Sunday, June 25, 2023

Of course the rampages through Palestinian towns are terrorism




Times of Israel reports:

Israel Defense Forces chief Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Shin Bet head Ronen Bar, and Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai in a joint statement on Saturday strongly condemned an ongoing series of settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, branding them as “nationalist terrorism in the full sense of the term.”

In the wake of a deadly terror attack carried out by Hamas-affiliated gunmen in the West Bank on Tuesday, in which four Israelis were killed, the past five days have seen hundreds of settlers rampage inside Palestinian towns and villages, setting fire to homes, cars, and even opening fire in some cases.

“In recent days, violent attacks by Israeli citizens against innocent Palestinians have been carried out in the Judea and Samaria area,” the security chiefs’ statement read, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name. “These attacks are against every moral and Jewish value and are also nationalist terrorism in the full sense of the term, and we are obliged to fight them.”
It then later reported in a headline, "Far-right ministers reject criticism of settler attacks on Palestinians as ‘terror’" - but I couldn't find in the text of the article where they said that. They complained about placing an equivalence between the settler attacks and Palestinian attacks, which is not how I interpret the joint statement.

Whether they said it or not, it is important that the Israeli side not engage in what the Israel haters do all the time - redefine terms for political purposes. Israel-haters do it with "apartheid" and "ethnic cleansing" and many other accusations against Israel, ignoring the real meaning of the terms, and the Zionist side must not do the same.

While there is no single agreed upon definition of terrorism, here are some.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2005 said that "terrorism is any action intended to cause death or serious harm to civilians with the purpose of intimidation."

A 2018 UN report on terrorism included in its definition, “any action...that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a Government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.”

The US Department of Defense says it is "The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."

While one might argue whether the rioters intend to cause death to the members of the Arab villages they rioted in, there is no doubt they intend to use violence to intimidate them. The violence is targeting people who are not known to be involved in attacks.

Israel is subjected to double standards all the time. If we are against such double standards, we must enforce a single standard ourselves, no matter what. 

The riots are illegal, immoral, and collective punishment. They are indeed terror. Beyond that, they are counterproductive and hurt the State of Israel, especially among its newest peace partners in the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco, not to mention its relations with Europe and the US.  The anger might be understandable but the actions are not justifiable. 

The IDF, Shin Bet and Israel Police are correct in their statement, and the rioters are hurting the State of Israel they claim to support. Unlike what Smotrich said, clearly condemning the rioters' crimes in no way lessens the horror and depravity of Palestinian terrorism.

 

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Saturday, June 24, 2023

06/24 Links: The Democratic Party’s anti-Zionist wing is growing. Here’s how; BDS Calls For Boycott Against UN Climate Summit in UAE Over Ties To Israel

From Ian:

Activist Org Calls For Boycott Against UN Climate Summit Over Ties To Israel
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is calling for a boycott of the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) due to its ties with Israel, according to an Instagram post.

The group is protesting the U.N. for allowing the annual conference in November to be held by “one of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers,” and argued that the move undermines the fight for “climate justice,” according to the post. BDS’ Arab account posted on Wednesday that it would be organizing a boycott against the summit because of the UAE’s “military-security alliance with the enemy,” the enemy being the state of Israel, the group claimed.

“Our call is in line with the call issued by boycott groups, parties, unions and civil associations in the Arab region, which calls for the boycott of the authoritarian Emirates region because of its military-security alliance with the enemy and its conspiracy on the Palestinian issue, the war crimes committed in Yemen and its violent suppression of freedoms in the UAE,” the post reads.

The group argued that protesting the “apartheid” state of Israel is in line with the fight for “climate justice,” according to the post.

“The struggle against the Israeli colonialist and apartheid system in Palestine is organically and intermittently related to the struggle for political and civil rights, social, economic and climate justice in the Arab world and around the world and against all systems of oppression and persecution.”


The Democratic Party’s anti-Zionist wing is growing. Here’s how
In recent weeks the New York political scene roiled in the wake of three separate but significant controversies revolving around American support for Israel: city and state legislatures divided over two separate votes relating to antisemitic violence and charities supporting Jewish victims of terror, and a City University of New York Law School valedictorian delivered a fiery polemic against Israel, the United States, and the rule of law itself. Each of these controversies derived from a growing split within the Democrat Party between older, moderate liberals who have traditionally supported the Middle East’s strongest democracy, and an ascendant, far-left wing of younger Democrats opposed in principle to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

New York is seen by Jews all over the world as a kind of second home and major center of Jewish life. Yet while Israelis and diaspora Jews may think of New York as a place where Jews may live safely and unapologetically both as Jews and fully invested Americans, the rise of hardline leftist in New York politics, and their views regarding Israel, challenge these assumptions and have serious implications for the future of the Democrat Party.

‘Personnel is policy’ is a familiar axiom in politics. Today’s leftist city council and state assembly members are tomorrow’s mayors, governors and members of Congress. And there are strong indications that the Democratic Party’s foot soldiers — staffers, campaign workers, and activists — who will eventually run for lower-level positions are even further left than their bosses. While the aging old guard of the Democratic Party at the national level has tamped down some (but not all) of the anti-Israel stridency of Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar and the rest of the “Squad” for the time being, their young Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) cohorts at the state and local level in New York are emboldened, with indications that their hostility to Israel extends to even liberal Jews who dare support the world’s only Jewish state.

End Jew hatred…
In the wake of antisemitic attacks in the city, the New York city council recently passed a resolution establishing April 29 as “End Jew Hatred Day,” a perfunctory, procedural gesture of support for a community alarmed by an uptick in antisemitic violence. While this might seem to be uncontroversial and worthy of unanimous support by design, it was passed in spite of direct ‘no’ votes from two council members and four ‘abstentions,’ from Democrat council members who concluded that fighting antisemitism was a controversial position unworthy of their unqualified support.

Two progressive Democrats, Shahana Hanif (co-chair of the council’s “Progressive Caucus”) and Sandra Nurse, directly opposed the bill, while four others (Rita Joseph, Charles Barron, Alexa Avilés and Jennifer Gutiérrez) in the progressive camp chose to abstain from a declaration of support for ending the hatred of Jews. All six represent districts in Brooklyn, home to almost half of the city’s Jews.

Hanif refused to support a bill that was also supported by Republicans, on the grounds that they had not done enough in support of trans issues and the BLM movement. Barron gave a meandering speech about Israel’s support for South Africa, though the legislation did not mention Israel at all. The others all made clear that their support for the notion of ending anti-semitic violence was contingent on who else was opposed to it or the actions of Israel as some sort of context.

This was followed in May by five Democrats (all DSA endorsed) in the New York State Assembly introducing a bill, “ Not on our dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence act,” to prohibit New York nonprofits “from engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity,” violation of which would provide authorization EMPOWER? to the State Attorney General to revoke tax-exempt status. This activity could include support for victims of terror attacks occurring in the West Bank or East Jerusalem.

Friday, June 23, 2023

06/23 Links Pt2: Netanyahu says US-Israel ties as strong as ever; Giving ‘progressive’ antisemites the benefit of the doubt; Florida to investigate Morningstar for potential BDS practices

From Ian:

What Avi Shlaim gets wrong about the persecution of Jews in Iraq
According to Marozzi’s piece ‘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.’

They needed no such persuading. The Jews of Iraq had been subjected to persecution for years. In 1941 they suffered the horrific Farhoud pogroms: over 180 Jews were murdered, hundreds injured and hundreds of Jewish homes destroyed. But even before the Farhud, Jews were targeted: 1938 saw a documented bombing campaign against Jews in Iraq ‘that cannot be explained away on ‘Zionist agents’; and in 1947 a Jewish man was lynched for ‘giving kids poisoned candy’ and the Jewish quarter of Fallujah was ransacked.’

Before the partition vote, the Iraqi foreign minister threatened the expulsion of Iraqi Jews, and by 1948, on the hearsay of two Muslims, any Jew could be thrown into jail for years as a ‘Zionist’. Throughout the land, Jewish banking rights were restricted, Jews were banned from most civil service positions, Jewish businesses were boycotted and countless Jews were arrested and dispossessed. Also in 1948, Iraq’s richest Jew, Shafiq Ades, was executed after being found guilty of selling weapons to Israel without evidence and refused a defence. Such levels of anti-semitism are not dissimilar to what happened in the early phases of Nazi Germany.

By the time of the 1951 bombings, most Iraqi Jews had already registered to leave, yet according to Esther Meir-Glitzenstein’s Zionism in an Arab Country, ‘Israel had only managed to evacuate some of them, which meant 10,000s of Jews were already trapped in no-mans-land’.

By September 1950, only 10,000 Jews had left; 60,000 of the 70,000 registrants were still in Iraq. By mid November the backlog was 65,0000. Why – even leaving aside the moral monstrosity of the process by which Shlaim alleges it did so – would Israel seek to speed up a flow of immigrants it was already struggling to process?


Netanyahu says US-Israel ties as strong as ever in exclusive 'Post' interview
The past six months have been exceedingly turbulent, even by Israeli standards. Between repeated, disruptive mass protests against the government, a judicial reform aiming to overhaul an entire branch of government, rookie cabinet ministers with unorthodox views shocking allies and threatening rebellion, a defense minister fired and unfired, terrorism in the West Bank, another mini-war with Gaza and attacks from Lebanon, plus the prospect of a new agreement between the US and Iran, Israel has felt like it is on the brink.

And then there’s the mainstay: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He returned to the premiership late last year after a little over a year leading the opposition, a brief interlude in his 16 nonconsecutive years of power, the longest for any Israeli prime minister.

Speaking in a small studio in the Prime Minister’s Office set up to look like his actual office, Netanyahu seemed determined to give the impression that everything is normal – or, at the very least, that he has a steady hand steering the Israeli ship.

The economy is doing great, he said, despite credit agencies’ lowering Israel’s outlook; they didn’t lower Israel’s rating and investments are flowing into the country, evidence, he suggested, that the judicial reform is actually helping Israel economically. The absence of a White House invitation belies how close the Biden administration is with Israel, and how much more transparent he and US President Joe Biden are with one another, compared to his relationship with Biden’s predecessor, Barack Obama. Even a new Iran deal didn’t raise Netanyahu’s hackles.

The Jerusalem Post is the first Israeli media outlet to interview the prime minister since his comeback, other than the overtly pro-Netanyahu Channel 14, and the first newspaper to do so. The Post agreed to film this interview and make it available in full to the public as a video; it is available on our website, JPost.com.

The wide-ranging interview took place before the IDF raid on Jenin or the deadly Palestinian terrorist attack outside Eli this week, though he dropped a hint that there were dramatic days ahead.


The Netanyahu Doctrine - opinion
Like Netanyahu, Herzog said this week that the sides were unable to reach understandings on any of the issues under discussion. Unlike Netanyahu, however, he called on the parties to return to the negotiating table and seek to reach an agreement. “I believe a large majority of the public wants that,” the president said.

Netanyahu, for his part, seems to feel that the talks have run their course. This week, he announced that his government would move forward with parts of the judicial reform, starting with changes to the so-called “reasonableness clause,” an effort to curtail the Supreme Court’s ability to intervene in government decisions.

“Last week it was proven that [Opposition Leader] Lapid and [National Unity Party leader] Gantz played a game,” he said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, one day before our interview. “It was a smokescreen of pretend-dialogue. We gave a month and then another, and their representatives did not agree to minimal understanding. Their intention was to waste time and delay every amendment, while a large majority of the public believes that there needs to be changes in the judicial system. Therefore, this week we will convene and begin practical steps in a balanced and responsible manner, but according to the mandate that we received, to change the judicial system.”

Having tried, in his telling, to reach consensus, Netanyahu is now determined for his government to proceed alone.

The Netanyahu Doctrine is most evident, however, in his approach to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and how it has evolved over the years.

In his first-ever address to a joint session of Congress, less than a month after first entering office in 1996, Netanyahu cautioned his audience against allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, which would, he said, “presage catastrophic consequences, not only for my country, and not only for the Middle East, but for all mankind.”

“Only the United States,” he continued, “can lead this vital international effort to stop the nuclearization of terrorist states… We are confident that America, once again, will not fail to take the lead in protecting our free civilization from this ultimate horror.”

Newest EoZ memes, cartoons, posters - seven of them!


 A variant of two previous posters.





This really happened.















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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.




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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.

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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!

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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!
 

 

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