Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

More people will fast this Thursday than any Tisha B’Av in history. (Most aren't Jewish, though.)

Wednesday night and Thursday is the most tragic day in the Jewish calendar, Tisha B’Av. it commemorates a number of terrible events that occurred on that day, including the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem. It is a fast day for Jews.

This year, however, tens of millions – maybe hundreds of millions - of Muslims will be fasting on that same day.

The ninth day of Dhu'l-Hijjah (the 12th and final month of the Islamic calendar) is the Day of 'Arafah. It is the day when pilgrims stand on the plain of 'Arafah to pray. On this day, Muslims all over the world who do not witness the annual Hajj should spend the day in fasting.

The Day of Arafah is more like Yom Kippur than Tisha B’Av – according to Muslim legend, those that fast on that day will be forgiven not only for the previous year’s sins but for the coming year’s sins as well. This brings up interesting theological questions.

However, fasting on that day is a custom, not obligatory, for Muslims.

Since very few Muslims are going on pilgrimage to Mecca this year, and the Muslim population was smaller that last time Tisha B’Av coincided with the Day of Arafah, that means that this year there will be more people fasting on Tisha B’Av than at any time in history. Of course, the vast majority aren’t Jewish.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

07/29 Links Pt1: Danny Danon: Israel won’t suffer for tight Trump ties; With Beinart Podcast, NYTs Pushes Zionism-Is-Racism Lie; Abbas claims Jerusalem only has “Muslim and Christian identity”

From Ian:

With Beinart Podcast, New York Times Pushes Zionism-Is-Racism Lie

The New York Times is doubling down on Peter Beinart’s plan to replace the Jewish state of Israel with a binational “Israel-Palestine.”

A Times op-ed by Beinart earlier this month called for eliminating the existing country of Israel and substituting instead something that Beinart calls “Israel-Palestine,” “a Jewish home that is also, equally, a Palestinian home” or “a Jewish home that is not a Jewish state.”

Now the Times is piling on with a podcast in which Beinart is given a half-hour of audio time to advocate what the Times podcast headline calls “The Case for a One-State Solution.” If President Donald Trump or a Republican senator had used the word “solution” in the same breath as a call to wipe Israel off the map, you can bet that it would be accused of dog-whistling echoes of the “Final Solution” faster than you can spell Jonathan Weisman, but here we are.

One gets a sense of where the Times podcast is headed not only from the introduction but from the scripted lead-in read by Times columnist Ross Douthat. “Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is now threatening formal annexation of strategic pieces of Palestinian territory, a move that signals comfort with permanent occupation,” Douthat intones. This is inaccurate and tendentious on so many levels it is hard to know where to begin. Start, though, with the Times assertion that this is “Palestinian territory.” That’s precisely what is in dispute, and in fact as recently as May 2020, the Times opinion section, after a complaint from the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, corrected a subheadline that erroneously described the West Bank as “Palestinian territory.” In addition, it’s quite possible that annexation signals precisely discomfort with “permanent occupation.” Agree or disagree with annexation, the idea is that it would change the status of the annexed territories from “occupation” to lands in which Israeli law or sovereignty applies on a more permanent basis. Also, it’s not “Benjamin Netanyahu’s government,” but the democratically elected government of the people of Israel.

The podcast goes further downhill from there. Rather than really debating or challenging Beinart, the Times columnists egg him on. “Philosophically, I am completely right there with Peter,” Times columnist Michelle Goldberg says at one point, while nevertheless mildly expressing concern that the Beinart plan would “turn into a civil war.”

What Did This Anti-Israel Org Use a Holocaust Photo For?

In a new low, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) exploit Jewish victims of the Holocaust by falsely portraying them as Palestinian. Let's set the record straight about AMP's anti-Semitism

Palestinian Activists at Human Rights Watch

In theory, the officials, researchers, and analysts working in the area of human rights are committed to unbiased, politically neutral reporting. In practice, these words often stand in sharp contrast to the activities and biased agendas of these institutions. This bias is characteristic of many major non-governmental organizations (NGOs) claiming human rights agendas. A prime example is Human Rights Watch, which exhibits a fundamental and consistent bias against Israel.
View PDF

FINALLY: the United Nations has published our detailed exposé of the Palestinian Authority leaders, educators, textbook, schools & youth centers that demonize Jews and Israelis.

This is now an official document of the world body: https://t.co/mYLCl3CFE8 https://t.co/JLb0ErrDA1
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) July 29, 2020

Lamentation: The Second Temple-era list of Temple priestly families from a stone tablet in Yemen (UPDATE)

Tonight and tomorrow is Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish calendar that commemorates the destruction of the two Temples and many other tragedies that befell the Jews throughout the centuries.

One of the kinot (liturgical poems) to be read on the day is איכה ישבה חבצלת השרון #10, “How does the Rose of Sharon sit [alone],” written by the famous and prolific Eliezer HaKallir. It lists the 24 mishmarot – the families of Kohanim (priests) who each spent a week at a time doing the Temple service, who each lived in a different town surrounding Jerusalem.

After the destruction of the Second Temple, the Kohanim all moved to the Galilee to different towns, mimicking how they lived in separate towns around Jerusalem. The brilliant HaKallir poetically alludes to the family names in each verse while listing the names of the towns they lived in.

It seems that Jews in the Middle East kept a tradition of calling out every Shabbat the name of the family that would have been taking care of the Temple that week. This list was found in the Cairo Genizah as late as 1034 CE.

Apparently, there was a custom to inscribe these family names in stone to be placed in synagogues so the correct name could be called out every week. There have been stone fragments of these lists found in ancient synagogues in Israel, but the most complete list was found in Yemen in 1970. Eleven lines of the 24 are partially or wholly visible in this stone column, with family names.

The visible words are:

Here is a reproduction of the entire list of names as used in synagogues, put together from fragments of the findings in Caesarea. I’m not certain how the author of that paper reproduced the entire text.

The Yemen stone column does not include the names of the Galilee towns the Kohanim moved to. According to the Beit Hatfusot Museum of the Jewish People in Israel, this column itself is dated to Second Temple times! – and the tradition of calling out the names of the Kohanic families predates the destruction of the Temple!

Where in Yemen was this stone column of huge importance found?

In a mosque about 15 kilometers east of Sanaa.

Muslims didn’t only steal the site of the Jewish Temples. They also stole priceless artifacts like this from the Jews in the Diaspora.

This is something else to lament on Tisha B’Av.

UPDATE: This paper dates the stone column to after the destruction of the Temple. (h/t Sapir Analytics)

UPDATE 2: I’m no expert on late Semitic epigraphy, but from my research of Hebrew evolution I think that the Yemen stone is from after the Second Temple era, perhaps around the 2nd century CE.

The end of Yemenite Jewry

The Houthi rebels in Yemen are proud of their Jew-hate. Their slogan and flag says “Damn the Jews.”

I’ve been posting about Arabic-language reports on the last remaining Jews in Yemen being forced out of the country – jailed, pressured to sell their possessions for a song to the Houthis, and sent away.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry denied the reports two weeks ago, but the Arabic articles are unusually detailed. This article from Aden-TM and Yemen Akhbar lists every remaining Jew in Yemen.

The last two Jewish Yemeni families are waiting for deportation from the areas controlled by the Houthi militia, after another group of Jews left them under the pressure and threats of the militia, which will make Yemen, for the first time in its modern history, devoid of the adherents of Judaism, with the exception of four individuals residing in the countryside of my province Imran and Sanaa.

Two days ago, the rest of the family of Saeed Al-Naati, who was forcibly deported to an Arab country, left when the rest of the family members, the man's wife and son, sold the remainder of their property to them in the Rayda area of Amran and Sana'a governorates.

With this batch leaving the Houthi-controlled areas, the only members of the Jewish community that will remain in the tourist city in Sana'a are the families of the brothers Suleiman Musa Salem and Sulaiman Yahya Habib, and the family of Salem Musa Mara’bi who moved to the complex owned by the Ministry of Defense near the US embassy building in 2007 after the Houthis assaulted them and looted their homes and all their vehicles and equipment in the Ghurair Al Salem area in the Kataf district of Saada governorate. (Also?) a woman lives with her brother in the Rayda district, and a man and his wife live in the Arhab district of the Sana'a governorate.

According to what one of the Jews said, the remaining two families are also ready to leave because it is difficult for them to survive after most of the followers of the Judaism left, with most of their relatives. The rest of the sect is ready to leave the country to avoid harrassment, to preserve the safety of their lives, and to obtain the release of the young Levi Salem, who suffered a stroke and paralysis in the Houthi prisons, despite his acquittal of the charges against him by the court.

It is with sadness and grief that the source says: “It is now clear that the Houthis want to deport the rest of the Jews, and prevent them from selling their properties at their real prices, and we are surprised that the international community and local and international human rights organizations have remained silent towards the process of forced deportation and forcing the Jews to leave their country and prevent them from disposing of their property.”

The Yemenite Jewish community has been there continuously for well over 2000 years; according to some they have been there from as far back as 1451 BCE, during the times of the First Temple.

It looks like this is really the end of the Yemenite Jewish community that had been there for over 2000 years (according to some, they’ve been there since the First Temple period.)

The loss of the Jews of Yemen is incalculable.

Were Jewish children taught that Palestinian Arabs didn’t exist, as Seth Rogen claims?

Comedian Seth Rogen showed off his ignorance about Israel and Judaism in an interview on some podcast with an equally ignorant Jew.

I want to look at one statement he said:

And I also think that as a Jewish person, like I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel my entire life. You know, they never tell you, that oh by the way, there were people there. They make it seem like it was– just sitting there, oh the fucking door’s open!…Literally they forget to include the fact to every young Jewish person: Basically, oh yeah, there were people living there.

Do Jewish kids not learn about the existence of Arabs in British Mandate Palestine?

There are not too many Zionist textbooks about Israel’s history meant for children, but I found one – The Story of Modern Israel for Young People by Dorothy F. Zeligs, published in 1950.

If any Zionist history book would erase Arabs, it would be one written in the afterglow of Israel’s 1948 victory.

But while this book is undoubtedly Zionist, it not only discusses Arabs often –it is sympathetic towards innocent Arabs. (It is not sympathetic at all towards the Arabs that tried to push the Jews into the sea.)

This photo in the book says it all:

It is literally impossible to teach Israel’s history without mentioning the Arabs who were the majority before 1948. The riots in 1920, 1921 and 1929; the mini-civil war of 1936-9, the reasons for the British White Paper limiting Jewish immigration, the partition plan, the fighting in 1947-8 and the refugee issue – these topics cannot be avoided if one is taught even a perfunctory history of Israel, no matter how Zionist that history is.

But I would bet that Seth Rogen is utterly unfamiliar with the 1929 riots or the 1936 Arab uprising or any detail of the 1948 war beyond “Israel won.” He is completely and totally ignorant about Israel’s history, because if he knew 1% of what he pretends to know he would never say such a stupid thing.

It is entirely possible that Rogen grew up knowing nothing about Israel – he’s proving it today. But it is far more likely that he slept through class (according to The Forward, he attended a Jewish elementary school and a Zionist summer camp) than that he was taught that there were no Arabs there.

07/28 Links Pt2: Wiley isn’t ill – he’s racist; Ice Cube agrees to support condemning antisemitism with ZOA president; How J Street is attempting to desecrate Tisha B'Av

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Wiley isn’t ill – he’s racist

Why is anti-Semitism treated as less bad than other forms of racism? Why is it a growing force in some sections of the left? Why is it often greeted with the words ‘well, he has a point’ rather than with the stern, irate condemnations we would expect in response to racism more broadly?

It’s because of identity politics.

Anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred. It has exploded in societies numerous times over the millennia, often with unprecedented murderous consequences. It sometimes changes shape – going from being a religiously motivated hatred to a form of biological racism, from a far-right pursuit to a shamefully left-wing phenomenon – but it is always there, in one form or another. And today, one of the forms it takes is identitarian categorisation.

Identity politics has helped to resuscitate anti-Semitism. One of the worst things identity politics does is categorise people according to whether they are oppressed or privileged. It creates hierarchies of victimhood. Intersectionality is an avowedly sectarian, divisive cause, given to grouping entire peoples according to whether they are historic victims or the beneficiaries of privilege. This very easily morphs into a form of moral categorisation: the victim groups are good, the privileged groups are bad. So black people deserve our sympathy and our support, while white people – the most privileged, apparently – deserve scorn, and constant lecturing (‘Dear white people’), and re-education. Witness how virtually every corporation in the West is now reprimanding and controlling its workforce through the mad ideologies of ‘white fragility’ and ‘white privilege’.

Identitarianism is a toxic, divisive politics. And it has proven particularly bad for Jewish people. Where do they go in the woke racists’ categories? Which inhuman identitarian box must they be placed in? It’s the ‘privileged’ one. Consider how both far-right and far-left racists flit between terms like ‘white privilege’ and ‘Jewish privilege’. Jews are successful, right? They aren’t struggling. Therefore, they are ‘privileged’. And ‘privileged’ is bad. It’s immoral. The ‘privileged’ are the new oppressors, requiring constant condemnation. White people, ‘cis’ people, people of Indian Hindu heritage, Jews… all privileged, all bad, all on the receiving end of the new hatreds whipped up by the destructive politics of identity.

Wiley’s racist rants contained elements of the old anti-Semitism, especially the vile trope about Jews running the world. But they had a big dose of identitarian anti-Semitism, too. His belief that Jews conspire in the repression of blacks, and that Jews (being white) can be racist but black people (being black) cannot be racist, springs directly from the identitarian ideology. It’s time to face facts: the new politics of identity, this racialisation of every facet of life, the myopic obsession over skin colour and ‘privilege’ and heritage, have breathed life back into actual racism, including the oldest racism. Identity politics is a gateway drug to actual racial hatred. Reject it.

The Loneliest Hatred

In the last eight months, we’ve seen two mass murders of Jews—one attempted and one successful—by people who expressed interest in racially exclusive Black Israelism. Grafton Thomas, who burst into a Monsey, New York, rabbi’s home during a Hanukkah celebration and hacked at people with a machete, rambled in his journal about “Ebinoid Israelites” and “Semitic genocide.” David Anderson, who, along with an accomplice, sprayed a Jersey City kosher market with gunfire and killed three people (and a cop earlier), was steeped in Black Israelism, though he was wary of the organized sects. One wonders: When the coronavirus pandemic loosens its grip on public spaces and the proselytizing bands of Black Hebrew Israelites return to street corners to shout racist abuse at passersby, as they have done for decades without causing much controversy, will they draw the attention of anti-racist protesters?

And again, there is the steady anti-Jewish street violence. In New York City in the last two years, social media has recorded a sizable fraction of it in Brooklyn neighborhoods where Blacks and Jews coexist. Some of the perpetrators of those hate crimes revealed Black Israelite beliefs. One man beat and choked an Orthodox passerby while yelling about “fake Jews.” Another shouted “They’re not Jews!” and threw rocks at a group of Jewish women and children. Someone accosted a Forward journalist and screamed that she and her friends were “fake Jews … Whose time was almost up!” A woman berated an Israeli student on the subway: “You ain’t even a Jew, you white.” As Griff noted ominously to Nick Cannon, anticipating Wiley: “Now because you recognize [your Hebrew origin], you know who they are.”

There is not a racial crisis between Blacks and Jews. High-profile African Americans, including Charles Barkley, Stephen A. Smith, Michael Wilbon, Zach Banner, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, quickly and resolutely criticized DeSean Jackson and Stephen Jackson. And not all people influenced by Black Israelism—a broad group that includes thousands of “African Hebrew Israelites” living in Israel—are anti-Semites. But in our increasingly panicked politics, where fanciful and vicious conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and QAnon have seen viral adoption, the sudden mainstreaming of a racist conspiracy theory with demonstrated links to violence should stir serious concern.

Yet when Black people express anti-Semitism it is continually treated as nothing to worry about. It is not hard to understand why. Anti-racist thought developed in response to the racial caste system in America and is primarily concerned with power. For those who are marginalized, it sees an accretion of victimhood; a disabled Black woman experiences compounding oppression at the intersection of her identities. On the other hand, those at the top of the racial caste system—whites—are invested with an almost mystical power that tends to flatten their other identities. Jews are generally regarded as white and privileged, so in practice, Jewishness seldom registers as a marginalizable identity. Anti-racists are dumb to our global history of persecution and vulnerability in the present.

Because anti-Semitism, like all conspiracy theories, mimics a politics of emancipation, anti-Semites believe themselves to be opponents of injustice. Among progressives today, the movement to redefine racism as “prejudice plus power”—that is, to downgrade nonsystemic forms of racism to mere personal “prejudice”—has ominous consequences for Jews. It fosters the belief that people who are thought to be powerful are deserving of hostility. And when racism poses as resistance by victims of racism, as anti-Semitism often does, it disqualifies Jews from concern.

Those who favor this revisionist definition have made so much headway that Merriam-Webster has agreed to incorporate it. How will we address a form of racism that purports to “punch up” against an evil elite? Most anti-Semitism in the West is nonsystemic, but its very nature is being systematically eclipsed. The loneliest hatred lives on, as it has for thousands of years—outside the ambit of our racial reckoning.

Ice Cube agrees to support condemning antisemitism with ZOA president

Pro-Israel advocate and president of the Zionist Organization of America Morton Klein announced via his Twitter page on Tuesday that he had 2-hour conversation with rapper Ice Cube where he claims that the musical artist supports condemning antisemitism and racism.

"I, Mort Klein, just had a 2-hour conversation with Ice Cube. We both grew up poor in Black hoods. Cube told me he thanked Jews for starting NAACP, many Black schools and fighting for Black civil rights. Cube told me he supports condemning Black and all antisemitism, and I condemned all racism," Klein said on Twitter Tuesday.

Shout out to Mort Klein who had the courage to seek the truth and speak with me and see for himself I am obviously NOT an anti-Semite or racist. I admire him for the advocacy of his people and look forward to talking more on how Black and Jewish communities can work together... https://t.co/dnVijJkR8q
— Ice Cube (@icecube) July 28, 2020

Ice Cube has been immersed in a row as of late, after condemning NBA Hall-of-Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for writing an article mentioning the rapper on the topic of antisemitism, as well as tweeting an image of a mural that was removed from a wall in London in 2012 after complaints that the image was antisemitic.

The rapper vehemently denies that he supports antisemitism – or racism for that matter - mentioning that he only took issue with the article because he was mentioned in the article without being contacted first.

"Just for the record: I still love Kareem Abdul Jabbar definitely had a right to write against Antisemitism and racism," Ice Cube wrote on his Twitter page on Monday. "I was just hurt to be added into that article without a conversation to tell him that I am neither. But there is no wedge between me and my brother."

Cartoon of the Day: The elusive antisemites

This is barely even a joke. It is really how too many people think.

Egypt Independent reports:

Egypt’s Economic Court sentenced Tik Tok influencers Haneen Hossam, Mawaddah al-Adham and three others to two years in prison and a LE 300,000 fine for violating family values and promoting debauchery and immorality via their accounts on social networking websites.

They were also accused of cooperating with organized human trafficking rings, and of using women to commit crimes that violate the principles and values of Egyptian society.\

Al-Adham’s TikTok videos look just like any other TikTok videos.

She dresses provocatively for an Egyptian but nothing seems to be illegal.

However, the Arabic versions of the story add a sinister twist. Her lawyer says that she was asked to undergo a “virginity exam” as part of the prosecution along with an examination of her bank accounts.

Al-Adham refused, and for all we know this may have been a factor in her sentence.

Egyptian police and military have been known to use “virginity tests” as weapons to control women. It is not something that is often discussed in English. If this was demanded of al-Adham, it is a truly disgusting indictment of the Egyptian justice system.

(h/t Abdallah Mashaallah)

07/28 Links Pt1: Camp David 20 Years Later: The Oslo Delusion; On Hezbollah, It’s Time to Call Nasrallah’s Bluff

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Camp David 20 Years Later: The Oslo Delusion

The veteran terrorist walked away from an offer that gave him more or less everything Palestinian advocates said they wanted. Two months later, convinced of Barak’s weakness and thinking bloody attacks on Israel would produce even more such suicidal concessions, he launched a terror war of attrition known as the Second Intifada. That traumatic conflict, which took the lives of more than 1,000 Israelis and many more Palestinians, blew up any remaining support for Oslo. It set in place a broad consensus among Israelis — further reinforced by the disastrous results of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, which led to a Hamas-run terrorist state in the Strip, as well as the refusals of Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate in good faith — that peace is out of reach in the foreseeable future.

As Miller now concedes, the summit didn’t have any of the elements that could lead to success, such as “strong leaders,” a “workable deal,” and “effective US mediation.” Barak’s desperation and the Clinton administration’s poor planning made things worse. Miller is also correct in pointing out that Clinton’s belief that trying and failing was better than not trying at all was horribly wrong. The consequences of his hubris were paid in the blood of those slaughtered in Arafat’s intifada.

Nevertheless, Miller still holds on to the delusion that more American pressure on the Jewish state, coupled with a set of parameters for a deal that would have given the Israelis no wriggle room on Jerusalem and other intractable issues, might have made a difference. He disdains the efforts of the Trump administration to advance peace, thinking its leaders are far too close to Israel. But although Kushner seems to have tried to avoid making the same mistakes as Clinton, he too doesn’t seem to fully understand why even his more realistic “Prosperity to Peace” vision had as little chance of achieving an agreement as the 2000 summit.

In an interview with Newsweek, Kushner exhibited some magical thinking of his own. Kushner believes that the key to peace is pushing the Arab states closer to Israel. Doing so is a good thing in and of itself, but like every other formula for a settlement, it failed because the Palestinians just aren’t interested.

The lessons of the Camp David Summit rest on understanding that better diplomacy, planning, and help from outside parties is never going to be enough. Until the Palestinians give up their vision of a world without a State of Israel — one that is now sadly shared by Jews like Peter Beinart, who think the failure to make peace means that the Zionist project should be discarded in favor of a dangerous utopian vision that will lead to far more bloodshed than any intifada — no peace process, no matter how skillfully conducted, will ever succeed.

Most Israelis understand this bitter truth and have adjusted their expectations accordingly. It is to be hoped that future American governments, including a putative one led by former Vice President Joe Biden, which will likely be staffed by Clinton and Obama administration veterans, will be capable of understanding that in the absence of a sea change in Palestinian political culture, further negotiations are simply a waste of everyone’s time.

Analysis of UAWC’s Response to the Dutch Funding Freeze over Terror Links

On July 20, 2020, the Dutch government announced that it was suspending funding to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) over links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). During a parliamentary debate, Foreign Minister Stef Blok and Development Minister Sigrid Kaag acknowledged that an internal government audit concluded that Dutch funds were used to pay the salaries of two UAWC employees who were also members of the PFLP terror organization and then arrested for murder.

According to NGO Monitor research, since 2013, the Netherlands has provided UAWC with approximately €20 million in grants.

In response to the Dutch announcement, UAWC issued a statement (July 22) attempting to deflect the serious allegations and misleadingly referring to “former employees” (the two were employed by UAWC at the time of the murder and their subsequent arrests). Reflecting the core emphasis on public relations and donor retention, the statement was published in English.

NGO Monitor has prepared the following detailed analysis of UAWC’s response:
Quote: For many years, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) has been attacked by the Israeli government and right-wing organization affiliated with it. Most of our projects are in “Area C” of the occupied West Bank, where we help vulnerable communities hold on to their land. The Israeli government has built illegal settlements in this area and wants to annex it. This is the key reason why we are attacked.

Analysis: UAWC opens (and closes) with a clearly political defense meant to appeal to European officials, emphasizing “’Area C’ of the occupied West Bank, where we help vulnerable communities hold on to their land,” and asserting that the “key reason” for being “attacked” is the Israeli government’s pursuit of annexation.

In reality, NGO Monitor’s research is the result of evidence linking UAWC to the PFLP terror group (see below). Since December 2019, UAWC’s links to the PFLP have taken on heightened importance, after Israeli authorities announced the arrest of two UAWC employees for murder. On August 23, 2019, Samer Arbid, UAWC’s accountant, commanded a PFLP terror cell that carried out a bombing against Israeli civilians, murdering 17-year old Rina Shnerb, and injuring her father and brother. According to the indictment, Arbid prepared and detonated the explosive device. Abdul Razeq Farraj, another UAWC employee, was also indicted for his involvement in the PFLP and the 2019 attack.

On Hezbollah, It’s Time to Call Nasrallah’s Bluff

From a position of unprecedented weakness and distress, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is back to his old gambling habits. Similar to the summer of 2006, he is now threatening to perpetrate a terrorist attack against Israel in response to the death of one of his operatives in Syria.

Then, Nasrallah’s failed gambit triggered an all-out war, which exacted a terrible price from Lebanon and mainly from the Shiite ethnic group he purports to represent. Nasrallah himself was forced to pay a heavy price: his personal freedom. The man has been shuttered in his bunker ever since, and doesn’t see the light of day.

Nasrallah, however, is shackled to his equations — because he fears Israel will interpret a failure to act as weakness, he feels obligated to retaliate and is willing to risk a head-on clash. He hopes, of course, that he’ll be able to control the flames by keeping casualties on the Israeli side to a minimum, allowing Israel to absorb the event and temper its own counter-response, as it has done in the past.

For this reason alone, Israel should not play into Nasrallah’s hands. Rather, it should nullify the equations he is seeking to dictate and present him with a clear red line.

During the Second Lebanon War, Israel was strung along by poor leadership that failed to bring the IDF’s massive military advantage to bear. Instead of bringing Hezbollah to its knees, Israel was needlessly drawn into a 33-day war of attrition.

And yet, the results of that war sent a clear and decisive message to Hezbollah — that Israel will no longer allow the terrorist group to violate its sovereignty and continue attacking it from Lebanese soil. The quiet that prevailed along the border with Lebanon was therefore an important achievement, and it’s a fact that Hezbollah, battered and deterred, recognized that preserving this quiet was just as much in its own interest.

Al Qaws, the Palestinian LGBTQ group, will hold a protest against both Palestinian patriarchy and Israeli oppression tomorrow.

But they won’t be holding it in Ramallah or Hebron. They are doing it in Haifa.

On Wednesday, July 29th, alQaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society along with other queer and feminist Palestinian organizations will hold a protest in occupied Haifa to raise our voices against the patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist oppressions on LGBT and queer Palestinians, and to demand an end to violence against our bodies and lives.

…Discussions exploring sexual and gender diversity have spread broadly and can no longer be ignored or denied. Nor are they limited to specific groups in our society. These discussions have stormed our homes, our workplaces, and even our political and social spaces, making this one of the most controversial questions in Palestine. Yet the most consistent aspect of our visibility and the current debates remains the violence against LGBT and queer Palestinians. We have witnessed unprecedented physical and psychological violence on social media and beyond, reflecting various forms of homophobia and transphobia, often expressed through outdated and harmful myths and misconceptions that work to yet again demonize and exclude us from our own society, to control our bodies and repress our desires.

Of course, a Palestinian group – no matter how unpopular – must also talk about how awful Israel is.

The struggle to combat societal and state violence against the queer movement in Palestine unfolds on a complex terrain, structured by a settler-colonial power that denies Palestinian freedom and decolonization, and exacerbated by an economic system that exploits and degrades us. These violent foundations give rise to the “pinkwashing” narrative which opportunistically weaponizes our own pain against us, both on the global stage and within our communities. We stand in fierce opposition to the colonizing force that erases our struggle, then uses us as a fig-leaf for its oppression by claiming to be our salvation.

I suppose it pains them for me to point out that they chose to do the protest in Israel and not in their own Palestinian controlled areas – because they know that in the Palestinian territories they would be attacked and arrested by police while in Israel they will be protected by police.

This is the “pinkwashing” they rail against – where they choose to protest in the very nation that they claim is oppressing them.

How to manipulate a poll to make it look like Americans oppose Israel

Anti-Israel activists are upset that the Democratic platform does not include anti-Israel language. They point to a poll last year that, they claim, says that a plurality of Americans and 2/3 of Democrats support cutting aid to Israel.

A look at the poll shows how pollsters can easily manipulate the people to say what they want.

Data for Progress (whose very name shows that they intend to manipulate data for their political purposes) asked two questions:

In the past, the US has cut military aid to foreign governments accused of human rights violations. Supporters of the cuts say the US shouldn’t be involved in human rights abuses and it’s a waste of taxpayer money. Opponents say that even if some governments have imperfect records, we need to do what is necessary to fight terrorism and to counter foreign powers like Russia and China. Do you [support or oppose] the US government reducing foreign and military aid to governments engaged in human rights abuses?

First, the stage is set where the person is told that the US has a track record of cutting aid to human rights abusers. Then the two sides of the issue are described in a deliberately slanted and simplistic way. Finally, the question is asked whether they support existing US policy on reducing aid to human rights abusers.

Of course, most people will oppose it.

Then comes the trap:

Israel is one of the largest recipients of US military aid. Some legislators in the United States say that aid should be reduced because Israel often violates the human rights of Palestinians by using lethal military force against unarmed Palestinian civilians, including children. Other legislators in the United States say aid should not be reduced; Israel does what it needs to do to protect itself from terrorism and hostile foreign powers, who deliberately provoke Israel with violence. Do you [support or oppose] the US government reducing foreign and military aid to Israel based on human rights violations?

Israel is defined as a human rights abuser, deliberately and often attacking innocent Palestinian children with lethal force. The “pro-Israel” side of the question ignores everything Israel does to minimize casualties and the history of deadly Palestinian terrorism against civilians.

The person being polled already has put himself on the record as supporting reducing aid for human rights abusers. The question does not leave room for anyone to say that Israel is not a human rights abuser on par with the worst dictatorships in history. No one wants to look like or feel like a hypocrite. So many people, especially those who are not informed of the facts around Israel, will allow themselves to be steered to answer the way that the “progressive” pollster wants.

Anti-Israel organizations like J-Street commission polls like this all the time and then trumpet the results as if they reflect actual opinions of people rather than naked manipulation of their emotions. I wish that Zionist organizations would do similar polls with different wording, for example:

Israelis have been incessantly attacked by Palestinian terrorists for over seventy years. Hamas and other terror groups regularly vow to destroy Israel and plot further attacks. Some people think that Israel is too aggressive in defending its citizens and the US should cut aid to Israel that pays for defense against Hamas rockets and other attacks. Others say that Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself and has a robust judicial system to ensure that there are no abuses of power against innocent Palestinians. Do you support or oppose cutting US aid to Israel?

See how easy it is to ask the same question in a different way – and how easy it is to lead the people being surveyed into taking the position that the pollster wants?

Polls assume that most people are ignorant of the topic they are asking about – which is often true. When the pollsters pretend that it is their job to “educate” those being polled, they are engaging in advertising, not surveying. Instead of pretending to present both sides of the argument, a truly objective survey would simply ask “Do you support cutting US aid to Israel?” without any explanations and without other precursor questions meant to prime the answer (like questions about the budget or taxes, or on the other hand about US allies and enemies.)

If most people answer “I’m not sure” then that is the reality.

Surveys commissioned by partisan organizations are worthless. This is something that should be covered in basic high school civics classes and by the media. Unfortunately, the media are often the ones who commission these same polls so they will not criticize a major source of their own “scoops.”

As far as I can tell, there are no watchdog organizations that rate the objectivity of surveys. There should be.

No, antisemitism is not rooted in white supremacy

At JTA, a Rabbi Emily Cohen makes a muddled case against boycotting Twitter for 48 hours to protest its acceptance of antisemitism.

Her arguments are all over the place, but a couple of them are worth dismantling:

First, there’s the issue of this boycott catalyzing around a Black man. Anti-Semitism comes from everywhere. While perhaps it’s chance, and celebrity, that led to Wiley’s particular thread being the tweet that broke the bird’s beak, I can’t help but worry that white Jews and their allies were more ready to speak out against Wiley than against anti-Semitic white people.

She is not the first person to see racism by Jews who go after Black antisemites. She must have some proof, right?

In the United Kingdom, white people — including prominent politicians like Jeremy Corbyn — have been spouting anti-Semitism for some years. While these statements have hardly gone unnoticed — responses have included a film about Labour Party anti-Semitism and suits for libel resulting in formal apologies — to my knowledge there has not been a public call for a comparable social media boycott. Not for Corbyn, not for the many George Soros conspiracy tweets and not for any of the countless instances of anti-Semitism that show up on my feed every day.

Did Corbyn ever spend an entire day with many posts directly attacking Jews? His antisemitism was not primarily on social media but behind closed doors in the Labour Party – and the justified attacks on him were properly centered on his political position, not his social media accounts. . To say that no one demanded a Twitter ban on Corbyn – and that this is somehow proof that the people demanding such a ban on Wiley are racists – is bizarre and insulting.

It is also racist. To add more obstacles before calling out antisemitism for a Black man than for a white man is pretty much racism, as if the Black man cannot be held responsible for his actions as much as a White man should.

Cohen then contradicts herself:

I believe that we must stand against anti-Semitism in all its forms, but I also know that anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in white supremacy. Fixating upon anti-Semitism expressed by Black people more than that expressed by white people hurts all marginalized peoples.

But she just said above that “anti-Semitism comes from everywhere.” Now she says it is “deeply rooted in white supremacy.” If the second statement is true, then black antisemitism or Arab antisemitism are virtually impossible.

No, Emily, antisemitism is not rooted in white supremacy. White supremacy is rooted in antisemitism.

For a rabbi, Cohen is surprisingly ignorant about Jew-hatred. Was Martin Luther’s antisemitism based on white supremacy? How about that of Voltaire? Marx? The Spanish inquisitors? The Mufti of Jerusalem? Louis Farrakhan? Ice Cube?

Jew-hatred is independent of philosophy, logic, politics or skin color. Anyone who tries to tie it to any of those is likely to be condoning some types of antisemitism as somehow more justified and less objectionable than others. And it is a disgrace when this comes from someone who calls herself a rabbi.

Too many on the Left want so desperately to say that white supremacy is the primary kind of antisemitism and want to soft-pedal all other kinds. These are the people who want to weaponize antisemitism against their political enemies – and in so doing, they are enabling antisemitism from the likes of Wiley or Professor Griff or Mahmoud Abbas. Plenty of antisemites are not white, just as plenty of them are.

To look at antisemitism primarily through the lens of race means that you don’t really care about antisemitism.

07/27 Links Pt2: UK chief rabbi accuses social media platforms of ‘complicity’ in anti-Semitism; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's slam dunk against anti-Semitism; Col. Kemp: Why I Speak Up For Israel

From Ian:

UK chief rabbi accuses social media platforms of ‘complicity’ in anti-Semitism

British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis accused Twitter and Facebook of “complicity” in online anti-Semitism on Sunday, charging that the two social media giants’ “inaction” had allowed hate to flourish on their platforms.

“For too long, social media has been a safe space for those who peddle hatred and prejudice,” Mirvis wrote in letters sent to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is Jewish.

“Free speech is an essential cornerstone of any civilized society, but when it is used to incite hatred and violence against others, social media companies have a responsibility to act and must do so without delay,” he wrote.

“Over the next two days, many people around the world, including myself, will be suspending their social media activity in protest against the woeful lack of responsible leadership from companies including Twitter and Facebook,” Mirvis continued.

“This cannot be allowed to stand. Your inaction amounts to complicity.”
The Chief Rabbi writes to @Jack and Mark Zuckerberg to demand #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate pic.twitter.com/s0AFO4HPSx
— Chief Rabbi Mirvis (@chiefrabbi) July 26, 2020

“This cannot be allowed to stand. Your inaction amounts to complicity. I urge you to take swift action to challenge the hatred that currently thrives on your platform.”

Thousands join 48-hour Twitter ‘walkout’ to protest anti-Semitism on platform

A host of British politicians, celebrities, high-profile figures and other users said they were signing off of Twitter for two days starting Monday morning to protest anti-Semitic hate on the social media platform.

The protest, promoted under the hashtag #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate, was sparked by Twitter’s handling of a recent anti-Semitic rant by UK rap artist Wiley, and came as anti-hate groups have stepped up pressure for social media platforms to clamp down on rampant hate speech.

Wiley, 41, whose real name is Richard Cowie, posted a stream of anti-Semitic tweets Friday, claiming connections between the Jewish community and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as repeated tropes about Jews and money.

The tweets were up for 12 hours before Twitter finally deleted some of them under its “hateful conduct policy,” though others remain. He also posted anti-Semitic content on Instagram, which appeared not to have been deleted.

The grime musician, who has half a million Twitter followers, was given a seven-day suspension from the platform. Amid a wave of backlash his management company said it had cut all ties with him. He is also facing a police investigation.

Among the people and organizations going silent until Wednesday are British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and his predecessor Jonathan Sacks, members of Parliament, Israeli elected officials and leading Jewish organizations in Canada and the United States.

Before going dark, Mirvis posted a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey calling for action against anti-Semitism on the platform he co-founded more than a decade ago. “Your inaction amounts to complicity,” Mirvis wrote.

The protest took root after Jewish actress Tracy-Ann Oberman, who became famous for her role on “EastEnders,” tweeted on Friday night that she was considering abandoning Twitter over Wiley’s two-day spree of aggressively anti-Semitic posts.

HonestReporting Joins Blackout After Barrage of Twitter Antisemitism

HonestReporting is joining a widespread 48-hour Twitter ‘blackout’ after the musician known as Wiley was allowed to tweet incitement against Jews for hours unimpeded. We stand together with the demands of other Jewish organizations that are calling on Twitter to act more quickly to prevent the spread of dangerous hate speech to large audiences.

Rapper Richard Kylea Cowie Jr., better known by his stage name Wiley, spent hours on Friday mounting a relentless attack against Jews, including calls for black people to go to “war” against Jews. Wiley claimed in these tweets that Jews had usurped black people as the Hebrews, a conspiracy theory that has led to acts of terrorism against Jews, such as the stabbing attack in Monsey in New York in December 2019. Wiley also called for Jews to be shot.

Wiley’s extended rant on Twitter saw him repeatedly invoking conspiracy theories positing that Jews were responsible for the international slave trade, claiming that Jews had cheated him and were “snakes”, comparing Jews to the Ku Klux Klan, and suggesting that Jews should “hold some corn” – a colloquialism meaning that the subjects be shot.

Over the course of several hours, Wiley issued dozens of offensive tweets to his audience of over 493k followers. Twitter’s reaction was to delete a handful of his tweets and briefly suspend his account – a woefully inadequate response.

Yet despite Wiley’s large online following, his protracted rant was initially met with little coverage in the traditional media.

For years, HonestReporting has been urging the broadcast media to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism. More recently, HonestReporting has taken the step of urging social media giants such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to adopt the same standard, on the understanding that social media networks are now as influential as traditional media outlets – if not more.

Cartoon of the Day–The Leftist do-gooders

They are so altruistic, endowing Israelis with their wisdom from the Upper East Side!

Jordan’s Ad Dustour newspaper columnist Marwan Soudah writes about the ~~Jewish~~ Zionist plan to for world domination– a plan that he happily credits his Soviet Union-era scholars for teaching him.

During my academic studies in the Soviet Union and beyond, I became acquainted with scores of scholars, specialists, researchers, orientalists, writers, and journalists from Russia, both civilians and military. They devoted most of their time and their entire efforts to denuding the expansionist Zionist thought and practice in Palestine and the Arab world, and to concentrate efforts to curb the global and racist-slavery goals of Zionism that set their sights on infringing on the peoples of Russia and the globe, and dividing people into two parts, two camps, two worlds facing and contradicting, neither valid nor free. They are: the Jews of Zionism "born full and civilized"; And .. Goyim; gentiles who are meant to be servants and inferior slaves.

Among these distinguished scholars wereYuri Ivanov; Vladimir Begon; Yevgeny Yvesev. Galina Nikitina; Vladimir Kiseleyov; Professor Gedanov; F. P. Pulshakov and the two magnificent internationalist generals: Yevgeny Shikatikhin and Professor Alexander Romanenko. The latter fought in Chinese military uniforms to confront the Zionist war pilots in the airspace of Korea and the People's Republic of China, and the foundations of the global front against Zionism and others. During the successive decades of their difficult struggles, they warned a lot about the hideous Zionist goals that "will not stop in and around Palestine", and some of them paid with their lives, dying was the price of their faith, the necessity of stopping the imperialist Zionist expansion of thought and practice on the ground…

They warned, according to their analyses and private information available to them, that: Signing a peace treaty or agreement with "Israel" will only mean one thing: a new stage of rest for Zionism during which it is preparing to implement a renewed aggression in the Palestinian territories, and to prepare for another outside it, in the Arab world.

They said that Zionism …does not believe in agreements and peace, because it is voraciously looking for their oil wells, water and wealth. In their studies, they indicated that peace agreements with the Zionists openly implied: a renewed geographical expansion, a new displacement of Arabs from their homelands, and Zionist plans to create new, more acute internal problems in the Arab countries.

Those patriotic scholars who support us say that Zionism aims, through its pure Jewish state, to distract Jews from its hidden economic-political goal of world domination. They mouth statements of their devotion to the Jewish ideals and the so-called "liberation of persecuted Jews in their societies." In this way, the Zionists established the so-called "movements for national liberation", in order to enable them to mobilize fabricated and politically domesticated fighters capable of fighting and dying to accomplish the Zionist cosmic mission as war and terror, to continuously expand capital and industries, to convert the Arab "goyim" into "Black labor" that has no rights.

Soudah is an unabashed fan of Communist China and North Korea, and he is – get this – he heads the “Qalamiyin League, Putin and Russia’s lovers in Jordan and the Arab world.”

Anyone who doubts the links between antisemitism and modern “progressive’ socialism should try to explain this article where “Zionists’ regard the rest of the world as “goyim” meant to serve them and their plans to take over the world.