Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, December 08, 2018

12/08 Links: UNIFIL and the Hezbollah Tunnels; Bethany Mandel: Trump’s Hanukkah Party Reminded Me Why America Is Great For Jews; NYTs columnist defends anti-Zionism

From Ian:

Elliott Abrams: UNIFIL and the Hezbollah Tunnels

UNIFIL is not supposed to be merely a means of communication, or the Security Council would have bought cell phones instead of paying for a military force. Moreover, there are no "appropriate authorities" in Lebanon or Hezbollah would never have been able to dig its tunnels.

The tunnels are hardly the only brazen Hezbollah violation of the Security Council resolutions undertaken right under UNIFIL's nose. Consider this: Hezbollah is blocking roads in southern Lebanon to smooth the path of missile it is moving into the area, according to a report in the newspaper Israel Hayom. Then there is the village of Gila, just north of the Israeli border, where there is a Hezbollah headquarters and according to the Israelis about 20 warehouses with weapons, combat positions, lookout positions, dozens of underground positions. All this was built in an area supposedly patrolled by UNIFIL.

What is to be done? As I wrote in a previous post about UNIFIL and its new commander,
Del Col should test the limits. That will make Hezbollah angry, but if Hezbollah isn’t vexed by UNIFIL's presence then we are all wasting a lot of money--$500 million a year is the UNIFIL budget—and effort supporting that organization and making believe that it is enforcing resolution 1701.

This is a test of UNIFIL and its new commander. "Communicating" to "appropriate authorities" is a euphemism for doing nothing at all. Hezbollah is preparing for war. UNIFIL is supposed to get in its way. If it cannot hinder Hezbollah's war preparations in any way and is even ignorant of them, UNIFIL is a waste of time and money.

In rain and mud, IDF exposes another tunnel from Lebanon into Israel

The Israeli military on Saturday located an additional cross-border attack tunnel from southern Lebanon into Israeli territory that it says was dug into the Hezbollah attack tunnel — the second it has fully exposed and the third it has identified since the start of its operation to find and destroy such underground passages.

This fresh tunnel, whose location has been kept secret for security reasons, has been fitted with explosives in order to ensure that it cannot be used by the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah, army spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told reporters.

According to the spokesman, excavation of the tunnel was being conducted until recently.

“It’s a fresh tunnel,” he said.

The military did not offer additional details regarding the size of the tunnel.

Conricus said Saturday’s tunnel, as with the others identified by Israel until now, was “not yet operational and does not yet pose an imminent threat to the surrounding Israeli communities.”

IDF fires toward 3 suspected Hezbollah fighters who approach border

Israeli soldiers on Saturday opened fire at three suspected Hezbollah fighters on the Israeli-Lebanese border, the army said.

A military spokeswoman said the incident took place close to Yiftah, south of Metula, a town near which a tunnel from Lebanon was found.

The military said the three men attempted to approach an “area of technological work” in an enclave north of the security fence, as the IDF continues Operation Northern Shield to destroy Hezbollah attack tunnels dug under the border.

The army said it believed the three attempted to use the cover of stormy weather to approach the Israeli forces. Troops fired towards the three “in accordance with the standard operating procedures” and they fled the scene. “Work in the area continues as usual,” it said.

Lebanon’s official NNA news agency said Israeli forces fired shots in the air east of the village of Mays Al-Jabal after they were surprised because of heavy fog by a routine Lebanese army patrol.

Israel using ‘passive seismic’ technology to expose Hezbollah’s attack tunnels

The Israeli army on Friday revealed that it has been using “passive seismic” technology to locate the attack tunnels Hezbollah has been digging under the border into Israel.

The IDF this week launched an ongoing operation to locate and destroy the tunnels, and has so far announced that two have been identified. On Tuesday, it released footage from inside the first of the two, with alleged Hezbollah members still inside, and on Thursday asked UNIFIL, the UN force in Lebanon, to deal with the second.

The IDF’s Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot announced Tuesday that Israel has “in its possession” Hezbollah’s tunnel plans. Military sources have said Israel believes several other cross-border tunnels have yet to be exposed.

An officer in the IDF’s Engineering Corps, Col. Ziv Nimni, told Israel’s Hadashot TV news Friday that the IDF, aware for years of Hezbollah’s tunnel ambitions, utilizes “passive seismic technology” throughout the northern border area in order to locate the tunnels.

The technology enables the IDF to identify where tunnel drilling is taking place — not only in limited, specific areas, but throughout the Israel-Lebanon border area, he said.

The sensors in the ground relay information to sensors at the border fence, as well as to receptors in patrol vehicles along the border, Nimni added.

He said locating and dealing with the tunnels “could take weeks or longer,” but that the IDF was operating as quickly as possible.

Chanukah video night 7: Sruli & Netanel - Chanukah Pop Medley

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12/07 Link Pt2: The ‘Hyper-Whitening’ of the Jews; Video Appears to Show Marc Lamont Hill Accusing Israel of Poisoning Palestinian Water; The BDS Movement, Where the Anti-Semites Find Room to Flourish

From Ian:

The ‘Hyper-Whitening’ of the Jews

At the Forward, Ari Feldman reflects on whether or not recent attacks against Jews in Brooklyn are the result of anti-Semitism. The article is gaining a bit of attention because of its nonsensical premise and because of a few choice quotes. He cites a local salesman as saying, “It’s less of an anti-Semitic thing than they needed a target to respond to this word: gentrification.” And he quotes someone named Mark Winston Griffith from the Black Movement Center, who says that may be the result black people’s seeing Judaism as “a form of almost hyper-whiteness.”

To reject these explanations as preposterous and offensive is, of course, righteous. But to do that alone is to miss something critical. Considering these claims at face value is important. Not because they have merit, but because they show precisely how anti-Semitism works and what it is.

The Jew is hated as whatever the anti-Semite holds responsible for his own misfortune. If you’re a capitalist, the Jew is a Communist; if you’re a Communist, the Jew is a capitalist. If you’re a pacifist, the Jew is a warmonger. If you’re a warrior, the Jew is a coward. Depending on your circumstance, the Jew can be grimy or snobbish, rootless or nationalist, invader or separatist. And if 100 years ago, American bigots saw Jews as Asiatic cross-breeds, today bigots see them as “hyper-white.” If you want to know what a culture considers most problematic, look at its brand of anti-Semitism. When you have headlines about “white privilege” and “evil white men,” Jews become the epitome of whiteness—except, of course, for neo-Nazis, who see Jews as hyper-integrationists.

No one explained it better than Ruth Wisse in the 2010 issue of COMMENTARY:
Anti-Semitism works through the strategy of the pointing finger. Through political prestidigitation, the accuser draws attention away from his own sins—in the case of Arab leaders, the systematic oppression and immiseration of their own people—by pointing to the Jews, whose demonically inflated image and luridly portrayed wickedness make them a plausible explanation for whatever ails his regime. The pointing finger keeps negative attention focused on the Jews—or Israelis—and the latter, as often as not, obligingly fall into the trap by accepting responsibility for a situation they cannot control. In politics as before the law, whoever points the finger is the plaintiff, and whoever stands in the dock is the defendant. Unless they were to file a countersuit, simply answering to the charge of which they stood accused placed the Jews under the constant obligation of defending their innocence.

America’s Jewish left endorses anti-Jewish discrimination

In the view of these five groups, every inch of Judea and Samaria is “Palestinian land,” and any Jew who lives there is an “usurper” who deserves to be boycotted, treated as a pariah, and eventually driven out.

Obviously if Jewish leftwing groups choose to support anti-Jewish discrimination—by boycotting only Jewish settlements and not Arab ones—that is their right according the U.S. Constitution. And if these groups want to advocate that every inch of Judea and Samaria is “usurped Palestinian land,” that, too, is their right.

But that does not mean the organized American Jewish community has to treat such racist positions as legitimate.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization overwhelmingly rejected J Street’s application for membership several years ago. That was a wise move. Jewish umbrella groups that have relationships with the New Israel Fund and the other members of the Gang of Five should reconsider whether they want to maintain those relationships.

Partners for Progressive Israel (PPI), for example, is a member of the American Zionist Movement. It’s fair to ask whether PPI’s support for discrimination against Israeli Jews is consistent with the AZM’s declared mission is “ to strengthen the connection of American Jews with Israel; develop their appreciation of the centrality of Israel to Jewish life worldwide; deepen their understanding of Israeli society and the challenges it faces; encourage travel, long-term visits and Aliyah to Israel; and to facilitate dialogue, debate and collective action to further Zionism in the United States and abroad.”

Is advocating discrimination against Jews in Judea-Samaria consistent with the AZM’s mission statement?

Gerald Steinberg: Human Rights Day nothing to celebrate

International Human Rights Day – commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Conventions on December 10, 1948 – is marked every year in the United Nations and by other organizations claiming to carry out its noble principles. But in stark contrast to the self-congratulation and high-sounding rhetoric that characterize these events, the reality makes a particularly desolate picture.

If anything, this day is a timely reminder of the failures of the institutions that were created after the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust to protect and defend human rights. Indeed, 2018 was another dismal year, and there is little to celebrate. The massive government bureaucracies and millions provided to groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International did nothing to prevent the carnage in Syria that destroyed millions of lives. And the triumph of the Assad-Russia-Iran-Hezbollah coalition offers no hope for the future. In Venezuela, the tyranny of oppression and repression continues, and hopes that after the death of Hugo Chavez the situation would improve have been dashed.

Ignoring most of the victims around the world, the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva continues to be controlled by some of the worst violators, including Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia (a major offender long before the murder of Jamal Khashoggi), Egypt and China. The member-states and UN officials they appoint routinely exploit the rhetoric of international law to deflect attention from their own behavior, and obsessively target Israel. Syrian and Iranian diplomats take the floor to make poisonous accusations against Israel, while their governments make genocidal threats that turn the 1948 declaration into a mockery.

This year, the council voted to again conduct a pseudo-investigation of Israel, this time over the claims of excessive force and war crimes during the Hamas-orchestrated violent “Grand Return March” incidents along the Gaza border with Israel. Like the infamous (and eventually discredited) Goldstone Report published in 2009, the one-sided results of this version were decided before the commission members were named. For these reasons and more, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley declared “the Human Rights Council is the United Nations’ greatest failure.” After all efforts to enact reforms were rejected, the US suspended its membership, further diminishing the council’s legitimacy.

Chanukah video night 6: Y-Studs - Don't Stop Me Now: A Queen Hanukkah

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12/07 Link Pt1: The joke of Palestinian ‘democracy’; Nikki Haley: Does the UN Accept Terrorism Directed at Israel?; Europeans Are Realizing Trump Was Right About Iran

From Ian:

U.S. Fears Iran Planning ‘Massive Regional War’ in Middle East

The Trump administration disclosed that Iran is behind the construction of several underground tunnels leading into Israel that Hezbollah militants and other terror forces have been using to conduct attacks, according to multiple U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon and communicated fears that Tehran is preparing to lead a "massive regional war."

The public identification of Iran isn't likely to surprise international observers, but signals aggressive moves by the Trump administration to tie Iran to the rise of terrorism not just in Israel, but across the Middle East, where Iranian-backed militants continue to strike U.S. interests and allies.

The Obama administration, in contrast to Trump, was careful to avoid singling out Iran as the chief force for terrorism against Israel and U.S. allies in the region in hopes of appeasing the hardline regime as it sought to ink the landmark nuclear pact that Trump abandoned earlier this year.

Senior U.S. officials familiar with Israel's discovery of these new tunnels—a tactic long used by Hezbollah and Hamas to conduct cross-border raids against Israeli civilians and military personnel—say they mark a massive escalation by Iran's terror proxies.

The Israeli military conducted operations to destroy the tunnels earlier this week, shortly after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held a one-on-one meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels.

The timing of Israel's military operations signal a deep coordination with the Trump administration, which told the Free Beacon the United States will stand side-by-side with the Jewish state as it works to thwart Iran's terror enterprise.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) said the tunnels show Iran used money from sanctions lifted under the Obama administration for military purposes.

"Senator Cruz has been tracking the Israeli campaign against these attack tunnels closely, and every day brings new disturbing revelations," said a spokesperson for Cruz. "It's now clear that Iran used its windfall from the Obama Iran nuclear deal to arm Hezbollah for an all-out war against Israel, and that the United States must do more to undo the damage of that deal. Sen. Cruz has also been unequivocal that our Israeli allies have an absolute right to defend themselves, especially against threats and violations of their sovereignty like these attack tunnels."

The joke of Palestinian ‘democracy’

In a recent Conflict Zone interview, acclaimed journalist Tim Sebastian grilled veteran Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat. While Erekat may not remember the interview as his finest hour, it could—and should have—been much worse had Sebastian pointed out a number of ludicrous statements that Erekat made.

During the interview, Erekat argued that the Palestinian Authority is “a true democracy,” that Mahmoud Abbas “won 62 percent of the vote” in the 2005 elections for head of the P.A., and that “Hamas carried out a coup d’état in Gaza” in 2007.

Closer examination of these claims shows their inherent contradictions.

While Abbas did indeed win 62 percent of the 2005 vote to be elected head of the P.A. (i.e., the Palestinian President), Erekat “forgot” that according to P.A. law, the chairman of the P.A. is elected to a four-year term. Since Abbas is about to start his 14th year of that four-year term, it is irrelevant to point to the level of Abbas’s support in order to substantiate the claim that the P.A. is a “true democracy.”

When examining Erekat’s claim about the Hamas “coup d’état” in the Gaza Strip, Erekat again “forgot” that Hamas won 74 seats of the 132 seat Palestinian Legislative Council in the last P.A. general elections held 13 years ago. Hamas therefore formed the legitimate P.A. government. As a result of immense international pressure threatening to cut off a vast amount of aid to the P.A., it was Abbas who deposed the democratically elected Hamas terrorist organization.

Accordingly, when Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip from Abbas’s so-called “technocrat government” in the summer of 2007, Hamas was simply reasserting the mandate that it had been granted by the Palestinian population in democratic elections—control which had temporarily been usurped by Abbas.

Exclusive: My year in the Palestinian Authority territories

“My first book appeared in 2000 and discussed Israel’s internal conflicts regarding the state’s identity. The Dutch title translates into English as 'A People that Dwells Alone.' I published my next book in 2007 which deals with the divisions between Christians in Israel. The title translates as 'Holy Quarrels'.”

Els van Diggele was born in 1967 in the Dutch village of Warmond. After her history studies at Leiden University she followed a postdoctoral journalism course at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University.

“I wanted to complete a trilogy by writing about the Palestinian Arabs. I resided in the Palestinian Authority region, carefully looking for people who would dare to tell the truth. Otherwise I would only hear: ‘Everything is fine. The Israeli occupation is the problem.’

“My first insight occurred when a Palestinian Arab asked me: ‘Do you write about our occupation? We are occupied by our leaders. The Palestinian occupation starts in our family with our father and uncles. Afterwards we are occupied by our boss and our leaders. The individual does not exist.’ He added: ‘That is our greatest real problem and explains our society’s stagnation.’

“I lived for a year in the Palestinian Authority territories. I did not register as a journalist with the authorities. I was not hindered by the authorities in any way, though there have been people who suspected me of being a spy.

“In Gaza I also did not encounter any hindrance. Interviewing there was even easier than in the 'West Bank.' In Gaza people are also fearful and society is very hierarchical. Yet the people were more open, perhaps because they are poorer and more desperate. It became clear to me that there is no historical unity between the 'West Bank' and the Gaza Strip. It is as if living in different worlds.

NYT op-ed says anti-Zionism isn't antisemitism. A rebuttal.

I'm not going to fisk the entire op-ed by Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times today claiming that anti-Zionism isn't a form of antisemitism, and concentrate on a single pivotal sentence:

Certainly, some criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, but it’s entirely possible to oppose Jewish ethno-nationalism without being a bigot.

Wrong.

If you are against Jewish self-determination, it means either than you are singling out the Jewish people as the only people on earth who do not have that right, or you deny that there are a Jewish people. Both positions are equally antisemitic, because both of them single out Jews as being different and less worthy than any other people.

Contra to fans of Shlomo Sands, the Jewish people have been considered a people and a nation since Biblical times. Chronicles 1 17:21-22:

כא וּמִי כְּעַמְּךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל, גּוֹי אֶחָד בָּאָרֶץ: אֲשֶׁר הָלַךְ הָאֱלֹ-הִים לִפְדּוֹת לוֹ עָם, לָשׂוּם לְךָ שֵׁם גְּדֻלּוֹת וְנֹרָאוֹת--לְגָרֵשׁ מִפְּנֵי עַמְּךָ אֲשֶׁר-פָּדִיתָ מִמִּצְרַיִם, גּוֹיִם.	21 And who is like Thy people Israel, a nation one in the earth, whom God went to redeem unto Himself for a people, to make Thee a name by great and tremendous things, in driving out nations from before Thy people, whom Thou didst redeem out of Egypt.
כב וַתִּתֵּן אֶת-עַמְּךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל לְךָ, לְעָם--עַד-עוֹלָם; וְאַתָּה יְה-וָה, הָיִיתָ לָהֶם לֵאלֹ-הִים.	22 For Thy people Israel didst Thou make Thine own people for ever; and Thou, LORD, becamest their God.

The Jewish people have considered themselves both a people and a nation since before this was written, and a glance at how 19th century newspapers would refer to Jews often as "Israelites" or "Hebrews" shows that this was the opinion of the Western world as well before Israel was reborn.

Whether or not Israel can represent all Jews who do not want to be represented is not the issue. The fact is that Israel is the only nation that calls itself a Jewish state, and to deny that is to deny the right of self-determination of the majority of Jews who support Israel's right to exist and its unique status as a refuge for Jews who are oppressed.

It is not "weaponized whataboutism," as Goldberg says, to point out that only the one Jewish state is subjected to the demand that it be dismantled. Any sane observer knows that a binational state replacing Israel would become yet another Arab thugocracy in short order - one that would have no equal rights for Jews, for gays, for women. The willful blindness to that certainty from the supposedly woke progressive crowd shows that their motivation is not equal rights, but the demolition of Jewish rights.

It is also not "weaponized whataboutism" to point out that not only is Israel singled out for being targeted for destruction on moral grounds, butat the same time Israel is more moral and liberal than nearly every nation on Earth, especially any nation that faces the hostility that Israel does from its neighbors. Israel is more tolerant of minorities than most European nations. Israel has spent more time and energy to minimize civilian casualties at war than any nation in history. Criticizing Israel isn't antisemitism, claiming that it has no right to exist based on its actions is. Only Israel is compared with some ideal than no nation has ever reached, and to claim it is illegitimate based on criteria that no other state on the planet is subjected to is indeed proof that the agenda has nothing to do with morality.

There is no escaping the fact that Israel is singled out not because it is a staunch ally of the US, as Goldberg implies - it is singled out because it is the Jewish state.

There is no other word for this than antisemitism.

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The six most hypocritical countries at the UN

Israeli diplomat David Roet described what happened at the UN yesterday in a series of tweets:

On any given day at the UN- 85 yes, 57 against and 33 abstentions means the resolution was accepted. It seems that when it comes to condemning terror group Hamas you “tilt the floor” by using a rarely used rule of procedure to change the rules and ask for a 2/3rd majority, Rule 83.
The vote to bend the rules exclusively in order to mute a large majority against Hamas passed by 1 vote (73-72 with. 26 abstentions). Not 1 person on UNGA floor was not aware that voting for the 2/3 rule or abstaining might mean that a terror organization wouldn’t be condemned.
In my 4 years at UN I witnessed numerous cases of extreme politicization and hypocrisy but rarely a similar case where rules of procedures are so clearly bent in order to prevent condemnation of a terror group.

Here is results on the procedural vote to require a 2/3 majority to condemn Hamas (green means require a 2/3 majority) and then the results on the actual vote to condemn Hamas (green means condemn Hamas.)

Any state that voted "yes" on both resolutions is hypocritical - signaling to the US that it pretends to care about terror, while signaling to the Palestinians that it really wants to ensure that their new best buddies Hamas doesn't get condemned.

Those hypocritical states?

If my eyeballing these two charts is correct, they are: Argentina, Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, Guatemala, and Japan.

On the positive side, here is a list of countries that are members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) who abstained instead of voting against the Hamas resolution (I'm not counting countries that were absent:)

Afghanistan, Burkina-Faso, Cameroon, Gambon, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Uganda.

Most of them are African nations, indicating that Israeli outreach to Africa is starting to pay diplomatic dividends - these African nations, although they abstained, value their relationship with Israel enough to not automatically follow the herd.

Albania is the only member of the OIC that both voted against the 2/3 majority rule and voted to condemn Hamas.

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From UNIFIL:

UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Major General Stefano Del Col, along with a technical team, today visited a location near Metulla in northern Israel where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has discovered a tunnel close to the Blue Line.

Based on the site inspection, UNIFIL can confirm the existence of a tunnel at the location.

Accordingly, UNIFIL is now engaged with the parties to pursue urgent follow-up action. It is very important to determine the full picture of this serious occurrence.

UNIFIL will communicate its preliminary findings to the appropriate authorities in Lebanon.

What is missing from this press release?

The word "Hezbollah," for one. These tunnels just magically appeared on their own.

In fact, the UNIFIL website has not mentioned the word "Hezbollah" or "Hizbollah" since the 2006 war!

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 mentions Hizbollah a number of times. But somehow UNIFIL, whose mandate partially comes from that resolution and which is tasked to keep all non-government armed groups out of southern Lebanon, cannot stomach mentioning the only such group's name.

For twelve years.

It has long been obvious that UNSC 1701 and UNIFIL have been a joke. Under the eyes of the very organization meant to limit its presence, Hezbollah has grown into what is almost certainly the most powerful non-government army in the world.

UNIFIL's refusal to even use the term "Hezbollah" is all you need to know about how useless the organization is.

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12/06 Links Pt2: Leftist Jewish Paper Suggests Blacks' Attacks On Brooklyn's Jews Are Because Of Gentrification; A Dangerous Future for J Street; Irish Senate approves bill criminalizing WB settlement activity

From Ian:

Leftist Jewish Paper Suggests Blacks' Attacks On Brooklyn's Jews Are Because Of Gentrification

On Wednesday, The Forward, a leftist paper that centers on Jewish issues, published an article revolving around recent attacks on Jews living in Brooklyn, suggesting that recent attacks on Jews by blacks arise from gentrification, and quotes a local black leader saying that attacks from blacks on Jews are precipitated not by anti-Semitism per se, but because blacks see Judaism as “a form of almost hyper-whiteness."

That statement came from Mark Winston Griffith, executive director of the Black Movement Center, who argued that blacks resented the gentrification of their neighborhoods driven by whites.

The Forward stated, "Jews are being targeted, say residents of these communities, by members of non-white ethnic groups who see Jews as symbols of gentrification in their neighborhoods." The Forward noted that of the six attacks on Jews in Brooklyn in the last six weeks, three have occurred in Crown Heights: “On Oct. 15, a teenager beat a Jewish man with a stick. On Nov. 19, a high school-age yeshiva student was 'sucker-punched' by an assailant. On Saturday, a man was punched without provocation on his way to synagogue. The last incident came amid four attacks on Jewish people — two of them on children — that occurred on the same weekend.”

In addition, a group of black teenagers loitering near a Brooklyn synagogue hurled a metal pole through the synagogue window on November 10; one congregant told The New York Post, “People were praying inside at the time. Everyone is upset already. So, this we don’t need this now.”

Last April, a black man attacked a 52-year-old Jewish man near the Kingsbrook Medical Center in Crown Heights. After that attack, State Senator Jesse Hamilton stated, “As a community, we must stand united in speaking out against these hateful, anti-Semitic crimes. These attacks are an assault on decency and an assault on our values; they are crimes that are especially cruel for violating the sanctity of a time for worship, peace, and reflection.”

Suspect in Brooklyn attack on Orthodox Jew arrested, charged with hate crime

New York police have arrested a man alleged to have punched an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man in the head and charged him with a hate crime.

In addition to the hate crime charge, Eric Gerena, 32, who was arrested on Tuesday, was charged with assault in the third degree.

The attack on Friday night targeted a Hasidic man who was wearing a streimel, a traditional fur hat, and talking with a group of similarly dressed men outside of a synagogue in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Gerena has a rap sheet, but it includes no prior hate crimes, police told the New York Post.

The man did not use any anti-Semitic slurs or racial epithets during the attack, which was captured on surveillance video.

Jewish Community Leaders in Brooklyn Thank NYPD for Swift Arrest of Antisemitic Hate Crime Suspect

Leaders of the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn on Wednesday welcomed the arrest by New York City police of a 32-year-old man who violently assaulted a Hasidic Jew in the borough’s Williamsburg district on Friday night.

The United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn issued a statement thanking the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force “for their prompt and appropriate response leading to the arrest of the individual suspected of carrying out the unprovoked hate-crime attack.”

Details of the arrest of the assailant — local resident Enrique Gerena — were released at a meeting on Tuesday between Jewish community leaders and top New York police officers and politicians. The group included the NYPD’s 90th Precinct Commanding Officer Capt. Timothy Skretch, NYPD Hate Crime Unit Commanding Officer Deputy Inspector Mark C. Molinari, Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, NYC Jewish Caucus Chair Councilman Chaim Deutsch and Pinny Ringel from NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Community Assistance Unit.

Friday night’s incident occurred as the victim was walking home from Shabbat services with his young son. When he stopped to greet a friend on Throop Avenue, Gerena allegedly ran up behind the victim, landing a brutal punch to the back of the head and instantly flooring him. The victim has since made a recovery.

Chanukah video night 5: The Maccabeats - I Have a Little Dreidel

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

“Ahed Tamimi is the Palestinian Rosa Parks” – Aljazeera headline for an article by David A. Love

One of the most illogical – indeed, embarrassingly stupid – ways to criticize Israel is to make an analogy between the “plight of the Palestinians” and the condition of blacks in America, to equate the “Palestinian struggle” to the US movement for civil rights.

And yet it has been highly effective among minorities and on college campuses. It has been used by intelligent and (sometimes) well-informed individuals like Condoleezza Rice, by dog-whistlers like Barack Obama, and by rabble-rousers like Jeremiah Wright. In the age of intersectionality, it is taken as a given that racism against blacks in the US and “oppression” of Palestinians by Israel are similar phenomena, and that opposition to one kind of oppression demands opposition to all.

Progressive ideology insists that racial strife in the US and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have similar root causes, like capitalism (somehow), colonialism, and racism (defined as racial animosity plus power). Progressives like to put the conflict under a microscope with a very narrow field of view, but by doing that they exclude the broader context in which the narrower struggle takes place. The Palestinian struggle is just a subset of the much larger Arab and Muslim struggle to rid the region of Jews and extinguish Jewish sovereignty. Israel has a degree of military power that has so far enabled her to defend herself, but the balance of power – in terms of numbers, financial clout, and even international support – clearly rests with the anti-Israel side.

There is certainly racial/ethnic animosity on both sides, but the hatred that drives Arabs to stab or run down random Jews is only rarely seen among Jews. Colonialism? Who is indigenous, the Jew whose ancestral culture, language, and religion developed thousands of years ago here in the Land of Israel, or the Palestinian whose ancestors most likely came to the land in the late 19^th or early 20^th century (even as late as 1946), who speaks Arabic like an Egyptian or Syrian, whose religion is the Islam brought to the region by Muslim colonialists from Arabia, and who didn’t even call themselves “Palestinians” until the late 1960s? If there is a “root cause” of the conflict, it is Arab rejectionism, deeply embedded in ideology and religion, and amplified by every input they receive from their media and educational system.

So now consider the black Americans, who were brought to the country as slaves in the most horrible fashion imaginable, and then when slavery was finally abolished, faced systematic oppression ranging from legal apartheid in the segregated South to multifaceted informal discrimination elsewhere. Unlike Palestinians, they are not part of a coordinated effort to ethnically cleanse white Americans from their homeland. Most of their families have been in America longer than many (most?) other Americans. Their struggle against discrimination has been mostly nonviolent.

Both struggles ostensibly aim to obtain human and civil rights for a particular minority group, and both struggles have been adopted by progressives as part of the intersectional framework that they live and breathe. That is the entirety of what they have in common. In reality, the aim of the Palestinian movement is the replacement of the Jewish state with an Arab state, and the ethnic cleansing of its Jewish population. And to a great extent progressive activists understand this, although many would not admit it even to themselves, and prefer to try to maintain the fiction that it is about rights.

The proposition that “all forms of oppression are interrelated” is on the face of it ridiculous, so the effort to convince people that it is true takes interesting forms. One of the most ugly arguments they present is that disproportionate police violence against black people is encouraged by exchange programs for American police officers to learn counterterrorism techniques from Israeli security agencies. Jonathan Tobin called it “an updated version of medieval blood libels.”

There is presently a campaign led by the anti-Israel group “Jewish Voice for Peace” called “Deadly Exchange” which has succeeded in getting several American police departments to cancel cooperative training in Israel. Tobin writes,

The conceit of Deadly Exchange is that such training is both inappropriate for Americans as well as indirectly responsible for outrages like “police murders,” “shoot to kill policies,” “extrajudicial executions” as well as “spying” and “deportation and detention.” The claim here is that Israeli police are a force that is primarily interested in repression and violence and those U.S. personnel that learn from them are more likely to kill Americans…

Treating Israel as a pariah state is both unjust and counter-productive to peace efforts. But by linking Israel and its supporters to disputes about American law enforcement, JVP is seeking to smear them as being ultimately responsible for the murders of African Americans. As crazy as that sounds, it should be eerily familiar to students of history. Blaming Jews for crimes, especially the murder of innocents, even though they had nothing to do with them, is a classic trope of anti-Semitism. In that sense, even though JVP presents itself as defending Jewish values, its campaign is merely an updated version of medieval blood libels, where Jews became the scapegoats for problems that were not of their making.

Blaming the Jews for everything has been a popular pastime since the days of the Black Death, when it was assumed that since no other explanation was forthcoming, the Jews must have been poisoning wells. In 2004, several politicians, retired military officers, and journalists asserted that Jews and Israel were responsible for pushing the Bush Administration into the Iraq War (although it is true that some of the Jewish so-called “neoconservative” officials and journalists supported the war, the primary responsibility has to fall on President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, none of whom are Jewish).

Even some politicians who are generally pro-Israel in their actions find it useful to attribute possibly unpopular decisions to considerations related to Israel. For example, President Trump said last week that “one reason [to keep US troops in the Middle East] is Israel.” Defending his decision not to punish Saudi Arabia for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, he said that “Israel would be in big trouble without Saudi Arabia.”

As I’m sure you know, Israel does not expect or want Americans to fight for her, although she is very happy to have an uninterrupted supply of weapons, and appreciates US diplomatic support in the UN. And Israel has no connection to the Khashoggi affair and wants none. President Trump’s decisions are made in line with American interests, not Israel’s. To say otherwise is “not helpful,” in diplomat-speak.

In case anyone needs a refresher, the Jews didn’t kill Jesus, we didn’t poison wells, we didn’t start all the wars of the 19^th century, we didn’t stab Germany in the back, we didn’t cause the Bolshevik Revolution, we didn’t poison Arafat, we didn’t knock down the Twin Towers, we didn’t make Bush invade Iraq, we didn’t create ISIS, the PLO is not the NAACP, we aren’t responsible for the actions of American police – and certainly not for the choices made by Donald Trump.

And Ahed Tamimi, who has publicly called for stabbings and suicide bombings (video), is decidedly no Rosa Parks.

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12/06 Links Pt1: Fatah: If Hamas is a terrorist organization, so are we; IDF finds 2nd Hezbollah tunnel inside Israel; calls on UN, Lebanon to destroy it; Oren: Thank you, Mr. President

From Ian:

PMW: Fatah: If Hamas is a terrorist organization, so are we

Today the UN General Assembly will be voting on a US-proposed resolution to condemn Hamas for firing rockets into Israel and inciting violence. The resolution demands that Hamas and other terrorist groups such as Islamic Jihad cease their "militant" activities, including the use of airborne incendiaries.

Despite the rift between Hamas and Abbas' Fatah, Fatah has come to the defense of Hamas. - In fact it has come to the defense of all Palestinian terrorists!

The resolution prompted one Fatah official to declare that if Hamas is considered a terrorist organization, then the entire Palestinian people is "involved in terrorism." Rather, he claimed, all the Palestinian factions are "national liberation movements":

Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki: "If Hamas, which is involved in resistance, is considered a terrorist movement, this means that all groups of the Palestinian people are involved in terrorism. This contradicts reality, as Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian factions are national liberation movements that are involved in resisting an Israeli occupation that is implementing terrorism against the members of our people... Hamas is part of us and we are part of it if a resolution is passed against it that defines its resistance as a crime. This is because Hamas - regardless of the internal and political differences of opinion - constitutes a state of resistance, whether we want it or not. It has a broad Palestinian presence, and we cannot abandon it to fight alone on the battlefield."
[Palestine Today, independent Palestinian news agency, Dec. 2, 2018]

Similarly reacting to the proposed UN resolution, Fatah Central Committee member Muhammad Shtayyeh denied all Palestinian terrorism. He stated that Abbas' Fatah Movement will not accept that "any Palestinian organization" be declared a terrorist organization:

Senior Fatah official: 'If Hamas... is considered a terrorist movement, this means that all groups of the Palestinian people are involved in terrorism."
Read more here: https://t.co/uyqvFniYgT pic.twitter.com/I0NBOxsB5R
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) December 6, 2018

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: No Difference Between Hamas and Fatah

It is supposedly fine for Abbas and his officials to condemn Hamas on a daily basis. It is supposedly not fine, however, for the US administration to condemn Hamas for its terrorist attacks against Israel. This is the logic of the Palestinian Authority, which has also been imposing financial and economic sanctions on the Gaza Strip in the past year. The sanctions include, among other things, the suspension of salaries to thousands of civil servants, cutting financial aid to needy families in the Gaza Strip, and refusing to pay for fuel and electricity supplied by Israel to the residents living under Hamas.

Abbas and Hamas have been working separately to thwart the US draft resolution at the UN General Assembly. Abbas has instructed his envoy to the UN to make an effort to foil the anti-Hamas resolution, while Hamas leaders have been urging Arab and Muslim leaders and governments to help thwart the US initiative.

"Despite all our differences with Hamas, we are categorically opposed to the American and Israeli attempt to label Hamas a terrorist group," explained Osama Qawassmeh, a senior Fatah official. We will fight to thwart the US resolution."

Another senior Fatah official, Abbas Zaki, was even more adamant in his defense of Hamas. "Hamas belongs to us and we belong to Hamas," he said. "If Hamas, which is practicing resistance, is considered a terrorist organization, this would mean that all Palestinians are practicing terrorism. Hamas, like all Palestinian factions, is a national liberation movement."

Abbas and Fatah are defending Hamas not out of love for Hamas, but because they despise the Trump administration to the extent that they are willing to go to bat for their arch-rivals in Hamas. Judging from the statements of some of Abbas's top officials, it is nevertheless clear that they fear that a condemnation of Hamas would pave the way for similar moves against other Palestinian factions, including the Palestinian president's own Fatah.

As Palestinian political analyst Emad Omar put it, "The proposed US resolution is harmful to the Palestinians' right of resistance. As president of the Palestinians, Abbas is forced to defend Hamas and any other Palestinian faction."

Hamas, for its part, has expressed gratitude to Abbas and Fatah for their strong opposition to the US-sponsored draft resolution.

Does all this mean that Fatah and Hamas have agreed to patch up their differences and open a new page in their relations? The answer, of course, is no. This is obviously a short-lived honeymoon that will end the day after the UN General Assembly vote on the anti-Hamas resolution. Abbas wants to score points on the Palestinian street by showing that he is capable of challenging the US administration at the UN. For now, Abbas is prepared to swallow the bitter pill of defending Hamas. The morning after the vote, Abbas will wake up to the realization that Hamas was a strange bedfellow indeed.

IDF finds 2nd Hezbollah tunnel inside Israel; calls on UN, Lebanon to destroy it

The Israeli military on Thursday located a second Hezbollah cross-border attack tunnel today in the western Galilee, after uncovering an underground passage two days earlier in the eastern part of the region, the army said.

The tunnel originated in the Lebanese village of Ramyeh underneath a number of homes and crossed into Israeli territory near the village of Zarit, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Israel launched its operation to find and destroy Hezbollah tunnels — called Northern Shield — late Monday night, announcing it publicly the next morning.

The first tunnel was discovered south of the Israeli village of Metulla in the northern tip of the Galilee panhandle.

The Israeli military said it believes the tunnels were meant to be used by Hezbollah as a surprise component of an opening salvo in a future war, alongside the mass infiltration of operatives above ground and the launching of rockets, missiles and mortar shells at northern Israel.

A senior Israeli official on Thursday said the tunnels discovered inside Israel were large enough to be used by “entire battalions” to enter Israeli territory in order to “carry out killing sprees and kidnappings and to capture Israeli towns and villages.”

Former Jordanian prime minister says that Jews are working to prepare for the dreaded "Yellow Cow"

Former Jordanian prime minister Taher al-Masri claimed in a speech this week that Israeli plans to dominate the region all started in a conference in 1879.

The First Zionist Congress occurred in 1897, but in this fictional conference that al-Masri is discussing, the "Zionists" set out their goals: "The goal is to create a Jewish state with Jerusalem as its capital, and to build the Temple to be a symbol of the Jewish state. They are now roaming around and under Al Aqsa to prepare the temple for what they call the Yellow Cow."

It turns out that there is an Islamic legend about Moses and a yellow cow - not the red heifer that is part of the Temple service. In this legend Moses requires a yellow cow to slaughter and put its tongue on a dead man to solve a murder case, and the only yellow cow available is from a righteous family who finally agree to sell it for the price of its size in gold.

Al Masri is not too bright.

He went on to say, "The Zionists also decided the Jewish state law, which means that the historic land of Palestine is a state of Jews and its inhabitants are Jews only, and others are strangers and can be deported by the Minister of Interior of Israel at any time. All the Palestinians on the historic land of Palestine, numbering about 6 million people, can be deported. According to the Israelis, the program of deporting Palestinians from the historic land of Palestine is a matter of 100 years, and they think and plan for it and they will get there but when no one knows."

Al Masri went on to claim that the Israelis use several tools to complete their plans, including creating difficult economic and social conditions in the region, especially in Palestine and Jordan, and then offering solutions to impose their will on the region.

The former prime minister also complained that during his travels in Muslim and Western capitals, no one is following up on the Palestinian issue and Jerusalem besides King Abdullah II .

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Forget intersectionality - being anti-Israel is a litmus test for true "progressives". Liberal Zionists seem lost.

A recent Intercept article about Rashida Tlaib included some interesting quotes from Rebecca Vilkomerson, the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Palestinian rights advocates also say that Tlaib’s willingness to buck the party line on Israel reflects a restive Democratic base that supports tougher action against Israeli settlements and its military occupation. A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that only a quarter of American liberals think of Israel as an ally — a number down from the 36 percent of liberals who viewed Israel as an ally in 2017.

“Palestinian rights are being integrated into the broader progressive agenda. It’s becoming almost standard that if you support single-payer health care and climate justice, you’ll support Palestinian rights,” said Rebecca Vilkomerson, the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

“The base has shifted and the leadership is going to have to shift sooner than they think,” said Vilkomerson. “The fight isn’t over yet. But that era of bipartisan unity in support of Israel really seems to be over.”

JVP isn't saying merely that Palestinians are one of the oppressed peoples who must be lumped in with gays, women, people of color and other categories of intersectional thinking.

Vilkomerson, who clearly equates being pro-Palestinian with being anti-Israel (see last paragraph,) is saying that hating Israel is quickly becoming a litmus test for those who want to truly be considered "progressive." As we've seen in other contexts, if you are openly Zionist, you are not welcome to participate in other "progressive" events and venues, and your ability to be considered progressive altogether is questioned.

The irony is that "progressives" want to support the creation of a Palestinian state that would be misogynist, anti-abortion, anti-gay, antisemitic, with laws based on a religion, and indifferent or hostile to every other liberal cause. Furthermore, they want this state to replace an Israel where women and minorities reach the highest levels of government, where gay rights and abortion policies are as liberal as most Western European nations, where there is universal health care, a state that does more to help the environment especially in terms of water management than any other nation you can name.

What, exactly, makes being pro-Palestinian a progressive position?

Liberal Zionists need to get rid of their ambivalence about some Israeli policies and point out that the only consistent position for true progressives is to embrace Israel and to reject yet another Arab state where women and minorities and LGBTs are frightened of their own leaders.

Yet even prominent pro-Israel liberals have no idea how to push Zionism as a liberal ideal - an oppressed people throwing off millennia of their land being controlled by a series of colonialists.

Enthusiasm for U.S. support for Israel is dying out among young Americans and the two countries must gin up a high-powered educational campaign to restore it, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer told a crowd of Israel supporters Sunday.

“We need a campaign aimed particularly at the young, using the media they care about and the language they use,” Schumer said, to convince them that “Israel’s very existence is still precarious.”

Why would that be the focus of a pro-Israel campaign? It wouldn't resonate with anyone. When the other side says "from the river to the sea" why should young liberals care?

What needs to be done is to show, in black and white, how Israel embraces progressive ideals at least as much as most Western nations do, and how a Palestinian state is opposed to every single major liberal cause.

Those are literally the only facts that should matter to those who profess to be progressive. And their decision to spurn progressive ideals for a regressive state indicates that liberal positions is not what makes them anti-Israel - but it is old fashioned antisemitism.

Also, liberal Jews need to stop apologizing for the parts of Israel that they don't like. There are plenty of Zionists in Israel who are liberal and disagree strongly with some Israeli policies, and yet they manage to get their points across about the fundamental justice of Zionism. One of the awardees at this year's Hasby Awards in Israel was Nurit Baytch, who does an amazing job defending Israel on Twitter - and until she gave her speech accepting the award, I had no idea she was a member of Israel's far-left Meretz!

American and European liberals need people who can unflinchingly defend Israel from a progressive, liberal viewpoint like Nurit does.

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Mohammed Younis Al -Abbadi writes in Ammon News about the upcoming centennial of the founding of Jordan (Transjordan) in 1921:

On the eve of the celebration of the centennial of the state that the Jordanians built with loyalty, work and blood, we need to highlight the documents of pride that accompanied this extended sacrifice and a fulfillment of the ideals we have secured.

The entire article discusses only a single historic Jordanian document, apparently the most important document in Jordanian history:

The document of the surrender of the Haganah to the Arab Army, which recounts part of our army's victories, is a document that dates back to the 1948 war.

The article says:

"Upon the request of the Jews of Old Jerusalem to surrender, the first group (ie the Arab army ) presented the conditions, and the second group accepted them."

The Arab army imposed five conditions on the Haganah gang in Jerusalem: surrendering weapons and handing them over, and taking all male combatants prisoner of war.

Elderly men, women and children and those with serious wounds can exit to the Jewish neighborhoods of New Jerusalem via the Red Cross. The Arab Army pledged to protect the lives of all surrendering Jews.

The fifth point in the document stated: "The Arab army occupies the Jewish neighborhoods in Old Jerusalem."

The conditions of the document, especially those relating to the humanitarian aspects, where the elderly men, women and children are allowed to leave via the Red Cross show us to have a high moral and humanitarian character.

Yes, so moral that they eagerly destroyed over 50 synagogues within a few weeks of the surrender.

Obviously this is only one person's opinion, but the idea that the surrender of Jews who were cut off from the rest of Israel in 1948 represents the most important moment in Jordanian history betrays a bit of an obsession. Jordan's victory over a few hundred Jews - which was reversed 19 years later - is considered, today, the perhaps biggest event in Jordanian history.

Palestinians have always defined themselves in terms of Israel. Apparently, some Jordanians do as well.

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12/05 Links Pt2: What PBS got right — and so wrong — about the Jews of Iran; France gives human rights award to BDS organization with terror ties; Dubai’s Jewish community steps hesitantly out of the shadows

From Ian:

From Jerusalem, Marc Lamont Hill’s ‘river to the sea’ comments hit too close to home

Unfortunately, if you were to base your understanding of why CNN fired Hill on the international media coverage of the row, and tweets by Hill’s defenders, you’d come away with the false impression that he was let go merely for criticising Israel and calling for a “free Palestine.”

In fact, he was fired because his speech included a call for a future Palestinian state “from the river to the sea,” and a thinly veiled justification for Palestinian terror.

Regarding the "river to the sea" comments, Hill denied that it was a call for Israel's destruction.

However, there is simply no question that, among Western pro-Palestinian activists and -- especially -- terror groups like Hamas, calling for a future Palestine “from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea” is code for the rejection of the continued existence of a Jewish state within any borders. In fact, Hill himself, in a recent tweet, acknowledged that he holds this view.

Hill’s support for the Palestinian right to engage in terrorism seems clear in several passages from his speech, including his evocation of the American slave revolts, which he described as equally important to attaining freedom as non-violent methods, adding that “true solidarity” with the Palestinians “must allow them the same range of opportunity.” He also spoke of the alleged “right of an occupied people to defend themselves,” and rejected what he termed the “narrow politics that shames Palestinians” for engaging in this kind of “resistance.”

Moreover, it’s important to note that Hill’s apparent support for violence isn’t a one-off. He has previously advocated on behalf of convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh, appeared to justify the kidnapping and murder in 2014 of three Israeli teens by Palestinian terrorists, and, in 2017, labeled the call for Palestinians to reject hatred and terrorism “offensive and counterproductive.”

Temple University Reviewing Whether Marc Lamont Hill Can Be Reprimanded After Israel Remarks, Board Chair Says

Temple University is determining whether it can reprimand Marc Lamont Hill, a faculty member whose contract as a CNN commentator ended after he made comments denounced as antisemitic.

Hill, a tenured professor of media studies and production, came under fire from Jewish groups after speaking at the United Nations last Wednesday, where he endorsed the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel in pursuit of “a free Palestine from the river to the sea” — a call typically used by Arab nationalist and Islamist groups to advocate for the establishment of a Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, in place of Israel. The BDS campaign itself is often criticized for rejecting the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and denying Jewish indigenity to the Levant.

In his speech, Hill also did not rule out violence as a means of Palestinian “resistance,” suggesting that as “black resistance to American apartheid did not come purely through Gandi and nonviolence … we must allow the Palestinian people the same range of opportunity and political possibility.”

His comments were quickly condemned by local and national Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Zionist Organization of America, National Council of Young Israel and Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, with the latter rebuking Hill’s remarks as “anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.”

Jews from Islamic countries are migrants of the clash of civilizations

Islam decolonized itself with an anti-Semitic ethnic cleansing whose very existence has been denied by the West. These Jews had been confiscated of everything: wealth totalling hundreds of billions of dollars. they were prevented from practicing religion, they were kicked out of their homes, they were massacred in the streets, they were robbed also of their own history.

And they became invisible.

But their sufferings didn't come to an end with their flight. In France it continues today. Most French Jews, in fact, are the sons and the grandsons of those who fled the Arab world: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt. And these Jews are targeted again by the Islamists.

“I'm scared for the future of my baby here”, say the French Jews in a chilling series that appeared on CNN. Nathaniel Azoulay, a boy from Paris attacked with a saw, tells his story: “He saw the kippah”. Azoulay and his brother started running as fast as possible. “He started to launch anti-Semitic insults, 'f*** Jew, you will die on this street'. He hit my brother with the saw. He shouted to the others: 'Let's beat the Jews, come, let's hit them'. I cut my fingers with the saw”.

Yonatan Arfi, vice president of Jewish communities, speaks of “hundreds of attacks” like this from 2000 to today.

Islamicized France, outside the Macrononian bubble, can become a war zone for the Jews, exactly as it was in Cairo, Marrakesh, Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo and Beirut at the time of the Jewish Nakba, the real one.

What PBS got right — and so wrong — about the Jews of Iran

In fact, the discrimination goes considerably beyond this. Under Iran’s sharia law code, different penalties are laid out for Muslims and non-Muslims for a variety of violations, almost always disfavoring the non-Muslims. The government also insists that each of the Tehran Jewish community’s five schools must be run by a Muslim principal — a requirement that the head of the Jewish community bluntly, and courageously, condemned on the record as “insulting” in my 2015 interview with him. If a Jew murders a Muslim, the proscribed penalty is death. If a Muslim murders a Jew, the payment of blood money is an option.

To be sure Jews, along with Christians and Zoroastrians, are recognized as “people of the book” in the Islamic Republic, with a legitimate place as tolerated minorities in Muslim society. The physical security of Jews as a community in Iran is even buttressed by a religious fatwa forbidding harm to the community that was issued by the Islamic Republic’s founding leader, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, soon after he took power. But taken in total, the legal and social discrimination under which Iran’s Jews (and Christians and Zoroastrians) live leave them as basically well protected second-class citizens.

For Jews, the impact of these conditions is reflected in a basic statistic found nowhere in the PBS report. Before the 1979 revolution, 80,000 to 100,000 Jews lived in Iran. Today, only 9,000 Jews live there, according to census figures, where Iranians are obliged to list their religion. Those numbers make a big statement about what most Iranian Jews think about living under the conditions “News Hour” describes more or less accurately, if incompletely.

Much of the emigration took place in the years immediately after the revolution, when the ability of Jews to make reasonable lives for themselves was far less clear. Just months after the installation of Khomeini’s first post-revolution government, Iran’s execution of one of the community’s major leaders and leading businessmen, Habib Elghanian, for “contacts with Israel and Zionism” shocked many Jews into flight. The charge was one that could be applied easily to many Iranian Jews. To this day Iranian Jews, many of whom have family in Israel, must be discreet about those ties. But today, the government often looks the other way when Iranian Jews quietly visit Israel via third countries. (h/t Zvi)

Chanukah video night 4 - 30 Chanukah puns in 60 seconds + Old City Chanukah lightshow

And this is VERY cool:

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Love him or hate him, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is just a ball of charisma. The force of his personality, when you share a space with him, is like a full frontal assault. It hits you like that.

At last week’s Jewish Media Summit, I had the honor of what was my second audience with Netanyahu. The first was also during a Jewish Media Summit, the first ever held in Israel. That was some years ago, yet I still remember sitting in the front row and feeling as though he were speaking only to me, a private audience. He seemed to gaze into my eyes as he spoke, though I knew it wasn’t possible. Apparently, he’s just that good.

And then there was the phone call.

It was an election year and Netanyahu was calling random voters to chat them up and persuade them to give him the vote. But he did it for a couple of days before it made it into the news, so that I was clueless when my landline rang. I went to the phone, expecting it to be a charity asking for a donation or perhaps a survey. Actual humans don’t use landlines anymore. If it’s someone I know, they call my cell.

So anyway, I pick up only to hear Bibi say, “Hello.”
“Goodbye,” I said, hanging up, thinking: Election. Robocall.

And then, of course, the next day I find out it probably really WAS Bibi and I’d had the chance to kvetch to my heart’s content and hash it out with him. Only I’d blown it.

Bummer.

So there I was at the Knesset last week when the head of the Government Press Office, Nitzan Chen, told us that Bibi would try to answer as many questions as we had, as soon as he arrived, and he was due to arrive any minute. I wasn’t going to squander another opportunity, so I began to think what I would ask him. I wrote it all down on my yellow lined notepad to get my questions into tip-top form. I wasn’t going to hem and haw, or make a speech. I was going to articulate the perfect question.

The problem was that I came up with three questions and couldn’t decide between them. Which one should I choose, I agonized. Most controversial? Least controversial?

As it turns out, my need to choose was soon moot. All of us in that room were the media, in one form or another. So we all had our hands shooting up the minute Bibi paused to take a breath. But rather than let Bibi choose whom he’d call on to ask a question, Chen handpicked those he favored, which meant: foreign media.

After all, this whole summit was really about impressing the foreign media, wooing them, wining and dining them and making them think that Israel’s a wonderful place. I was there almost by accident, a token Israeli.

It had been a wonderful week and this was the final day. I’d made amazing contacts. And met Daled Amos, for instance.

When Daled Amos met Judean Rose

But it seems that Bibi and I are destined to be like two ships passing in the night. I would not be chosen to ask any of my questions that afternoon. Not that it matters. It’s easy enough to guess how he would have answered them.

Which is why I decided I’d share my carefully crafted questions here (they should go to waste?) and tell you how I think Bibi would have responded.

1) How can you have transparency when so much is unknown to the public? How can we be informed citizens and voters? We are being asked to “trust.” How can we even claim to be a democracy?

What Bibi would have said: Israel has a robust democracy. But of course, every country’s leadership has access to important intelligence that the average joe does not have and uses it to protect its citizens. The voters put their trust in my leadership and this is well warranted by dint of my experience in office and by my actions at the helm of this great country which have kept the people both safe and prosperous.

2) Who can replace you when your time is over? Are you grooming/mentoring younger MKs for this purpose?

What Bibi would have said: Apparently you’ve come to bury, not to praise me! But don’t kill me off just yet (pause for laughter). (Turns serious) We have several good and capable people in the Likud party any number of whom could be depended upon for leadership should the need arise. The people of Israel are in good hands.

3) “Annexation.” Isn’t it unnecessary? Can’t we, in theory, declare sovereignty and end the state of martial law in Judea and Samaria? We settlers feel marginalized, even demonized. This lack of support by the Likud, which is supposed to be the Greater Israel party, leaves us feeling abandoned. There is total lawlessness on our roads, because traffic laws are not enforced. We pay taxes, but it’s taxation without representation. Our sons serve in the Israeli army, but we are not even “in Israel.”

What Bibi would have said: No one has a greater affection for and understanding of the settlers and their sacrifice for all of us by securing our inheritance, our ancestral lands. But the situation is complex and tensions must be taken into account both with local actors and those abroad. Relations with Europe, the UN, and the U.S. are just some of the factors we must take into account in determining our policy in Judea and Samaria, and so we must tread carefully and not make any hasty decisions.

While I didn’t get to ask my questions—once again having missed out on an opportunity to confront Bibi, when I thought about it after the fact, I realized I hadn’t missed out on anything at all. As you can see from the little exercise above, it’s easy to figure out what Bibi, the slick and accomplished politician, might have answered. There would have been no great revelations on this or any other day.

And at least I didn’t embarrass myself, which is more than I can say for the female blogger who chased after the prime minister’s entourage as he left the room, crying, “Bibi, I LOVE YOU. I am behind you always! AM YISRAEL CHAI!”

So. Embarrassing.

But like I said, he’s got this magnetic charm. And some of us are more susceptible than others.

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Netanyahu Critics Say New Corruption Probe Just To Distract From Old Corruption Probes (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Jerusalem, December 5 - Political opponents and rivals of Israel's prime minister accused him today of orchestrating the latest round of bribery and breach of trust allegations against himself and his wife in order to divert attention from the previous episodes in which the prime minister or his wife stand accused of bribery, breach of trust, and other abuses of power.

Police officials recommended indictment of Binyamin and Sara Netanyahu this week on bribery charges stemming from a multi-year investigation, alongside several other ongoing probes. Senior figures in the political Opposition, and some right-wing rivals of the premier, called attention today to what they termed suspicious timing of the announcement, coming as it does on the heels of other news involving alleged Netanyahu corruption, and suggesting the possibility that the police recommendation plays a part in a longtime Netanyahu strategy to distract from his corruption with other charges of corruption.

The decision whether to indict the prime minister rests with the Attorney General, who is expected to issue a decision in the next several months.

"I urge the public and the media not be taken in by this subterfuge," admonished MK Avi Gabbay, current head of Labor, the largest Opposition party. "We must not lose focus on Bibi's unsuitability for the office of prime minister, as demonstrated by his constant involvement in unsavory, and apparently illegal, activities, which he is attempting to obscure with other stories demonstrating his unsuitability for the office of prime minister." Gabbay called for Netanyahu's immediate resignation.

Gabbay's ally MK Tzipi Livni, chief of the HaTnuah Party and Gabbay's partner at the head of the Zionist Union faction in the Knesset, laid some blame at the media's feet. "It's irresponsible to cover these new corruption developments so intensively when there are so many older ones we haven't milked for all their political worth yet," she stated. "Netanyahu is basically exploiting the press's tendency to glom onto the most recent thing, which sometimes has its benefits, but in this case doesn't allow the public to really absorb to the fullest extent how corrupt Bibi is before getting sidetracked by other evidence of how corrupt Bibi is. A little journalistic responsibility, please."

Sources close to Netanyahu Likud rival Gidon Saar, who declined to be identified by name, voiced a different concern. "This is all Bibi getting attention, when you come down do it," warned one. "I think it's time we impose some socialism on the system, namely by assigning a certain level of coverage to which every aspiring elected official is entitled, and that way you don't have one guy hogging it all - at least until our guy gets into power and does the hogging, which would be ok because it's not Bibi."

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