even as the regime ratchets up its execution of protesters, the protests continue. An Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base was bombed earlier this month. IRGC forces are under attack on the roads and in their bases.

Israeli support for striking Iranian workers and sabotage of Iranian military installations will go a long way towards destabilizing the regime and empowering the people rising up against it.

Such action, in turn, will demonstrate both Israel’s power and its importance as a regional power, drawing its neighbors, first and foremost Saudi Arabia, closer to Jerusalem.

This may cause MBS to conclude that he wants to directly negotiate a peace with Israel without preconditions. It may cause Biden to drop his demands for mediation. It may convince another party to step into the breach and mediate an accord. Whatever the case, destabilizing the Iranian regime and empowering the Iranian people will strengthen Israel, diminish the chances of regional war and so stabilize the region far more than paying an unwarranted price for a paper peace.

US, Israeli diplomats slam Abbas, as potential UN blacklist worries Jerusalem

The American ambassador to the United Nations blasted the Palestinian Authority’s leader during a U.N. Security Council meeting on Wednesday morning.

Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield chastised P.A. head Mahmoud Abbas for his incendiary speech during the U.N.’s “Nakba Day” event on May 15.

Thomas-Greenfield said that Abbas’s equivocation of Israel “with the lies of infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels” was a “gross affront to Holocaust victims and survivors.”

She added that making such a statement “about the world’s only Jewish state is entirely unacceptable, especially during a time of rising antisemitic violence around the world.”

In that speech, Abbas aired out a list of grievances he said contributed to the Palestinians’ current predicament, including a claim that the United States and the United Kingdom sent their Jews to the Land of Israel in order to benefit their own countries.

Thomas-Greenfield said on May 24 that Abbas’s rhetoric was “totally without basis and it is deeply offensive to the American people.”

Notably, the United States was among 45 countries that did not attend the “Nakba Day” event, according to the Israeli mission to the United Nations, and no U.S. State Department officials met with Abbas during his trip. No senior U.N. officials met with him either.

Israeli officials met UN chief on Children and Armed Conflict blacklist

Israeli officials pushing to ensure that the Jewish state is not blacklisted in the United Nation's Children and Armed Conflict report due to be published in the coming months met this week with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

“There is, understandably, a lot of interest in different parts of that report,” Guterres’ spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York on Wednesday when quizzed about the meeting.

“I just ask for everybody's patience to wait” for the report’s release “which should be late June or early July,” he added.

Involvement of UN Ambassador from Israel Gilad Erdan
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Major General Ghassan Alian spoke with Guterres in New York on Tuesday to provide him with data regarding Palestinian casualties during IDF military operations in advance of the report’s release.

“We presented the Secretary-General with clear data proving that the majority of Palestinian minors killed in the past year were involved in acts of violence and terrorism,” Erdan said.

“This information was omitted from the UN data, along with the fact that terrorist organizations use Palestinian children as human shields and fire missiles and rockets from densely populated areas,” he added.

"Whoever is responsible for the incitement and recruitment of minors for murder and terrorism is the one who should be included on the blacklist, not the IDF, which is the most moral army in the world,” Erdan stated.

Israeli officials similarly provided such information to the special representative of the UN secretary-general for children and armed conflict Virginia Gamba when she visited Israel in December. Neither Erdan's office nor the IDF has released that data to the public.

The UN had warned Israel and the Palestinian Authority last year that both governments could be blacklisted in this year’s report if steps were not taken to protect children in armed conflict.

EU envoy: ‘No such thing as Area A and B, it’s all Palestine’

German diplomat Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, who represents the European Union in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, said on Wednesday during a visit to Samaria, “There is no such thing as Area B and C, it’s all Palestine.”

Areas A, B, and C are three administrative zones in Judea and Samaria established under the Oslo Accords. Area A is under Palestinian Authority civil and security control. Area B is governed by P.A. civil control but joint Israeli-Palestinian security. Area C, roughly 60% of the area, is fully under Israeli civil and military control.

Von Burgsdorff also said that “what we’re seeing in Homesh is not just a violation of international law … it’s a violation of Israeli domestic law.”

He was referencing the Knesset’s vote in March to repeal articles of a 2005 law banning Israelis from residing in the four communities in northern Samaria—Homesh, Sa-Nur, Ganim and Kadim—that were evacuated during the disengagement.

The E.U. on Wednesday issued a statement saying it is “gravely concerned by and condemns the decision of the Israeli authorities to allow Israeli citizens to establish permanent presence in the outpost in Homesh.”

Von Burgsdorff made his comments during a tour for senior E.U. diplomats organized by three Israeli NGOs opposed to Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria—Peace Now, Yesh Din and Emek Shaveh.

I was reminded of a famous Midrash:

A certain Jew passed before Hadrian and greeted him.

[Hadrian] asked him: ‘Who are you?’ He said to him: ‘A Jew.’ He said to him: ‘Is there a Jew who passes before Hadrian and greets him?’ [Hadrian] said [to his men]: ‘Go and behead him.’

Another [Jew] passed, who saw what had befallen the one who preceded him, and he did not greet him. [Hadrian] asked him: ‘Who are you?’ He said to him: ‘A Jew.’ He said to him: ‘Is there a Jew who passes before Hadrian and does not greet him?’ [Hadrian] said to [his men]: ‘Go and behead him.’

His advisers said to him: ‘We do not understand these actions that you are performing. One who greets you is executed and one who does not greet you is executed?’ He said to them: ‘Do you seek to advise me how I am supposed to execute my enemies?’

Today as well, Israel is considered guilty no matter what it does - and the justifications come later.

The only difference is that today Hadrian would have a team of lawyers and academics who would write reports and papers explaining from a human rights perspective why a Jew greeting the emperor deserves the death penalty. And then they would write another set of reports and papers describing why a Jew not greeting him is a grave violation of the law as well and must be executed.

And Hadrian would have another set of publicity experts to explain to the media why these actions are not antisemitic, and how Hadrian isn't treating Jews any differently from anyone else, it is just that the Jews who greet him and don't greet him have some other attribute - perhaps curly hair, perhaps an offensive headcovering - that explains fully why they should be beheaded, but not others. And to point out that there are some good Jews that Hadrian hadn't beheaded yet which proves that he is not an antisemite.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Arab News parrots Palestinian lies about the Temple Mount. Lying reporter has written for major news media.

The biography of Mohammed Najib says he "a journalist, war correspondent and defense analyst based in Ramallah, Palestine. He reports and writes on the Middle East region for leading newspapers and journals like The Jerusalem Post, Yomiuri Shimbon, Le Monde, Special Operations Report, the Wall Street Journal and Jane’s Information Group."

He is a Palestinian based in Ramallah.

Judging from this article in the Saudi-based Arab News, he has no business pretending to be any kind of journalist. The article is filled with absolute lies and Palestinian propaganda.

Palestinians are outraged by the Israeli government’s move to hold a weekly Cabinet meeting on May 21 inside the tunnels it has dug under Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Israel has not dug a single tunnel underneath the Temple Mount or under the mosque. All the tunnels that archaeologists have uncovered and excavated are adjacent to the Mount, or stretch hundreds of meters away from it.

For decades, Israel has been excavating under Al-Aqsa as part of a vague, historically motivated search for “Solomon’s Temple” in an attempt to justify the occupation through archeology.

However, after years of digging, Israelis, who claim they can trace their heritage to the land of Palestine, have found nothing linking their history to the Al-Aqsa region.

The only people who have excavated underneath the Temple Mount since the 19th century have been the Muslims of the Waqf.

They dug out hundreds of tons of debris removed to illegally build the huge underground Marwani Mosque at the site of what was (erroneously) called Solomon's Stables.

It was the biggest archaeological crime of the century.

The Temple Mount Sifting Project has been going through the truckfuls of debris - and found countless Judean artifacts from the times of the First and Second Temples.

One example is this bulla inscribed with the name of a well-known priestly family of First Temple-era Jerusalem, the children of Immer.

They also found the distinctive Herodian tiles from the Second Temple period. So we know Herod built something big there - now what structure could it have possibly been and described in detail by Josephus?

Najib is a liar.

Dozens of far-right Israelis visit the Al-Aqsa compound daily to show defiance and provoke Palestinians.

No, they (and visitors like me) visit to be at Judaism's holiest spot - a small fact that Najib doesn't mention to the readers.

In July 2017, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee issued a decision affirming that Israel has no sovereignty over the city of Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in 1967. It condemned the excavations carried out by the Israeli Antiquities Department in the city.

UNESCO never condemned the Temple Mount excavations by the waqf - which continued on into the 21st century.

Ikrima Sabri, a preacher at Al-Aqsa Mosque, said that Israel was carrying out comprehensive excavations in the entire area, including the surroundings of Al-Aqsa.

Sabri said the main objective of these excavations “is to search for antiquities belonging to the Jews, but they have not yet found any antiquities or stones related to ancient Jewish history, despite the extensive excavations that have been taking place since the city’s occupation in 1967.”

Besides the examples listed above, and the Temple Mount itself which can be seen to have been built and expanded by Jews, here is a photo of the beams on the roof of the Al Aqsa Mosque that were exposed when it collapsed in the 1927 earthquake.

The beams were removed and, decades later, examined with carbon-14 dating. Some date from the Second Temple and even First Temple periods, and they are cedar and cypress from Lebanon - used in the Temples and repurposed for a Byzantine church on the site and later for Al Aqsa.

This is serious evidence of a major 3,000 year old structure on the Temple Mount. If there is a serious theory that these belong to another ancient building, let's hear it. Especially since the stones of the retaining wall itself show clearly that they were built in different time periods corresponding to the known building and extensions of the Mount.

About 12 tunnels have been dug under Al-Aqsa, some reaching 450 meters in length. The excavation has led to the systematic destruction of many antiquities above and below the ground from all periods — from the Umayyad to the Ottoman

On the contrary: Israeli archaeologists have not only preserved Muslim buildings and artifacts - there are plenty in the Israel Museum which gives them as much prominence as the Christian and Jewish objects - but the only reason we know there was an Umayyad palace south of the Temple Mount is because Israelis discovered it and preserved it.

Notice how Najib defines "all periods" as only the Muslim era, discarding Jewish and Christian history in Jerusalem altogether.

This is not journalism. This is Palestinian propaganda that has not a shred of fact behind it.

No newspaper should ever publish Mohammed Najib's writings again.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Palestinian students in the West Bank vote for Hamas at university elections

Last week, at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Hamas squeaked out a win over the Fatah bloc in student elections, the first time Hamas has won in 16 years - during the second intifada.

Hamas won 40 seats, Fatah's bloc 38, and the socialist PFLP won three.

On Wednesday, there were student elections in Birzeit University near Ramallah, and Hamas's victory was much more substantial. The Islamist bloc won 25 seats, the Fatah bloc 20, and the PFLP six.

Since there aren't any real elections, these meaningless student elections are given outsized importance since they are the closest thing to democracy Palestinians ever see. But as anyone who is familiar with student councils knows, their power is practically nil, and the universities don't follow their decisions.

Even so, these elections do reflect how West Bank students think, and even in the heart of Fatah country, the Islamist terror groups won.

The Islamic bloc campaigns heavily referred to famous terrorists.

Anyone who claims that the majority of Palestinians want peace are lying.

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!

05/24 Links Pt2: Dershowitz: Amanpour equating terrorists and victims is ‘beneath contempt’; Melanie Phillips: The betrayal of America's Jews; Mahmoud Abbas’s Jewish ancestry

From Ian:

Arsen Ostrovsky: A defining moment for how the White House handles antisemitism

The answer is that the Biden administration has been under relentless pressure from progressive elements within its own party to extricate or minimize any reference to Israel, to “allow more space for criticism of Israel.”

In fact, the IHRA definition does not chill, silence, censor or stifle criticism of Israel or advocacy for Palestinians. In fact, the IHRA definition explicitly states that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” The definition also includes helpful examples, however, illustrating how, “taking into account the overall context,” purported criticism of Israel can sometimes evince antisemitism. This occurs, for example, when critics apply double standards against Israel that they would not apply to other democratic nations, “[draw] comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” or “[deny] the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

Ahead of the Biden administration’s unveiling of its national strategy to counter antisemitism, there are reports that, while it might highlight the IHRA definition, it may also reference “alternatives.” Doing so would be a terrible idea.

Not a single one of these alternatives has ever even been adopted by a government entity or major institution, and for good reason: They fail to identify some of the most common manifestations of modern anti-Jewish hate, including the targeting and vilification of Israel “conceived as a Jewish collectivity.”

With antisemitism surging to unprecedented levels across America, now is not the time to equivocate. If the Biden administration is serious about delivering the “most ambitious, comprehensive effort in our history to combat antisemitism in America,” it will not appease those seeking to undermine this effort. Rather, it will unequivocally endorse the IHRA working definition as the sole and indispensable definition of antisemitism.

The White House intends to fight antisemitism. That starts with a sensible definition

The IHRA definition is the most authoritative and internationally accepted definition of antisemitism. Forty-one nations, as well as hundreds of local governments, academic institutions, NGOs and other entities have formally adopted in different ways the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Over half — 31 — American states also adopted it.

Since the Obama Administration, the U.S. Department of State has utilized and promoted the IHRA definition (and previously, its similarly-phrased predecessor from the European Union’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia). Both Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt are leaders in advocating for its usage around the globe. The U.S. Department of Education also employs the IHRA definition as a tool in determining antisemitism discrimination in Title VI discrimination cases.

The IHRA definition continues to gain significant attention and support among governments and civil society actors. Fifty-one of the 53 member organizations of the Conference of Presidents adopted the definition – a clear recognition from every corner of a disparate Jewish community that we are unified when it comes to applauding the comprehensive approach it provides for labeling and addressing antisemitism.

One particular aspect of the IHRA definition that draws attention — and criticism from some groups — is its treatment of the relationship between anti-Israel bias and antisemitism. For too long, definitions of antisemitism failed to account for how anti-Zionism often serves as a cover for antisemitism. Forms of antisemitism that are masked as “anti-Zionism” and that deny the right of the Jewish people to self-determination are among those most frequently encountered by many Jews today, whether or not they are Zionists, as documented in surveys by the Anti-Defamation League and by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights.

The IHRA definition addresses the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, while not conflating legitimate criticism with actual antisemitism. Critics fail to identify actual instances where the IHRA definition suppressed free speech. In fact, over the last 20 weeks, as debates raged around the world over Israel’s proposed judicial reform — with hundreds of thousands of Israelis of all political stripes expressing virulent criticism of the Israeli government’s proposed overhaul — I have yet to hear one individual accuse the critics of being antisemitic. Despite the fact that the IHRA definition is so ubiquitous, legitimate speech that is critical of Israeli government policy is not censored. When put to the test, the IHRA definition does not do what its critics say it does.

We at the Conference of Presidents steadily campaign for states, localities, international governments and organizations to adopt the IHRA definition. The Biden administration seems poised to reassert their ongoing endorsement of the IHRA definition, pushing back yet again against those who distort the nature of the definition’s treatment of legitimate criticism of Israel governmental policies.

In a time when antisemitism in the United States has become all too often lethal, this would mean a vital and praiseworthy evolution of policy.

Biden antisemitism strategy is futile without the IHRA definition

How do the incessant attacks on Israel persist, given the widespread adoption of the IHRA? The main reason is that even those who have adopted it do not take it seriously enough to call out the antisemites in their midst. More fundamentally, the IHRA explicitly states that criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic. Furthermore, it does not suggest punishment for those whose words or deeds are antisemitic.

Still, opponents of the definition don’t want to be called out for their bigotry or stigmatized as antisemites.

Sarcasm and cynicism aside, it’s nice to see our government take the issue of antisemitism in America seriously enough to invest some time and hopefully meaningful money into taking steps to address the issue. It is also nice to see the initiative coming from a Democratic president, given that his party has significantly normalized antisemitism. Of course, if the party does not act against the antisemites in its midst, like Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, it will not only fail but be rightly ridiculed for hypocrisy.

The effort can make a contribution if it impels colleges to take the issue seriously, adopt the IHRA definition and end the anomaly of being the only institution in America where antisemitism is tolerated.

The inclusion of the IHRA is necessary but not sufficient. The definition and examples were formulated in 2015. Antisemites have become more sophisticated in disguising their behavior and malign intent. We now see Jew-hatred manifested in ways not covered by its examples.

Even more concerning is how social media has exponentially increased the opportunities to spread bigotry, and jellyfish like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk refuse to prevent their platforms from giving the seemingly infinite number of Goebbels imitators a megaphone to spread their bile. Failure to address online hate will also neuter President Joe Biden’s efforts.

Mr. President, listen to your State Department, which said in 2022 the IHRA definition of antisemitism is “integral to the fight to eliminate this scourge. It is widely accepted and used throughout the world by governments, international organizations, religious and sports entities, and other civil society organizations, which sends a powerful message of solidarity against antisemitism. Bipartisan U.S. administrations have embraced and used the IHRA working definition of Antisemitism, inclusive of its examples, as a policy tool.”

Without this shared understanding of antisemitism, even the most well-meaning strategy is doomed to failure.

And the bit about "caring" about Israel more is circular, and fatuous. Would a single-minded focus on the evils any other religious or national group d be justified by a self-professed "care" about them? (2/2)
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) May 24, 2023

The U.S. has sent $75 billion to Ukraine in the past two years without making "Ukrainianism" a pressing social problem, but Biden Admin wants you to endorse a document that says demonizing Jewish state is ok because American gives it some money. It's not all about the Bejamins... pic.twitter.com/1R2m9OA4Ae
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) May 24, 2023

The opponents of IHRA are reenacting Jabotinsky's anecdote about the European gentleman who says "An anti-Semite is someone who hates Jews more than one should." https://t.co/1sZPnGVDUe
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) May 24, 2023

How the English-Language, Left-Leaning Media is Turning the World Against Itamar Ben-Gvir and Israel (Judean Rose)

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister is variously embraced and reviled for his views, depending on one’s political views. He is embraced by the right for—among other things—his support for settlements; access to Jewish holy sites; and the deportation of terrorists. The left, meanwhile reviles Ben-Gvir for his supposed extremism and racism, though the MK has openly stated that he does not support the deportation of Arabs, only terrorists. The stark difference in perspective is best illustrated through news reports on Ben-Gvir’s recent visit to the Temple Mount. It all boils down to how the different outlets translated the Hebrew “Ba’al HaBayit.”

מתפלל. pic.twitter.com/Ms4zX2nag2
— نير حسون Nir Hasson ניר חסון (@nirhasson) May 21, 2023

According to the Hebrew Ynet report, what Ben-Gvir actually said in his statement during his visit to the Temple Mount, was “We are the ‘ba’alei habayit of the house, here. All of the threats of Hamas will not help; we are the ba’alei habayit of Jerusalem and of the whole of the Land of Israel,” “ba’alei” being the plural form of “ba’al.”

The literal translation of “ba’al habayit” is “Master of the House.” But that is not the sense of this title. A host is referred to as a “ba’al habayit,” or head of household; the one who sets the tone for his family and guests. A landlord is also called a “ba’al habayit,” the owner, as distinct from his tenants. A ba’al habayit can also be someone who concerns himself with the mundane and earning a living, as opposed to someone who engages in the full time study of Torah.

The auto-Google translate interprets Ynet’s Hebrew “ba’alei” as “owners.”

The Jewish Press, a right-wing publication that supports Ben-Gvir, similarly likes the word “owners” for the translation of “ba’alei habayit.” They have Ben-Gvir’s quote as follows: “We are the owners of Jerusalem and the entire Land of Israel.”

The right-wing Israel National News (Arutz 7), prefers to translate “ba’alei” as those in charge: “We are in charge of Jerusalem and of all of the land of Israel." In agreement are Reuters and the Times of Israel—though they probably see “in charge” as exclusionary and maybe even racist.

The Jpost translates “ba’alei habayit” in its most literal sense. “We are the masters of Jerusalem,” blares the headline, betraying the news outlet’s left-of-center bias. They want Ben-Gvir to sound imperious and extreme.

Which version of Ben-Gvir’s quote are English-speaking news consumers most likely to see? How might these different translations color the way western readers are likely to view this controversial Israeli politician? The substitution of “owner” and “in charge” for “ba’al habayit” seem to this writer at least, to be factual; Ben-Gvir is making a statement of fact: Israel owns and is in charge of Israeli territory, not Hamas, no matter what the terrorists say or do.

The JPost’s translation of “ba’al” as “master” on the other hand, while accurate, has the effect of making Itamar Ben-Gvir seem like a braggart; someone who is incendiary and in-your-face; someone who is lording Israel’s ownership of the land over the Arabs in order to provoke them. If so, this is blatant anti-Ben-Gvir propaganda that is being fed to a western audience from a biased, left-leaning publication. It has the effect of demonizing the current Israeli government to the entire English-speaking world, and makes Israel in general, look bad.

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!