Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 23, 2023

The dumbest anti-Israel argument yet

I've mentioned Zachary Foster before. He is an academic who used to come up with very interesting research on the history of the region. But over the past year or so, he apparently got addicted to "Likes" on Twitter for his anti-Israel posts and then went from someone who could look at things somewhat objectively into a troll.

Unlike most anti-Israel trolls, he tries to come up with novel arguments. However, perhaps because he has become blinded by his popularity among the anti-Israel idiots, he has lost any of his previous ability to think.

Last week, Foster proved this twice.

A tweet of his pointed to the Save the Children report I mentioned last week as having prompted Palestinian children to give the responses that the anti-Israel NGO wanted them to give.

Foster saw one (probably bogus) statistic in the report, and thoroughly misunderstood it. Here's his description in a newsletter he sent out to his fans:

59% of kids in Gaza are self-harming, the highest youth self-harm rate in the world.
The 2 million people of Gaza have lived through 7 wars and 16 years of blockade. An entire generation has never left the strip. Their caloric intake is controlled by the Israeli military. The amount of electricity they consume is controlled by the Israeli military. And so the children of Gaza have the highest self-harm rate in the world, 3X higher than the European average.

This is a perfect example of how an academic favors propaganda over facts.

Israel does not limit food into Gaza at all. At one point, it did, but that policy ended in 2010.

Israel does not limit the amount of electricity into Gaza. Gaza's power plant fuel problems are the result of poor infrastructure and Hamas/PA infighting.

But after repeating the lies of the anti-Israel crowd, Foster is proud of his finding that 59% of Gaza children self-harm. But even Save the Children's biased report makes no such claim.

It says "more than half of caregivers reported noticing a trend in harmful coping mechanisms among children and young people, including substance abuse, self-harm (59%) and suicidal thoughts (55%)."

Since the average caregiver (parent) in Gaza has about four children, then the 59% figure should be divided by four to give an estimate of the number of children reportedly engaging in these practices. Which means that Gaza children are probably less likely to self-harm than their European counterparts! (It is possible that more than one per family could engage in such activities, but we simply don't know from the Save the Children report.)

Foster, of course, didn't correct his statistic. That would require intellectual honesty. Instead he went through my timeline to try to find something wrong I may have tweeted. And this is where he apparently came up with a profoundly stupid argument.

I tweeted an article by Ed West pointing out that, nowadays, Jews in Western Europe have to take many more security precautions to simply go to synagogue than those in the East like Hungary.

Foster responded:

the most dangerous place in the world to be Jewish today? You guessed it ... Israel!

why is Israel putting millions and millions of Jewish lives in danger everyday? And why are you supporting a state that is endagering Jewish lives?

... why do you support endangering Jews? Are you anti-semitic?

The Forward article he linked to notes that more Jews in Israel are killed for antisemitic reasons than in any other country - because antisemitic Arab terrorists target Jews there more than they do in the US or Europe.

Again, this academic shows how his hate of Israel has destroyed his previous ability to think rationally.

The stupidity is breathtaking.

By Foster's logic, since 43,000 British civilians were killed during the Blitz in 1940-1, then Great Britain is responsible for their deaths - not Germany.

The US is responsible for the thousands murdered in the World Trade Center in 2001 - not Al Qaeda.

As I responded, "Call me old fashioned, but I think that the people who want to kill the Jews are the ones endangering the Jews."

The concept that murderers are responsible for murdering is apparently too advanced for anti-Israel Ph.Ds.

But the stupidity goes beyond that. After 1948, and more so after 1967, Arabs attacked local Jews in Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt and elsewhere - forcing them to leave. Now the antisemitic Arabs attack Jews in Israel, because that's where they are, just as they attack identifiable Jews in Brooklyn and Stamford Hill.

But only idiots and anti-Israel activists could argue that Jews who miraculously still exist in Yemen or Syria are safer than those in Israel.

Successful terror attacks are not the proper metric of security for Jews. The metric is being able to walk around freely wearing a kippah or tichel or tallit without fear. The metric is being able to keep synagogues unlocked. The metric is to be able to walk around with a kippah and not expect to be berated as either Christ-killers or baby-killers or slave owners while on the bus or on campus.

Safety is a state of mind based on everyday events more than exceptional terror attacks. Normal people know this.

But highly educated anti-Israel activists look at the world through only one lens - how to twist any new pieces of information into ammunition, no matter how stupid these arguments are.

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!

75 years ago: An Israeli government minister does all he can to help Arabs

From the Palestine Post, July 22, 1948:

Israel had a Minister of Minorities in 1948 whose job as to advocate for the Arab minority population.

This hardly fits in with the narrative of the Israeli leaders doing everything they could to expel Arabs.

The ministry only existed for a year, and its minister had conflicts with other government institutions, particularly the military government. But from all accounts, Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit was an able advocate of Arab rights, respected by the Arab community. A Sephardic Jew, born in Ottoman Palestine, Sheetrit spoke fluent Arabic.

Even during the heaviest fighting of the 1948 war, Sheetrit urged fair treatment of the Arab communities and protection of Muslim holy places.

He was mentioned in the previous Palestine Post as prioritizing the opening of Arab school in the upcoming 1948-49 school year.

And the following week, Sheetrit urged the repair of water systems damaged by the Arab Legion in Lydda during the war.

I'm not saying there wasn't bias against Israel's Arab minority in 1948 and for years afterwards. But there were conflicting opinions on how to work with Israeli Arabs, and the desire to live up to giving Israel's minorities equal rights was a prominent feature in the early days of the State.

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!

07/22 Links: The Oppenheimer irony; ‘Reasonableness’ bill advances to final Knesset votes; ‘Jews in the Garden’ uproots Poland’s homegrown Holocaust perpetrators

From Ian:

The Oppenheimer irony

Perhaps the most striking moment, however, is when Z. goes beyond Israel and addresses the Jews as a whole: “Listen, friend, if that celebrated Jewish mind had spent less time saving the world, reforming humanity—Marx, Freud, Kafka and all those geniuses, and Einstein, too—and instead had hurried up a bit, only 10 years, and set up a tiny, Lilliputian Jewish state, sort of an independent bridgehead just from Haderah down to Gedera, and invented in time a teeny-weeny atom bomb for this state—if they’d only done those two things—there never would have been a Hitler. Or a Holocaust. And nobody in the whole world would have dared to lay a finger on the Jews.”

“It would have been enough just to have a bomb like that in some Jewish storage shed in a tiny little state back in 1936 or ’39, and no Hitler would have dared to come near a Jew,” Z. asserts. “And those who died would still be alive—they and their offspring.”

In principle, there is little one can argue with in this passage. While it is absurd to think that the Jews could have built an atomic bomb on their own, it cannot be denied that the Jews of the modern world have tended to achieve extraordinary things for other people in return for very little. Oppenheimer, who became a victim of the Red Scare, was one of them.

As Z. puts it, “There’s also cunning in history, a dialectic, irony.”

Indeed, there is no word but irony for the Jews who expend their energies on the world’s behalf only to have the world decide that it doesn’t particularly care—though it is, of course, happy to reap the benefits for itself.

Today, there is a deeper and even more terrible irony at work. If the latest reports are to be believed, the Islamist regime that rules Iran is at most weeks away from a nuclear weapon. All that is required is for the ayatollah to give the order. This regime has stated innumerable times that it intends to use such a weapon to annihilate Israel and its people.

What this means is that a weapon some of the 20th century’s most brilliant Jews labored mightily to build, mainly because they feared Hitler might have it first, could soon be in the hands of Hitler’s heirs, who intend to use it to finish the job their predecessor started.

There appears to be no one willing or able to do what is necessary to prevent the Iranians from becoming death, the destroyer of worlds. Their own people are crushed and powerless. The U.S. is clearly unwilling to act and appears to be preventing Israel from doing so. As for the various countries of Europe and the United Nations, the less said the better.

There is one final irony at work, however. While it may have come too late to save the six million, this tiny Lilliputian Jewish state, from Rosh Hanikra down to Eilat, did acquire what the Jewish people could not in the past. Today, though it has never been publicly admitted, the Jews have their “teeny-weeny atom bomb” and, according to some reports, a great deal more than that.

This is all-important, because a weapon so many Jews worked to build being used to commit a second Holocaust is an irony that cannot be permitted. The Jews today possess the power to insist that it cannot be permitted. They should make use of it, if only as a threat, if only as a reminder to Iran that it is not the only one who can become death, the destroyer of worlds.

At the heart of the film ‘Oppenheimer’ is a clash between real-life Jews

In 1945 physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was a national hero, hailed as the “father of the atomic bomb” and the man who ended World War II.

Less than a decade later, he was a pariah, after the United States Atomic Energy Commission revoked his security clearance following allegations about his left-leaning politics at the height of the anti-communist McCarthy era.

Christopher Nolan’s biopic, “Oppenheimer,” which opens in theaters on July 21, will star Irish actor Cillian Murphy as the famous scientist. But it will also feature Robert Downey Jr. as a lesser known real-life character, Lewis Strauss (pronounced “Straws”), the chairman of the AEC and one of Oppenheimer’s chief inquisitors.

The clash over the nuclear bomb
The clash between the scientist and the bureaucrat was a matter of personalities, politics and the hydrogen bomb (Strauss supported it, Oppenheimer was opposed). But according to amateur historian Jack Shlachter, the two represented opposites in another important way: as Jews. Shlachter has researched how Oppenheimer’s assimilated Jewish background and Strauss’ strong attachment to Jewish affairs set them up for conflict as men who represented two very different reactions to the pressures of acculturation and prejudice in the mid-20th century.

Shlachter is in a unique position to explore the Jewish backstory of Oppenheimer: A physicist, he worked for more than 30 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the New Mexico complex where Oppenheimer led the Manhattan Project that developed the bomb. Shlachter is also a rabbi, ordained in 1995, who leads HaMakom, a congregation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as well as the Los Alamos Jewish Center.

“A hero of American science, [Oppenheimer] lived out his life a broken man and died in 1967 at the age of 62,” The New York Times wrote last December, after the secretary of energy nullified the 1954 decision to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Lewis Strauss died in 1974 at age 77; his funeral was held at New York’s Congregation Emanu-El, where he had been president from 1938 to 1948.

When I asked Shlachter what drew him to the story of Oppenheimer and Strauss, he told me, “At this later stage of my life, I realized that things are not black and white. The common narrative that I think I have heard in town puts Oppenheimer at 100 and Strauss at zero. I just tried to balance that a little bit, and I thought that their Jewishness was one way to see that there’s some nuance in the relationship.”

California editor: A Jew was ‘one too many’ for new ‘Oppenheimer’ film

tomic bomb “father” J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was Jewish, is one of history’s most famous theoretical physicists. Yet from the start, filmmaker Christopher Nolan had a non-Jew—the Catholic actor Cillian Murphy—in mind for the role, writes Malina Saval, the editor of Pasadena Magazine, in Newsweek.

“When it comes to casting, should it matter that Oppenheimer was a non-observant Jew, a Jew who essentially denounced his Jewish identity? It should not,” Saval wrote. “Judaism is an ethnoreligion. We are a religion, we are a people, we are an ethnicity. Jews originated in the Levant. There are varying degrees of religious observance. But when it comes to one’s ethnic identity, there is no litmus test for how Jewish one is.”

Nolan does not seem to have considered the possibility that a Jewish actor might be able to more accurately portray Oppenheimer, given that the latter “was in a perpetual state of identity crisis, constantly wrestling with the fact of his Jewishness.”

The decision is “par for the course in today’s entertainment industry,” according to Saval, who was features editor at Variety for a decade. She notes that Rachel Brosnahan (who is not Jewish) played the Jewish comedian at the center of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” for five seasons, and Bradly Cooper (also not Jewish) is slated to play Leonard Bernstein, the renowned Jewish composer.

“Jews are rarely cast in the roles of prominent Jewish characters,” she wrote. “The collective Hollywood push for diversity, equity and inclusion when it comes to on-screen representation has almost entirely eluded the Jewish community.”

The ‘Funny Girl’ Jewface controversy is nothing to laugh about

Still, there are those who claim that Brice is such an archetype of the American Jewish woman that it’s simply unthinkable for someone with a different background to play her.

Brice was an early 20th-century star of the vaudeville circuit who made it on Broadway as a comic foil to the more glamorous female members of the cast of producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.’s “Follies.” From there, she went on to be a star on radio in the heyday of that medium, portraying an annoying child called “Baby Snooks” to the delight of a generation of Americans who lived through the Great Depression and Second World War.

But if Brice is remembered today, it is only because of the 1964 Broadway musical “Funny Girl,” which was very loosely based on her life. Which is to say that her place in American culture is inextricably linked with that of Barbra Streisand. The singer’s performance in the play at the age of 22, and then the film version that gained her an Academy Award for Best Actress and a sequel (the 1975 “Funny Lady”), launched her on a career that made her one of the most iconic and influential performers of the last 60 years.

So, when people complain about a non-Jew playing Brice, what they’re really saying is that they can’t envision them as Streisand.

The play was so closely associated with the superstar that it was not revived on Broadway until last year—58 years after its first performance. The revival opened to decidedly mixed reviews largely because of the inability of audiences and critics to accept Beanie Feldstein in the title role made famous by the larger-than-life Streisand. The revival gained more applause when she was replaced first by Julie Benko (who had a triumph the night I attended the play) and Lea Michele, who, like Feldstein, are both also Jewish. They seemed better able to step into Streisand’s shoes and make a case for a musical whose virtues have long been overshadowed by the idea that it was merely a vehicle for the woman who would become a dominant figure in both popular music and Hollywood.

But when we transpose this sort of disconnect onto the ideas that pass for intellectual fashion among those who control the arts world, what we get is claptrap like “Jewface.”

Just as Jewish actors have no difficulty pretending to be all sorts of non-Jewish characters, so, too, can non-Jews capture the essence of those who are Jewish. Indeed, the most stereotypical Jewish character in recent television history—the title character of the Amazon program “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”—was successfully brought to life by Rachel Brosnahan, who is of British and Irish descent. Would Midge Maisel have been funnier or more likable if played by Sarah Silverman, a real-life Jewish comic? All we know is that Brosnahan was able to convincingly portray a Jewish housewife turned comedian in a way that made millions love her and the show.

The same could be said for many other classic acting performances when Jews played non-Jews and vice versa.

Jews gain nothing by trying to get in on the victimhood game that is behind the talk of Jewface. We would all be better off if our society—and popular culture—was less obsessed with race and identity, and more willing to think of everyone as individuals with equal rights rather than as people trapped in an identity and status as victim/oppressor from which the ideologues allow us no escape. Doing so doesn’t undermine Jewish peoplehood or show disrespect to any other group. But it would make for a saner and less divisive world, as well as better theater, films and television.

07/21 Links Pt2: I Have a Right to Live in Judea and Samaria; Herzog’s lamentable performance; What Israel needs right now; Bollywood film accused of minimising the Holocaust

From Ian:

I Have a Right to Live in Judea and Samaria

We are not alone
Some haters like to suggest that residents of Judea and Samaria are the pariahs of the world and that everyone agrees we’re evil, illegal, and unjust. But we know that people around the world stand with us as we work to rebuild our homeland. These people include Bible-believers who know what we’ve been promised, indigenous peoples who are amazed that one small native nation was able to wrestle its lands back from occupiers, ancient peoples who understand the intricacies of a long and illustrious heritage, anti-jihadists who take notes on how to stand strong in the face of aggression, and nationalists who respect the value of bolstering authentic culture.

We are not going anywhere
One of the things I most wish our enemies understood is what an utter waste it is to kill themselves trying to kill us. It is sick that so many Palestinians are willing to launch their children at our children, losing them in the process. They just waste life. Our lives, and theirs. Yet we keep growing. We’re soft-hearted, but we are thick-skinned. Attacking us hurts, but it will not stop us.

Here’s how I put it in my previously mentioned tweet:
Do you really think killing 4 of us will create a Palestine or destroy an Israel? 40? 400? I know it’s always fun to throw a party in Shechem or Gaza, but do you not realize how utterly futile these attacks are? In the end, you will fail. There will never be a Palestine on the Land of Israel. We will not budge one inch. You caused us pain today, that’s definitely true. But we’ll just kill the killers. You achieved nothing. Like every other day. Choose life. Abandon the fruitless fight for control in the Land of Israel.

We deserve to live
Israel-haters routinely and openly justify the murder of Jews in Judea and Samaria, as if killing us is the normal response of any right-thinking person. But—and I know it’s shocking—we actually have a right to live and thrive. Returning to our land after 2,000 years of forced exile and ongoing persecution is the rectification of historical injustice. The Jews of Judea and Samaria have the guts and the spirit to stand up in the face of not just local antisemitism, but global antisemitism. We are strong and determined, and will never give up.

I have never attacked anyone, I have never stolen anyone’s land. And I don’t have to justify my existence to anyone. So I won’t. The Jews have never submitted their convictions for anyone’s recognition or permission. In that spirit, we, the Jews of Judea and Samaria, will push ahead.

I am a wife and mother who lives by choice in Judea. I will continue to teach my children to love our story, to live our story, to know our rights, and to fight for a better future. I have faced rock attacks, Molotov cocktails, and ambushes. I face daily antisemitic tropes and attacks on social media. But I won’t be deterred. Neither will my neighbors. Millions of people around the world stand with us. Millions of Israelis stand with us. The IDF stands with us. History stands with us. And I pray that God will continue to stand with us as we help advance the evolving story of Shivat Tzion—the great return to Zion.

Melanie Phillips: Herzog’s lamentable performance

For anti-Israel liberals, the ultimate “bad Jews” are the “settlers,” Israelis who live in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria. Yet again, this animosity is based on an entirely false premise.

Settling the Facts, a new documentary produced by pro-Israel activist Roger Walters, thoroughly debunks the canards that these “settlements” break international law and are an obstacle to peace.

Law professor Avi Bell observes in the film that the word “settler,” meaning Israeli Jews who are living where they supposedly aren’t entitled to live, is loaded and distorted.

These Israelis are breaking no international law, he says. In 1922, international law was established giving Jews entitlement to the entire land including these territories, while there has never been any legal or historical basis for the claim that they belong to the Palestinian Arabs.

The film contains interviews with Israelis and Arabs living and working together in these territories, with many testimonies that they have formed friendships with each other.

In 2017, both communities formed the Judea and Samaria Chamber of Commerce to promote peace between them and shared interests. Its co-founder, Sheikh Ashraf Jabari, told the filmmakers that the problem lies not with the Israelis but with the Palestinian Authority’s minions who “hate and arrest” anyone who wants peace with Israel.

Yet Biden reportedly also told Netanyahu to impose a “settlement” freeze. He is thus trying to prevent Israeli Jews from living in areas to which they alone are entitled in order to appease aggressors who want to destroy the Jewish homeland altogether.

As a result of the Biden administration’s hostility, there are increasing calls for Israel to dispense with American aid. An article in Tablet by Jacob Siegel and Liel Leibovitz points out that, far from the image of Israeli dependency on the U.S., America actually gains more from this relationship.

Tellingly, one former security-related U.S. official told the authors, “Aid to Israel is the biggest bargain we have on our books. Ending it would be a disaster for us.”

Rather than Herzog’s lamentable performance, ending American aid is the message Israel now needs to deliver to its two-faced American friends.

What Israel needs right now

Israelis are tired of these childish tit-for-tats. Successive public opinion polls over the past few months have found broad support for a negotiated compromise on judicial reform. It’s long past time for Israel’s leaders to seek one seriously.

On Thursday, this paper’s editorial lauded a compromise on the reasonableness standard drawn up by Jewish People Policy Institute President Prof. Yedidia Stern and former deputy attorney-general Raz Nizri. Today the pair lay out their proposal on these very pages.

“At this moment in time, compromise is vitally needed, and it is within reach,” they write. The two jurists lay out a proposal that preserves the reasonableness standard, while reforming it in a way that is, well, reasonable. Decisions made by the government largely would not be subject to judicial review, but decisions by individual ministers largely would be.

“Restrictions on the reasonableness standard would be enacted, but in a more limited way than currently contemplated,” write Stern and Nizri. “In exchange, the coalition would commit to shelving the other elements of its judicial reform plan for the rest of its term, unless it can achieve broader consensus – one that includes some of the opposition – through talks at the President’s Residence or elsewhere.”

Their plan is an important step in the right direction. Other compromises have been proposed, including by Herzog himself. None have stuck. That’s okay; no one has a monopoly on wisdom, and there are surely other ideas that have yet to be proposed. What is not okay is continuing this insanity, which is tearing this country apart.

In recent days, many commentators have linked this moment in our national life to the period on the Hebrew calendar: the Nine Days leading up to Tisha Be’av, which commemorates the destruction of the Jewish Temples in Jerusalem and the termination of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel for nearly two millennia.

The Talmud, in Tractate Yoma, states that although Jews engaged in Torah study, the fulfillment of mitzvot (religious commandments), and acts of lovingkindness during the times of the Second Temple, the Temple was nevertheless destroyed because there was also sin’at hinam – baseless hatred.

And boy, do we have sin’at hinam in spades these days.

The alarmist headlines of recent months are unhelpful; to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of either Israel or Israeli democracy are greatly exaggerated. The Third Jewish Commonwealth is not in danger of collapse.

But the tenor of the debate, the ferocity of the argumentation, and the bile suffusing our national conversation should give us all pause. This is not the country our founding fathers and mothers had in mind.

What Israel needs right now is for its most senior elected officials to exhibit the responsible leadership we expect of them, to put a halt to this march of folly, and to invest their collective energy in hammering out a compromise that will reform the judicial system without breaking it and will leave our social fabric intact.

The problem with brinkmanship is that you risk reaching the brink. We’re not there, and hopefully will never be, but this cannot continue. The time has come to step back, reflect, and chart a path forward – together.

Asma Al-Sayyari is a popular Saudi social media influencer, with 753,000 followers on TikTok.

Her latest video, uploaded Thursday, shows her and her sister trying out what they call the "favorite drink of the Jews."

It is cola mixed with milk.

I have no idea where she got the idea that this was a Jewish drink.

A British comedian on Twitter wrote that he liked it in 2019 and it was a popular drink in Birmingham. Others wrote about it then, along with its more disgusting attributes.

But whoever thought it was Jewish?

Anyway, the sisters tried it and really didn't like it much. As one could imagine.

@somaaroma #fyp ♬ original sound - أسماء السياري🇸🇦

The video has, as of this writing, 75,000 "Likes. "

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!

07/21 Links Pt1: Erdogan to host Netanyahu, Abbas in Turkey next week; Arguments about judicial reform, ICC are legally baseless; UN envoy accused of flouting impartiality rules

From Ian:

Erdogan to host Netanyahu, Abbas in Turkey next week

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans to separately host both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas in Ankara next week.

The visit will mark Netanyahu's first prime ministerial trip to Turkey and is one more sign of the renewed diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Ankara has not hosted an Israeli Prime Minister since Ehud Olmert visited in 2008.

Turkish-Israeli diplomatic ties
Diplomatic ties with Turkey and Israel broke down following a 2010 IDF raid on the Mavi Marmara as it attempted to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. Ten Turkish citizens were killed during that raid.

Tensions have also been high in the past due to Erdogan’s strong support for the Palestinians and his sharp anti-Israel comments, including at the United Nations.

Ties were restored last year, a move that was cemented with a visit by President Isaac Herzog. Former Prime Minister Yair Lapid also met with Erdogan in the fall on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Prior to the breakdown of relations between Jerusalem and Ankara, Turkey had been one of the countries along with Egypt that had served as a regional mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, particularly with Hamas.

The Turkish invitation, which follows the one extended last week by Morocco, comes amid increased Israeli-Palestinian violence. The trilateral project between Israel, Cyprus and Greece

It also immediately follows a visit by Netanyahu to Cyprus next week. Israel has looked to Cyprus to develop natural gas projects including with Greece.

A trilateral project between Israel, Cyprus, and Greece to develop an underwater pipeline by which to export Israel’s natural gas to Europe has been on hold pending an EU feasibility study. It also risked sparking tensions with Turkey, which claimed that a portion of the project was under its territorial waters.

Cyprus and Israel have also separately discussed natural gas projects, including one in which Israel’s natural gas would be sent to Cyprus via an underwater pipeline and then liquefied at a special plant built there and shipped to Europe from a nearby port.

Turkey would similarly like to develop a natural gas project with Israel, in which it would act both as a transit state to other sites and sell the commodity domestically.

FDD: Iran and its Network of Nineteen Terrorist Organizations on Israel's Borders

DESCRIPTION
Over the last four decades, the Iranian regime has built a network of armed groups on Israel’s borders to create instability and foment terrorism. Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and a mosaic of other terrorist organizations receive funding, training, and weapons from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Quds Force (IRGC-QF). FDD’s Long War Journal has monitored the buildup of Iran-backed terrorist organizations on key fronts: Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria. Israel has worked to limit the growth of these terrorist organizations, but they remain a significant threat on multiple fronts.

METHODOLOGY
This visual draws on open-source information, such as data released by government agencies, English and Arabic-language news reports, and social media accounts operated by terrorist organizations. ‍

Terrorist organizations highlighted in the visual are active, possess military capabilities to attack Israel and have acknowledged receiving support from Iran or are closely affiliated with armed groups who do. Palestinian organizations who operate under the Hamas-led Joint Operations Room are included due to their close affiliation with factions who receive support from Iran.

The visual identifies the terror groups’ areas of operation based on information primarily published by terrorist organizations. While most of the armed groups have maintained a presence in their respective territories for many years – decades in some cases – nascent terrorist organizations, such as the West Bank branches of Islamic Jihad and the Nablus-based Lions’ Den, are in the process of expanding the territory from which they operate from. Likewise, long-established organizations sometimes seek to open new fronts, as in the case of Hamas’ spread into southern Lebanon.

Some data — particularly funding levels, number of active members, arsenal contents and the identity of key leaders — are not available in open sources. These data points are noted as “undisclosed” or an estimate is given, often based on public statements of government officials — some anonymous — who have access to intelligence. In some instances, if FDD’s Long War Journal cannot locate reliable open-source data identifying a commander or secretary-general, “key leaders” is listed as “former leaders.” Furthermore, some organizations have established external headquarters, which are indicated in the "Area of Operation" segment of the profiles. Download Visual (pdf)

EU parliament urges Hezbollah be designated a terror group

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators and representatives joined together earlier this week to insist that the European Union classify Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organization, as opposed to solely its “military wing.” An influential group that issued a similar push prior to that is the international alliance’s own legislature.

On July 12, the E.U. parliament passed a resolution calling for Hezbollah to be added to the list of banned terrorist groups.

The International Legal Forum (ILF) released a statement in response that applauded the decision. It said “Hezbollah is a genocidal jihadist terrorist group created, funded and instructed at the behest of the Iranian regime. It presents not only a direct threat to Israel but the E.U. as well.”

ILF dismissed efforts to divide Hezbollah into separate “political” and “military” divisions, calling such thinking “not only superfluous but dangerous.”

CEO Arsen Ostrovsky explained the resolution, telling JNS: “The European Parliament decision is not binding. It still needs to go to the European Commission to be formally ratified and Hezbollah added to the terror list in full.”

Ostrovsky called the E.U. parliament’s move “very important” and that it “carries significant weight.” He said it was the first time that parliament has called for Hezbollah “to be designated in full” and hoped that “U.S. pressure will carry additional weight now with the Commission to take the next, final steps.”

Every Friday, Arab media is filled with the same story, with only a couple of details changing week to week:

Tens of thousands performed Friday prayers at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, despite the strict military measures imposed by the Israeli occupation authorities at the gates and entrances of the Old City of occupied Jerusalem .

The Islamic Endowments Department in Jerusalem estimated that about 50,000 worshipers performed Friday prayers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque .

The occupation forces deployed in the streets of the city and the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and stationed at its gates, and stopped the worshipers and checked their identity cards .

It is truly amazing how they manage to get past those Islamophobic police who are restricting them.

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!

"We don't hate Jews! We just hate things Jews do/believe/are!"

One of the most bizarre things about antisemitism is that even the worst antisemites all insist that they do not hate Jews.

We looked at a most egregious example before, when in the early 1930s the Nazis denied that they were antisemitic. As long as Jews stayed in their own lane, they said, they would have no problems.

But that has been a consistent pattern. Here are three examples I came across in the past day.

Here is an article from the Manchester Evening News, exactly 100 years ago, July 21, 1923:

The good people of Edmonton didn't have a problem with Jews, no, of course not. But they really hated that Jews mourned their dead so loudly and publicly. It scares the children! It obscures their views! The real British citizens - meaning Gentiles - would be upset!

And then, as an afterthought, the last sentence of the article that says, of course, we won't allow Jews to be buried in the municipal cemetery that is meant for all citizens. Obviously, Jews couldn't be British.

Moving on to today, two Arabic language articles also say that Jews are OK, as long as the antisemites get to define what Jews are.

In the Palestinian Shfa News, an "expert" named Ghassan Abu Najm argues that Jews aren't a people or a nation, but merely a religion - a hardly new lie, and he leans on fraud Shlomo Sand for his analysis. But the underlying theme is the same: they don't hate Jews as a religious sect; only Jews as a nation.

From a completely different angle, political analyst Abdel Samad Belkabir says that the Jews in Morocco have a long and illustrious history, and Moroccans do not have a problem with the Jews, but rather with "distorted Talmudic Judaism."

And this is what the anti-Zionists of today do as well. They don't hate Jews, they just hate Jewish nationalism which has been a core component of Judaism since Biblical times.

Everyone recognizes antisemitism - except when it comes from them.

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This essay, by former British premier David Lloyd George, was published in many newspapers during July 1923.

Strangely enough, I did not find the full contents online in any digital text format, so I transcribed it and am publishing it here.

The essay is notable for a number of reasons.

It describes antisemitism in an accurate way that is just as true today as it was a century ago.

It argues that only Jews can possibly turn what he describes as the neglected wasteland of Palestine into a successful nation.

He notes that antisemites love the oppressors of the Jews no matter how vile they are.

And he argues that Zionism is not meant to be for Jewish supremacy but to give Jews equal rights among the nations.

If anything, Lloyd was too pessimistic. He said that the land could not be restored in a single generation, and could not have imagined that the Jews would have turned the country into a workable independent nation in only 25 years.

______________________

London, July 14 (1923) —Of all the bigotries that savage the human there is none so stupid as the antisemitic. It has no basis in reason—it is not rooted in faith—it aspires to no ideal —it is just one of those dank and unwholesome weeds that grow in the morass of racial hatred.

How utterly devoid of reason it is may be gathered from the fact that it is almost confined to nations who worship the Jewish prophets and revere the national literature of the Hebrews as the only inspired message delivered by the Deity to mankind, and whose only hope of salvation rests on the precepts and promises of the great teachers of Judaism.

Still, in the sight of these fanatics, Jews of today can do nothing right. If they are rich they are birds of prey. If they are poor they are vermin. If they are in favor of a war, that is because they want to exploit the bloody feuds of Gentiles to their own profit. If they are anxious for peace they are either instinctive cowards or traitors. If they give generously - and there are no more liberal givers than the Jews .-. they are doing it for some selfish purpose of their own. If they don't give—then what would one expect of a Jew?

If labor is oppressed by great capital, greed of the Jew is held responsible. If labor revolts against capital—as it did in Russia—the Jew is blamed for that also. If he lives in a strange land he must be persecuted and pogrommed out of it. If he wants to go back to his own he must be prevented. Through the centuries, in every land, what ever he does or intends or fails to do, has been pursued by the echo of the brutal cry of the rabble of Jeru-salem against the greatest of all Jews—"Crucify Him !"

No good has ever come of nations that crucified Jews, It is poor and pusillanimous sport lacking all true qualities of manliness. and those who indulge in it would be the first to run away were there any element of danger in it. Jew baiters are generally of the type that found good reasons for evading military service when their own country was in danger.

The latest exhibition of this wretched indulgence is the agitation against settling poor Jews in the land their fathers made famous. Palestine under Jewish rule once maintained a population of 5,000,000. Under the blighting rule of the Turk it barely supported a population of 70,000. The land flowing with milk and honey is now largely a stoney and unsightly desert. To quote one of the ablest and most farsighted business men of today, "It is a land of immense possibilities in spite of the terrible neglect of its resources resulting from Turkish misrule. Its glorious estate has been let down by centuries of neglect. The Turks cut down the forests and never troubled to replant them. They slaughtered the cattle and never. troubled to replace them."

It is one of the peculiarities of the Jew hunter that he adores the Turk.

If Palestine is to be restored to a condition even approximating to its ancient prosperity it must be by settling Jews on its soil. The condition to which the land has been reduced by centuries of the most devastating oppression in the world is such that restoration is only possible by a race that is prepared for sentimental reasons to make and endure sacrifices for the purpose.

What is the history of Jewish settlement in Palestine? It did not begin with the Balfour declaration. A century ago there were barely 10,000 Jews in the whole of Palestine. Before the war there were 100,000. The war considerably reduced these numbers, and immigration since 1918 has barely filled up gaps. At the present timorous rate of progress it will to many years before it reaches 200,000.

Jewish settlement started practically 70 years ago. It started with in 1854 — another war year. The Sultan had good reasons for propitiating Jews in that year, just as the Allies had in 1917. So the Jewish settlement of Palestine began. From that day onward it has proceeded slowly but steadily. The land available was not of the best. Prejudices and fears had to be negotiated. Anything in the nature of wholesale expropriation of Arab cultivators, even for cash, had to be carefully avoided. The Jews were therefore often driven to settle on barren sand dunes and malaria swamps.

Everywhere the Jew cultivator produces heavier and richer crops than his Arab neighbor. He has introduced into Palestine more scientific methods of cultivation, and his example is producing a beneficent effect on the crude tillage of the Arab peasant. It will be long ere Canaan becomes once more a land flowing-with milk and honey. The effects of fie neglect and misrule of centuries cannot be effaced by the issue of a declaration. The cutting down of trees has left the soil unprotected against heavy rains, and rocks which were once green with vineyards and olive groves have been swept bare. Terraces which ages of patient industry built up have been destroyed by a few generations of Turkish stupidity. They cannot be restored in a. single generation. Great irrigation works must be constructed if the settlement is to proceed on a satisfactory scale.

Palestine possesses in some respects advantages for the modern settler which to its ancient inhabitants were a detriment.

Its one great river with its two tributaries are rapid and have a great fall. For power this is admirable. Whether for irrigation or for the setting up of new industries, this gift or nature to Palestine is capable of exploitation impossible before the scientific discoveries of the last century. The tableland of Judea has a. rainfall which if caught in reservoirs at appropriate centers would make of the "desert of Judea" a garden. If this were done, Arab and Jew alike would share in the prosperity.

There are few countries on earth which have made less of their possibilities. Take its special attractions for tourists. I was amazed to find that visitors to Palestine in the whole course of a year only aggregate 15,000. It contains the most famous shrines in the world. Its history is of more absorbing interest to the -richest people on earth, and is better taught to their children, than even that of their own country. Some or its smallest villages are better known-to countless millions than many a prosperous modern city.

Hundreds of thousands ought to bow visiting this sacred land every year.- Why are they not doing so? The answer is Turkish misrule scared away the pilgrims. Those who went there came back disillusioned and disappointed. The modern "spies" on their return did not carry with them luscious grapes of Eshcol to thrill the multitude with a desire to follow their example. They brought home depressing tales of squalor, discomfort and exaction which dispelled the glamour and discouraged further pilgrimages.. The settled Government gives the Holy Land its first chance for 1900 years. But there is so much undeveloped country demanding the attention of civilization that Palestine will lose that chance unless it is made the special charge of some powerful influence, The Jews alone can redeem. it from the wilderness and restore its ancient glory.

In that trust there is no injustice to any other race. The Arabs have neither the means, the energy nor the ambition to discharge this duty. The British Empire has too many burdens on its shoulders to carry this experiment through successfully. The Jewish race, with its genius, its resourcefulness, its tenacity and, not least, its wealth, can alone performs this essential task. The Balfour declaration is not an expropriating but-an enabling clause. It is only a charter of equality for Jews. Here are its terms:

"His Majesty's Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this. object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights or existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

This declaration was subsequently endorsed and adopted by President Wilson and the French and Italian foreign ministers.

The Zionist ask for no more. It has been suggested by their enemies that they are seeking to establish a Jewish oligarchy in Palestine that will reduce the Arab inhabitant to a condition or servitude to a favored Hebrew minority. The answer to that charge is to be found in the memorandum submitted by the Zionist Association to

the League of Nations:

"The Jews demand no privilege unless it be the privilege of rebuilding by their own efforts and sacrifices a land which,- once the seat of a thriving and productive civilization, has long been suffered. to remain derelict. They expect no favored treatment in the matter of political or religious rights. They assume as a matter of course that all inhabitants of Palestine, be they Jews or non-Jews, will be in every respect on a footing of perfect equality. They seek no share in Government beyond that to which they may be entitled under the constitution as citizens of the country. They solicit no favors. They ask, in short, no more than an assured -opportunity of, peacefully building up their national home by their own exertions and of succeeding on their merits."

This is a modest request which these exiles from Zion propound to the nations. And surely it is just for it to be conceded, and, if conceded.- then to be carried out in the way men of honor fulfill their bond.

There are 14 millions of Jews in the world. They belong to a race which for at least 1900 years has been subjected to persecution, pillage, massacre and the torments of endless derision, a race that has endured persecution which, for variety of torture, physical, material and mental inflicted on its victims; for the virulence and malignity with which it has been sustained; for the length of time it has lasted, and, more than all, for the fortitude and patience with which it has been suffered, is without parallel In the history of any other people.

Is it too much to ask that those amongst them whose sufferings are the worst shall be able to find refuge in the land their father made holy by the splendour of their genius, by the loftiness of their thoughts, by the consecration 'of their lives and by the inspiration of their message to mankind?.

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Read all about it here!

07/20 Links Pt2: David Collier: So you think Israel should tear down its walls?; AMIA bombing 29 years on; What does ‘pro-Israel’ Democrat mean in 2023?

From Ian:

Reasonableness bill will not endanger IDF soldiers at ICC – Kohelet

During debates about the reasonableness standard bill in the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee, opposition members have repeatedly warned that the passing of the legislation would lead to IDF soldiers being brought to stand trial before international legal forums.

However, Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, director of International law at the Jerusalem-based libertarian Kohelet Policy Forum, argued in a new policy paper co-authored by Adv. Avraham Russel Shalev that the reasonableness bill will not change the legal situation with bodies like the International Criminal Court.

The chief argument made by opposition members center on the principle of complementarity, the idea that international courts are supplemental to local courts, and that they only have jurisdiction when the local judiciaries are unable to prosecute war crimes and other criminal action because they are unable or unwilling, and are not independent or lack the authority or power.

Opposition members contend that if the reasonableness bill were to pass, the independence and power of the Israeli courts would be altered in a way that the ICC would feel that it had the right to bring itself to bear on IDF soldiers, officers, and officials accused of crimes.

Kontorovich told The Jerusalem Post that the ICC has no jurisdiction regardless of the status of Israel’s local courts. Across Israel’s political factions for the last 20 years, the view has been that the court has no right to judge Israelis. Israel has not ratified the Rome Statute to become a party to the ICC.

“The issue is not whether the ICC should prosecute us if we’re naughty or prosecute us if we’re nice,” said Kontorovich. “Under Israel’s view, the ICC is an illegitimate international tribunal. It is not a lawfully constituted court. It is just something that has no connection with Israel. Israel has not accepted its jurisdiction, and it has absolutely no authority to exercise that jurisdiction over Israel, especially in the way that it is trying to do about issues involving Gaza and the West Bank, which are not even a country capable of joining the ICC.”

JPost Editorial: It's time for Israel to find a middle ground in judicial reform

Netanyahu may be considering a proposal for compromise
Two jurists, Jewish People Policy Institute President Prof. Yedidia Stern and former deputy Attorney-General Raz Nizri, have presented a proposal that offers a way out of the impasse. Netanyahu is reportedly considering it.

The proposal’s basic assumption is one that polls have shown the majority of the country would be willing to sign off on: there is a need for some judicial reform, but not the sweeping overhaul that has been put forward.

Under this proposal, the language in the reasonableness clause would be softened, and the courts could rule as unreasonable decisions and appointments made by cabinet ministers, including the prime minister, but not on those made and approved by the cabinet.

This finds the middle ground between those who do not want any judicial review based on the standard of reasonableness and those who believe the current system – whereby all decisions and appointments by ministers and the government can be deemed unreasonable – should remain.

Proponents of judicial reform will say that agreeing to this compromise is folding in the face of protests and giving in to blackmail by a cadre of reservists holding the country captive. And opponents of the plan will say that this paves the way for Arye Deri – whose ministerial appointment by Netanyahu was blocked as unreasonable by the court due to his past convictions – back into the government.

Accepting this will take a show of leadership by Netanyahu, Lapid, and Gantz. Netanyahu will have to stand up to those in his party and coalition who see their 64-56 Knesset majority as a mandate for sweeping changes, and Gantz and Lapid will have to repel calls by those in their camp who reject any judicial reform by this government.

During its first 75 years, Israel has faced challenges far more daunting than finding a compromise on a legal matter. This should not be that difficult. What is needed is for the leaders on both sides of this issue to muster the courage to withstand political pressure and finally put an end to the current self-destructive madness.

David Collier: So you think Israel should tear down its walls?

I lived in Israel for nineteen years. I lost a good friend during the Second Intifada to a suicide bomber who chose to turn a music pub on the Tel Aviv seafront into a scene from a disaster movie. During this time I also tutored a boy of a close family friend – I helped him pass his exams – only to see him murdered by Hamas terrorists. Israel tried to make peace with the Palestinians over and over again and the result was always the same – exploding buses, cafes and malls. The threat has not gone away – and all those people who want to slaughter Jews are held back only by Israel’s security apparatus.

Which is why it is so offensive to see people who hate the Jewish state turn Israel’s need to defend its citizens – into something nasty. There is nothing dirty about Israel protecting Israelis from genocidal hate. But the anti-Israel propaganda machine is a billion-dollar industry – and haters have taken to disgracefully calling Israel’s defensive strategies – ‘apartheid’. Just this week we have seen an explosion of these claims from ‘progressive’ US politicians.

So I want to take this opportunity to remind everyone just what Israel’s non-existent apartheid is actually about:

Israel and Gaza.
Israel withdrew fully from Gaza in 2005 and dismantled the Israeli settlements there. Everyone – including the Palestinian leadership described it as a ‘historic’ move. Today these people – Hamas – control Gaza. They were put in power by the Palestinians – who voted the Islamic terror group into office. Hamas then did what all Islamic terror groups do – they slaughtered the opposition and turned the Gaza strip into a terror enclave. Hamas – and Islamic Jihad – are constantly trying to kill Israelis any way they can.

Nablus and Jenin
Areas under PA control these days are not much better. The PA was always unwilling to make peace with Israel and the Fatah leadership nurtured terror as a means of pressuring Israel. They have long since lost control and today the streets of cities such as Nablus and Jenin are run by terror groups. The PA won’t hold elections because they know the Islamic terrorists will win.

Israeli streets
Israel does not want to restrict anyone’s freedom – but even when its back is turned for a second – devastation strikes. Just some examples of the terror attacks from 2022/2023:

The security fence
The security fence (what they call the ‘Apartheid wall’) was not always there – and these horrific images are from a time when Palestinian terrorists could enter Israel more freely:

Palestinian terror groups were planning to meet with the PA in Cairo at the end of the month in the umpteenth attempt for reconciliation and unity that never existed.

But over the past week, Israel has been staying out of Jenin to give the PA a chance to go in and arrest terrorists, which they appear to have been doing.

This has been upsetting Islamic Jihad, which is the primary terror group in Jenin. And now theyare threatening to boycott the meeting in Cairo, along with Hamas and the PFLP.

Analysts say it is likely that the PA will stop the arrests from now until the meeting. It wants to appear to be the leader of its people and if the majo rarmed groups boycott, then it is clear that it isn't leading anyone.

Especially since the terrorist groups are very popular among the people.

Of course, imagining a PA-led unity government that eschews terror is simply impossible.

(h/t Yoni Ben Menachem)

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If We're To Genocide The Palestinians, What's With All The Free Medical Care? (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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If We're To Genocide The Palestinians, What's With All The Free Medical Care?

by Dr. Tzvi Bar-Giora, Department Chief, Obstetrics, Hadassah - Ein Kerem University Medical Center

Jerusalem, July 20 - Thank you for attending this meeting today, ladies and gentlemen. I realize I called it on short notice, and I don not intend to keep you from your duties and commitments any longer than necessary. But a critical issue has come up for this hospital, and we must address it in a fundamental and thorough way: if Zionism aims to exterminate the Palestinians, why has this Zionist institution provided life-saving and life-improving treatment to any and all Palestinians who come through our doors - and why do we continue to do so?

This crucial question gets to the very core of our mission as the bearers of the legacy of Henrietta Szold herself. Ms. Szold dedicated her life to health care in the incipient Zionist state. We, her spiritual and professional heirs, are charged with maintaining and expanding her life's work. Yet every single day, multiple times a day, each of us gives care to Palestinians, often without demanding payment - I ask you, how does that square with the genocide we are supposedly perpetrating as a people against the Palestinians?

I will grant that the genocide has not, by any statistical or factual measure, been a success. Perhaps a million Arabs lived in this land before the establishment of Israel. They have multiplied by a factor of at least seven, and the body count for this conflict in the last eighty or so years hasn't even cracked six figures. We are definitely going about genocide wrong.

That is an important point you just made, Professor Levy. As Jews we know all too well what the pursuit of genocide looks like. Some of our own parents or other relatives witnessed it firsthand, swallowing up their families and communities during the Holocaust. You would think just from observation, we might learn a thing or two about how it's done! But no: not only do we not have execution pits, gas chambers, cattle cars, mass starvation, work-to-death camps, or local collaborators happy to do the massacring, raping, and pillaging for us, we give our putative victims immunizations, blood transfusions, antibiotics, corrective surgery, rehabilitative regimens.... Thank you for pointing that out, professor, as it highlights the absurd failures of this entire endeavor.

I am beginning to think, my friends, that we are not, nor have we ever been, serious about this genocide thing.

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

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07/20 Links Pt1: EU commits to PA funding freeze over textbook incitement; Friedman has a Herzog problem; Islamic Jihad terrorists attack worshippers at Joseph’s Tomb

From Ian:

Bassam Tawil: Palestinians' Summer Camps To Kill Jews

For more than a decade, the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas terror groups have been holding summer camps for thousands of schoolchildren throughout the Gaza Strip. These camps have served as a framework for inculcating an extreme ideology that glorifies Jihad (holy war), terrorism, and armed struggle against Israel with the aim of "liberating Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea."

The camps also provide military training, such as practice with knives and firearms; hand-to-hand combat, and marching and foot drills. The children also stage plays and enact scenes of fighting and capturing Israeli soldiers or firing rockets at Israel.

On July 8, Hamas launched its summer camps for 2023, with the participation of more than 100,000 boys and girls.... The children are being trained to carry out terror attacks and serve as human shields in the Jihad against Israel.

In June 2022, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh denied any trace of Jewish history in Jerusalem...

When Hamas talks about "liberation," it is expressing its desire to eliminate Israel, as explicitly stated in the charter of the group:

"Article 11: The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it."

"Article 13: [Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion...."

The summer camp director in Rafah, Muhammad Barhoum, said that the camps are part of Hamas' activities that focus on the [younger] generation "due to its importance as "the generation of liberation and victory." — MEMRI, July 17, 2023

EU commissioner commits to PA funding freeze over textbook incitement

The European Union official who oversees aid to the Palestinian Authority has voiced support for conditioning the release of funds on the removal of incitement and antisemitism from P.A. textbooks.

The remarks follow two European Parliament resolutions last week demanding the “deletion of all antisemitic references, and removal of examples that incite hatred and violence” in Palestinian textbooks, and calls for a funding freeze.

“Incitement to hatred and violence and glorification of terror violate E.U. core values,” tweeted Olivér Várhelyi, the European commissioner for neighborhood and enlargement. “It is a poison for our society, in particular in classrooms and textbooks. There can be no justification to turn a blind eye, neither in Europe nor beyond.”

In the tweet, the E.U. official said that the “commission duly notes this request from the budgetary authority.”

In May, Várhelyi said that the European Union “will make sure it’s not funding Palestinian textbooks that incite against Israel.” He had previously announced that the European Union would conduct a second study of the P.A.’s textbooks.

Unlike previous resolutions, which mentioned incitement to violence without directly calling for the removal of antisemitism, the wording of the resolutions last week explicitly links E.U.-funded textbooks to “rising involvement of teenagers in terrorist attacks.”

By Daled Amos

We found out over the weekend that no one is going to burn a Torah in Sweden, at least for now.

A Muslim activist who had received permission to burn a Torah and a Bible outside the Israeli embassy in Sweden on Saturday appeared to back off from his plan, saying he only wanted to draw attention to the recent burning of the Quran in the country.

The Swedish police had given Ahmad Alush the OK after he decided this was all part of his protest against the burning of a Quran outside a Stockholm mosque last month, by an Iraqi Christian immigrant. The police at the time permitted burning the Quran as an example of free speech after a court overturned a ban on Quran burning.

Pity poor Sweden. On the one hand, the Swedish foreign ministry condemned the original Quran burning:

The burning of the Quran, or any other holy text, is an offensive and disrespectful act and a clear provocation. Expressions of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance have no place in Sweden or in Europe

while at the same time pointing out that Sweden has

constitutionally protected right to freedom of assembly, expression and demonstration.

Luckily, Alush backed out and claimed he never intended to burn the Torah and was just trying to make a point about the limits of free speech.

Still, the idea of burning Jewish books is not new and reminded more than one person on Twitter about Jewish history:

Some background:

A Jewish apostate, Nicholas Donin, told the Pope that the Talmud contained insults to the Christian religion. In France, on the order of the Pope, many volumes of the Talmud were seized. In 1240, King Louis IX ( later St. Louis) ordered the Talmud put on trial. Jewish representatives were permitted only to defend themselves, not to advance positive proofs for their position. Not surprisingly, the Talmud was declared guilty, and in 1242 24 wagonloads of Talmudic volumes were publicly burned in Paris

Just as Alush got his idea from a previous burning of the Quran, in 1290 France there was also a precedent that inspired Church to burn Jewish books:

Sadly, Jewish infighting regarding Rambam's works also played a major role in this tragic event. Some overzealous Jews denounced the Rambam's writings to the Church, and once the Church determined that his books should be burned, it was only a small step until all Jewish books were consigned to the flames.

Of course, history shows that the world does not need Jewish in-fighting in order to get ideas.

In 2017, a German court ruled that firebombing a synagogue is not anti-Semitic:

This week a German regional court ruled that the 2014 firebombing of a synagogue in Wuppertal, a region just east of Düsseldorf, was an act of criminal arson, but not anti-Semitic. Instead, the court found it was a protest against Israel, even though the synagogue was obviously not in Israel and those who worship there are Jews, not Israelis.

The decision upheld that of a lower court, which stated the perpetrators, a trio of Palestinian-born German residents, wanted to “call attention to the Gaza conflict” when they prepared and then lobbed Molotov cocktails at the synagogue one July night in 2014. No one was injured, but the attack caused €800 in damages. The men were ultimately given suspended sentences. [emphasis added]

Isn't it amazing the destructive, intolerant and downright racist things that can be excused in the name of protest and free speech?

You can destroy the religious holy books of other people and excuse it as an expression of your opinion

You can firebomb a synagogue in German, and by claiming to protest against Israel, get a suspended sentence.

The German court bought into the argument that if you want to protest against Israel, but you are living in Germany -- no problem: go find yourself the nearest synagogue and terrorize some Jews.

And Europe isn't the only place where you can get away with this. You can get away with this in the US as well. In the US, a synagogue and its congregation have been singled out for abuse on Shabbat for 20 years:

On every Saturday morning since September 2003, a group of protesters has gathered in front of the Beth Israel Synagogue in Ann Arbor during Shabbat morning services with signs reading "Jewish Power Corrupts,” “Resist Jewish Power,” “End the Palestinian Holocaust,” “Stop Funding Israel,” and “Fake News: Israel Is A Democracy.”

The synagogue responded by filing a federal lawsuit pointing out that the protesters were infringing on their federal and state rights. They also noted that the City of Ann Arbor had failed to enforce the city code which requires that protests have permits. This in addition to the obvious extreme emotional distress.

But US District Judge Victoria Roberts was unimpressed and ruled that the protests were protected by the First Amendment.

Peaceful protest speech such as this – on sidewalks and streets – is entitled to the highest level of constitutional protection, even if it disturbs, is offensive, and causes emotional distress.

The Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2022.

This is an expansion over what we have seen for years on university campuses, where speakers were prevented from speaking. After all, once you start targeting someone's words to prevent speakers from being heard, you can also take the next step by targeting their words to try to prevent them from being read -- including by burning the books themselves, even a Torah or a Quran. And if you can burn their books, you may be tempted to try to burn the places where they are read.

And you can demonstrate outside a synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath, claiming this is your constitutionally protected way to protest against a country half a world away.

Starting on college campuses, we see that it is not so much that free speech is defended -- rather free speech is prioritized. Some are more entitled. Others have their speakers disinvited or just shouted out.

And just like on college campuses, we see that elsewhere, Jews still end up holding the short end of the stick.

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!