Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, September 07, 2023

Bill: Have Children Run Knesset While School Out; Improved Functioning Expected (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Jerusalem, September 7 - Late summer has long proved a challenge to Israeli parents, as during the latter half of August, few, if any, camp options exist for children, and school does not resume until the first of September. A new legislative proposal aims to change that, and experts believe it would also make the parliament more efficient, effective, and competent: send the kids to the plenum and committee sessions to conduct the regular affairs of the lawmaking body.

A parental rights lobbying group urged Members of Knesset - currently on recess until after the Jewish holiday season ends in October - to adopt the proposal, which calls for childcare responsibilities to be transferred to the legislators so that parents can maintain a normal working schedule and not be forced to take precious vacation days or to forfeit wages and job security for not working. The move, the group argues, will allow the productive people in Israeli society to maintain their productivity, while giving the unproductive politicians something productive to do.

"The late August vacation is a relic of a more socialist age in Israeli society," explained Dvir Shoham, chairman of the HELP Coalition, which advocates for "sane policy" and the removal of undue hardship for parents. "Mandated vacation, which is what many of us face for our children, and sometimes ourselves as well, is bad for families' solvency, bad for the economy, and bad for those ill-prepared or ill-equipped to handle non-stop childcare duties for the entire period."

"Politicians need to step up and do something useful for once," he continued. "That's why we need this bill. We can all send our children to the Knesset, or even to the local or city council, where the children will conduct the everyday business of those bodies, and the children will do at least as good a job of it as the elected 'leaders.'"

Analysts agreed with the last point, but observed that it all but guarantees the proposal's failure. "No politician in his or her right mind will endorse a scheme that demonstrates his or her uselessness as a politician." noted commentator Ben Caspit, "Well, other than being in office. That always seems to bring out the uselessness in public figure."

"On the other hand," he added, "since a voluble chunk of progressive culture insists on the affirmation of anything anybody but a white heterosexual male says, including 'affirming' the 'expressed' gender preferences of single-digit children, this would be the logical extension of such a view. Put the children in charge. At the very least, they couldn't perform any worse than the current crew."

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!

09/07 Links Pt1: US antisemitism envoy and EU denounce Mahmoud Abbas’s speech; The Palestinian peace process was meant to increase terrorism

From Ian:

US antisemitism envoy and EU denounce Mahmoud Abbas’s speech: Distorts the Holocaust

The US and EU on Thursday condemned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for a recent speech about the origins of Ashkenazi Jews and Adolf Hitler’s motivations, with the latter saying it fuels antisemitism and insults Holocaust victims.

US Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt slammed the “hateful, antisemitic remarks” made by Abbas in a speech last month to his Fatah party’s Revolutionary Council.

“The speech maligned the Jewish people, distorted the Holocaust, and misrepresented the tragic exodus of Jews from Arab countries,” Lipstadt wrote on X.

“I condemn these statements and urge an immediate apology,” she added.

Lipstadt’s condemnation came as the EU also denounced Abbas’s comments, saying they contained “false and grossly misleading remarks about Jews and antisemitism.”

Abbas repeated a number of antisemitic canards he has uttered over the years, including that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler had Jews slaughtered because of their “social role” as moneylenders, not because of enmity toward Judaism.

“Such historical distortions are inflammatory, deeply offensive, can only serve to exacerbate tensions in the region and serve no one’s interests,” read the EU statement. “They play into the hands of those who do not want a two-state solution, which President Abbas has repeatedly advocated for.

“Moreover, they trivialize Holocaust [sic] and thereby fuel anti-Semitism and are an insult to the millions of victims of the Holocaust and their families,” continued the European condemnation.

France’s embassy called the speech “clearly unacceptable” and stated that it “unequivocally strongly condemns antisemitism and the denial of the Holocaust in all its forms, as well as its determination to fight tirelessly against these scourges.”

2018

UNESCO lies: Jericho is not in 'Palestine' because no such state exists - opinion

UNESCO is at it again, and this time they’re targeting one of the most ancient and historically significant cities in the world: Jericho. The World Heritage Committee is set to vote on whether to list ancient Jericho as a Palestinian World Heritage site. This is not just a distortion of history. It’s an outright theft of Jewish heritage.

Let’s get one thing straight: Jericho is not in “Palestine.” There is no such state. The land is disputed, and many Israelis, including myself, see it as an integral part of Israel. By attempting to attribute Jericho to a “State of Palestine,” UNESCO is not just overstepping its mandate; it’s taking a blatant side in a geopolitical conflict. This is not education, science, or culture; this is political warfare.

UNESCO engages in political warfare
UNESCO has a track record of anti-Israel decisions. Remember when they denied the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and Hebron?

Those weren’t just slaps in the face to Israel; they were affronts to Jews and Christians worldwide.

Now, they’re about to add another insult by undermining the biblical significance of Jericho. The Palestinian Authority’s application does mention the city’s biblical importance but then has the audacity to claim it’s archaeologically false. This is a direct insult to every Jew and Christian who respects the Bible.

And let’s not forget the PA’s ongoing efforts to erase Jewish history. They’ve destroyed archaeological evidence on the Temple Mount and vandalized Jewish sites in Judea and Samaria. Instead of being held accountable, they’re being rewarded by UNESCO. This is not just wrong; it’s obscene.

UNESCO’s actions are not just damaging to Israel; they’re damaging to UNESCO itself. The organization was founded to promote peace and cultural understanding. By taking a side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they’re undermining their own mission. They’re not preserving world heritage; they’re politicizing it.

This isn’t just about one city or one heritage listing. This is about the integrity of an international organization that is supposed to be impartial. If they can unilaterally decide the status of Jericho, what’s next? Will they start rewriting the history of other disputed territories too?

It’s time for UNESCO to get out of the business of politics and back into the business of culture, science, and education. They need to drop this outrageous proposal and focus on what they were actually created to do. If they don’t, they’re not just failing Israel; they’re failing the world.

In a time when the Abraham Accords have shown that peace and mutual recognition are possible, UNESCO’s actions are a step backward. They’re not just undermining Israel’s sovereignty; they’re undermining the very possibility of peace and mutual respect.

Here is the abstract of a paper by Walaa Alqaisiya, published in Political Geography, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Elsevier:

Beyond the contours of Zionist sovereignty: Decolonisation in Palestine's Unity Intifada

This article takes the May 2021 uprising in Palestine, known as the Unity Intifada, as a prism to map old and new political geographies between coloniser and freedom-fighter, whose significance extends beyond the temporal limits of the May event. The first part of the paper investigates the role of identity and cultural geographies in re-enforcing Jewish claims to sovereignty. It shows how the Zionist production of pink (sexed/gendered), red (racializing/indigenising) and green (environmental) markers, is used to draw the contours of settler legitimacy and intensifies when faced by growing indigenous rebellion. The second part addresses the decolonising possibilities engulfing the Unity Intifada. It examines the role of youth, including women and queer collectives, and how their actions invoke new political and material taxonomies beyond the liberal peace structure to which Palestine has succumbed since the Oslo agreements. Overall, the article advances the political geographies of decolonisation by challenging the maintenance of settler colonial violence within the popular, political, and intellectual imaginary of ‘Israel/Palestine.’ It does so by tracing the spatial and epistemic value of decolonisation theories that extend from interactions across indigenous, queer feminist, critical race, and eco-materialist debates.

That is a lot of obfuscation to give a message that Palestinian violence is wonderful and must be encouraged.

As with most such academic papers, the author "talks past the sale:" she takes lies like Israel's "colonialism" or terrorists as "freedom fighters" as being so obvious that they need no proof or citations and uses them as building blocks to selectively chose whatever evidence they claim supports their propaganda. She has no need to explain how, exactly, shooting rockets into civilian population areas or ambushing and shooting drivers on the road is "freedom fighting."

In the first paragraph, Alqaisiya asserts "Nakba is a structure not an event (Wolfe, 2006)." But the Wolfe paper says "Invasion is a structure not an event." The author redefines "nakba" for her own purposes from the standard Palestinian line that it means the (fictional) expulsion of 700,000 Arabs in 1948 - now it means the arrival of Jews to the region decades earlier, framing it as an "invasion."

Her assumption is that Jews had no right to migrate to Palestine to escape persecution in Europe or the Middle East throughout the centuries. The right for persecuted minorities to seek refuge is unchallenged - unless they are Jews returning to their ancestral homeland, the exact opposite of colonialism.

She knows what she is doing. The peer reviewers of Political Geography are not experts in the history of the region, and they are also probably reluctant to challenge a Palestinian's narrative of her "truth." She, and many other academics, take advantage of these factors, plus the general anti-Israel atmosphere in academic circles, to spread lies and agitprop without fear of being exposed.

And just in case a reviewer might notice Alqaisiya is not exactly objective, she says in her "Methodology" section that her hatred of Israel is a strength, not a weakness:

[G]iven the role played by social media in circulating activist online campaigns and commentary about the Uprising, a digital ethnographic component shaped the methodological approach of the article. Not only did this method help direct the selection of primary sources that ‘capture how self-identity is formed, structured and expressed on digitally based platforms,’ (Kaur-Gill and Dutta, 2017: 3) but it also aligns with the epistemic base of decolonising research (Tuhiwai Smith, 2012), recognising the author's own positionality as Palestinian. Indeed, the majority of the discussion across the two sections emerges from the author's political and scholarly engagement within decolonial feminist and activist online spaces, in Palestine and beyond, which responded to the Unity Intifada's plight. The aim of advancing the sovereignty of indigenous knowledge, therefore, is at the heart of this article's methodological approach (Tuhiwai Smith, 2012).

In English: "I am a Palestinian, therefore my anti-Israel activism and opinions are worth more than any objective source. My obvious bias is the core of this research, and I then choose my secondary sources to fit my bias. And if you object to that methodology, you are oppressing me."

Here is a key paragraph:

It was as the bombs were dropping on besieged Gaza, devastating entire families and amounting to war crimes, that Israel took part in the annual international song competition, Eurovision. Israeli participation in such events unveils a cultural site for Zionist pinkwashing, delineating a sexed/gendered self that reifies the logic of settler colonial domination. The country's 2021 representation through the figure of a Jewish Ethiopian woman, Eden Alene, reveals how race plays a defining role in settlers' (subjects and state) efforts at indigenising colonial settlement. I read Alene's 2021 Eurovision contest participation as an attempt to neutralise Zionism's mounting crisis during times of growing confrontation with the indigene's resistance via the crafting of ‘an alternate (hi)story.’ This Zionist self-indigenising narrative, which also activates forms of cultural exchange with Indigenous nations and their plight elsewhere, further intertwines redwashing and greenwashing efforts.

It hardly needs to be mentioned that Israel didn't choose the dates of Eurovision, and that the contestants were chosen way before the May mini-war in Gaza. But Alqaisiya "reads" the two events coinciding as a Zionist response to the bad publicity of defending itself from rockets. The author then doubles down and spends several paragraphs railing against previous Israeli entries in Eurovision as symbolizing "pinkwashing."

To anti-Zionist fanatics, Israel is by definition an illiberal state. Therefore, any counter-evidence - like transsexual, gay-friendly and Black contestants for Eurovision being fully embraced by most of Israeli society - must be interpreted as a cynical attempt by Israel to hide its hate for LGBTQ and people of color. The contestants' own Zionism is further proof of Israeli illiberalism and attempts to obscure its "apartheid." In short, any facts that decisively disprove the assertion of Israeli evil are themselves further proof of Israeli evil.

Occam's Razor is shredded in favor of conspiracy theories.

Again, the peer reviewers might not be expected to understand the history of the scurrilous "pinkwashing" and "redwashing" and "greenwashing" accusations throughout this paper. But they should at least click on the references to see if they say what Alqaisiya claims. In this same paragraph, the link to her saying that the Gaza war in 2021 amounts to war crimes goes to an Al Jazeera article which says "The United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet has said Israel’s recent attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip that killed more than 200 Palestinians may constitute “war crimes” if they are shown to be disproportionate." This is a deliberate misquote, one of dozens, and that minor example should have been enough to raise flags for any reviewer at Political Geography.

So many of her other footnotes link to articles that do not say what she claims. Another example:

Predating Alene's participation was Netta Barzilai's win of the 2018 Eurovision contest with the song ‘Toy,’ whose feminist LGBTQ vibes (Cook, 2019) invoked the celebration of Israel as a place that shares the progressive liberal values of Europe. Israel has been at the core of embodying attributes of ‘European identity’ (Ayoub and Paternotte, 2014) as they link to feminist and LGBTQ issues.

The link says that LGBT rights are emblematic of European identity, but that has nothing to do with Israel actively claiming to be European. This is Alqaisiya's way to tell readers that Israel is a foreign European outpost in the Middle East that doesn't belong, and that Jews are really European converts and not descended from the Children of Israel.

Yet another example: A footnote about the organization StandWithUs says "The Israeli government heavily funds this US-based organisation to disseminate hasbara (public diplomacy for the Israeli government) through ‘citizen activism,’ whose goal is to mobilise young people in Israel, the US and Britain to stand up for Israel and Jewish people. (See Bazz, 2015; StandWithUs, 2022). " "Bazz" in 2015 reported that Israel planned to pay StandWithUs about $250,000 for a specific one year project, but it fell through and as far as I can tell, SWU does not get any funding from the Israeli government.

It would take a month to show the many such inaccuracies in this paper - and this is all what Political Geography should have done, and failed to do.

The entire paper is online, so you can see for yourself how Alqaisiya has little regard for truth. Every paragraph includes lies (including the Depo-Provera slander I mentioned that are spread in multiple academic papers).

I don't know what kind of peer review Political Geography engages in, but it is apparent that not only do they not do basic fact checking, they don't even flag a paper like this that all but brags that it is intended to be Palestinian propaganda.

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!

Israeli forces arrested Saeed Nakhleh, a leader of Islamic Jihad, along with 17 other suspected terrorists early this morning in the Jalazone camp near Ramallah.

Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today's coverage of the raid shows a typical progression of how terrorist media deals with such major setbacks.

First, it reported the story straight, with a hint of panic:

The "Israeli" occupation forces arrested, at dawn today, Thursday, September 7, 2023, the leader of the Islamic Jihad movement, Sheikh Saeed Nakhleh, after storming his house in the Jalazoun camp, north of Ramallah.
...It is noteworthy that the occupation forces are escalating the assassinations and arrests against the Mujahideen of our people and the leaders and cadres of the Islamic Jihad movement in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

Then came the first spin: that Nakhleh was ill and warning of consequences if anything should happen to him:

Dr. Jamil Alayan, a leader in the Islamic Jihad Movement and Director General of the Muhjat al-Quds Foundation, said the “Israeli” occupation is fully responsible for the life of Sheikh Saeed Nakhla and for his health condition, as the Sheikh suffers from a number of chronic and serious diseases, and that this arrest will further complicate the health situation .

Then came the assertions that this arrest shows Israeli weakness and that will not negatively affect Islamic Jihad in any way:

Leader Elayan said: The Zionist enemy's arrest at dawn of the leader and great national symbol, Saeed Nakhla, constitutes a miserable step and a failed attempt to hide its security failure in the West Bank and to give a false image of reassurance to its soldiers and settlers.

And he considered that the enemy's continuation of the arrest campaigns against our people in an unprecedented manner, in addition to the killing operations, will not achieve security for this enemy and will increase the strength and flames of the resistance in the West Bank and everywhere.

And then another spokesman to reassure Palestinians that these arrests and neutralization of their members is really a good thing:

Musab al-Baram, spokesman for the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, confirmed today that the campaign of "Israeli" arrests against the cadres of the Islamic Jihad Movement, the last of whom is Sheikh Saeed Nakhla, reflects the anxiety experienced by "Israel" at the security and political levels.

The occupation forces are escalating their frantic campaign against the Palestinian resistance, especially the Islamic Jihad movement, with assassinations and arrests against the mujahideen in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, the latest of which was the arrest of Sheikh Saeed Nakhla from his home in the Jalazoun camp, north of Ramallah.

Al-Buraim explained that the Zionist enemy lives in a political security concern, which explains the persecution and arrest of the resistance men, especially the Islamic Jihad cadres and members of the Al-Quds Brigades in the occupied West Bank.

The spokesman for the Jihad confirmed that if the occupation tried assassinations, the resistance would become more severe for the occupier and carry the message of the martyrs and their commandments. It is an open battle with the enemy."

If the killings and arrests make them stronger, then they should welcome them!

The more they claim that these raids are showing that they are winning, the less convincing it seems - to Palestinians, let alone Israelis.

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!

Over and over again: Mahmoud Abbas spouts Jew-hatred. He is pressured to apologize and does it again. And the world continues to respect him.

In April 2018, Palestinian Authority president and PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas gave an antisemitic speech where he claimed that Ashkenazic Jews were not really Jews, that Jews throughout history including during the Holocaust were hated not because they were Jews but because of how they acted, that Jews were never persecuted in Arab lands and that Jews have no connection to the Land of Israel.

World leaders expressed outrage, and Abbas - under pressure - apologized.

In a statement released by his office, Abbas said he did not intend to cause offense in a speech to the Palestinian National Council on Monday, in which he claimed the Holocaust was driven not by anti-Semitism but by a reaction to the financial activities of European Jews.

In his speech, citing books written by what he described as Zionist Jewish authors, Abbas also re-aired a discredited theory that Ashkenazi Jews hail from Khazaria, an empire located in Eastern Europe, rather than the biblical Holy Land.

“If people were offended by my statement in front of the PNC, especially people of the Jewish faith, I apologize to them,” Abbas said in his statement. “I would like to assure everyone that it was not my intention to do so, and to reiterate my full respect for the Jewish faith, as well as other monotheistic faiths.”

“I would also like to reiterate our long-held condemnation of the Holocaust, as the most heinous crime in history, and express our sympathy with its victims,” Friday’s statement from Abbas said. “Likewise, we condemn anti-Semitism in all its forms."

A couple of weeks ago, Abbas repeated every single antisemitic point he made in 2018 - and added a few more.

From MEMRI:

Abbas: "The truth that we should clarify to the world is that European Jews are not Semites. They have nothing to do with Semitism.

"The story began in 900 CE, in the Khazar Kingdom on the Caspian Sea. It was a Tatar kingdom that converted to Judaism.

"[In the 11th century], this empire collapsed, and all its population left to the north and to the west. They left for Russia and Western and Eastern Europe. They spread there, and they are the forefathers of Ashkenazi Jews. So when we hear them talk about Semitism and antisemitism – the Ashkenazi Jews, at least, are not Semites.

"They say that Hitler killed the Jews for being Jews, and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews.

"Not true. It was clearly explained that [the Europeans] fought [the Jews] because of their social role, and not their religion. Several authors wrote about this. Even Karl Marx said this was not true. He said that the enmity was not directed at Judaism as a religion, but to Judaism for is social role.

"The [Europeans] fought against these people because of their role in society, which had to do with usury, money, and so on and so forth. Even Hitler...

"Everybody knows that during World War I, Hitler was a sergeant. He said he fought the Jews because they were dealing with usury and money. In his view, they were engaged in sabotage, and this is why he hated them. We just want to make this point clear. This was not about Semitism and antisemitism.

"As for the eastern Jews, they are Semites, because all of them originated in the Arabian Peninsula and they traveled to Al-Andalus, and then came back. We are familiar with this history.

"The Balfour Declaration saw the light of day only because of the complete agreement between Balfour and U.S. President Wilson. They were in full agreement about this phrasing. So America was a partner to the Balfour Declaration. Who invented that [Jewish] state? It was Britain and America — not just Britain.

"The U.S., who was not even a member of the League of Nations, force the League of Nations to include the Balfour Declaration in its covenant. I am saying this so that we know who we should accuse of being our enemy, who has harmed us and took our homeland away, and gave it to the Israelis or the Jews.

"In 1948, the population of Israel numbered 650,000 people. In 1948-1949, they occupied 78% of Palestine. 650,000 people were not enough, so Ben-Gurion complained to the British, to his friend Churchill. He said: 'Man, I have a problem. Get me the Jews from Europe. I am short [of people]. I have this vast land, but no population.'

"[Churchill] said: 'I cannot get you the European Jews. After the World War, they emigrated to different places, or settled [in Europe], or were killed. The only ones I can get you are the Jews of the Arab countries.' But Churchill said that there was no one else. Ben-Gurion said: 'God forbid! Do me a favor, I don't want the Jews of the Arab countries.'

"[Ben-Gurion] said: 'Brother, those Jews of the Arab countries are just like the Arabs. They look like Arabs. They have the same culture, same food. I don't want them.' But [Churchill] said: 'Do whatever you want. There is no other solution.'

"Not only did Ben-Gurion agree, he sent his people to Iraq, to kill, destroy, and plant explosives in synagogues, in order to force the Iraqi Jews to emigrate. This also happened in Egypt in 1956 – the Lavon Affair – and then in Morocco, and other countries. The Jews did not want to emigrate, but they were forced to do so, by means of pressure, coercion, and murder."

Abbas repeated the exact same lies he said in 2018 - that he "apologized" for.

And after his apology, everyone forgot about his antisemitism.

Just as the media has forgotten that in 2016, Abbas claimed that rabbis called to poison Palestinian water.. His office released a statement saying "President Mahmoud Abbas has affirmed that he didn’t intend to do harm to Judaism or to offend Jewish people around the world."

Of course, he didn't apologize for lots of other antisemitic statements. In January 2018 Abbas said that European Jews stayed in Europe to be slaughtered rather than immigrate to Israel. In 2015, Abbas said Jews "have no right to defile [the Temple Mount] with their filthy feet." In 2022, Abbas told German officials that Palestinians have gone through 50 "holocausts" at the hands of Jews.

Do you sense a pattern?

No, I don't mean the pattern of Abbas saying vile statements that prove that he is an antisemite. I mean the pattern of the media and world leaders feigning outrage every single time one of his Jew-hating statements makes it into the headlines - and then they go back to acting as if Abbas is a respected member of the world community.

Which means that world leaders, the media and human rights NGOs care as much about antisemitism as Mahmoud Abbas himself does, and their lip service of condemning his statements are exactly as sincere as Abbas' "apologies" 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!

09/06 Links Pt2: Biden Backdoors Israel in the U.N.; Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s daughter boycotts namesake CUNY center over anti-Israel speech

From Ian:

Biden Backdoors Israel in the U.N., Rescinding Trump’s Recognition of Sovereignty over the Golan

Nowhere is the split between formal U.S. policy and the stealth agendas being implemented by U.S. policymakers more glaring and toxic than in the Middle East. This is true because the core of U.S. Middle East policy is the de facto alliance with Iran promoted by the Obama administration and enshrined in the JCPOA. Obama’s revisionist approach to Iran has in essence left the U.S. with two Mideast policies—one enshrined in our alliances and understandings with historic U.S. allies, and the other centered on dumping our commitments to our allies in order to appease Iran. Only one of these is truly U.S. regional policy, of course—the policy that seeks to establish Iran as the center of a new Middle East. As a result, American commitments now serve to gaslight our allies into going along by encouraging them to imagine that, sooner or later, things will go back to normal.

The focus of the split in U.S. policy and of gaslighting our allies is the Lebanese pseudo state run by Hezbollah, the terror army controlled by Iran. By dealing with “Lebanon,” the U.S. can help forward the objectives of its Iranian partner without ever dealing directly with Iran—and thereby can continue gaslighting its allies to the extent that they would prefer to believe that the U.S. is still their partner.

The latest act in the Biden administration’s Middle Eastern Kabuki theater is the use of Lebanon to rescind America’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. No formal announcement of this major policy shift was made, of course. Instead, it was buried in the fine print of the U.N. Security Council’s reauthorization of UNIFIL, the force that ostensibly secures Lebanon’s border with Israel. In a reprise of Barack Obama’s passage of Security Council Resolution 2334 in the final days of his second term, Team Obama-Biden on Aug. 31 again used the route of the Security Council to abandon a formal American commitment and implement a new policy with extreme repercussions for Israel’s security.

With UNSCR 2334, Obama adopted the so-called 1967 lines as the official U.S. position on Israel and its conflict with neighboring Arabs. The resolution called upon all states “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967,” and reaffirmed that all Israeli communities established in territory “occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, have no legal validity.” It meant that the U.S. had adopted the position of Israel’s enemies on East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, as well as on the Golan Heights.

UNSCR 2334 was the twin of UNSCR 2231, the resolution Obama used to lock in his deal with Iran at the Security Council. Obama’s objective in both cases was to bypass Congress and to tie the hands of his successor by etching his preferences—what people like to call his “legacy”—in Security Council resolutions.

Both planks of Obama’s “legacy” were cracked by Donald Trump, who made two historic moves of his own: moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

When Trump made his move, officials from Team Obama (who now serve in the Biden administration) publicly opposed it. Obama’s former ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, who is currently the Biden administration’s senior adviser for “Regional Integration,” was particularly vocal in his opposition to the recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan. In fact, Shapiro wrote, the recognition might become an obstacle to a future Israeli-Saudi agreement—a line that offered a preview of how the Biden administration would invert the Abraham Accords in order to reassert Obama’s framework.

Upon returning to power, the Biden administration underscored its plan to reopen the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. It also quickly tipped its hand on its intention to reaffirm Obama’s position on the Golan. In February 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken telegraphed the administration’s rejection of Trump’s decision, as well as their plan to rescind it during their tenure. The administration continued to speak of Israel’s “control” (as opposed to “sovereignty”) over the Golan as a “practical” matter. The issue of “legality,” however, was “something else” that the administration was “still working on,” as U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield put it in June 2021.

And work on it they did. This past June, the administration took measures to reaffirm Obama’s UNSCR 2334 legacy, issuing new guidance to government agencies ending scientific and technological cooperation with Israel “in geographic areas which came under the administration of Israel after 1967.”

Three Years Later, Trump Deserves A Nobel Peace Prize For The Abraham Accords

This month, the world will celebrate the three-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords.

While the Obama administration and others said Trump’s bold decision to keep his campaign promise and move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel, would cause war in the Middle East, just the opposite happened. Many of these individuals said the same when the framework of the Abraham Accords was initially announced, but just as they were wrong before, they were wrong once again.

On Sept. 15, 2020, President Trump ushered in a new era of peace and collaboration in the Middle East among Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco without a single bullet fired. Imagine that: Peace was achieved through America leading with strength, without any wars started, when the experts said the opposite would happen.

Furthermore, Trump and his administration provided the metaphorical runway and jet fuel for long-standing relationships among the Israelis, Bahrainis, and Emiratis that had been held in the darkness to take off into the light for the world to see, which has led to tremendous economic and societal expansion. As commercial ties grow, so will the strength of the bonds between the countries and their people.

Per the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, trade between the countries saw a major increase from 2021 to 2022, coming in at $3.37 billion in 2022, an 82 percent increase from 2021! Bahrain is set to utilize Israeli solar technology as a result of the Abraham Accords, and earlier this year, the Abrahamic Family House opened its doors to the world in Abu Dhabi. The center encompasses three separate houses of worship — a mosque, a church, and a synagogue, as well as shared spaces for gathering and dialogue. Based on these economic and societal indicators, the Abraham Accords have been a major success thus far.

Both authors have seen firsthand how Israel is liked and respected in the Arab world, which never would have happened if not for the Abraham Accords. Having served as a U.S. Army Reserve captain and intelligence officer in Saudi Arabia during the historic peace accords, Abraham Hamadeh had a unique experience serving in the Middle East, with Syrian ancestry and Arabic language skills allowing for much more personal interactions with Saudi Arabia’s security apparatus’ leadership — and they’re ready for peace.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s daughter boycotts namesake CUNY center over anti-Israel speech at law school graduation

The daughter of the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is boycotting the opening of a CUNY institution named after her father due to a speech at the university’s law school commencement that she called antisemitic.

Maura Moynihan, 66, told the New York Jewish Week that she believes the university system has not done enough to combat and condemn antisemitism on their campuses. In protest, she said that she intends to skip the Thursday opening of The Moynihan Center, a City College institution dedicated to cultivating new public affairs leaders.

“The speech by Fatima Mousa Mohammed at the CUNY Law School commencement shocked and horrified so many people in New York and around the world,” Moynihan said, referring to a May 12 graduation speech by a student who praised the law school as a rare place where students could, in her view, “speak out against Israeli settler colonialism.”

Moynihan added that her father, an Irish Catholic, was a great supporter of Israel. She said that by not condemning Mohammed’s address, The City College of New York — which is also part of the CUNY system but operates separately from the law school — is “taking his name in vain.”

The Daniel Patrick Moynihan Center is part of City College’s Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership. It will host two new fellowship programs and a slate of events dedicated to advancing public scholarship and public service. The center received a grant of nearly $7 million from the Leon Levy Foundation, which is known for supporting many Jewish causes in New York City, including the Tenement Museum and the Center for Jewish History.

Back in April, I asked a question: Is Tucker Carlson a Covert Antisemite? To my mind, there is no question that he is, but people understand things in different ways. Some want proof rather than this author’s interpretation of Carlson’s words and deeds.

In a way, that is the point. There likely will never be proof. This is why I refer to Carlson’s brand of antisemitism as “covert.” It’s slippery and slimy. It’s about pushing the boundaries as far as he can go without going over the line. Carlson goes just far enough in what he says, the words just shy of, “I hate Jews.”

Some Jews are unfortunately too nice. They are not interested in believing the worst of a person. So, short of Carlson shouting into a megaphone, “I hate Jews,” the benefit-of-the doubter Jews will doggedly insist on proof. “Can you prove it?” and since Carlson never leaves much of a trail, you’ve got no way to do so. Not that I make much effort to persuade them. Either they do or don’t believe that Tucker Carlson is an antisemite.

Aside from requiring proof of Tucker’s antisemitism, there’s another factor in play for those who just don’t buy it. Some Jews don’t want to believe that Tucker is an antisemite because they otherwise agree with his Conservative politics. Since they agree with Tucker on so many other things, they pooh-pooh any suggestion that Carlson, at heart, hates Jews.

I noted the same phenomenon when I wrote about RFK Jr.’s antisemitism. Some readers were upset. They said to me, “Can you prove it?” and they aren’t even Democrats.

There is irony in the sudden request for proof of antisemitism in the case of RFK Jr. The same readers challenging me to bring them cold, hard evidence that Tucker is a Jew-hater, are like me, generally hypersensitive to antisemitic undertones and nuances. What made them look the other way from the empirical evidence this time, and hold their nose at the stench, was RFK Jr.’s stance on vaccination, with which they agree.

To all of these naysayers, I will, unlike Tucker Carlson, declare myself out and out: Of course I can’t prove it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know it.

Tucker Carlson will not be coming out of the Jew-hate closet any time soon, at least not on purpose. He’ll never say the words out loud. And some Jews will always insist on his innocence. Even after much proof, such as a recent Tucker Carlson interview with Douglas Macgregor, a retired US colonel, about the war in Ukraine, as captured by the Israel Advocacy Movement.

Macgregor, like Tucker Carlson, understands how to say just enough to escape any overt accusations of antisemitism. His words hint at hatred without actually saying the J word out loud. Like here, where all the people Macgregor references are Jewish:

Tucker Carlson: How would you characterize Zelenskyy?

Douglas Macgregor: He was picked and then blessed by Victoria Nuland and the State Department as their man. Now, when he originally ran for office, he ran on a peace platform. Ukrainians didn't want to go to war with Russia. Of course, once he was in there, he took a different road, and I can't help but think that that road was defined for him by us.

Tucker Carlson: Who is Victoria Nuland?

Douglas Macgregor: Ah, goodness gracious, all these hard questions, Tucker! I do not know Victoria Nuland, personally. I know Fred Kagan, and his brother Bob is married to her and she's a long-term committed neocon. No, I don't think she understands the gravity of the situation. These are the same people. Tony Blinken is in this.

These are people with this agenda and the agenda says until the entire world is garrisoned by US forces and is converted forcibly to some form of democracy that we approve of, uh, the world will not be safe, and we must continue to fight, and I think in in the case of Russia, Russia has special appeal, because I think these people have ancestors who come from that region in the world, and have a permanent ax to grind with the Russians. Now of course, which I don't, and I don't think most Americans do, and nor do I think anybody in the government should shape policy based on whatever unhappiness their ancestors, you know, experienced in a place like Russia.

Tucker then asks Macgregor why both Democrats and Republicans support Ukraine.

Douglas Macgregor: Well, first of all you've got to go through and identify the donors. What's their background; where did they come from; and why do they feel the way they do? I think there're more personal issues there than we realize with many of them.

Macgregor, this whole time, is talking about Jews. And Tucker never once calls him out for airing antisemitic conspiracy theories. Tucker Carlson is quite happy to interview this man and air his views for his listeners. Why? Is it about freedom of speech?

No. It’s about antisemitism. And no I don’t have proof. You either see it and believe it or you don’t.

Tucker Carlson is carefully testing antisemitic tropes on his show. https://t.co/hA9vLaEvSQ
— George Yury Revutsky (@george_revutsky) August 22, 2023

We shouldn’t mind the people who don’t want to admit Carlson is an antisemite because they like his politics. They’re just fooling themselves. It’s the benefit-of-the-doubter Jews who are worrisome. They are like the Jews who waited too long to leave Europe, because Hitler and his goose-stepping fans were not to be taken seriously. They thought that Hitler and his Nazis were just a flash in the pan. Germany wouldn’t let a Holocaust happen.

By the time these Jews understood that Hitler was not some temporary nuisance but manifestly evil, the gates had already closed and they could not leave. Which is a common theme in Jewish history. Jews don’t want to believe someone can be evil. They won’t believe it until it is absolutely proven—like when they see smoke coming out of an Auschwitz crematorium, or watch people walk into a shower and never come out.

That is far too late.

For Jews, in particular, it is crucial to recognize that some people really are bad. And the last thing you want from them is proof.

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!

How to spread antisemitic lies in academic papers: A case study from @FeministReview_

In 2021, the academic journal Feminist Review published "(Re)producing the Israeli (European) body: Zionism, Anti-Black Racism and the Depo-Provera Affair" by Bayan Abusneineh.

Its abstract:

This article examines the Depo-Provera Affair—where Israeli doctors administered the contraceptive Depo-Provera to newly immigrated Ethiopian Jewish women—to argue that the Israeli settler colonial project depends on these forms of gendered anti-Black violence, through the management of Black African bodies. In 2013, then Israeli Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman admitted that they had administered Depo-Provera to Ethiopian immigrant women without their consent, after reproductive and civil rights activists in Israel called for an investigation after a drop in the birthrate among Ethiopian women: close to 50 per cent within the previous decade. The demarcation of Blackness as a political tool necessary to advance Israeli modernity and the situating of Black bodies as antithetical to the state of Israel are not contradictory but rather illuminate Israel’s deployment of anti-Blackness through the racial and reproductive violence necessary to become part of the superior, European West.

The entire article is an anti-Israel screed (and, as you can see from the title, an anti-Jewish screed that accuses Jews of being white Europeans).

And it is based on something that never happened.

Yaakov Litzman didn't "admit" that Depo-Provera was injected into Ethiopian Jewish women without their consent. There was a documentary that made those claims then Litzman authorized an investigation. But in the end, it was all a slander - no Ethiopian women were forced to take this (temporary) contraceptive, although some may have misunderstood what the doctors said. As my investigation proved, many of the women wanted to take the contraceptive secretly, against their husbands' wishes - turning this episode from infantilizing these women into empowering them.

Haaretz' story claiming that Israeli officials admitted to this conspiracy theory was corrected and rewritten.

The entire basis for this paper is false. Its conclusions of a racist Israeli society - the only country that actually went out of their way to save the lives of black people in Africa - are utterly false. The paper also sprinkles other lies, like claiming that Israel as a nation has "past and present ties to the eugenics movement" based wholly on the opinions of one Zionist who died in 1943.

It is bad enough that Feminist Review publishes a paper where the linchpin of the author's thesis is a falsehood.

It is bad enough that Feminist Review is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

But since this lie was published in a respected, peer reviewed journal, it is now being cited as factual in other academic journals. Google Scholar lists six papers that cite this one, most of them clearly written from an anti-Israel perspective as well:

Coloniality and feminist collusion: Breaking free, thinking anew
NK Purewal, J Ung Loh - Feminist Review, 2021

Beyond the contours of Zionist sovereignty: Decolonisation in Palestine's Unity Intifada
W Alqaisiya - Political Geography, 2023 - Elsevier

Structural racism and the health of Palestinian citizens of Israel
O Tanous, Y Asi, W Hammoudeh, D Mills… - Global Public …, 2023 - Taylor & Francis

For sled dogs and women: Hormonal contraception and animacy hierarchies in Danish/Greenlandic Depo-Provera debates
AN Bang, CH Kroløkke - European Journal of Women's …, 2023 - journals.sagepub.com

Jil Oslo Generation Palestinians and the Fight for Human Rights
BK Thakore - Critical Sociology, 2022 - journals.sagepub.com

Criminalising Palestinians: History and Borders in the Construction of the Palestinian Threat
M Al-Hindi - International Journal for Crime, Justice and …, 2023 - crimejusticejournal.com

The lie spreads and cross-breeds with dozens of other falsehoods and half-truths, in turn creating more raw material for modern antisemites to spread hate in an academically respectable way.

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!

09/06 Links Pt1: Abbas: Hitler Fought European Jews Because of Usury, Money Dealings; NYT's Thomas Friedman is consistently wrong about Israel

From Ian:

Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Evil manifests on the streets of Gaza

We are familiar with the professors’ key talking point: “One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.” That is certainly true, and therein lies the core of the problem. Is there a reasonable defense of that position? Are there no moral distinctions left to ponder? Isn’t there an obvious difference between combatants and non-combatants, between military targets and a kindergarten teacher? What happens to a world in which people are no longer able to or simply refuse to make simple moral distinctions?

Their apologists insist that Palestinians under occupation “have no choice,” that their dignity has been stripped away by Israelis. Terrorism, mayhem, and murder, including killing women and children in cold blood, are legitimate responses in fighting for their future. Far from condemning Palestinian terrorism, such apologists insist that the world needs to understand it and applaud all courageous acts that resist Israeli "genociders."

But that narrative lays the groundwork for a world without reason, or a world where reason is eagerly subverted to conform to personal feelings, a worldview that could unleash a dystopia that our civilization cannot endure for long.

As the memory of the 20th century fades, we must ponder whether the world has internalized any of the lessons from the Holocaust. Didn’t the jurists at Nuremberg conclude that each individual is responsible for their decisions? Didn’t they decide that people are responsible for their actions, regardless of the arguments or orders of others to commit atrocities?

Sacrificing reason and Palestinian children on an altar of a deadly political narrative has not helped a single Palestinian. Yet the very global agencies and NGOs charged with defending core human values too often rationalize and legitimize Jew-hatred, hate crimes, and terrorism by upending simple moral reason. They will yet have to confront the bitter fruit of their sophistry as social media teaches new generations around the world how to leverage violence and hate to dehumanize the “enemy” and potentially take down their own society’s future.

And what about the ordinary citizens of Gaza or the West Bank who never strapped on a suicide vest or stabbed a Jewish family during a Passover celebration or Shabbat dinner? Why does poll after poll show majorities supporting terrorism and rejecting compromise that would guarantee two peoples living side by side in peace? The most disturbing lesson

Perhaps the most disturbing lesson provided by the propaganda specialists of the Third Reich, Stalin’s Russia, and Mao’s China is that ordinary people can become eager supporters of and participants in individual and mass violence, even murder. The first step is to inculcate an irrational sense of otherness about some “enemy,” and then brainwash the youth to embrace and normalize that irrationality.

This is precisely what we see in Gaza. Palestinian society has been teaching, preaching, and practicing genocidal hatred of Jews in its schools and mosques and in the media for three generations. And the nations who donate to them rarely utter a word of protest.

Leaders of the world beware. Today, evil manifests itself on the streets of Gaza, in the cells of Tehran’s Evin prison, and in concentration camps filled with Uyghurs. Such evil repackaged as morality is not only a stain on our democracies but a poison pill that can deconstruct a university, a city, and, yes, even houses of worship. Once you erase the difference between resistance and murder, between morality and impulse, what follows? What about older people who continue to function, but fill our hospitals? Don’t younger people deserve more of those precious resources? Won’t newer generations feel better by ridding themselves, by all means necessary, of groups whose beliefs or ideologies they find repugnant?

Reason is not perfect, but it got civilization this far. Embracing evil as just, or accepting it as the new normal, is a prescription for global disaster and oblivion.

Families of terror victims sue to block US from releasing $40 billion in frozen Iran funds accounts

A group of American victims of Iranian terrorism, who hold more than $400 million dollars in court judgments against the Islamic Republic for its sponsorship of terrorist attacks, have moved to enjoin the Biden Administration from releasing an estimated $40 billion in frozen Iranian assets. The United States has pledged to unfreeze the funds belonging to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), which are primarily held in overseas bank accounts, under an upcoming prisoner release agreement being currently negotiated with Tehran. The families claim that releasing the funds will prevent them from enforcing their judgments against these assets, and as a practical matter may preclude them from ever collecting on their judgments.

Two dozen plaintiffs filed the lawsuit today in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit names the U.S. State Department and Treasury Department as well as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin as respondents.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the terror victims by attorneys Robert J. Tolchin of New York and Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Tel, Aviv, Israel who represent the families.

According to news reports the U.S. and Iran, which is holding five Iranian-Americans in prison in Tehran and has demanded the release of the frozen funds as a ransom, have been moving towards a deal that would see $40 billion in Iran assets returned to the Iranian regime. It is speculated that the U.S. and Iran are on the verge of a broader agreement, however.

The families’ judgments stem from deadly attacks, including suicide bombings, car ramming attacks, and drive-by shootings, committed from 2001-2016 by Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestine Islamic Jihad, in which the terror-victim plaintiffs were harmed. In addition to the American families bringing the petition there are many other victims who have won judgments against Iran.

MEMRI: Israeli-Arab Writer: Normalization With Israel Is A Done Deal; It's Time To Stop Persecuting Individual Arabs For 'Cultural Normalization'

On August 15, 2023, the UAE hosted a football match between the Jordanian Al-Wehdat team and the Emirati Shabab Al-Ahli Dubai team.[1] The match sparked controversy and was almost canceled because the Emirati team includes an Arab Israeli player, Mu'nas Dabbur, who formerly played on Israel's national football team. While some Jordanian Al-Wehdat fans called to boycott the game in order to avoid sanctioning "normalization" with Israel, other elements, such as Jordanian MP Khalil 'Atiyya, called on the management of the club not to do so, because this would offend the Palestinians and especially the Palestinians "in the 1948 territories," i.e., Israeli Arabs.[2]

Israeli Arab elements, such as Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi and the municipality of Nazareth, Dabbur's hometown, likewise urged the Jordanian football club not to boycott the match, since this would be unfair not only to footballer Mu'nas Dabbur but to all Palestinian Arabs who are citizens of Israel. In their statements they praised Dabbur and emphasized his national Palestinian positions.[3]

After voting against boycotting the match, the club management issued a statement stressing its commitment to the Palestinian cause and its opposition to normalization, and explained that it had taken this decision to avoid damaging Jordan's relations with the UAE.[4] Six of the club's board members resigned – a move that the club president, Bashar Al-Hawamdeh, condemned as "populist" – but withdrew their resignation a few days later.[5]

On August 4, after the controversy over the game broke out but before Al-Wehdat announced that it would be playing, Jawad Boulos, an Israeli Arab attorney and journalist, addressed the affair in the London-based Qatari daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi. He wrote that the effective forms of boycott against Israel – diplomatic and economic boycott – are no longer implemented, and only the "cultural boycott" remains. That is, powerful Arab regimes and Arab tycoons maintain ties and trade relations with Israel without hindrance – yet individuals like athletes, artists, writers, poets and members of various professional unions are persecuted by "radical activists" for engaging in so-called cultural normalization with Israel. They suffer this persecution regardless of their political positions on the Palestinian cause and their contribution to this cause.

The following are excerpts from Jawad Boulos' article:[6]
"The repercussions of two local events are still plaguing us and causing doubts among us regarding the ban on cultural normalization with Israel. The first of these events was the harsh criticism that accompanied the visit of the Tunisian singer Emel Mathlouthi in the occupied Palestinian territories. She insisted on giving several performances in Ramallah and Jerusalem, but was eventually forced to cancel her show in Haifa, succumbing to pressure from elements that call for a cultural boycott of Israel.

The second event involved the Jordanian Al-Wehdat [football] club, whose management announced several days ago that it intended 'to sit out a match against the Emirati Shabab Al-Ahli team in the AFC Champions League preliminaries, due to suspicion of normalization.' By 'suspicion [of normalization]' it meant the participation of the Palestinian player Mu'nas Dabbur, from Nazareth, who now plays professionally for the Emirati Al-Ahli [football] club and who used to be an international player on Israel's national team…

The Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights just released its report of human rights violations by Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Gaza in 2022 (it has not yet been released in English.)

Its section on violations against Palestinian human rights activists is summarized:

Concerning human rights defenders, the independent commission said: Human rights defenders are exposed to a number of violations and harassment committed by official bodies or other unofficial parties. It may lead to murder, kidnapping, arrest, torture, threats, harm to the family and defamation. Defenders of women's rights are subjected to various harassments by social movements and religious and political parties, who see their defense of women as a contradiction with religion and in line with the goals of the West and a denial of Arab values, customs and traditions.

Those stories, about real abuse against real human rights activists, is rarely covered by the media - because it doesn't fit the narrative that Israel is the human rights violator of Palestinians and, of course, also one of the biggest human rights abusers in the world. (Apparently Israel is surrounded by an oasis of liberal progressive protectors of humanity.)

So the reality gets buried in reports no one reads while the media exaggerates and fabricates Israeli crimes.

There are real Palestinian human rights defenders - and no one hears about them.

But there are also fake human rights defenders that get lot of coverage. Here's a story that is getting play in Arabic news sites today:

Human rights organizations have called for a boycott of Israeli companies specialized in the field of water and agriculture, prior to their participation in the United Nations Climate Summit (COP 28) scheduled for the end of next November in the UAE.

These companies work to improve their image in front of the world in light of their theft of Palestinian rights to water and the destruction of the Palestinian environment through toxic agricultural pesticides.

The companies (Mekorot, Netafim, Haifa Chemicals, and Adama) seek to present themselves during the summit with their ability to achieve sustainable solutions regarding the environment around the world, at a time when these companies steal Palestinian resources and direct them towards illegal Israeli settlements according to international law.

Human rights organizations are working to reveal the true face of these Israeli companies, and to defend Palestinian rights against climate colonialism.

Notice anything strange?

The stories do not mention a single "human rights" organization that is calling for this boycott.

The only group I can find talking about this is, of course, BDS. They probably pretend to be a human rights organization. Yet it would not be a surprise if HRW or Amnesty indeed does call for a boycott of Israeli companies at COP28. Because "human rights" is now nothing more than a slogan, with no relationship with real human rights.

And the real contributions that Israeli technology make to help the world conserve water are considered not as important as the political boycott of any Jewish-owned company in the Middle East.

And real humans will be deprived of water in the name of "human rights."

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

As a new school year starts, Palestinians are complaining in their media about how Israel is forcing Jerusalem schools to standardize on an Israeli curriculum that does not encourage terror and "martyrdom."

The Rowad Al-Quds School in Beit Hanina, an Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem, was built in 2016. It has been accredited by the Jerusalem Municipality and it uses the Israeli Arabic curriculum.

It looks like a normal school. The students look like normal teens.. Some are religious, some are not. No one is judged. The classrooms and facilities look modern and comfortable.

And Arab culture is not sidetracked, but celebrated:

These are the horrors of an Arabic school under Israeli accreditation.

Imagine if all Palestinian Arabs went to schools like this and if their teens looked like the students at Rowad Al Quds -- instead of these:

(h/t iTi)

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!

Bergen-Belsen

From the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, How Latin American Passports Were Used to Save Lives during the Holocaust, by Efraim Zadoff.

This is a bit different than most stories of diplomats issuing papers to Jews. In this case, even the Germans often knew that the papers were issued illegally (and indeed many Jews with these papers were sent to extermination camps.) But the Nazis were keen on prisoner exchanges with the Allies and they sometimes used these Jews as bargaining chips to sweeten the terms of the swaps.

As many as a thousand Jews were saved this way. And the diplomats who saved the Jews were almost all punished by their governments.

Excerpts:

The use of Latin American passports during the Holocaust has yet to receive the attention it warrants in Holocaust historiography.

This article is based on a wider study aimed at shedding light on the identity of the individuals who served Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Chile (Samuel del Campo), Costa Rica, Ecuador (Manuel Antonio Muñoz Borrero), El Salvador (Arturo Castellanos), Guatemala, Honduras (Alfonse and Isabelle Bauer), Haiti (Johan Schluchin, J. Bruner), Paraguay (Rudolf Hügli), and Peru (José María Barreto and José Gambetta). These officials operated in a number of countries and under widely varying circumstances. Some were posted to Switzerland (Bern, Geneva, and Zurich), Sweden (Stockholm) or Portugal (Lisbon)—three European countries that maintained neutrality throughout the war. Others were situated in Axis-aligned Romania (Bucharest and Czernowitz) and Japan (Kobe) or in the Americas, in countries such as Bolivia, Paraguay, Costa Rica, and the United States. One operated out of German-occupied Poland. Most of these individuals risked and eventually lost their jobs for consciously taking action that ran counter to the instructions and policies of their superiors and of their own governments regarding the rescue of Jews during the war.

In some cases, these once-trusted diplomats were placed under surveillance and subjected to police interrogations in the countries in which they served. This diversity among the diplomats involved in the endeavor to save Jews with Latin American documents also characterized the individuals and entities behind that effort. In most cases, a broad group of Jewish activists with disparate orientations—Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) and Orthodox rabbis, Zionists and non-Zionists, officials of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), entrepreneurs and businessmen—led the struggle to get Latin American diplomats on board and obtain the required documents from them. Occasionally, non-Jewish individuals and officials, such as the Polish diplomatic team in Bern, cooperated in this effort and even actively supported it. The result was the rescue of many hundreds of Jews (probably over 1,000).

Three primary types of documents were used in such rescue efforts. The first was a passport, which indicated that the person named was a citizen of the country of issue. The Ecuadorian passport took the form of a hardbound traditional booklet, whereas those of Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, and Paraguay generally consisted of standard sheets of paper. Both contained a photo of the person or persons in whose name the passport was issued (sometimes such documents were issued to an entire family). In some cases, Jews received copies bearing notary certification, which lent additional credibility to the document; the original was stored in the archive of the organization that had sent it in case its retrieval became necessary.Footnote6

The second type of document used in this context was a certificate of protection, which indicated that its bearer enjoyed the protection of the country of issue, as in the case of documents issued by El Salvador and others by Paraguay.

The third type of document issued was known as a promesa (Spanish for “promise”), which, as reflected in its name, constituted a guarantee that when the bearer arrived at a consul of the state in question, he or she would be issued an immigration visa.

In all cases, both the diplomats who issued the documents and the Jews who received them were cognizant of the fact that they were not legal and unrecognized by the state in question and therefore could not be used for immigration purposes....The reason for securing such documents was that they provided a degree of protection for Jews by transforming them into the subjects of neutral or enemy states. ...Such documents were primarily used to help enable the Germans to hold hostages whom they could then swap for their compatriots held in Allied countries.

...The prisoner exchange between Germany and the Allied countries took place at the beginning of 1945. On January 21 of that year, a train left Bergen Belsen carrying 301 Jews holding Latin American passports. Before the train crossed the border into Switzerland, some Jews were removed due to their poor physical condition and were sent to the camps at Biberach and Wurzach in southern Germany. Some of the members of this group did not survive. Those who arrived in Switzerland underwent the required medical examinations and treatments, and were subsequently transferred by US hospital ship from the French port of Marseilles to the Jean d’Arc transit camp in Philippeville, Algeria.

The consuls serving in Sweden, Switzerland, and Romania who issued these documents were placed under surveillance and subjected to police interrogations in the countries in which they served. At the same time, upon receipt of information regarding the issuance of passports, the foreign ministries of the countries represented by the consuls decided to punish those diplomats by removing them from their positions in the foreign service.