Friday, June 23, 2023

06/23 Links Pt1: Congressional Human Rights Chair Announces Boycott of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch Over Israel Treatment

From Ian:

‘Disgusted’: Congressional Human Rights Chair Announces Boycott of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch Over Israel Treatment
The chairman of the Congressional subcommittee responsible for human rights announced on Thursday that he would boycott representatives from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch from testifying before his committee because of their position that Israel is an “apartheid” state.

Speaking at a hearing on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias in the UN, the Palestinian Authority and NGOs, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations, said he was “disgusted” by the two human rights organizations.

“It used to be that Amnesty International was all about political prisoners, and they had a very sterling reputation,” Smith said. “They have reneged on all of that…Apartheid is an abomination… To sit there and take that type of language and smear Israel with it is appalling and Human Rights Watch is doing the exact same thing…I’ve had representatives of those groups come and testify on other issues. But you know, it just occurred to me, I’m gonna boycott them. Any hearing I have on human rights, Amnesty is not invited, nor is Human Rights Watch, because of their smear, their horrible smear.”

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch did not immediately respond to The Algemeiner’s request for comment.

In a 2021 report titled “A Threshold Crossed”, Human Rights Watch declared that Israel was now an apartheid state. Amnesty International released a similar report in 2022. Those findings have been widely condemned by Israel, US elected officials and Jewish groups, but have been increasingly normalized among international human rights organizations.

Thursday’s hearing also heard extensive testimony from expert witnesses that track antisemitism and anti-Israel bias in international fora.

“Antisemitism is the elephant in the room that the international community has ignored, looking for all sorts of other reasons to blame the conflict on.” said Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch. “It’s now embedded in Palestinian Authority worldview and is being echoed at CUNY University and around the world.”




Erdan: UNSC must condemn Hezbollah infiltration into northern Israel
The United Nations Security Council must condemn Hezbollah for crossing Israel’s border and building three temporary military structures, Israel’s Ambassador Gilad Erdan told the 15-member body.

“Several weeks ago, two temporary structures (a container and a tent) were erected south of the Blue Line, crossing it by more than 30 meters into Israeli territory,” Erdan said in a letter he sent to the council on Thursday.

“Another tent was erected next to the first one, 55 meters south of the Blue Line and into Israeli territory,” he charged. The construction of the structures on Israeli territory “constitutes a gross violation of Israeli sovereignty,” he added.

The structures are part of an “expansion of Hezbollah’s Radwan forces military compounds and outposts along the Blue Line,” Erdan explained.

Both incidents reveal the expansion of Hezbollah forces along Israel’s border, he said, adding that during the past year, Hezbollah has built at least 27 new military outposts along Israel’s northern border that are manned by its Radian elite force. It does so under the guise of the NGO “Green Without Borders,” he further alleged.

The presence of these structures underscored the failure of the Lebanese government and military to control the Iranian proxy terror group which sits on Israel’s border, Erdan said.

Israel has repeatedly told UNIFIL about Hezbollah outposts along border
Israel has repeatedly given information about these military outposts to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, which is a peacekeeper force tasked with monitoring such activity and has raised the issue with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Erdan explained.

Israel “expected the UN to report the gross violations .. and bring these disturbing developments to the knowledge of the Security Council,” he said, adding that the Lebanese government must ensure the removal of the outposts.
West Bank risks 'spiralling out of control' - UN rights chief
The United Nations high commissioner for human rights said on Friday that the situation in the West Bank was deteriorating sharply, adding that Israeli forces had killed at least seven Palestinians including children in a refugee camp.

"This week's violence in the occupied West Bank risks spiraling out of control, fuelled by strident political rhetoric, and an escalation in the use of advanced military weaponry by Israel," Volker Turk said in a statement via a spokesperson at a UN press briefing, calling on Israel to bring its actions into line with international law.

The weaponry included helicopter gunships and drones, the spokesperson added.

The air strikes on the Jenin refugee camp represented a "major intensification of the use of weaponry more generally associated with the conduct of armed hostilities, rather than a law enforcement situation," he said.

"Israel must urgently reset its policies and actions in the West Bank in line with international human rights standards, including protecting and respecting the right to life," he said.


Israel on verge of apartheid, hopes for peace ‘fading away,’ says former UN chief
Israel is inching toward apartheid and drifting further away from the hopes of creating a Palestinian state alongside it, former United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon told The Associated Press Thursday on a visit to the region.

Ban said that throughout his three-day visit, which coincided with a spike in deadly violence in the West Bank, he encountered a bleaker reality than the one he faced while head of the world body from 2007 to 2016. He said he had seen signs, through expanding West Bank Jewish settlements and tighter restrictions against Palestinians, that an apartheid system was taking root.

“I think the situation has worsened,” Ban said. “I’m just thinking that, as many people are saying, that this may constitute apartheid.” He said he was concerned that a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict was “fading away.”

Ban was in the region on behalf of The Elders, a group of statespeople that engages in peacemaking and human rights initiatives around the world. Along with the group’s chair, former Irish president Mary Robinson, he met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and civil society. It was from local rights groups that he said he heard that Israel was committing the crime of apartheid.

Leading rights groups in Israel and abroad have accused Israel and its 56-year rule of the West Bank of morphing into an apartheid system that they say gives Palestinians second-class status and is designed to maintain Jewish hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.


UN Children and Armed Conflict report to blacklist Russia, not Israel
The United Nations annual report on Children and Armed Conflict due out next Tuesday is expected to blacklist Russia but not Israel, according to an advanced copy of the document seen by Reuters.

The report on children and armed conflict includes the list intended to shame parties to conflicts in the hope of pushing them to implement measures to protect children. It has long been controversial, with diplomats saying Saudi Arabia and Israel exerted pressure in recent years in a bid to stay off the list.

Israel has never been on the list, while a Saudi-led military coalition was removed from the list in 2020 several years after it was first named for killing and injuring children in Yemen.

The report found that Israeli forces killed 42 children and injured 933 children in 2022. Israel is not the offenders list.

"I note a meaningful decrease in the number of children killed by Israeli forces, including by air strikes," Guterres wrote. "Nevertheless, I remain deeply concerned by the number of children killed and maimed by Israeli forces."

To prevent Israel’s inclusion in the blacklist attached to the report, Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Maj.-Gen. Ghassan Alian met with Guterres last month in New York. They presented him with data to back up their position that Israel should not be blacklisted.

Human Rights Watch advocacy director Joe Becker charged that Guterres had done Palestinian children “a terrible disservice by leaving Israel off his list of shame.

Arab writer says the quiet part out loud: opposing Israel was never about defending "Palestine"

Khaled Ibrahim writes an op-ed in the Lebanese, purportedly progressive  Al Akhbar with his analysis of the future of Israel. But it is a side comment that is most interesting:

The Zionist entity goes against the logic of history and justice and stands in the way of the rights and aspirations of a major Arab nation from the ocean to the Gulf. It has no future in our Arab world...
While he then mentions the Palestinians as an afterthought, Ibrahim is honest about the real Arab problem with Israel: it stands in the way of a mythical, united, Arab nation from the Atlantic to the Gulf.

In other words, the Palestinian issue is, and always was, an excuse to oppose Israel, but never the reason.

The Arab world opposed Israel before anyone heard of the "Palestinian people," they opposed Israel before the "occupation." Their opposition to Israel was never about Palestinians, but they pretended to want to "defend" them even as both Trans-Jordan and Syria plotted to subsume Palestine as part of a "Greater Syria."  

AP, October 19, 1947:

 

Manchester Guardian, February 14, 1947:



There was no interest in an Arab Palestine then, and there was no interest in creating such a country between 1948 and 1967. It was always opposition to a Jewish state, not support for a Palestinian state, that animated Israel's enemies - and that includes Palestinian leaders today, who have had 30 years to build a workable government but prefer a dysfunctional stub that prioritizes encouraging martyrdom over a good life for its citizens.




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!
 

 

Islamic Jihad military camp for kids: "Fighting the Jews is an act of worship"

It is summer, and that means that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are proudly parading photos of their violating the war crime of recruiting child soldiers, calling it "summer camp."

These pictures from an Islamic Jihad "Revenge of the Free" training camp are not ambiguous.






This is a war crime. 

As the ICRC says,
The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child differentiates between States and non-State armed groups in setting the age-limit for recruitment and use in hostilities. For States, the age limit for direct participation in hostilities and for compulsory recruitment is 18. This means they can accept voluntary enlistment of persons between the ages of 15 and 18. Armed groups, on the other hand, are bound by a stricter prohibition, affecting both voluntary and compulsory recruitment of under-18s.
There are no photos of the kids engaging in sports, playing games or otherwise having fun.  Calling this a "summer camp" is a joke. It is a military training camp for kids. And Islamic Jihad makes this clear in their recruitment video:


Not only that, but Islamic Jihad freely admits that the targets of the weapons the children learn to use are Jews.  Islamic Jihad official Darwish al-Gharabli said, "These camps qualify the generation to carry the banner after this generation, part of which has been martyred; it also establishes a generation that is aligned with the path of jihad and resistance; believing in this option and that Palestine is the central issue and fighting the Jews is an act of worship."

The UN and its agencies, and Defense for Children International Palestine, and other "human rights" NGOs are curiously uninterested in this incitement to violence and these violations of children's human rights and international law

It's just another "Palestine exception" where Palestinians are exempt from the laws and rules for the rest of the world.

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!
 

 

Book review: "Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership"

I generally abhor divisions in the Jewish community. There are too few of us to be able to afford partisanship and needless hate for our own.

For those reasons I have been reluctant to criticize fellow Jews outside of the fringe who are anti-Zionist or anti-Judaism. And I have been equally reluctant to criticize the leaders of American Jewish organizations, trying and wanting to assume that they do the best they can with the resources they have.

That position is no longer tenable after reading Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership, a new book of damning essays edited by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser.  

Betrayal is a strong indictment of those American Jewish leaders, on both the national and local levels. 

The single biggest issue that should unify American Jews is the fight against antisemitism. But as Betrayal shows, the mostly self-appointed American Jewish leaders have been more interested in maintaining their positions of power than in going toe to toe with today's antisemites.

Worse, in example after example in this book, when grassroots Jewish groups organize to fight a specific threat to American Jews, these pseudo leaders generally try to dissuade and discourage them. They claim that their connections with other powerful people, and their quiet diplomacy, will carry the day. Their message to ordinary Jews who want to defend themselves from specific threats is "sha, shtill" - shut up and be quiet.

We cannot read minds, but the overwhelming impression given is that these so-called leaders enjoy their perks of being considered as such. They love to attend their interfaith breakfasts and to attend meetings and parties with local and national secular leaders. They don't want to make waves, to risk their positions and their perceived prestige, their speaking engagements at Temples, their parades for progressive causes.

Problems which should and could have been attacked early on - mosques with terror links, undermining K-12 and university education with the concepts of "wokeness" that slot Jews as oppressors and supremacists, BDS and campus "apartheid weeks" as well as the other constant attacks on Israel that these leaders prefer to sympathize with instead of battle against - have metastasized into major sources of today's American antisemitism. 

An essay by Jonathan Tobin sets the tone with his analysis of how the Anti Defamation League has turned its back on fighting antisemitism and instead steered the ship to be more progressive and partisan rather than defending Jews.  The organization's hiring of a rabidly anti-Zionist Tema Smith as "director of Jewish Outreach" was particularly risible. 

Richard Landes describes how American Jewish leadership has exhibited cowardice in the face of the jihadist threat, preferring to partner with their Muslim friends rather than to ever confront them. Of course, this peculiarly Jewish tendency to compromise on principles in order to seek approval from others is not mirrored by the openly pro-Hamas Muslim American leadership, who - if anything - feel empowered to more extremism because the Jews are on their side.

Josh Block describes the failure of American Jewish leaders to push back against Ilhan Omar's antisemitic statements, and this led directly to her emerging from the controversy as more influential than ever. 

Caroline Glick observes that the "two state solution" has become a religion of sorts for American Jewish leaders, and instead of defending Israel they are defending cutting Israel in half and abandoning nearly all Jewish holy sites. 

Naya Lekht notes how liberal Jewish groups have replaced Judaism with "social justice," a philosophy that comes from Stalin's Soviet Union and that is ultimately used against Jews.

The ADL, the AJC, the local JCRCs and Federations, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs - all of them are stridently criticized as becoming part of the problem rather than the solution for the one theme that Jews should unite around, fighting antisemitism. Specific examples from grassroots groups who were stymied by their local Jewish "leaders" abound. 

The only national organization that has held on to its principles of unwavering support for Jews and Israel is the Zionist Organization of America, and its president Morton Klein writes an essay as well demonstrating how the eagerness by other Jewish leaders to make nice with the anti-Israel and ultimately antisemitic progressive philosophy hurts the Jewish community and makes everyone lose respect for their leaders.

One of the most interesting essays is by M. Zuhdi Jasser, of the Muslim Reform Movement, who has tried to partner with American Jewish leaders - only to be spurned because they prefer their partnerships with Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations that are actively antisemitic. His frustration of being abandoned by those who should be his natural allies is palpable.

Jacobs and Goldwasser's own essay doesn't only describe the problems, but offers a ten point program towards solutions - the exact thing that the supposed American Jewish leaders avoid. These pro-active ideas are what real leaders should come up with and implement. 

Betrayal describes outrageous examples of failed and counterproductive leadership. It will make you angry, and it should.

American Jews pour millions into these organizations that have little or nothing to show for themselves. It is time to replace those fossils with real leadership, real ideas, and real passion. The authors of these 22 essays are all fine candidates to be true leaders of the North American Jewish community. 



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 22, 2023

06/22 Links Pt2: ZOA to Biden: Rescind ‘horrific, frightening’ Holocaust museum council appointments; Poll: Majority of Arab Youth in UAE, Egypt and Morocco Support Normalization with Israel

From Ian:

ZOA to Biden: Rescind ‘horrific, frightening’ Holocaust museum council appointments
The Zionist Organization of America and Mort Klein, its national president, are calling on the Biden administration to rescind its appointment of two individuals to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, which governs the museum.

The decision to name Kimberly Marteau Emerson and Alan Solomont to the council is “horrific and frightening,” given that the two lead “hostile-to-Israel non-governmental organizations,” Klein and the ZOA stated.

“Support for a Jewish homeland” is cited as one of the museum’s focuses in the 1979 report of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, which Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel chaired. “Thus, the Holocaust Memorial Museum—which by law is mandated to carry out ‘support for the Jewish homeland’—should never have board members of anti-Israel organizations on the museum’s governing board,” Klein and ZOA stated.

Emerson is a board member of Human Rights Watch, which is “Israel-bashing and America-bashing” and is “infamous for falsely accusing Israel of ‘apartheid,’ ‘crimes against humanity,’ ‘persecuting’ and ‘systematic oppression’ and ‘inhumane acts’ against Palestinians,” Klein and the ZOA wrote.

Meanwhile, Solomont sits on the board of the “vicious, hostile-to-Israel groups” New Israel Fund and Israel Policy Forum, the latter of which “is so radical that it was the only group to testify against moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem,” per Klein and ZOA.

“Solomont is currently the national board chair of the notorious anti-Israel group J Street, which promotes anti-Israel UN resolutions; funds anti-Israel political candidates and lobbies for U.S. funding for the Palestinians—which enables the Palestinian Authority’s ‘pay to slay’ payments to Arab terrorists to murder Jews, among many other horrors,” they added.


'I don't think black people or Jews should be solely defined by their race'
I meet Tomiwa Owolade outside Woolwich Arsenal train station in south east London a few weeks before the publication of his hotly anticipated book, This Is Not America: Why Black Lives in Britain Matter.

“I like to call this the African Riviera,” he jokes, gesturing at the Thames as he leads me through Plumstead, where he grew up after his politician father took the family to England from Nigeria when he was nine.

"We pass a Costcutter at the end of a long road of Victorian semis. “This is where I came to buy The Times when I had my first article published in the paper, a book review,” he tells me, proudly.

Owolade has come a long way. Today a first-rank essayist and author at just 26 years old, he was at the centre of a big row in April after he wrote an article for The Observer saying that Jews were among the most abused minorities in Britain.

The article prompted Corbynite MP Diane Abbott to write a letter to the paper claiming that Jews could not suffer racism, just prejudice like that faced by “redheads”.

Owolade’s demands that Labour should expel Abbott, made to the JC at the time, marked him out as one of the few — of any colour or creed — with the courage and intellectual nous to call out the Jew-hate that often characterises the “anti-racism” movement.

He rounds on prominent figures in black America — Kanye West, Ice Cube, Whoopie Goldberg and Nation of Islam leaders — who have all been accused of antisemitism. “These people all think that they are being anti-racist.

But the main antisemitic conspiracy theory is that Jewish people are behind the slave trade. They fashion the antisemitism [as an objection] to the pernicious legacy of the slave trade, and when people think about racism against African Americans, that [the slave trade] is the gold standard.
The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion In The Arab And Muslim World – Past And Present
Holocaust Denial Is An Inseparable Part Of The Protocols Conspiracy
One great difficulty arises, however: the theory of the Jews' satanic omnipotence is incompatible with the facts of history, and particularly with the Holocaust. How can it be claimed that the evil, all-powerful Jews are so successful in their plot for world domination when in fact one third of world Jewry was wiped out in the Holocaust?

The only way to avoid this glaring contradiction is to deny the Holocaust. Hence, Holocaust denial is an inevitable and inseparable part of the Protocols conspiracy.

Indeed, there are also those who perversely recognize that the Holocaust took place, but justify it. One noteworthy example is recently-deceased Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, pictured being kissed by Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Aal-Thani. Al-Qaradhawi said on the Qatari state-run Al-Jazeera Network in 2009 that Allah imposed Hitler upon the Jews as a punishment for their corruption, and that "Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers."

There are also those who solve the contradiction between the conspiracy and the Holocaust by claiming that the Jews actually collaborated with the Nazis, as was claimed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the introduction to the Arabic translation of his doctorate thesis.

The only other resolution to the contradiction between historical facts and the Jewish conspiracy theory would be to dismiss the conspiracy. Unfortunately, very few individuals choose this path. These notable individuals include: recently-deceased secularist Syrian intellectual Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm, the author of Self-Criticism Following Our Defeat[10]; political advisor to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Dr. Osama Al-Baz, who in 2002 published a series of articles in the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram in which he debunked some of the most notorious antisemitic myths, particularly the Protocols, the blood libel, and Holocaust denial; and Egyptian academic Dr. Abd Al-Wahhab Al-Masiri, the author of the Arabic-language eight-volume Encyclopedia of Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, who has written a book about the Protocols titled The Protocols, Judaism, and Zionism and who said that the Protocols are inauthentic and "100% laughable and foolish plagiarism."[11] Notably, a new approach towards Judaism has emerged in the most morally advanced Arab country, the UAE, which in recent years has launched interfaith dialogues.
  • Thursday, June 22, 2023
  • Elder of Ziyon

Media is only allergic to the word "terrorist" when they are Palestinian

What did the world's media call the murderers of four Israelis in Eli this week?

Almost all called them "gunmen."


And also Haaretz.

Outside of mainstream Israeli and Jewish media, I could only find Fox News using the word "terrorist."

There are two things that are strange about this.

One is that the EU and US State Department didn't hesitate to call the attack "terrorist."

If the major Western governments consider these attacks to be terror attacks, why does the media have such a problem with it?

The standard answer we always hear is a variant of "one person's terrorist is another person's 'freedom fighter." But the media uses the word "terrorist" in other contexts.

June 18, New York Times:  "Dozens of Students Killed in Terrorist Attack on Ugandan School"

June 12, NBC News: "U.S. forces are operating in Syria to fight the Islamic State terrorist group."

June 22, CBS News: "Adel Daoud, man convicted of terrorism plot in Chicago's Loop, to be resentenced"

February 2, BBC: "Four guilty of helping jihadist in terror attack"

Clearly, there is no reluctance to call some people or groups "terrorist." But when it comes to Palestinians or even Hamas, the mainstream media falls back on euphemisms like "militant" or "gunmen."

What makes Palestinians different?

 The rules are always different when Israel is involved, and Jews being murdered is no exception. There is no controversy about this: Hamas freely admits that its goals are terror. But to the media,  there are always mitigating circumstances for Arabs murdering Jews. 

It's a clear double standard for Israel, saying that Israeli Jews being massacred is not quite as bad as others murdered in terror attacks. There is a small amount of Jewish responsibility for being killed. 

While it isn't the worst example of antisemitism....it is still antisemitism.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Report: Opponents Violating Norms Makes It OK For You To Be An Ass Too (PreOccupied Territory)

 Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.


Tel Aviv, June 22 - A new study confirms what many had assumed or intuited for years, namely that unsavory, unethical, impolite, and, sometimes, illegal behavior on the part of people on the other side of the political aisle from you justifies your adoption of the same or worse behaviors in response.

Writing in the journal He Started It, a team of researchers from the University of Racetothegutter in Cellar, Germany, published an article detailing their discovery that when anyone prominent in a political camp, however loosely defined, violates norms that until than many had assumed govern the rhetoric and actions of political expression, that violation gives a moral, interpersonal, and ethical imprimatur for those in the opposing political camp to engage in either those violations themselves, in service of their political cause, or, preferably, to engage in different and more egregious violations of norms.

"We found that while norms are supposed to be a good thing," the authors wrote, "in fact they only serve a good purpose if other people, in particular the people with whom you disagree, adhere to them. Norms serve no real purpose once even a single high-profile - or, let's be honest, low-to-medium profile, if you dig long enough - figure on the other side disregards them. Once that happens, poof, the norm is gone, but it was important until that moment. Now, with the norm gone, you are free to be a jackass with hemorrhoids. It's science."

The norms, the article explained, can feature in the realms of political protest, politicians' conduct in their official capacities, adherence to unstated or customary rules in legislative proceedings, etiquette, vocabulary, and debate, among others.

The writers acknowledge their puzzlement at an important fact that remains unexplained. "It appears that the original violators of the norms nevertheless expect their opponents not to violate the same norms," they wrote.

They theorize that the initial violation of norms took place in a unique or special context that justifies that violation, a justification that their opponents willfully fail to admit pertains only to the original norms violation and could never justify those opponents' violations of the norms, which of course are still sacred.

Thus, only your side may ignore, dismiss, or justify such phenomena as riots, looting, trespassing, vandalism, or assault in the pursuit of political goals or ideologies that you favor, or that your allies favor,  but if the other side does anything similar, that only shows how uncivilized and wrong they must be.


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!
 

 

06/22 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: Israel’s American ‘frenemy’; Palestinians: We Prefer Terrorism to Peace with Israel; PA portrays murderers of 4 as innocent victims “assassinated” by Israel

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Israel’s American ‘frenemy’
Whatever the real reason, by minimizing the mortal threat Iran poses to the West, the Biden administration now views Israel as a threat instead because it is determined to stop Iran.

The administration therefore regards Israel as a major obstacle to be neutralized. Accordingly, Israel must now view the U.S. as a “frenemy.”

Of course, the U.S. depends on Israel to be the West’s front line of defense in the Middle East, and Israeli intelligence is critical to American security.

Israel’s biggest potential defense against U.S. perfidy, however, is the American people. American support for Israel is not based on the small U.S. Jewish community but the Christian heartlands of middle America—which would take a very dim view indeed of a political party that was putting Israel at risk.

Yet Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who famously alerted the American public to the risks of the 2015 nuclear deal, is now silent. As pointed out by Michael Doran in Tablet, Netanyahu appears to be trapped.

The U.S. is projecting friendship with Israel through joint military exercises, working within CENTCOM towards integrated missile defense and dangling the biggest prize of all—the administration’s apparent enthusiasm for promoting normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

This enthusiasm is false, since normalization would jeopardize the administration’s all-important courtship of Iran. But the carefully spun optics—with the intention of preventing Israel from attacking Iran—are that the U.S. is working hand-in-hand with Israel. It appears that Netanyahu has decided to play along with this cynical fiction.

So, Netanyahu has sacrificed Israel’s biggest diplomatic weapon: The ability to alert the American people to their government’s lethal abandonment of the Jewish state.

If Netanyahu can’t or won’t do this, others should step up to the plate. Israel has numerous friends in Congress. All those Republican presidential candidates should be using Israel to put clear blue water between the Democrats and the American people. In a country where love of Israel is key to its core values, this should become a defining election issue.

It’s high time for Israel’s truest friends in the US to tell the American people about the betrayal of Israel taking place in their name, and the frightening ways in which the Biden administration is hanging the Jewish state out to dry.
Bassam Tawil: Palestinians: We Prefer Terrorism to Peace with Israel
The findings of the poll, which was conducted between June 7 and 11, show that the Biden Administration and all those who continue to talk about reviving the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians are living under an illusion. The results of the poll indicate that most Palestinians are more interested in killing Jews than making peace with them. The results, in addition, show that most Palestinians want as a successor to their current leader, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who has ties to terror.

According to the poll, the largest percentage of Palestinians (24%) believe that the rise of extremist Islamist terror groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) was "the most positive or the best thing that has happened to the Palestinian people since the Nakba."

[A] majority of the Palestinians see terrorist groups and the murder of Jews -- not the construction of schools and hospitals -- as their proudest accomplishment over the past seven decades.

More than half of the Palestinians, the poll showed, prefer an "armed struggle" (terrorism) against Israel to negotiations with it.

The only thing that seems to disturb the Palestinian public is the possibility that Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority security forces might go after the terror groups.

The armed terrorists of these groups are regularly hailed by Palestinians as heroes and martyrs.

The Palestinians want the gunmen to remain on the streets and continue their terror attacks against Jews. The vast majority (86%) say that the PA does not have the right to arrest members of these terrors groups to prevent them from carrying out attacks against Israel. This view seems to be one of the reasons that Abbas is reluctant to order his security forces to crack down on these terror groups and confiscate their weapons. Abbas is undoubtedly aware of the widespread support the terrorists enjoy among the Palestinian people. He undoubtedly knows that if he goes against the terrorists, he will be denounced by his people as a traitor and Israeli collaborator. Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are already facing severe criticism for conducting security coordination with Israeli security forces in the West Bank.

According to the latest PSR poll, support for the concept of the "two-state solution" stands at 28% and opposition stands at 70%. A poll conducted by the same center three months earlier showed that support for the "two-state solution" stood at only 27%, while opposition to it stood at 71%.
How social media boosts terrorists’ recruitment of minors
Social-media networks are being exploited by Palestinian terror factions to boost the recruitment of minors, an Israeli military source has told JNS.

The source noted that although the trend of recruiting minors is not new, its current form and scope are both relatively new phenomena.

In 2004 during the Second Intifada, 16-year-old Hussam Abdo, who was stopped at a Huwara military checkpoint wearing a suicide-bomb belt, made headlines across the globe.

Since then, however, the smartphone revolution and the arrival of social media networks have created many new recruitment opportunities.

The military source said that while in the past, incitement in Palestinian education and informal educational systems was the main vehicle for terror recruitment, today, the device in every minor’s possession is a potential recruitment tool.

In 2019, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres issued a statement calling on Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others to cease targeting Palestinian minors for recruitment. Needless to say, his call fell on deaf ears.

Terror organizations continue to go after Palestinian children and teens of all ages, though they especially target teenagers.

The Israel Defense Forces has monitored efforts by the local Lions’ Den terror group, based in Nablus, to target for recruitment youths with no previous organizational affiliation by exposing them to incitement to violence.

The group has skillfully used platforms like TikTok to encourage youths to arm themselves and join the group.

“Social media networks are used for two goals. One is for recruitment—minors are told to meet terror operatives, to join such and such activity—and the second is for incitement. Jews and Israelis are described as evil Zionist occupiers and youths are encouraged to turn to violence,” said the source.

Did the Kingdom of Israel control the lucrative "royal purple" and "royal blue" dye trade?

Pottery that contained the argaman dye found at Shikmona


Haaretz publishes a fascinating theory:

Israeli archaeologists are rethinking the history of an ancient factory that, thousands of years ago, was one of the largest sites for the production of “royal purple,” a dye that adorned the robes of the rich and powerful across the Mediterranean.

Tel Shikmona, located on the shore of the modern-day city of Haifa, was interpreted as a Phoenician settlement that produced royal purple from sea-snails. The dye was one of the most sought-after luxuries of the ancient world. But a new paper, putting together information from archaeological digs there over 50 years, reached a new conclusion.

For about two centuries, Shikmona was something of a joint venture: an industrial site controlled by the biblical Kingdom of Israel and run by skilled Phoenician workers, say Prof. Ayelet Gilboa, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa and Dr. Golan Shalvi, formerly also at Haifa and now a postdoctoral researcher at Ben-Gurion University.

Their study, published in June in Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, offers rare insight into the closeness of the ties between the ancient Israelites and the Phoenicians. It also sheds light on the economical background behind the expansion of the Kingdom of Israel, which would rise to become a major regional power during the middle of the Iron Age (or the First Temple Period, if one prefers references to the biblical chronology).
The theory, backed up by archaeology, is that the Israelite kingdom expanded to encompass the already existing Phoenician dye factory. It built fortifications to protect it, indicating that the Israelites employed the Phoenician experts to control the export market for both royal purple (argaman) and royal blue (techelet), very expensive dyes used not only by royalty but also in the Jewish Temples in Jerusalem.  Tekhelet was also used (and some still use it) in tzitzit, the Biblical commandment to put a tekhelet string on the corners of square garments including prayer shawls.

The archaeologists point to proof that there was a large export trade in argaman, with pottery from Cyprus at the site. They theorize that this site, the only known such factory in that time period, was a major source of the Northern Kingdom's revenue with a near monopoly on the valued dyes. 

The paper can be read here.

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!
 

 

Prominent Jews will explain how anti-Zionism is the new antisemitism at Congress today (live video at 11 AM EDT)




Today, the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations will hold hearings on "Responding to Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israel Bias in the UN, Palestinian Authority, and NGO Community."

Prominent leaders in the field of antisemitism and anti-Zionism will be speaking. Most of their testimonies have been published ahead of time. Here are some highlights.

Natan Sharansky, the famous Soviet dissident, describes how the Soviet Union's pretense of using "anti-Zionism" as a proxy for antisemitism has now been widely adopted by much of the world:

In the Soviet Union, where I grew up,...each time when official Soviet propaganda starts a new round of attacks on Israel, every Jew, whether he knows what Zionism means or not, knows that he has a problem. They are all treated as not loyal to the Soviet Union, but loyal to Zionist Israel. Attacks on the Jews have always been a convenient platform for attacks on Israel and vice versa. Assuming that all this is a direct result of the dictatorial regime of the Soviet Union, which needs a convenient scapegoat for accusations, an external and internal enemy, and a more convenient scapegoat than the Jews and Israel cannot be imagined. Therefore, when in 1975 the Soviet Union initiated a resolution that Zionism is racism, it was adopted only thanks to the communist bloc. The Free World voted against it. 

I thought that in the free world, this would not happen. 

It was all the more surprising when at the beginning of 2000 at the first U.N. conference against global racism in Durban - the only result of this conference was the accusation of Israel as an apartheid state. Soon the cartoons published in the international press against Israel surprisingly began to resemble those in the Soviet and Nazi press against the Jews. Israel, which fights against terrorist attacks daily in defense of itself, has been declared to be fighting the Palestinians, as the Nazis fought the Jews, and Palestinian refugee camps were compared to Auschwitz. All this had nothing to do with constructive criticism of the policies of Israel, which deserved this or that criticism like any other democratic country. It was then, 20 years ago, that I proposed my three-D test to distinguish justified criticism of Israel from new antisemitism.

Over the 20 years, I have visited about 100 American campuses, where I have clearly seen how the new antisemitism is creating a very difficult environment for Jewish students who consider themselves Zionists. There is much evidence of how the growing attacks on the Jews are encouraged, developed and reinforced by the attacks on Israel, like colonial white racism. Much like in Soviet times, antisemitic attacks on Israel are weakening the sense of security of Jewish students at American universities. And attacks on Jews are often accompanied by anti-Israeli slogans. It is impossible today to analyze the growth of antisemitism without seeing that these phenomena are very closely linked. 

That is why there must be one explanation linking the demonization of the Jews, the double standard towards the Jews, the denial of the Jews as a nation with the demonization of the State of Israel, the double standard towards the State of Israel and the denial of Israel's right to exist. 

There can be no success in the fight against antisemitism if we do not fight it on all fronts. Therefore, the exact definition of antisemitism is crucial. It is very important that the US administration adheres to this definition of antisemitism in its policy.
Prof. Eugene Kontorovich shows why the IHRA Working Definition is important and how the "Nexus Document" that was welcomed in the Administration's strategy plan against antisemitism is an effort to whitewash modern antisemitism:

Not surprisingly, the IHRA definition is opposed by those who wish to engage in precisely the kind of anti-Israel double standards that it warns of. In an effort to confound or counteract the legitimacy and clarity of the IHRA working definition, a few other groups have offered definitions of antisemitism that greatly minimize the role of Israel-focused antisemitism. One such effort is the Nexus Document, a project hosted by Bard University. The Nexus definition differs from IHRA primarily in its treatment of Israel-focused conduct. Nexus does not regard as presumptively antisemitic either the questioning the basic legitimacy of Israel’s existence or the application of double standards to Israel.  According to Nexus, such views may have legitimate grounds. 

Unlike IHRA’s adoption by a wide range of countries (including many states that are often sharply critical of Israel), not one single country has adopted the Nexus Declaration. The IHRA definition was developed by an international group of scholars not known for their views on Israel or their politics one way or another. The Nexus Advisory Board, by contrast, is overwhelmingly left-wing and includes people, like the head of J-Street, who can only be described as professionals in the field of Israel bashing. Members of Nexus’s advisory board have described Israel as “fascist,” denounced it as an “apartheid state,” and justified those who say it should have never existed. 

While IHRA has become the global benchmark, the narrow Nexus definition has languished in total obscurity—that is, until the White House suddenly announced its “welcome and appreciation” of the Nexus Document last month, while still “embracing” IHRA.  Nexus leaped from the discussions of like-minded academics straight into a White House policy document. While the IHRA definition remains the only one officially used by the government, the White House’s National Strategy harms efforts to respond to antisemitism by referring to two different, and fundamentally contradictory, definitions 

...The obsessive focus on the supposed wrongs of this one tiny group has resurfaced across an amazing array of cultures and epochs. From the Romans to the Crusades. From the Reformation to the Inquisition. From National to International Socialism. The justifications change, the target remains same. Then after two thousand years, the Jewish people reconstituted their nation—and immediately found it the subject of unparalleled international defamation and libel—accompanied by ongoing efforts at physical elimination. Jews have been hated sometimes as adherents of a faith, sometimes as members of a people. Now the extraordinary enmity is aimed at their State. The coin lands on the same side on every toss. The segue from earlier modes of antisemitism to “anti-Zionism” is a remarkable coincidence.

...The accusations leveled against Israel often resemble those made by antisemites throughout history. Instead of the Jews being accused of killing Gentile children,  Israel is accused of deliberately killing Palestinian children;  instead of Jews being accused of causing plague among Gentiles, Israel is accused of causing disease among Palestinians. And the accusation of “apartheid” is a modern blood libel—an absurd “Big Lie,” but inciteful in ways that cannot be rectified by mere refutation. Just as the classic blood libel resonated with the theological preoccupations of earlier ages, today’s claims resonate with the ethnic justice concerns of our times.
Yair Rosenberg of The Atlantic ties all forms of antisemitism, from Left to Right, to conspiracy theory:

For almost as long as there have been Jewish people, there has been anti-Jewish prejudice. This bigotry predates the United States of America and the modern state of Israel. It is older than capitalism and communism, Republicans and Democrats, progressives and conservatives. And it precedes Christianity and Islam. Because of this, while antisemitism is expressed by these communities, it cannot be caused by them. The source is something much more fundamental. 

Consider recent antisemitic incidents that on the surface seem to have little connection to each other. In 2018, a white supremacist massacred 11 congregants in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue. In 2019, assailants tied to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement shot up a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, killing three. And in 2022, an Islamic extremist held an entire congregation hostage in Colleyville, Texas, for much of the Jewish Sabbath. 

To take another odd example: Both the supreme leader of Iran’s Islamic theocracy and Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh shooter who hated Muslims, posted memes on social media alleging Zionist control of American politics. During the 2016 presidential race, supporters at campaign events for both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were captured on tape claiming that “Zionists” run America’s finances.

What unites all of these seemingly disparate antisemitic actors? Not their identity or background, but their adherence to a conspiracy of Jewish control. The Pittsburgh white supremacist believed that Jews were responsible for flooding the country with the brown people he hated, as part of the so-called “great replacement” of the white race. One of the Black Hebrew Israelite sympathizers in Jersey City wrote on social media about how Jews controlled the government. And the British Islamic extremist who targeted the Texas synagogue did so because he thought American rabbis held sway over the U.S. authorities and could free someone from prison. 

...Because people have long been conditioned to conceive of Jews in an underhanded fashion, it doesn’t take much to update the ancient conspiracy theory to persuade contemporary audiences. And thanks to centuries of material blaming the world’s problems on its Jews, conspiracy theorists seeking a scapegoat for their sorrows inevitably discover that the invisible hand of their oppressor belongs to an invisible Jew.

Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch explains how antisemitism forms the core of Palestinian Authority ideology:

PA Antisemitism is not a collection of disconnected hate-speech; it is a systematically disseminated ideology that is by now deeply ingrained in the Palestinian national and political identity. It serves as a primary source of loathing towards Jews and Israelis and is a significant motivator for Palestinian terror. 

The PA’s Political Antisemitism asserts the following:

1. Jews are inherently evil, endangering not only Palestinians but all of humanity. 

2. Accordingly, Jews themselves are responsible for the antisemitism and hatred they have faced throughout history. 

3. The PA turns this demonization of Jews into its political ideology: the Western countries were anxious to get rid of the Jews and solve their "Jewish problem,” so they initiated the establishment of a Jewish state. The Jews would never have come to Palestine on their own because the Jews have no history in the land. Israel is defined as an illegitimate result of "settler-colonialism" with no right to exist. 

This ideology is disseminated by PA leaders, Mahmoud Abbas appointees, and through the structures controlled by the PA.
Other speakers include Hillel Neuer from UN Watch, Yona Schiffmiller from NGO Monitor, and the ADL's Sharon Nazarian, all of whom show how anti-Israel bigotry is a proxy for anti-Jewish bigotry. 

The webcast can be seen here at 11:00 AM EDT.





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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Arab media publish fake translation of Hatikva as a racist anti-Arab poem




Arabic and particularly Palestinian media have been spreading a new fake story over the past couple of days, claiming that the Jordanian ambassador to the UN confronted Benjamin Netanyahu at the General Assembly with the "real" racist lyrics of Israel's national anthem, Hatikvah.

In a session of the United Nations General Assembly attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jordan's ambassador to the United Nations, Mahmoud al-Hamoud, asked:

"Why is the Israeli national anthem not taught to our children in Arab schools and in Muslim countries as a kind of culture? Certainly knowledge of something is better than ignorance of it?.... Until every Arab and Muslim determines who his enemy is and prepares to confront him!"

He continued, saying: "Let us learn about an accurate literal translation of the Israeli national anthem, which is played on occasions and holidays and when receiving presidents and ambassadors in the Zionist entity (including Arab ambassadors)."

He wondered: "Why are they pressuring us to change our educational curricula and amend the interpretation of some Quranic verses, and it has never been suggested that they change their official national anthem?"

Al-Hamoud continued, saying: "What does the "Israeli" national anthem say? And why did the Jews choose this anthem for the Zionist entity when it carries hateful religious slogans for a country that claims to be secular, civilized, and democratic!"

He explained that the real translation of the Israeli national anthem is:

As long as there is a Jewish soul in the heart!
She longs forward to the east
Our hope is not made yet!
A dream of a thousand years on our land
Land of Zion and Jerusalem
Let him who is our enemy tremble
Let all the inhabitants of Egypt and Canaan tremble.
Let the inhabitants of Babylon tremble.
Let fear and terror hang over their skies 
- When we plant our spears in their chests!
  And we see their blood spilled!
  And their heads cut off!
- Then we will be God's chosen people wherever God wants!

Al-Hamoud concluded his speech by saying: "The question that must be asked.. Who are the original terrorists, the masters of beheadings: the Muslim extremists, or the Jews!?"
It turns out this fake Hatikvah translation is at least five years old, and has surfaced every once in a while in Arabic media. AFP and Al Hurra debunked it years ago, but its too good a rumor to check. 

In fact, since many Palestinians know Hebrew quite well, the Palestinian newspapers that have published this fake translation almost certainly know they are lying. 

Do you know whose anthem is filled with violent imagery? Why, the Palestinian national anthem, known as "Fida'i" - "Warrior!"

Warrior, warrior, warrior,
Oh my land, the land of the ancestors
Warrior, warrior, warrior,
Oh my people, people of eternity

With my determination, my fire and the volcano of my vendetta
With the longing in my blood for my land and my home
𝄆 I have climbed the mountains and fought the wars
I have conquered the impossible, and crossed the frontiers 𝄇

With the resolve of the winds and the fire of the weapons
And the determination of my nation in the land of struggle
𝄆 Palestine is my home, and the path of my triumphal[b]
Palestine is my vendetta and the land of withstanding 𝄇

By the oath under the shade of the flag
By my land and nation, and the fire of pain
𝄆 I will live as a warrior, I will remain a warrior,
I will die as a warrior - until my country returns 𝄇

Yes, Elder's First Rule of Palestinian Projection ("whenever Palestinians accuse Israel of doing some crime, they are doing that exact crime, usually on a far grander scale than their accusations") remains in force, 16 years since I coined it.


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!
 

 

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

06/21 Links Pt2: The antisemitic BDS war on celebrities; Hillel Neuer Confronts U.N.’s Biased Pillay Commission; Why is Avi Shlaim recycling the ‘Baghdad bombings’ theory?

From Ian:

The antisemitic BDS war on celebrities
The BDS movement has been a total failure. It has not damaged Israel’s economy, it has not turned Israel into a pariah, it has not changed Israeli policy, and it has not destroyed the Jewish state. The BDS movement has tried to create the image of winning by claiming phony victories. It has also capitalized by convincing a handful of mostly B- and C-list celebrities to shun Israel. The fight to achieve these symbolic “victories” is the subject of Lana Melman’s well-researched book, Artists Under Fire: The BDS War Against Celebrities, Jews, and Israel.

Melman is an industry insider who has been on the frontline of the fight to educate celebrities and try to insulate them from the global assault waged against them by BDS advocates through relentless social-media campaigns, threats and disinformation. She does not mince words in defining antisemitism as “demonizing Israel.” The BDS campaign, she writes, “seeks to use the celebrity of artists a tool to destroy Israel and stir up hate against Jews worldwide.”

“Artists are public figures who need audience support to succeed, making them particularly vulnerable to attacks on their character,” Melman explains. “Artists are afraid that “false charges against them will stick like chewing gum on the bottom of one’s shoe” and ruin their reputations.

It’s more than reputations at stake. Sometimes, the threats are more serious, as when Paul McCartney was threatened by Islamic activist Omar Bakri Muhammad: “‘If he values his life Mr. McCartney will not come to Israel.” McCartney ignored the threat and played in front of 50,000 people in Tel Aviv in 2008. He told an Israeli journalist: “I was approached by different groups and political bodies who asked me not to come here. I refused. I do what I think, and I have many friends who support Israel.”

McCartney is by no means the only A-list celebrity (or Beatle) who has defied the boycotters to appear in Israel. Others include Ringo Starr, Rhianna (twice), Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Mariah Carey, Art Garfunkel, Chick Corea, Julio Iglesias, Herbie Hancock, Madonna, Bon Jovi (three times), 50 Cent (twice), Andrea Bocelli and Guns N’Roses (three times, most recently on June 5).

The A-listers can usually withstand the pressure and not worry about their careers being affected. Others are more sensitive and are bombarded with petitions, statements, open letters, criticism on social media and Photoshopped images “associating Israel and the artist with destruction, racism, apartheid, the murder of children and worse.” Demonstrators protest outside venues. Artists’ representatives are overwhelmed by malicious emails and calls.
Why is Avi Shlaim recycling the ‘Baghdad bombings’ theory?
It is a mystery why "the Zionists" might have thought it necessary to bomb the synagogue when, by late 1950 a backlog of 80,000 Jews, who had already registered to leave for Israel, were stranded in Iraq. Indeed, the Iraqi government toyed with the idea of dumping these Jews on Israel’s border with Jordan or in the Kuwaiti desert because Israel was not shipping them out fast enough.

All the evidence for the bombings points to the nationalist Istiqlal party as the culprit. An Istiqlal member confessed to an Iraqi historian, Shamel Abdul Kader, that he planted the first bomb in April 1950. The Israeli new historian Tom Segev produced evidence blaming the synagogue bombing on Iraqi nationalists.

Iraqi Jews already had reason enough to seek a haven in Israel – rising pro-Nazi sentiment, the memory of a vicious Baghdad pogrom in 1941, the execution of the wealthy non-Zionist Shafik Ades in 1948, arrests, extortion, racist laws persecuting and dispossessing them. A vibrant community of 150,000 is now reduced to three Jews.

But Shlaim claims there was no antisemitism in Iraq until the Iraqis ‘turned on the Jews’ for their alleged complicity with the British invasion of 1941 and the foundation of Israel.

It is a travesty that Shlaim should not only fail to blame Arab regimes for the mass ethnic cleansing of their Jewish citizens, but that his reputation as an Oxford academic should lend ‘exceptional authority’ and respectability to these highly controversial claims,

What lies behind Shlaim’s anti-Zionism? In reviewing ‘Israel and Palestine’ Benny Morris pronounced himself puzzled.

“Many intellectuals, in Israel as in the West, have been moved by the Palestinians’ history and their plight, but at the same time they have remained sympathetic to Israel’s predicament…. In Israel and Palestine, by contrast, there is no sign of any such complex sympathy.

"For Shlaim, Israel and its leaders can do no right. It all begins to seem very personal. What is the source of this bias and this resentment? ‘

It appears that Shlaim’s memoir holds the answer. Israel is responsible for his unhappy childhood, his family’s impoverishment and his broken home.
Examining Islamic Group’s Ties to Hamas
CAIR emerged out of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), an organization that served as a propaganda arm of a now-defunct Hamas-support network called the “Palestine Committee.” The Committee was created by the Muslim Brotherhood to help Hamas politically and financially in the United States. As the committee’s propaganda outlet, the IAP organized “annual conventions and meetings, which were regularly addressed by members of Hamas brought from the Middle East.” The outlet published magazines with articles supporting the terrorist group. It also “published the Hamas charter in English and distributed Hamas communiques.”

Founded in 1994, CAIR was incorporated by three IAP leaders — Nihad Awad, Omar Ahmad, and Rafeeq Jaber. Mousa Abu Marzook, a member of the Hamas Politburo, “served as a member of IAP’s advisory board and served as its chairman in 1988-90.” He also provided IAP with $490,000. IAP, which is now defunct, was long a central player in Hamas’ US support network.

In August 2002, a Federal judge ruled that there was evidence that “the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), has acted in support of Hamas.” In November 2004, a Federal magistrate judge held IAP civilly liable for $156 million in damages in the 1996 shooting of an American teenager by a Hamas member in the West Bank.

And evidence from the Dallas trial charging the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and its officers with providing material support for Hamas shows that the IAP played a central role in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.

According to the Committee’s 1994 meeting agenda and a 1991 organizational chart introduced into evidence, the IAP, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, and a Virginia think-tank that Marzook founded were the committee’s primary components.

A November 1991 committee status report approved by the Shura Council explained that the Ikhwan, or Brotherhood, created IAP “to serve the cause of Palestine on the political and media fronts. The Association’s work has developed a great deal since its inception, particularly with the formation of the Palestine Committee, the beginning of the Intifada at the end of 1987 and the proclamation of the Hamas Movement.”
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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