Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, September 27, 2021

09/27 Links Pt1: Dershowitz: Mainstream Democrats Introduce Bill Endangering Israel; A Foul Play by Progressives over Israel's Iron Dome; Bennett at the UN: Hating Israel doesn’t make you ‘woke’

From Ian:

Alan M. Dershowitz: Mainstream Democrats Introduce Bill Endangering Israel

This is not an "occupation." It is legitimate and entirely lawful self-defense. It would be a lie — a blood libel — for the United States to declare Gaza to be occupied territory.

Under international law, a military occupation may continue as long as there is belligerence, as there certainly continues to be.

Had Israeli troops remained, Israel would be criticized. Now that they have left, there is still criticism. For some, Israel can do no right.

Jerusalem is more complicated... These are not occupied territories. Nor is the rest of East Jerusalem which is part of a united city.

Israel twice offered to end its presence in more than 90% of the West Bank in exchange for peace. The Palestinian leadership refused these offers and are thus responsible for the current situation.

The bill proposed by Levin and his fellow Democrats encourages the refusal of Palestinian leaders to negotiate painful compromises that are essential to achieving peace. It also rewards the pay-to-slay and terrorist policies... It sends a dangerous message to Palestinian naysayers: you do not have to negotiate or compromise; the United States will compel Israel to give in to your demands without requiring the Palestinians to negotiate, compromise or give up terrorism.

A far better bill would be one that conditioned reopening the Palestinian embassy on a willingness of the Palestinian leadership to return to the negotiating table and engage in genuine and honest discussions leading toward a peaceful two-state solution that assured security for Israel and autonomy for the West Bank Palestinians. (There can be no solution for Gaza except a military one as long as Hamas remains in charge, and persists in its terrorism and refuses to recognize Israel.)

The Democrats' new assault on Jerusalem's Western Wall

Throughout 2016, a year rife with global Islamist terrorism and horrific human rights violations, the UN General Assembly passed 20 resolutions against Israel and four against all other countries combined. At UNESCO, an Arab–backed resolution erased any historic link between the Jewish people and Judaism’s holiest sites, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. It also rebranded Rachel’s Tomb and the Tomb of the Patriarchs as exclusively Muslim sites. The resolution also “deeply regrets” Israel’s refusal to remove these sites from its national heritage list..."

UNSC 2334 called Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter, the Temple Mount, the Western Wall and the settlements "occupied Palestinian territories" but the Congress rejected this. H.Res.11 rejected UNSC 2334. 0n July 1st 2017 the Congress approved H.Res.11 - Objecting to United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 as an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace, and for other purposes. H.Res.11 "Calls for such resolution to be repealed or fundamentally altered

On January 13, 2017 JEAN-PATRICK GRUMBERG wrote in dreuz.info "In a historic trial carefully forgotten by the media, the 3rd Chamber of the Court of Appeal of Versailles declared that Israel is the legal occupant of the 'West Bank'."

Until 1948 Jews were a majority of the population in Jerusalem. On December 11, 2017 Amb. Dore Gold wrote in the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs "By the mid-19th century, the British Consulate in Jerusalem made the following determination, according to this report, which I found in the Public Record Office in Kew, it states that Jews were a majority in Jerusalem, when? already in 1863 – that’s long before Theodor Herzl, before the Britt’s arrived, or Lord Balfour."

"See the guy on the right, William Seward, he was Secretary of State of the United States during the American civil war, under President Abraham Lincoln.

"When Seward’s term ended, he visited the holy land, he visited Jerusalem. And he wrote a memoir. And in his memoir, it is written, 'There is a Jewish majority in Jerusalem.'" See William Seward, Travels Around the World (1873)

Jews were a majority of the population in Jerusalem until they were expelled by the Jordanian Arab Legion in 1948. In 1948 British General Glubb Pasha lead the Jordanian Arab Legion to expel all the Jews from Hevron, East Jerusalem and the 'West Bank'. Not only they did ethnic cleansing but they destroyed dozens of ancient synagogues and thousands of Ancient Jewish Tombstones in the Sacred Ancient Jewish Cemetery of Mount of Olives to try to erase all evidence of Jewish History.

According to the Palestinians Arabs themselves most "Palestinians" are migrants from other Arab Countries. On March 23, 2012 MEMRI reported "Hamas Minister of the Interior and of National Security Fathi Hammad Slams Egypt over Fuel Shortage in Gaza Strip, and Says: "Half of the Palestinians Are Egyptians and the Other Half Are Saudis" (Please see video in the link below)

Even though 20% of the Israeli population is Israeli Arab and Arabs are allowed to live anywhere in Israel, Abbas calls for the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from Judea and Samaria (including Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall). On July 29, 2013 Reuters reported "...Abbas said that no Israeli settlers or border forces could remain in a future Palestinian state..."

In conclusion, Israel must emphasize that Jerusalem is to Judaism as Mecca is to Islam. Jerusalem is the spiritual capital of Judaism, the spiritual capital of Islam is Mecca. Jews around the world face Jerusalem when they pray, Muslims face Mecca even when in or around Jerusalem. Jews were not allowed to pray in Jerusalem's Western Wall while it was under Jordanian occupation (1948-1967) and now the Democrats are trying to get the Jews expelled from the Western Wall again.

The Palestinians Don’t Want ‘Economy for Peace’

Twenty years after the collapse of the political process, Israel is now insisting on repeating exactly the same perceptual error vis-à-vis Hamas, with the idea that an “economic settlement” will take the place of a political settlement. Economic easing and a partial relaxation of the so-called Israeli “siege” of the Gaza Strip are meant, like the spurned territorial concessions of the 1990s, to inspire Hamas and all the other Palestinian terrorist elements in Gaza to lay down their arms and make peace with Israel.

In recent years, this notion has become a cornerstone of Israel’s policy toward Gaza, comporting as it does with Israel’s reluctance to engage in further military campaigns in the Strip. So great has Israel’s attachment to this misguided idea become that it has begun to misrepresent Hamas terrorism as “disobedience” that has nothing to do with the organization’s official goal of destroying the Jewish state, which Hamas makes no attempt to conceal.

Not even the violence of the Gaza war in May could change this outlook among Israelis. On the contrary: it anchored the assumption that an economic settlement was possible. This perception reveals that Israelis have not yet internalized the fact that like the PLO, which was unwilling to accept the existence of Israel in any shape or form and expressed that view with violence even as it pretended to negotiate, Hamas’ strategy is based on a combination of negotiations and terrorism. This combination of a false willingness to negotiate and constant violent behavior also characterizes Iran in its relations with the US as it attempts to forge a path toward a nuclear weapon. This approach works well for terrorist entities because their Western enemies, be they American or Israeli, remain committed to the idea of “either/or” — either war or concessions are the pathway to peace.

There is no fundamental difference between the PLO and Hamas. As far as Israel is concerned, they feel the same way: the goal is Israel’s total destruction. Yet Israel repeats its mistakes by artificially imposing Western thought patterns on its enemies.

Political folly is not fate, however. It’s time for Israel to sober up and recognize that economic regulation carries no promise whatsoever of a secure peace.

NPR falsely claims Arafat slowed down the intifada after 9/11 and Israel forced him to restart it

NPR reported ahead of September 11:

On Sept. 11, 2001, American TV viewers saw scenes of cheering Palestinians, jubilant to see Israel's ally attacked. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had his security services quash the scattered celebrations, and issued a statement.

"We want to send a message to the world: we are not with Al Qaeda and its activities," said Nabil Amr, then Palestinian minister of information, who helped draft the condemnation.

At the time, the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising — with militant bombings and shootings, and attacks by Israeli troops — had been going on for one year. The 9/11 attacks made Arafat worried that Palestinians, who considered themselves freedom fighters, would be seen by the West as terrorists.

"At this stage, I think Yasser Arafat knew very well that the Intifada must stop," said Nasser Jumaa, a former Palestinian combatant leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Jumaa said Arafat's emissaries delivered that message to Palestinian armed groups like his.

Violence decreased, but only for a short while.

"Yasser Arafat ... wanted to distance himself from this axis of evil, and the only way to do it was to stop the Intifada," said retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom. "But it didn't stop, and not because of Yasser Arafat. Because of the Israeli side. We missed this opportunity."

In January 2002, Israel killed a top West Bank militant, restarting a policy of assassinations. "We couldn't overcome the urge," Brom said.

If this report is true, then we would have seen a significant decrease in Palestinian terror attacks between September 11, 2001 and January 2002.

I count no less than 23 fatal terror attacks aimed specifically at civilians and a few more aimed at soldiers between September 11 and December 31, 2001. Here are just the Fatah attacks:

Sept 20, 2001 - Sarit Amrani, 26, of Nokdim, was killed Thursday morning and her husband Shai was seriously wounded in a shooting attack near Tekoa, south of Bethlehem.

Oct 4, 2001 - Sgt. Tali Ben-Armon, 19, an off-duty woman soldier from Pardesia, Haim Ben-Ezra, 76, of Givat Hamoreh, and Sergei Freidin, 20, of Afula were killed when a Palestinian terrorist, dressed as an Israeli paratrooper, opened fire on Israeli civilians waiting at the central bus station in Afula. 13 other Israelis were wounded in the attack.

Oct 28, 2001 - St.-Sgt. Yaniv Levy, 22, of Zichron Yaakov was killed by Palestinian terrorists in a drive-by machine-gun ambush near Kibbutz Metzer in northern Israel.

Nov 2, 2001 - St.-Sgt. Raz Mintz, 19, of Kiryat Motzkin was killed by Palestinian gunmen 5:45 P.M. on Friday at an IDF roadblock at near Ofra, north of Ramallah. The Fatah-affiliated al-Aqsa Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack.

Nov 27, 2001 - Noam Gozovsky, 23, of Moshav Ramat Zvi, and Michal Mor, 25, of Afula were killed when two Palestinian terrorists from the Jenin area opened fire with Kalashnikov assault rifles on a crowd of people near the central bus station in Afula. Police officers and a reserve soldier confronted them, killing the terrorists in the ensuing firefight. Another 50 people were injured, 10 of them moderately to seriously. Fatah and the Islamic Jihad claimed joint responsibility.

Nov 29, 2001 - Inbal Weiss, 22, of Zichron Ya'akov; Yehiav Elshad, 28, of Tel-Aviv; and Samuel Milshevsky, 45, of Kfar Sava were killed and nine wounded in a suicide bombing on an Egged 823 bus en route from Nazereth to Tel Aviv near the city of Hadera. The Islamic Jihad and Fatah claimed responsibility for the attack.

Dec 12, 2001 - Yair Amar, 13, of Emmanuel; Esther Avraham, 42, of Emmanuel; Border Police Chief Warrant Officer Yoel Bienenfeld, 35, of Moshav Tel Shahar; Moshe Gutman, 40, of Emmanuel; Avraham Nahman Nitzani, 17, of Betar Illit; Yirmiyahu Salem, 48, of Emmanuel; Israel Sternberg, 46, of Emmanuel; David Tzarfati, 38, of Ginot Shomron; Hananya Tzarfati, 32, of Kfar Saba; Ya'akov Tzarfati, 64, of Kfar Saba were killed when three terrorists attacked a No. 189 Dan bus and several passenger cars with a roadside bomb, anti-tank grenades, and light arms fire near the entrance to Emmanuel in Samaria at 18:00 P.M. About 30 others were injured. Both Fatah and Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

The idea that Israel was responsible for Palestinian terrorism when fatal attacks were happening several times a week is slanderous.

There was a supposed cease fire on December 16, 2001, and the alleged assassination - which Israel denied - was on January 14, 2002. In between those dates there were fatal attacks on Israelis on December 25 and January 9. If that was a ceasefire, it sure wasn't much of one.

(h/t Irene)

Jews represented Palestine at the 1896 Berlin Expo

The (delayed) 2020 Dubai World's Fair is starting this week, and Israel will be represented there.

Even though the modern State of Israel is 73 years old, Jews represented Palestine in World's Fairs way before 1948. In fact, the first time was 125 years ago.

This Jewish New Year's postcard is from the Great Industrial Exposition of Berlin of 1896 - and the story behind it is remarkable.

Portrayed in the photograph are Heinrich Loewe, Moshe David Șuv and others at the entrance to a building bearing the sign "Exposition of Sons of Israel in the Holy Land" (In Hebrew and German), with palm trees and a mosque

A Colonial Exhibition was held as part of the Great Industrial Exposition of Berlin in 1896, with grand displays replicating towns and villages in Africa, New Guinea and other places (for which purpose the organizers brought natives from these places, dressed them in traditional costumes and presented them to the public, in sets portraying indigenous life). The town of Cairo was "built" in one of the exhibition compounds where a Palestinian booth was erected (under the name "Exhibition of Sons of Israel Colonies in the Holy Land"). The pavilion offered for sale products from Palestine: "Carmel" wines, olive wood artefacts, books and booklets printed in Palestine, and more.

The person in charge of organizing the Palestinian pavilion was Moshe David Șuv (one of the leaders of founders of the colonies Rosh Pina, Yessod Hama'ala and Mishmar HaYarden). In his book "Zichronot LeBeit David […]" he describes the exhibition: "Among the general exhibition displays, a miniature city was built in the form of Cairo… with shops, hotels and Arab cafes, with the Nile flowing…. Our exhibition, the Palestinian one, was arranged in Cairo, within one of the great mosques. When I sat in this exhibition I felt as if I was in an Arab town…Thousands visited the exhibition, Jews and non-Jews and almost all bought wine and other products"

After being displayed in Berlin the exhibition was moved to Cologne and later to Hamburg.

Yes, Zionist schools should teach the Palestinian narrative - but not this way

Sabrina Miller writes in TheJC about how Jewish children aren't taught enough about Israel and Zionism to be well prepared when they go to campus.

She states the problem well. But her suggested solution is not the way to deal with it.

Miller suggests that groups that are critical of Israel be invited to lecture the kids on their viewpoint, and therefore muddy the waters.

I've said for a long time that Jewish schools must teach the Palestinian narrative - from the perspective of showing why it is wrong. As I wrote in 2010 (somewhat modified here):

It seems to me that only one thing needs to be taught to Jewish students: the truth. If Jewish schools completely ignore talking about some 600,000 Palestinian Arabs having left their homes, some of them (but far from the majority) forced out by the Haganah and IZL, they are failing. If they teach the skewed Palestinian Arab narrative of forced dispossession and unending massacres, they are failing worse.

Yes, teach the Nakba - but teach what really happened. Of course it was a catastrophe for hundreds of thousands of people, but the continuing catastrophe of what has happened to them since 1948 at the hands of their Arab brothers needs to be taught as well.

There were some massacres - usually exaggerated but still true - and Israel should regret some of the excesses of war. But there was also heroism, there were also miracles, there was also the overriding moral imperative to survive and beat back an onslaught that was literally meant to be genocidal.

Teach about how Palestinian Arab nationalism was weak to nonexistent in 1948. Teach how Jordan and Egypt's occupations of "Palestinian" land were not protested. Teach the history of the Mufti, his Nazi activities and his terror sprees against Jews (not Zionists - Jews.) Teach about how Arab refugees in Israel were integrated into society while those in Arab lands were treated like garbage, and still are. Teach about how UNRWA has ensured that the "refugee" problem will fester until Israel is destroyed. Teach about how the first people to lose their homes in the conflict were Jews, not Arabs.

All of these need to be taught. It doesn't mean that Jewish youngsters shouldn't feel the appropriate sorrow for the suffering of Palestinian Arabs, but it also doesn't mean that they should forget that they were still the enemy, and the moral imperative is to ensure your own survival before worrying about that of those who tried, and most still desire, to destroy you.

For an example of what must be taught, here is an article that I have quoted before, from Dorothy Bar-Adon in the Palestine Post, August 17, 1948 (click to enlarge). In it she discusses how she feels bad over the fact that her neighboring Arab village fled - but also says exactly why they cannot return. It strikes the perfect balance between humanity and self-preservation. Acknowledging the fact that 1948 was a disaster for Arabs in Palestine is not a violation of the Zionist narrative; it should be part and parcel of it - but it must be put in the proper context of the time and the place.

Because the alternative was unimaginably worse.

Beyond teaching the truth, what also need to be taught is what the anti-Israel arguments are and how to answer them. I once serialized some twenty answers to anti-Israel accusations I gave at a lecture.

Things might be a little different in England. As On The Dark Side notes, the 1996 Education Act requires controversial subjects to be taught offering ‘a balanced presentation of opposing views.’ In England, the truth might be considered too "controversial." Which means that teens must be taught the truth outside of school, which is more of a challenge.

The antidote to ignorance is education. But just as you don't tell a kid to Google Israel and figure it all out for himself, responsible parents and educators need to teach the truth in a way that the students know they are learning all sides of the issue.

Elder Comix: How Israel haters argue

They never think they lose the arguments - they just throw something else at you.

The USS Liberty is another favorite.

(Here is my debunking of the "dancing Israelis" lie.)

09/26 Links: Twenty Years After Durban, What We Still Get Wrong About Left-Wing Antisemitism; Madrid Assembly Officially Adopts IHRA Definition of Antisemitism

From Ian:

Twenty Years After Durban, What We Still Get Wrong About Left-Wing Antisemitism

Like all intellectual monopolies, postcolonialism denies the validity of other explanations and in its certitude becomes an illiberal and dangerous source of extremism and hate. Of course, the ideology contains a modicum of truth — the horrors of colonialism do explain some of today’s global disparities. The proponents of postcolonialism, however, completely paper over the highly successful Asian countries that were once colonies, and what that says about the long-term impact of colonial rule.

In simplistically dividing the world into oppressors and oppressed, postcolonialism holds successful nations morally culpable and struggling nations morally pure. And in insisting on this perverse binary, the ideology enables the expression of the usual resentment and ill-will toward Jews and Israel, both of which have succeeded in their respective environments.

Talking about the antisemitism at Durban without reference to postcolonialist ideology is like talking about the attacks of Sept. 11 without reference to extreme Islamist ideology. We should have grasped it then. “It’s the ideology, stupid.”

Fast-forward 20 years, and we see the same political dynamic not in a remote international conference of NGOs and diplomats, but in myriad mainstream American institutions, including higher education, K-12 schools, corporations, the law, medicine, nonprofits and even scientific research. Woke ideology is postcolonialism applied to the domestic scene in Western countries, dividing people neatly into victimizers and victims. And just like the post-Durban reckoning, those concerned about the resurgence of antisemitism today largely fail to understand and name the animating ideology.

About five years ago, it became apparent that woke ideology and its concomitant antisemitism, once confined to the margins, was gaining ground. Then a CEO of a national Jewish advocacy organization dedicated to engaging progressives, I wrote that “the growing acceptance of intersectionality arguably poses the most significant … challenge of our time [to the Jewish community]. Ultimately, how popular — and threatening — intersectionality becomes depends on the degree to which the far left … is successful in inculcating its black-and-white worldview … with the mainstream left.”

I thought at the time that Jewish organizations could best protect the community by positioning ourselves as members in good standing of the intersectional club. Such progressive certification would, I and others surmised, prevent the lion’s share of the left from fully embracing antisemitic and anti-Israel perspectives. I thought that these forces had a long way to go before gaining mainstream currency. Boy, was I wrong.

20 years since Durban: Most sickening display of Jew-hate since Nazis

In 2011, 14 countries boycotted, and in 2009 there were 10, as opposed to in 2001, when only Israel and the US walked out.

Erdan considered the growing number of countries boycotting Durban, as well as the fact that not one Western country sent a high-level representative to Durban IV or volunteered to lead a roundtable, as a success for Israel “in labeling it antisemitic and anti-Israel.”

Cooper, however, said Israel should have reached out to Abraham Accords countries, as well as states in Africa, South America and elsewhere, “to gently, politely say, look, great things are happening bilaterally,” but they need to speak up against antisemitism as well.

Diker saw these announcements as a “silver lining” in Durban IV, together with an even larger number of countries accepting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, by which the Durban Declaration arguably and the NGO declaration certainly would be considered antisemitic.

It is up to the countries that adopted IHRA “to enforce that moral mandate and not allow international organizations such as the UN to upend and uproot and dismantle their own founding charter, which calls for righting against racism of any kind,” Diker added.

Bayefsky sees the boycotts by major democratic countries as an important milestone: “All the democratic members of the UN Security Council are with Israel on this. They have said no to Durban. That’s a big deal. They don’t agree on everything... Israel’s other solid friends and allies stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel on this abomination... saying this demonization of Israel is antisemitism. That message is getting through whether the other side likes it or not. They cannot make the case that calling for the dismantlement of the Jewish state is somehow unrelated to antisemitism.”

Bayefsky also said that the Jewish delegates who pushed back against antisemitism in 2001 are still involved today.

“We have been able to get the team back together, with some of us who were there and others of a younger generation who were not there and understand the danger to the State of Israel and the Jewish people and aren’t prepared to let it go,” she stated.

“We have no intention of lying down and letting the so-called human rights world walk all over us.”

Madrid Assembly Officially Adopts IHRA Definition of Antisemitism

The Madrid Assembly, the local parliament of Spain’s main region, adopted on Friday the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition of antisemitism.

In addition, the Assembly demanded that the country’s national parliament adopt legislation precluding any possible grant or public aid to entities that promote antisemitism as defined by the IHRA, according to pro-Israel advocacy organization Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM).

This proposal would effectively exclude public financing of any BDS group or activity in Spain, a nation where BDS has gained popularity in recent years.

The law was supported by the Partido Popular, the ruling party in the Madrid region, led by President of Madrid Isabel Díaz Ayuso, “a strong and committed defender of Israel,” according to ACOM, with the support of the the Socialist Party (center-left) and the VOX Party (conservative).

There were some dramatic activities this weekend in Kurdistan.

At the "Conference for Peace and Reclamation," held in Erbil and organized by the New York-based Center for Peace Communications, over 300 participants called for Iraq to join the Abraham Accords and to make peace with Israel, a country it has been officially at war with since 1948.

Reaction was swift.

Iraq’s federal government on Saturday rejected the conference as an “illegal meeting.”

Today, Iraq started issuing arrest warrants against participants.

Already, one prominent participant, Wisam al Hardan, has disowned the statement he signed, claiming he didn't read it carefully - even though he had written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Friday calling for Iraq to join the Abraham Accords. He is clearly frightened of being arrested and tortured for violating Iraqi laws against "normalization" with Israel.

Now we can find out how consistent "human rights activists" who are critical of Israel will be.

Will Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and Oxfam condemn these arrests as a gross violation of freedom of expression? Will these group defend the participants and their right to call for peace between Iraq and Israel?

My guess is that they will either be silent, or (if shamed) they will issue a tiny, perfunctory statement of "concern." But you will not find a full throated defense of these participants or a condemnation of Iraq's laws against promoting "Zionist values."

Arabic media are reporting that Syria is on a charm offensive in the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings in New York, trying to re-establish its relationships with its fellow Arab countries.

The irony is that Israel has had a better relationship with many Arab regimes than Syria has.

The Palestinian Authority never severed its relations with Syria in light of its atrocities in its civil war, and Syrian foreign minister Faisal Miqdad met Saturday with Palestinian foreign minister Riyad Al-Maliki, saying that the Palestinian cause "will remain the central issue of the Arab people."

Miqdad also met with his Tunisian and Egyptian counterparts over the weekend. This was the first official contact between Egypt and Syria in ten years.

It is almost jarring to read the word "normalization" in Arab media and have it not referring to Israel.

Mondoweiss has an exclusive, which is being gleefully reproduced in Iranian and Palestinian media:

Retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson is the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell who emerged as a leading critic of the neoconservatives. In remarks to Mass Peace Action last June, he made some bracing assertions about Israel that I just saw the other day:

Israel won’t exist as a state in 20 years because it is delegitimizing itself as an apartheid state.
Israel is a “strategic liability of the first order” for the United States and is “the most likely state in the world to take the United States to Armageddon.”
The U.S. ought to tell Israel now to “change swiftly” or it will cease to fund and protect Israel, but the U.S. will not do so.
The neoconservative agenda in the Middle East was “to set the Levant on fire, to keep Israel’s enemies so at one anothers’ throats” that they could not give Israel trouble.

Wilkerson is a fellow at the Quincy Institute and teaches at the College of William and Mary.

It turns out that Wilkerson has said some other stuff over the years that clearly crossed the line from criticism of Israel into antisemitism.

In 2005, he said that the US went to war in Iraq partially for Israel: "'I use the acronym OIL,' he said, 'O for oil, I for Israel and L for the logistical base necessary or deemed necessary by the so-called neocons – and it reeks through all their documents – the logistical base whereby the United States and Israel could dominate that area of the world.'" He added that Ariel Sharon controlled President Bush.

In 2007, Wilkerson claimed that American foreign policy was dominated by "the Jewish lobby" and pointed to Jewish officials like Elliott Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle for proof.

In 2013, he defended the Syrian regime and claimed that Israel had used chemical weapons in Syria in a "false flag" operation.

In 2018, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times accusing Jewish billionaires of pushing the US into war with Iran.

In 2019, he claimed that Israel intends to conquer parts of Lebanon and Jordan to create "Greater Israel" to fulfill Biblical prophecies.

Wilkerson is a conspiracy theory nutcase on matters outside Israel and Jews. But because he sasy what he says about Jews, Mondoweiss has elevated this lunatic as a sober realist.

Which tells you all you need to know about Mondoweiss and modern antisemitism.

And if you doubt that Iran's "anti-Zionism" is antisemitic, check out how this story was illustrated by the official Iranian Fars news agency:

09/25 Links: Why the Haters of Israel Are Hypocrites; Bennett on Iraqis’ call for normalization: ‘Israel extends its hand in peace’; The New York Times tips its anti-Semitic hand

From Ian:

Why the Haters of Israel Are Hypocrites

We are faced today with a very remarkable phenomenon, one in which a group of people have decided that they are not simply the finest and most moral people in the world, but the finest and most moral people who have ever existed. For such people, hypocrisy is inevitable. But the hypocrisy of these self-appointed saints is most acute on the issue of Israel and their hatred of it.

There are innumerable examples of this, but it is worth noting a few of the most blatant:
Imperialism and Colonialism: The claim that Israel is an imperialist and colonialist state is one of the oldest cliches proffered by the saints. Israel, they claim, is an invasion of Palestine by a foreign people who colonized it at the expense of the indigenous population. These invaders must either “go back to Poland” — as the vulgar among them put it — or be exterminated.

We may put aside, for the moment, the complications of the term “indigenous” — no one, after all, is indigenous to anywhere except to the savannas of sub-Saharan Africa. If we must use the saints’ vague definition of the term, however, then we should note that even the most avowedly secular archeologists — who reject most or all of the biblical narrative — agree that the Jewish nation began several thousand years ago as a subset of the indigenous Canaanite tribes of the Levant.

More to the point, however, is the supposedly indigenous Arab presence, which to the saints is a sacred fact. But it is a matter of historical record that the Arabs came much later as foreign imperial conquerors who colonized the region and expelled or forcibly converted the native populations by various coercive means, not the least of which was placing them under an apartheid system. And this holds true not only of the land of Israel, but the entire Middle East and North Africa.

It is clear, then, that by the saints’ own logic, almost the entire Arab population of the Middle East and North Africa ought to be expelled and sent back to their homeland in Saudi Arabia, with the vacated territories returned to the remnants of their native populations. Those of us who are at least vaguely reasonable would not advocate such a thing in a million years, but then again, we are not hypocrites.

Genocide: Our self-appointed saints are, to say the least, extremely fond of accusing Israel of genocide. This blood libel is absurd on its face, but its hypocrisy is equally obvious, because Israel’s most dedicated enemies, sanctified by the saints, have displayed a remarkable weakness for genocide over the past 1,500 years.

Even a brief examination is sufficient proof of this. We may note, for example, Muhammad’s annihilation of the Jews of the Hijaz; the slow whittling of Egypt’s native Coptic or North Africa’s Berber populations down to a tiny minority; Turkey’s near-annihilation of the Armenians and the Anatolian Greeks; the slow-motion genocide that was the Ottoman Empire’s enthusiastic trade in both European and African slaves; Saddam Hussein’s murderous assault on the Kurds; and ISIS’s recent slaughter of Iraq’s Yazidis.

More to the point, however, is the fact that many Arabs and Muslims are currently threatening another genocide, this time against Israel’s Jewish population. And our self-appointed saints not only refuse to say a word against any of this, but in many cases whitewash, erase, or even openly collaborate with it.

The war on terror sacrificed thousands of lives to avoid tough political decisions

Our various enemies were correct in assuming that our political leaders lacked the will to make the necessary decisions. Where they erred was in assuming too much and pushing too far. The Japanese made that mistake in Pearl Harbor, the Soviets in Berlin, and Al Qaeda on 9/11. The Jihadists haven’t made one final mistake yet, but history suggests that they will.

America, to its friends and enemies, and to its own patriots, can be an infuriating mix of weakness and strength, idealism and corruption, division and unity. And it’s never entirely clear, even to us, when the tipping point that turns one into the other will unexpectedly arrive.

The great tragedy of the aftermath of September 11 is that our leaders proved willing to sacrifice soldiers, but not the dream of a democratic world order, and instead sacrificed lives to that dream. They took the road that was easiest for them and hardest for so many military men.

The War on Terror only became a forever war because we failed to confront two of the three pillars from which the enemy draws its strength. After two decades, we’ve seen the limitations of a military option that is not combined with foreign policy and immigration decisions that would cut off the true economic and demographic sources of the enemy’s strength.

Until our leaders are ready to make the hard choices and our people are ready to elect those who will, the forever wars will go on, not just in distant countries, but in the streets of our own cities.

We have failed to identify the enemy. And until we do, we can never win.

In the end, House Iron Dome fracas only showed Israel support not going anywhere

Just nine congress members voted against the bill — eight of them Democrats and one Republican — amounting to less than two percent of the entire House of Representatives.

The small number didn’t even include all of the Squad. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who spearheaded the effort to have the Iron Dome funding removed from the government spending bill, chose to abstain, along with one other progressive colleague, Rep. Hank Johnson.

In a lengthy letter to supporters on Friday, she attacked her party’s leadership for jamming the vote through, while insisting that Israel did not deserve or need additional no-questions-asked funding for Iron Dome — and yet, she still voted to abstain, apparently fearful of further crossing pro-Israel constituents and lobbyists.

The bill even won support from some frequent Israel critics.

Rep. Betty McCollum, who has introduced legislation aimed at restricting aid to Israel and has regularly called out the Jewish state over settlement building and treatment of the Palestinians, voted in the same column as Reps. Ted Deutch and Ted Cruz.

And at a press conference introducing legislation to keep the two-state solution alive — which included provisions referring to the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip as territories illegally occupied by Israel — Reps. Andy Levin, Alan Lowenthal, Sara Jacobs and Peter Welch each proudly announced their plans to vote in favor of the Iron Dome funding later that day.

As for the aforementioned Two State Solution Act, the progressive group Levin leads can only dream of receiving the kind of wall-to-wall backing for that legislation enjoyed by those moderate Democrats who pushed for the standalone Iron Dome funding bill.

In the end, traditional pro-Israel stances still reign supreme on Capitol Hill. Those looking to criticize the Israeli government or advocate for Palestinian sovereignty undoubtedly have more of a voice than they once did, but that doesn’t translate into legislative power: Even after another Gaza war further polarized the American debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, fewer than 2% of House representatives cast a vote against robust support for the Jewish state.

In her letter to constituents Friday, Ocasio-Cortez questioned why the House leadership had rushed the Iron Dome funding bill through “without any of the usually-necessary committee debate, markup, or regular order.”

Procedural complaints notwithstanding, the answer to her query is, in essence, simple: In Washington, as polarized as it might be, support for Israel’s security remains an issue that’s not up for discussion.

09/24 Links Pt2: When will the ‘happy dhimmi’ myth be discredited?; 300 prominent Iraqis publicly call for full peace with Israel; Abbas demands Israel withdraw to 1967 'borders' within a year

From Ian:

Lyn Julius: When will the ‘happy dhimmi’ myth be discredited?

Colonial rule is considered by Western supporters of the myth to have disrupted this happy relationship. In practice, the colonial powers “liberated” non-Muslim minorities from their dhimmi status and granted them better education and security.

Israel became tarred with the brush of imperialism after the Suez Crisis in 1956 when Israel joined forces with Britain and France to invade Egypt. Further politicization followed when Israel became an “occupying” power after the Six-Day War in 1967. Beginning in the 1950s, Western intellectuals were so bewitched by Third Worldism that when Tunisian-Jewish writer Albert Memmi moved to France, he was astonished to have been almost congratulated by left-wingers for having been born in a country where racism did not exist.

Dhimmi-denial was mirrored in the attitudes of white Southerners who thought of themselves as upholding Christian values and even “high civilization.” After losing the cause of slavery in the American Civil War, they went to considerable lengths to praise slavery’s “benevolent features.” The master-slave relationship, they said, was amicable: “The only bonds were those of tender understanding, trust and loyalty.”

Pollack and Norwood argue that the “happy darkey” myth provided Southerners with a foundation to justify their “lost cause,” just as Arabs use the “happy dhimmi” to challenge Israel’s legitimacy.

Nowadays, as statues associated with slavery are being torn down, and any connection with slavery, however tenuous, is enough to make historical figures into non-persons, the “happy darkey” myth is thoroughly discredited.

How much longer will we have to wait until the “happy dhimmi” myth is consigned to the dustbin of history?

Abe Greenwald: Systemic Wokeness - Review of 'The Authoritarian Moment' by Ben Shapiro

Institution after institution has caved before this strategy and thereby been renormalized. Shapiro goes into great detail, offering separate analyses of the renormalizations happening in government, media, science, education, and the workplace. Given that he wrote the book during the COVID-19 pandemic, his section on the renormalization of science lands with a fierce immediacy.

He identifies two dominant elements in the current corruption of science: the Ultracrepidarian Problem and the Bleedover Effect. “The Ultracrepidarian Problem widens the boundaries of science beyond the applicable,” Shapiro writes. This happened, for example, when scientists came out en masse proclaiming racism a public-health emergency. By contrast, “the Bleedover Effect narrows the boundaries of science to the ‘acceptable.’” Such was the case when, in 2018, the American Medical Association renounced any definition of sex that referred to “immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth.” Doctors, according to the renormalized AMA, “assign” sex. (Shapiro is never caught wanting for real-word events to bolster his arguments.)

Through the power and reach of American institutions, the radical left has managed to foist its oppressive agenda on the country in what seems like an overnight coup. But it merely feels as if it happened overnight. Shapiro lays out a valuable account of the revolutionary groundwork, a century in the making, that went into the establishment of the new dispensation. The American left, in his telling, has historically oscillated between dreams of utopia and a hunger for revolution. “But the two impulses are in conflict,” he writes. It was Barack Obama who finally tied the two together “by embracing the power of government—and acting as a community organizer within the system itself, declaring himself the revolutionary representative of the dispossessed, empowered with the levers of the state in order to destroy and reconstitute the state on their behalf.” This insight perhaps best explains Joe Biden’s clunky “Build Back Better” slogan. What the revolution has destroyed, the Biden administration will rebuild—along utopian lines.

Shapiro is famous, in part, for a rapid-fire speaking style that enables him to pack years of analysis into a single TV appearance. He manages something analogous in The Authoritarian Moment, conveying a door stopper’s worth of information in fewer than 250 pages (not counting notes). He is infamous on the left, however, as an emblem of right-wing nastiness. But that misunderstanding of Shapiro points to a paradox that gets at why the left truly detest him. He is a cool-headed and surgical expositor of complicated ideas—so cool-headed and surgical that his targets can only take their wounds for the work of a monster. He in fact models an alternative to political nastiness. What is his oft-repeated catch phrase—“Facts don’t care about your feelings”—but an admonition against excessive emotionality in discourse? In The Authoritarian Moment, Shapiro paints with a fine brush and makes a clear distinction between liberals (who respect free speech) and leftists (who do not). He throws powerful rhetorical bombs, but they’re smart bombs. “To be politically incorrect means to say that which requires saying,” he writes, “not to be a generic, run-of-the-mill jackass.”

The Authoritarian Moment says very much that requires saying. Shapiro is beloved—indeed, he is a phenom—among young conservatives because he can articulate the multitude of frustrations that most others can only groan or rage about. And he can do it more concisely than any human being alive. But, more than that, he dissects the actual mechanics of the current crackdown in a way that is undeniable. His new book is, in short, an argument-winner. Shapiro maintains that if conservatives and liberals are to resist the new reality, they must undo in reverse order the three-step authoritarian takeover. This means that they will finally have to win more arguments than they currently do. The Authoritarian Moment is, then, a vital step toward genuine normalcy.

Melanie Phillips: Review of The Legacy - My novel "weaves the true stories of our collective and tragic Jewish history"

Irene Lancaster has written a glowing review of my novel The Legacy in the magazine Christian Today. I am most grateful, and reproduce it here.

Review in Christian Today
Many would say that War and Peace, Tolstoy’s epic 1860s chronicle of the earlier Napoleonic invasion of Tzarist Russia, experienced through the lives and loves of a number of individuals, is his greatest novel – maybe even the greatest novel ever written.

At exactly the same time, that very English genius, George Eliot (real name Mary Ann Evans), was writing what she herself considered to be her greatest novel, Romola, based on Florentine Renaissance history also seen through the private lives and loves of a number of individuals.

Both these books are, as you might expect, immensely difficult to read. The mind and heart are expected to concentrate on two disparate subjects simultaneously – with individual loves and the great events of world history panning out before us both in parallel and in tandem.

Not every reader succeeds in this endeavour and ends up having to choose one aspect as against the other, simply in order to get through the book. Not really what the respective authors – giants of the novelistic genre – would have wished of their readers.

It is therefore something of a miracle that England’s greatest Jewish journalist, Melanie Phillips (now living in Israel), has managed to pull off this exacting feat in her very first novel, entitled The Legacy.

Author Ahmed Khaled Mustafa wrote a book called "Antichristos" in 2015. It became a best seller in Egypt and elsewhere.

It is pure Jew-hatred.

The book is summarized here.

The writer Ahmed Khaled Mustafa intended his novel to be a true historical document that combines facts and fiction in a beautiful narrative form. The novel centers on Bobby Frank, a wealthy Jewish character who belongs to a class of ultra-rich Jews, who is killed in mysterious circumstances by two young Jewish men from the same neighborhood....

This novel tells historical events related to Judaism and Freemasonry and their control of the world. Roxelana the Jewish woman who was in the palace of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and her success in threatening the Ottoman Empire internally, as well as the story of Harut and Marut and their planning of Judaism on the world and their ability to control the minds of young people.

The writer used in his novel a set of images and non-exaggerated metaphors that serve the ideas that the writer wants to reach the reader, including what the writer described to the Jews, as he said: “The Jews are beings that must be disposed of immediately, revolting and malicious worms and cursed forever. of them all their books and we burn, we must expel them all from our country. "

Antichristos is a dialectical narrative that contributes to unveiling the cover of Judaism, which tries to destroy all those who oppose it, regardless of their affiliation, even if they are Jews themselves.

Mustafa's Wikipedia page in Arabic doesn't mention a whiff of controversy over writing this book. It has a 4.5 star rating in Amazon.

One edition of the book has this cover, just in case you weren't sure what it says about Jews.

The book was so popular that Mustafa recently released a sequel, Antichristos II.

09/24 Links Pt1: The Moral Perverseness of Democrats' Foreign Policy Priorities; How Many Dead Jews Will Satisfy the Squad?; Iran foreign minister vows to eliminate Zionism at UN anti-racism conference

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: The Moral Perverseness of Democrats' Foreign Policy Priorities

In the aftermath of President Joe Biden's disastrously executed withdrawal from the Afghan backwater, that would have translated to $400 million directly subsidizing the Taliban. That's the same Taliban-run Afghan government that, as FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted to Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) during a Senate hearing earlier this week, counts eponymous Haqqani network member Siraj Haqqani as its interior minister. Haqqani remains wanted by the FBI, and there is a $10 million bounty for his capture. Some Democrats would apparently rather fund Haqqani's government than protect innocent Jewish, Arab and Christian lives in the Holy Land using state-of-the-art missile defense technology. Indeed, many Democrats would presumably still rather send amorphous "humanitarian aid" to Afghanistan which, due to ubiquitous venality, would of course just subsidize the Taliban, than fund the inherently defensive Iron Dome system.

That is, quite simply, perverse.

But at this point, it also should not be surprising. For years during the Obama administration, Democrats embarked on a broader Middle East-centric foreign policy realignment crusade by which the U.S. would create distance between itself and its formerly staunch Israeli and Sunni Arab allies, and cozy up to Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. Years later, the purported rationale for such a realignment remains unclear. The Iranian regime is the world's leading state sponsor of jihad, and regime propagandists quite literally chant "Death to America" in the streets of Tehran. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, for whom the Biden administration nixed in February the Trump administration's previously affixed "terrorist" label, have as their official slogan: "Allah is Greater, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam." They sound like nice people.

Democratic Party foreign policy is in complete shambles right now. Much of that intellectual descent goes back to the Obama, and even the Clinton, administrations. But it has rapidly accelerated in recent years, as the tail that is Ocasio-Cortez's Jew-hating "Squad" has come to lead the dog that is the broader Democratic Party apparatus. Unapologetic anti-Semites and anti-American zealots, sadly, are now steering one of America's two leading political parties. That is now an inescapable truth.

Melanie Phillips: The Democrats' Iron Dome fiasco, and what it means

Those baying for Israel's blood deny that this singling out of Israel for demonization is essentially the same kind of deranged treatment meted out to the Jews through the ages.

Instead, more and more on the left – tragically, including many Jews – now nod along to the evil and patently ludicrous charges against Israel of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and war crimes.

When Israelis are murdered in the disputed territories of the "West Bank," the silence from the human-rights-obsessed, "anti-racist" left is deafening. These murders are simply ignored because, to supporters of "Palestinian rights," these Jewish victims are simply to be written out of the script of humanity.

Even to "moderate" Israel supporters on the left, there are good Israelis and bad Israelis; good Jews and bad Jews. The bad ones are deemed bad because they fight their enemies; the good ones are deemed good because they cave in to them.

The result is a vast increase in attacks on Jews, with students on campus increasingly hiding their Jewish identity.

So what should Israel and its supporters do in response?

Israel's new ambassador to the United States, Brig. Gen. Michael Herzog, has rightly said: "We are in the midst of a war of consciousness, and the State of Israel has to develop new, strong and profound tools to deal with this challenge."

In fact, Israel has never responded adequately to this great crisis of Western thought. This is partly the result of Israel's epic and endemic governmental incompetence.

But it's also because of Israel's deeply felt belief that trying to make Israel's case to Britain and Europe, where Jew-hatred has been ingrained for centuries, is a hopeless task – while (with the exception of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who understood that Israel had to appeal directly to the American public) it could take American support for granted.

Now it needs to revisit that last assumption as a matter of urgency. Yet at this most critical juncture, Israel has saddled itself with a feeble governing coalition that appears to believe that a plastic spoon should be brought to a gunfight.

Israel has an obligation to defend itself

The most common refrain from strong Israel supporters was: “Israel has a right to defend itself.” The people making those statements thought they were helping Israel, but they were not.

Of course Israel has a right to defend itself. Why wouldn’t it? By even mentioning the “right,” you are welcoming a debate whether Israel does or does not have a “right” to defend itself.

It is time for the pro-Israel and I daresay pro-America crowd to permanently change the lexicon. “Israel has an obligation to defend itself and its citizens.”

The most basic expectation that a citizen of any country has is the expectation to safety and security. This is an obligation of the state to its citizens, not a right, not an option. It is a non-negotiable obligation.

When a nation does not fulfill its obligation, it questions its ability to succeed as a state. To win a war, you must choose the correct battlefield.

This week it became clear that the Democratic Party is currently negotiating Israel’s surrender as their very right to exist has been called into question, and those willing to fight to extinguish it cared more than those who purport to defend it.

The cause is not lost, and strong bipartisan support for Israel is important to Israel, but it is even more important to America.

Combine this week’s capitulation with America’s disastrous retreat from Afghanistan – with Americans and allies left behind with zero repercussions for anyone in the administration or Congress – and we have a glaring lack of understanding of a country’s obligations to its citizens.

A new Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll has been released, and it shows yet again that Palestinians support terror against Israelis.

When asked about support for specific policy choices where they could choose more than one policy, 54% supported return to armed confrontations and intifada.

When asked about their preferred way out of the current status quo, only 28% said “reaching a peace agreement with Israel” a plurality of 39% prefer waging “an armed struggle against the Israeli occupation.”

When asked what they think is "the most effective means of ending the Israeli occupation," a huge plurality of 48% chose armed struggle, compared to 28% who prefer negotiations.

If Israeli courts expel the illegal Arab squatters in Sheikh Jarrah, 60% say that Hamas should respond with rockets towards Israeli civilian population centers.

More evidence of Palestinian preference for violence: 46% believe the lesson that the Palestinians should learn from what happened in Afghanistan is that they should strengthen terror groups ("the forces of armed resistance.")

This is all very damning. It destroys the narrative that Western media try to create. Which is why you won't read about it in AP or the New York Times.

Uber-liberal Seattle city council defeats bill to end training with Israeli police

There was some great news this week that didn't get much attention.

In June, Seattle councilmember Kshama Sawant introduced a bill to end all cooperation with Israeli law enforcement, under the banner "End Deadly Exchange," the monicker used by Israel haters for US police training with their Israeli counterparts.

The “End Deadly Exchange” campaign was joined by about 60 community groups, many of them virulently anti-Israel. These included the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Northwest BDS Coalition, the Rachel Corrie Foundation, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. It was also supported by the teachers’ union for the Seattle public schools. They heavily lobbied City Council; with dozens of supporters calling and meeting with councilmembers in support of the bill, officially called CB120142.

Jewish and Zionist groups, while not as well organized, did their own lobbying against the bill, meeting with councilmembers. These included the ADL, StandWithUs, the American Jewish Committee and the local Jewish Federation.

The bill was amended a number of times and finally came up for review in the City Council meeting this past Monday - hours before the Sukkot holiday.

Most of the speakers calling in supported the bill - and many identified themselves as Jewish.

Even so, the Jewish lobbying paid off.

Seattle's City Council, representing one of the most far Left cities in the US, whose members are comprised of 8 Democrats and one Socialist (Sawant), voted against the anti-Israel bill, by a 5-4 vote.

This shows that pro-Israel groups can respectfully make their voices heard and convince officials to understand the ramifications of these attempts to hijack local issues.

The haters, on the other hand, showed their true ugliness when they lost, accusing the City Council of being more loyal to Israel than to Seattle residents.

The modern antisemites showed yet again that they are nothing but bullies who don't give a damn about human rights unless they can use it as a weapon,

It is notable that this happened soon after similarly "progressive" Burlington, VT withdrew its own local anti-Israel legislation.

The good guys can win even in as hostile environments as Seattle and Burlington. Facts can win out over propaganda. It isn't easy but these two victories show that things aren't as dire as they sometimes seem.