Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Donald Trump Put Joe in the White House So Shut Up Already Before We Get Kamala (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Donald Trump has many times reiterated the claim that what happened on October 7 in Israel would not have happened had he won the 2020 election. I completely agree. Which is why, to a degree, I blame Donald Trump for what happened on and in the wake of October 7.

If Trump hadn’t been such a rude bully, perhaps Joe Biden would not now be pretending to be executive in chief with Kamala Harris waiting in the wings while contemplating the great significance of the passage of time (why Joe wasn’t pushed down a flight of stairs and said to be dead from COVID long ago, I have no idea).

You don’t need me to tell you that Trump is (in)famous for his ad hominem attacks on his opponents. Trump delights in inventing creative attack nicknames for his competitors, among them:

· Little Marco

· Lyin’ Ted

· Crooked Hillary

· Ron DeSanctimonious

· Low Energy Jeb

· Pocahontas

· Crazy Joe Biden

· Sleepy Joe

· Comrade Kamala

· Tampon Tim

The mean nicknames no doubt delight many Trump voters. For them, it’s all a part of Donald Trump’s charm. But what about those who take offense at the name-calling? They also vote. If Donald Trump really cares about America, shouldn’t he want their votes, too?

Aside from the rude and childish name-calling, there was his mockery of the way the now-deceased John McCain used his hands. Love or hate Donald Trump, you have to admit that making fun of the disabled is repugnant, pure and simple. But it’s even worse when that disabled person is a former prisoner of war and war hero, whose disability is the result of maltreatment and torture. Is someone who mocks the disabled, someone who behaves in this fashion, worthy of being elected to the highest office in the land—a land that John McCain defended with his body?

My dad was an American hero. An icon. A patriot that will be remembered throughout history. I cannot buy a bagel without someone approaching me about how much they loved and miss him.

Trump is a piece of shit, election denying, huckster whose own wife won't campaign with him. https://t.co/f3RlWLqT9B
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) January 7, 2024

The name-calling, crude references to manhood/menstruation, and public mimicry of the disabled are all problematic and, it must be acknowledged, at least in part to blame for Trump’s loss to Biden in 2020. Many are now warning Trump that here too in 2024, he stands to lose voters because of his coarse behavior. And then we’re really in trouble, because God forbid, we’d end up with two YUGE antisemites running the show, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

As Victor Davis Hanson explains it, there is only a short window for Donald Trump to define himself for the voters. When Trump calls Harris “stupid” without saying why, he only looks churlish. It’s a missed opportunity to present his case at a time when time is running out, or as Hanson put it, “No time for invective.”

Despite his at times unpresidential behavior, Trump was a damned good president according to just about every measure this author can think of. Think back to what your grocery cart looked like then compared to now, under the Bidenomics of which Kamala is so proud. Picture the signing of the Abraham Accords, and then see in your mind’s eye how Biden, instead of fostering peace, gave Iran the wherewithal to finance Hamas brutality while staying Israel’s hand from its own defense:

“I will end every single international crisis that the current administration has created, including the horrible war with Russia and Ukraine — which would have never happened if I was president — and the war caused by the attack on Israel, which would have never happened if I was president,” said Trump at the RNC.

“Iran was broke. Iran had no money. Now Iran has $250 billion. They made it all over the last two and a half years,” he adds, saying the Biden administration has provided Tehran sanctions relief.

“I told China and other countries if you buy from Iran, we will not let you do any business in this country.”

These are not empty boasts. I believe Trump when he says these things. And he’s right; Hamas would not have attacked Israel on October 7 had he been in office. They wouldn’t have dared; and now they remember all too well how things were when Trump was in office—and tremble. As they should.

Trump starved Iran of money, making it impossible for the Ayatollah to support his proxies, including the one in Gaza, Hamas. Joe Biden, on the other hand, has fed Iran a constant diet of cash, even as he stays Israel’s hand from obliterating this cruel enemy. There’s no reason to think this policy of emboldening those who murder, rape, and brutalize Jews won’t continue under a Kamala Harris presidency. And by now we must acknowledge that Joe cannot possibly be running the show. The unseen handler of Joe is likely to become the handler of Kamala Harris as well, if Trump fails to make his case.

Here in Israel, we feel the terrible strain of the hostage situation. We pray for the best, but anticipate the worst, and it is unbearable. That makes me—and I’d venture a lot of other Israeli Jews—feel kind of desperate about the American presidential election. We are desperate for Donald Trump to win. And angry that this might all have been avoided, had Trump behaved a little better in the run up to the last election. Who knows how many lives would have been saved had Trump kept a civil tongue in his mouth? It makes me ache to think of it. A good president who won’t behave, and people died.

And still, it is a pragmatic fact that Trump must win, because he is the president who will act decisively, and extract a price from Hamas for what it did and continues to do to Americans and American allies both dead and alive in Gaza. In spite of his rough behavior, it’s obvious that Trump has a strong sense of right and wrong. He feels the disgrace of what it means for Biden to have allowed this state of affairs to continue even as Joe helps it along—helps the terrorists along. Trump also feels the disgrace of America throwing an ally, Israel, under the bus.

Kamala, on the other hand, will be worse than Joe. She has expressed sympathy for supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah, again and again.

So we watch and worry. We worry that Trump will say more nasty, childish thing and that this will affect his chances at the polls. What will be of our hostages if Trump can’t shut his mouth and restrain himself. “Save it for Putin!” we want to shout.

Yet we know that in spite of any mean-spirited behavior to the contrary, in the bigger scheme of things, Trump has more morality in his little finger than there is in the entire Biden White House.

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!

Latest set of EoZ cartoons

Another batch of cartoons I posted on Twitter/X in recent weeks.

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!

Islamic Jihad admits two of the dead members of their Tulkarm Battalion were children

Islamic Jihad issued a press release that proves both its own immorality.

The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, announced to our struggling Palestinian people and to the Arab and Islamic nations its heroic knights in the Tulkarm Battalion and its formations.

The Al-Quds Brigades stated in a press statement, on Tuesday evening, that the martyrs are the martyr leader Mujahid: Muhammad Al-Sheikh Yusuf (Abu Al-Muhandis), one of the field commanders in the Tulkarm Battalion, the martyr cub Mujahid: Adnan Ayser Jaber, one of the Mujahideen of the confusion unit affiliated with the Tulkarm Battalion, and the martyr cub Mujahid: Muhammad Alian, one of the Mujahideen of the confusion unit affiliated with the Tulkarm Battalion.

"Cub" means "young boy." And indeed, those two children were 15 and 16 years old, respectively.

The "confusion unit" is meant to distract Israeli troops with fireworks, flash bangs and burning tires to protect the more heavily armed adult terrorists.

This isn't spontaneous demonstrations by local youth: they are recruited as part of the battle. And since they are on what Islamic Jihad considers the front lines, they are treated as cannon fodder - their lives are not only expendable, but their deaths are strategic.

Amnesty, HRW and the UN will never condemn Islamic Jihad for purposefully sacrificing children. Because they want to make sure that they can count these "mujahadeen" as "children" in their databases, and by mentioning that they were engaged in military activities at the time, that would ruin their entire goal of demonizing Israel.

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!

Hezbollah's rocket launch sites are near a UN facility. UN silent.

Here is a sizable UN facility in southern Lebanon near the town of Hanniyeh. You can see "UN" painted on the roof of the main building.

The IDF released photos of some of the Hezbollah launch sites from the attack on Sunday. One of them was only 150 meters from the UN facility, and dozens of others were nearby within 500 meters of the UN site.

Hezbollah has built a massive rocket launch infrastructure right under the UN's nose - and the UN is silent about it.

The only press release from UNIFIL and UNSCOL since the attacks was a generic "both sides" statement that did not mention that Hezbollah is using the UN as human shields.

Even though the IDF released this photo and a press release detailing how Hezbollah rocket sites were near various civilian structures, practically no media covered this. Part of the reason is that unless the UN itself makes a statement about the gross violations of UNSC 1701 that these represent, the media isn't interested in IDF statements alone.

But if the UN would complain about the rockets sites under its nose, it would look bad.

So no one reports this.

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!

You know how the media loves to quote Gaza doctors and hospital officials?

The New York Times published an op-ed by Dr. Hussam Abu Safyia last year about how awful things were in Gaza from his vantage point at the Kamal Adwan medical center in Gaza. Clearly they thought he was a reliable witness, as most media treats Gaza doctors.

But if you read what some of them say in Arabic, one wonders about their truthfulness.

Dr. Safiyia, who now says he is the Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, is quoted in Palestine Today as accusing Israel of engaging in "germ warfare" in Gaza.

Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safyia pointed out that medical teams detected diseases that were foreign to the sector and were unable to diagnose them due to the lack of medical equipment.

He also stressed that they are facing germ warfare, calling for activating the vaccination system in the Gaza Strip.

Yeah, sure. Israeli scientists are devising germs that do not perish when they are dropped in bombs. Or maybe IDF soldiers are spending time dropping germ-infested objects around Gaza.

This is just another blood libel. But good luck waiting for the New York Times to admit that the person they platformed is an antisemitic conspiracy theorist.

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!

08/27 Links Pt2: A Hostage Rescue and a Reality Check in Gaza; Egypt: Israel’s Alleged ‘Peace Partner’; Elite Private Schools Are Teaching Antisemitism

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: A Hostage Rescue and a Reality Check in Gaza

Qadi’s ordeal is a reminder of that fact. The hostages are moved around underground and often held there as well. Yahya Sinwar can, of course, simply release the hostages and surrender. He has instead insisted on the war’s continuation, and this is what that looks like.

But the tunnels aren’t only for hostages. The tunnels, in fact, are at the center of the ceasefire negotiations. Israeli troops have secured the Gaza side of the Philadelphi corridor and the tunnels leading from Rafah to Egypt. It is not hyperbole to say that those specific tunnels are the reason for the perpetual state of hostilities and the regularity of war between Israel and Hamas. Without them, Hamas would be unable to rearm and resupply in perpetuity, to say nothing of the opportunity the corridor presents to move terrorists into and out of the war zone.

Militarily speaking, logically speaking, it is nothing less than insane to ask the Israelis to relinquish the corridor without some demonstrable way to maintain its deactivation process. Leaving the corridor in the hands of Hamas and Egypt means war; sealing the corridor is the only possible path to peace.

Yet the pressure on Israel to abandon the corridor continues. The Biden administration has convinced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to redeploy some troops from part of the corridor, in the hopes that Hamas will accept those terms and agree to the ceasefire. So far, Hamas won’t agree to anything that leaves the IDF in “operational control” of the corridor.

So let’s put in plain English what the fight over the tunnels is really about. Israel is asking for a commitment to long-term peace, and Hamas and its patrons are proposing permanent war. We can attempt to elide those differences all we want, but it won’t change the fundamental issue of these negotiations—and of the wider war.

You are either for Hamas rearmament or you are against it. You are either for the continued taking and holding of hostages or you are against it. The tunnels are the instruments of rearmament and hostage taking. The Israeli-Palestinian future depends on their dismantlement.

Egypt: Israel’s Alleged ‘Peace Partner’

UNRWA was actually created to settle the Arab refugees in Arab countries, the same way that international organizations settled refugees of the Korean War in Korea, and tens of millions of other refugees were resettled after World War II. The Arab states simply said no. [Read Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf’s excellent The War of Return for details.]

Israel’s withdrawal from Sinai in 1982 reestablished a border between Gaza and Egypt — the Philadelphi Route — which divided the city of Rafah. (If you think the tunnels of Rafah were built by Hamas, you’re way late.) The 2005 Gaza disengagement was accompanied by the Philadelphi Agreement, under which Israel and Egypt pledged to work together to “stem terrorism, arms smuggling, and other illegal cross-border activities.” Israel was supposed to have access to the goods brought in by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was, for a while, the government of Gaza.

Jordan was a bit different, but not much. It illegally annexed the West Bank and the eastern side of Jerusalem in 1950, giving citizenship to some resident Arabs, including some refugees. In 1972, the PLO tried to overthrow the King of Jordan; Israel stepped in to prevent Syria from taking advantage, but King Hussein knew the Hashemite Kingdom had no long-term future in the territory. In 1988, he renounced Jordan’s claim and stripped most of the people of Jordanian citizenship. No one seemed to have noticed.

Over the years, King Hussein not-quite-jokingly referred to Yitzhak Rabin as “Jordan’s Defense Minister for the West Bank.” [His heir, King Abdullah II, relies on Israel for economic assistance as well as security control.] Then, in 1994, he had the same discussion with Yitzhak Rabin in advance of the Jordan-Israel peace treaty that Sadat had with Menachem Begin: keep the West Bank and have a treaty, or push it on us and there won’t be one.

It was still going to be Israel’s problem to solve.

Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has exposed some serious shortcomings by Israel in the security of the Gaza Strip. Those will, no doubt, be the subject of a serious post-war assessment. But consider Egypt, Israel’s alleged peace partner and recipient of billions in US aid.

The Egyptian government refused to permit Palestinians displaced by the war to enter northern Sinai, even temporarily. Cairo claimed it would not be secure — although the mostly-empty area would easily hold Egyptian military camps for temporary refuge. Even NPR was critical of the decision.

The world later discovered that Gazans could buy their way out, though, for several thousand dollars, which tells you something about Egypt’s motives.

Egypt also delayed passage of aid trucks into Gaza after Israel took over the crossing, demanding a Palestinian presence restored on the Gaza side of the border.

After a (rare) rebuke by the US, Egypt agreed to reopen the crossing, but after another slowdown, Middle East Monitor reports that talks with the US and Israel in July failed to resolve the new impasse.

A week ago, an Israel-Egypt border agreement for Gaza was announced.

On Monday, Egypt reneged.

Israel will have to make the determination that serves its security interests. It would be in the interest of the United States and the Palestinian people to support a strong Israeli presence and control of the border to help break the control of the territory and the people of Gaza by Hamas.

Islamist delusions: Hidden truths behind the Arab-Israeli conflict

Arabs refused to live in peace
Indeed, this is exactly what happened: the Arabs refused to live in peace alongside the Jews.

Years later, there was the involvement of the Arab spearhead, Amin al-Husseini (the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and head of the Supreme Muslim Council), in the "Final Solution," the Nazi plan to exterminate all Jews in Europe.

Al-Husseini arrived in the German capital, Berlin, in the second week of November 1941. He had come from Italy, where he had met with Mussolini, Germany's strong ally.

On November 28 of the same year, Hitler received al-Husseini at the Reich Chancellery, describing him as "the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and one of the most influential men in the Arab liberation movement."

Before he met with Hitler, al-Husseini met with Joachim von Ribbentrop, one of the Nazi regime's leaders in Germany. Days later, al-Husseini was personally escorted on a tour to observe the genocide in the gas chambers at Auschwitz alongside Adolf Eichmann.

Al-Husseini commented on the visit, saying that there was consensus between them and that Hitler told him, "The Jewish problem should be solved step by step."

Al-Husseini received a promise that once the Middle East was occupied, "Germany's sole goal would be the extermination of the Jewish element residing in the Arab region under British protection." Al-Husseini's visit to Germany was engineered by his Lebanese secretary, Othman Kamal al-Haddad.

It is important to highlight a crucial point: all proposed solutions were always rejected by the Arab side, and the idea of two states, one Arab and one Jewish, was consistently discussed.

This confirms that there was never a state called Palestine in any historical period. The Partition Plan itself, issued by the UN General Assembly under Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947, stipulated two states, one Arab and one Jewish. If the Palestinian state existed, why was it not explicitly included in the resolution?

The Arabs' rejection of the Partition Plan "at that time" and the actions of Amin al-Husseini, "the head of the Supreme Muslim Council," in his quest "to eliminate the Jews from the face of the earth" all align with the mentality that still persists today.

This mindset continues to reside in the minds of Yahya Sinwar, Hassan Nasrallah, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, and all the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as the destructive arms of Iran in the Middle East, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis.

These Islamic terrorist organizations and movements share the same approach, driven by ideologies of hatred and hostility towards others. They embrace the delusions and hallucinations of global supremacy and the establishment of a supposed caliphate state.

08/27 Links Pt1: The jihad to destroy Israel; 90% of Hezbollah rockets fired from civilian areas; Bedouin hostage Qaid Farhan Alkadi rescued by IDF troops from Gaza tunnel

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: The jihad to destroy Israel

A letter sent recently by the Palestinian "resistance" groups in Gaza to Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of Lebanon's Hizbullah militia, serves as a reminder that Iran and its terror proxies view the conflict with Israel as a Jihad (holy war) to eliminate the Jewish state.

For Iran and its allies, the conflict does not concern borders, refugees, prisoners, settlements, or checkpoints. It is actually about their contention that Israel has no right to exist on Muslim-owned territory and that all Muslims must work toward wiping out Israel. In their eyes, this is a religious war between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Hizbullah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad regularly describe their slain members as "mujahideen" (warriors or Jihadists), devout Muslims who sacrificed their lives against the "enemies of Allah and Islam."

In mourning its slain men, Hizbullah has announced that each of them was killed "on the road to Jerusalem." These Muslim warriors were on a sacred mission to liberate Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the Jews. By calling its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel the "Al-Aqsa Flood," Hamas is reminding everyone that the conflict against Israel is a religious one. Accordingly, any ceasefire or truce will only serve as a reprieve before they resume the Jihad to destroy Israel.

War Is Hell, Especially for Those Who Bring It on Themselves

A war without civilian casualties is impossible, even for those who try hard to avoid them. During World War II, between 350,000 and 635,000 Germans died in Allied strategic bombing. Germany's cities were reduced to rubble. The German people brought Hitler to power and were his willing accomplices in a war of subjugation and annihilation. In the end, Germany had to be bombed into submission.

In August 1945, Japan's war Cabinet was planning to mobilize the entire civilian population to resist an expected invasion, resulting in a "glorious death" for the nation. That's what Hamas envisions in Gaza, which is why it keeps rejecting proposals for a pause in fighting.

Like Germany in 1939 and Japan at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war in Gaza started with an act of naked aggression, resulting in 1,200 deaths, many in the most savage fashion, including rape and torture, as well as more than 240 hostages taken. The Palestinians brought the war into Israel on Oct. 7. Where did they think it would lead, and what right do they have now to complain about the way it's being fought?

Israel Must Defend Itself on Its Own - While Cooperating with Allies

The principle "to defend itself with its own forces" is fundamental to Israel's concept of national security. There is no contradiction between this basic Israeli principle and Israel's comprehensive cooperation with the U.S.

American military aid constitutes 16% of the Israeli defense budget and about 2% of the general budget. It also entails Israeli access to the American security system, with its wide dimensions and possibilities.

Calling Israel "America's continental aircraft carrier" was an exaggeration, but the facts that Israel is the only democratic and stable country in the Middle East and that it has a developed technological, scientific, and military capacity have increased its value to the Americans.

From time to time, the idea of a defense agreement between Israel and the U.S. has been floated, but its critics see it, rightly, as a possible violation of Israel's freedom of military action, without adding much to the existing security arrangements.

The Israeli concept of security, designed by David Ben-Gurion, is based on the transfer of war to the enemy's territory. Ben-Gurion strove to prioritize deterrence actions and to strive for decisive victory as quickly and overwhelmingly as possible. On Oct. 7, and in fact well before it, Israeli deterrence lost many of its components. This was the result, in part, of Israel's refusal to act strongly against the terrorist attacks of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and its reliance instead on the economic benefits of a more tolerant approach.

Quoting the ADL and saying Israel is beautiful is now "Anti-Palestinian racism"

he Daily Targum (Rutgers) reports, "Multiple resident assistants walked out of a University-mandated training session on Tuesday that some say under- and misrepresent Palestinian people, according to an Instagram post by Students for Justice in Palestine at Rutgers—New Brunswick (SJP)."

Let's see what SJP considers "anti-Palestinian racism:"

1. Calling Israel a "beautiful land."

2. Not mentioning Palestinians.

3. Mentioning antisemitism that occurred since October 7. (SJP clearly cannot read English.)

4. Quoting the ADL. (Whether the information is accurate or not is altogether irrelevant.)

5. Talking about antisemitism in any context outside the Holocaust.

This last slide shows the truth - the Israel haters are sick and tired of people talking about antisemitism.

This is how Israel haters pretend to be victims - by redefining and trivializing real antisemitism.

To these presumably Palestinian students, anything that doesn't center them as the main victims of racism in the world today is, by definition, "anti-Palestinian racism."

Clearly, if these are examples of anti-Palestinian racism, then there is no such thing as anti-Palestinian racism on campus.

(h/t Brad)

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!

After the last post, I looked at the Santa Ana Unified School District Ethnic Studies program materials they have online.

They have "Six Guiding Pillars For Interdisciplinary Learning" that all ethnic studies courses in the district must adhere to. They include positioning ethnic studies as a counterweight to the presumably false dominant narrative:

Ensure the study of how colonization has lead to neocolonial ideology, systemic and structural racism and present day mainstream culture resulting in dehumanization, genocide and ecological destruction.

Critique empire-building in history and its relationship to white supremacy, racism and other forms of power and oppression.

Analyze and articulate concepts such as race, racism, racialization, ethnicity, equity, ethno-centrism, eurocentrism, white supremacy, self-determination, liberation, decolonization, sovereignty, imperialism, settler colonialism, and anti-racism etc.

Challenge Hegemony and Normalization
Co-construct learning spaces with students to develop critical historical literacy in order to counter the normalization of the master dominant narrative

There are a lot of problems with these. Most groups throughout history have exhibited antipathy towards other groups, whether they are different colors, tribes, cultures, languages or castes. The hate for the "other" is not only a function of white vs. non-white; it is almost universal. In fact, the entire idea of equal rights and anti-racism is a Western concept. In fact, some native American groups would engage in "slave raiding" and steal members of other groups to be slaves to them.

I don't think the ethnic studies curriculum teaches that.

Additionally, "colonialism" is also not a Western concept. Indigenous peoples expanded their territories and took over other lands and their people.

The ethnic studies program pretends to give a counter-narrative to classical Western history, but it is at least as biased and political as any other.

I was struck by their first pillar, though, about indigeneity:

Cultivate Indigeneity and Cultural Roots

● Recognize diasporic indigeneity, pre-colonial ancestry, and roots.
● Place high value on the pre-colonial, ancestral knowledge, narratives, and communal experiences of Indigenous people, communities of color, and groups that are typically marginalized in society.

By this definition, Jews should be celebrated: they maintain their culture, their traditions, their customs, and their languages even when dispersed. And they have always remained deeply connected to the land of their birth, Israel. Zionism and the rebirth of Israel was a victory for anti-colonialists and for indigenous peoples worldwide. It is an inspiring story, not an example of white supremacy and colonialism.

I had a friend, sadly recently deceased, who was partially native American. He would pepper me with questions on how Jews managed to keep their unity throughout the Diaspora, because he saw in real time how today's native Americans were forgetting everything about their own culture and customs and he wanted to stem this loss.

That is the irony of ethnic studies. If they weren't designed by antisemites and anti-Zionists, students could look at the Jews in their own communities as role models for how an ancient culture maintains its unity, uniqueness, peoplehood, religion, customs and language and yet still be productive members of the larger society.

Isn't that what they want from every minority group?

When students study racism, they could learn how antisemitism has been the prototype for all hate - how Jews have been hated by being associated with every society's biggest ills, even when they contradict each other. And how that hate has morphed into "social justice" today, and even the biggest self-avowed anti-racists can themselves fall into the trap of hate - a much more powerful lesson in how ordinary people can become bigots than studying the Holocaust is.

If ethnic studies wants to accomplish what it claims it wants to accomplish, Jews should be near the center of the coursework. Because what happens to Jews will eventually happen to all other minorities.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

We know in a general sense that the progressive mindset is antisemitic while pretending to be only anti-Zionist, but it is relatively rare that people can point to specific examples of blatant antisemitism from the woke crowd that makes that link explicit.

A lawsuit filed last year against the Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) by the ADL, AJC and others now includes discovered text messages between members of the district and consultants they hired for create an ethnic studies curriculum leave no doubt whatsoever that these people are antisemitic to the core.

They disparage Jews as Jews. They intentionally schedule meetings on Jewish holidays to keep Jews from knowing what they are doing. They insult, and laugh about insulting, Jews from both the school district and the larger Jewish community.

Here is part of the text of the lawsuit, along with examples of text messages found during discovery:

For four years and counting, the Santa Ana Unified School District (“SAUSD”) has unlawfully worked behind closed doors to create a mandatory ethnic studies program for its students, and has done so with the deliberate goal of avoiding public scrutiny of its work. In June 2020, the SAUSD Board of Education (the “Board”) created an Ethnic Studies Steering Committee (the “Steering Committee” or “Committee”) consisting of two Board members and several SAUSD staff members. The Board created the Steering Committee—a legislative body under California’s open meeting law, the Brown Act—to develop ethnic studies courses it mandated for students. ...

[I]t has been dominated by two Board members—along with their personal friend, an ideologue paranoid of dissenting views—who have run it “like a dictator” to push forward their specific vision. As such, the Board rubber-stamped the courses created by the Committee in violation of the Act....

Discovery in this case has revealed not only how SAUSD failed to comply with the Brown Act, but also why SAUSD kept the creation of the ethnic studies curricula behind closed doors. SAUSD did not want members of the Jewish community or the public generally to know what was going on. The Steering Committee sought to exclude any voices—especially Jewish ones—that might stray from so-called “liberated” ethnic studies orthodoxy, which classifies Jewish people as “White—regardless of their actual skin color or historical perceptions of Jews as non-white—and the Jewish people as oppressors....

Petitioners have uncovered deeply troubling evidence of extreme bias and antisemitism within the Steering Committee. For example:

• In text messages, two senior SAUSD officials discussed scheduling ethnic studies course approvals by the full Board on a Jewish holiday so Jews could not attend and comment on the course content. One stated: “on a good note…no public comment on ethnic studies. We may need to use Passover to get all new courses approved.” The other official responded: “that’s actually a good strategy.”

• In discussing the removal of the only Jewish member from the Steering Committee, a Committee leader referred to him in a text message as a “colonized Jewish mind” and a “f---ing baby” for expressing concerns over antisemitism on the Steering Committee.

• In discussing a potential meeting with the Jewish Federation of Orange County, a Committee leader (and SAUSD curriculum specialist) said “someone has to guide [Committee members] or they will cave in to . . . the racist Zionists.” . Despite using such language to describe Jews who support the State of Israel, this same Committee member refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization even after it perpetrated the horrific terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, arguing that it would be “dehumaniz[ing]” to call Hamas fighters “terrorists.”

• Senior members of the Steering Committee reportedly stated, among other things, that “Jews are not a disadvantaged ethnic group in the U.S. because they were never slaves,” that “Jews greatly benefit from white privilege, so they have it better,” and that “we don’t need to give both sides. We only support the oppressed, and Jews are the oppressors.”

• When made aware of Jewish community concerns, Committee members wrote in an official agenda of a (private) subcommittee meeting how to “address the Jewish question.”

• Without conducting any due diligence or a competitive bidding process, the Steering Committee retained an external consultant to train SAUSD teachers on ethnic studies. SAUSD hired this consultant despite a serious prior domestic violence charge and unhinged social media rantings in which he used antisemitic tropes about “Zionist control,” claimed that “the Zionist Jewish Caucus hijacked Ethnic Studies,” and asked “how TF can anyone support the settler colonial state of Israel?”

Later it adds how this affected Jewish staff members:

The antisemitism was palpable to Jewish staff members at SAUSD. The lone Jewish Committee member texted that he was “sick of [Employee 1]’s thinly veiled antisemitism.” He also expressed dismay when, just days after the October 7 attack, Committee members “ma[de] it sound like Jews never lived in Israel or had any history in the region. Just random Jewish [Z]ionists suddenly deciding to take over Palestine.” . He reported how Committee members spread an antisemitic myth about a former Israeli prime minister commenting on eating Palestinian children. And when he told his colleagues that their comments were “personally offensive and racist,” he was told to “‘check [his] tone’ so as not to ‘ruin the spirit and mood of the room.’”

Scratch an "anti-Zionist," find an antisemite.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

We know about "as-a-Jews" who pretend that their opinions are mainstream in western media. But some of them specialize in being "as-a-Jews" for the Muslims.

From Turkey's Anadolu Agency:

ISTANBUL

American Jewish activist and co-founder of the anti-war organization CodePink, Medea Benjamin, has called for an end to US support for Israel, calling the situation in Gaza "genocide."

Speaking ahead of the premiere of the TRT World documentary Holy Redemption, filmed in the occupied Palestinian territories, Benjamin criticized the ongoing Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank.

Benjamin also praised Türkiye for its leadership on Gaza and support for the Palestinian cause at the UN.

Medea Benjamin traveled to Istanbul to introduce an anti-Israel documentary, she got interviewed, and her interview is all over Muslim media as "American Jewish Activist: What is Happening in Gaza is Genocide."

Arabic and Turkish sites cannot get enough of her - this is not the first time they have written about her aa an American Jew that they either feature or interview.

She's the secular Neturei Karta for the Arabs and Muslims.

After all, there are lots of "as-a-Jews" in the West, but how many pop up in Muslim countries to be interviewed as pro-Hamas representatives of Jews?

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!

08/26 Links Pt2: Anti-Zionist Campus Activists Admit It: Their Purpose Is To Silence Jews; Democrats Can No Longer Take the Jewish Vote for Granted; Back to School in Wartime

From Ian:

Jake Wallis Simons: As Israelis are left out of terror memorial, it is time to reform the UN

It is as plain as the nose on your face that the UN has become corrupted by autocratic antisemites, who have grown adept at appropriating its authority and language as cover for their Israelophobic and anti-western agendas. Seeing that many western progressives are not too keen on the Jews themselves, and understanding the pressure-points that can be prodded with words like “colonialism”, “racism” and “genocide, they take Israel as an easy proxy for western liberalism and power. They don’t care about playing by the rules. Meanwhile, blinded to the exploitation by a deep-seated progressive animus of their own, the European technocratic elites who should know better play a part in this deplorable charade, and ultimately their own demise.

Take, for example, the reaction of the UN to the death of the Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi in May. Here was the figurehead of one of the most malign nations on Earth, who as the “butcher of Tehran” became notorious for sending thousands of political prisoners to their deaths. Here was a man who spent his every waking moment undermining the global order, terrorising the innocent, brutally oppressing women and repressing democracy. Yet when he was killed in a helicopter crash, the UN lowered its flag to half-mast and paid tribute to him in the General Assembly, including a minute’s silence. Its clownish secretary-general, the aforementioned António Guterres, even saw fit to write a personal note of condolence.

It gets more sinister still. Less than a month one of Iran’s numerous client militia, Hamas, launched its attack on the civilians of southern Israel, the new chair of the UNHRC was announced at a meeting in Geneva. Step forward Ali Bahreini, Iran’s ambassador to the UN. Entirely predictably, Bahreini opened the session by berating “colonial policies” of sanctions against his Islamic regime, while delegates nodded along.

All of this leads to a single, radical conclusion: the UN must be radically reformed, if not dismantled and replaced, as Erdan demanded. The problem is clear. Given the fact that the majority of the world’s nation-states are not democracies, if you set up an organisation on the basis of equal membership for all, the autocracies will outweigh those who stand for freedom. From the point of view of the world’s dictators, the UN offers a wonderful opportunity for legitimacy, enabling them to pose as legitimate statesmen while robbing and suppressing their own people and subverting democracy abroad. It’s a simple question of numbers. As the 1960s Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once remarked: “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the Earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13, with 26 abstentions.”

It is this moral relativism that lies at the heart of the scandalous state of the UN. From Putin to Xi, Maduro to the Ayatollah, the world’s worst regimes are given equal seats at the table as the democracies. For all of them, hatred of Jews and Israel provides the ideal cover under which to advance their own agendas of corruption, oppression and subversion. The aura surrounding the UN is of a global moral authority. As the coverage of the Gaza war has demonstrated most vividly, append those two letters to any allegation and the public will swallow it whole. What better Trojan horse for the dictator’s goals than this?

The German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, in his short 1795 book Perpetual Peace, proposed the notion of a “League of Nations”, in which various nation states would hand authority in resolving disputes to a central body, thus reducing the necessity for conflict. This became a reality after the First World War and was transmuted into the UN after the Second World War. If Kant could see the state of the organisation today, however, he would be deeply shocked.

As Sir Roger Scruton wrote: “Kant was adamant that there can be no guarantee of peace unless the powers acceding to the treaty are republics. Republican government, as defined by Kant, both here and elsewhere in his political writings, means representative government under a rule of law, and his League was one that bound self-governing and sovereign nations, whose peoples enjoy the rights and duties of citizenship.”

It is time for the democracies to throw out their cretinous moral relativism and recognise that it is incumbent upon us to shape the globe according to our values. As the women of Iran will happily attest, democracy is simply better than autocracy. As the malign dictatorships of Russia, China and Iran form an ever-closer union, drawing in smaller allies like Venezuela and North Korea into an axis of repression, the fight is coming our way. If we are to win, and the world is to avoid anarchy and war in favour of stability and justice, the UN must begin to unapologetically project democratic values, and make membership dependent on conforming to them. The struggle must start now.

Seth Mandel: Anti-Zionist Campus Activists Admit It: Their Purpose Is To Silence Jews

Colleges in the hands of folks like Diermeier are in better shape going into the next stage in this fight because to a large degree, personnel is policy. So the schools that are just now taking their first steps in the right direction are trying to impose values that the institution itself has never modeled.

Additionally, the entire structure of the “safe space” generation of schooling was constructed in bad faith. Much like DEI and other race-essentialist competitions, no one was ever in danger from “Zionists” (read: Jews) on campus. The whole production had one specific goal, which anti-Zionist groups are finally elucidating in clear terms. Last week, an imam headlining a Zoom teach-in hosted by Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine said this about Jewish professor Shai Davidai, who has been hounded for his criticism of genocidal anti-Semitism:
“If there’s one professor, like that Shai Davidai guy, how do we get him in trouble? What are the ways in which his professorship is sort of tenuous, or maybe in jeopardy, or at what point will it be in jeopardy? How do we create a situation in which he’s in jeopardy? In a particular situation that might have more impact and it might silence—this is what the Zionists do—that might silence 100 other professors. If you’re able to take out somebody like that, and make an example of them, it might shut up 100 more…. What’s our biggest threat here? What’s our biggest opportunity? Which domino, if we knock it over, is going to knock 20 dominoes over?”

What too many administrators, journalists, and even groups like FIRE never understood (or never wanted to admit) was that if the anti-Israel movement on campus had one single ethos, it was: “How do we create a situation in which he’s in jeopardy?”

Free speech was always at the center of it, but just not the way it has been portrayed. The goal was to eliminate Jewish students’ freedom of speech (and, eventually, of association, and even of movement) on campus. The speech of Anti-Zionists was not in danger—though they were occasionally told not to take hostages in university buildings and not to set up Jew-free zones on campus. What they were protecting was their ability to silence others.

A school like Columbia, where a pro-Hamas student group holds events explicitly designed to extinguish basic civil rights on campus, is in more trouble than schools like Vanderbilt (and University of Chicago, Purdue, and others), because its students have no need to even hide the ball anymore. The institution has already been converted from a university into a theater of political warfare.

The fall of Columbia is a cautionary tale in what happens when important elite American institutions believe they can jettison, without consequences, the American values that made them important and elite in the first place.

Biden’s DNC speech: A strategic echo of Reagan's 1988 PLO move?

So, Ronald Reagan decided to do Bush a favor – the type of favor a departing administration would never do for a successor from another political party. Rather than force his friend George Bush to have to withstand criticism from supporters of Israel for the eventual decision to begin a dialogue with the PLO, Reagan decided to “take the bullet.”

He was completing his second term in office with high approval ratings and a reputation for having a good relationship with Israel. He figured he had little to lose by a switch in diplomatic norms.

In the dying days of his administration, Reagan allowed his secretary of state to announce a dialogue with the PLO. By having his administration do “the dirty work” that many expected Bush would have to do sometime over the next few years, Reagan increased the chances that the “blame” would not fall upon Bush.

To Bush’s credit, months later, after the PLO admitted to being involved in an attack on an Israeli bus, his administration broke off its channel of communications with the PLO.

FAST-FORWARD TO August 2024. One of the biggest concerns of the Democrats heading into the November elections is that the actions of the Biden administration in rearming Israel after October 7 will alienate voters in the large Arab community in the swing state of Michigan.

When Joe Biden took to the stage on the first night of the DNC, he could have spoken about his trip to Israel after the October 7 massacre. He could have spoken about being touched by his meetings with the many family members of Israeli and non-Israeli hostages in captivity in Gaza since October 7.

However, the president decided to address the conflict in a different manner. He told his audience that the protesters outside the convention center “have a point.” In fact, those protesters have many points – they believe that Zionism is evil, many of them support the massacre of October 7, and many of them shout (“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”) for the genocide of the Jews.

With very few exceptions (perhaps none), those protesters were not making any “point” in favor of a two-state solution.

To many, the decision by the president to use his time in front of a national audience to say that those protesters “have a point” was very strange. However, the phenomenon is not as strange when looked at through the Reagan-Bush-December-1988 lens. A president who will soon leave office knows that he has very little to lose by taking an action that a mere few months (or maybe even just weeks) earlier would have violated political orthodoxy. And if he can help his successor – from his own party – it might be worth breaking from political orthodoxy.

In the case of Reagan, opening a dialogue with the PLO was intended to remove an eventual “headache” for the president who Reagan knew with certainty was going to succeed him. In the case of Biden, extending a hand to the pro-Hamas protesters was intended to help the candidate who Biden hopes will succeed him.

For the State of Israel, the big concern is not what Biden said from the podium at the DNC – but rather what it foreshadows for other moves Biden might make between election day, November 5, 2024, and January 20, 2025, to remove any possible “headache” for Kamala Harris.

08/26 Links Pt1: Israel’s decisive preemptive strike thwarted a major Hezbollah attack. It's about time; New Trump ad pays tribute to ‘thousands’ of Oct. 7 victims

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Israel’s decisive preemptive strike thwarted a major Hezbollah attack. It's about time

A massive attack like this one – hitting so many targets across southern Lebanon simultaneously – is not cobbled together overnight. This attack necessitated precision planning, precise intelligence, and pinpoint operational capabilities.

Coming on the heels of the ongoing demolition of Hamas’s capabilities in Gaza, the assassination of Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Shukr in Beirut, and Hamas arch-terrorist Mohammad Deif in Gaza, the attack on Hodeidah port in Yemen in July in retaliation for a Houthi strike on Tel Aviv, and the penetration of Iran’s most sophisticated air defense system in April; Sunday’s operation helps to rebuild the deterrence eroded by Hamas’s brazen October 7 attack, and projects power.

It projects Israel’s power toward its enemies and – perhaps more importantly– inward to its own citizens. The projection of power is critical for this country’s morale.

Ever since Hezbollah and Iran vowed vengeance for the back-to-back assassinations of Shukr and Haniyeh, Israel has largely been in a defensive crouch that is corrosive to morale. It feeds a sense of powerlessness, even helplessness.

But this country is neither powerless nor helpless, nor dependent on the grace of our enemies not to strike us. It can effectively forestall those attacks. Sunday’s preemptive action reminded everyone of that.

We hope that this is not a one-off but that Israel will now take a more offensive and aggressive posture against Hezbollah and not wait for it to fire and then retaliate in a minor key. The situation in southern Lebanon needs to change fundamentally to make it possible for northern border residents to return home. We hope that Sunday’s decisive action is the beginning of that change.

A potential turn of the tide
This attack could also have a positive impact on the hostage negotiations taking place in Cairo with Hamas because if Hamas’s chief Yahya Sinwar sees that his organization’s salvation is not going to come from the North, and that Israel can act with full force in Lebanon even as it is still dismantling Hamas’s capabilities in Gaza, then the terrorist organization might become more pliable.

But “might” is the operative word. No one can predict Sinwar’s thinking. Nevertheless, his negotiating position is definitely weaker if it becomes clear that Israel is willing to fully take on Hezbollah in the North, even while it continues to degrade Hamas’ capabilities in the South.

With the intensity of the fighting in Gaza much reduced compared with a few months ago, Israel now has greater bandwidth to deal with Hezbollah. As such, it needs to keep its foot just above the gas pedal in Lebanon, ready to press down and strike Hezbollah with overwhelming force at a minute’s notice – just as it did on Sunday.

Seth Frantzman: Hezbollah's plodding war of attrition on Israel will continue - this is how

In essence, what Hezbollah is saying is that its plodding attacks will continue, and this war of attrition will continue. Hezbollah will continue to attack until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Then it will revisit its demands, and it may even continue attacks after that due to the “open account” it believes it has due to the killing of Shukr.

But it is clear that Hezbollah prefers to return to some semblance of quiet. It doesn’t want a large war. It also thinks that it benefits from this low-level war. It is putting on a brave face in a sense, despite its losses. It is showing that it can take the losses of a few men a week in this long war, and that it will recover.

It is also indicating that it doesn’t view any of this with urgency. It doesn’t mind waiting for weeks or months to attack because it knows this puts Israel and the US on alert. Hezbollah believes it has achieved a lot just because it can put Israel on alert, and that in some cases, this might be enough for it to achieve a kind of victory. It has also caused Israel to evacuate the northern border, which for Hezbollah is a major accomplishment.

Nasrallah’s speech revealed the overall sense that Hezbollah has that it doesn’t need to carry out more large attacks quickly. It can wait, and it will wait as Iran keys in other proxies, such as Syrian-based militias. One of those groups launched a drone at Israel, for instance. Yemen’s Houthis have also backed the Hezbollah attack, according to a statement at Beirut-based Al Mayadeen, a pro-Iranian news channel.

Meanwhile, the Iranian regime is also signaling that it can hold off on its own claims it will retaliate against Israel. Iran’s foreign minister spoke with his Italian counterpart on Monday. “Iran’s foreign minister has reiterated his country’s pledge to punish the Zionist regime for assassinating Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran,” IRNA reported.

Iran is also reaching out to Turkey and Egypt. “Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his Egyptian counterpart, Badr Abdelatty, have discussed bilateral relations and regional issues, including the Gaza war,” IRNA reported Sunday.

Have the IDF's massive preemptive strikes prevented all-out war in Lebanon?

If Hezbollah's only accomplishment is more strikes on Safed and Acre, with minimal casualties, then the military's preemptive strike may later be credited with having prevented a much larger disaster and even war.

Step one in preventing such a war was stopping any successful strikes on major Israeli population centers or infrastructure.

Step two would be focusing Israel's strikes on imminent attack platforms of Hezbollah while leaving other parts of Hezbollah and all of non-Hezbollah Lebanon largely untouched.

In the balance of unwritten rules between Israel and Hezbollah, this would be a massive Israeli strike that still showed restraint and was not per se "offensive," but rather preemptive and narrowly tailored defense.

There are no moves by the IDF to invade southern Lebanon, which it could have decided to do.

Hezbollah may now be deciding how much more of a wave of attacks it can manage without exposing its capabilities to more hits by Israel.

It may also be trying to convince Iran to join the fight, which would make the situation even more dangerous.

But both Iran and Hezbollah know that the US could also still intervene on Israel's behalf.

Also, a Gaza ceasefire may still be possible if a larger war does not break out, possibly pitting Iran and Hezbollah against Hamas since they do not want to take larger losses. However, the Gaza terror group would like its more powerful allies to expand the war to help it get better terms from Jerusalem.

The future is highly uncertain, but round one has gone to Israel.