Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, December 12, 2023

The @NYTimes promoting the smokescreen that tries to hide today's blatant antisemitism in city councils

Practically no Jew-haters admit they are Jew-haters.

The entire term "anti-semitism" was coined to hide the fact that the Jew-haters of 19th century Europe hated Jews, claiming that they were only against the racial inferiority of "Semites" - it was objective science, not irrational hate against a religious group.

Even in the early days of Nazi rule, officials strenuously denied persecuting Jews and pretended they were only defending Germans from outsiders threatening their way of life.

The deceptions and the attempts to hide Jew-hatred behind respectable sounding arguments are no less prevalent today. No one wants to be called an antisemite. But antisemitism is the only consistent explanation for the unhinged hate towards Israel we have seen every day since it was founded.

The problem is when the mainstream media reports the smokescreen as if it is the truth.

From the New York Times:

For weeks, Americans in a host of Democratic-led cities have packed their government chambers for marathon sessions, all to demand immediate action from local leaders on a matter nowhere near home: the Israel-Hamas war.

More than a dozen U.S. city councils have now passed resolutions urging Israel to stop shelling Gaza, including several in Michigan, which has a sizable Muslim population, and several in California. Among the biggest cities to do so are Atlanta and Detroit.

Local resolutions on international affairs largely amount to symbolic gestures that play no direct role in foreign policymaking. But they can send a signal to allies abroad over the domestic political temperature and provide a vehicle for some of the most opinionated voters to say their piece.

Those calling for cease-fire resolutions believe that this time, a critical mass of local gestures may ultimately convey to the White House that it has lost support for backing Israel’s military campaign. Especially if the resolutions come from Democratic strongholds that serve as President Biden’s base.

“You can see the momentum,” said Eduardo Martinez, the mayor of Richmond, Calif., which was the first city to pass a cease-fire resolution, deploying some of the strongest criticism of Israel and accusing it of “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing.”

These people aren't crowding city council meetings to demand a ceasefire. They are there to publicly slander Israel.

The public council meetings allow any crackpot to make any public statement, for the record, televised, and unopposed. It is an ideal way to normalize hate. And that is exactly what is being done.

Demands for a "ceasefire" are a smokescreen. Because the same people had previously demanded resolutions to declare Israel an "apartheid state." And before that to call for boycotting Israel and only Israel. A boycott resolution was proposed at Berkeley as far back as 2002 during the height of the second intifada. The contents of the resolutions don't matter - as long as the public discussion is centered on demonizing Israel. If they win, great; if they lose, they can have the circus again next year.

The BDS Movement even has a guide on how to hijack local city councils and unions for anti-Israel purposes. They give a "menu" of excuses to use, "depending on your context" - for some, "divestment" might be the hook to use, for others, "ceasefire," and for others, "anti-apartheid." These resolutions are an update of the many anti-Israel resolutions that were all over campuses during the 2010s, just with a more public venue.

Some of the resolutions even add language against antisemitism (and Islamophobia) in order to inoculate themselves against those exact charges. But no one passed resolutions demanding a ceasefire in Syria; one would be hard pressed to find resolutions in support of the Uyghurs in China or the Rohingya in Myanmar.

It is always Israel. And that is antisemitism.

Antisemitism is fun. It is pleasurable. It gives one the opportunity to publicly attack Jews while pretending to be moral and "on the right side of history." And when it is done in an official venue like a city council debate, the hate becomes normalized.

That is the entire point.

When the New York Times calls these modern antisemites "cease-fire activists," they are also normalizing antisemitism.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Constantine 1934: A mini-October 7, Arabs slaughtering Jews and being proud of it today

From JTA, August 8, 1934:

A scene of utter desolation and horror, of Jewish girls with their breasts cut off, of little children with numerous knife wounds and of whole families locked in their homes and burned to death, was described by a Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent, who succeeded in reaching this city today.

“It will take days before the world will obtain a true picture of all the atrocities committed by the Arabs during the pogrom on the Jewish quarter,” the correspondent wired.

“The only comparison I can think of is the Palestine riots of 1929. I found Jewish girls with their breasts cut off, greybearded Jews stabbed to death, little Jewish children dead of numerous knife wounds and whole families locked in their homes and burned to death by the rioters.

A more extensive report added these details:

Women attacked and breasts cut off. Families locking themselves in rooms and either being burned to death or forced to escape when their houses are burned down, where they are slaughtered.

This sounds chillingly familiar.

The people who say "history didn't start on October 7" are entirely right. Arabs have mercilessly attacked Jews on any or no pretense for centuries beforehand - and, just like today, they look at these massacres as honorable battles.

In the end, 25 Jews were murdered, and over a thousand were forced to leave their homes.

An Algerian newspaper interviewed historian,Dr. Ammar Talebi, about the event, and he painted the massacre in heroic terms, saying that the Jews insulted Mohammed and killed Muslim children, and were then confronted. [Algerian media often rewrite the episode to make themselves look heroic.] The historian himself draws a comparison between Constantine and October 7, saying, "This is [the Jews'] policy from the battle of Constantine to the battle of Gaza. History repeated itself. Their state will be annihilated."

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!

12/11 Links Pt2: Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals; The Things I Never Thought Possible—Until October 7; What Hamas can learn from Hanukkah

From Ian:

Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals

The lesson of German history for American academia should by now be clear. In Germany, to use the legalistic language of 2023, “speech crossed into conduct.” The “final solution of the Jewish question” began as speech—to be precise, it began as lectures and monographs and scholarly articles. It began in the songs of student fraternities. With extraordinary speed after 1933, however, it crossed into conduct: first, systematic pseudo-legal discrimination and ultimately, a program of technocratic genocide.

The Holocaust remains an exceptional historical crime—distinct from other acts of organized lethal violence directed against other minorities—precisely because it was perpetrated by a highly sophisticated nation-state that had within its borders the world’s finest universities. That is why American universities cannot regard antisemitism as just another expression of “hate,” no different from, say, Islamophobia—a neologism that should not be mentioned in the same breath. That is why Claudine Gay’s double standards—with their implication that African Americans are somehow more deserving of protection than Jews—are so indefensible.

That is why rational minds recoil from her argument that antisemitism on the Harvard campus is tolerable so long as genocide is not being perpetrated.

Well, the backlash against our contemporary treason of the intellectuals has finally arrived.

Donors such as the chief executive of Apollo, Marc Rowan (a Penn graduate), Pershing Square founder Bill Ackman (Harvard), and Stone Ridge founder Ross Stevens (Penn) have each made clear that their support will no longer be forthcoming for institutions run in this fashion.

On Saturday, Penn president Liz Magill stepped down, along with the chair of the Penn board of trustees, Scott Bok. Perhaps others will follow.

Yet it will take a lot more than a few high-profile resignations to reform the culture of America’s elite universities. It is much too entrenched in multiple departments, all dominated by a tenured faculty, to say nothing of the armies of DEI and Title IX officers who seem, at some colleges, now to outnumber the undergraduates.

In La trahison des clercs, Julien Benda accused the intellectuals of his time of dabbling in “the racial passions, class passions, and national passions. . . owing to which men rise up against other men.” Today’s academic leaders would never recognize themselves as the heirs of those Benda condemned, insisting that they are on the left, whereas Benda’s targets were on the right. And yet, as Victor Klemperer came to understand after 1945, totalitarianism comes in two flavors, though the ingredients are the same.

Only if the once-great American universities can reestablish—throughout their fabric—the separation of Wissenschaft from Politik can they be sure of avoiding the fate of Marburg and Königsberg.

The Things I Never Thought Possible—Until October 7

I witnessed antisemitism for the very first time at school in Germany, when classmates taunted a Jewish girl I was friends with just for being Jewish. I saw pictures from Auschwitz for the very first time when the television series Holocaust showed images of the mass murder and the dead bodies piled up there.

On my first trip to Israel, I wept while talking to German Holocaust survivors who, despite their concentration camp tattoos, still felt homesick when speaking of the country they were born in. Then I went to Auschwitz for the first time because I wanted to gain a better understanding of how people could do such inhumane things to their fellow humans, and because I wanted to see the ruins of the gas chambers, a place that symbolizes the collapse of civilization.

From then on, I felt certain—or wanted to feel certain—of one thing: that antisemitism would be fought against successfully in Germany if it ever again raised its ugly head beyond the criminally fanatical right-wing extreme.

I also thought Israel’s right to exist in the democratic world was nonnegotiable and nobody—except for the extremist mortal enemies of Israel—would ever think otherwise. And that if worst came to worst, we could always rely on America, with its love of freedom, to stand at Israel’s side.

The last few weeks have shown every one of my assumptions to have been sadly mistaken. Since October 7, anything is possible.

I didn’t want to believe it was possible that, immediately following the terror attacks on Israel—after a pogrom, a genocidal offensive in which more than a thousand Israelis, among them women, elderly men, children, and babies, were shot, stabbed, raped, burned, and beheaded by Palestinian terrorists, and recordings of these horrors were disseminated with triumphant words—that Salafists would be handing out candy on the streets of Berlin and celebrating this successful antisemitic attack without anyone stepping in to stop them from doing so.

I didn’t want to believe it was possible that the reaction to this war in Europe and in the U.S. would be so ambiguous, and that there would be no unequivocal gesture of solidarity with the victims. Seldom has the reason for a war—namely, to prevent the threat of peace in the region—been so clear. Seldom was the question of who began it all—namely, Hamas—been so easy to answer. Seldom was it more obvious who the perpetrators were and who the victims were—namely, Hamas as the attacker and Israel as the defender.

Seldom has the cynical propaganda of a warring party been as easy to see through as Hamas’s. The organization uses its own population as human shields, hides its cache of arms below hospitals, and misuses its own children to kill Jews or to be hit by Israeli bombs at strategic points to generate images for use in the propaganda battle on social media.

I didn’t want to believe it was possible that so-called quality media outlets like CNN, The New York Times, Reuters, and AP would use photos from “journalists” who were most likely informed of Hamas’s murderous plans beforehand and who “just happened” to be standing at the exact right spot on the border to Israel on October 7, meaning the photographers were not there to shed light on the situation, but as accessories to terror.

Jeff Jacoby: What Hamas can learn from Hanukkah

A FEW years ago, with good intentions but woeful misjudgment, the Catholic News Service tweeted out a greeting for the Jewish festival of lights.

"Hanukkah began at sundown," it read. "Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate!" Accompanying the tweet was a photograph of the Arch of Titus in Rome, which celebrates the defeat of Judea and the sack of the Temple in Jerusalem by Roman legions in 70 CE. A relief on the arch shows soldiers triumphantly holding aloft artifacts plundered from the Temple, most prominently its great golden menorah.

The news service quickly realized its blunder. Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Temple during a much earlier conflict — the Maccabean revolt against the religious tyranny of the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE — so an image of the Temple's later devastation was wholly inappropriate. The tweet was deleted and the news service apologized.

Yet in retrospect the Arch of Titus does symbolize a key message of Hanukkah, one intensely relevant amid today's rising tide of antisemitism and hostility toward Israel: However genocidal and powerful their enemies, the Jews and the Jewish faith have endured. Under Antiochus IV, the Seleucids (also called Syrian-Greeks) were determined to replace Judaism with the pagan culture of Hellenism; under the Roman emperors Vespasian and Titus, Jewish ties to the Jewish homeland were to be crushed forever. Two millennia later, those emperors are dust and their grandeur lies in ruins. But the Jews and their religion still live, and their bond with the land of Israel is as indissoluble as ever.

Hanukkah arrives this year amid a terrible eruption of Jew-hatred. The horrific pogrom of Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists murdered, tortured, raped, and kidnapped some 1,400 residents of southern Israel, was the bloodiest massacre of Jews since the end of the Holocaust. The reaction in much of the world, and especially in many bastions of elite culture and higher education, has been an unprecedented wave of antisemitic vituperation, intimidation, menace, and glee. The director of the FBI testified on Oct. 31 that antisemitism in the United States was reaching "historic levels," and the crisis has only worsened since then. In many US communities, on college campuses, and overseas, Jews feel threatened to a degree unprecedented in generations.

In a Capitol Hill hearing room Tuesday, there was a particularly chilling indication of how normalized antisemitism is becoming.

Chanukah Music Video Night 5: It's for Hanukah! | Boys Town Jerusalem Choir (plus bonus tune from Yechiel Schron)

Plus an original Al Hanissim that just dropped within the past hour:

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!

Palestinians told yet again that it is better for them to die than for them to abandon imaginary principles

In 2013, an event happened that is perfectly symbolic of the entire short history of Palestinian Arabs.

AP reported:

The Palestinian president said he has rejected a conditional Israeli offer to let Palestinian refugees in war-torn Syria resettle in the West Bank and Gaza, charging it would compromise their claims to return to lost homes in Israel.

Abbas told a group of Egyptian journalists in Cairo late Wednesday that Ban [Ki-Moon] contacted Israel on his behalf.

Abbas said Ban was told Israel "agreed to the return of those refugees to Gaza and the West Bank, but on condition that each refugee ... sign a statement that he doesn't have the right of return (to Israel)."

"So we rejected that and said it's better they die in Syria than give up their right of return," Abbas told the group.

About 4,000 Palestinians were killed in Syria. They died because of a principle they never signed off on. They weren't given a choice. Their "leaders" chose for them.

In 1948, when Palestinian Arabs tried to flee the war zone with their families, neighboring Arab countries were angry at them too. How dare they abandon their homeland! They should stay and fight! Egypt, and perhaps others, forced the men to go back into Palestine and do exactly that.

Again, the Palestinians weren't given a choice. Arab leaders told them what was best for them, saying they must adhere to a principle they didn't agree with. I'm sure that some of them never made it home.

It is happening now.

The Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah II, said today, Monday, that “Jordan has warned from the first day that we consider any displacement process a red line because, for us, this is the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.”
He added, during his meeting at Al-Husseiniya Palace, today, Monday, with the Chiefs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a number of retired security services directors, that there will be no solution to the Palestinian issue at Jordan’s expense, stressing that Jordan is confident in itself and is strong with the awareness of its people and the strength of its army and security services.
The Jordanian King reiterated that Jordan's strength politically, economically and security-wise is a strength for the Palestinian brothers, stressing that this country was built with the determination of its people, and it is the responsibility of all of us to give priority to its highest interest and protect it.
The Jordanian King praised the cohesion of the internal front, calling for not paying attention to the voices that try to keep us away from serving and defending our brothers, and stressing that the Kingdom stands with the Palestinian people in their steadfastness on their land.
He expressed his pride in the Jordanian Armed Forces - the Arab Army, and the security services in defending the homeland, stressing his confidence in their ability and readiness.

Abdulah is saying that letting Palestinians die in Gaza is preferable to saving their lives - because of a very important principle of not letting them leave their land. Moreover, he adds another principle: Jordan's strength is something that helps the Palestinians, and Jordan is their best friend.

Oh, and by the way, if any Palestinians don't adhere to these wonderful principles and manage to try to enter Jordan, there's an army that is ready to shoot them.

Did you get all that? Abdullah is saying that Palestinians must die because that way Jordan will remain strong enough to remain a good ally of Palestinians.

Jordan took in some 1.3 million Syrian refugees during that war, and they didn't refuse them because of worries about how a weaker Jordan might not be able to help Palestinians. They weren't concerned that by going to Jordan they would lose their Syrian identity. In fact, the 2 million Palestinian citizens of Jordan also are reminded that they are not really Jordanians but Palestinian. They still get many services from UNRWA rather than the kingdom.

Palestinians have been given the same message, loud and clear, for 75 years: they cannot inconvenience other Arab nations, or even their own leaders. But the reason is always the same: it is for their own good.

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!

12/11 Links Pt1: Jerusalem: ‘No UN chief has done more to secure the survival of a terrorist organization’; Spielberg to document Hamas massacre survivors’ stories

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The UN and Israel have never gotten along

There’s an old joke about the United Nations having a soccer team. “But who would they play?” it goes. “Why, Israel of course.”

There may not be much humor in it, but there’s plenty of truth. Despite Israel being set up by UN vote, it has been the world’s premier forum for Israel-bashing, particularly since the country won wars of self-defense in 1967 and 1973.

Perhaps the most notorious moment was the “Zionism is racism” resolution in 1975, when the foundations of the Jewish state were suddenly under assault. On that occasion the late great Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the former Democratic senator from New York, gave one of the best counter-blast speeches ever given on the floor of the UN. As did Chaim Herzog, the father of Israel’s current president. But at that point, as at so many other times, Israel’s enemies were greater in number than its friends by a significant margin. The victorious majority was led by that great campaigner for social justice Idi Amin. A party for the anti-Israel delegates was thrown by Kurt Waldheim of Austria, who turned out to have spent his war years serving in a Nazi unit.

In any case, ever since then Israel has been the main source of international ire at the UN, from non-aligned countries as well as much of the Muslim world. The farcical UN Human Rights Council in Geneva does little else but knock Israel around. I’ve known some people who spent their lives in that Alice in Wonderland world in Geneva and noticed it isn’t good for their long-term health. How can you sit there day after day and listen to, for instance, the representative from North Korea claiming human rights abuses in western democracies? Only last month Iran was given the chairmanship of a UN human rights forum. And although it is true that the regime managed to refrain from bludgeoning any woman to death for not wearing a headscarf during the meeting itself, there was again that sense that something might not be right.

A month earlier, the United Nations General Assembly in New York had an opportunity to vote to condemn the Hamas massacre of October 7 and demand the release of all Israeli hostages. But even that simple assertion of decency was too much for the UN. The proposition was voted down and when that was announced the General Assembly broke out into applause.

Amb. Tzipi Hotovely: The UN's Anti-Israel Bias Must Be Addressed

This year, the UN General Assembly has adopted 15 resolutions singling out Israel for criticism. All other countries in the world combined have had six resolutions passed against them, with just one resolution each condemning Iran, North Korea and Syria.

The Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter to call for a ceasefire at a time when Hamas still has significant military capabilities. Making any such call is like saying to Israelis that you do not mind if Oct. 7 happens again. Israel has no other choice than to take this threat seriously. Indeed, we are obligated to, under international law, in order to protect our citizens.

The current war between Israel and Hamas is tragic. It is a war that we did not want, and a war we did not start. Hamas made the choice to murder, rape, behead, torture and mutilate over 1,200 innocent people on Oct. 7. We are fighting a war of self-defense.

Yet on Oct. 27, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that did not even mention the atrocities committed by Hamas nor the legal right that Israel has to defend itself. Widespread torture and abuse of Israelis continues in Gaza. There are still 137 hostages - men, women, children, and pensioners - being held illegally inside Gaza, each constituting a war crime committed by Hamas. The thought of what they are going through should frighten us all. Every second counts while our 137 hostages remain in Hamas captivity.

UN-funded schools, meanwhile, have allowed anti-Semitism to flourish. Their textbooks teach Palestinians to hate Jews, glorifying jihad and martyrdom. These same buildings are also used by Hamas terrorists for military purposes.

Sadly, the UN long ago abandoned its commitment to the universal application of human rights, evidenced by its glaring double standards applied to Israel.

Qanta A. Ahmed: Hamas Crimes Against Humanity Cannot Be Allowed to Fade

Hamas committed crimes against humanity in Israel on Oct. 7. That much should be obvious from the terrorists' own mass-murder video recordings, but it is indisputable for anyone who has visited the ravaged sites of their attack, as I have.

At Israel's National Center of Forensic Medicine, I inspected the body of an older man. His decaying body was now a quilt of stab wounds and gunshot entries and exits. His wrists remained encircled in plastic zip ties. A CT scanner was required to reveal that a charred mass was actually two humans. Cables bound the bodies together. The orientation of two spinal columns showed one adult and one child had died while locked in an embrace.

Now, two months later, much of the discussion has moved on to considering how to achieve peace between Israel and Palestinians. But what happened on Oct. 7 meets the internationally recognized definition of genocide. The world has an obligation to recognize what was done - and to punish the perpetrators.

Spielberg to document Hamas massacre survivors’ stories

The Shoah Foundation of the University of Southern California, founded by Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg, has begun collecting the testimonies of Israeli survivors of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

The foundation is best known for its work documenting the stories of more than 56,000 Holocaust survivors since its founding in 1994.

“I never imagined I would see such unspeakable barbarity against Jews in my lifetime,” Spielberg said in an announcement issued by the foundation on Friday.

“Both initiatives—recording interviews with survivors of the October 7 attacks and the ongoing collection of Holocaust testimony—seek to fulfill our promise to survivors: that their stories would be recorded and shared in the effort to preserve history and to work toward a world without antisemitism or hate of any kind. We must remain united and steadfast in these efforts,” said Spielberg.

The foundation has already posted on its site videos of 68 Oct. 7 survivors sharing their stories. Videos range in length from nine minutes to just over one hour. Many of the videos were in Hebrew with English subtitles.

At least 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on Oct. 7. Hamas currently holds 135 men, women and children captive in Gaza. Some people remain unaccounted for as Israeli authorities continue to identify bodies and search for human remains.

Koen Metsu (Belgian MP): Why Did the Hamas Murderers Shout "Allahu Akbar" - "God Is Great"?

In 1980, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini began planting the seeds of a genocidal movement to destroy Israel. Iran's goal is to bring the entire Middle East under Islamist control, and Hamas is only one part of this strategy. Iran is helped by the fact that Hamas and the people of Gaza have never supported a "two-state solution." They believe that Muslims must control all the land "from the river to the sea." It must be purged of Jews and any semblance of democratic governance.

On my trip to Israel in November, I made myself watch a 46-minute film of the horrors of Hamas' Oct. 7 massacre. I would rather not have seen it, but I felt it was my duty to do so. I will never be able to erase the images from my mind. I sincerely did not think any human could commit such atrocities. Most hideous of all, perhaps, was that throughout those 46 minutes, terrorists were shouting "Allahu Akbar" - "God is great" - again and again. What God, one wonders, would condone such violence?

During my visit to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, I met Yula and her son. Yula survived by hiding with her children in a drawer under the bed while Hamas terrorists entered her home and set it on fire. Yula's family tried to flee the fire, only to be met with terrorists outside their home, so they instinctively ran back into the inferno to escape via a back room. For seven hours they hid in a warehouse until the IDF rescued them.

I am in the peace camp. I support democracy and coexistence. But anyone who disparages Israel after Oct. 7 opens the door for another Oct. 7 anywhere in the world.

An op-ed in the New York Times by ordained pastor Esau McCaulley discusses how important it is for clerics to tackle theological questions around war, specifically the current Gaza war.

Let's examine one throwaway line in the article, a phrase considered so self-evident as to not need a link: I show the context and place the line in bold.

A central teaching of Christianity arising from Genesis, a text it shares with its Jewish neighbors, maintains that every person, regardless of country of origin, is made in the image of God and deserving of respect. We are not alone in this belief. Other religious and secular traditions have articulated a similar idea. This provides an opportunity for cooperation. The belief in the inestimable worth of human beings can be a moral anchor in the turbulent seas of conflicting concerns.

There is no more crucial time to press this basic truth than in times of war, when the humanity of one’s opponents gets tossed to the side. Contending for the dignity of Palestinian and Israeli civilians is a theological act when the goals of victory and of the protection of the innocent struggle with each other for supremacy. Giving equal value to human beings on both sides of the conflict does not entail making moral equivalences between Israel and Hamas. It requires considering the lives of noncombatants in Israel and Gaza as equally sacred.

I have no reason to doubt that this is an accurate representation of Christian ethics, that all human life is equally precious..

But do all armies really ignore the humanity of their opponents?

The IDF most emphatically does not. And, I would argue, the IDF Code of Ethics is more ethical than the ethics described by this pastor.

The IDF "Ruach Tzahal" lists three fundamental values. Two of them are:

1. The purpose of the IDF is to protect the existence of the state of Israel, its independence, and the security of its citizens and residents.
3. The IDF and its soldiers are obligated to preserve human dignity. All humans are to be valued, regardless of race, creed, nationality, gender, status or role

Among the ten additional values that come from the fundamental values are:

(1) Human Life

The IDF serviceman will, above all, preserve human life, in the recognition of its supreme value and will place himself or others at risk solely to the extent required to carry out his mission.

The sanctity of life in the eyes of the IDF servicemen will find expression in all of their actions, in deliberate and meticulous planning, in safe and intelligent training and in proper execution of their mission. In evaluating the risk to self and others, they will use the appropriate standards and will exercise constant care to limit injury to life to the extent required to accomplish the mission.

(2) Purity of Arms

The IDF serviceman will use force of arms only for the purpose of subduing the enemy to the necessary extent and will limit his use of force so as to prevent unnecessary harm to human life and limb, dignity and property.

The IDF servicemen's purity of arms is their self-control in use of armed force. They will use their arms only for the purpose of achieving their mission, without inflicting unnecessary injury to human life or limb; dignity or property, of both soldiers and civilians, with special consideration for the defenseless, whether in wartime, or during routine security operations, or in the absence of combat, or times of peace.

All human life is sacred. But everyone prioritizes the value of some lives over others: themselves, their families, their tribe, and - for a soldier - their comrades, their nation and their own citizens above all.

Claiming that all human life is of equal value might be a nice slogan but no one adheres to that standard in reality. And if someone wants to live by that ethical standard, they are free to abandon their families to save the lives of the most vulnerable people in the world, since that is what such a standard would not just allow but seemingly demand.

But they do not have the right to insist that others live to their own impossible, impractical and ultimately immoral standards.

The IDF Code of Ethics is supremely ethical. It does not "toss the humanity" of Palestinians to the side, no matter what the media is claiming. But soldiers prioritize defense of their own comrades and people, and in this war that means ensuring that Hamas cannot fulfill its own "ethical" standard of genocide against Jews.

The ethical imperative to destroy Hamas before they could mount another October 7 is far higher than letting them survive to attack again. Which means that the civilians whom Hamas uses as human shields are killed not because their lives are worthless, but because the IDF ascribes supreme value on its own citizens. They die because Hamas uses them as their main line of defense, and their lives are Hamas' responsibility.

Knowing that the media will blame Israel for the deaths of those Hamas cynically uses is Hamas' secondary line of defense. In a sense, articles like this that implicitly describe the IDF as unfeeling monsters are doing Hamas' bidding as well, and can ultimately help Hamas accomplish its own genocidal goals.

How ethical!

The IDF indeed faces difficult ethical issues. Experts who have studied the IDF methods all come to the same conclusion - it places very high value on civilians on the enemy side, higher than most or all armies in history. Hamas knows this and has taken advantage of this morality in order to accomplish its own goals of self-preservation and murdering Jews.

If you need proof, read the story of how Gaza terror groups recruited a Gaza burn patient to infiltrate into Israel and attempt to blow herself up at a hospital in 2005.

It is ironic that Israel is considered guilty for the exact opposite of reality.

Israel has given far more thought to these very issues than a New York Times columnist ever will. It is an insult to all Israelis to be lectured about morality by those whose idea of morality would set the stage for the truly evil to win. And any moral code that allows a truly evil side to keep trying to wipe out all Jews until they get it right is not a moral code at all.

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!

New York Times politics writer Jonathan Weisman wrote an interesting piece, "A Fraught Question for the Moment: Is Anti-Zionism Always Antisemitic?"

It is worth looking at the arguments against that proposition in more detail, since the arguments themselves reveal the deceptiveness of anti-Zionists.

First, he brings the argument saying the two are essentially the same. That argument is straightforward:

Zionism as a concept was once clearly understood: the belief that Jews, who have endured persecution for millenniums, needed refuge and self-determination in the land of their ancestors. The word still evokes joyful pride among many Jews in the state of Israel, which was established 75 years ago and repeatedly defended itself against attacks from Arab neighbors that aimed to annihilate it.

If anti-Zionism a century ago meant opposing the international effort to set up a Jewish state in what was then a British-controlled territory called Palestine, it now suggests the elimination of Israel as the sovereign homeland of the Jews. That, many Jews in Israel and the diaspora say, is indistinguishable from hatred of Jews generally, or antisemitism.

[F]or some Jews, the answer to the question is obvious. Of course anti-Zionism is antisemitism, they say: Around half the world’s Jews live in Israel, and destroying it, or ending its status as a refuge where they are assured of governing themselves, would imperil a people who have faced annihilation time and again.
“There is no debate,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, which has been defining and monitoring antisemitism since 1913. “Anti-Zionism is predicated on one concept, the denial of rights to one people.”

The arguments against, on the other hand, all play word games.

Yet some critics of Israel say they equate Zionism with a continuing project of expanding the Jewish state. That effort animates an Israeli government bent on settling ever more parts of the West Bank that some Israelis, as well as the United States and other Western powers, had proposed as a separate state for the Palestinian people. Expanding those settlements, to Israel’s critics, conjures images of “settler colonialists” and apartheid-style oppressors.

Laila el-Haddad, a Palestinian activist and author, called it “a chilling attempt to punish and silence voices critical of Israeli policies.”

Opposing the so-called "occupation" is not anti-Zionist to begin with. Plenty of Zionists hold that position. That is indeed valid criticism of Israeli policies. Laila al-Haddad is purposefully conflating legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Zionism, which is calling for the destruction of Israel. She then innocently claims that it is the former position that is being classified as antisemitic.

Jonathan Jacoby, the director of the Nexus Task Force, a group of academics and Jewish activists affiliated with the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, said the group had wrestled with the issue for several years now, seeking a definition of antisemitism that captures when anti-Zionism crosses from political belief to bigotry. He warned that shouting down any political action directed against Israel as antisemitic made it harder for Jews to call out actual antisemitism, while stifling honest conversation about Israel’s government and U.S. policy toward it.

Again, this is a straw man argument. Just because some Jews say that some valid criticism of Israel is antisemitic doesn't mean that anti-Zionism - the opposition to Zionism itself, and the desire to see Israel destroyed as a Jewish state - is not antisemitic.

Ms. Omar said the Republican resolution that she opposed “conflates criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism” and “paints critics of the Israeli government as antisemites.”

That's the third time that the same invalid argument is used, and it is no more valid this time. Ilhan Omar opposes Israel as a Jewish state. That is not "criticism of the Israeli government." And given that she herself has a pattern of engaging in antisemitic tropes, she is actually Exhibit A that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are indistinguishable.

Eva Borgwardt, the 27-year-old political director of IfNotNow, said she graduated high school wanting to be a rabbi. Now she speaks of a renaissance of Jewish identity in the United States, a “diasporic” chicken farm, queer Talmudic studies and a Judaism based on good works — including the securing of equal rights and protections for Palestinians.

“For Jews questioning Zionism, the issue is protecting the rights of a minority from a state determined to eliminate them,” she said. “What could be more Jewish than that?”

This argument says that if someone is proud to be Jewish, they cannot be antisemitic. But the problem here is that she is not proud to be Jewish at all: her "Judaism" is that of a "diasporic chicken farm" and "queer Talmudic studies." Instead of redefining anti-Zionism, she chooses to redefine Judaism, and then uses that as an argument that she cannot be antisemitic.

In reality, her contempt for Judaism is as clear as her contempt of Israel.

And that's it. Those are all the arguments provided that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. Every one of them depends on redefining either what anti-Zionism means or what Jewishness mean.

If you cannot argue based on the plain definition of the words, then you have lost the argument.

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A new survey by The Economist/YouGov of Americans confirms, and goes beyond, other recent polls that point to a frightening future for American Jews.

The big news from this poll is that a large number of Americans aged 18-29 are ignorant, anti-Zionist and antisemitic.

Less than half of Americans under 30 - 46% - feel that denying the Holocaust is antisemitic. The rest said either it wasn't (17%) or they weren't sure (37%.)

That's incredible ignorance. And that ignorance follows throughout the poll.

Only 38% felt that it was antisemitic to say that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than the US.

20% of young Americans themselves say the Holocaust was a myth, the highest percentage of all demographic groups surveyed (liberal/conservative, Republican/Democrat, male/female). One in five Americans under 30 say it was a myth! What will the percentage be in the next generation?

For all the following results, young Americans had the highest poll results across all demographics:

23% of them felt that the Holocaust was "exaggerated."

28% say Jews have too much influence in America.

36% say Israel exploits Holocaust victimhood for its own purposes.

33% support boycotting Israeli products.

31% say Israel has too much control over global affairs.

30% say the interests of Israelis are at odds with the interests of the rest of the world.

19% say Israel has no right to exist.

32% say Israel is an apartheid state, behind only liberals (36%)

40% say Israel is deliberately trying to wipe out the Palestinian population, behind only liberals (48%.)

That is a truly astonishing and troubling percentage of young Americans who cannot distinguish reality from lies. And in general, the younger people are, the more unmoored they are from basic facts.

The problem goes beyond believing lies about Israel and Jews. It is a generation that cannot distinguish between the veracity of their textbooks and TikTok.

But there are a lot of other factors in play. There has been a concerted effort by "progressives" to take over the US educational system over recent decades. They teach that there is no such thing as objective reality. They teach that the underdog is automatically right. They teach that the world is divided into oppressors and the oppressed, and everyone fits only one category. Antisemitism is a natural result of this mindset.

Things are not looking good for Jews in the United States. A quarter of young Americans are actual antisemites. The numbers get worse with each passing year. If anything, October 7 has accelerated antisemitism.

There is no indication that this trend will be reversed anytime soon.

How can this be countered?

Something that took decades to accomplish cannot be fixed overnight. The entire US education system is at fault and it will take a complete restructuring to fix it. The atrocious performances from the presidents of MIT, Harvard and Penn last week is waking people up to a world where the most prestigious schools cannot describe the difference between right and wrong. But it will take a long time for any significant change, and there is no assurance that such a turnaround is even possible.

In the medium term, we need to teach kids - and adults, for that matter - how to do their own fact checking. How to tell when they are being manipulated. How facts matter. How to d their own research. How to check whether footnotes actually say what they claim to say. How captions can lie. How to tell an AI image, a deepfake video, a manipulated video. How to understand double standards.How statistics can be manipulated.

But in the meanwhile, American Jews are watching the nation that has been the most welcoming for Jews outside Israel itself become a place where we live in fear.

Things are not looking up.

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Chanukah Music Video Night 4:"Epic Chanukah Rap"

Not quite sure what to make of this one..

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(Guest post by Josh Namm)

Every year article after article (after article) appears telling the world that Chanukah is the Jewish holiday of “religious freedom” or “religious tolerance.” Neither is even close to true. In fact, both of those ideas, related, but not identical, are both as far away from what Chanukah is as is possible.

Another thing Chanukah is not, is a “minor holiday.”

And more than anything else, Chanukah is not some kind of Jewish Christmas. At all. Proximity on the calendar does not make one thing identical to another thing. It doesn’t even make it related to that other thing.

This year, possibly more than any other in our lifetimes, the message of Chanukah resonates in powerful ways.

The basics of Chanukah are easy to understand. The word itself means “dedication.” The reason for that is that, at its most basic level, the holiday celebrates the re-dedication of the “Beit HaMikdash” (The Holy Temple). Why did it need to be re-dedicated? Because at the time, the second century BCE, Syrian Greeks called the “Seleucids” tried to force us, the Jews, to assimilate and adopt Greek culture. Meaning: they tried to force us to become pagans, turn away from Torah based observance and Judaism’s foundational belief in one G-d.

For that reason, a small band of religious Jews, starting with Judah Maccabee (son of Mattathias the High Priest), defeated one of the mightiest armies on earth, drove the Greeks out of Judea (Israel), and reclaimed the Temple. Because it had been defiled by the idol worshipers, Jewish law required that it be re-dedicated. Part of that purification process was the lighting of its famous, seven branched, menorah with untainted oil. The Jews only had enough pure oil for one day, to get more would take seven days and, miraculously, the one day of oil lasted for eight days.

Pretty cool.

But - what does all that mean beyond latkes, sufganiyot, and (possibly) gifts for the kids?

So much more than most people realize.

The first lesson is of this important holiday is: NEVER be afraid to be Jewish. Be a proud Jew, be unapologetically Jewish, and always do what’s right as a Jew. We light the menorah publicly, or place it in a window facing the outside, precisely for that reason. It is an expression of defiance, and pride in our Jewishness. Judah fought a massive army, and defeated it, because he, and the Jews of that time, did not compromise. At all. Their faith in Hashem and their unity as Jews made them undefeatable.

On a deeper level, we light the candles at night not for the drama of it, but because it demonstrates that even a little bit of light can penetrate the darkness. We add a candle each night to remind us that more mitzvot, increased Jewish observance, brings more light into the darkness.

Also very cool.

The confrontation between our Jewish ancestors and the pagan Greeks set up a confrontation between our fundamental belief in one G-d, and His mitzvot (commandments) on one side, and Greek paganism on the other. Which meant the choice between the world of Torah, of the elevated vision of mankind it represents, and the pagan view of humanity in which aesthetics and self-indulgence were the primary goals, absent any higher, refining, elements.

The Greeks had their own philosophy, but it was an empty vision, one in which there was no ultimate obligation to G-d. Pleasing the self was, in their view, the pinnacle of existence. That view was, and is, diametrically opposed to Judaism because it placed man, and not G-d, at the center of the universe.

And we all know what man is capable of without any limiting principles, or a framework for spirituality.

We saw that very clearly on October 7^th.

So why isn’t Chanukah a holiday celebrating religious tolerance? After all, the Greeks were trying to force us to live as they did, and we fought back to worship as we please.

Isn’t that a quest for freedom?

Every Jewish holiday has its own associated mitzvah (commandment). Passover has matzah, Rosh Hashanah has the shofar, and Chanukah has the lighting of the menorah, etc. Each of these has a unique “extra” component in the Jewish prayer service for that holiday.

During Chanukah that component is called “Al Hanissim.”

In it we thank G-d for the “miracles, for the redemption, for the mighty deeds, for the saving acts, and for the wonders which You have wrought for our ancestors in those days, at this time.” It also describes how “In the days of Matityahu, the son of Yochanan the High Priest, the Hasmonean and his sons, when the wicked Hellenic government rose up against Your people Israel to make them forget Your Torah and violate the decrees of Your will…You waged their battles, defended their rights, and avenged the wrong done to them. You delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, the wicked into the hands of the righteous, and the wanton sinners into the hands of those who occupy themselves with Your Torah.”

It seems to me that is not a declaration of religious tolerance, but a statement of total dedication to Jewish values, a complete repudiation of a foreign culture’s influence on our own, and a call to return to Torah. Far from “tolerance,” or “freedom,” the “many” were “delivered into the hands of the few.” Those few lived very Jewish lives, and their actions led to the entire nation’s return to Torah observance.

Today those who invoke “tolerance,” and the equally “woke” ideas of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” do so very selectively. As we’ve seen every single day since October 7, those ideas never include Jews. While I absolutely abhor their hypocrisy, and find it repugnant, we should be totally okay not being included in their formulation of “inclusion,” or anything else they advocate.

Chanukah teaches us that are under no obligation to “fit in,” to “please the world,” or to be anything but proudly Jewish. While they are telling us to take off our kippahs, our Magen Dovids, our tzitzit, our mezuzahs, and anything else that makes us identifiably Jewish (G-d forbid), Chanukah comes along and teaches us to be proud. To look and behave as Jews.

In fact, they would love it if we stopped identifying as Jews, because they don’t want to be reminded of what being Jewish means. Our very presence is a threat to their, Hellenized, way of life. We remind them that pleasing the self is not the ultimate goal.

Outward, and inward, Jewishness represents a defiance in which we tell the world that we will not back down just because we make those who wish to destroy us uncomfortable.

Israel is at war right now for that exact reason. And like Judah and the Maccabees, today’s Jewish army will also defeat our enemies and in a massive victory. The Greeks also poked the Lion of Judah a few too many times and found out that we never back down, ever, when we’re threatened and have the means to fight back. Especially in our own land.

In the end, confidence in who we are, and what we represent, always brings ultimate Jewish unity. When we have that: we are undefeatable.

So is this holiday mainly about latkes, dreidels, sufganiyot, and gifts? No, it is about publicly and proudly living as Jews, no matter the odds, no matter what the rest of the world would have us do. It is about being Jewish with unwavering confidence, with the understanding that Hashem is always with us, and that our Jewishness is, literally, embedded in our souls. Chanukah reminds us to bring the light of Torah into the world, and when that world is at its darkest, that light shines its brightest.

This is NOT a “minor” holiday.

Happy Chanukah, a freilichen Chanukah, and Chanukah samayach.

Never back down. Never give up.

Am Yisrael chai.

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12/10 Links: The tomb of Palestinian liberation; Israel’s survival clashes with America’s Lebanon delusions; The problem is bigger than three college presidents

From Ian:

Recognizing the truth about Israel and Jewish connections to the land

Zionism was the opposite of a colonial movement. Jews are the true indigenous people of the land of Israel. While many ancient and far gone nations have lived and ruled the land, there are no people around today that have an older claim on the land of Israel than the Jewish people.

The Jews have lived in Israel for over 3,000 years. No one sent the Zionists to colonize the land of Israel, the Zionists came to liberate the land from non-native people who had no rights or connections to the land.

Lastly, the Israelis have made it a priority to treat all people under their rule in accordance with international law and grant all people their human rights. They’ve dramatically improved the lives of all peoples, Arabs, Druze, Bedouins, and Circassians that live in Israel.

Israelis have made sure to give equal rights to all citizens irrespective of their religion or nationality. While it won’t grant citizen rights to non-citizens, like Palestinians, it does make sure to grant them full human rights. This doesn’t stop Israel’s opponents from slandering Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, but their accusations never match reality.

As Israeli soldiers fight on behalf of their nation to secure it against foreign enemies in Gaza, Israel’s advocates speak on its behalf on social and mainstream media. The two can’t be compared in the importance of their mission, but the latter group ensures that the truth about Israel is spread throughout the world.

Israel deserves to rule its historic homeland, it seeks peace, is the indigenous people of its land, and treats its citizens and residents properly. In challenging times the truth will eventually rise and become the final world.

Ben Judah: The tomb of Palestinian liberation

And yet, there is a strand of continuity in the politics of Abbas, stretching back to the heady days of the PLO in Lebanon. From the mid-Seventies, Palestinian politics were divided between rationalists, who saw the future involving some kind of accommodation with Israel, and radicals, who would accept none. Arafat flitted and played with the two. But Abbas was squarely rationalist.

This remains true to this day. Rationally, he knows he never had the power to lead a successful intifada against Israel. Rationally, he knows he has never had the legitimacy to sign a peace accord, whose compromises vast swathes of the nation would see as a betrayal. And rationally, ever since he lost Gaza to Hamas in 2007, he has decided that the best course of action is to simply hold on.

This logic has turned the Mukataa from what was once a symbol of revolution into a symbol of an authoritarian Arab regime in miniature: a system tied together by corruption, where no elections have been held since 2005. Fatah, in turn, is now widely derided as an empty card-carrying shell — like the Ba’ath party in Syria or the old Eastern bloc. Across the West Bank, the system is largely outright despised.

Abbas, in his twilight, has never been weaker but also never more central. At night in Ramallah, there are protests, but things are still quiet. At night in Gaza, there is the thunder of bombs. Never in Palestinian history has the contrast between violence and negotiation been so stark. No longer between Abbas and Arafat, the contrast is between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. This appears hard to see from a distance, but October 7 was the start of a new war for Jerusalem, launched “in defence of the Al-Aqsa mosque”. Named “Operation Al Aqsa Floods”, Hamas’s massacre was only the latest offensive in what they see as an unending one, to stop the Jews “erecting their alleged temple on the ruins of the shrine of our Prophet Mohammed”.

Hamas sought, on October 7, not only to start a war with Israel but to detonate the West Bank. Their leaders dreamed that with mass hostage-taking they could bring Israeli society to its knees and force the release of all Palestinian prisoners — grabbing in one jubilant swoop the ownership of the Palestinian cause from the PLO. Opinion is divided among Palestinian analysts over their successes. All agree Hamas’s popularity is soaring in the West Bank, with crowds chanting its slogans even in the heart of Ramallah. But opinions differ over whether or not tensions in the West Bank actually threaten the Mukataa.

Abbas’s response has mostly been silent. Rationally, he believes the best strategy is to avoid tempting a possible intifada or Israeli action against him. But behind this muted response to the bloodshed, the Mukataa believe that Hamas has led the Palestinian people — with the destruction of Gaza City and now Khan Younis — into the greatest disaster of their history since 1948. Massacres are not new to the land, but never before has a city been levelled in the entire conflict. “Hamas entered a battle and the result was the complete destruction of Gaza. To blindly follow slogans to satisfy an illusion and the result is the destruction of the Palestinian people.” These were the words of Abbas a decade ago, but they could have been said yesterday. “I am responsible for the people and I will not allow their destruction to happen again.”

This is the crux of Palestinian politics. Hamas believes only violence can force the liberation of Al-Aqsa. Abbas believes only negotiations and the international community can. Hamas sees him as a corrupt collaborator. Abbas sees himself as protecting his people from what Gazans call the Israeli “monster” and guarding the mechanism that will eventually deliver a Palestinian state. Meanwhile, Western and Arab diplomats have come to see him as an intransigent obstacle to any progress towards a “two-state solution”. The tragedy, however, is that with the Palestinian people now so divided, the only man who could have made peace on behalf of all of them is buried in the Mukataa.

Caroline Glick: Israel’s survival clashes with America’s Lebanon delusions

This brings us to President Joe Biden. Biden reinstated and expanded Obama’s policies. He decided that the best way to “stabilize” Lebanon—that is, empower Hezbollah—is by providing it with steady income. So last year, Hochstein exploited Israel’s political instability to achieve that end. He compelled Israel’s interim government led by Yair Lapid to accept a deal to delineate Israel’s maritime border with Lebanon that was based entirely on Hezbollah’s legally unsupported claims to sovereign Israeli territorial waters and Israeli economic waters.

Which brings us to Hochstein’s plan for demarcating Israel’s land border with Hezbollah. When Israel withdrew from its security zone in south Lebanon in 2000, the United Nations determined that Israel had fully withdrawn to its border. Hezbollah, keen to maintain a casus belli, rejected the U.N. determination and presented claims to 14 points within sovereign Israeli territory. Hochstein’s offer means that the U.S. position is that Israel’s sovereign territory can be negotiated away, and indeed, the U.S. supports Israel being denied its sovereign territory.

As Lebanon’s Al Akhbar reported last week, Hochstein’s offer includes Israel “vacating all contested points in Lebanon’s favor, including withdrawal from the northern part of Ghajar and key posts in the occupied Shebaa Farms, on condition that the matter be implemented in two stages: declaring the Lebanese identity of these territories and agreeing that the UN oversee them militarily and security and social-wise until the emergence of another political situation.”

“Shebaa Farms” are the Lebanese term for Mount Dov, a strategic location along Israel’s border with Syria in the Golan Heights. The United States recognized Israeli sovereignty over Mount Dov in 2020.

In exchange for transferring its sovereign lands to Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hochstein’s plan would involve Hezbollah proclaiming that it is abiding by UNSC Resolution 1701, which it of course will never abide by.

Israel is not eager to open a front with Lebanon, at least not until it has largely defeated Hamas throughout the Gaza Strip. Such a war will require the bulk of IDF forces to be moved from the south to the north, reversing the current balance in forces between the two fronts. But it is obvious that Israel cannot end the war without doing so. This places U.S.-Israel relations on a collision course that can only be averted if the United States abandons its delusions about Lebanon.

Over the past month, Turkish media has been reporting on the "silent occupation of Northern Cyprus by Jews.

About a month ago, the Cyprus Foundation published an announcement warning the public in Northern Cyprus and Turkey against the threat of the occupying Israel. In the statement, it was stated that 'Israel's occupation plan is not limited to Palestine' and that the Island of Cyprus, like Palestine, was included in the "Promised Land" drawn by the Zionists. It added that this situation poses a threat to Turkey's national security, and it called on the Turkish people to stop the "silent occupation" of northern Cyprus.

This is as ironic as it gets, since of course it is Turkey that is occupying northern Cyprus. Practically no nation recognizes Northern Cyprus as independent.

Because of the uproar over this accusation, the Turkish government issued a list of the nationalities that have bought land in Turkish-occupied Cyprus. They said that there have been 15,000 applications for purchasing real estate in the territory over the last five years, and Israeli citizens ranked 12th among foreigners who bought property there, way behind the British, Iranians, Ukrainians and Russians.

But that wasn't enough to end the antisemitic rumors of a plan to "occupy" Turkish Cyprus. You see, Turkish pundits explained, the people buying the land from the UK, Ukraine, Iran and Russia were mostly - Jews! And Jews are becoming Turkish citizens in order to buy the land! And Jews are using other evil means to secretly control the land and Turkish Cyprus' economy!

It is true that Israelis have been investing in Turkish Cyprus; there are websites about the pros and cons of such an investment and right now the real estate there is much cheaper than in Greek Cyprus. It looks gorgeous - as long as you are aware of the many risks. And Israelis like to take risks.

But the rumors of a coordinated Jewish takeover of the land, and a supposed Jewish claim to northern Cyprus as part of the "promised land," is Turkish antisemitism - and it is getting a receptive audience.

The puppet prime minister of Turkish Cyprus is now looking at passing laws to restrict Jewish land purchases and other investments.

This episode is yet another example of how anti-Zionism is simply a subset of antisemitism. A crazed accusation of "Israelis" buying up the land, when disproven, turned into "Jews." Israeis who are legitimately looking at the region as an investment opportunity are turned into monsters - but Iranians who are doing the same are ignored.

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Today's antisemites love "context" - except when it damns them

We're hearing a lot about "context" nowadays.

The president of Harvard invoked "context" when asked if antisemitism would be tolerated on her campus. So did now-former president of the University of Pennsylvania.

Israel haters love to invoke "context" to exonerate terror acts. They love saying that "history didn't begin on October 7." No matter how heinous the acts of Palestinian terrorists, they say, it is always a response to something that Israel did that was worse. Never mind that the IDF never engaged in mass rape, in gleeful burning of bodies, in suicide bombings of pizza shops, in putting powerful explosives on city buses, intentionally targeting civilians.

Jews are given no such luxury. If the IDF unfortunately kills civilians while trying to destroy Hamas, there is no "context" allowed, neither to October 7 nor to other wars nor to Israel's history and certainly not to Jewish history or the Holocaust or mentioning Arab antisemitism that preceded "Jewish colonialism."

At an American Muslims for Palestine convention over Thanksgiving weekend, there was an entire session - Session 3 - meant to invoke "context." It was called "Gaza in Context: The Genocide and Signs of Major Transformations in the Region."

Nihad Awad, the co-founder and executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was one of the speakers at the convention. MEMRI captured what he said:

The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp, on October 7. And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in. And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves, and yes, Israel, as an occupying power, does not have that right to self-defense.

Gaza became the liberation source, the inspiration for people.

Gaza transformed many minds around the world, including people who are not Muslim. What kind of faith do these people have? They are thankful, they are not afraid.

Israel did not scare them, because they knew their heaven is in Gaza, and if they would like to die, they will go to another heaven. That is the faith of the people of Gaza. That is why Gaza and the people of Gaza were able to transform everyone who is watching – they have learned from these people. Those who felt bad for Gaza – they don't understand the equation. Those who thought that Gazans are less than those who can help them, they are mistaken. They are mistaken. The Gazans were victorious.

The media took notice of the head of the major American Islamic organization saying he was "happy" to see the mass murders, the rapes, the burnings of people alive and the kidnappings - all of which were quite well known by the time of this speech.

In a statement Thursday, Awad said that he condemned violence against all civilians and all forms of bigotry and claimed his comments were taken out of context.

“What I actually said while discussing international law: Ukrainians, Palestinians and other occupied people have the right to defend themselves and escape occupation by just and legal means, but targeting civilians is never an acceptable means of doing so, which is why I have again and again condemned the violence against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7th,” he said.

The only tweet that I can find where Nihad Awad even hints at condemning the October 7 attacks is where he whines that in his interviews everyone asks him if he condemns them. National CAIR never issued a statement condemning Hamas, for these or any other crimes, ever.

But was his speech at AMP was taken out of context? Was he really discussing international law and Ukrainians and other "occupied people"? Was his "happiness" divorced from what Hamas actually did?

I'd love to hear the context!

Unfortunately, the video of Session 3 has been taken down from the AMP YouTube channel. We have the introductory session, sessions 1-2, sessions 4-15, but no session 3!

If Awad's words were taken out of context, he should be eager to allow everyone to hear the context for themselves!

I guess this is a case where "context" is not on their side. The actual video is probably worse. And the only context we have for this is that Awad is an unrepentant Jew-hater who founded an organization that has had links to Hamas from its start, and is one of the most antisemitic organizations in the United States today.

There's the missing context - the context that Nihad Awad, CAIR and today's Israel haters do not want you to think about.

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