Linda Sarsour's "MPower Change" uses "Israeli" the way "Jew" used to be used

MPower Change, the Muslim advocacy group co-founded by Linda Sarsour, just sent out an action alert to its email list with the title "Take Action: No autonomous drones from Israel:"

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) just approved a request by Airobotics, an Israeli government-funded company,¹ to fly “autonomous” drones over U.S. neighborhoods.²

We don’t want unaccountable, autonomous “crime-fighting” drones snooping on us, filling our skies, and making life-or-death decisions.

Tell the FAA: We need safety where we live, not spy drones funded by apartheid Israel.

Airobotics is not funded by the Israeli government. It received a specific grant at the end of August of $540,000 from the Israel Innovation Authority, which is funded by but independent of the Israeli government. The grant has nothing to do with the drone that the FAA approved. The Muslim group is stretching to find any connection, no matter how tenuous, to associate Israel with a myth of drones meant to spy on Muslims and people of color in cities. 

But what does Airobotics' Israel connections have to do with what the drone does? The email pretends that it is trying to protect civil rights of people of color who they imagine will be surveilled disproportionately by these autonomous drones - but if that was really MPower Change's concern, what difference does it make whether they were manufactured or even funded by Israel?  It is up to the people who actually purchase and deploy the drones to determine how they will be used, whether for good or evil purposes. The source has nothing to do with it. 

This is hatemongering, not a concern for human rights. And the implication that a drone company is especially pernicious because it is Israeli is simple bigotry.  

Notably, while the email mentions Israel eight times to whip up their subscribers into a frenzy, their auto-email to the FAA doesn't mention Israel once. Telling the FAA not to approve a drone because it is Israeli would be obvious bigotry. The advocacy group only tells that to fellow Muslims. MPower Change knows that Israel has nothing to do with the issue, but they also know that their email list is filled with people who hate Israel and Jews - and they want to leverage that hate to get them to take action (and raise their own profile.)

This email shows that the word "Israel" is now a dog-whistle for modern antisemites. They use "Israel" the way "Jew" used to be used, as a means to make people angry. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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You Other Jews Don't Punch Your Chests Hard Enough During Confession. Allow Me. by Peter Beinart (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

You Other Jews Don't Punch Your Chests Hard Enough During Confession. Allow Me.  

by Peter Beinart

New York, September 21 - Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is upon us. Many of the religiously devoted have been reciting penitentiary prayers for weeks already, passages that include a repeated litany of sinful attitudes and behaviors that we regret, an alphabetical acrostic that features a gesture of striking the chest over the heart at the mention of each term. I must say, observing my coreligionists recently, and through the years: you hit yourselves far too lightly. I insist on doing it for you.

This has become a worrisome trend. You other Jews feel insufficient guilt about existing, let alone sympathizing with - or, God forbid, actively supporting - Jewish assertions of sovereignty and removal of outside oppression. A good punch or twenty-four, times three, per weekday, ought to help remedy that. It'd be my pleasure.

I know, I know, there's no way I can do it all on my own. Jews who neglect, or refuse, to guilt-punch themselves hard enough far outnumber me. I could never hope to reach all of you without exhausting myself, and even then, I'd fall short. But fear not: I can call upon hundreds, even thousands, of like-minded colleagues, many of whom aren't even Jewish, to assist me in my punch-every-Jew-for-their-own-atonement initiative. Finding enough non-Jews interested in helping uphold that value has never posed a problem.

As the Talmud famously teaches, we encourage people to maintain positive practices even if they undertake those practices for the wrong reasons, because eventually they may begin to do them for the right reasons. Indeed, many, perhaps most, of the volunteers I aim to recruit will not share my specific motivations for this enterprise, but no one can deny the enthusiasm and robust participation they will bring to the job. We can all admire that, and one day, they will engage in the punching for its own sake.

One can even dream that we Jews will (re?)acquire the capacity to punch ourselves hard enough in recognition of our collective guilt for whatever the cultural hegemony deems the greatest sin of the age. All along, I plan to continue my current trajectory of speaking engagements, panel discussions, article royalties, and other income streams born of encouraging my people to surrender any control for their own communal security and safety, not to mention self-determination.

Goodness, those are such triggering, disturbing terms. They fill me with shame and make me want to punch someone!

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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09/21 Links Pt1: Col Kemp: Biden needs Netanyahu for a foreign policy success; Palestinians: Israeli Concessions Are a Sign of Weakness; The West’s betrayal of the women of Iran

From Ian:

Col Kemp: Biden needs Netanyahu for a foreign policy success

It is Saudi Arabia that Biden has his sights on to salvage his foreign policy train wreck in time for the 2024 election. Specifically, he wants to normalize relations between Riyadh and Jerusalem, and for that he needs Netanyahu. Of course he is pushing on an open door, because an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia would be a historic game-changer.

It is possible as well, and in Biden’s requisite time frame, although some believe King Salman might veto it, effectively deferring normalization until Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, accedes to the throne and maybe Biden has left the stage.

Irrespective of that, MbS has a price: US security guarantees, assistance with a civilian nuclear program and access to advanced weaponry. Some of this will need Israel to bite the bullet, but it will be willing to do that given the prize.

More challenging will be substantive Israeli concessions toward the Palestinians and that is above all what Biden needs from Netanyahu. Biden’s real objective here is to go down as the man who advanced “peace” between Israel and the Palestinians. Never mind that history has shown us time and again that successive Palestinian leaders gobble up anything Israel concedes, while giving nothing in return, and certainly not an end to conflict. But for the White House it is all about short term optics and piling up capital for the election.

In his meeting with Netanyahu, Biden no doubt played the Palestinian issue up as some kind of Saudi red line and the White House has probably been pushing MbS in that direction. But while the Saudis would no doubt want some kind of pro forma undertaking by Israel for the sake of presentation, the other three conditions are what they really want. The Saudi’s under the table backing for the original Abraham Accords in the face of stiff Palestinian rejection shows us where its priorities lie.

The other major issue discussed between Biden and Netanyahu is Iran. Biden wants to rehabilitate in some form the flawed Obama nuclear deal that Trump rightly discarded, both to chalk up what he thinks he can portray as another foreign policy “success” before the election and also as the final rebuke to Trump of his presidency.

So desperate has the White House been to resurrect the nuclear deal that in June and July $10 billion of frozen Iranian assets were released and just this week another $6.5 billion were freed up. Some believe that Washington plans a total of $50 billion of sanctions relief by the end of this game.

That amounts to naked bribery for a deal that is not worth the paper it’s printed on and like Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will make the world, and especially Israel, a more dangerous place. It also amounts to rewarding Iranian abetment of Russian war crimes in Ukraine. The ayatollahs have supplied thousands of Shahed attack drones to Moscow, with the specific purpose not of fighting on the battlefield but of killing and terrorizing civilians in Ukrainian cities.

Iran’s drone supply is illegal under UN Security Council Resolution 2331 endorsing the JCPOA and should have triggered snap-back sanctions against Iran; not the opposite, which is being done. This appeasement is another mark of Biden’s desperation, that a meaningless nuclear deal trumps what is supposed to be one of America’s main foreign policy objectives — supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression.

As he went into the meeting with Biden, Netanyahu spoke of the need for a credible military threat against Iran. No doubt behind closed doors he argued strongly for that, as well as the crippling sanctions he also mentioned. But neither will happen under Biden, whose undertaking to “ensure that Iran never, never acquires a nuclear weapon” represents demonstrably empty words.

With a craven - or perhaps more accurately an electoral - opportunist White House, Israel remains alone in countering Iran’s nuclear threat, albeit with Saudi and other Arab countries cheering behind the scenes. This meeting won’t have changed that. We must hope, however, that Netanyahu has been able to persuade Biden of the electoral benefit to him of settling for a historic peace between Israel and Saudi rather than holding out for the unobtainable jackpot of a two state solution.

President Biden Should Learn the Lessons of Past U.S. Attempts to Solve the Israel-Palestinian Conflict

In his speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Joe Biden addressed a host of international issues, mentioning, inter alia, the “positive and practical impacts” resulting from “Israel’s greater normalization and economic connection with its neighbors.” He then added that the U.S. will “continue to work tirelessly to support a just and lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians—two states for two peoples.” Zach Kessel experiences some déjà vu:
Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and review how past U.S.-brokered talks between Jerusalem and [Palestinian leaders] have gone down, starting with 1991’s Madrid Conference, organized by then-President George H.W. Bush. . . . Though the talks, which continued through the next year, didn’t get anywhere concrete, many U.S. officials and observers across the world were heartened by the fact that Madrid was the first time representatives of both sides had met face to face. And then Palestinian militants carried out the first suicide bombing in the history of the conflict.

Then, in 1993, Bill Clinton tried his hand with the Oslo Accords:
In the period of time directly after the Oslo Accords . . . suicide bombings on buses and in crowded public spaces became par for the course. Clinton invited then-Palestinian Authority chairman Yasir Arafat and then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak to Camp David in 2000, hoping finally to put the conflict to rest. Arafat, who quite clearly aimed to extract as many concessions as possible from the Israelis without ever intending to agree to any deal—without even putting a counteroffer on the table—scuttled any possibility of peace. Of course, that’s not the most consequential event for the conflict that occurred in 2000. Soon after the Camp David Summit fell apart, the second intifada began. Since Clinton, each U.S. president has entered office hoping to put together the puzzle that is an outcome acceptable to both sides, and each has failed. . . . Every time a deal has seemed to have legs, something happens—usually terrorist violence—and potential bargains are scrapped. What, then, makes Biden think this time will be any different?

JPost Editorial: Israel must not let the Oslo Accords wither away

Everyone from US President Joe Biden, to Jordan’s King Abdullah, to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has raised the importance of finding a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a prerequisite for stability in the region and for progress with Israel’s normalization efforts with Saudi Arabia.

Biden, in his speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday, said “Israel’s greater normalization and economic connection with its neighbors deliver positive and practical impacts even as we continue to work tirelessly for just and lasting peace, for Israelis and Palestinians, two states for two peoples.”

Abdullah, noting that “five million Palestinians live under occupation,” stressed that a two-state resolution to the conflict remained the only viable option.

“Without clarity on where the Palestinian future lies, it’s impossible to converge on a political solution to this conflict,” he said.

Erdogan, in his UNGA address, said that “without the realization of an independent and integrated Palestinian state, based on the 1967 borders, it is difficult for Israel to find the peace and security it seeks.”

Is it all just lip service, the one time in the year that the friends of the Palestinians trot out heartfelt calls for Palestinian statehood, while ignoring the issue the rest of the time? Or should Israel, intent on a deal with Saudi Arabia and increased integration in the Arab world, take these words to heart?

The latter track is the smarter one.

Thirty years after the Oslo Accords were born, there is much talk about its death. However, there is presently no alternative plan to end the conflict between the two peoples who covet the same land.

“I have not given up on peace. I remain committed to a vision of peace based on two states for two peoples. I believe as never before that changes taking place in the Arab world today offer a unique opportunity to advance that peace.”

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Another "innocent child" in Jenin who was a combatant

Defense for Children International-Palestine writes:

Rafat Omar Ahmad Khamayseh, 15, was shot by Israeli special forces while leaving his grandfather’s house in Jenin refugee camp around 7:30 p.m. on September 19, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International - Palestine. As he left the house, Rafat saw Israeli special forces exiting three Palestinian licensed cars and surround the home of the father of a Palestinian man wanted for arrest. Rafat fled, yelling, “Special forces! Special forces!” One Israeli soldier chased Rafat and shot him in the abdomen from a distance of 10 meters (33 feet).    

 While nearly all of the reports on the Jenin incident identify Khamayseh as being 22 years old, photos indicate that he probably really was 15.

And that he was not exactly an innocent child.

Yet even if we take DCI-P at their word that all he was doing was warning terrorists that the IDF was there, that makes him legally a militant and a legitimate military target.

The US Department of Defense Law of War Manual (revised July 2023) says that a civilian is considered to be taking a direct part in hostilities when he or she is "acting as a guide or lookout for combatants conducting military operations." 

The ICRC agrees. In its document "Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities Under International Humanitarian Law" it says,  "a person serving as one of several lookouts during an ambush would certainly be taking a direct part in hostilities although his contribution may not be indispensable to the causation of harm."

This is exactly what DCI-P is admitting that Khamayseh was doing. His warning endangered the Israeli forces and therefore he became a combatant and legitimate target, no matter what his age.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Terrorists hiding behind children doesn't make them immune to attack, morally or legally

Israel haters were given a huge gift this week courtesy of anti-government protester Shira Eting.

Eting, interviewed by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes, said, "I was a combat helicopter pilot…. If you want pilots to be able to fly and shoot bombs and missiles into houses knowing they might be killing children, they must have the strongest confidence in the people making those decisions."

The modern antisemites have been having a field day with an attractive and articulate Israeli woman matter of factly saying that Israelis knowingly shoot missiles into homes that kill children. Here we have proof of how monstrous Israelis are - even leftist Israelis!

A number of years ago, I looked at a B'Tselem report on families killed in their homes during 2014's Operation Protective Edge. Even that incomplete report showed that many families were acting as human shields for the terrorists - sometimes the shields were the terrorists' own families, and sometimes the terrorists were sheltering in an innocent family home. 

I did further research and listed over a hundred children who were used as human shields to protect terrorists, often senior terrorists.

This is only what I could find out with open source research. But it proves the point: Israel is not going to bomb a house unless it has excellent intelligence that the house is a legitimate military target. Perhaps a senior terrorists is inside, perhaps a weapons cache is underneath, perhaps a command and control center is in the apartment next door. 

As long as the military advantage outweighs the collateral damage, this is a moral decision and also legal under international law.  While we are not privy to the specific calculus that Israel uses in making those decisions, it employs teams of lawyers to review every airstrike and goes to great lengths - never reported in the media - to ensure that it minimizes mistakes. Israel goes above and beyond the requirements of the Laws of Armed Conflict in its own policy decisions. 

Eting caused more harm to Israel with her out of context quote than the proposed judicial reforms she is protesting could possibly do. But she wasn't wrong in what she said: in the real world, in real wars, decisions must be made that sometimes mean children would die. 

In the case of Gaza, that is entirely the fault of the terrorists who deliberately choose to locate military targets in residential areas. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Al Quds al Arabi can't even come up with original antisemitism - it has to plagiarize it

At the UK-based Al Quds al Arabi, Palestinian writer Ismail Juma Al-Rimawigoes on an antisemitic rant as he describes "The Curse of the  Jewish Holidays:"

In this month of every year, the occupied city of Jerusalem and all of the occupied territories are experiencing their worst and most bitter stages, when thousands of extremist Jews desecrate the sanctity  of the Holy City, and begin spreading their poison and unleashing their Talmudic and racist rituals that exceed the limits of humanity and religious freedom, which have disappeared from the dictionary of the “Hebrew State.” “.

During the Jewish holiday season, which falls in September of each year, the Holy City turns into a military barracks whose entrances and exits are controlled by the occupation forces, to besiege, harass, and oppress the Jerusalemites, under the pretext of securing the settlers’ celebrations, while the heavy hand of the settlers is unleashed to oppress, steal, orgy, and assault the residents under heavy protection from the occupation police.

With the beginning of the holidays, the settlers who live in the Old City turn their homes and the surrounding areas into shrines in order to receive other settlers from the surrounding settlement outposts, of all ages, to eat the holiday meal and sleep inside or outside those homes.

The holiday season not only affected Jerusalemites through assaulting and humiliating them at checkpoints and in the streets, but also turned into an economic curse, forcing many merchants to close their shops and leave the city until these seasons, which the people of Jerusalem call “the curse of the Jewish holidays,” ended.

I was curious how popular this phrase "the curse of the Jewish holidays" is. I found it in exactly two other unique articles (which were copied to other sites.)

It turns out that this article was plagiarized, word for word, from an article written in 2018 by Nader Al-Safadi at Noon Post.

This guy couldn't even come up with original antisemitism!

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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09/20 Links Pt2: How NGOs Fabricate the Legal Definition of Apartheid to Attack Israel; The Cult of ‘Antizionism’; Dan Hannan: Remember why they're the Abraham Accords

From Ian:

The Cult of ‘Antizionism’

A group of anti-Israel academics and BDS activists have taken a new step toward rebuilding the long-forgotten Soviet discipline of “scientific antizionism” on American campuses. The “founding collective” of 10 has established an Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, which aims “to support the delinking of the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies” and “to reclaim academia and public discourse for the study of Zionism.” The new institute defines Zionism as a “political, ideological, and racial and gendered knowledge project, intersecting with Palestine and decolonial studies, critical terrorism studies, settler colonial studies, and related scholarship and activism.” This October, ICSZ will hold its inaugural conference titled “Battling the ‘IHRA Definition’: Theory and Activism.”

The ICSZ’s website presents a vision of an overtly academic institution that will churn out politically motivated “research” designed to move the American public toward the idea of doing away with American support for Israel and, ultimately, with Israel itself. Coming at a time when American Jews and Jewish identity are under comprehensive attack within mainstream institutions, ICSZ sounds like bad news—and it is.

American progressives have scored numerous successes in recent years by using the power of tenured academic positions, in-class bullying, and threats of physical intimidation to enforce anti-Zionist culture at American universities and within the elite cultural spaces that employ American liberal arts graduates. Now, they have taken opposition to Zionism a step further, by transforming their hatred of “Zionists” and rejection of the historical dynamics of Jewish self-identification and national self-determination into its own free-standing ideology, which is politically aligned with, but not dependent on, the wider progressive movement.

Anti-Zionists, as part of the broader far left, are eerily reproducing elements of the cultural deformations that once defined the lives of the citizens of the communist bloc: They have introduced Americans to the practices of collective demonization, blacklists, and denouncing friends and colleagues. They have injected political reeducation and oversight committees into workplaces and academic institutions as part of a new cultural revolution that overtly targets “Zionists” as present-day villains and boogeymen, on a par with “white supremacists” and “fascists.” And they have forced colleagues and coworkers who don’t agree with them to either hide their true opinions, or, more often, to stop having opinions at all, in order to keep their jobs.

Within academia, progressives who primarily derive their personal and professional identity from expressing extreme loathing of Israel have notched additional victories. They have reorganized the missions of entire academic disciplines, including Middle Eastern, Jewish, and Israel studies, around demonization of the Jewish state. They have pushed states to introduce radical “liberated ethnic studies” maligning Jews and Israel in K-12 schools. They have coopted countless academics into signing defamatory anti-Israel petitions that are of questionable academic validity and, word has it, are now working to place signatories on the synagogue lecture circuit, as part of their strategy of legitimizing the openly racist, and even genocidal, views at the heart of anti-Zionist ideology by co-opting wealthy Jewish institutions and funders who seek to buy protection from progressives, despite the radical unpopularity of their views among ordinary American Jews.

The establishment of ICSZ marks a new stage in the relentless regressive march of this bizarre progressive movement. How delighted would the institute’s forebears in the Soviet security and propaganda apparatus have been to witness the spectacle of Americans, including Jews, coming together of their own free will to provide academic legitimacy and a Jewish institutional imprimatur to conspiracy theories about Zionism that they spent their entire careers developing, and then inculcating with sympathetic audiences around the globe?

The ICSZ’s founders are known figures in the BDS movement and the movement for the academic boycott of Israel. They include Rabab Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University, who tried to bring convicted PFLP terrorist and airline hijacker Leila Khaled to SFSU; Lau Barrios, who has served as campaign manager at Linda Sarsour’s MPower Change and as a co-organizer of the “No Tech for Apartheid” campaign geared at pressuring Google and Amazon to end their work with Israel; and Emmaia Gelman, ICSZ’s founding director, who serves as a trustee of the Sparkplug Foundation, a funder of IfNotNow and Palestinian Youth Movement, and also a co-sponsor of the ICSZ conference.

We must shun California's radical ethnic studies

What’s wrong with the current state-mandated framework?

The Jewish proponents of ideological ethnic studies argue that the California state model “excludes discriminatory content, and includes two Jewish-American lesson plans and a definition of antisemitism.”

They ignore, however, that the state model is built on a highly ideological, illiberal premise, which emphasizes instilling in children a “critical consciousness” – the supposed ability to see systems of oppression throughout society– and it “critiques empire building in history and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, and other forms of power and oppression.”

The model curriculum further calls for building a “post-imperial life that promotes collective narratives of transformative resistance.” And it exalts radical black leaders like Angela Davis and Assata Shakur but leaves out civil rights heroes such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Congressman John Lewis.

In other words, the model curriculum doesn’t merely lift up the narratives of marginalized communities, as the proponents suggest, it inculcates kids in an ideology that can be, will be, and has been weaponized against Jews. So when a school district teaches social studies through a “settler-colonial lens,” but removes explicit reference to Israel as a “settler colonialist state,” that’s not “justice” and it’s not a victory for the Jewish community. The schools are still indoctrinating kids with an ideology that conditions them to think of Israel, the US, and the West in precisely those terms.

The Jewish proponents of the ideological curriculum say that their “strategy is working” and “just a handful of districts are using or considering curricula we find problematic.”

First, we don’t, and they don’t really know how many of California’s 1,200-plus school districts have embraced the most radical versions or will try to do so in the future. It’s hard enough to know what’s happening in school districts where there is a robust Jewish presence let alone in places where there isn’t.

Second, while the proponents may not find teaching a highly opinionated, radical, power-based, curriculum problematic for California’s children, we opponents do and strongly believe it is the exact wrong form of multicultural education. It will generate more, not less antisemitism and division.

The greatest danger of Jewish proponents of radical ethnic studies paying the price of remaining in the good graces of traditional progressive allies is that they lock themselves in and end up supporting outrageous political positions completely at odds with the traditional Jewish understanding of America and Jewish interests. I get why they do it. But like a corporation that seeks to maximize quarterly earnings to raise the value of its stock, sometimes a short-term win is a long-term defeat.

University of California Urged to Reject Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement Over Antisemitism Concerns

Nearly 100 religious, civil rights, and educational organizations are calling on the University of California (UC) to reject a proposal that would require applicants to schools in the UC system to take an ethnic studies course, arguing that anti-Zionist activists are developing and leading the effort to implement the measure.

The diverse coalition, which includes several Jewish groups and antisemitism watchdogs, wrote a letter this week to UC’s Board of Regents urging them to oppose a proposal that, if approved, would lead to high schools across California offering ethnic studies courses based on the course criteria developed by ethnic studies experts promoting the idea.

“This is a deeply alarming prospect, given the openly antisemitic sentiments of these ‘experts’ and their own contention that anti-Zionism constitutes a core element of ‘authentic’ ethnic studies,” the letter says.

A working group in the UC Academic Senate has been tasked with developing a proposal for the ethnic studies requirement. The idea — inspired by AB 101, state legislation approved in 2021 to make passing ethnic studies a requirement for high school graduation in California — outlines what UC would consider an acceptable ethnic studies course for admission.

Jewish groups initially opposed AB 101, arguing schools would be required to adopt curricula that included anti-Zionist material. However, the legislation eventually gained the support of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus — a voting bloc in the state legislature — which moved to add civil rights measures to the bill designed to prevent schools from teaching any content that promoted bigotry and discrimination. According to critics, however, these changes are no longer holding up with many school districts adopting the very curricula that the guardrails were intended to combat.

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Har Homa is Not in East Jerusalem (Judean Rose)

Har Homa is not in East Jerusalem, nor is it in southeastern East Jerusalem. Har Homa is in southern Jerusalem, period. In fact, Har Homa is located at the southernmost edge of Jerusalem. Observe this OCHA map of so-called East Jerusalem, OCHA not being known for its friendliness to Israel:

See that little square outlined in black, above? It is clearly labeled “East Jerusalem.” Technically, there’s no such thing. Jerusalem is a one, unified city.

#Australia is a great friend of #Israel and we greatly appreciate our friendship and warm relations. But there is no such thing as “West Jerusalem” and “East Jerusalem”. There is only Jerusalem, the eternal and undivided capital of the state of Israel.

— Tzachi Hanegbi • צחי הנגבי (@Tzachi_Hanegbi) December 15, 2018

But let’s leave that for now. Scroll way down the OCHA map in a southerly direction and eventually, you will hit Har Homa, circled below, in red. It is indisputably, decidedly in south Jerusalem, as distinct from east Jerusalem (and East Jerusalem, which does not exist).’

The Virtual Jewish Library doesn’t seem to have any problem with its compass, moral or otherwise. Its entry on Har Homa is straightforward: “Contrary to Palestinian claims, Har Homa is not in ‘traditional Arab East Jerusalem.’ It is neither ‘Arab’ (most of the land was expropriated from Jews); nor ‘East’ (it is in southern Jerusalem).”

Why then, did Tablet use this Getty photo with its erroneous caption on August 24, 2023? Poor fact-checking? A lack of caring over what might have been seen by the Tablet editor in question as an insignificant detail? Or is Tablet just down with revising geography to suit a “Palestinian” narrative not grounded in reality?

The Guardian is known to lie to make Israel look bad, so we expect them to lie about the actual location of Har Homa. They do it to make it look as if the Jews stole Har Homa from the Arabs, as in this 2014 piece on “settlement expansion.”

Haaretz is also known to invent facts about Israel not in evidence, and a recent (July 2023) piece by Judy Maltz does not disappoint:

Another outlet seemingly determined to distort hard geographic truths for the delectation and delight of their readership, is the Times of Israel. TOI was slightly more in tune with reality than some other outlets, when it referred to Har Homa as “southern East Jerusalem” in a recent report on a nearby stabbing attack. Ah well, if only the word “East” hadn’t been next to “southern.” Also, weirdly, “East” is capitalized while “southern” is not. TOI seems to think that “southern” is a direction” while “East Jerusalem” is a distinct city—one apparently not belonging to Jews.

But of course, no matter how you slice it, the label of “southern East Jerusalem” is erroneous. Its use by TOI suggests to this writer, at least, that the media outlet is carrying water for the wrong side.

The Jerusalem Post carried a similar piece that same day, September 18, 2023, with the caption on the feature photo referring to the “har Homa neighborhood of East Jerusalem.” Here “east” is capitalized where it shouldn’t be, while the “Har” of “Har Homa” is not, when it should be (much as the “New” of “New York” is always capitalized). 

Writer Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, tells his readers that the “Mazmuriyeh crossing” is “near east Jerusalem.”

It is not. Capitalized or otherwise.  But good for him for not capitalizing that E. Maybe this will give him/the JPost some brownie points for Yom Kippur?

Did any outlet get the location right in reporting that recent attack? The Jewish Press did. Kudos to them for bucking the trend by correctly stating that Har Homa is in “southern Jerusalem.” 

Like Nikki Haley at the UN, all the Jewish Press did was “tell the truth” about Israel--but we sure could do with a lot more of that.)

To all my readers, may you be inscribed in the Book of Life: גמר חתימה טובה!

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Blood libel of the day: "Israel blocking dialysis supplies to Gaza"

From Xinhua:

At least 1,100 Palestinian kidney patients are facing an interruption of life-saving treatment due to a lack of medicines and medical equipment in the coastal enclave, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said on Wednesday.

They include 38 children who are in danger of being denied access to dialysis sessions, Ashraf Abu Mahdi, director of the pharmacy department in the Health Ministry, said in a press conference held in Gaza.

"Patients with kidney failure are forced to live in difficult health conditions as medical supplies will be used up soon," Abu Mahdi added.

Abu Mahdi indicated that stores run by the ministry in Gaza are short of related medical supplies, and the hospitals in Gaza provide 13,000 dialysis sessions for patients per month.

He accused Israel of "banning the transport and shipment of medical supplies to the hospitals of the coastal enclave, putting the lives of thousands of kidney patients at risk."

Israel has never blocked the supplies of medicines or consumable medical supplies to Gaza. Any previous shortages were blamed on the Palestinian Authority, not Israel. 

And interestingly, when Gaza health authorities first raised this alarm on Saturday, they didn't blame Israel either:

The Director of the Hospital Pharmacy Department at the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, Alaa Helles, appealed to all concerned authorities “to assume their responsibilities to save the lives of kidney failure patients due to the acute shortage of the necessary medical supplies needed for dialysis sessions, which poses a threat to the lives of 1,100 kidney failure patients, including 38 children.”

Helles called on the relevant authorities to “take urgent action to provide medical consumables for the needs of kidney failure patients, which means continuing service to them and preserving their lives.”

Not a word about Israel, just "authorities." Which is not a word used to refer to Israel. 

This is not adding up.

Perhaps a hint to what is really going on can be seen in this June article at ReliefWeb:

In response to the difficult health situation and a looming dialysis services halt in Gaza, Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) has provided the hospitals of Palestine’s Ministry of Health (MOH) in Gaza with a total of 12 dialysis machines and accessories, as well as life-saving medicines and medical consumables for the patients with kidney failure.

Dr. Akram Nassar, head of QRCS’s office in Gaza, said the project of “providing dialysis departments with equipment and medicines in Gaza” was part of QRCS’s unwavering support to the health sector of Gaza. Its aim is to ensure continuing dialysis services, as well as mitigate the impact of depleted medical equipment and supplies for 1,022 patients with kidney failure.

Since 2018, QRCS has been working extensively on dialysis services in Gaza, with three projects to procure 33 dialysis machines, medications, and consumables to MOH hospitals, totaling approximately QR 4.2 million in value.

We learned this week that Qatar was reducing its aid to Gaza. Could it be that they also stopped paying for these dialysis supplies and Gaza has no one else to pay for them?

Given that it appears that Hamas is trying to pressure Israel to pressure Qatar in turn to resume payments, this sounds like it is another means by Hamas - which runs the Gaza health ministry - to make Israel look like the reason for the shortages - and, as we see, the world media won't fact-check any accusations against Israel. 

 

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09/20 Links Pt1: From Partner to Ally: The Case for a U.S.-Israel Defense Treaty; Israel’s UN Amb Detained by Police After Protesting Iranian President’s UN Speech

From Ian:

From Partner to Ally: The Case for a U.S.-Israel Defense Treaty

The United States is contractually committed to the defense of 52 allies on five continents, each of which also pledges to come to America’s aid in case of attack. As the war in Ukraine illustrates, these mutual defense pacts remain crucial to upholding stability and strengthening deterrence more than seventy years after they were first created, and no war has ever broken out that threatened the existence of any U.S. treaty ally. Yet the United States has no such treaty alliance in the Middle East, despite it being one of the world’s most volatile regions that is also home to one of America’s most capable and longstanding partners anywhere: Israel.

Now, seventy-five years after Israel’s founding, a bilateral defense treaty would advance U.S. strategic interests by upgrading and cementing a longstanding pivotal military, intelligence, and high-tech relationship. It would enhance Israeli capabilities, enshrine Israel’s qualitative military edge (QME), deter existential threats, help prevent a nuclear Iran, mitigate the severity of a major conflict that involved Israel, bolster America’s global credibility, and better align Israeli policy with the United States on China and Russia – all without requiring more U.S. boots on the ground. In tandem with potential Israel-Saudi normalization, it also would build a new U.S.-led regional security architecture that leverages America’s unmatched set of partnerships across the broader Middle East to address common threats and share burdens more effectively and equably. Here at home, it also would stabilize one of America’s top security partnerships against domestic efforts to abruptly and arbitrarily condition or downgrade it.

JINSA first proposed such a pact with Israel, including a draft treaty, in 2018-19. We are now issuing this updated paper and proposed treaty text to reflect new developments, highlight the increasing importance of a treaty, and address potential concerns in both countries. In recognition of both countries’ concerns to maintain their freedom of action and avoid overextension, and especially in light of Israel’s ingrained ethos of self-defense, JINSA’s proposed treaty – like all existing U.S. mutual defense pacts – explicitly acknowledges that each ally retains its full sovereign right of freedom of military action. Moreover, given that Israel frequently is subjected to lower-level armed attacks, our proposed treaty sets a much higher threshold and would activate only under a very limited set of exceptional circumstances. Click here to read the report (PDF).

Dermer pushes IDF, Mossad chiefs to support US-Israel 'defense alliance'

Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer recently engaged in discussions with Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and the head of the Mossad, David Barnea, to secure their support for his proposal to establish a defense alliance with the US.

This information was revealed by three Israeli and American sources who are well-versed in the matter.

Why is this significant?
Without the backing of key figures in the defense establishment, particularly the chief of staff, advancing such an initiative will prove to be extremely challenging. Over the years, the defense establishment, particularly the IDF, has opposed the idea of entering into a defense alliance with the US due to concerns that it might constrain Israel’s ability to conduct preemptive military operations in the Middle East.

The issue is expected to be on the agenda during the meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden in New York on Wednesday.

Behind the scenes
During these discussions, Dermer clarified to the chief of staff and the head of the Mossad that the proposed alliance would be relatively narrow in scope, addressing only existential threats such as an Iranian nuclear threat, unconventional weapons attacks by regional actors, or highly extreme escalation scenarios.

The bigger picture
Dermer emphasized that such an agreement would meticulously define each scenario, ensuring that it does not limit Israel’s capacity for routine military operations. Dermer first introduced the proposal during talks he held with Biden’s advisers at the White House in mid-August. He suggested that this alliance could complement the broader deal the US is pursuing with Saudi Arabia and Israel, alongside the separate defense alliance that Saudi Arabia is seeking for itself.

Another Palestinian Reverie

On August 29, 2023, Sheikh Issam Amira, a prominent member of the Palestinian Hizb al-Tahrir party, argued that the "liberation" of Palestine is nothing compared to the potentially great conquests that Islam has in store for the rest of the non-Muslim world — including the United States.

What crime did these non-Muslim cities, nations, and continents commit against Muslims to deserve being targeted for violent conquest?

"The Party of Satan is America, Europe, Russia, and all Western nations, and all infidel [non-Muslim] nations everywhere.... Everyone who opposes Allah and his prophet is to be stricken with disgrace and misery. Not just that, they are to be broken in the here, and sent to the fire in the hereafter." — Sheikh Issam Amira, YouTube, August 29, 2023.

Although [Hizb al-Tahrir] means the "party of liberation," and although it pretends its sole interest is "liberating" Palestinians from Israel, when its members get together there seems to be an additional plan, not just for Jews.

Palestinian cleric Nidhal Siam made clear that, from an Islamic perspective, for Christians as well, liberation and conquest are one and the same.

"Oh Muslims, the anniversary of the conquest [fath/فتح, literally, "opening"] of Constantinople brings tidings of things to come. It brings tidings that Rome will be conquered in the near future, Allah willing." — Nidhal Siam, Jerusalem Post, January 20, 2020.

[The Palestinians] seek sympathy from the international community, despite the fact that until 1964, there reportedly were no Palestinians.

It also might be helpful to recall that until the seventh century and the birth of Muhammad, there were no Muslims – anywhere – let alone Palestinians.

The word Islam means "submission."

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Palestinian militants in Ein al-Hilweh break into houses and steal - bras

Lebanon24 reports that a man was interviewed by the new youth oriented Blinx network in the Lebanese camp Ein al-Hilweh.

The man, who didn't want his name used, spoke about how terrorists there stole everything from his house - even bras. He asked, "Why do they need bras?"

A Palestinian next to him then explained why Lebanese terrorists like bras.

"Bras are very important for the gunman... In Lebanon, during the civil war between 1975 and 1990, a civilian would cross the front lines and try to avoid being shot by a sniper. He would carry a bra and wave  it over his head because it is like a transit card.

“My father used to tell us this and we used to laugh about it, but through many stories about the same subject I am now certain that it was true. That's why the gunman, if he wanted to cross from one place to another without a weapon, could carry this bra so that the snipers in the camp would think that he was a civilian. It's actually very funny."

The victim also said that his wife's jilbabs (long loose fitting robes that cover the entire body)  were stolen as well, and he speculates that the Islamist terrorists use them to dress up as women so they would not be stopped and searched.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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King Abdullah's speech to the UN is a study in hypocrisy and lies

Yesterday, Jordan's King Abdullah addressed the UN General Assembly with polished English and breathtaking hypocrisy.

Harking back to the long-debunked "linkage" theory, Abdullah claimed, "The Palestinian-Israeli conflict [is] the central issue in the Middle East."

This is right after he spoke about Syria, and the 1.3 million Syrian refugees that Jordan hosts!

As has been the case for decades, Arab leaders cannot resist using the Palestinian issue as a means to distract their people from their own shortcomings. Whipping up hatred against Jews means less hatred towards their own leaders.

Five million Palestinians live under occupation—no civil rights; no freedom of mobility; no say in their lives.   

About 2.3 million people cross between the West Bank and Jordan through the Allenby crossing every year - most of them Palestinians. Does that sound like they have no freedom of mobility?

Some 90% of Palestinians live under Palestinian civil governance and laws. If they have no civil rights or say in their lives, how exactly is that Israel's fault?

Moreover, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Jordan who moved there from Gaza in 1967 have no civil rights or path to citizenship - so who exactly is curtailing the rights of those Palestinians?

And delaying justice and peace has brought endless cycles of violence—2023 has been the deadliest for the Palestinian people in the past 15 years.  

No, it hasn't: it has been the deadliest in the West Bank. And nearly all of those killed have been armed terrorists or active fighters, whom Abdullah pretends are innocent civilians. 

The past 18 months have been the deadliest in Israel in many years as well - where is the justice for Jews?

Jerusalem is a flash point for global concern. Under the Hashemite Custodianship of Islamic and Christian holy sites, Jordan remains committed to safeguarding the city’s identity.

First of all, Jordan has no custodianship over Christian holy sites. The original (verbal) agreement between the Supreme Muslim Council and the Hashemites was only concerning Al Aqsa.  The 1994 Jordan-Israel peace agreement says "Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem." Abdullah is lying.

Secondly, when he says Jordan wants to safeguard Jerusalem's identity, by specifying "Islamic and Christian," he means a Jerusalem that has no Jewish history.

But preserving Jerusalem, as the city of faith and peace for Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, is a responsibility that we all share.

Except that under Jordanian rule, no Jews of any nationality were allowed to visit the Old City. Jordan regularly condemns Jews peacefully touring the Temple Mount. Abdullah supports a Jerusalem where Jews are, at best, tolerated but have no rights. If he cared about preserving Jerusalem for all religions, he would support Israeli sovereignty - since it is only under Jewish rule that Jerusalem has ever been truly open to all.

And we must not abandon Palestinian refugees to the forces of despair. Sustainable funding is urgently needed by UNRWA, the UN agency that provides vital relief, education, and health services to millions of Palestinian refugees. This is essential to protect families, keep communities stable, and prepare young people for productive lives. 

Jordan itself gave a mere $4 million to UNRWA in 2022 - much less than the $7 million it gave in 2021. And so far it has only pledged $2 million in 2023. Abdullah is not exactly walking the walk.

But there is a lot of cynicism here: Jordan's economy benefits greatly from UNRWA. Even though UNRWA has no business giving aid to most of its "refugees" in Jordan who are full Jordanian citizens, it spends over $150 million a year in Jordan alone. Abdullah is appealing for UNRWA because that money is money he saves in providing basic services to nearly 2 million of his own citizens. 

He pretends his appeal to UNRWA benefits Palestinians, but in reality UNRWA saves Jordan hundreds of millions of dollars, and it injects a great deal of cash into Jordan's economy on the world's dime.

The hypocrisy does not end there. In his speech, Abdullah speaks about "justice" and about how he is against "the black flags of terror, hate, and extremism." Yet even today, Jordan is zealously protecting terrorist Ahlam Tamimi - an unrepentant, proud monster responsible for the murder of 16 civilians including 7 children at a pizza shop in Jerusalem - from being extradited to the US to face justice.

Abdullah doesn't support justice. On the contrary, he supports a celebrity terrorist walking around freely in his kingdom. 

Western media and politicians love King Abdullah. He is young, articulate, and smooth. He says all the right things and is considered a "moderate." So no one bothers to fact-check his speeches and analyze his actions. But in just this short address on the biggest stage on Earth, Abdullah has proven himself yet again to be a hypocrite and a liar. 

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Explaining what is going on in Gaza (Abu Ali Express)

Abu Ali Express has a great analysis of what has been happening in Gaza, translated by the (also great) Imshin.

If you are wondering why Hamas is sending youth to the Gaza fence now, and why Israel is closing the Erez crossing, this explains it.

Gaza Strip: The border conflict and the Qatari dollar - analysis of the situation

 This afternoon, a significant piece of news was published in the Palestinian media that did not receive much exposure on the Israeli side: the Ministry of Finance of Hamas in Gaza announced that only 55% of August salaries will be paid to Gaza public sector officials instead of the usual 60%. Also, the August salary will be paid to officials on 20  September instead of at the customary beginning of the month.

"Palestine Now" news agency reported from its sources in the Hamas Ministry of Finance that the cut in the salaries of government officials in the Gaza Strip (hereafter "Hamas officials") is due to a decrease in the revenues of the treasury in Gaza, especially with regard to the revenues from the Egyptian side of Rafah crossing.  According to these sources, the Finance Ministry of Hamas has a deficit of 116 million shekels.

 On Tuesday, the Palestinian news agency in Ramallah, Sada News reported "shrill tones" between senior Hamas officials and Qatar, in connection with the Qatari ambassador's recent visit to the Gaza Strip, in which it was made clear that Qatar is not interested in continuing to transfer the Qatari contribution in its current form and that it intends to cut it and move to permanent solutions instead of Monthly payments.

 Also, the Sada News news agency reported that about 3 months ago, Qatar suddenly stopped transferring the $7 million every month for Hamas officials (amounts that would have been transferred in the form of fuel through the Rafah crossing from the Egyptian side - this is probably what the "Palestine Now" report was alluding to).

 The meeting between senior Hamas officials and the Qatari ambassador, according to the same agency, ended in an impasse and the ambassador left without any announcement being made on his or Hamas' side, as had been customary until now on his previous visits.

 In other words: Hamas is now in the midst of negotiations for Qatari money. It is using the tools at its disposal to put pressure on Israel so that it will put pressure on Qatar (as it has in the past) to provide the money to Gaza.

 Since the Qatari ambassador left the Strip, an escalation of the attacks on the fence in the Strip can be seen.  Hamas wants dollars.

 Last night Israel took the first punitive step following the escalation of events on the fence and closed the Erez crossing to the entry of Gazan laborers into Israel.

 Hamas responded today with actions: the clashes on the fence continue.

 Hamas, which absolutely directs the attacks on the fence and are in total control of the height of the flames, tells Israel that closing the crossing will not solve the situation.  Nor will an IDF attack on observation towers in the eastern Gaza Strip 3 days ago in response to the escalation on the fence.

 If you look at the situation logically, you can certainly understand the step Hamas is taking in its chess game.  It is now negotiating for larger sums than its loss of income from a few days of closing Erez crossing to Gaza workers.

 So what's next?

 Israel has another "soft tool" at its disposal: preventing the export of goods from the Strip to Israel and the West Bank as well as preventing the entry of goods into the Strip. 

Besides, it is a play for time.

 Israel's two "soft tools": preventing laborers from entering Israel through the Erez crossing and the ability to close the movement of goods to and from the Gaza Strip, have more impact over time.  They have a cumulative effect.

 In the meantime, the situation on the border could escalate further and the killing of Gazans on the fence could lead to the launch of rockets and a military escalation on the part of Israel.

 Both sides are in a game of chicken to see who blinks first.  Hamas has succeeded in past rounds in proving that it has a better negotiating capacity with Israel because it is willing to go further, even at the expense of its own citizens. The Gazans are known for their particularly high adaptability to difficult situations...

 Israel is more committed to the well-being of its citizens, and therefore, according to most, more susceptible to pressure in  negotiations with Gaza.  It can be assumed, based on past experience, that Israel will try to pressure Qatar to renew the Qatari contribution, in order to buy quiet in Gaza. Until next time...

Tzvi Joffre at the Jerusalem Post also makes some good points about why Hamas is choosing now to escalate.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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