Wednesday, August 09, 2023
From Ian:
Jew-hatred must not pay
Jew-hatred must not pay
What is shocking is that the United States has both very powerful tools and a clear legal mandate under the Taylor Force Act and Koby Mandell Act to demand and assure that justice is done. Under these acts, funds can and should be withheld from the Palestinian Authority, which under its current “pay for slay” program financially rewards terrorists and their families. Yet the current administration appears blithely to continue aid while in effect mildly rebuking the offenders.There should be no hierarchy of antisemitism
The callous disregard for the law is so egregious that a bipartisan group of 50 members of Congress (30 Democrat and 20 Republican), led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on July 18, stating:
For some Palestinians, terrorism literally pays. As you know, the Palestinian Authority has for decades provided financial compensation and other benefits to families of terrorists jailed in Israeli prisons and “martyrs” killed while carrying out attacks against Israelis. These payments cost the P.A. more than $300 million annually, at 8% of its budget.
Referring to the Taylor Force Act, the letter went on to state:
In an effort to cut off “pay for slay” at the source, many of us helped pass this much-needed, bipartisan legislation that prohibits U.S. assistance to the West Bank directly benefiting the P.A. In January 2023, following an attack by a Palestinian terrorist that killed 7 in a Jerusalem synagogue, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza celebrated the carnage by handing out sweets, blasting festive music from their cars, and lighting fireworks. Days earlier, Akram Rajoub, the mayor of Jenin, said that the “P.A. will not stop the transfer of funds. … President [Mahmoud] Abbas made it clear that the Palestinian Authority will not stop funding the families of our martyrs even if we are down to the last penny.”
The letter went on to note:
In late February, a Palestinian terrorist killed Columbia University graduate Elan Ganeles, a native of Connecticut. In early April, a Palestinian terrorist killed British-Israeli mother Lucy Dee and her two daughters in an ambush in the West Bank. Those behind these heinous acts are lauded by Palestinian society, and it is abundantly clear that these payments continue to reward and incentivize terror.
The continuation of funding the P.A. under these circumstances effectively condones and is tantamount to complicity with the heinous “pay for slay” program.
We must remember and take to heart the wise and immortal words of the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: “The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews.”
Curing the world of hatred requires ending Jew-hatred in all its mutating and malignant forms.
Actions speak louder than words. When the Trump administration curtailed aid to the P.A., the terrorist attacks substantially decreased. Ever since the Biden administration renewed and significantly increased such aid, terrorist attacks have escalated.
The Biden administration must enforce the Taylor Force Act and cease funding directly or indirectly the immoral P.A. “pay for slay” program. Let the verdict in Pittsburgh be a clarion call not to tolerate Jew-hatred, no matter who the offender may be, and to end it once and for all.
This touches on the foundation of the problem many have with Palestinian antisemitism. It is not considered the same as antisemitism in the West, and is thought, at least in part, to be just part of the politics of the ongoing conflict.World Indigenous Day: Recognizing Jews' ties to the Land of Israel
This is an increasingly rampant form of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Parts of the international community do not expect the same behavior of the Palestinians that it expects of others. This is bigotry, bordering on racism.
It allows the Palestinian Authority and its leaders to continue with its incitement and antisemitism and continues to fete and welcome Abbas as a legitimate leader.
Rarely do members of the international community strongly condemn Abbas’ antisemitic excesses, especially when made locally rather than on an international stage. They do not push and prod Abbas publicly to end the antisemitism, by making this conditional on aid and assistance.
Far too many see it as merely part and parcel of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and believe it is rooted in injustice. They see it as part of the war.
Nonetheless, people like Fuentes also believe they are in a struggle against the Jewish people. Only a few days ago, he said, “We will make them (Jews) die in the holy war.”
The primary difference is that Palestinian antisemitism is societally endemic and leads to massive and ongoing bloodshed on both sides of the conflict, whereas Fuentes only has a fringe following.
Thus, Palestinian antisemitism should be treated at least as seriously as other forms.
The bottom line is, antisemitism is antisemitism, and all forms of hate against Jews must be countered with equal vigor.
There should be no hierarchy of bigotry.
The international community must treat the antisemitism and incitement against Jews that emanates from within or by the Palestinian Authority as it would if it came from a white supremacist or neo-Nazi source.
This is not just important so as to equalize hate, but it will also send a new and demanding message to the Palestinian leadership that there is now zero tolerance for antisemitism, and they will be shunned and lose any aid and assistance if they do not stop.
If this can lead to an end to Palestinian state-sponsored antisemitism, many lives will be saved, and peace will be closer to realization.
Today is World Indigenous Day, as set out by the United Nations. This should be a significant day for Jews and Israel, because, after all, Jewish people are indigenous to the Land of Israel.PreOccupiedTerritory: European Names That European Governments Forced On Jews Proves Jews Are European, Not Levantine by Faisal al-Kurd, activist(satire)
However, due to misrepresentations of Jewish identity, many Jews feel disconnected from this concept. Nevertheless, in order to reclaim our story and define our own experience and identity, Jewish people must acknowledge that they are an indigenous people, and that Jewish communities everywhere constitute a Middle Eastern Diasporic community.
To understand indigeneity, it’s important to examine its etymology. It comes from the Latin noun indigena (native), which was formed by combining old Latin indu (in or within) with the verb gignere (to beget). This is the essence of the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, the land from which we emerged, or literally, were born.
By definition, indigenous peoples are diverse and unique, sometimes making them difficult to pin down precisely. The United Nations enumerated seven criteria:
1. Self-identification as indigenous peoples at the individual level and accepted by the community as their member
2. Historical continuity with pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies
3. Strong link to territories and surrounding natural resources
4. Distinct social, economic, or political systems
5. Distinct language, culture, and beliefs
6. Form non-dominant groups of society
7. Resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and systems as distinctive peoples and communities.
Except for the sixth criterion, which we shall set aside as it suggests that an indigenous community must be non-dominant and does not give room for decolonization, the other criteria strongly resonate with the Jewish experience. In fact, they appear to precisely affirm the Jewish narrative, as we can see from the following:
Guys, guys! I’ve got the argument that will silence those stupid Zionists and their ridiculous claims that Jews from Poland, Russia, and wherever are indigenous to Palestine: show how the family surnames that Napoleon, the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs, the Romanovs, and the other post-Enlightenment rulers imposed on the Jews in their domains indicate origins for those Jews in those places, and not here. You with me?
I got the idea from the Zionists themselves, that’s the poetry of it. We all know fellow Palestinians whose last names attest to ancestry not in Palestine: names that mean “from Aleppo,” “the Egyptian,” “the North African,” and my favorite, obviously, “the Kurd,” among many others. You might see them making the rounds on Zionist hasbara social media. Well, I thought, how about we turn the tables? Everyone knows “Teitelbaum” and “Ostrovsky” aren’t Levantine names! Those are names that were forced on Ashkenazi Jews in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries all across Europe, which proves that the Jews who came from Europe are European, and can’t claim to be “returning” to our land from which they say their ancestors were exiled.
Oh, I’m not worried about the question getting examined too closely. There might be some angry Zionists arguing that the names came long after those Jews arrived in Europe, but for our purposes, those countermeasures will be too little, too late. At that point we’ve landed our rhetorical blow, and our sympathizers far outnumber theirs. Those technical objections about so-called historical accuracy will be drowned out by the jeers, retweets, and uncritical parroting of our rhetoric that has long formed a centerpiece of mainstream Western journalism on the conflict here.
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