Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Today's "anti-Zionist" and "equity" obsessed academia really does resemble Nazi Germany's educational philosophy

Nazis blocking Jews from entering the University of Vienna, 1938

Analogies are always tricky. Comparing today's university environment with the situation in German universities in the 1930s and 1940s usually sound more like an application of Godwin's Law rather than serious analysis.

The obvious differences are that today's political orthodoxy in academia is not driven by a ruthless dictatorship and there is relatively little fear (today) of physical harm to those who disagree with that orthodoxy.

But when students and professors are bullied into holding opinions that are not supportable by scholarship, when entire academic fields and research have been subverted, and when hiring practices discriminate against people who hold different opinions or are Jewish - this part of the analogy between Nazi Germany and academia today is way too accurate.

I came across a three part article written in the October 22 through November 5, 1944 Department of State Bulletin titled "Education in Germany Under the National Socialist Regime" by Leon W. Fuller, a State Department specialist.

While not everything applies today, way too much of it sounds sickeningly familiar.

That National Socialism is an attack upon the Western heritage is now a generally accepted truism, nowhere more applicable than in the field of education. Before considering this basic antagonism the underlying premises of Nazi educational theory may be noted. To the Nazis the individual is a myth, having no separate existence apart from the "total collective- personality" of which he is a member. This larger, all-comprehending corporate personality is the Volk, a spiritual-historical being, the ideal form, mold, or type for all its members. It is immutable and eternal, the reality which endures and transcends ephemeral circumstance, always embodying the ideality and objectives of personal, group, and national life. Thus educational objectives cannot be devised or formulated for preconceived ends-they are predestined by the nature of the Volk and must be discovered. Personality is a derivative of race and cannot be fashioned arbitrarily, nor can it evolve autonomously in accordance with its own laws. ...There is no place for free, that is arbitrary and unmotivated, cultivation of the mind; "abstract life-strange theories" are to be avoided. ... An ethno-cultural determinism must rule all educational procedures.

Today's DEI race theories that white people are inherently racist and evil is the mirror image of Nazi ideas that non-Aryans are inherently immoral and biologically inferior. There is no recourse for the people who are born with the wrong colored skin. Free will does not exist.

[To Nazis,] Race is the natural form which differentiates life, a primal unity of living substance expressing itself in body, spirit, and soul, the basic reality which gives meaning to all knowledge. Humanity is a myth-there are only racial types. Education, then, cannot develop man but can only elicit responses characteristic of a racial group. Blood has symbolic significance it is the source of the spirit of a race and transmits the ancestral heritage.

The German word Volk is untranslatable as "folk" or "people. " It implies the organic union of a racially determined community in a collective personality embracing generations past, present, and to come. Hence it is eternal, immutable-as fixed as a Platonic type or form.

The Volk is a communion as well as a community, a fellowship of faith and feeling. The lone thinker easily becomes divorced from his community and no longer shares its intuitive grasp upon vital truths.

Is there really much of a difference between the Nazi embrace of "volk" and the current fetishization of "indigeneity" and "BIPOC"? People viewed as people of color or indigenous are pure and everyone else is a colonialist cancer that cannot contribute to society - and whose previous and current contributions are suspect and to be minimized or ignored.

The Relativity of Truth. Nazi theory denies the existence of a positivist system resting on truths of universal validity.

National Socialist reforms in the field of higher learning can be understood only in the light of the Nazi attitude toward science and research-an attitude which springs inevitably from the ethnocentric nature of the premises underlying all National Socialist thinking. It attacks first the detachment of the scientist. "Scientific objectivity", asserts a German educational journal, "is only one of the many errors of liberalism. The liberal man is only an artificial construction. He does not exist in reality ; there are only men who belong to a nation and to a specific race. "

Which sounds a lot like factual relativism.

And then we get to how Jews were treated in German universities, which sure sounds like how Zionists are treated in Western universities today. Not by law - but by consensus, which is in many ways worse.

Under the Civil Service Law of April 7, 1933 , members of the teaching staffs of the universities and other collegiate institutions might be summarily removed for "non-Aryan" origin, unsatisfactory political records or views, membership in "subversive" organizations, or on grounds of administrative necessity. By May 4, according to reports in the German press, about 200 teachers had been dismissed, mostly because of their Jewish origin or liberal views. This number included former ministers of state, world- famous scientists, historians, jurists, and two Nobel prize-winners. ...

The position of the college or university teacher in Germany has become one of complete subordination to the regime. Incessant pressure is put upon him to participate in party functions ( which, incidentally, monopolize much of the time and energy of his students) , to subscribe for the official journals, to lecture at Land-Year camps and SA gatherings, to favor students who miss work because of party activity, and to refrain from making complaints except through official channels. He may be disciplined in innumerable and vexatious ways. His lectures may be canceled if they conflict with party functions. He may not travel abroad without official permission. His favorite seminar may be abolished. He may be transferred as a disciplinary measure.

Again, the analogy is not complete. Discrimination against Jews today is more in not hiring them to begin with than in firing or demoting them. But at a graduate school level, Zionists and Jews are feeling this discrimination and pressure to adhere to the politics of the progressives - or else.

Just like then, students are encouraged to skip classes for "party activity" - anti-Israel protests.

The curriculum in German colleges and universities has been modified mainly in two directions-greater stress on Rassenkunde (race science)...New chairs have been established in such fields as peasant lore, race science, defense physics, and folk problems. ....Extreme political orientation tends to undermine speculative science. ....The social studies and the humanities are completely dominated by race science, in which subject the University of Berlin alone offers 30 seminars. Nazi mathematicians have founded a new journal, Deutsche Mathematik, to deal with their subject along racial lines. The party has financed at Frankfurt an Institute for the Investigation of the Jewish Question , designed as the first division of a Nazi high academy as a center of scientific study from the point of view of race.

Race math sounds a lot like "woke math."

The Institute for the Investigation of the Jewish Question sounds a lot like the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism.

The entire enterprise sounds like what the current situation is in Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies,

Postcolonial Studies, much of anthropology and sociology. Today, many academic fields suffer from a form of intellectual authoritarianism where questioning becomes tantamount to heresy, undermining the fundamental purpose of academic research: critical, evidence-based inquiry.

Boycotting Israeli universities and protesting Jewish institutions on campus mimics what the Nazis did at their own institutions. Jews and Zionists face cancellation of invitations to joint conferences, rejection of articles for publication, the rejection of grants, the inability to hold joint projects with Israeli colleagues.

Today's antisemitic "woke" are also working overtime to spread their anti-scientific, antisemitic theories in more and more areas. I recently wrote about an upcoming edition of "The Journal of Architectural Education" that literally celebrates the murder and rape of Jews under an academic veneer.

This is no different, and no less immoral, than what the Nazis did to turn every academic field into a cesspool of racism and Jew-hatred.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Iranian officials after Axis of Resistance collapse: "We remain strong. Really! We are! We promise! Even stronger! Why don't you believe us?"

Current and former Iranian officials are trying so hard to say that they remain strong that they are undercutting their own message with their eagerness.

The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said, "We have not been weakened and Iran's power has not diminished." The Supreme Leader's representative to the IRGC said, "Don't worry about the situation and know that we have had many ups and downs; but despite this, our situation on the resistance front has not changed at all." The former commander of the IRGC's Quds Force, Ahmad Vahidi, stated: "The Resistance Front will continue its work with strength; although it is possible that problems may arise from time to time, this path will continue with strength and there will be no wavering in the axis of resistance."

The Ayatollah Khamenei himself echoed the "we are strong" theme in his speech this morning, where he said:

I tell you that by the grace and power of God, the scope of resistance will encompass the entire region more than in the past.
This is the resistance, this is the resistance front: the more pressure you apply, the stronger it becomes, the more crimes you commit, the more motivated it becomes. The more you fight them, the wider it becomes, and I tell you, with the power of God, the scope of resistance will encompass the entire region more than ever before.
Ignorant analysts, unaware of the meaning of resistance, imagine that when resistance weakens, Islamic Iran will also weaken. I say that by the will of God, by the will of God Almighty, Iran is strong and powerful and will become even more powerful.

Those who are truly strong don't have to tell people they are strong every five minutes.

Behind the pretense of strength is chaos at the IRGC, as The Telegraph reports:

A furious blame game is unfolding among Iran’s armed forces over the fall of Bashar al-Assad, The Telegraph has learned.

Officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said commanders of the elite military force were blaming each other “in angry terms” for the collapse of Assad’s regime and the loss of Iranian influence in the region.

“The atmosphere is like something between almost punching each other, punching the walls, yelling at each other and kicking rubbish bins. They are blaming each other, and no one is taking responsibility,” one official from Tehran told The Telegraph.

Iran spent billions of dollars propping up Assad’s regime after intervening in the Syrian civil war in the mid-2010s.....

But the loss of Syria could be fatal because it was the main route for supplying Hezbollah, whose arsenal in southern Lebanon had projected Iranian military power directly to the border of Israel.

“You need someone there to send arms to [but] they are either getting killed or escaping. Now the focus is on how to move forward from this impasse,” a second IRGC official told The Telegraph.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/10 Links Pt2: Why do the Left march against Israel but not Russia, Iran’s mullahs, or the Taliban?; Why young British Jews are leaving for Israel; Death to Jews': SJP Leaders Home had Guns, Ammo, and Terrorist Flags

From Ian:

UN Watchdog Calls for Resignation of Top UN Human Rights Official After Investigation Produces Damning Report of Turning Blind Eye to Human Rights Abuses

A UN watchdog group has called for the United Nations’ top human rights official to resign by January 1st, after an investigation yielded damning examples of the “High Commissioner” placing political considerations before blatant abuses of human rights across the globe.

According to a new UN Watch report, , “Blind Eye to Dictatorships,” High Commissioner Volker Türk stayed “silent on gross and systematic violations of human rights” in countries known to commit heinous human rights abuses. The report reviewed and tallied statements initiated by Mr. Türk during his tenure of from October 2022 through October 2024.

Key findings of the report include:

• UN human rights chief Volker Türk condemned the United States more than the combined total of his condemnations of China, North Korea, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

• Türk for the past two years was completely silent on gross and systematic violations of human rights committed by the regimes of Cuba, North Korea, Algeria, Eritrea, Mauritania, Lebanon, and Qatar. At the same time, he had no trouble criticizing democracies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, and France.

• Even when Türk did criticize some of the most oppressive regimes, he ignored many of their worst offenses. For example, he made only three criticisms of China, yet even in these he never mentioned Beijing’s imprisonment of more than one million Uyghurs in concentration camps.

• Türk was obsessed with condemning Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, making 58 condemnations during the past two years, most on the Hamas-Israel war. To put this in perspective, over the same two years, he criticized the Maduro regime only 4 times. Turk has made more statements on Gaza than the combined total of his statements on Ukraine, Sudan, and Myanmar. To put this in perspective, although the war in Sudan also began in 2023, it has already killed tens of thousands of civilians and has created over 2 million external refugees, which is nearly as many refugees as the entire population of Gaza. Another 7.7 million Sudanese have been left internally displaced.

• Despite his position as the highest independent voice in the UN human rights system, Türk was silent when the UN elected serial abusers like China, Cuba, Qatar, and Eritrea to the Human Rights Council, which now has a membership that is 60 percent non-democracies, and he was silent when the Islamic Republic of Iran was made Chair of the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum.

Why do the Left march against Israel but not Russia, Iran’s mullahs, or the Taliban?

Israel’s response to Hamas’s October 7 invasion put to rest any final worries about the confidence and passion of Gen Z, especially the swathes of it associated with the Left (or the disturbing mishmash of disinformation, false history and identity politics that passes for the left these days). Marches in London “for Palestine” and against Israel regularly number 125,000.

And yet this apparent dedication to the cause of justice in the world is astonishingly narrow. Yes, there’s the preoccupation with the hazily menacing notion of “climate justice”. But on issues where Leftist passion would be truly welcome, and reassuring, it is missing in action. If risking arrest, harassing and creating an intimidating environment for Jews and glorifying terrorism is de rigueur, there seems to be no appetite for doing so on behalf of – to give an example – women in Afghanistan who are ever-more brutalised by the Taliban.

The extending misogynistic sadism of this movement was revived by Joe Biden’s craven decision to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan. When, in August, the Taliban stopped women speaking, singing or showing any skin at all, even on their faces or hands, in public, there was barely a peep from the Left. And last week, there was news of a fresh tightening of an already unbearable screw in Afghanistan – with a ban on women training in midwifery, dentistry and nursing, their sole remaining avenue for education and career. It’s hard to imagine what else there is to destroy in women’s lives, but no doubt the Taliban will think of something.

Add to the list the Muslim Uyghurs in China, of whom one million have been arbitrarily detained in concentration camps, subjected to torture including forced sterilisation, or Sudan’s civil war between two vicious forces, the RSF (Rapid Support Forces, the new name for the militia that carried out the slaughter in Darfur 20 years ago) and the SAF (Sudanese Armed Forces), which has left more than 60,000 dead, displaced more than 10 million and is threatening the destruction of 13 million more through famine in what aid organisations call “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster”.

Then there are the victims of the brutal Russia-backed Assad regime in Syria; victims, especially girls, of Islamist groups in Nigeria; Venezuelans fleeing authoritarian rule, violence and poverty. And what about the innocent civilians in Ukraine bombarded every night by Russian bombs?

The sinister, lethal approach to women, artists and intellectuals in Iran, surely, also ought to garner at least some reaction; some use of megaphones, and some placards paraded through city streets imploring our government to take this threat seriously?

But sadly it seems the streets are all but silent by such activists. Some on the Right speak out, but on the Left, on real questions of right and wrong, passion runs cold and dry. The fate of women the world over trapped in inhumane Islamist regimes, including those of Hamas and Hezbollah, and all the rest of the world’s poor and abused who deserve to be stood up for, or at least remembered, are of no interest.

There are many explanations for this phenomenon – some say it’s to do with disaster fatigue, and the overweening dominance in the media of events in the Middle East and in Ukraine under Russian aggression. Some say it’s to do with confusion over who the bad guy is when the conflict does not involve a friend of America (the friend of America is always the bad guy).

But I think the answer is simpler and darker than those rationalisations suggest. It’s that the cheerleaders for those who mean Israel the darkest harm under the banner of attempting to “free Palestine” – but who remain silent in the face of an emboldened Taliban, genocidal militias, and mass abuse of Uyghurs – actually want the West to be destroyed. Their pattern of passion and frigid silence is not some accident of well-meaning care for the weak. It is intentional, a direct result of a set of ideologies that has soaked through academic and institutional settings.

In their warped world, even the shuttering of a final avenue of life beyond total darkness for women in a country that the West threw to the wolves, but could have saved, simply doesn’t register.

It’s hard not to conclude, then, that those who shout the loudest on behalf of the dispossessed of Palestine are actually engaged in a project of cheerleading for those who want the West, beginning with Israel, to fall.

Congress Probes Pro-Hamas Group Behind Union Station Riot for 'Strong' Ties to CCP

House Republicans are probing the People's Forum—the pro-Hamas social justice organization behind the violent riot at Union Station over the summer—over its "strong" ties to the Chinese Communist Party, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Ten Republican members of the House Natural Resources Committee, led by the panel's chairman Bruce Westerman (R., Ark.), outlined how the People's Forum's funding can be traced back to Neville Roy Singham, a well-known socialist businessman with direct ties to China's global propaganda operations, in a letter sent to the New York-based group on Monday.

The letter marks an escalation in the committee's ongoing investigation into the events leading up to and following the July 24 riot at Union Station, where agitators launched human feces at U.S. Park Police officers, burned an American flag, raised a Palestinian flag, and defaced several monuments with graffitied slogans such as "abolish the U.S.A." and "Hamas is coming."

The investigation was launched in the immediate aftermath of the riot and has focused on the individuals and groups responsible for the riot. Lawmakers are now broadening the scope of the investigation, digging into the foreign influences driving those behind the riot.

A 2023 report published by the New York Times revealed how Singham has constructed a shady network of nonprofits headquartered at UPS stores, which send millions of dollars producing and distributing media content parroting Chinese propaganda talking points. At least one of the groups, the Justice and Education Fund, funds, provides services like accounting, and shares personnel with the People's Forum, according to federal tax filings.

Singham's network also funds the media outlets Dongsheng News and BreakThrough Media, both of which provide friendly coverage of Chinese issues—the People's Forum regularly touts content produced by both outlets. In September 2021, the People's Forum posted a video of BreakThrough Media journalist Kei Pritsker stating that "China is not our enemy, China isn't belligerent towards us, China wants peace."

Considering the People's Forum's involvement in the Union Station riot, the revelations raise serious concerns about China's efforts to influence public opinion and sow division in the United States. American intelligence agencies have warned that China engages in information warfare in the United States by, for example, providing financial incentives for academic institutions and nonprofit organizations to bolster positive views of the nation.

"The Committee is concerned with the CCP’s growing attempts to influence U.S. policies and that the relationship between the CCP and the People’s Forum may impact the People’s Forum’s political and advocacy activities, including those relating to the abuse of free speech," Westerman and the other lawmakers wrote to the People's Forum executive director Manolo De Los Santos.

12/10 Links Pt1: Assad’s Fall Has Humiliated Washington; World Central Kitchen Fires 60 Gaza Workers for Failing Israeli Security Checks

From Ian:

Eli Lake: Assad’s Fall Has Humiliated Washington

The end of Bashar al-Assad's tyranny in Syria was made possible not because President Biden had the foresight to unleash the Jewish state against America's enemies in the Middle East. It's because Israel defied Biden's efforts to restrain it. When Israel took the very steps that have weakened Iran and its proxies, it was greeted by threats and disapproval from Washington.

Biden's approach has been to prevent regional escalation. That may sound sensible on the surface, but it has meant trying to limit Israel's war to a purely defensive one against Iran's proxies - one at a time - while preventing Israel from taking the fight to Iran, the patron of those proxies. It goes back to President Obama's policy of respecting Iran's regional ambitions.

It turns out that another regional power - Israel - was able to extinguish much of Iran's vaunted "ring of fire," despite the warnings, arm-twisting, and weapon-shipment delays from the Biden administration. The Israelis did not have to "share" the region with a regime intent on dominating it.

While the Washington foreign policy establishment had persuaded itself of the futility of fighting a regime dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, Israel could not afford that illusion. It demonstrated the fragility of Iran's imperium and the delusions about that imperium.

Seth Mandel: The Wages of Peace with Israel

If you had the opportunity to start a new Middle East state from scratch, would you rather it be at peace with Israel or at war with Israel?

I genuinely wish regional leaders would ask themselves this question once in a while. And the fall of the house of Assad is a great time to do so.

Israel’s offer of peace has been on the table to all comers from the start. If you want peace with the Jewish state, you can have it. Should you take the offer?

If the citizens of your state are of any concern to you, it’s pretty obvious you should take the deal.

Israel borders Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt. In recent weeks and months, we have watched Lebanon continue its long history of abridged sovereignty and political decay. The Iranian/Hezbollah statelet in South Lebanon persists, though in a weakened state. That occupation exists to regularly plunge the country into war with Israel. Before the area was Hezbollah’s playground, it was the mini-state of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which instigated two types of armed conflict: war with Israel and civil war within Lebanon. After Israel ousted the PLO from southern Lebanon in 1982, Syria intervened to ensure there would be no peace with Israel by killing Lebanese politicians who wanted an end to the bloodshed.

Syria, meanwhile, has been in the news because a decade-long revolt finally succeeded in ousting Bashar al-Assad, who has only been able to stay in power with the help of Hezbollah terrorists, Iranian generals, and chemical weapons that Assad’s forces used on civilians. Three-quarters of a century into Israel’s existence, such is the reality of life in the neighboring countries that insist on permanent hostility to Israel’s existence.

It is no coincidence that this is not the state of affairs in Jordan or Egypt. Peace with Israel isn’t the only reason for their relative stability. But not being at war with a first-rate military and ally of the Western democracies is a pretty big factor.

What might a Sliding Doors-style alternate history look like? We have a useful model in the Sinai Peninsula.

Seth Mandel: Israel Deserves More Credit for Eliminating Syria’s Loose Weapons

The situation regarding the chemical weapons is more complicated, thanks to one of the Obama administration’s bizarre mistakes in the region. A decade ago, after Assad was found to have used chemical weapons against his own civilians, which President Obama had designated as America’s “red line,” a scheme cooked up by the administration and the Russians enabled Obama to forgo punitive strikes and pretend the crisis was being handled. Assad declared 1,300 chemical weapons to international inspection regimes, but that was far from its total reserves. Ever since then, inspectors had been stymied by Assad and unable to tally Syria’s full stock of illegal weapons.

“To date, this work has continued, and the Syrian declaration of its chemical weapons program still cannot be considered as accurate and complete,” the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said in a statement yesterday.

“It costs millions and millions of dollars without making any progress,” one source told Reuters. “So it really is a great opportunity now to get rid of (chemical weapons) for good. This is the moment.”

Unlike the Israeli Air Force, OPCW inspectors require comprehensive security planning to search Syria. That means the new regime, which technically doesn’t exist yet (Syria only has a transitional government at the moment), would have to arrange it. That seems a long way off.

Meantime, therefore, the presence of those weapons poses a “proliferation risk,” according to the U.S. That risk is believed to include undeclared full-scale production sites.

The regime’s 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta killed over a thousand. Assad’s forces were found to have used sarin gas, which is heavier than air and thus sinks. Families hiding with children in their basements might have survived a conventional bombing, but were sitting ducks for the sarin gas.

Israel’s current actions are reminiscent of its successful secret mission in 2007 to destroy Syria’s nascent nuclear reactor, likely constructed with North Korean help. The threat that Syria poses to the region was and remains acute. The threat it poses to the rest of the world is, once again thanks to Israel, far more limited.

Jake Wallis Simons writes in TheJC:

If there has been one message to have emerged in intelligence circles in recent weeks it is that Iran’s feared “axis of resistance” was not all it was cracked up to be. Did Russia and China come to Iran’s defence when Israeli planes attacked? They did not. When Tehran rained missiles on the Jewish state last April, however, a coalition of friendly democracies pitched in. It is clear where the true alliance lies.

For years, the Biden administration has been trying to appease the despots of Tehran. Why? It has never been any match for Western might. The time is approaching to point out that the emperor has no nukes.

For now. History may never repeat itself but certain lessons may be drawn. If Iran is allowed to go nuclear, there are two possible futures. Either the regime gets to wield its new atomic muscle across the region or it collapses under the weight of its own brutality and the weapons fall into chaotic hands. For Israel, neither would be tolerable.

The recent constellation of events has led Iran to its weakest position in decades. The regime is desperate. This week, Rafael Grossi, head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, said that Tehran had drastically escalated its uranium enrichment programme. A wounded animal is most dangerous when cornered.

Whether the White House will get onboard or not, Jerusalem must rip apart the paper tiger of Tehran before it crosses the atomic threshold. Remember when the late John McCain sang “bomb bomb Iran” on the campaign trail? That was 16 years ago. Why the delay? The Begin doctrine worked in Iraq and Syria. It is time to dust it off once again.

There are a couple of other reasons for Israel to consider action now.

One is that Biden is the lamest in the history of lame duck presidents. Right now the US is rudderless. Any worries about the US turning against Israel at this point, with Trump entering the White House, are almost nonexistent.

But beyond that:

I recently looked at Iranian media to see what they were saying about the promised reprisal against Israel for last October's attack by Israel on Iran. Iranian officials and media are still promising that the attack is coming, and the emphasize that when Khamenei makes a promise, they will make sure it happens.

One analyst asked what is taking so long -in mid-November.

The first possibility is that Iran is trying to repair the gaps and strengthen its defense systems before attacking Israel, and this solid work may take a little time. For example, the Bavar 373 defense and defense system has proven to be very effective, but its number of missiles is limited. The Russian S-300 system is probably not up to expectations; Perhaps there is a greater need for electronic defense systems. For example, in order to repel the next Israeli attacks, a new generation of Russian or Chinese fighters may be needed, or for any other reason that Iranian defense officials want to patiently and intelligently organize and work hard.

Iran saw its weaknesses from Israel's October attack and is probably busily looking for all the help it can get to patch them. It knows that if it gives Israel an excuse, Israel's next attack will be much larger and more devastating. It doesn't want to attack when Israel's next response will hurt it much more than it can hurt Israel.

Why should Israel play Iran's game? They have publicly promised to attack Israel. (The UN seems strangely uninterested in that promise.) Israel has every right under the theory of self-defense to take the initiative this time. Why wait until Iran is closer to a nuke, until Iran shores up its defenses?

Israel has the ability not only to damage Iran's nuclear program (which is still mostly underground) but to cripple Iran's economy much faster than Trump's sanctions will. Iran can't count on too many friends to help it out.

While Israel may want to wait for a clearer reason to attack, the daily threats from Iran must be taken seriously. They didn't lie the last two times and they are not lying now. Waiting is what Iran is assuming Israel will do. There is no reason to play by their rules.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Adam Schiff was sworn into office yesterday. He chose to place his hand on a 15th century printing of a volume of Maimonides' legal opus Mishneh Torah that is owned by the Library of Congress.

This sparked an interesting discussion on X.

It is traditional for officials to swear on Bibles. Lahav Harkov half-jokingly asked whether Schiff thought that the Mishneh Torah is a Torah, which it isn't.

Forgetting Schiff's political positions, which certainly color people's responses, there are a couple of interesting points made.

One is that under US law, people can choose to swear in using pretty much anything they want. People have used a Dr. Seuss book, a rare Superman comic book, and the Autobiography of Malcolm X, or even nothing. So from that perspective, there is nothing wrong with swearing on a book of law, which seems appropriate given that the wording he is swearing is to support and defend the Constitution.

The other issue is whether Jewish law allows such an oath to begin with. Traditionally, religious Jews avoid swearing given the seriousness of such a move under Jewish law; instead we will say we "affirm" when going to court or the like.

In this case he did swear, so the question is whether a Jew can swear on a Mishneh Torah?

Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin notes that "Ramah in Choshen Mishpat 87:15 cites opinion that allows for oaths to be administered on any Jewish Sefer that includes the name of God."

But that brings up the next question: does that mean the Tetragrammaton, the four letter Name that should not be pronounced, or one of the other Names that are more commonly used that do not have the same degree of sanctity?

As far as I can tell, looking at old editions of Mishneh Torah online, the Rambam (Maimonides) does not use the Tetragrammaton, instead abbreviating it with the letter "heh" or the "double yud." (He alludes to the Name in the acrostic introducing the work.)

So I am not sure that Mishneh Torah, while certainly holy, qualifies as a a book that contains the name of God for the purposes of taking an oath.

Finally, I expect it will take about five minutes before antisemites use this ceremony to "prove" that Schiff only swore to uphold Talmudic Jewish law, not the Constitution.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

A new poll of Canadian Jews by a group of left-wing Jewish organizations finds something curious and seemingly contradictory.

It showed that a huge majority of Canadian Jews - 94% - believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state.

That's pretty much the definition of Zionism.

But only 51% of them considered themselves Zionists. 27% said they did not consider themselves Zionist and the rest were not sure.

So 94% of Canadian Jews are Zionist - but nearly half of them don't admit it even to themselves.

I don't have the raw results of the poll, but the article indicates that older and more religious Jews are more likely to say they have an emotional connection to Israel so it is likely that most of the people who are Zionist but claim not to be are younger and more liberal.

The most likely reason is that anti-Zionist propaganda among the Left has been so effective that the word "Zionist" is now associated with evil, completely outside of its actual meaning. Repetition - the most effective form of brainwashing - mean that even people who support Israel as the Jewish state don't want to be associated with that term.

We need to take back the word "Zionist" from the haters. We need Jews to be proud to be Zionist. We need to show the world that, invariably, anti-Zionists are just antisemites in new clothing.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Let's compare how much Syrian territory Israel controls with how much Turkey illegally occupies

Lots of antisemites are looking at Israel going into the former buffer zone in Syria to help defend Israel from any threats. They are saying that this is evidence of the "greater Israel" plan, of Israel's ast expansionist desires to eventually control the entire region from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Let's look at how much land Israel is now occupying. (Most maps from Critical Threats.)

It is the little patch of blue next to the much larger Golan Heights.

Now let's zoom out and look at who is controlling all of Syria today.

You can hardly see the blue area.

But look at the light yellow areas in northern Syria.

Those are controlled by the "Syrian National Army." The SNA is a Turkish proxy - essentially, Turkey's "Hezbollah." It is funded by Turkey, armed by Turkey and all of its military decisions are made by Turkey.

Turkey controls 22 times the area Israel controls - 8,835 square kilometers.

And the Turkish presence is not only in the yellow sections. As of 2021, one think-tank counted 113 Turkish military bases and outposts in Syria: within 5 governorates: 55 in Aleppo, 43 in Idlib, 9 in Raqqa, 4 in Al-Hasaka and 2 in Lattakia.

Unlike the Russian and Iranian bases in Syria, the Turkish bases are in no danger of being taken over by the rebels.

This has been going on for many years, and there are probably fewer articles about Turkish occupation of vast parts of Syria in the past decade than on Israel taking over tiny parts of Syria in the past couple of days.

But that is not the only thing that Western media has been downplaying about these areas.

Turkey considers a 20-30 km wide swatch of Syrian territory along its borders to be a "safe zone" - which is a buffer zone that it controls or intends to control. And within that zone are illegal settlements.

You see, Turkey has been expelling hundreds of thousands of Kurds from these territories - building settlements, and forcibly populating them with Sunni Muslim Syrian refugees who fled to Turkey. They are changing the demography of the area with settlements that almost no one talks about.

Turkey's policy of occupation, ethnic cleansing and settlement enterprise in parts of Syria violates international law. Almost no one discusses this and European governments, fearful of Turkish reactions and threats to send millions of refugees their way, are reluctant to emphasize this - but no one outside Turkey disputes this.

How many Syrians has Israel displaced? From all accounts - zero.

Here is a great example where the main story is true - Israel did indeed take over 400 square kilometers of Syrian territory, as a temporary measure until there is a dependable government or other arrangements that can guarantee Israel's security. But when you compare that to the entire size of Syria and the amount of land controlled by other foreign nations, the real story turns out to be the one that everyone is ignoring.

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12/09 Links Pt2: ‘NY Times’ confirms Hamas presence in UN schools; BBC News is openly deceiving you; The Real Reason Iran Wants to Destroy Israel

From Ian:

Kassy Akiva: Why Trump Recognizing Jerusalem As The Capital Of Israel Is ‘Just and Right’

The authors of a book detailing the behind-the-scenes story of Donald Trump’s decision to move the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem weighed in on what a future Trump administration will mean for U.S.-Israel relations. In their book, “Because It’s Just and Right,” Farley Weiss and Leonard Grunstein chronicle the story behind one of Trump’s most significant foreign policy moves. Now, as Trump prepares to return to office in January, the two authors offer unique insights about how his second term may further redefine and strengthen U.S.-Israel relations. “You’re going to be seeing a whole different world, a much more peaceful world now with the Trump administration,” said Weiss. Weiss and Grunstein both predict that a key priority of the Trump administration will be to expand the Abraham Accords. “I think you’re going to see many countries become part of the Abraham Accords and you’re going to just see a whole different dynamic,” said Weiss. He added that the Abraham Accords will be able to broaden because the United States will refocus on countering the Islamic Republic of Iran and their proxies, including Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. Grunstein said that he hopes these actions will pave the way for a “Cyrus Accords” agreement — named after Cyrus the Great, who liberated the Jews from captivity and allowed them to return to Israel in 538 B.C. — between Israel and the free people of Iran. “It’s natural for the free people of Iran to come together. And this new axis of evil that’s developed will be dismembered in effect, and it will usher in a new age of peace and prosperity in the world,” said Grunstein. Both Grunstein and Weiss believe that more countries will be emboldened to follow Trump’s lead and move their embassies to Jerusalem. So far, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea have made the move. Argentina has indicated that it will follow suit, with some speculation that Hungary is considering the move as well. Because It’s Just and Right, named from the remarks for former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), who championed the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995. Weiss himself was instrumental in the act’s passage, after being asked by Kyl to serve as an advisor because of his credentials as the president of Young Israel of Phoenix, a prominent synagogue.

JPost Editorial: Amnesty International cherry-picked incidents to fit its predetermined narrative

Undermining credibility
Amnesty International’s misuse of the term “genocide” undermines its credibility and trivializes the suffering of actual genocide victims. From the Holocaust to the Rwandan and Yazidi genocides, the term carries a historical and moral weight that should never be wielded irresponsibly.

The timing of this report is equally telling. It comes as Israel continues to recover from the October 7 massacre perpetrated by Hamas: the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. Amnesty International, which condemned Israel’s actions so swiftly, has yet to produce a comprehensive report on Hamas’s atrocities, including its use of human shields and indiscriminate rocket fire targeting civilians.

NGO Monitor said before the report’s publication that the announcement used selective evidence to come to its conclusions. The group highlighted how casting the humanitarian effort of evacuation orders as genocidal contradicted demands that Israel take precautions to avoid civilian deaths in combat.

This report is not about justice or accountability – it is about vilifying Israel. By turning a blind eye to Hamas’s crimes while condemning Israel for defending itself, Amnesty exposes its bias and forfeits its moral authority. The International Legal Forum pointed out that the report is “replete with malicious lies, gross distortions of truth, and fabrications of law.”

If Amnesty International wishes to salvage its reputation, it must retract this report and apologize for its reckless accusations. Human rights organizations must uphold fairness, impartiality, and truth – not inflame tensions with baseless claims. The term “genocide” should never be used as a rhetorical cudgel, and Amnesty’s decision to do so is an insult to both the victims of real genocides and to the truth itself.

Israel’s critics should remember this: The Jewish state will always be held to a higher standard and will not shy away from scrutiny. But reckless accusations like these do nothing to protect civilians or promote peace. Instead, they encourage extremists and deepen divisions.

David Collier: BBC News is openly deceiving you

Make no mistake – BBC News is openly deceiving its audience. It is happening day after day, and article after article. Sometimes we can put the problem down to laziness, ineptitude, or an ‘agency problem’ (the fact most BBC articles on the Middle East are dependant to some degree on toxic BBC Arabic journalists and their networks). But often, the problem is clearly more sinister than mere incompetence.

We know for a fact that there are numerous BBC journalists who spend almost all their time ONLY looking for new ways to demonise Israel – and there are far too many occasions where a piece has been deliberately worked to hide a central truth from a reader. The only logical conclusion – is that there are BBC journos out there who are deliberately skewing the news. BBC News deceiving readers – example 1

This heartbreaking article was published late Sunday night, 01 December. It is the story of a poor, innocent Lebanese family, who paid a devastating price during the conflict. Having already moved several times to get away from the fighting, the woman in the image – Rihab Faour – eventually lost both her children and her husband to a massive IDF strike. A devastating story with a crushing headline…so of course, the article went viral.

Hezbollah – the aliens from outer space
The article on Rihab Faour is a great example of a primary disinformation campaign the BBC has been running since Oct 7. The BBC completely misleads readers about the culture, and make-up of the societies being discussed. The truth is that Hezbollah is even more embedded into Shia Muslim Lebanese society, than Hamas is into Gaza – but this truth does not suit the narrative the BBC journalists want to spread around.

Instead, the BBC describe a fictitious landscape, which suggests 99% of the local population has nothing at all to do with the terrorist groups (that most of them voted for!). What this does is create a completely false illusion – as if Hamas and Hezbollah are aliens that have invaded these lands, and have forced themselves on all these poor, innocent, locals. This is a blatant misrepresentation of the truth and places the IDF in an impossible war.

But a very different story is hidden away behind the words in the article – or in some cases omitted all together. For example, even though it can be found easily online, the original village Rihab Faour came from is (strangely) not mentioned in the BBC article. I found it on the FB page of her husband’s workplace. It was Bint Jbeil. Which means that the BBC journo did not have to go far, to give some colour and context to the piece, because BBC News has previously referred to Bint Jbeil as ‘Hezbollah heartland’. For whatever reason – this information – that the family lived in a Hezbollah heartland, was left out.

Then the article tells us the family left ‘their unnamed village’ – and headed to a suburb of Beirut
“The Israeli bombs fell close enough to Rihab’s village that the 33-year-old and her husband Saeed, an employee of the municipal water company, gathered their daughters Tia, eight, and Naya, six, and fled to Rihab’s parents’ house in Dahieh, a suburb of the capital Beirut.”

A responsible journalist would probably have added here that the Beirut suburb of Dahieh – is the capital of Hezbollah’s ‘state-within-a-state’, which is WHY the suburb was being specifically targeted. But the BBC is not publishing this article to INFORM readers – it is being written to MISINFORM. So nowhere in the article is that vitally important fact mentioned either. The family left one Hezbollah outpost – and headed to another.

And it gets worse. The family moves again, and is tragically struck (and children being killed is always a tragedy), during an Israeli attempt to kill Wafiq Safa, the head of Hezbollah’s co-ordination and liaison unit. Which means (whether it was successful or not) that the third place we know the family had set up home inside, was in, or next to, a building being used by Hezbollah’s leadership.

And then there is this from Saiid Kabalan – Rihab Faour’s husband. Posted on his timeline 11 years ago. A statement he is proud to be considered a terrorist, and is ‘at the service’ of Hezbollah:

12/09 Links Pt1: This Is What Imperial Collapse Looks Like; The suicide of the Israel haters; Israel denies report hostage deal in ‘advanced stage’

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: This Is What Imperial Collapse Looks Like

It seems odd that the great mass of “anti-imperialist” students and scholars are so unenthusiastic about having a real-world example to point to. Nonetheless, the end of the Assad rule in Syria, whatever else it may also mean, signifies the textbook dissolution of an empire whose time has come and gone.

That empire is, of course, Iran’s.

The Iranian government itself may not fall. The end of the Russian Empire did not result in the disappearance of Russia, and the same is true of most empires. But Iran’s empire is crumbling.

It is appropriate, then, that it appears to be ending where it began: in Syria.

The Iran-Iraq War that consumed most of the 1980s reshaped political alliances in odd ways, one of which was that Baathist Syria aligned itself against Baathist Iraq and with non-Arab Iran.

zran expanded into Lebanon by helping to launch Hezbollah. This proved to be the most advantageous of any of its investments. Born of chaos and opportunism, Hezbollah was Iran’s successful effort to organize Lebanon’s disparate militias under one umbrella, while gaining Tehran a Mediterranean outlet.

Soon the Lebanon and Syria branches of this imperial tree would start to benefit each other. Iran used Syria to transfer arms and other terrorism supplies to Hezbollah, and Hezbollah’s leadership helped guide Bashar al-Assad when he succeeded his father, Hafez, as president of Syria at the young age of 34.

In the late 1980s, Iran was also an “angel investor,” so to speak, in Hamas. “Since its formation in late 1987, Hamas has received and continues to receive significant financial and other support from Iran,” writes Matthew Levitt, counterterrorism program director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “By 1994, Palestinian author-turned-legislator Ziad Abu-Amr wrote that Iran ‘provides logistical support to Hamas and military training to its members,’ estimating Iranian assistance to Hamas ‘at tens of millions of dollars.’ Over time, this figure would rise steadily.”

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was an important source of funding and training for Hamas. After Hussein’s fall, Iran stepped in to fill the void left by its old rival. Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader based until 2012 in Syria, played a key role in increasing Iran’s operational control over the Palestinian terror group.

Brendan O'Neill: The suicide of the Israel haters

They tried to destroy the Jewish State and ended up destroying themselves. The 7 October effect is extraordinary. Fourteen months after Hamas visited its racist savagery on the people of southern Israel, the so-called Axis of Resistance is in tatters. Hamas is gravely weakened as a result of the ruinous war it started. Hezbollah has been spectacularly humiliated, its leadership almost entirely wiped out by the IDF. And now the Assad regime has fallen. This ‘keystone’ of the Iran-led ‘Axis of Resistance’ is no more. The Iranian regime hasn’t looked this rattled, this isolated, this existentially brittle, since the Iran-Iraq war that followed its Islamic Revolution in 1979. Has there ever been a greater self-inflicted blow in world affairs than 7 October?

The fall of Assad is first and foremost a good day for the people of Syria. People are right to raise questions about what comes next, about what the Islamists of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and their various allies might do now they’ve conquered Damascus. But the staggeringly swift fall of the Assad regime, a testament to its superficiality, should be welcomed by all who love liberty. Bashar al-Assad, like his father Hafez before him, was the cruellest of rulers. He viciously suppressed dissent, jailed his critics, massacred Kurds and invited Russia to help him slaughter tens of thousands of his own countrymen during the civil war. The Syrians dancing in the streets following his spineless fleeing are not doing so because they’ve read every policy statement of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and agree with it all. They’re doing so because they feel the sweet relief of deliverance from Assad’s boot on their throats. It’s their Berlin Wall moment and it should not be begrudged them.

Yet Assad’s fall also speaks to the suicidal dynamic of 7 October. Hamas’s pogrom set in motion a chain of events that proved catastrophic for the pogromists themselves and their apologists. Assad’s scalp is the greatest prize yet in this self-destruction of the Israelophobes. That his shallow government, all-powerful but unrooted, was so speedily put into the history books by the advancing rebels is down to two things. First, and most importantly, the distraction of Russia. Assad’s allies in Moscow are too busy killing Ukrainians to be able help him kill Syrians this time round. Without the brute force of Russian back-up, Assad’s hollow government collapsed overnight. That Syrian soldiers in city after city downed arms as the rebels arrived spoke to the regime’s pathological frailty in the absence of Russian muscle.

The second problem for the Assadists was the gutting of Hezbollah by the IDF in recent months. Hezbollah played a central role in propping up the Assad regime during the civil war. Where Russia slayed rebels from the air, Hezbollah did it on the ground. It both trained pro-Assad militias in the ‘art’ of urban warfare and took part in major clashes, including the Battle of al-Qusayr when Assad forces and Hezbollah militants won back the key supply route of al-Qusayr in western Syria. The Center for the National Interest in Washington, DC went so far as to say that Hezbollah was ‘winning the war in Syria’, using its ‘battlefield acumen’ to re-establish Assad’s rule. In 2024, though, Hezbollah could do precisely nothing to assist its allies in Damascus. Like Russia, it is distracted. In fact, it is virtually defeated.

Where once Hezbollah ‘deployed its well-trained fighters’ to aid Assad, says the BBC, that ‘did not happen this time’ because Hezbollah is ‘preoccupied with [its] own affairs’. That’s one way of putting it. Actually, Hezbollah is suffering one of the worst ignominies of its entire existence as a result of the fallout from the 7 October pogrom it supported. In the days after Hamas’s butchery in southern Israel, Hezbollah started raining missiles on northern Israel in an act of solidarity with the Jew-killers. It was a low-level war for months until Israel upped the ante in September this year. It launched its devastating ‘pagers attack’ and took out Hezbollah leaders one by one, including the secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah. Last month, Hezbollah agreed to the humiliating terms of a ceasefire deal with Israel that effectively forces it to vacate southern Lebanon and, worse, to submit to the authority of the Lebanese government.

How Assad’s Potemkin dictatorship crumbled

And just like that, Bashar al-Assad’s reign over Syria is no more. Over the course of a mere two weeks, what looked from the outside like a brutal but relatively stable regime has evaporated into thin air.

When several thousand opposition fighters, headed up by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), launched their offensive in late November, few would have predicted their triumph. Riding out from their anti-Assad hold-outs in Syria’s north-west, in pick-up trucks and on motorbikes, they looked like what they were – a fearsome set of militias, but surely no match for a state army backed by Russian airpower.

The HTS-led forces soon took towns and villages with ease. By last weekend, they had captured Syria’s second city, Aleppo, and were seemingly advancing on the capital, Damascus. Even then, few inside and outside Syria believed that Moscow-backed government forces would not at some stage mount a counter-offensive. On Saturday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov insisted that Russia ‘was trying to do everything possible to prevent terrorists from prevailing’. Rumours circulating that Assad had fled were denied. The interior ministry announced that the army was forming a ‘ring of steel’ around the capital. Surely, there would be a fightback.

But the fightback never came. The insurgents were able to enter and capture Damascus without really having to lift a weapon – except to fire celebratory shots into the sky. By Sunday, HTS had announced that ‘the city of Damascus is free from the tyrant Bashar al-Assad’, and a few hours later HTS leader Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, now going by his original name Ahmed al-Sharaa, was declaring victory in a speech to the nation from within Damascus’ historic Umayyad mosque, the same mosque at which Assad would usually mark Eid.

The speed with which Assad’s rule has collapsed and the sheer absence of any resistance reveals a stark truth about Syria’s fallen dictatorship. It has been completely hollowed out over the past decade or more of conflict. This was a regime built on repressive force that now lacked any actual force. A regime whose authority rested on military strength that now lacked a strong military. And so when Islamist factions pushed at the doors to the palace, as they did both literally and figuratively this weekend, they simply opened.

Few will mourn the passing of the Assad family’s half-century-long exercise in despotism. Bashar’s father, former airforce pilot Hafez al-Assad, had been a key player in a military coup in 1963, which brought the Ba’ath Party to power. When Hafez became president in 1971, it wasn’t due to popular support. From the start, his regime’s authority rested almost entirely on its use of force, principally through Syria’s much feared intelligence and security agencies.

Bashar al-Assad inherited this repressive regime, complete with its brutal security apparatus, in 2001. Initially feted by the West, this British-educated ophthalmologist set about liberalising Syria’s economy, largely for his and his network’s own benefit. At the same time, he busied himself repressing any hints of dissent and striking up a close relationship with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in neighbouring Lebanon – all the better to suppress their mutual opponents.

A reminder of how the "Axis of Resistance" loved Assad up until recently

It's really funny to see Iran and its proxies scramble to pretend to support the Syrian people, when just a month ago they were supporting the ruthless dictator who was repressing those same people.

Looking through older issues of Islamic Jihad's mouthpiece Palestine Today, I see this classic from 2022:

The Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Sayyed Ali Khamenei, stressed that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian people enjoy high esteem and prestige among the peoples of the region, noting that everyone today views Syria as a force to be reckoned with.

During his reception today, Sunday, of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his accompanying delegation, Leader Khamenei considered the resistance and steadfastness of the people and state in Syria and the victory in an international war as having provided the ground for strengthening Syria’s position and pride.

He said: "In light of the interest, activity and strong will of the President of the Republic and the Iranian government to develop cooperation with Syria, efforts should be made to further advance relations between the two countries."

The Leader of the Revolution stressed that Syria today is not Syria before the war, and pointed to the great successes achieved by Syria in the political and military arenas, indicating that respect for Syria and its status have become much higher than they were in the past, and that everyone sees this country as a force.

Or who can forget this greatest hit:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has won a new presidential term for the fourth time in a row after winning 95.1 percent of the votes, according to results announced by People's Assembly Speaker Hammoudeh Sabbagh on Thursday.

Not to mention this from this past August:

The Syrian President sent greetings to the resistance fighters in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, who represent "a role model, an example, and a model for us to follow on the path of liberation, dignity, honor, and independence."

The "strong horse" theory remains in place, and there are fewer and fewer strong horses in the Iranian orbit.

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

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Once upon a time, @UNRWA helped resettle Palestinian refugees in other countries - and removed them from their "refugee" counts

Browsing through old UNRWA annual reports, I saw this from 1954:

At one time, UNRWA would remove refugees from its rolls if they emigrated to other countries - and even if they made money on their own.

And UNRWA encouraged both. It created works programs (the "W" of UNRWA) to help Palestinians find work and become self-sufficient. Over time, those programs disappeared.

When it came to emigration, the same thing happened. Its 1956 report says that UNRWA provided grants to those who managed to obtain visas but couldn't afford travel: "1,040 refugees who wished to emigrate, who had obtained visas on their own initiative and who had requested assistance from the Agency have been given travel grants when they demonstrated that they would otherwise not have been able to use their visas."

UNRWA continued to give such grants for the rest of the decade, although it doesn't seem to have publicized that too well. The number of people who took advantage of it went steadily down. (Only Jordan and Lebanon allowed the refugees to leave; those in Syria and Gaza were not allowed to emigrate - for their own good, of course.)

South America was the preferred destination for most of the Palestinian refugees.

By 1962, the budget for paying for Palestinians to go elsewhere was slashed. The program wound a year or two afterwards, although UNRWA doesn't explain why.

This chart can help explain it, though:

By 1961, over 99% of UNRWA staff were Palestinians themselves. These were the ideologues who wanted to ensure that the population would stay put to pressure Israel with the threat of "return." It is no wonder that UNRWA funds to emigrate dried up - these Palestinian UNRWA employees would pressure, and probably threatened, anyone who wanted to find a better life in the West, where they would no longer be stateless.

It was not long after this that UNRWA decided that the definition of "refugee" would include their descendants, forever, and when UNRWA changed their policies to ensure that "refugees" can never be taken off their rolls even when they leave UNRWA areas of operation.

UNRWA transformed from an agency that actually tried to help Palestinians into an agency that only wanted to keep them miserable and stateless for political reasons. The statistics of those that UNRWA helped emigrate elsewhere is another piece of evidence for how the agency went from a group of people who really wanted to help into a political organization hell bent on using the "refugee" issue as a means to destroy Israel.

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

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