Friday, June 02, 2023

By Daled Amos

Last week the Biden Administration unveiled its plan to address the growing antisemitic violence that threatens Jews nationwide.

No one can deny the importance of fighting antisemitism, and the attempt by the Biden Administration to formulate a plan to do this is of course a positive step. However, some issues undermine Biden's plan from the outset.

One of the organizations Biden included to implement the plan is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is not known to be friendly to Jews. On November 27, 2021, Zahra Billoo -- the executive director of CAIR in San Francisco -- described to the American Muslims for Palestine’s (AMP) Annual Convention for Palestine that Zionists and their synagogues are enemies:
We need to pay attention to the Anti-Defamation League. We need to pay attention to the Jewish Federation[sic]. We need to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues. We need to pay attention to the Hillel chapters on our campuses. Just because they're your friend today doesn't mean that they have your back when it comes to human rights…know your enemies, and I'm not going to sugarcoat that they are your enemies.

CAIR claimed that Billoo's comments were taken out of context and CAIR would "continue to proudly stand by Zahra." According to the White House Fact Sheet, this is the same CAIR that will be responsible to "launch a tour to educate religious communities about steps they can take to protect their houses of worship from hate incidents."

Another organization listed on the fact sheet as part of the fight against antisemitism is the National Action Network, which was founded by Al Sharpton, and used by Sharpton in 1995 to stage the protest at Freddy’s Fashion Martduring which Jews were called “bloodsuckers” and the protesters threatened, “We’re going to burn and loot the Jews.” In the end, one protester killed 7 people. In December 2019, the executive director of NAN's North Jersey chapter -- Carilyn Oliver Fair -- stood up for Jersey City Board of Education trustee Joan Terrell-Paige. Paige had defended the 2 shooters who targeted a kosher grocery store, killing 3 people inside and another at a different location. According to Fair:

[Paige] said nothing wrong. Everything she said is the truth. So where is this anti-Semitism coming in? I am not getting it.

Obviously, in order to fight antisemitism, it is necessary to recognize antisemitism when it occurs. For that reason, many organizations wanted to see the Biden Administration explicitly and unambiguously support the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition of antisemitism is widely accepted as the gold standard for defining antisemitism. It is used by the US, has been adopted by 26 US states and by 36 other countries -- as well as by the EU, the Organization of American States and the Council of Europe.

Contrast the wide acceptance of the IHRA definition with the claim made by J Street. 

Dylan Williams, senior vice president for policy and strategy at J Street claims that the IHRA is no help at all in the fight against antisemitism:
efforts to give the force of law to a single, controversial definition of antisemitism that focuses disproportionately on criticism of Israel does a disservice to Jewish Americans targeted by this hatred.

What has been widely accepted is, according to J Street, controversial. And as far as criticism of Israel is concerned, the IHRA makes it very clear:

criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.

J Street is also among those who claimed that IHRA would be a threat to freedom of expression and criticism of Israel. This is a claim that has been made without giving actual, concrete instances where this has happened. On the other hand, a report on Understanding Jewish Experience in Higher Education has been published in the UK. It was researched over a 6 month period at 56 different universities. Besides noting the "underlying fear of being targeted," the report went further and pointed out:

Despite concerns expressed by some academics, none of the 56 universities spoken to could identify a single example of the [IHRA] definition restricting freedom of expression. [emphasis added]

Instead of using the IHRA definition, J Street is pushing for the definition of antisemitism given by the Nexus Task Force.

According to the Nexus definition:

Paying disproportionate attention to Israel and treating Israel differently than other countries is not prima facie proof of antisemitism. (There are numerous reasons for devoting special attention to Israel and treating Israel differently, e.g., some people care about Israel more; others may pay more attention because Israel has a special relationship with the United States and receives $4 billion in American aid). [emphasis added]

This is wonderful news!

As Lea Speyer points out, we can now attribute the UNHRC fixation with singling out Israel to it either "caring more" about Israel or because of Israel's "special relationship" with the US. The Nexus excuse for applying a double standard to Israel and singling it out for condemnation and punishment is worse than laughable.

Yet J Street supports the Nexus definition -- and no wonder.



Ben-Ami's interest in a contrary definition of antisemitism is not surprising. In fact, it could very well be that J Street opposes the IHRA definition on principle -- if it were to accept the IHRA definition, many of those whom J Street supports and allies itself with could be labeled as antisemitic.

For example, that would explain why J Street couldn't get their story straight about receiving money from George Soros.

In 2010, Eli Lake wrote in the Washington Times that from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009 Soros and his 2 children contributed $245,000 to J Street. Lake writes that at the very time that Ben-Ami claimed to be "very proud" to have the support of Soros, the J Street website featured a "myths and facts" section which denied receiving any money:
George Soros very publicly stated his decision not to be engaged in J Street when it was launched — precisely out of fear that his involvement would be used against the organization.
Soon afterward, the website was amended with an addition:
J Street has said it doesn’t receive money from George Soros, but now news reports indicate that he has in fact contributed.

At the same time, a spokesman for Soros had no problem stating publicly stated Soros was very clear about his desire to be involved with the group and “has made no secret of his support" for J Street.

J Street's reluctance was based on Soros's anti-Israel stance. 

I don’t deny the Jews their right to a national existence — but I don’t want to be part of it.
A 2004 article in Commentary notes that in a speech to the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research in 2003, "Soros likened the behavior of Israel to that of the Nazis," an example of "his coldness toward the Jewish state. The IHRA definition explicitly points to comparisons of Israel with Nazis as antisemitic. On the other hand, the Nexus definition does not.

The current policy of not seeking a political solution but pursuing military escalation -- not just an eye for an eye but roughly speaking ten Palestinian lives for every Israeli one -- has reached a particularly dangerous point.
Soros's claim that Israel deliberately targets Palestinian Arabs mendacious.

Tablet Magazine noted in 2016 that in 14 grants since 2001, Soros had given over $2.5million to Adalah, which accuses Israel of war crimes. In 2013, the groups published a database claiming to have found 101 Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinian Arabs. NGO Monitor has an article debunking Adalah's claim.

The Tablet article, Soros Hack Reveals Evidence of Systemic Anti-Israel Bias, concludes:
there can be little doubt about the Soros-funded extensive and deliberate effort to delegitimize Israel while doing comparatively very little to address real human rights abuses in the Palestinian Authority or elsewhere in the region.
No wonder J Street was reluctant to admit to accepting money from Soros.

Similarly, J Street -- which claims to be pro-Israel -- has itself supported politicians who are antagonistic towards Israel.

Take for example J Street's initial support for Rashida Tlaib:



J Street supported Tlaib despite the fact that Tlaib:
o supported Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh
o supported Islamic Relief, which has links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
o accused Harris of “racism” for meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
o retweeted a post from Linda Sarsour supporting Ahed Tamimi, who was jailed for incitement and assaulting an IDF soldier -- and upon release voiced support for suicide bombing.
Did J Street consider any of this to be antisemitic? Apparently not. Maybe all of this merely falls under the category of criticism when in fact Tlaib was demonizing Israel.

The only reason they withdrew support from her was that Tlaib did not support a two-state solution. Nevertheless, J Street still gushed over Tlaib:
We strongly support and are encouraged by her commitment to social justice, and we are inspired by her determination to bring the voice of underrepresented communities to Capitol Hill. We wish her and her campaign well, and we look forward to a close working relationship with her and her office when she takes her seat in Congress next year. [emphasis added]
Then there is Betty McCollum, senator from Minnesota, who in 2018 was the first elected US official to accuse Israel of Apartheid.

Rep. McCollum has been a strong ally of the pro-Israel, pro-peace community since her election to Congress.

While Amnesty and HRW had to cobble together different definitions of Apartheid to single out Israel, McCollum did not back up her claim, and J Street simply ignored it.

In its most recent support for McCollum, J Street no longer praises McCollum for being pro-Israel -- but rather pro-Palestinian and uncritically accepts her claim that Israel holds children in military detention and praises her stance against evictions from Masafer Yatta without any context:


J Street also supports Mark Pocan, the representative from Wisconsin, who in 2017 anonymously reserved official Capitol Hill space for an anti-Israel forum organized by organizations that support boycotts while not attending the anti-Israel forum he sponsored. A senior Congressional official was quoted as saying that Pocan "chose to facilitate a pro-BDS smear campaign using taxpayer dollars without even showing his face at the event."

Pocan's sole support for boycotting Israel as opposed to any other country represents a double-standard, which explains his hiding his support at the time.

In 2016, Pocan was one of a handful of Democratic congressmen who met an Arab terrorist affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Shawan Jabarin was described as the General Director of Al-Haq, for a discussion on “Palestinian political prisoners,” but in fact
A member of the PFLP, Jabarin was convicted for his efforts to enlist support abroad for attacks on Israel. He was sentenced to two years in prison, but was released after nine months due to respiratory difficulties.
But J Street continues to support Pocan, in part because


Lacking in J Street's description is any mention that the destruction of homes is a measure taken against terrorist attacks or that "expanded settlements" refers to the building of homes within settlements, not building additional settlements. Similarly, J Street gives no details on how Pocan's "strong support for Israel's security" manifests itself or support for human rights of Israelis facing terrorist attacks. Also, no mention of Pocan's support of BDS and how it fits in with the J Street policy of not supporting BDS but not opposing BDS that supports a two-state solution, assuming that such a thing exists.

J Street's part in drawing up the Nexus definition of antisemitism shows that their support is not based on inpartiality. This is the definition they want and their claims about the flaws in the IHRA definition is merely gaslighting in an attempt to defend and maintain the double-standard that Israel is held to in the UN and by self-proclaimed "human rights" groups. J Street supports the disproportionate focus on Israel.

Back in the day, Ben-Ami bragged that J Street saw itself as Obama's "block back."
Just who is J Street blocking for now?




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 chef Joudie Kalla  is quoted in the antisemitic Amnesty-UK campaign I highlighted in my last post, saying, "Showcasing my Palestinian food and heritage is a way of showing resistance to the apartheid system."

Indeed, Palestinian propagandists love using the word "resistance." To Westerners, it is meant to evoke a mental picture of peaceful protests, often being violently attacked by thuggish uniformed forces.

But the word "resistance" means something entirely different to Palestinians. 

A Google Image search for "Palestinian resistance" in English returns 19 out of the first 20 photos showing photos of Palestinian protesters, often confronting Israeli soldiers. Only one shows a Palestinian with a weapon.



But an identical search for المقاومة الفلسطينية, the Arabic translation of "Palestinian resistance," shows something entirely different:


19 out of the first 20 images show either members of militant groups or Palestinians with weapons.

In English, the phrase implies peaceful protest 95% of the time. In Arabic, the same phrase implies violent attacks 95% of the time. 

Indeed, in Arabic, when the phrase is used by itself, it more often than not refers to Palestinian terror groups, which are called by default "Palestinian resistance."

One example: the abstract of this Arabic academic paper entitled "Palestinian resistance: stages of development and future prospects" doesn't even bother to define "resistance" to its Arab audience, but mentions that Palestinians themselves often use a different term for resistance: "armed struggle."

Even more pointedly, a search for "resistance operations" in Arabic - even without the word "Palestinian" - almost invariably refers to specifically Palestinian violence.

When Palestinians want to refer to non-violent protest they call it "popular resistance." "Resistance" by itself is understood to mean violence. 

So Palestinians speaking to Western audiences know very well that they are using a term with a different meaning in English, so they can full-threadedly advocate "resistance" without fear that their fellow Palestinians would accuse them of abandoning terrorism as a tactic.




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!

 

 

Amnesty's apartheid slur is absolutely antisemitic. The arguments that Amnesty uses for the accusation are literally filled with lies and depends on a brand new definition of apartheid they made up just for Israel. If they would apply the same standards to other states, there would be scores of others that are guilty of the same definition - but Amnesty is creating an entire ecosystem to ensure that Israel and only Israel is accused of one of the worst human rights crimes possible. 

The word "apartheid" is deliberately used to provoke a visceral reaction of disgust. It has nothing to do with reality - it is meant to incite hatred of the Jewish state. 

No sane person would think that Israel is at the bottom of the list of human rights violators, or even that they treat non-citizen Palestinians worse than many other countries treat their (citizen) minorities.  Yet Amnesty spends far more time and money slandering Israel than any other country - and spreading that incitement to hate Israel across all mediums. 

Yes, that is antisemitism.

A new, insanely egregious example can be found in a new campaign that Amnesty-UK launched, called  "Palestine at Home,"  It is meant to show sympathetic Palestinians acting like normal Westerners having fun, spreading information about Palestinian cuisine - and interspersing this with incitement to hate Israel. it has its own logo, its own materials, its own videos. 



Home is peace. Home is safety. Home is love.
For many of us, it is the space we are most at ease, a space where memories are created and happiness forged. When our homes are secure we are free to live and thrive surrounded by community and those who love us. Our need for home connects us all.

But for some of us, this precious space does not exist. Right now, Palestinians are instead experiencing forced evictions and demolitions that destroy their homes and strip them of their safety net. The Israeli authorities’ system of apartheid reaches into homes and rips families apart.

Despite these injustices, Palestinians are resisting. One of the ways they are doing this is through food. Through cooking, they are preserving their histories and telling their stories. Through food, they are keeping the hope of home alive. #PalestineAtHome
This is pure propaganda filled with deception. The entire campaign appeals to emotion, not facts or context, and the purpose is simply to get people angry at Israel without giving Israelis a chance to respond.  All of Amnesty's protestations that they are objective are shown to be lies by the existence of campaigns like this.

It gets worse. Amnesty quotes, without contradiction, a chef's assertion that Palestinians have been under "75 years of illegal occupation."

Which means that Amnesty agrees that Israel's entire existence is illegal.

This propaganda is not only a website. It is also a planned series of videos. It is a set of recipes. 

And make no mistake - Amnesty does not target any other country besides Israel in this way. There are no videos showing cooking with  Rohingyas,  no recipe books of traditional Uyghur foods, no detailed explanations of the warm family lives of the Tutsis in Rwanda, no photos of quaint Darfuri homes. Victims of genocide need not apply to be part of Amnesty campaigns. No - only Palestinians are positioned as victims that are worthy of being elevated this way, and only Jews - not Arab Israelis, but Jews - are the oppressors. 

Ironically, the first recipe in this campaign was for Fattet Makdous - which isn't a Palestinian dish, but Syrian! Of course, Syrian victims of their own regime do not get campaigns on their behalf by Amnesty, but they can be happy that their cuisine is being hijacked by Amnesty and Palestinians. 

If this isn't enough to show how Amnesty-UK is obsessed with hatred of Israel, this is not even their first food based campaign against Israel! 

Last year, in conjunction with their huge publicity campaign around the apartheid slur, Amnesty encouraged baking parties where people could watch films about how awful Israeli Jews are.


Palestinians get two food based campaigns from Amnesty, and the rest of the world - zero.

Just likeAmnesty sells T-shirts attacking only one country in the world. By coincidence, it is again Israel. 

Just like Amnesty's book for children only disparages a single nation in the world - and, yet again, that country is Israel. 

Truly an amazing coincidence that only Israel is singled out, time and time again, for special vitriol from Amnesty. But it couldn't be that it has anything to do with the fact that Israel is filled with 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!

 

 

Thursday, June 01, 2023

From Ian:

Do Jews Get to Define Antisemitism? Yes and No
The prejudice plus power definition of racism would mean that Jews, a group deemed powerful, cannot be victims of racism, and groups deemed powerless cannot be guilty of racism. In this conception, Jews are a powerful group with no legitimate gripes. Acceding to such a definition of racism effectively marginalizes Jewish claims of antisemitism.

Moreover, why should anyone be expected to outsource their thinking to anyone else? We live in a free society where people are allowed to hold and articulate their own views and no one gets to define anything for others. We should not want to be bound by a discourse in which we must defer to others and others must defer to us.

While such thinking comes from the left, it’s frequently Jews on the political right who draw from the progressive playbook and weaponize IHRA to silence alternative views. Indeed, Jews who accuse IHRA’s opponents of antisemitism are engaging in a form of cancel culture, based precisely on the same suppositions that radical leftist voices use to silence opposition to their dogmas. Ironically, there’s nothing in IHRA itself that would justify calling anyone who disagrees with the definition an antisemite. Proponents of an alternative definition of antisemitism have every right to advocate for their position and should not be demonized for doing so.

There’s nothing remotely unfair or illiberal when the IHRA definition wins out, as it did in the recently released White House national antisemitism strategy.

By the same token — and a point often lost upon IHRA’s critics — Jews who do support the IHRA definition have every right to push vigorously for government adoption of their preferred definition of antisemitism and urge governments to ignore competing definitions. Government policy is not like public discourse with multiple voices. Very often contests to set government policy are winner-take-all: Only one definition of antisemitism will be adopted, and the others will be set aside. There’s nothing remotely unfair or illiberal when the IHRA definition wins out, as it did in the recently released White House national antisemitism strategy.

Nor does the IHRA definition, used properly, suppress free speech. Kenneth Marcus, who served as Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education and has done as much as anyone to advance IHRA on the American front, states in no uncertain terms that IHRA “does not generally ban, regulate, restrict or punish, all activities that may be described as anti-Semitic within the Definition’s meaning.” Marcus continues, “The E.O. (Executing Order issued by the Trump Administration invoking the use of IHRA in Title VI cases) protects free speech by directing its usage only as a means of discerning intent.”

In other words, the proper use of IHRA is not to prosecute those who engage in antisemitic speech or force everyone to sing from the same song sheet about antisemitism, as much as we might wish we all would, but to aid governments in determining antisemitic intent.

So, yes, Jews should have a major role in “defining” antisemitism as government policy, and no, we don’t get to insist that everyone accept our views.
‘Willful ignorance the most powerful weapon against Israel’
Ignorance, coupled with a “progressive” worldview which disregards historical fact, is the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of those who seek to deny Israel’s right to exist, Israel’s diaspora and strategic affairs minister said in Canada on Wednesday.

“In a time of ‘relative truth,’ some portray the people of Israel as foreigners in the Land of Israel,” Minister Amichai Chikli told a gathering of pro-Israel Canadian lawmakers at the Parliament in Ottawa.

The event marked Israel’s 75th anniversary and the reunification of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War.

“We are not foreigners in our home,” said Chikli.

“Our ancestors knew there would come a day when there would be those who would claim we have no connection or right to Jerusalem,” he added, citing the passage in the Book of Samuel describing how King David insisted on purchasing the Temple Mount.

“However, I don’t think they could have fully imagined the depths of absurdity we see today, including condemnations of Israel for building in Jerusalem or for Jews visiting the Temple Mount,” he continued.

The Likud minister told the gathering, organized by the Canadian Israel Allies Caucus in the first such commemoration of Jerusalem Day in the Canadian Parliament, that “basic historical facts” are the most powerful weapon for those who support Israel and the Zionist idea in the face of such “shameful ignorance.”

The event comes at a time of rising global antisemitism, often in the guise of anti-Israel activity.

Indeed, the competing Israeli and Palestinian narratives were on vivid display at the Canadian Parliament on Wednesday, where an anti-Israel event organized by Law for Palestine and the Palestinian General Delegation to Canada was held on Parliament Hill at the very same hour as the gathering of the supporters of Israel.

“At a time when antisemitism is on the rise, it is critical that Canadian parliamentarians, faith and Jewish community leaders stand together in their steadfast support of Israel,” said Canadian MP Dr. Leslyn Lewis, who immigrated to Canada as a young child from Jamaica and who now heads the Israel Allies Caucus.

“Israel is a symbol of freedom, resilience and hope to millions who wish to see the peaceful coexistence of all peoples,” she said.
How to Fight Antisemitism
The new White House strategy to counter antisemitism means well. It represents an official effort to combat the ancient curse of antisemitism that seems to follow Jews everywhere they live, even in a country as welcoming as the U.S. This administration wants us to know they have our backs, and yes, we ought to be grateful for that.

The elephant in the room no one wants to bring up is the notion that any "strategy" can ever eradicate a sentiment as immutable as hate. Would Jew haters hate Jews any less if they learned more about the history of antisemitism, or if they learned more about the Holocaust? If antisemites resent Jews because they see us as hard-working and successful, how do we make them stop resenting us? By arguing that we're not that successful?

Complaining projects weakness; pride projects confidence. If the Jewish brand in America comes to be defined by obsessive complaining against anyone who hates us, we'll end up looking weak, insecure and humorless. Who'd want to join that tribe?

Jew hatred is a resilient disease without any known cure. Thankfully, we know that there's a powerful, long-term vaccine against the hate: a strong Jewish identity.
Limited Liability Podcast: Antisemitism Roundtable
On this week’s episode, Rich and Jarrod are joined by Elana Broitman of the Jewish Federations of North America, Stephanie Hausner of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and Ken Marcus of the Brandeis Center, for a roundtable on the White House's recently released National Strategy To Counter Antisemitism and what it means for the Jewish community.
Ma'an reports:
Prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh called on Germany to put pressure on Israel to abide by its agreements, to fulfill our right to hold elections in all Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem, and to stop all measures and violations by the occupation and its settlers.

This came during his meeting with the President of the German Federal Council (Bundesrat) Peter Tschentscher, today, Thursday, in Ramallah, in the presence of the Head of the Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the State of Palestine, Ambassador Oliver Ovcha.
The "elections" demand is interesting, because there are no elections scheduled nor is there any prospect for elections in the future. The last scheduled elections were "postponed" indefinitely because polls showed that Fatah would lose, so Abbas blamed Israel - for not allowing voting in Jerusalem.

The only reason that the Palestinian Authority officials talk to the EU about elections is because they want to use that issue to gain control over "east Jerusalem." 

Up until now, Israel allowed Jerusalem Arabs to use ballot boxes in Jerusalem post offices. The boxes then get transported to PA-controlled areas where they are unsealed and votes counted. This way, from Israel's perspective, they are absentee ballots being "mailed" in, and from the PA perspective the ballots are being cast in Jerusalem. It is a convenient fiction for both sides. 

But the PA then started insisting that Israel allow campaigning in Jerusalem, which they won't do. So they have been requesting the EU pressure Israel to give in to their demands - which are congruent with official EU policy that Israel has no rights to any part of Jerusalem across the Green Line.

It isn't like the Palestinians care about Jerusalem in itself. Before 1967, under Arab rule, it was all but ignored by Jordan and by Palestinians. The 1964 PLO Charter didn't mention Jerusalem once. Neither did the 1968 version, which is the current version. 

But they are keenly interested in taking Jerusalem away from Jews. 

When the UN proposed that Jerusalem be an international city, as far as I can tell, there was no outcry from the Palestinian Arabs then against that idea, claiming it was theirs or that it was purely Muslim. All those narrative are said only in the context of taking it away from Israel. 

That is their only goal. That is why insisting that Jerusalem be their capital is positioned as non-negotiatible - there is no logical, historic or legal reason Judaism's holiest city must be their capital for them to have a state. There are 193 other nations that manage to survive without their capitals being in Jerusalem. 

But taking Jerusalem away from Jews would, they know, be the beginning of the end of Israel. It would be cutting the heart out of the Jewish people. 

That is the overriding goal. And it always has been. 




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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Violence Against Us Only Steels Our Resolve, But We Expect Israel To Be Cowed By Violence  

by Soubhi Al-Amad, Palestinian fighter

Jenin, June 1 - From Deir Yassin to Gaza, every time the Zionists wield their weapons against us, we use that as motivation to fight harder! On the other hand, the purpose of our attacks is to weaken Zionist morale, and that represents the only possible reaction to our operations.

It has ever been thus. Each time the enemy kills or injures one of us, we sublimate our rage into further resolve, never to be moved from our land, and never to cease our efforts to remove the usurper from all parts of it. The enemy, we expect to run from our violence, and the fact that they most often do not only means we must use more violence. Soon, inshallah, it will work and the foreign interloper will leave Palestine forever.

Of course violence will never force us to leave our homeland! It is our homeland! Not so for the Jews, whose homeland is... well, who cares! Not here, because we said so! Obviously they will leave if we fight them hard enough.

If you want to defeat your enemy, you must understand the way he thinks. Our enemy fails to understand that the harder he hits us, the stronger we stand against him. Whereas the harder we hit our enemy, the more it demoralizes him. This is why we are on the cusp of winning, of driving the accursed Jew invaders out of Palestine, any day now. Only six million to go! Such poetry in that number.

Each time we strike at the heart of the enemy - with rockets, roadside bombs, knives, bullets, cars, grenades, or anything else at our disposal, we drive home the point that he does not belong here, and he fears for his existence! Thus the constant talk of their "Holocaust." Look how scared they are! Just a few more attacks and they will all pack up and leave!

We, obviously, would not react that way, knowing this is our homeland, and will stay here through thick and thin. Except for the millions of refugees from 1948 and 1967, which we must ignore, and the thousands who try to leave every year, for greener pastures, plus the ones in refugee camps who jump at every opportunity to gain citizenship in their host countries rather than wait for glorious return to Palestine.

We are so close. Just keep attacking the Jews, and they will go elsewhere! It has always been thus.




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!

 

 

From Ian:

‘They Are Paying for Terrorists to Murder’: State Department Confirms Palestinians Continue ‘Pay-to-Slay’ Terrorist Payments
US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf on Wednesday confirmed that the Palestinian Authority continues to make so-called ‘pay-to-slay’ stipend payments to terrorists and the families of terrorists who have killed Americans and Israelis.

Speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Biden Administration’s budget requests for the Middle East, Leaf was asked by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) about a report sent to Congress on Friday about Palestinian non-compliance with the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits US funding to the Palestinian Authority so long as it maintains its pay-to-slay program.

“We are working to bring pay-to-slay to an end. Period,” Leaf said. Asked if the administration had succeeded, Leaf replied, “not yet.”

The Palestinian Authority makes official payments to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of ‘martyrs’ killed in attacks on Israelis, and to injured Palestinian militants. The exact size of the program is disputed, but is estimated to be around $300 million annually, or nearly 10% of the entire Palestinian Authority budget, according to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, an Israeli think-tank. The payments are higher than the average Palestinian wage, further incentivizing terrorist attacks.

Because the payments scale with the length of incarceration, a terrorist like Hakim Awad, who murdered five Israeli civilians, including three children, can expect to receive nearly $2 million while he serves his 130-year sentence as a reward for his actions from the Palestinian Authority.

The Taylor Force Act was named for a US army veteran, Taylor Force, who was killed in a Palestinian stabbing attack in Tel Aviv in 2016 in which 11 others were also injured. The attacker, 21-year-old Bashar Masalha, was killed by Israeli police, but his family receives a monthly payment from the PA’s Martyr’s Fund. The act prohibits all US aid to the Palestinian Authority so long as the stipend payments continue.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly rejected calls to halt the payments, which are enshrined in Palestinian law.

Cruz in his question said that even as the Biden administration agrees that the Palestinian Liberation Organization is a terrorist group, the administration continues to engage with their leadership.




Israeli Sbarro bombing victim dies after 22 years in coma
Chana Nachenberg died on Wednesday, almost 22 years after a Palestinian suicide bomber bombed the Sbarro pizza place, putting her in a vegetative state.

New York-born Nachenberg, nee Finer, was 31 years old when the bombing took place. Her two-year-old daughter Sarah was one of the few to survive the attack unscathed.

Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri bombed the Sbarro pizza place on the bustling corner of King George Street and Jaffa Road in Jerusalem on August 9, 2001, killing 15 people, including seven children and a pregnant woman, and wounding 130.

The bomb that he carried to the restaurant included nails meant to cause extra injury.

Masri's accomplice was Ahlam Tamimi, who chose the location for the attack. Tamimi was convicted and given 16 life sentences but was released in the prisoner swap for captive IDF soldier Gilad Schalit.

Tamimi is one of the FBI’s “most wanted terrorists,” and her poster says she “should be considered armed and dangerous.” The FBI poster asks for tips, offering a reward of up to $5 million.

However, her location is known. She lives in Jordan, where she hosts a talk show on a Hamas-affiliated television channel. Jordan has refused to extradite her.
22 Years since Tel Aviv Dolphinarium Club terror attack
As hundreds of people were going out in Tel Aviv on a Saturday night, many were crowding in front of Dolphinariumv Club right on the beach. Among them a Hamas terrorist

Over 15 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded when the terrorist activated the suicide bomb attached to his body

More than 20 years later, the attack is still an unforgettable event for Israeli society


Cairo Conspiracy, also known as Boy from Heaven, is a film synopsized as "Adam, the son of a fisherman, is offered the privilege to study at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the center of power of Sunni Islam. Adam becomes a pawn in the conflict between Egypt's religious and political elites."

It was released a year ago. It has received a number of awards and positive reviews.

It was finally released in Israel last week.

Suddenly, Egyptian officials are denouncing the film - and blaming Israel for it.

Islamic writer and researcher, and former Egyptian Undersecretary of the Ministry of Religious Endowments, Saad El-Fiqi, said that showing the movie "A Boy from Heaven" in Israel to tarnish the image of Al-Azhar Al-Sharif failed miserably.

He continued in statements to RT: “The Zionist is known for lying, fraud and promoting everything that is false, and Israel is a bastard state that has no origin and its history is known and established for all wise people in the world,” stressing that one day it will be destroyed as its legend ended in the war of the tenth of Ramadan and the sixth of October.

Al-Fiqi stressed the need to  refute what is published in the Zionist media, especially with regard to Al-Azhar Al-Sharif, which is known for always standing with the cause of Palestine and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as its clear positions against Zionist arrogance and exposing its lies, as well as exposing the faults of those who support the bastard state.

The Egyptian Islamic writer and researcher said that the honorable Al-Azhar, whether Israel likes it or not, remains a dagger in its back, revealing its faults, showing their mistakes and lies, and that it is a state that will inevitably disappear.
If you need evidence that hate for Israel is unhinged, this is plenty.

The director of the film is Swedish-Egyptian. It was co-produced by  Sweden, France and Finland.. It was mostly filmed in Turkey.

So, naturally, it must all be Israel's fault.

Apparently, an Israel Hayom article about the movie mentioned that some of the actors were Israeli. Last year, they were proudly described in Arabic media as being "of Palestinian origin."  That seems to what started this whole thing. 

Yet the film was even reviewed positively by Al Jazeera last year!



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The United States has left a leadership vacuum in the Middle east - and the Saudis filling it.

For decades, there has been jockeying on who would be the leader of the Muslim world. Egypt filled the role under Nasser but since then it has been a free for all. 

Iran tried to position itself as that leader in the 2000s, but it could not overcome the antipathy from the Sunni majority. Turkey has been making its bid. The UAE, while tiny, has been trying to set a new direction for the Gulf states in a post-oil world. 

But over the past couple of years, Saudi Arabia has emerged as the clear leader. The Saudis always wanted a leadership role as well, but until recently their main asset was Mecca, and the religious component was a necessary but not adequate prerequisite for true leadership.

Now, the Saudis are setting the agenda not just as the leaders of the Muslim world but of the entire region. 

Up until now, the Saudis have been the passive recipients of US security guarantees. The Obama administration's reckless pursuit of an Iran deal and discarding Saudi concerns taught the Saudis that relying on the US for security and leadership is foolhardy and they need to create their own solutions. The ignominious US abandonment of Afghanistan showed that the days of Pax Americana are long gone.

There has been much media attention to China filling the leadership vacuum, and indeed China has ambitions there, but mostly just to keep things calm to serve their own interests. The Saudis are not being passive anymore.  They have been becoming skilled diplomats and working all sides to become congruent with Saudi goals and ambitions. I see the Chinese role in brokering agreements between Riyadh and Tehran as more the Saudis using China to rein in Iran than China showing leadership. 

What are the Saudi goals? I believe that the major goal is security. Letting the US, Russia, and China set the agendas for the Middle East guarantees permanent strife for the region with no benefits. The Saudi vision for the region is to reduce risk by ending pointless conflict that only benefitted outsiders. 

Refreshingly, the Saudis - along with the UAE and Bahrain - seem to have abandoned the zero-sum mentality that has kept the Arab world behind for so long. They are now seeking win-win solutions that can allow everyone to prosper without the worry of war, with themselves as the leaders.  

The Saudi-led rapprochement between the Arab League and Syria is a perfect example. From their perspective, Syria is an evil regime, and there is no love lost between Syria and the other Arab states. Yet nothing has been gained by a decade of shunning them. Better to embrace them and influence them in a bear hug.

To an extent, this may be the Saudi policy towards Iran as well, as the Iranian economy is in terrible shape, and the Saudis are quite publicly telling the world that they have lots of cash.  Their buying major soccer stars is a message to their neighbors. The  Saudis may see Iran's threats to refine uranium to levels needed for the atom bomb as a bid for influence, and the message back is that Iran can have more influence and economic independence if they join in with the Saudi vision and de-emphasize their nuclear ambitions. (I'm not saying this will work, but if Iran is closer to the Saudi orbit, then Saudi Arabia is no longer a potential nuclear target.)

The Saudi leaders have been wisely investing in a future without fossil fuels, and they are trying to position themselves as an economic powerhouse in the coming decades. The Saudis want to keep the the peace with promises of sharing the economic future, but unlike similar US promises, the Saudis have skin in the game.

In recent weeks there has been more talk of the Saudis making peace with Israel. Again, the Saudi diplomats are in the driver's seat. Instead of the US leading the way, the Saudis are using the carrot of a possible peace deal to get what they can out of the US. They see the Arab-Israeli conflict as a pointless waste of time that hasn't benefitted anyone. On the other hand, they see great potential benefits of Israeli participation in the Saudi vision of the future

In the old Arab mindset, the Palestinian issue was useful: it distracted from infighting and Arab corruption. It was used to create a false sense of Arab unity. In the new Saudi vision, those goals are better addressed by actually trying to build a modern society with transparency and a prosperous future. The Saudis still care about Palestinians but they know that there is no humanitarian disaster and that Palestinians are in no worse shape - and often better shape - than most other Arabs. They will try to leverage peace to get concessions from Israel on the issue, but the Palestinians are an afterthought in the Saudi vision for its role as the leader of the region. 

The Saudis want the Middle East to be a player on the world stage in a post-superpower world, and they want to be the ones to set the agenda for the region. So far, they are doing exactly that.

Israel needs to decide on its own vision and determine how close it is to the Saudi version.




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The Palestine Post reported on June 1, 1948 that Arab airplanes were dropping propaganda leaflets on northern Israel urging Jews to surrender and assuring them that Jews are treated wonderfully in Arab countries - better than anywhere else in the world.

At the same time, Iraq - which had troops in Palestine - started forcing their Jews to pay huge sums:


In Egypt, the government started confiscating property owned by Jews who had been thrown into concentration camps::


And on the following day, witnesses started reporting on the systematic Arab destruction of anything Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem:


Arabs continue to repeat the lie, today, that Jews have always been treated wonderfully under Muslim rule. 









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Wednesday, May 31, 2023

From Ian:

Richard Landes: On Western Media and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
The expression ‘reality-based community’ has a strange genealogy. First used contemptuously by a Bush Administration official in 2004 to describe liberals who objected to their policies with ‘facts’, it quickly became a proud self-referent for liberals. Ironically, as Kurt Andersen puts it in his extensive study of America’s troubled relationship with reality, ‘Neither side has noticed, but large factions of the elite left and the populist right have been on the same team.’ This has become even truer in the six years since Andersen wrote that remark in 2017.

Today we have two loud camps each justifiably accusing the other of substituting post-truth advocacy for descriptions based on hard evidence. In the process, a ‘great divorce’ has occurred between Western information professionals and the realities it is their vocation to understand. The following study examines one aspect of this problem – the conflict between Israel and her neighbours – for the following reasons: a) it was an early harbinger of things to come, b) because the misinformation comes to us from a legacy media that claims to observe professional standards, c) because this misinformation reflects the biases of people who, even as they embarked on this great divorce with reality, were convinced that they were indeed, the reality-based community, and d) because ‘getting it wrong’ on this particular topic has so many grave real-world consequences not just for Palestinians and Israelis, but for democracies the world over.

For anyone with an elementary knowledge of Soviet propaganda, it might seem disconcerting to read collective statements from academics, including Jewish ones, about the Middle East conflict, or even to listen to a news broadcast from an increasingly post-modern legacy media about the Middle East.[1] One does not normally expect a morally and empirically bankrupt propaganda ministry, the subject of savage parodies, to hold such hegemonic sway decades after the failure of the totalitarian system that spawned it. How does a propaganda campaign of cognitive warfare get belatedly adopted by the very culture it targets? After all, one of the reasons the West won the Cold War in the early 1990s was because Soviet propaganda had so divorced the USSR from reality that once Glasnost took hold and that propaganda was challenged, the bottom fell out. And yet, now, in the early 2020s, the central themes of Soviet anti-Zionist, anti-democratic propaganda – Palestinian nationalism and freedom fighting, Israeli colonialism, apartheid, racism, and genocide, Zionism=Nazism – now rerouted through post-colonialism, hold wide currency in Western public discourse, both explicitly, and implicitly.[2]

To some extent, one can explain this in terms of the increasing influence of an intellectual revolution in the West, broadly taken to involve variants of critical theory – post-modern, post-colonial, queer, critical race, victim – and the various identity politics that inform this theorising. This study focuses not on documenting those trends, but the underlying cognitive and psychological factors that drove otherwise welcome post-modern perspectives as contributors to our understanding of reality,[3] in directions that have produced a major wedge between practitioners of the new approaches and the reality they aspire to explore and change for the better.
Mitchell Bard: Biden’s antisemitism program defends antisemites
Ultimately, the president caved into the far left and announced a strategy to fight antisemitism that gives antisemites cover. Establishment Jewish organizations rushed to praise the administration without apparently reading “The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism” or considering its implications.

As I warned in my previous column, the strategy failed at the most fundamental level by refusing to define antisemitism unequivocally. Trying to have it both ways, the document says: “There are several definitions of antisemitism, which serve as valuable tools to raise awareness and increase understanding of antisemitism. The most prominent is the non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism adopted in 2016 by the 31-member states of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which the United States has embraced. In addition, the administration welcomes and appreciates the Nexus Document and notes other such efforts.”

This is doublespeak. It does not say that the IHRA is the definition it will use in pursuing its strategy. Worse, as many of us feared, it gives credence to the Nexus Document, which, unlike the IHRA, does not have the support of the international community. It was drafted by a handful of left-wing professors who defend anti-Zionism and double standards applied to Israel.

Since both supporters and critics of the IHRA claimed victory, the administration probably views its formulation as a successful compromise. If opponents of the internationally recognized definition believe they won, however, we have all lost.

Evidence that the administration has no intention of using the IHRA is that it is not mentioned in the White House’s fact sheet accompanying its strategy paper. It is also absent from the U.S. Department of Education antisemitism awareness campaign that was announced simultaneously.

You can’t fight antisemitism if you don’t know what it is.

By refusing to define antisemitism and trying to mollify “progressive” Democrats, the administration created serious doubts as to what it will be fighting against. Most notably, the strategy does not mention the antisemitic BDS campaign. This was undoubtedly to appease the far-left authors of the “alternative” definitions of antisemitism. The effect is to allow boycotts to proliferate and ignore one of the most significant sources of antisemitism on college campuses.
Why does Joe Biden's antisemitism strategy barely mention Israel?
The White House should, as the IHRA advises, draw a clear line on which kinds of public speech and actions are acceptably anti-Zionist and which are explicitly antisemitic and likely to incite violence. Instead, the Strategy says anything goes, so long as you’re pure in heart.

The Strategy is written to firm up the Democratic coalition, not protect American Jews. The White House cannot define the problem because the Democratic left, key groups in the Democratic coalition and heavily pro-Democratic institutions are all part of it. Instead, the Jewish problem is to be wished away. The Jews must blend into an alphabet soup of intersectionality and subordinate themselves to the greater good.

“Those who target Jews also target women, Black, Latino, Muslim, AANHPI, and LGBTQI+ Americans,” the Strategy’s authors claim. This is only partially true, and it is deeply misleading. It masks LGBTQ activism of the “Queers for Palestine” kind and the fact that in polls African Americans, Muslim Americans and Latino Americans express antisemitic views at higher rates than other groups.

Bizarrely, the Strategy recommends that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) advise synagogues on security. CAIR has long been accused of association with the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2014, the UAE added CAIR to its list of terrorist groups.

In 2021, CAIR’s San Francisco executive director Zahra Billoo told members of another radical group, American Muslims for Palestine, that pro-Israel “Zionist organizations”, “Zionist synagogues” and Hillel student groups were “your enemies” who “would sell you down the line if they could, and very often do behind your back”.

The lunatics are taking over the asylum.
Biden’s antisemitism plan is a missed opportunity
Prior U.S. administrations adopted the IHRA definition for some of their agencies’ work (as have the majority of U.S. states). Under former President Barack Obama, the State Department adopted it in dealing with foreign countries’ antisemitic practices. Under former President Donald Trump, an executive order allowed Jews (and Muslims and Sikhs) to benefit from the anti-discrimination protections of Article VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, even though it doesn’t apply to religions, because these religious groups share ethnic and national origins. This 2019 executive order also adopted the IHRA definition for the Department of Education’s use in monitoring federal grants to universities under Article VI.

Unfortunately, the Biden plan punts on this key issue of the definition. The 60-page strategy document devotes one short paragraph where it says “there are several definitions of antisemitism.” It cites the IHRA as the most prominent one, which the U.S. “has embraced,” but also “welcomes and appreciates the Nexus Document” and notes other definitions.

The Nexus Document was drafted by American academics to counter what they considered the IHRA’s overbroad inclusion of anti-Israel behavior.

The Biden plan includes many good action steps to be taken by the U.S. Government, especially in the area of education, and pledges from private sector actors. It leaves open the core question of when anti-Israel speech and action crosses the line into antisemitism — a compromise, according to participants with whom I spoke, owing to push-back from left-wing groups who oppose any cross referencing of antisemitism with anti-Israel work.

Thus, the Biden plan has become a lost opportunity for all Americans concerned with the current rise of antisemitism.

Left open are the questions of whether the State Department and the Department of Education will continue to use the IHRA definition. Also left open is whether the forthcoming UN plan on antisemitism will reference the IHRA definition. I suspect U.S. and UN bureaucrats have received sufficient signals of caution from the Biden plan about including anti-Israel behavior.

The Biden plan rightly notes that “there is no higher profile platform than the White House for pushing back against and re-stigmatizing antisemitism.” Let us hope that the president finds the moral courage — which the President of Princeton apparently lacks — to use his platform to point out when antisemitism goes hand in hand with anti-Israel advocacy, as it does in the case of Mohammed El-Kurd.


Palestinians have it easy. 

Whenever there is any statistic announced that shows that life for them isn't perfect, they have someone to blame: Israel. 

So, for example, when there are some people in Gaza who are food insecure, it must be Israel's fault - even though it is much worse in neighboring Egypt, and even though Israel does not limit food into Gaza at all.

When the unemployment rate in the West Bank is at 14%, that sounds very high. It must be Israel's fault. Except that neighboring Jordan's is at nearly 22%.

Whose fault is that?

To the world, Palestinians have zero responsibility for their own problems. That is mostly because Palestinians insist that this is the case. This way they avoid doing any actual nation-building, and the EU keeps sending experts who do the work for them. 

For three decades. 

The fact that Palestinians choose to spend about 6% of their budget on terrorist "salaries" and family payments hundreds of millions of dollars that could go to help normal Palestinians - does not faze the rest of the world. 

And the fact that Israel employs some 125,000 Palestinians, with salaries more than double their domestic worker counterparts, doesn't mean anything either. 

The only narrative allowed  - in the media and from NGOs - is that all Palestinian problems come from Israel. 

And the world is happy - nay, eager - to believe it.




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

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Read all about it here!

 

 


This morning, there was a large explosion in a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command location in the Bekaa region in southern Lebanon, near the Syrian border.

The PFLP-GC immediately issued a press release saying that this was an IDF airstrike.

Arabic-language media spread the word about the Israeli aggreesion.

Since then, two things happened:

- The IDF denied doing any activity in Lebanon at all.
- Multiple Lebanese security sources reported what did happen:
Five fighters from a pro-Syrian Palestinian militant group were killed in an accidental explosion at a base in eastern Lebanon, a Lebanese security source said Wednesday.

"An old rocket exploded in an arms depot on the base and five fighters were killed," the security source said, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

In Beirut, a Lebanese military official said the explosion was the result of a blast within the base, adding that there was no airstrike. An official with a regional group allied with the Syrian government, said the explosion was the result of a “human error” that occurred when militants were handling ammunition. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
Yet looking at the last several hours of Arabic media reporting on the explosion and its aftermath, the Israeli denial is barely mentioned on a couple of Western-oriented Arabic sites, and the report about an old missile explosion has been ignored completely.

This is even after wire services like AFP reported on the rocket explosion. 

This is not government-level censorship. This is an unofficial policy for Arabic media to censor facts that do not fit the narrative or that can cause unease among some of their readership. 

If they even published it as a competing set of claims, as The National (UAE) did in English, any thinking person would see that the PFLP-GC is lying and Israel's denial is truthful - and that means that Arabs are less trustworthy than Jews, which contradicts the mega-narrative of Jews being dishonest and Arabs being honorable and trustworthy. 





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Read all about it here!

 

 



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