Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Uninformed or Disloyal and the Thin Jewish Line Between the Two (Judean Rose)

We all know what Trump said about the Jewish people, right? About American Jews being uninformed or disloyal? This, we were told, was the president being antisemitic! He’s using an ancient antisemitic trope: the dual loyalties accusation.

Except he’s not. The president is not speaking of divided loyalties to two different countries, the United States and Israel. On the contrary, he’s saying that American Jews are loyal to a single entity alone: the United States. He means that Jews who vote Democrat are disloyal to the Jewish people and to Israel.

Look at the context of what he said, when he responded to Ilhan Omar’s call to cut off U.S. aid to Israel:

“Where has the Democratic Party gone? Where have they gone where they are defending these two people over the State of Israel? I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty."

What Trump means is that people vote their conscience. And the Democratic Party appears to have no conscience when it comes to Israel and the Jews. If you vote Democrat, you're throwing Israel and the Jews under the bus.

Democratic Party: Lost Its Moral Compass

Here is a fact: the Democratic Party has lost its moral compass when it comes to the Jews and Israel. The party is not issuing clear condemnations against BDS, cutting aid to Israel, or the trip to Israel that wasn't, which was so clearly intended to demonize and harm Israel. There has been no official censure of the junior congresswomen for the things they have said and done against the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel. The inaction and the silence of the Democratic Party in the face of this antisemitic onslaught makes it complicit in the attack, an actor with ill designs against the Jews.

The issues we speak of are deadly serious. BDS, for example, represents an existential threat to the State of Israel and the Jews who live there. Cutting aid to Israel, has as its goal, a Jewish people unable to defend itself against domestic Arab terror and attacks by hostile countries on several fronts at once. Maybe Israel doesn't need U.S. aid and is perfectly capable of managing without it. But the malicious intent of the effort is clear, a desire to bring down the State of Israel while placing the lives of 7 million Israeli Jews in mortal danger.

Hence, from Trump’s perspective, if a Jew votes Democrat, the voter is basically saying he doesn’t care whether his own people--7 million of them--live or die. If the average American Jew, in his continuing support for the Democratic Party votes his conscience he is collectively saying he doesn’t care about these things--doesn't care about Israel, doesn't care when his faraway brethren are endangered.

Maybe They're Clueless

But there's a silver lining. President Trump did offer these average American Jewish Dems the benefit of his doubt: maybe they're not disloyal. Maybe they're just clueless! That could be it: they simply aren't aware of what is going on with the Democratic Party and what it has sanctioned with its inactivity and its silence. Hence, “a total lack of knowledge.” They're not disloyal: they're uninformed.

Which is what happens when you just don’t care about something. When you don't care, you don't bother to do your homework.

To be loyal to someone or something, on the other hand, is first and foremost to care. You make sure you know what’s going on with those you love and the things you care about. You show your loyalty and broadcast it loud and clear.

A Blood What?

So if the average American Jew is loyal to his people, he should know that Tlaib and Omar were to tour Judea and Samaria with Miftah, an organization that promoted the blood libel. He should know what a blood libel is, a primitive, evil, and unfounded rumor that Jews kill Christians to get their blood to be used in the manufacture of Passover matzah. The irony of the blood libel is that it has caused the spilling of Jewish blood alone, for centuries.

The average American Jewish voter should know that the itinerary for Tlaib and Omar contained meetings with two organizations tied to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group. The PFLP has as its sole aim the murder of as many Jews as possible. Tlaib and Omar chose to give these people a hearing, and to amplify their views even now, by association. For surely if American congresswomen saw nothing wrong in meeting with these people--people tied to those whose sole goal is murdering Jews because they are Jews--it must be that goal isn't really so bad.

Now this is important: if American Jews know the Democratic congresswomen were to meet with people who thirst for Jewish blood, and these Jews continue to vote Democrat anyway, there's no getting around it. They are disloyal. To their own people and to Israel.

If, on the other hand, the average American Jew doesn't know the congresswomen were to meet with people who thirst for Jewish blood, it's because he hasn't cared enough to find out. Which is, arguably, disloyal. One might say he is "willfully uninformed."

Loyalty Is A Duty

In loyalty, you see, there's a self-imposed duty. You find out what you need to know in order to protect the people and the things you care about. And if you don't look to find out, it's because you don't care about your own people. Which means you have a loyalty problem. That's just how it is.

It's not just that the Democratic Party--the party of choice for the average American Jew--was silent in the wake of the trip to Israel that wasn't. It went beyond that, with candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for president actually condemning Israel for barring entry to the congresswomen, instead of calling them out for consorting with antisemites.

The response, meanwhile, of your average American Jew? Continued support for the Democratic Party, a party that is doing nothing about the antisemitic narrative taking hold of its kishkes, its innermost workings.

Strange Loyalty

It is simple: the average American Jew is not using his vote to defend the Jewish people and the Jewish State. American Jews are not defending their people, their brethren in Israel. They aren't defending Israel, either. What we have is a dearth of loyalty accompanied, on the other hand, by this strange loyalty to a Democratic Party that is more and more, allying against the Jewish people and the country that is so central to their religion and history.

This is hard for me to understand as an Israeli American. I am certain it would be all the more difficult for a non-Jew like the president to understand. This lack of loyalty to one's own. It is a shameful thing. A moral failing.

From Trump’s perspective then, the Jew who votes as a Democrat is using his vote to express his conscience. When AOC trivializes the Holocaust by comparing detention camps to concentration camps, she is cementing an idea into our zeitgeist, that what happened to the Jews was nothing special, not so bad. That Auschwitz, for instance, was no more than an immigrant holding center, a detention camp.

The Language Of Holocaust Trivialization

And when AOC is not censured by the party she represents, they are helping this narrative take hold. So when you vote Democrat, this is what you are voting for: a narrative that trivializes what happened in Auschwitz, compares the separation of parents from their children to say, an infant thrown up in the air, with a Nazi shooting bullets into it in front of its mother's eyes, to count how many shots he can get into it before it falls to the ground dead. If you care enough about your people to know these things, there is a shocking disparity between these two events, all the more so because the illegal immigrant enters America knowing what will happen if he is caught. The mother of the dead Jewish infant, on the other hand, was taken from her home, packed into a cattle car, and shipped off to an unchosen destination.

If you are a Jew who is loyal to your people, you fight against AOC and the evil she peddles, that horrendous narrative. You move your vote to the other party, because you know what is right and what is wrong.

Because as a Jewish voter you either know what AOC said and do not care or you don’t know what she said, because you didn’t care enough to find out.

You Should Be Screaming

It is a very serious thing indeed that Jews would not be crying out against the Democratic Party, the things these women say about their people and the way they try to hurt Israel. If they were loyal to their own, they'd be shrieking their heads off about these issues. That is how things seem to President Trump and how it looks to Israeli Jews as well.

Unless of course, the average American Jew is completely unaware of these things. And then of course, we have to ask why they don't care enough to make it their business to know.

Uninformed or disloyal? It seems there is a thin Jewish line between the two. In either direction, it's a bad choice, the wrong way to be. The good news is you can change.

What You Can Do

Tired of being disloyal, uninformed? Want to be a better support for your people and for Israel? Here is what you can do, going forward:

o Follow alternative news sources like Elder of Ziyon to find out what is really going on and how these things affect Israel and your people.

o Speak out loud and clear on social media regarding Democratic candidates who target Israel and the Jews.

o Use whatever platforms you have to fight against BDS, Arab terror, the blood libel, antisemitism, and Holocaust trivialization.

o Vote in a way that counts for your people. Don't vote Democrat.

If you are an average American Jew, that last bullet point is going to be a difficult one to swallow. The media has whipped you into a frenzy of hate against the alternative. Loyalty, however, demands a second look at what is really going on. If you love your people, step away from the Democratic Party.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

10th century Arab geographer lamented that so few Muslims lived in Jerusalem

I mentioned 10th century Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi recently.

He was from Jerusalem and wrote extensively about it. Notably, he remarked upon how few Muslims lived there at the time, even though the Muslim invasion of Palestine had already been going on for centuries.

He wrote:

Few are the learned here, many are the Christians, and these make themselves distasteful in the public places ...The Christians and the area are predominant here and the mosque devoid of congregations and assemblies.

Referring to the Christians and Jews in Jerusalem, he referred to the city as a "golden basin full of scorpions."

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08/28 Links Pt1: David Singer: Saudi Arabia Jolts Jordan to Negotiate with Israel on Trump Plan; Israel’s Sagi Muki takes gold at judo world championships

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Israel, Iran and Trump: Behind the rhetoric

It is not likely that Netanyahu has anything to worry about where Trump is concerned, however.

In the first place, the American president said that he had no intention of lifting the sanctions. So, as was the case where his “buddy” in Pyongyang was concerned, no appeasement toward Rouhani is on the horizon.

Secondly, he was adamant that a precondition for any negotiations with Tehran would be its agreement to “no nuclear weapons and no ballistic missiles.”

Third, Rouhani replied by saying that he would not talk to Trump without a lifting of sanctions. The predictable impasse means that there will be no change in the status quo.

No, it’s not Netanyahu who needs to fear a flip-flopping Trump at this stage, but rather the Iranian people. It was they who were just sent a loud and clear message from the White House that the United States would not help them overthrow their evil regime, even indirectly.

It was “déjà vu all over again” for the population that was so brazenly abandoned by the Obama administration in favor of the world’s greatest terror-masters.

Let us hope that Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, is able to persuade his boss that Iranian weapons are only part of the battle. As he and Netanyahu are both keenly aware, without new leadership in Tehran – one not governed by a desire for global Shiite hegemony and jihadi fighters to carry it out – the West cannot rest.

David Singer: Saudi Arabia Jolts Jordan to Negotiate with Israel on Trump Plan

Abdul Hameed Al-Ghabin – “a Saudi writer and a political and tribal figure” – has challenged Jordan to negotiate with Israel on President Trump’s “deal of the century” – or risk losing control of the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem currently vested in Jordan under the 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty and the Washington Declaration.

Al-Ghabin’s views have – significantly – been published by an Israeli newspaper. Saudi Arabia’s rulers have not condemned Al-Ghabin or disavowed his views – indicating that Al-Ghabin’s message could represent Saudi Arabia’s official position.
Al-Ghabin asserts:
“There is a major issue of contention: the future of the Palestinians and their right to self-determination. It is important and logical to us that Palestinians should have a state at the end of a peace process. However, anti-peace forces litter our region. An example of such a force is, sadly, the Kingdom of Jordan”.

Al-Ghabin asks:
“How can we achieve peace if the Palestinian people remain without a place to call home?”

Al-Ghabin’s answer will assuredly jolt Jordan – and the United Nations – out of their long running historical, geographical and demographical memory loss:
“The answer is simple: Jordan is already 78 per cent of historical Palestine. Jordanians of Palestinian origin constitute more than 80 percent of the population according to U.S. intelligence cables leaked in 2010. Jordan is essentially already the Palestinian Arab state. The only problem is, the king of Jordan refuses to acknowledge this.

Nonetheless, the world will eventually recognize Jordan as the address for Palestinian statehood—and perhaps sooner than we think. We don’t know if the Jordanian royal family will still be in power when Jordan officially becomes Palestine, but we do know that if the royal family leaves and the Palestinian majority takes over, Jordan will officially become their homeland and we Arabs won’t feel guilty normalizing relations with Israel as another regional state.”

The sting in the tail is Al-Ghabin’s warning that Jordan’s custodianship of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem – created under article 9(2) of the Israel- Jordan Peace Treaty – could be ended if Jordan does not play ball.

Al-Ghabin is ruthless in his criticism of Jordan’s monarch – King Abdullah:

In the wake of the bombings last night in Gaza that killed three policemen, Gaza's Interior Ministry issued an eight point statement that was light on details.

First, the security services were able to father the first leads of the details of this heinous crime and its perpetrators, and continue to pursue the investigation to uncover all its circumstances, which we will announce later.

Second, we assure our people of the stability of the security situation in the Gaza Strip, and stress that these suspicious bombings - aimed at shuffling the cards in the internal arena - are isolated incidents that will not affect that situation.

Third: The sinful hands that committed this crime will not go unpunished...

Fourth: We will not allow any party to compromise the security of the citizens of the Gaza Strip, and that all the sinful and suspicious attempts in this regard will fail, and we will strike with an iron hand anyone who tries, under any cover, or by any means.

Fifth: We pledge to our struggling people that the Ministry of Interior and National Security will remain the guardian of the security of Gaza, whatever the sacrifices, and will not rest until we take away from the masterminds of this criminal act, and those behind them.

Sixth: The Zionist occupation and its agents are constantly working to undermine the security and stability situation in Gaza, and they use various methods, and the security services have thwarted many plans, and still stands immune to all suspicious attempts that take different forms and methods.

Seventh: We call upon all sectors of our people and factions to condemn this cowardly act, and stand united in the face of this pariah group, which seeks to provoke chaos and strike the home front and cohesion.

The eighth point is most interesting:

Eighth: We call on the media and social networking activists not to rush with the transmission of news, and only report [news] from official sources. Anyone who spreads rumors and false news is a partner in trying to tamper with security.

The Interior Ministry, which controls the police, is warning bloggers and reporters not to say anything beyond official statements.

This is an explicit and official threat to press freedom by Hamas.

Not that "human rights activists" will even bother to mention it. After all, their willingness to speak "truth to power" doesn't extend to powers that are actually dangerous.

Sure enough, the "independent" Ma'an and Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today only reported on what the interior ministry demanded, and nothing else. One needs to go to western sources to find out more details on the bombings, which appear to be suicide bombings by IS.

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Most Palestinians want to keep the conflict going until they destroy Israel

In a recent poll by the Palestine Center for Public Opinion in partnership with The Washington Institute of Near East Policy, a large majority of Palestinians said that the top priority for the next five years should be either "regaining all of historical Palestine for the Palestinians from the river to the sea" or "achieving a one state solution" - both of which would eliminate the Jewish state.

Moreover, when asked about ending the conflict with Israel permanently, a majority in both the West Bank (56%) and Gaza (54%) say “the conflict should not end, and resistance should continue until all of historic Palestine is liberated.”

The survey did say that most Palestinians don't expect this kind of victory, but the important part is that they have never been taught that peace with Israel is a desirable solution - but only the best they might be able to do because Israel is too strong to be dislodged.

The poll results came out nearly a month ago. One would hope that this is considered newsworthy by the mainstream media, but obviously it isn't.

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Palestinian historian who denies Jewish connection to Jerusalem pretty much admits Palestinian identity didn't exist before 1967

In June, Nazmi Al Jubeh, Associate Professor of History and Archaeology, Birzeit University, told a UN conference in Geneva that there was no scientific evidence linking Jews to Jerusalem.

This is the state of Palestinian academia.

But I found another article of Jubeh's apparently from 2006 where he discusses Palestinian identity, and while he insists it is a real thing, his supporting evidence says otherwise.

Excerpts:

The Palestinian people are not different from other Greater Syrian (Bilad al-Sham) peoples. They are the result of accumulated ethnic, racial, and religious groups, who once lived, conquered, occupied, and passed through this strip of land. Wars and invasions have never totally replaced the local population in any period of history; they rather added to, mixed with and reformulated the local identity. The Palestinian people are the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Jabousites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Aramaeans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Turks, the Crusaders, and the Kurds, who once settled, conquered, occupied or just passed through Palestine.

The question is whether Palestinians could reflect their identity in a different manner than they do now. I think the answer is yes. The artificial division of Greater Syria was imposed on the people. If there had been no Sykes-Picot Agreement, I am not sure that the Palestinian people would have chosen an independent state as a container of their identity. ...The idea of an independent Palestinian state was raised quite recently; as a matter of fact, the Palestinian national movement continued to market the conflict as an “Arab-Israeli” one and not as a “Palestinian-Israeli” one. The idea of the Palestinian independent state was raised in 1973 in the aftermath of the October War and specific international, regional, and national political developments; in 1974 the idea became the vehicle of the political program of the PLO. Since then and until now (I do not know for how long) Palestinian life has been completely organized according to it.

With the establishment of the PLO and the different resistance organizations, mainly in the 1960s, Palestinian identity went through an intensive politicization process. The PLO exceeded its national and regional importance, reaching wider circles all over the world. With the PLO, the Palestinian identity became “revolutionary” or at least designated as such. The Palestinian became a young man/woman wearing the kufiyya and carrying a machine gun. The PLO faced a complicated challenge, namely how to unify a nation and to develop a shared identity for people(s) living under different political regimes and living in different socio-economic contexts, Jordanian, Egyptian, Israeli, in addition to the regional and international diasporas. The PLO actually implemented different political, cultural, and social programs and worked very hard to strengthen, shape, reshape and develop a national identity, vis-à-vis an Arab identity, with the aim of creating a fighting nation seeking freedom. This, in the mid-sixties, was a dreamed approach, but it led to very tangible results. The shared political aspiration, which was not easy to maintain and to gather people around it, was efficiently used. This aspiration became the major vehicle in forming the current “Palestinian identity”. ...This hard work also led to recognition of the Palestinian people, first by the Arabs and then, slowly, by the rest of the international community.

Even though other parts of his essay claims otherwise, he's pretty much admitting that there was no Palestinian people - either self-identified of externally-recognized - until the 1970s, when the PLO effectively created them. And his description of Palestinian identity before the 1960s does not indicate anything unique or different about them compared to the larger Arab identity of the region. Bu his watered down criteria, Palestinian identity is no more specific than "Delaware identity" would be - a bunch of people who happen to live in a region but share no other unique characteristics.

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2 Gaza policemen killed in explosions targeting police checkpoints, but nothing to do with Israel

There were two attacks at police checkpoints in Gaza on Tuesday.

Two Palestinian policemen were killed in an explosion at a checkpoint near the Al-Dahdouh junction in Gaza City, Palestinian police spokesman Iyad Al-Bazam said.

Al-Bazam said that another explosion targeted a police checkpoint on the Al-Rasheed coastal road in Al-Sheikh Ajleen area, west of Gaza City, leaving a number of injuries.

He said that the police forces and security services are continuing to investigate the sites of the blasts.

A state of alert was declared to all security and police services.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the "martyrs" in the first explosion were Majid Nadeem, 32, and Alaa Ziad Gerabel, also 32. Two other men and a woman were injured.

Looks like Hamas has some internal enemies who are willing to kill.

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08/27 Links Pt2: The myth of the ‘Arab Jew’; 200 years ago, John Adams promoted a Jewish state in the Holy Land; Amb. Mark Regev gives three reasons why anti-Zionism IS anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Lyn Julius: The myth of the ‘Arab Jew’

Anyone who keeps abreast of the growing academic field of Mizrahi/Sephardic studies (Mizrahi: oriental, from the Middle East; Sephardic: originating in pre-Inquisition Spain) cannot help noticing that the vast majority of papers focus on the purported “discrimination” or “racism” of the Ashkenazi establishment.

Typical is this paper by one Sarah Louden, “Israeli Nationalism: the Constructs of Zionism and its Effect on Inter-Jewish Racism, Politics, and Radical Discourse.” It has 455 views, more than any other paper in its genre. It pulls no punches in attacking the “racism” of Zionism. Its sources are almost entirely Mizrahi anti-Zionists like Ella Shohat.

Shohat, a professor at New York University, made her name by applying Edward Said’s theory of “Orientalism” to Israel, claiming that both Mizrahi Jews and the Arabs are victims of the West (Ashkenazim).

Mizrahi Jews and Arabs are assumed to have more in common with each other that Jews from the East have with Jews from the West. The former, Shohat and her ilk contend, were “torn away” from their comfortable “Arab” environment by Zionism and colonialism and turned into involuntary enemies.

These academics widely assume that Mizrahi Jews in Israel support the Likud and right-wing parties to “get their own back” against the Labour-dominated Ashkenazi establishment.

But Louden and those like her hardly ever mention the elephant in the room: The subliminal memory of Arab and Muslim persecution suffered by parents and grandparents driven from the Arab world.

Is is not plausible that Mizrahi Jews view the rocket attacks and bombings afflicting Israel as just the latest chapter in a long history of Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism? That they vote Likud because they believe that only the right can deliver the necessary tough response?

Why Israel Must Stop Granting Legitimacy to the International Criminal Court

The Palestinian Authority in the past two years has lodged dozens of complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague over the Jewish state’s behavior, most recently calling the court’s attention to the approval of 650 new housing units for a village north of Jerusalem. In these instances, Israel has responded with what it terms “informal cooperation,” in which its lawyers meet with court officials to try to convince them that the charges are bogus. Avi Bell argues that this is the wrong approach, and that Jerusalem should instead imitate the U.S., which has successfully stymied equally bogus attempts to prosecute it:

The American strategy [involves] a complete refusal to cooperate with the ICC, anchored in U.S. legislation; a campaign to delegitimize the ICC . . . as an undemocratic, unaccountable, illegitimate institution that endangers the sovereignty of the United States and the constitutional rights of its citizens; and concrete threats against the ICC, beginning with diplomatic and economic sanctions . . . and ending in a threat to liberate Americans with force should they be arrested at the request of the ICC.

The ICC prosecutor, [meanwhile], who has already surrendered to Palestinian demands and opened a preliminary investigation against Israeli “criminals,” can be expected to request permission from the ICC judges to open a full investigation. . . . Israeli lawyers tasked by the government with dealing with the ICC challenge are convinced that legal responses that failed everywhere else in the world will suddenly come to their country’s aid.

UN Watch: Iraq pledges to “ensure harmony” as UN human rights council member

Iraq has submitted a list of voluntary pledges in its bid for re-election to a seat on the UN Human Rights Council for 2020-2022. Following are five of Iraq’s most absurd claims, contrasted with the reality.

Iraq’s UN Pledge #1: “Iraq strives to ensure harmony among cultures, religions and civilizations through respect, tolerance and solidarity to eliminate hate speech and disrespect to any kind of cultural differences.”
Reality: When Miss Iraq Sarah Idan took the floor at the UN Human Rights Council to support peace with Israel, the Iraqi Parliament’s Security and Defense Committee reportedly called for her Iraqi citizenship to be revoked, labeling her advocacy a “crime.”

Iraq’s UN Pledge #2: “Iraq emphasizes the role of Civil Society Organizations and other stakeholders as main partners towards developing the work of the Human Rights Council and permit those partners to address the Council on human rights issues.”
Reality: According to a December 2018 report by Minority Rights Group International and the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights, “the outbreak of large-scale popular protests in Basra and other Iraqi cities has led to a wave of violent repression of civilian activists.”

Iraq’s UN Pledge #3: “Iraq reiterates its belief in the universality of Human Rights and the unwavering commitment to its principles, in terms of upholding the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights, in accordance with the mandate of the Human Rights Council.”
Reality: According to Freedom House‘s 2019 listing of Freedom in the World, Iraq is ranked as “Not Free”, with a score of 32/100.

What's Wrong with Advice for Dealing with Zionophobia on Campus? Part 2 (Victor Muslin)

A guest post by Victor Muslin. This is part 2 - EoZ

It is common wisdom that approximately 10% of students on a typical campus are committed supporters of Israel and 20% of students are committed anti-Zionists whose minds cannot be changed by facts or arguments. Therefore, pro-Israel students have been advised to concentrate on winning over the remaining 70% of the undecided. The problem with this strategy is that it assumes that the "undecided" are unbiased and would be potentially interested in joining either side if it were not for their ignorance. However, there are other, more significant reasons why these students have not taken sides. Many are apathetic and not interested in Israeli-Palestinian issues; their minds cannot be changed by any tactic that requires an investment of effort to learn the truth. The rest feel that joining the pro-Israel side would be uncool and would damage their social standing. This is where the perverse notion of intersectionality—pervasive on campus but largely ignored by liberal professional advice-givers—plays a huge role. The threat of this pernicious ideology that aligns every group against Jews cannot be overstated. To be a part of social justice circles students must demonstrate that they are anti-Israel.

Intersectionality is a key reason why pro-Israel Jews have lost ground on campus and in society at large. By using intersectionality, Islamists have hijacked the good intentions of otherwise decent people and have made antisemitism palatable. By linking together unrelated—often contradictory—grievances, Islamists have weaponized intersectionality and have infiltrated every social justice movement, assigning every possible nasty quality to Israel supporters—and Jews in general—in order to exclude them from participation in social justice causes. By positioning anti-Zionism as a purely political issue Islamists inoculated themselves against legitimate charges of antisemitism or racism.

By combining intersectionality with what they falsely claim to be a "political disagreement", Islamists defanged traditional tactics that relied on shaming and social pressure. Together with the identitarian progressives, Islamists undermined and inverted Western social norms that open liberal societies traditionally used to restrain the virus of hate. Thus, once the scarlet letter had been blotted out, it became impossible to generate bad publicity to inflict reputational damage on universities promoting or tolerating Zionophobia. As long as the universities could plausibly claim to be on the forefront of other social justice causes—such as diversity and inclusion—and as long as their faculty and students were careful to lambast "Zionists" rather than "Jews," they were insulated from ignominy and were free to spread the new antisemitism. The antisemitic absolution has been purchased with intersectional indulgence that allowed to slander, demonize, delegitimize, and apply a double standard to the only Jewish state in the world and the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. The problem with academia goes deeper than Zionophobia, but antipathy to Jews and Israel—"the Jew among nations"—is usually the first manifestation.

Despite a mountain of advice, Zionophobia on campuses has been getting worse and more virulent. One would think that this calls for some introspection and that the professional advice-givers would step back and evaluate why the trend continues in the wrong direction. Perhaps, instead of the same old "more education", "more engagement", "more listening", "more nuance", "more positivity", "more Israel-is-cool" advice, it would pay to first determine why the advice given so far has not produced the expected results? Sadly, this is either not happening or, if it is, no new strategies based on data-driven assessments and results-oriented success metrics have been implemented.

Bizarrely, some professional advice-givers disregard overwhelming evidence and believe that the situation on campus has actually improved. A year ago another member of Columbia University's chapter of Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF) and I met with the National Campus Outreach Director of a major Jewish organization to discuss potential synergies. During the unproductive and frustrating conversation, we were repeatedly advised to let the "professionals" handle the situation on our campus because, having attended numerous conferences, they were better equipped for it. We were told that the role of alumni should be limited to supporting functions, specifically, to exhibiting their materials and promoting this particular organization on Columbia's prestigious campus. After an hour of getting nowhere, we asked in exasperation whether the National Campus Outreach Director thought that the situation on campus improved over the last one, three, or five years due to the strategies she was advocating. To our amazement the Director indeed believed that the situation on campus had improved because she and her colleagues had done an effective job. At this point we politely said "thank you" and walked out. This is what is called "drinking too much of one's own Kool-Aid."

Pro-Israel students are constantly bombarded by negative messages about Israel. Here are the posters from the Israeli Apartheid Week at Columbia University (for more information on these items click here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

Besides a delusional lack of self-assessment, pro-Israel advocacy on campus suffers from stale, ineffective strategies and defensive, measured tactics that make the pro-Israel advocates—both students and adults—appear tentative. These approaches are no match for the brazen commitment of the obnoxious anti-Israel brigade.

In part 3 we will give some different advice that does actually work.

For more information about Zionophobia in academia and specifically at Columbia University and Barnard College, please visit https://www.cu-monitor.com/

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

08/27 Links Pt1: Benjamin Netanyahu: A Plan for Peace; Abandoning East Jerusalem would undermine both its residents and Zionism; Gazan terrorists fire mortar shells at Israel; IDF retaliates with airstrike

From Ian:

Benjamin Netanyahu: A Plan for Peace

Could an Old Israeli Plan for Peace be America’s New One. Is America about to adopt the Israeli prime minister’s 20-year-old plan for a durable settlement between Israel and the Palestinians?

Of late, a new “villain” was introduced into political discussions about the future of the Middle East. There are those who said that the responsibility for a thousand years of Middle Eastern obstinacy, radicalism, and fundamentalism has now been compressed into one person—namely, me. My critics contended that if only I had been less “obstructionist” in my policies, the convoluted and tortured conflicts of the Middle East would immediately and permanently have settled themselves.

While it is flattering for any person to be told that he wields so much power and influence, I am afraid that I must forgo the compliment. This is not false modesty. The problem of achieving a durable peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors is complicated enough. Yet it pales in comparison with the problem of achieving an overall peace in the region. Even after the attainment of peace treaties between Israel and its neighbors, any broader peace in the region will remain threatened by the destabilizing effects of Islamic fundamentalism and Iran and Iraq’s fervent ambition to arm themselves with ballistic missiles and atomic weapons. Let me first say categorically: It is possible for Israel to achieve peace with its Arab neighbors. But if this peace is to endure, it must be built on foundations of security, justice, and above all, truth. Truth has been the first casualty of the Arab campaign against Israel, and a peace built upon half-truths and distortions is one that will eventually be eroded and whittled away by the harsh political winds that blow in the Middle East. A real peace must take into account the true nature of this region, with its endemic antipathies, and offer realistic remedies to the fundamental problem between the Arab world and the Jewish state.

Fundamentally, the problem is not a matter of shifting this or that border by so many kilometers, but reaffirming the fact and right of Israel’s existence. The territorial issue is the linchpin of the negotiations that Israel must conduct with the Palestinian Authority, Syria, and Lebanon. Yet a territorial peace is hampered by the continuing concern that once territories are handed over to the Arab side, they will be used for future assaults to destroy the Jewish state. Many in the Arab world have still not had an irreversible change of heart when it comes to Israel’s existence, and if Israel becomes sufficiently weak the conditioned reflex of seeking our destruction would resurface. Ironically, the ceding of strategic territory to the Arabs might trigger this destructive process by convincing the Arab world that Israel has become vulnerable enough to attack.

That Israel’s existence was a bigger issue than the location of its borders was brought home to me in the first peace negotiations that I attended as a delegate to the Madrid Peace Conference in October 1991. In Madrid, the head of the Palestinian delegation delivered a flowery speech calling for the cession of major Israeli population centers to a new Palestinian state and the swamping of the rest of Israel with Arab refugees, while the Syrian foreign minister questioned whether the Jews, not being a nation, had a right to a state of their own in the first place. (And this at a peace conference!) Grievances over disputed lands and disputed waters, on which the conference sponsors hoped the participants would eventually focus their attention, receded into insignificance in the face of such a primal hostility toward Israel’s existence. This part of the conference served to underscore the words of Syria’s defense minister, Mustafa Tlas, who with customary bluntness had summed up the issue one year earlier: “The conflict between the Arab nation and Zionism is over existence, not borders.”

From the book A Durable Peace: Israel and its Place Among the Nations by Benjamin Netanyahu. Copyright © 2000 by Benjamin Netanyahu. Reprinted by permission of Grand Central Publishing, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

Why Have Israelis and Palestinians Failed to Make Peace

Israelis value security above all else, located as they are in a region filled with people, organizations, and governments that at best do not want them there and in many cases are actively trying to kill them.

In the quarter-century since the Oslo Accords, Israelis and Palestinians have failed to make peace. The responsibility for that failure belongs to the Palestinians.

The Palestinian entity in control of Gaza, the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas, says explicitly that it will never accept Jewish sovereignty and devotes its resources to terrorism against Israel.

Its putatively moderate counterpart in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas, has refused all offers to settle the conflict, which have included substantial territorial concessions.

The PA has never put forward a counteroffer of its own. It has done nothing to build the institutions of statehood other than deploying multiple police forces that repress political opposition. It has generated vile anti-Jewish propaganda that harks back to Europe in the 1930s and has sponsored the murder of Jews by publicly praising and paying the murderers. The Palestinians have thus clearly demonstrated that they are not "a partner for peace."

Assuring the Palestinians that they will pay no price - indeed that they will continue to receive generous Western political and financial support - for their unyielding and indeed violent refusal to accept the legitimacy and permanence of a Jewish state in the Middle East has helped to perpetuate the conflict.

Israel Thrives: Does Israel Need US Weaponry?

Israel has given to the US much to offset the foreign aid that has allowed Israel to maintain its security edge. And, of course, we appreciate that help and assistance. But, what about the future? I think over the next few years Israel will do its best not to be put in the situation that it was in during the last war in Gaza. Where a president Obama could hold Israel hostage by not allowing them to resupply smart weapons from storage facilities right here in Israel.

The agreement was that in payment for the US storing the tools of war in Israel, Israel would be able to re-arm without asking permission. Going back on that agreement was a surprise for Israel, and taught us a lesson. The lesson is, don't put your best pardner into the position where he can deny you the weapons you need to survive. Recently I read that in preparations for the next war Israel has been manufacturing, and storing bombs, missiles, ammunition, and more so that we don't put ourselves at risk. It is reported that we have 10 times the stored weapons that we had during the 2006 war in Lebanon. In the future, Israel will be less and less dependent upon the largess of the US and foreign aid. I think that we will, however, go into joint venture deals where weapons systems will be developed jointly. The US may supply the bulk of the financing, while Israel supplies the brain power, and real time testing under combat situations.

All of the above says loudly that Israel will be more like a co-equal with the US rather than a small nation dependent on the largess of a larger big brother. Never again will we be put in the position where a mission to destroy a target has to be canceled because we felt compelled to tell the US our plans. And, the US called the target to warn him. This was done by Obama, the leader of our so called greatest allie. We know that Obama isn't unique, there will be another one sometime in the future. For that reason we are more self-reliant than ever and will continue to be so.

The weekend that could have turned out differently if it hadn’t been for one bold move: pic.twitter.com/iYrgwjuv6V
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) August 26, 2019

What Is It About Palestinian Accountability That So Irks Tlaib and Sarsour? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

It all started with this comment by Jake Tapper, making a comparison between the rhetoric that led to the El Paso massacre and Palestinian incitement to terrorism.

"You hear conservatives all the time — rightly so, in my opinion — talk about the tone set by people in the Arab world. Palestinian leaders talking about, and the way they talk about Israelis, justifying, in the same way you're doing, no direct link necessarily between what the leader says and the violence against some poor Israeli girl in a pizzeria — but the idea that you’re validating this hatred. You can’t compare the ideology of Hamas with anything else but at the same time, either tone matters or it doesn’t."

People seemed surprised by Tapper's comparison.

On the one hand, how often do you see the media actually call out Palestinian incitement of hatred against Israelis? Not only that, but Tapper also mentioned in passing the Sbarro Massacre, in which 15 civilians were murdered including 7 children and a pregnant woman, and 130 were wounded on August 9, 2001. The mastermind behind the attack, Ahlam Tamimi, is still given refuge by the Jordanian government, despite US demands that she be turned over to the US per the extradition treaty between the 2 countries.

Tapper's reference to "some poor Israeli girl in a pizzeria" is a reference to Malka Roth, who had dual US citizenship, on which basis her father Arnold Roth has been pursuing justice for his daughter.

On the other hand, there were those who are unused to seeing such a blunt reference to Palestinian terrorism, and were maybe more accustomed to newspaper headlines that tended to blame Palestinian attacks on the weapons used rather than on the people who wielded them.

Along came Tapper and violated the narrative.

Rashida Tlaib went after Tapper, claiming that Tapper was “comparing Palestinian human rights activists to terrorist white nationalists.”

To which Tapper replied:

Apparently, Tapper was too polite to ask Tlaib to clarify which Hamas terrorists she considered to be "Palestinian human rights activists."

Then Linda Sarsour took what these days is considered the next logical step, calling for Tapper to be fired.

We’re teaming up with Jewish Voice For Peace to let CNN President Jeff Zucker know that this kind of casual anti-Arab and Islamophobic bigotry—particularly in the aftermath of an explicitly anti-immigrant mass shooting—is unconscionable.

By inserting Palestinians and Arabs in a conversation about white supremacist violence, Tapper pushed the Islamophobic “terrorist” narrative about Muslims and Arabs that’s been mainstreamed over the past few decades.

Tapper is Islamophobic for criticizing Palestinian terrorists?

Check out this definition of Islamophobia -- from CAIR, no less:

Questioning Islam or Muslims is not Islamophobia

It is not appropriate to label all, or even the majority of those, who question Islam and Muslims as Islamophobes. Equally, it is not Islamophobic to denounce crimes committed by individual Muslims or those claiming Islam as a motivation for their actions.

"A critical study of Islam or Muslims is not Islamophobic," former CAIR Research Director Mohamed Nimer wrote in 2007. "Likewise, a disapproving analysis of American history and government is not anti-American... One can disagree with Islam or with what some Muslims do without having to be hateful." [emphasis added]

Even if Tlaib and Sarsour do consider the arbitrary killing of unarmed Israeli men, women and children to be in defense of Palestinian human rights, those who disagree with that stand can point to CAIR in support of their right to disagree.

True, CAIR itself refuses to come out and clearly condemn Hamas terrorism, but that is a point for another time.

There is a second issue here -- one of a double standard.

We have seen people claim that Jews deflect criticism of Israel by saying that such criticism is in fact antisemitism. For some reason, those claiming Jews do this tend to forget to give actual examples. But let's assume for the sake of argument that they are right, that sometimes defenders of Israel label criticism of Israel as antisemitic purely in order to rebuff the argument and avoid having to address it.

Isn't this what we see happening when critics of actions by Muslims or Muslim countries are accused of being Islamophobic?

Take Jake Tapper as an example.

He is a journalist discussing current events with his guests and addressing the power of inciteful rhetoric. In particular, he compares the way Arab leaders "talk about Israelis" with the kind of heated rhetoric found among White Supremacists.

Does he have to do a comparison of the cartoons of both sides on his show to prove his point?

Are Tlaib and Sarsour so heavily invested in their defense of Palestinian Arabs that they cannot come out and condemn the Palestinian Authority and Hamas the same way Israelis condemn hateful statements and actions by their fellow Israelis?

Instead, Tlaib and Sarsour are upset that Palestinian terrorists get called out and their reaction is to claim "Islamophobia" -- and call for Tapper being fired.

Anything to avoid addressing the issue of how Palestinian leaders incite hatred of Israel, and the consequences.

Tapper's reference to the death of Malki Roth in the terrorist attack on the Sbarro pizzeria also points up an aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that Sarsour once highlighted -- but now ignores.

In a 2011 article on Spectrum News, Sarsour showed then the kind of compassion for Israeli victims that she really does not exhibit today:

Closer to home, Sarsour has worked with an interfaith group called The Dialogue Project, through which she has come to understand those who have suffered on the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Her name was Robin, and her son died in one of the suicide bombings in a café,” says Sarsour. “And I never got to meet a person like that, and obviously I'm a mother so just hearing and seeing the emotions of someone who lost their child, obviously I wouldn't want that to happen to anyone, so it made me go home and kind of more look at this not from a political place, but look at — there's human beings being affected by this, too, and I never had that opportunity to really look at that."

These days, Sarsour is all about that political place.

These days, Linda Sarsour could easily show the kind of compassion that she briefly demonstrated back in 2011. She has made a conscious decision not to. Apparently, that does not fit the persona Sarsour feels the need to project.

So be it.

That may have something to do with a grudge Sarsour holds against Israel. From that same 2011 article:

She's been plagued by a 2004 article that's been circulating around the internet, an article Sarsour says is untrue.

It claims that at the time, she had family members in Israeli jails with ties to Hamas.

"I can't deny that people related to me have been in Israeli prison,” says Sarsour. “Does that mean that any of them were charged with crimes or they are terrorists or potential suicide bombers? Absolutely not. This is just the reality of Palestinians living under military occupation."

Sarsour is not the first to want you to believe that Israel puts Arabs in prison for no reason. And it does suggest an additional motivation to her animus to Israel.

Jake Tapper's comment provided the opportunity to speak out honestly about Palestinian terrorism and where it is taking Palestinian Arabs.

Tlaib and Sarsour rushed to make sure that such honesty and introspection was nipped in the bud.

A week after Tapper's comment, the Palestinian Authority was called upon to account for hate speech and antisemitism in its official statements and in its textbooks during their very first review by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva on Tuesday.

Could this be the first hints of Palestinian accountability?

Faster, please.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Israel is again being vilified, this time for revealing last week that it has been working to find ways for Gazans to voluntarily move to Europe.

Israel is actively promoting the emigration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, and is working to find other countries who may be willing to absorb them, a senior Israeli official said Monday.

Israel is ready to carry the costs of helping Gazans emigrate, and would even be willing to consider allowing them to use an Israeli air field close to Gaza to allow them to leave for their new host countries, the official said, apparently referring to air force bases deep inside Israel.

The senior official, in Ukraine as part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s delegation to Kiev, spoke on condition of anonymity.

It was not very wise to publicize this plan, given that Israel found no country in Europe willing to take Gazans voluntarily.

People like Haaretz' Amira Hass are clucking about how terrible Israel is for considering such a thing.

While no one doubts it is in Israel's interest to encourage Palestinian migration, these critics who claim to care so much about Palestinians are ignoring the fact that many Palestinians desperately want to leave Gaza and the West Bank - and some are willing to risk their lives to do so.

A month ago, two boats capsized off of Libya's coast, filled with 300 would-be refugees to Europe - including many Palestinians.

Nearly 1400 Palestinians managed to reach Greece in ramshackle boats so far this year alone.

An estimated 35-40,000 Palestinians have left Gaza in the past year alone. That's 2% of the total population of Gaza, and they mostly left through Egypt which has severe restrictions on how many can leave.

If the "pro-Palestinian" side actually cared about Palestinians, wouldn't they want a safe means that Palestinians could leave if they choose?

"Voluntary transfer" is phrased as if it is a means of ethnic cleansing, but it is voluntary. No one is forced to leave. Going through Israel, subsidized, to go to Europe - even though the plan has not worked out - is far more humane than forcing thousands of Palestinians to resort to going on rickety and dangerous boats. Even if Israel has ulterior motives, the plan is still more humane than any alternative.

For members of the supposedly progressive crowd, Israel's support for a plan that can save Palestinian lives is enough reason to oppose it. Think about that.

These critics don't actually care about Palestinians but only want more excuses to use them to attack Israel.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

The Palestinian Astronomical Society writes:

For the first time in history - the International Astronomical Union will allow Palestine to name a planet and a star outside the solar system!

We announce the launch of the Palestinian National Campaign to name a planet and a star outside the solar system for the first time in history, after the agreement of the International Astronomical Union to allow Palestine to name the planet and the star. All Palestinians can participate in this national campaign to choose the name for the star and the planet to represent our civilization, culture, history, hope and love for our homeland Palestine high in the sky.

They set up a site where Palestinians can nominate names. Here are the rules:

1. There must be a link between the names proposed for the planet and the star (for example the names of characters from the same story)
2. Not offensive, and not very similar to an existing name of an astronomical object
3. In addition, it is not permissible to suggest:
- Names of a commercial nature
- Names of individuals or places known primarily for political, military or religious activities
- Names of living individuals
- Names of individuals who died less than 100 years ago
The process must respect intellectual property: it should be possible to prove that existing names, when submitted, are free for public use (for example, are not subject to copyright as with names that have been created in fiction such as books, games and movies, etc.

The rules that the planet and star cannot be named after anyone who died less than 100 years ago and that they cannot be religious or political figures reduces the number of possibilities of non-fictional characters to very nearly zero.

The only exception I can find of a prominent person before the 20th century who supposedly self-identified as Palestinian is the 10th century geographer Al-Maqdisi or Muqaddasi (named after Jerusalem in Arabic which was in turn named after the Jewish Temple.) His father was a prominent architect so that is the only pair in human history I can think of that might qualify. There were a number of academics from Gaza and Ashkelon in the fifth century but I do not believe they identified as "Palestinian."

Even this initiative has a political component, of course. The Palestinian Astronomical Society's spokesperson Daoud al-Tarwa couldn't resist mentioning that the planet and star will be seen "in the sky high away from the barriers of the occupation," showing that in reality Palestinian self-identification today is virtually impossible without mentioning Israel.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

08/26 Links Pt2: Jewish Rabbis and Disloyalty; ‘The Squad’ Co-Sponsors Bill Claiming Israel Tortures Children; The Myth of Palestinian ‘Canaanites’

From Ian:

Jewish Rabbis and Disloyalty

Like the boy in the tale of the emperor’s new clothes, President Trump has once again spoken a taboo truth: Some American Jews seem to be more loyal to an increasingly anti-Jewish and far-left Democratic Party than they are to the Jewish people. That’s not necessarily an immoral position for most American Jews to take: As individuals, they have no concrete duty of loyalty to the Jewish people, and it is their absolute right to seek stronger allegiances through political, rather than through religious or ethnic affinity. But American Jewish leaders, picked and paid as such by the Jewish community, are in a different position. Those Jewish leaders whose fiduciary duty of loyalty is to the Jewish missions of their organizations, but whose primary loyalty is to the Tlaibanized progressive movement and the party that champions it, are betraying that duty in some truly indecent ways.

Consider Reconstructionist Rabbi Toba Spitzer. As president of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis (MBR), and as the long-time rabbi of the cultish Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, Spitzer has aggressively promoted extreme left-wing causes. Many are direct threats to the Jewish community: embracing anti-Semitic Islamist extremists like Linda Sarsour, hostility toward the U.S. government, hostility toward the Israeli government, support for the anti-Semitic Occupy Wall Street movement, support for the anti-Semitic Black Lives Matter movement, and open border refugee policies are some examples. Yet Rabbi Spitzer and the MBR insist that these causes are Jewish religious imperatives, even as they proclaim Jew-haters like the Hamas front group, CAIR, and the terror-affiliated Islamic Society of Boston to be their friends and allies. At the same time, Spitzer and the MBR demonize in vicious terms those fellow Jews who don’t agree with their political viewpoints.

Last year, Spitzer wrote that, when it comes to Israel, American Jews should ask themselves: “Do we believe that the physical continuity of the Jewish people supersedes other Jewish values?” In other words: Should the Israelis choose to die en masse instead of committing what Rabbi Spitzer feels is the unforgivable sin of perpetuating the fight with the Palestinians? Implicitly answering in the affirmative, Spitzer challenged the “existential narrative” of Israel, arguing that Jewish sovereignty -- and the Jewish lives protected by its existence -- should not supersede the Jewish values of “lovingkindness” (chesed) and “mercy” (rachamim) toward “supporters of Hamas” -- her words, not mine.

Rabbi Spitzer’s question, and the argument implicit in it, comes from ignorance. According to the Jewish canon, which deals with the laws of armed conflict at length, war against the likes of Hamas is literally a mitzvah. Beyond Judaism, the principle of individual and collective self-defense of life and property is a universal human value enshrined in the law of nations and in free sovereign legal systems like those of the United States. It is an inhuman demand, most often made by totalitarians, that a class of people die or submit to being robbed without putting up a fight -- for the good of another class or people. (h/t MtTB)

John Podhoretz: About This Whole Loyalty Business… A reflection on the discourse.

We American Jews are not disloyal when we turn our backs on Israel and insult its friends and treat them as though they are enemies–and when we treat its enemies as though they are our friends, Peter Beinart.

At best, we are blind fools who do not see how a mere twist of fate has kept us from speaking Hebrew as a first language as we ride on a bus headed toward Mount Scopus that will be blown up or ensanguined by a knife-bearing terrorist.

At worst, we are far lower than merely disloyal. We are acting as active collaborators with those who wish our destruction. Such people do not bother sorting out which Jew is full of deep feeling for Palestinian rights and which Jew is a settler seeking to annex the entire West Bank. What they see is a Jew, and the Jew should be dead, and that Jew could be you or your mother or your baby.

Clearly, Trump shouldn’t have wandered into this minefield. But spare me the outrage about Trump saying no Jew should vote Democrat. This isn’t about Jews. Trump thinks no person in America should vote Democrat. This is just part of his own evolution as a partisan since he was a Democrat until about five minutes ago. Now, he’s a Republican, so he thinks everybody else should be, too, especially because he’s sure he so wonderful. Why is this surprising? Every liberal thinks everybody should vote liberal. Every conservative thinks everybody should vote conservative. Every Jew thinks every other Jew should vote the way he does. You think you’re right and the other side is wrong. You can work to understand the opinions of others and respect them, but you still think they’re wrong. If you didn’t, you would vote the other way.

Donald Trump says things no president has ever said before, and many of his rhetorical innovations have not been good for our political life or our country. But in this respect, he’s just like everybody else these days. (h/t IsaacStorm)

Commentary Magazine Podcast: How Much Outrage Can Trump Generate?

Hosted by Abe Greenwald, Christine Rosen, John Podhoretz, Noah Rothman
What was Trump doing talking about Jews and loyalty? Why does everyone have a cow every five minutes about what Trump says when he’s been doing the same thing for four years now? Whom does this help? Whom does it hurt? The whole podcast gang is back to offer maybe a little insight.

‘The Squad’ Co-Sponsors Bill Claiming Israel Tortures Children, And Parrots Other Terrorist Propaganda

Many Americans now know that Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar—two members of “the squad” of far-left congresswomen so much in the news—were recently barred from traveling to Israel to agitate for the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Fewer know all four members of “the squad,” including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, have co-sponsored a bill that accuses the Jewish state of torturing children. Fewer still know the claims made in the bill originate mostly from a group that could be described as the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization.

The so-called “Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act“ was re-introduced in the House by Rep. Betty McCollum, whose congressional district neighbors Omar’s in Minnesota. Until recently, McCollum was considered a supporter of Israel, but a critic of its government.

In February, however, she condemned “[t]he right-wing, extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu and its apartheid-like policies,” adding “there are now members of Congress who are not willing to ignore the Israeli government’s destructive actions because they are afraid of losing an election.”

McCollum’s invective prompted Mark Mellman of the Democratic Majority for Israel to respond that Netanyahu “came to office in a fair and democratic election in which every Arab citizen of Israel had the same right to vote as any Jewish citizen.” Mellman added that “by suggesting that Jews have disproportionate influence on U.S. elections, the Congresswoman exploits an anti-Semitic trope widely used by far right forces from Czarism to fascism.”

McCollum’s bill, while not directly exploiting the anti-Semitic trope of blood libel, trades on the accusation that Israel treats non-Jewish children cruelly and inhumanely. The bill claims Palestinian children detained by Israeli defense forces suffer torture and physical violence, are deprived of lawyers and parents, not informed of their legal rights, and so on. (h/t MtTB)