Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, June 19, 2023

06/19 Links Pt2: Will Anthropology Faculty Group Become a Political Tool to Boycott and Attack Israel?; UN Security Council Explicitly Condemns Antisemitism for First Time in UAE-UK Resolution

From Ian:

Will Anthropology Faculty Group Become a Political Tool to Boycott and Attack Israel?

A network of scholars (Anthropologists for Academic Freedom) has released several statements noting that the resolution is “misguided, is aimed at the wrong target, and will have absolutely no impact upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Several of its members recently participated in a webinar, where they passionately implored colleagues to come to their senses.

The problem is that most of the thousands of eligible voters in the referendum probably are not aware of these materials or resources that cogently present counter-arguments. To its credit, the AAA leadership created a Resources page so that members could become better informed about the issues at stake. But this page is buried in the recently revamped AAA website, and is difficult to find.

Furthermore, the page is top-heavy in materials curated and prepared by a pro-boycott group. A letter organized by the AMCHA Initiative, signed by more than 100 organizations and submitted to over 250 university presidents, doesn’t feature on the page, nor does a warning letter issued by The Deborah Project’s legal team.

In the weeks leading up to the vote, AAA leaders have made no effort to restore balance in the debate. They ignored a reasonable suggestion to organize at least one virtual discussion where both sides could have made their case to the membership, followed by a constructive Q&A. What’s worse is that they have failed to ensure that officers of the association’s many committees present both pro and con arguments, with the result being a manifestly unfair deliberation process. For example, the chair-elect of the Archeology Division is reportedly attempting to create a “space for conversation” about the ballot measure by organizing two upcoming webinars that will only feature BDS supporters.

Now that voting on the referendum has begun, some anthropologists appear to be swayed by two of the resolution’s key claims: Palestinians have asked for this kind of support in a “call from civil society organizations,” and Israeli universities are “complicit” in their oppression. Both arguments rely on most AAA voters having little understanding of the BDS movement or the realities of Israeli campus life.

Rather than originating as a request from Palestinian civil society, BDS was rolled out by far-left European NGOs in 2001, at the infamously antisemitic UN anti-racism conference in Durban. Today, more than two decades later, Palestinian academics and human rights activists do not uniformly support academic boycotts. And Arabs who research and teach in Israel’s universities and colleges are definitely no fans of the tactic.

For example, in a compelling testimonial opposing the resolution, professor Alean Al-Krenawi, a former Dean at Ben-Gurion University and currently the President of Achva Academic College (in Yinon, Israel) pleads with AAA members not to undermine his life’s work in support of Arab scholars and students.

The AAA resolution paints a woefully inaccurate picture of Israeli higher education. The truth is that the Israeli academy is not an arm of the state, nor is it malevolently hostile to Palestinians. Like in the US, Israeli university leaders and faculty often protest encroachment of the government into the academy. They also work hard to advance diversity and inclusion as key priorities, and strive to ensure free expression and diversity of viewpoint on their campuses, including by supporting Palestinian voices.

Come July 14, when the voting period closes, it remains to be seen whether a sufficient number of anthropologists will have rejected turning their professional association into an advocacy organization that mandates absolute positions and virulently anti-Israel ideological orthodoxies, violating the intellectual autonomy of those AAA members who disagree.

But one thing is certain: If this foolhardy and detrimental resolution passes, then it will open the floodgates: pro-BDS faculty zealots at many other large and prestigious professional associations, from the Modern Language Association to the American Historical Association, which have also entertained such irresponsible boycott measures in the past, are likely to once again resurrect them, hoping that this time, they can also prevail.

Those who care about the health of the US academy, and the rising tide of vehemently anti-Israel and often antisemitic activity on campus, should hope for the best — and prepare for the worst.

France: Submission to Islamism Quickly Gaining Ground

Samuel Paty, a high school teacher [was] savagely beheaded on October 16, 2020 in... the suburbs of Paris where he taught...

The list of 14 people [indicted] does not include the murderer, Abdullakh Anzorov: he was shot dead by police.

[A]ll investigations show [that teachers] are afraid and practice self-censorship. For 10 years, teachers have not taught about the Holocaust. They have also given up on addressing the subjects that led to Paty's murder: secularism, tolerance and the right to criticize religions.

Throughout France, Muslim students openly threaten teachers by telling them that they are "risking a Samuel Paty". Many topics can no longer be addressed.... In biology class, discussing evolution or Charles Darwin is... unsafe.

Teachers have been resigning in increasing numbers, and recruiting new ones has become a problem.

Recently, anthropologist Florence Bergeaud-Backler in a book called Le frérisme et ses Réseaux, l'Enquête ("The Brotherhood and its Networks: The Survey"), explained in detail the way the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist movements in France use social media networks and mosques to incite Muslim children and adolescents to challenge the education provided in high schools to push the French educational system to submit to their vision of Islam.

The French authorities are aware of what is happening, but do nothing. Apparently, government officials are afraid, too, and do not want to take any risks. They know that more than 750 no-go zones exist in the country, and that riots frequently erupt... Most ended in violence by young people from no-go zones who burned cars and looted shops.

Macron's proposed law, called the "Law confirming respect for the principles of the Republic", has since been rewritten. All references to Islam and Islamism have been removed from the text. Passed on August 24, 2021, it does currently not contain any measure likely to combat the Islamist danger. A paragraph speaks of the need to "protect teachers", but teachers are still not protected. The Islamist movements in French high schools continue to exist.

About 400,000 legal immigrants arrive in France from the Muslim world every year, according to the latest informati0on available. These do not include the thousands who arrive illegally.

A study in September 2020 showed that 74% of French Muslims under the age of 25 placed Sharia above the laws of the republic.... Another study published a year later showed that two-thirds of Muslim high school students also placed Sharia above the laws of the Republic. The same survey showed that 9% of young Muslims said they "share the motivations" of Paty's murderer.

No inhabitant or Ottoman ruler or administrator of the region called the area “Palestine” this was purely a Christian European designation. Guidebooks calls everyone Arabs never “Palestinian.” Arabs themselves called area Esh-Sham never Palestine. 2/ pic.twitter.com/vQktj6Fa4B
— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) June 19, 2023

No Jewish history or Temple Denial at all by these British publishers. Map of Ancient Jerusalem clearly marks the area of “Haram esh-Sharif” with the “Temple” and “Palace of Solomon” and areas as “City of David.” This was common knowledge for millennia. 4/ pic.twitter.com/9FrWz5Av5H
— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) June 19, 2023

Latest EoZ memes, comics, posters

This is a good batch.

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!

Herzl postcard to his daughter from Jerusalem, October 30, 1898

Al Jazeera, which is still respected as a real news source in much of the Western world, published an article entitled, "This is how Israel plunders the antiquities of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem."

The article starts with a quote, supposedly from Theodor Herzl:

"If we ever get Jerusalem and I am still alive and able to do anything, I will remove everything that is not sacred to the Jews in it, and I will burn the centuries-old monuments."

Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement

The rest of the article goes on to falsely claim that Israeli archaeologists ignore anything non-Jewish in their digs and research, an absurd lie.

What about this supposed Herzl quote?

Here is what Herzl really wrote in his journal on October 31, 1898, during his visit to Palestine:

If I remember you in the future, Jerusalem, not with pleasure will I remember you. The moldy residues of two thousand years of cruelty, intolerance, and filth lie in the stinking streets. If we ever get Jerusalem, and if it is within my ability, I will clean it first. I shall remove everything that is not sacred, I shall set up housing for laborers outside of the city, I shalI empty out the nests of filth, destroy them, burn those ruins which are not sacred, and the bazaars I shall move to another place. Preserving the old building style as much as possible, I will erect a modern, convenient, clean and functioning city around the holy sites.“

At no time did he differentiate between things that are sacred to Jews and to non-Jews, and indeed the postcard that he sent his daughter pictured above shows the Dome of the Rock - certainly not something the secular Herzl wanted to destroy.

Al Jazeera is lying, explicitly, in both the quote and the story itself. Why do people still put any trust in this propaganda rag?

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!

06/19 Links Pt1: U.S. Keeps Funding Palestinian Terror - in Defiance of Congress; Ehud Barak agreed to give up part of Temple Mount, Old City; 7 IDF soldiers wounded in Jenin ambush of armored vehicle

From Ian:

U.S. Keeps Funding Palestinian Terror - in Defiance of Congress

US Permanent Representative to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield rightly condemned in a recent speech Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ antisemitic statements that equated Israelis to the Nazis.

With no sense of the irony, she then called for foreign aid to the very same PA he continues to lead, 18 years into his four-year term.

An even more distressing irony: President Joe Biden recently launched a first-ever National Strategy To Counter Antisemitism amid a spike in Jew-hatred, yet at the same time — in defiance of Congress’ intent — his team continues to provide material support for the PA, even as it not only spouts antisemitic speech but funds anti-Jewish terrorism through its “pay-for-slay” program.

Congress clearly determined that PA terror payments encourage violence, which is why it passed the Taylor Force Act, barring economic assistance that “directly benefits the Palestinian Authority” until it “stops all payments incentivizing terror.”

In recent months, the West Bank has seen a spate of fatal Palestinian terror attacks, with each of the perpetrators and their families then eligible for PA payments.

In 2018, the authority’s refusal to end systematic terror funding led to bipartisan passage of the Taylor Force Act, named for a US citizen and West Point grad murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in Tel Aviv.

Among other things, the law urges our UN representative to “use the voice, vote and influence of the United States at the United Nations” and the State Department “to use its bilateral and multilateral engagements” to highlight the issue of pay-for-slay and push for governments to stop funding the PA.

The Biden administration is violating these requirements.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Arabs Do Not Trust the Biden Administration

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states apparently still do not trust the Biden Administration, largely because of its perceived abandonment of its traditional Arab allies in the Middle East and President Joe Biden's hostility to Saudi Arabia. This view began with then-presidential candidate Biden declaring the kingdom a "pariah" state -- and is continuing with US attempts, still ongoing, to revive a "nuclear deal" that will enable an expansionist Iran to have nuclear weapons potentially to topple other countries in the region.

Meanwhile, the same Biden Administration has continued to cozy up to the Iranian regime, which the US's own Department of State has called the "top state sponsor of terrorism" and which has, until recently, has not only been attacking both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates through Iran's proxy militia, the Houthis in Yemen, but has also been supplying troops and weapons to Russia for attacking Ukraine.

The message being sent is that being America's enemy pays handsomely, while, as with Afghanistan, being America's friend can be fatal.

The London-based Rai Al-Youm online newspaper said that Blinken's visit to Saudi Arabia failed to achieve most of its goals, including promoting normalization between the Kingdom and Israel. According to the newspaper, the Saudi media ignored Blinken's visit, while playing up the arrival of former Real Madrid soccer player Karim Benzema in the Kingdom....

"There are many obstacles to America's success in playing these roles, including what is related to the nuclear file, as a nuclear Iran remains a concern for the Gulf and for other countries in the region. The [Saudi] agreement with Iran may alleviate this concern, but it will not dispel it. Washington's success in settling this file in a way that does not threaten the security and stability of the Gulf states is the bottom line and it is what will determine the future of Washington's relations with the countries of the region." — Sam Mansi, Lebanese columnist, Asharq Al-Awsat, June 12, 2023.

"[W]hatever Blinken achieved during his visit to Saudi Arabia will remain weak and incomplete in the face of the dangers of ongoing tensions in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and other conflict areas, most notably the civil war that broke out recently in Sudan, in addition to the comprehensive challenges posed by the fraught relations between Iran and Israel, which may explode if there is no progress in the nuclear talks, and if more daring steps are not taken to limit Iran's continuation of uranium enrichment, and Iran's public support for Russia and its cooperation with it in the context of the war against Ukraine." — Sam Mansi, Asharq Al-Awsat, June 12, 2023.

Judging from the reactions of these Arabs to Blinken's recent visit to Saudi Arabia, it is clear that the Saudis and other Arabs have lost confidence in the Biden administration and are not pinning any hopes on it to bring security and stability to the Middle East.

Moreover, it is evident that the Saudis feel so offended by Biden that they are willing to move closer to Iran and Russia if that enables them to steer clear of the American president. It will take more than a visit by Biden or Blinken or Sullivan to repair the damage that has been done to America's relations with Arab countries that used to respect the US. In fact, it is safe to assume that the Arabs' attitudes toward the Biden administration will remain steady regardless of any effort that this administration might choose to make.

PreOccupiedTerritory: ‘400 Seconds To Tel Aviv’ Boast Sparks Rush To Board Hypersonic Missile, Get The Hell Out Of Iran (satire)

A billboard in the capital of the Islamic Republic touting the regime’s development of a weapon that can travel many times the speed of sound and reach Israel’s commercial hub has prompted tens of thousands of citizens in the Republic to try to find a way to get that weapon to transport them there, as well – anything to help them leave a country being run into the ground by the mullahs.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s officials hung a large banner in Tehran the week before last featuring images of what it claims is a hypersonic missile capable of reaching Tel Aviv “in 400 seconds,” a claim the banner proclaimed in Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew. Intended both as a threat against a country the mullahs consider an enemy and as a tool to distract a disaffected, restive population from the regime’s disastrous policy failures, the advertisement instead sparked a rush to find the missile, which, if its claims prove true, offers desperate Iranians a way out of Iran.

Social media reported a spike in interest among Iranians two weeks ago regarding the payload capacity of the missile. Accounts of frustrated Iranians, unable to discern where or how many such missiles exist, spread around the internet. At least fourteen cases appeared captured on video of citizens yelling at regime officials, trying to extract information on whether the missiles could take them away from the mismanaged, theocratic hell that Iran has become in the last 44 years.

By Daled Amos

Boy, was I wrong!

Writing last year about the Muslim world ignoring the mistreatment of Uyghers under Chinese rule, I suggested that critics are eager to attack Israel with use damning parallels between Uyghurs and Palestinian Arabs:

We see how there are attempts to draw parallels between Palestinian Arabs and Ukrainians on the one hand and Israel and Russia on the other.

How long before we see similar parallels of Palestinian Arabs with Uyghurs and Israel with China?

Now it seems that such a comparison is unlikely to be made -- considering that Mahmoud Abbas has joined the chorus defending China's detention centers. The Associated Press reported Palestinian leader Abbas ends China trip after backing Beijing’s crackdown on Muslim minorities:

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas wrapped up a trip to China Friday after seeking economic aid and voicing support for Beijing’s repressive policies toward Muslim minorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

...In the statement, the Palestinian Authority said issues regarding China’s policy toward Muslims in Xinjiang have “nothing to do with human rights and are aimed at excising extremism and opposing terrorism and separatism.”

“Palestine resolutely opposes using the Xinjiang problem as a way of interfering in China’s internal affairs,” the joint statement said.

In turning his back on his fellow Muslims, Abbas is merely joining other Muslim countries in pushing the Uyghers under the bus.

In July 2019, a group of 37 countries signed a letter claiming that criticism of China's treatment of the Uyghers amounted to “politicizing human rights.” They echoed China's claim that the detention centers were merely “vocation education and training centers.”

Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and deradicalization measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centers.

The signatories to that letter included Muslim countries such as Algeria, Bahrain, Belarus, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates.

Abbas clearly has good company.

But some Muslim countries have done more than just support China's treatment of Uyghurs vocally. The Telegraph reported in 2020 that Turkey helped China by facilitating the return of Uyghurs back to China. And according to the BBC Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE forcibly sent Uyghurs in their countries back to China.

Fortunately, the West Bank is not noted for its Uyghur population.

By backing China, Abbas can expect the support of a major competitor to the US in the Middle East. Besides the recognition, it is not clear what kind of economic cooperation Abbas and the PA can look forward to. But Abbas should be careful about what he wishes for:

China relies on such partnerships to bolster its diplomatic posture and give large Chinese corporations a leg-up when negotiating infrastructure deals in line with the government’s “Belt and Road Initiative” that has left many struggling countries in deep debt to Chinese banks. [emphasis added]

The Arab world has become reluctant to fund the PA, seeing how the corruption of the Abbas government has turned those investments into money that merely lines the pockets of Palestinian leaders, so maybe the Chinese should be careful too. All in all, this might be a deal that will not benefit either side.

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!

To @AmnestyUK, swimming pools in the West Bank are apartheid. But only the ones owned by Jews.

Amnesty-UK tweeted:

Amnesty-UK is saying that thirsty Palestinians are upset by the massive amounts of water that are clearly available for their Jewish neighbors, as they stare longingly at the waste that the Jewish pools symbolize. Clearly they should be angry at the contrast between their own inability to drink a refreshing glass of water to avoid dying of thirst while the Jews frolic in wasteful swimming pools.

So Amnesty must really be upset when those thirsty Palestinians are mocked by extravagant displays of frivolous swimming pools that they see in, for example, Hebron, decorated with a Palestinian flag to twist the knife of their poverty:

Certainly Amnesty is condemning the huge waste of water there, right?

Other pools in the West Bank also include very patriotic flags:

And this one in Birzeit looks like it holds a great deal of water, too.

According to Amnesty-UK, even the smaller pools are a giant waste of water that hurts thirsty Palestinians' feelings and must be condemned:

How dare these heartless people enjoy the water when their neighbors have none!

Obviously a human rights group cannot be accused of antisemitism for treating pools owned by Jews differently from those owned by Palestinians. Perhaps Amnesty-UK is upset over Jews owning private pools while Palestinians next door are deprived of their basic water needs.

We will just have to ignore the Palestinian company Blue Blue Palestine which installs private pools for well-to-do Palestinians every day, in-ground and above ground, from small 600-shekel pools to ones costing tens of thousands of dollars.

I'm sure Amnesty is preparing a 150 page report on Palestinian waste of precious water in their many swimming pools. After all, it is the pools they are upset over, and not the religion of the owners, right? If they treat pools differently because some are owned by Jews, that is pretty blatant antisemitism - and how could that possibly be?

To Amnesty, Jewish pools are apartheid. Palestinian pools are nonexistent. And Amnesty International isn't a hypocritical, Jew-hating organization hiding its bigotry behind the fig leaf of pretending to care about human rights.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The Abraham Accords continue to amaze.

From Morocco World News, June 9:

Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense technology company, has announced plans to open two sites in Morocco, Shai Cohen, head of Israel's liaison office in Rabat, said during a press conference this week.

Elbit Systems is renowned for its expertise in developing and implementing advanced defense solutions. The opening of the new sites is considered as a strategic move for Elbit Systems as it aligns with the company’s commitment to expanding its global footprint and leveraging Morocco’s strategic position as a gateway to the African market.

While specific details regarding the locations and operations of the two sites are yet to be disclosed, Cohen confirmed that one of the facilities will be located in the Casablanca region.

The move comes as a result of the renewed diplomatic and economic relations between Morocco and Israel. The two countries reinstated diplomatic relations in December 2020 under the US-brokered Abraham Accords. Since then, the two countries have been forging closer ties, fostering collaborations across various sectors, including defense.

According to the Hespress Moroccan news site, Moroccan experts expect that Morocco would be helping Elbit manufacture high tech weaponry like drones and radars, although they may be guessing. They note that Casablanca offers companies easy access to sea ports as well as airports to make distribution easy,.

At the same time that protesters in the UK are trying to shut Elbit offices down there, ostensibly on behalf of Palestinians, at least one Arab nation is anxious to host that same company and strengthen ties with Israel.

Morocco has made it clear that it wants to become an arms manufacturer and not rely completely on others for its weapons for defense. This appears to be the first major deal with a foreign arms company.

In the Hespress article, while there is the expected antisemitism, most Moroccans are pleased with the deal. They note that Morocco's traditional friends in France, Spain and the US never considered building any weapons plants in the kingdom - while Israel does.

The move shows an enormous amount of trust in the Morocco-Israel relationship. Which is, again, astounding.

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!

Old anti-Zionist organizations don't die...they just fade away, slowly

Have you ever heard of the American Council for Judaism?

We've discussed it before. It was the IfNotNow of the 1940s and 1950s, holding an anti-Zionist position that it pretended was Jewish. The ACJ pretended to be loyal to "classical Reform Judaism," and insisted that Jews were a religion but not a people and that to be Zionist was to be anti-American. In 1957 the Union for Reform Judaism emphatically rejected the ACJ as having nothing to do with the Reform stance towards Zionism.

Because it had the name "Judaism" in its name, the media loved to quote it even though it represented only a fringe of a fringe of American Jewry. Just like "Jewish Voice for Peace" today, the early head of ACJ - Elmer Berger - managed to grab headlines and make it appear that ACJ was a major player in American Judaism.

So whatever happened to the ACJ?

It is still around, and even more irrelevant.

It has a website, and apparently it still has some assets, but not much income.

The website shows that there is a quarterly journal, "Issues of the American Council of Judaism." Nearly every article for the past twelve years is written by the same person, Allan C. Brownfeld.

Brownfeld, in a good As-A-Jew tradition, also writes for anti-Israel outlets like Mondoweiss and the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs.

If you want to know what JVP and IfNotNow will look like in ten years, look at the American Council of Judaism.

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!

06/18 Links: Collier: The Spectator falls down an antisemitic conspiracy rabbit hole; Netanyahu: New nuclear agreement won’t stop Iranian bomb; New Iran deal meant to stop Israeli attack

From Ian:

David Collier: The Spectator falls down an antisemitic conspiracy rabbit hole

The Jews were persecuted, dispossessed, and forced out of Iraq. Most turned up as penniless refugees in Israel. This is fact, not opinion – and there is overwhelming evidence to prove that this is true. Yet Spectator Magazine has just published an article that gives legitimacy to a disgraceful antisemitic conspiracy theory – one which claims that it was the result of a Zionist plot.

The article by Justin Marozzi
The title of the article by Justin Marozzi is ‘the shocking truth behind the Baghdad bombings of 1950 and 1951‘. It is a review of a book by the anti-Zionist writer Avi Shlaim called ‘Three Worlds: Memoir of an Arab-Jew‘.

The review is gushing in clear admiration. Marozzi calls the book ‘beautifully written‘ and says it ‘carefully blends the personal with the political‘. To reinforce the narrative the journalist calls Shlaim a ‘powerful and humane voice‘. Marozzi also focuses on a key claim that Shlaim has long pushed – that a series of bombings against Jewish targets which took place in Baghdad in 1950 and 1951, were set by ‘Zionist agents‘ in order to ‘force them to flee Iraq‘.

The article also pushes Shlaim’s other anti-Zionist lies, such as the idea that the Jews in Arab lands were ‘compatriots’ of their Muslim overlords – and it was Zionism (rather than rising Arab antisemitism and religious nationalisms) which dealt their position a ‘mortal blow‘.

(editor’s note: One wonders what dealt all the other suffering minorities in the Middle East – the Christians, the Kurds, the Yazidis, Assyrians, Armenians, Bahrani, Baloch, Coptic Christians, Druze, etc., their own mortal blow, if these cannot be blamed on ‘Zionist agents’?)

Marozzi even writes that it is difficult to mount a credible argument against some of Shlaim’s ‘conclusions’. Convincing stuff!

Ending inside the rabbit hole
The Iraqi Jews were persecuted, were offered a window to leave- and despite the fact they had to leave everything behind – they almost all left. This is what really happened.

The explosions were (as Shlaim admits) set by different actors. Even if (and it is unlikely given the evidence) there was a Jewish Zionist involved in any of them – it still doesn’t mean Israel was involved. The idea that every single Zionist Jew is a puppet of the Israeli state – is a classic antisemitic trope. But most importantly – whoever set them – these explosions did not cause the exodus.

Avi Shlaim writes in his book that:
‘the question of who was behind the bombs is of crucial importance for understanding the real origins of the exodus’.

Except it isn’t important at all. He is deflecting away from everything else that was taking place. Shlaim is just spinning fairy tales – creating a straw man – and leading everyone down a rabbit hole.

To draw an analogy – Shlaim wants to spin stories about why WTC7 collapsed, rather than focus on the Islamist hijacked planes that flew into the Twin Towers.

And the Spectator has just given that unforgivable strategy a huge platform. Remember that this was not news. This was a book review – this was something the Editors at the Spectator thought would be a good idea to promote. They chose to write it – and to give antisemites the ammunition. If like me this makes you angry and you wish to complain to them, feel free to do so.

Why They Hate Israel

They grew up in an environment controlled by the PA (or, in Gaza, by Hamas). That environment was supposed to be shaped by the Oslo II agreement, signed by Israel and the PA in 1995, which states (Chapter 4, Article XXII, clause 1) that the PA is required to “abstain from incitement, including hostile propaganda” against Israel and Jews.

Yet for the past 28 years, the PA has done exactly the opposite of what it pledged to do. For 28 years, an entire generation of Arab children was raised in an environment that should have been free of incitement and antisemitism. According to the Oslo agreement, the PA was supposed to foster peace and nonviolence through its schools, news media, and popular culture.

Instead, the PA has done the opposite. It names streets and parks after terrorists. It pays salaries to imprisoned terrorists and dead terrorists’ families. PA schools teach that Arab terrorists are heroes and Jews are hook-nosed racist monsters. The PA’s official maps, in government offices and schoolrooms alike, show all of Israel as “Occupied Palestine.”

Just take a look at the invaluable website of Palestinian Media Watch for a glimpse of what Palestinian Arabs are reading, seeing and hearing on any given day.

On May 30, for example, the PA gave a full military funeral to a member of the PA Intelligence division who was also a Fatah terrorist and was recently killed after he tried to murder Israelis. Instead of denouncing Ashraf Ibrahim as an enemy of peace, the PA lionized him. The official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, hailed him as a “martyr” and senior PA officials attended his funeral. One who spoke at the funeral urged the public to “confront Israel with every weapon.”

A week before that, on May 23, official PA Television broadcast an announcement by the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate that “the top priority of the Palestinian journalist is loyalty to all the Martyrs, loyalty to our people’s just cause.” So much for journalistic standards!

Go back a little further and you read that PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh boasted on his Facebook page on May 4 that the Palestinian Arab terrorists who murdered Rebbetzin Lucy Dee and her two daughters were “righteous martyrs” who “ascended to heaven” because they were fighting “the criminal occupation.”

So, it’s no wonder the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs support terrorism and want to see Israel destroyed—because that is what they have been taught, incessantly, throughout their lives.

How antisemitism in Arab media infiltrates the West

Tamar Sternthal, the director and founder of CAMERA (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America)’s Israel office, said at the Begin Center, “Nearly a quarter of a century ago, CAMERA focused on ensuring that English language coverage of Israel in American media outlets put forward a professional coverage of journalistic content. Since then, the media environment in which we work shifted dramatically in the face of globalization.”

CAMERA shifted away from focusing solely on reporting in America. This led to CAMERA establishing an Arabic department to focus on “Arabic language reports on Western media outlets, like CNN, Reuters, Agence France-Press, Sky News, France 24, Deutsche Welle and more. We decided to focus specifically on Western media outlets because they are focused on journalistic codes of ethics that require accuracy, accountability and transparency.”

Sternthal said there was a huge need for this project. While she stressed how Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) have done excellent work translating the content of both extremists and moderates from the Palestinian and Islamic world into English, no one was doing the same for the Arabic language websites of Western media outlets.

“There was little or no oversight, including internally. Often, English language editors were completely unaware of this information published on their own platform in Arabic. Problematic language and unfounded claims that English language editors considered unacceptable appeared unchecked in Arabic under their own brand names.”

An analyst who works for CAMERA Arabic, speaking on condition of anonymity, noted that much of the antisemitism promoted in Palestinian Authority media outlets has found its way onto Arabic language websites of Western news outlets.

“For example, the Arabic branch of the British Independent published a theater critic about a Beirut play where Anne Frank was portrayed as a vicious Zionist who came to take a Palestinian home from its original home. The play is called ‘A Letter to Anne Frank.’ It is still there. It has the Independent logo on it. If you did not know that the Independent in Arabic is a Saudi-owned subsidiary, you would think that this is content that the British Independent promotes. Obviously, they are irresponsible about their own content,” the analyst said.

According to him, many antisemites have been given positions in the Arabic language websites of Western news channels. One of them was Joelle Maroun, the Beirut correspondent of France 24, a publicly funded corporation.

“Their correspondent is a huge fan of Adolf Hitler. She publicly praised Hitler for over 10 years and nothing was done. There was no background check. Nothing of the sort. Only when CAMERA Arabic called her out, she got fired. Unfortunately, other correspondents who did likewise only got suspended for a month and they went back to work. You can still see them on the screen.”

Palestinian media are celebrating the murderous pogroms that targeted unarmed and innocent Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and elsewhere in 1929.

June 17th was the anniversary of the 1930 British execution of three Arabs who were convicted of murdering Jewish civilians during the pogroms.

Originally, the British court found 25 Arabs guilty and deserving of the death penalty; 22 of them had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. The three who remained were clearly found guilty of multiple murders and premeditation, two of them in Hebron and one in Safed.

The three murderers are being hailed as heroes in Palestinian media, in print and on video, and the murders of Jews are being called the beginning of the "Al Buraq Revolution."

The Palestine Bulletin in 1930 noted that they were hailed as heroes then, too, with an Arab Execuitve Committee notice that looks strikingly like those of Hamas and Islamic Jihad today.

Strikingly, many prominent Jews - including Einstein - lobbied against the death penalty for the murderers, on principle against the death penalty altogether.

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!

Iraqi Jews left because of Iraq's antisemitic policies, not because of bombings (update)

The Spectator writes:

Avi Shlaim’s family led the good life in Baghdad. Prosperous and distinguished members of Iraq’s Jewish minority, a community which could trace its presence in Babylon back more than 2,500 years, they had a large house with servants and nannies, went to the best schools, rubbed shoulders with the great and the good and sashayed elegantly from one glittering party to the next. Shlaim’s father was a successful businessman who counted ministers as friends. His much younger mother was a socially ambitious beauty who attracted admirers, from Egypt’s King Farouk to a Mossad recruiter. For this privileged section of Iraqi society, it was a rich, cosmopolitan and generally harmonious milieu. And for the young Shlaim, born in Baghdad in 1945, these were halcyon days.

They were not to last. In 1950, during a series of bombings targeting the Jewish population in the Iraqi capital, he and his family fled their ancient homeland to begin new lives in the fledgling state of Israel. His father, by then in his fifties, could not speak Hebrew and was completely undone by the move. After a couple of failed attempts to start a business, he never worked again. Shlaim’s vivacious mother was forced to take up the slack, exchanging the gilded life of a society hostess in Baghdad for a mundane job as a telephonist in Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv, where they lived in much diminished circumstances. The couple drifted apart and divorced, and Shlaim’s father died in 1970.

At the heart of this riveting and profoundly controversial book is Shlaim’s investigation into the Baghdad bombings against Jewish targets in 1950 and 1951. Between those years around 110,000 Jews of a population of approximately 135,000 emigrated from Iraq to Israel. Although Israel has consistently denied any involvement in these attacks, suspicion has hung over the clandestine activities of Zionist agents tasked with persuading the Jewish community to flee Iraq and settle in Israel. Shlaim’s bombshell is to uncover what he terms “undeniable proof of Zionist involvement in the terrorist attacks,” which helped terminate the millennial presence of Jews in Babylon. It is quite a charge — and will always be hotly disputed.

The review does not say what the "undeniable proof" is, so I cannot investigate whether what he says is true or not.

Here is what we do know.

There were seven bombings in Iraq against Jewish targets or Jewish owned businesses in 1950-51. Only one was fatal, which was the only one targeting a synagogue - the January 1951 hand grenade to the courtyard of the Masouda Shem-Tov Synagogue that killed three or four Jews. By that time already 86,000 Iraqi Jews had registered to go to Israel and the exodus was full blown. It makes no sense that Jews would have thrown that bomb when it wouldn't have added to the exodus. Indeed, the Jews killed that day were themselves waiting in line to register to emigrate to Israel.

From the parts of Shlaim's book that can be seen online, he appears to say that this only fatal bombing was done by a Syrian Muslim, not Jews:

So, at worst, Shlaim is claiming (at least according to this review) that some of the earlier bombs that didn't kill anyone were the main impetus to cause Jews to leave Iraq.

That is simply not true.

By all accounts, Iraqi Jews - at least up until the 1930s - were prosperous and secure, living in the same country for 2500 years. They felt at least as secure as Jews in the US and Canada do today. Does it make sense that nearly all of them would emigrate en masse from a series of non-fatal bombs? It would make more sense that millions of Americans would move to Israel in response to the Tree of Life synagogue attack where 11 Jews were murdered.

Clearly the bombings had little or no impact on Iraqi Jews, at least not compared to the real persecution that they suffered from the Iraqi government itself. And there were other Jews killed in Iraq between Israel's declaration of independence and the Iraqi exodus.

Newspaper stories at the time of the Iraqi exodus gave many reasons that a secure and mostly prosperous community would decide to leave suddenly - and leave everything behind. And when you look at the news stories from 1949-1951 about Iraqi Jewry, plenty of examples of persecution are given - and almost none of them even mentions bombings.

Here is a 1951 account by a UJA official, Morris W. Berinstein proud of his organization's role in airlifting the Iraqi Jews:

In the early nineteen thirties, when British controls were relaxed in Iraq, and the Arabs were beginning to form their own state, the Jews of Iraq, theretofore secure, began to worry for their safety. Although the government never' passed an overtly anti-Jewish law, Arab nationalism created an ugly atmosphere for Iraq's minorities.

When Hitler came into power, Nazi propaganda flourished in Iraq. Soon Jewish civil servants were being discharged from their jobs. Anti-Jewish feeling pervaded the country.

In 1937, there were violent anti-Jewish demonstrations in Baghdad. In 1938, nitric acid was poured on Jewish passers-by. In 1938, there were riots and the police did nothing to prevent rioters from firing on Jewish homes. During the riots, 150 Jews were killed and more than 700 wounded. Throughout the next ten years, the economic status of the Jews in Iraq steadily deteriorated.

...Then, in 1948, Iraq joined the other Arab states in the war against Israel. And Iraq's Jews found themselves being subjected to searches, arrest, denunciation, torture, mass imprisonment, fines, impoverishment, and the slow destruction of all rights. Iraq declared martial law during this period. The Jews of Iraq found out that for them this meant searches of homes at night, confiscation of valuables, arrests and "trials" by martial courts.

On the Day of Atonement in 1949, 150 soldiers surrounded a synagogue in El Amara, seized the men wrapped in prayer shawls worshipping there—and arrested them. The charge? There were Stars of David on their prayer shawls. For it was now a crime — a capital crime — to be a Zionist in Iraq, to emigrate to Israel, .to help others emigrate.

And every Jew in Iraq was considered a Zionist. The unofficial persecution became worse and worse . The judge in a martial court would slap and kick the defendant before pronouncing the sentence. Young men where kidnapped, beaten, forced to confess they were taking part in "Zionist" activities. Shops were looted. Homes were unsafe for Jews. Men were sentenced to years of hard labor for receiving a letter from Palestine!

Jews were not only forbidden to emigrate to Palestine, but even to visit there. Iraq passports were stamped, "Not valid for travel to Palestine."

After the establishment of Israel in 1948, this policy continued. And then, suddenly, in March, 1950, the government of Iraq reversed its stand on emigration. Both chambers of the parliament passed a law authorizing Iraqi 'Jews to leave by May 31, 1951. The price was relinquishment of Iraq nationality.

The Guardian, April 13, 1951, also enumerates a litany of injustices to the Jews of Iraq, and blames it on Iraqi nationalism that excluded Jews from their country:

This movement has the aspect of a stampede, and it is not to be assumed that a people so deeply rooted in the place as the Iraqi Jews would, except under the most compelling necessity, uproot themselves as completely as they are doing and give up all they have: their positions, their educational and communal organisation, and their own way of life. The stampede, then, is a result of an acute feeling of insecurity. The feeling became acute as a result of the war in Palestine, but it must not be supposed that it was not there before the events in Palestine brought it to the surface. The feeling of insecurity was there for perhaps the last twenty years; it dates, in fact, from the time when the death of Faisul removed the one person of influence in Iraqi politics capable of tolerance and fair-mindedness.

One can see now in retrospect the slow but sure process whereby a minority was made to feel unwelcome in the land it had inhabited for something like two thousand years. The "numerus clausus" in schools and colleges, the gradual elimination of all Jews whose services could be dispensed with from Government employment, the tightening control over the educational system of the community, the molestations, murders, and bomb-throwings which went unpunished, the discrimination against Jews in administrative action, the pogrom of 1941, the increasing restrictions on the movements of Jewish citizens—the record is curiously like the dreary and familiar history of European anti-Semitism. That the Jews of Iraq were not loyal and useful citizens cannot be maintained; neither can it be .maintained that there was ever among any class of the Moslem population a hate or a dislike for their Jewish neighbours, so that the conclusion at the present moment seems inescapable : if you introduce, foster, and encourage nationalism " a l'europeenne" in an area where it was previously unknown the life of minorities becomes intolerable.

Soon after the kingdom of Iraq got its full independence from the mandatory in the early thirties, its officials in the Ministry of Education devised a curriculum in modern history for the use of primary and secondary schools The perspective given by this curriculum was somewhat peculiar for it consisted in large part of the story of the attainment of national unity and independence by Germany. Italy, and Japan in the nineteenth century There seems to be an intimate connection between this kind of curriculum and the fortunes of the Jews of Iraq in the last twenty years. The Palestine war provided the culmination of a long story initiated by a nationalism introduced, " de toutes pieces," from Europe. And the culmination, too, owes a great deal to Europe, for it was the kind of treatment that European Jewry received at the hands of the anti-Semites of Europe which set up the tremendous pressures ending in the clash between Arabs and Jews which was to prove so catastrophic both for the Arabs of Palestine and for the Jews of Iraq.

Stories like the Guardian's emphasize that Iraqi Jews were reluctant to leave. This is emphasized in this article from Philip Toynbee, from the London Observer Foreign News Service, published in US newspapers December 30, 1950:

The Jewish community of Iraq is the oldest in the world, its origin traceable to that small remnant of the Captivity which never returned to Israel. Two and a half millennia later, the greater part of this antique community---they have been here at least 1,100 years longer than their Arab masters—have decided to reverse the decision of their ancestors. ...
Those who leave with, comparatively speaking, the blessings of the Iraqi government, are stripped of their belongings, even down to a spare new suit of clothes, and allowed to take only 50 pounds with them for each adult emigrant. They are also, and not unnaturally, deprived of their Iraqi passports and nationality. The temptation to slip across the frontier isito Iran, where Jewish emigrants to Israel are treated with far more tolerance and generosity, is naturally a strong one. Yet another 75.000 Iraqi Jews have made official applications to leave, in spite of the hardships and uncertainties which this change must involve.

Even during the Palestine war of 1948 there was little in Iraq which we, by our bitter standards, would call persecution. Once, a prominent Jew, accused of sending material to Israel, was summarily hanged and his body dragged on a rope's end through the streets of Basra. Three hundred boys and young men were arrested without trial, and kept for 18 months in sufficiently brutal captivity. But physical violence has not been widespread. The tragedy of the present situation is that for so many centuries Jews and Arabs lived here in peace together, mutually respectful of each other's religion, mutually unconscious of any subtle racial effluvia. The Jews of Iraq are Arabic-speaking. and, to an outsider, quite indistinguishable in appearance from their Arab neighbours. Only religion distinguishes the two groups.

Yet today, though at least 50 per cent of the Baghdad retail trade is still in Jewish hands. life in Iraq has become so difficult and painful for the Jews that more than half of them have elected to face the known austerities of life in Israel.

It would be quite unjust to see in this development a wanton aggression on the part of the Arab majority. Since the prelude and aftermath of the Palestine war, Iraq's Jews have been regarded as a potential fifth column, a group whose prime loyalty must be to the new, hated state which has been established in Zion.

The tragic process is a spiral. Being so regarded, it is natural that the Jews of Iraq, however devoted they may have been to their ancient place of settlement, should come to see themselves primarily as Jews, not as Iraqis.

By now the wound has been cut too deep to be easily healed. Iraq's remaining Jews live in huddled and self-conscious communities, apprehensive that they and their children may be mocked or slighted in the streets, rapidly developing that spirit of suspicious introversion which has been long imposed on the Jews of Europe.

...Meanwhile, the Jews of Iraq are being quickly squeezed out of all official positions in the country. The board of the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce, which was one-third Jewish two years ago, is now without a single Jewish member. Jews have been summarily dismissed from government positions, and life in Iraq is becoming daily more difficult for all of them. No doubt they are right to choose hardships which will at least be suffered among their own people and without any accompanying indignity.

Again, I don't know Shlaim's "undeniable proof" so I cannot say with certainty that no Zionists were behind some of the 1950 bombs. It is certainly true that some resentful Iraqi Jews, who did not want to leave Iraq and were not Zionist, blamed Zionists for the bombings, without any proof. We know that a 1960 Mossad inquiry requested by David Ben Gurion - whose results remained secret until 1996 - found "that no entity in Israel gave an order to perpetrate such acts of sabotage."

What is clear that Iraqi Jews didn't leave Iraq because of these bombings. They left because there was no future for them in Iraq.

Some of them remained bitter at being forced out, and that seems to include Shalim's own wealthy family. This book must be read through the prism of resentment towards Israel that Avi Shlaim clearly harbors, because the facts do not support his thesis that Israel was responsible for the Iraqi Jewish exodus.

UPDATE: The excellent Adin Haykin has written extensively about this.

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!

Once again, @AmnestyUK lies about Israel

Amnesty-UK has embarked on what I believe is at least its fourth campaign to get the UK to ban any Israeli goods from communities across the Green Line.

As far as I can tell, Israel is the only country in the world whose consumer products are targeted for boycotting by Amnesty branches.

The current campaign makes claims that are simply false:

Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria have either been built on empty areas that hadn't had any Arab residents or they were built where Jews lived before 1948 (Gush Etzion and parts of Jerusalem and Hebron.)

Israel haters love to paint a picture of Israel depopulating Palestinian communities in the West Bank and replacing them with Jewish communities - and it is simply a lie.

I tweeted Amnesty-UK asking for a list of these communities - certainly, someone must have made such a list like there are lists of communities that Arabs fled from in 1948. But no one has been able to provide the name of even one.

Because it is a lie. And the "human rights" community is not bothered by lies as long as they are lies that demonize 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!

06/17 Links: Joe Biden’s UNESCO fiasco; What George Soros's succession plan means for America; Michigan man arrested for planning mass attack on synagogue

From Ian:

Joe Biden’s UNESCO fiasco

UNESCO passes more scandalous anti-Israel resolutions
What is particularly galling about this move is that just last month, UNESCO once again passed a series of scandalous anti-Israel resolutions at the 216th session of its executive board in Paris, which was held from May 10 to 24.

Take, for example, Item 33 of the UNESCO board’s agenda, which is titled “Occupied Palestine” and reads like it was formulated by the worst of Israel’s foes.

In a subsection about Jerusalem, the Jewish state is described as the “Occupying Power” over the city, and the board’s members declare that Israel’s Basic Law on Jerusalem, which established the city as our united capital, is “null and void and must be rescinded forthwith.”

Another subsection declares that both Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people are buried, are “Palestinian sites” which are under Israeli occupation.

This is so patently offensive and insulting to Jewish belief that it borders on outright antisemitism.

Denying the Jewishness of our ancestors is nothing less than a direct assault on the very foundations of the Jewish people, and UNESCO deserves to be shunned for it, not embraced.

Regarding Gaza, the UNESCO board criticized “Israeli army violations” in the area, while failing to mention Hamas and Islamic Jihad or their habit of firing thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians. And it also bemoaned the situation on the “Occupied Syrian Golan.”

If this is what UNESCO’s director-general had in mind when she said that she had managed to “reduce political tensions and find consensus on the most sensitive topics, such as the Middle East,” then I would hate to see what a flare-up might look like.

THE FACT of the matter is that UNESCO and its obscene anti-Israel bias has not changed one whit.

As the Palestinian news agency WAFA gleefully reported on May 19, “For the first time, a symposium marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba was hosted at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO’s) Headquarters in Paris.”

In other words, an organization ostensibly devoted to promoting the benefits of knowledge and culture instead played host to an event mourning the establishment of the State of Israel.

These outrageous positions are in line with UNESCO’s long-standing hostility toward Jewish history and memory.

Rep. Mark Green: Rejoining UNESCO ‘undermines’ US-Israel relationship

Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) told JNS that the United States must continue to stand with its ally Israel, which rejoining UNESCO undercuts.

“The Biden administration’s decision to rejoin UNESCO undermines this important alliance because of UNESCO’s history of passing anti-Israel resolutions, including one identifying Israel as ‘the occupying power’ in Jerusalem,” Green said. “Any organization that doesn’t treat Israel as a legitimate and contributing nation does not deserve U.S. support or participation.”

At a time when Washington ought to be cutting spending, Americans should be “furious” that the Biden administration is paying hundreds of millions of dollars to UNESCO, according to Green, a member of the House Republican Israel Caucus.

“The U.S. will likely return to becoming its largest funder. This is a bad use of taxpayer dollars, to say the least,” he said. “UNESCO made its stance on Israel clear. By rejoining this organization, the Biden administration is turning its back on our friend and ally.”

It had previously been illegal under U.S. law for Washington to fund any U.N. entity that bestows full membership on entities lacking “internationally recognized attributes” of statehood. In 2011, the Obama administration stopped funding UNESCO after it welcomed Palestine as a member, and in 2018, the Trump administration exited UNESCO altogether, and Israel followed thereafter.