To my knowledge, on Monday I was the first to write in English about reports that the few remaining Jews in Kharif, Yemen were being imprisoned and being forced to sign over their property to the Shiite Houthi group with the intention of expelling them.
The report has yet to be confirmed by any official source, leaving questions about the report’s validity. The fate of the Jews in Yemen if the report is true is uncertain.
When asked by The Jerusalem Post about the matter, Israel's Foreign Ministry said it had been queried about the report many times and it appears to be false.
World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder responded to the reports, saying, “Though the horrific reports we are reading about the persecution of Yemeni Jews are unconfirmed, the international community has a responsibility to investigate the situation and to protect this vulnerable population.”
There appears to be at least partial confirmation from Asharq al-Awsat, a news outlet with a pretty good reputation. it reports:
With tears in their eyes, a Jewish Yemeni left Yemen this week and arrived in one of the Arab capitals, following the instructions of the Houthi militia, which gave the head of the family a choice between staying in prison or leaving his hometown in Amran Governorate (north of Sanaa). The presence of the Jewish community there is nearing its disappearance from this region that has historically represented one of the most important centers of their presence in Yemen.
Asharq Al-Awsat traced the journey of suffering incurred by the Saeed Al-Na’ati family since the beginning of this year, as he was harassed, abused and pursued, before he was imprisoned for more than a month and then told to either leave the Houthi militia-controlled areas, or to remain in prison.
The Jewish community currently does not exceed 33 persons of both sexes. Only five of them live in the Kharif area of Amran governorate and the Arhab district of Sana'a governorate, as the Houthi gunmen intentionally harass the residents of the new market area in Amran governorate, which was a mostly Jewish area before the emergence of the Houthis, who compel them to emigrate and buy their homes and properties cheaply so that there is no presence of the followers of the Jewish religion in their areas.
Last May, the Houthi militia arrested a Jew named Youssef and also imprisoned Sa`id al-Na`ti. After a month and a half of prison as his family pleaded with tribal elders, al-Na`ti was released after he signed an pledge to sell his house and leave the country. This month, the group allowed him to sell some of his belongings and household items, while his mother and three daughters left for the city of Aden before they reached one of the Arab capitals in search of a new homeland.
Members of the sect told Al-Sharq al-Awsat that Al-A’ati had been forced with his family to leave while they were crying, and they did not want to leave their country. One of them said: “There is nothing left in Imran except for an old woman who takes care of her brother who lost his mind, while there are three others in the district of Arhab.”
The sources talked about how the family told the Houthis that they might be prevented from passing through the checkpoints scattered along the road leading to the temporary capital of Aden, but the Houthis answered them, saying, "Travel, and nothing should concern you. We will give you a pass at all points, and the most important thing is that you leave."
Until before the Houthis invaded Amran Governorate, the "New Market" area was like a closed neighborhood, most of whom were Jews who worked in iron workshops, carpentry and car repair,where they coexisted with the Arab population. With the emergence of the sectarian organization of the Houthis in the governorate of Saada in mid-2004, systematic targeting of Jews began, and Yemen saw the first wave of forced internal displacement of the followers of this religion, according to one of its members.
He added: “When the Houthis stormed the Al Salem area they sent a written warning to the Jews to leave the province; the attacks and targeting continued, and the number of these people dwindled from more than five thousand to today it is slightly more than 30 people, most of whom reside in a city owned by the Ministry of Defense near the American embassy in Sana'a.”
This appears to be an accurate account of at least one family of at least 5 people – perhaps 15% of the remaining Jews in Yemen.
There is reason to believe that the present government of Israel is not only bloated and venal, but that it is staggeringly incompetent.
The Prime Minister acts almost exclusively to protect himself, and not on behalf of the country. The evidence for this is the absurdly fat and expensive “unity” (one has to laugh) government with its 35 ministers and 8 deputy ministers. This structure exists so that Binyamin Netanyahu can continue to be Prime Minister. There is no other reason.
There are countless difficult issues facing the government, but here are three major ones. In each case, the government has – through laziness or indecision, and by its members seeking political advantage for themselves, failed to deal with them. They are:
The Corona crisis. The numbers of newly diagnosed cases, the percentage of positive test results, and the number of seriously ill are all rising precipitously. The recommendations of the Health Ministry are passed through a political filter so that various constituencies are protected from inconvenience. The 35-minister government has created a 20-member “Corona Cabinet,” supposedly to make quick decisions. But there is also a Knesset Corona Committee which needs to approve them.
The Ministry is trying to find someone who will accept the job as “project manager” [the Hebrew word is “projector”] for the fight against the disease. But so far, nobody has agreed to take the job, because they don’t believe that they will be given the necessary authority. Even the Health Minister, Yuli Edelstein, has complained that the recommendations of his ministry are “gnawed away” by the politicians.
The objective that everyone pays lip service to is to stop the spread of the disease without killing the economy. So far, the effect of the government’s actions has been to not stop the disease, although they have done an effective job of crushing the economy.
The extension of sovereignty. The offer of American support for the extension of civil law to the Jordan Valley and to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria was an unprecedented opportunity for Israel. The window, however, is closing every day. PM Netanyahu first promised that he would act almost immediately after the election; then he said it would be at some point after 1 July. Now it seems that it has receded to an undetermined future date. The main reason seems to be the lack of agreement in the “unity” government. If this does not occur before the pre-election period in the US, it will probably be on ice until the next Republican administration (if we are lucky).
The Iranian threat. This is probably the most serious of all, even more than the epidemic. As everyone knows, Iran has been developing a murderous ring of proxy militias armed with what Maj. Gen. [res.] Yitzhak Brik estimates as 200,000 rockets and missiles in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Gaza. Several hundred of them may also have already been converted to precision-guided missiles that can strike within a few meters of a selected target. Hezbollah also has been training ground forces to invade Israel and capture civilian towns near the border.
The scenario of accurate missiles hitting our runways, refineries and chemical plants, power stations, desalination plants, military headquarters, nuclear reactors, cities – I could go on – is frightening, especially since such an attack could cripple our ability to retaliate. For this reason, the IDF has been carrying out the so-called “War Between the Wars,” a campaign of attacks on Iranian bases and supply lines in Syria and Iraq, to prevent the transfer of equipment to add precision guidance to the inaccurate rockets and missiles that make up their arsenal. Possibly some of the recent mysterious explosions in Iran are also part of the campaign to pull Iran’s teeth (including nuclear ones) before the outbreak of hostilities.
But no matter how hard we try, we can’t totally prevent the upgrading of Hezbollah’s weapons; we can only slow it down. We can bomb truck convoys in Syria, but (at least as far as I know) we have not dared to shoot down Iranian civil aircraft flying to Lebanon. Brik calls Israel’s campaign “a drop in the ocean.”
We have various missile defense systems in place, but they are limited. We do not have the ability to defend against a sustained mass attack, even with inaccurate rockets, from Hezbollah, which could launch thousands of rockets a day. Precision-guided missiles tip the balance even more in the direction of our enemies.
Brik argues persuasively that the fact that we are able to pursue the “War Between the Wars” with very little retaliation from Iran is not an indication of strength, but rather a danger sign. Iran, he says, is displaying restraint so as not to provoke a larger conflict until they are ready. Meanwhile, every day, more of their weapons are fitted with precision guidance systems. Such a conventional attack would not justify a nuclear response; and in any event, most of the missiles would be coming from Lebanon, and even vaporizing Tehran wouldn’t stop them. The IDF, Brik believes, has not sufficiently upgraded either its offensive or defensive capabilities to counter such an attack. And if Iran succeeds in obtaining its own nukes (which it might even buy from another rogue regime), then Israel would be deterred from using its nuclear option. Brik has been criticizing the IDF’s level of preparedness for some time, and the response has always been “don’t worry, we have it covered.” I am not so sure.
The citizens of Israel have an implicit contract with its government: we pay heavy taxes and allow the government to control many aspects of our lives. In return, it protects us against attacks from outside and responds to natural disasters like epidemics. We accept a certain amount of waste and even graft, because the alternative of anarchy would be far worse. But the feeding frenzy of the politicians that accompanied the formation of the “unity” government, the gobbling up of salaries, offices, staffs, cars, and more by the unnecessary ministers, as well as the personal greed shown by the Prime Minister, has brought us to a historic moral nadir. Combined with the fumbling of the major issues facing the state, it’s clear that fundamental change is needed.
But what change, and how, and – importantly – who?
I don’t have the answers. But neither do the morons who rioted in front of the PM’s residence in Jerusalem last night and threw eggs (and worse) at the police. I am sure that any cure they would propose would be worse than the disease.
The last decade has seen an explosion of attacks on the memory of the Holocaust. This expresses itself in many ways, including the casting of doubt on the Holocaust’s uniqueness. This version was aired in recent public debates in Germany and can also be found in historical manipulations by academic scholars.
The memory of the Holocaust has been under assault for decades from all sides: the extreme right, the extreme left, and parts of the Islamic world. A common tactic is to assert that the Holocaust was not unique, contrary to the Jewish claim.
Looking at the question on a purely empirical basis, the Holocaust was unambiguously a unique event. While some elements are comparable to other genocides, its combined characteristics are not. Several criteria collectively make the Holocaust an unprecedented event: the totality of the targeting (all Jews everywhere), its priority (all branches of the German state were involved in the effort), its industrial character, and its impracticality (instead of exploiting Jews for labor purposes, they were killed.)
Leading Holocaust philosopher Emil L. Fackenheim noted that the Armenian genocide was confined to the Turkish Empire. And even within that empire, not all Armenians there were targeted—for instance, those living in Jerusalem were spared. Geographical confinement also applies to the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sudan.
As Fackenheim pointed out, the Nazis, by contrast, set out to exterminate every last Jew on the face of the earth. He said that while the Holocaust does belong to the species “genocide,” the planned and largely executed borderless extermination of the Jews during the Holocaust is without precedent and, thus far at least, without sequel. It is thus entirely appropriate to call it “unique.”
So “Left” and “Right” mean only one thing in the Israeli context: where you stand on relinquishing territory in the Land of Israel, particular regarding the territories of Judea & Samaria (the mountainous regions overlooking the coastal plain) and the Jordan Valley, liberated from Jordan’s 19-year illegal occupation (1949-1967) in Israel’s 6-Day War of defense of June 1967.
Radical Leftists promote immediate and unilateral, unconditional withdrawal from what they term “occupied” territories (misrepresenting the Geneva Convention of 1949); the less extreme Left supports a negotiated withdrawal from most of these disputed territories. Both support – with more or less enthusiasm – the idea of the establishment of a “Palestinian” state in those territories.
Extreme Rightists claim all of the biblical Land of Israel and historical Mandatory Palestine as Israel’s patrimony, based on various international legal instruments like the San Remo treaty, and reject any notion of an Israeli withdrawal; they dismiss a “Palestinian” identity separate from wider Arab nationalism, oppose vigorously the idea of a Palestinian state, and would like to see most Arabs who identify as Palestinian move to neighboring Arab states. The less radical Right grudgingly acknowledges a “Palestinian” movement but insists this can be accommodated within existing nation-states in the region, promoting various forms of autonomy, and focuses on Israel’s security needs and the belligerence of the Arab and Palestinian leadership, noting the unlikelihood of any real peace possibilities in the near future.
The middle ground – incorporating various aspects of the more restrained concepts of both the Right and Left in Israel – is actually the ‘high ground’ held by a majority of Israelis, proven in polls and at the ballot box over the past few decades. This is what I call the moderate Center in Israel, and it is far more powerful, and widespread, than most people realize – not least as it doesn’t get the headlines with pithy media phrases like “Peace Now” and “Annexation”, or “Destroy the terrorists” and “Disengagement” and the like. Ironically but significantly, every government and prime minister of Israel, with perhaps the exception of Ehud Barak in 1999-2000, has followed the policy lines of this centrist trend – even ‘Leftists’ like Shimon Peres (who used conservative economic policies to save Israel’s economy in the ‘80s) and ‘Rightists’ like Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon (who were the only Israeli prime ministers to withdraw from territories with Israeli civilian communities living in them).
Where is the ‘Center’ marked? For English speakers’ reference, Rabbi Daniel Gordis is right there, as are journalists/commentators like Yossi Klein Halevi and Haviv Rettig Gur, and historian Gil Troy; former minister and human rights activist Natan Sharansky and former Labor party MK Einat Wilf; and many of the politicians and thinkers and supporters of Blue & White (Benny Gantz, and Moshe Yaalon, less so Lapid’s Yesh Atid), Likud (which has also right-wingers of course in it), and Labor (which has also left-wingers, mostly in fact, of course).
But forget the political parties and labels: read anything by Amotz Asa El (he writes a column in the JPost called “Middle Israel”)… or for that matter anything I write. 🙂 There are Centrists in almost every Israeli political party and movement, except the hard Left and the hard Right, both of which are peripheral in Israeli society though they receive substantial press coverage. Even most of the 1.4 million Arab Israelis, some 20% of Israel’s population, can be included, perhaps ironically, in this category (though for historical, social, religious and cultural reasons many of them unfortunately vote for the most radical, anti-Israel, antisemitic and belligerent politicians to represent their sector in the Knesset). This is clear from both their behavior and polling data. (h/t Yerushalimey)
Bravo, Kudos, every kind of Kol Ha Kavod, to all those Knesset members, on both the right and the left, especially former Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, and Gilad Erdan, then-Minister of Internal Security (now Israel’s new Ambassador to the United Nations), who worked on the new legislation that criminalized customers ("Johns"), not prostitutes; who understood that prostitution is violence against women; and who were wise enough to also pass a funded enforcement provision which has just gone into effect.
This is a revolutionary law because it recognizes that prostitution is violence against women.
Although the issue is hotly debated, especially among feminists (“sex workers have to eat, they can’t starve’), I stand with Knesset member, Shelly Yachimovich (Labor) who stated: “The war against prostitution is like a war to free the slaves.”
Oddly enough, many anti-capitalist feminists rarely glorify mind-numbing factory, agricultural, or low-level office work. They are clear that the “workers” are being oppressed. When it comes to prostitution, the alleged “work” is often viewed as a form of resistance, rather than as a forced choice, as a “job” which they actually say allows women greater independence than marriage ever can.
If caught, the newly criminalized customers (“Johns”), will have to pay a fine of 2,000 shekalim ($580.00). Repeat offenders might face criminal charges.
This is not the first time that I’ve been called upon to write about the Israeli heroes who were and still are fighting violence against women.
Dr. Anat Gur is a pioneering Israeli therapist, the founder of the Women’s Wisdom Center, a professor at Bar Ilan, and an author (Women Abandoned: Women in Prostitution, Foreign Bodies: Eating Disorders, Childhood Sexual Abuse, and Trauma Informed Treatment), has worked with women prisoners, incest and eating disorder victims, and prostitutes since 1984.
According to Dr. Gur: “Prostitution is not a job or a livelihood for women. In addition to the severe violence, humiliation, and ongoing rapes, it is not ‘easy money’ for anyone but the pimps and traffickers of women, not for the girls and women who are exploited as prostitutes. Prostitution is the direct continuation of the exploitation of the most vulnerable women in society, those who have already been ‘groomed” by childhood incest, and are ready to be exploited as prostitutes.”
Dr. Gur independently confirmed the important, and also long-time research of Dr. Melissa Farley, namely that the complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorders among prostitutes are more severe than the Stress experienced by many combat veterans of more recognized wars. Dr. Gur told me: “While exploited in prostitution, they are completely disassociated and disconnected and cannot afford to tell what is really happening to them.”
Yisrael Medad is Betar to the bone. Having joined the Revisionist Zionist movement of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky at the tender age of 17, Medad is still enamored of this Zionist figure and his controversial ideology. So much so it seems, that he’s translating Jabotinsky’s words into English, that others might access the work of this prolific genius.
What makes the work of Jabotinsky, a journalist by profession, so controversial? For one thing, Jabotinsky was at odds with the idea of intersectionality, of combining Zionism with other ideologies. He liked his Zionism pure. According to biographer Hillel Halkin, Jabotinsky called this singular devotion to the cause “Zionist monism,” refusing to link Zionism to, for instance, Jewish agrarianization or to socialism. Which put him at odds with, for instance, David Ben Gurion.
But the disagreement went deeper than defining what it means to be a Zionist. Jabotinsky founded the Jewish Legion to help the British fight against the Ottoman Empire, but was disappointed to discover that cooperating with the British brought the Jews no closer to a Jewish State. And then the British issued the infamous White Paper. That's when Jabotinsky founded the Irgun to revolt against the British, who could no longer be seen as a benevolent force.
Ben Gurion, meantime, favored a policy of “havlagah” or “restraint," and looking the other way. He felt the Brits remained the Jews' best hope for attaining statehood.
About havlagah, Jabotinsky had this to say:
Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky
.... I have mentioned the word "Havlagah", a rare word, never heard before in modern, every-day-life Hebrew language in the Land of Israel. It seems this word is now the most common and hated word in the Land of Israel... The Jews should not distort the facts and complain. In the Land of Israel there are young political activists from the left and the right who are not afraid to clash with British soldiers, who are forcing them to act like cowards. They do not fear about their own lives, they fear for the destruction of the 1917 Balfour declaration and the violation of the alliance between England and Jewish people... Any indigenous people will fight foreign settlers as long as they believe there is a chance to get rid of the foreign settlement danger. This is how the Arabs in the Land of Israel are acting and will act in the future, as long as they have the spark in their hearts that they could stop the transformation of Palestine into the Land of Israel... Therefore our settlement can (only) grow under a force which is not dependent upon the local population, behind an "iron wall" that the local population could not break.
Ze'ev Jabotinsky was a pragmatist. The Jews weren't going to hold their land by biding their time and twiddling their fingers. They weren't going to reclaim their territory by kissing up to the British, as they turned a blind eye to Arab terror. If the Jews wanted the land they would have to fight. And this willingness to face the truth made Jabotinsky, the boy from Odessa, a Zionist outlier, a figure of the right.
So how does a boy from New York end up in Israel, translating the works of a boy from Odessa? What makes a man devote his life to keeping the work of Jabotinsky, a man long dead, alive in our hearts? I spoke to Yisrael Medad to learn more:
Yisrael Medad
Varda Epstein: Tell us something about your background and your family, if you would.
Yisrael Medad: Both my parents were American-born, my mother from the Lower East Side and so prior to every Pesach and Rosh Hashana we were down there shopping and eating. My parents were quite American but also very ethnically and traditionally Jewish—yet of the style of Jewish at home and less so outside.
I attended synagogue and Hebrew school but we would drive up to The Bronx on Saturday afternoons. We kept kosher at home but ate at non-kosher restaurants. I remember once returning from shul on Yom Kippur (I started fasting when I was already 11 and my father had purchased me my own mahzorim (high holiday prayer books V.E.) and I came up in the elevator with someone who pressed the buttons for me as I knew it was forbidden, but my mother heard the elevator door slam just before I walked into the apartment. She asked if I used the elevator and when I responded in the positive, she slapped me. When I became bar mitzvah in 1960, we all became chozer b’tshuva (a religious returnee V.E.) but that’s another story. That my mother’s family was from Brody was a very prominent memory item.
I attended Yeshivat Chofetz Chaim and then went on to attend Yeshiva University. I joined Mizrahi Hatzair in 1962 (Yudi Henkin, now Rav Yehuda Henkin, was my madrich (adviser V.E.) but in 1964 I joined Betar.
Varda Epstein: When did you make Aliyah? What was the catalyst? Why Shiloh?
Yisrael and Batya Medad
Yisrael Medad: I spent 1966-1967 in Israel on a program called Machon L’Madrichei Chutz La’Aretz and so my earlier inclination to make Aliyah was sealed – we had a war that year which had me in a foxhole for a few days in June. My future wife, Batya, was similarly inclined and in August 1970, two months after our wedding, we boarded the Queen Anna Maria and arrived in Israel on September 5, after 12 days at sea.
We were first in the Old City of Jerusalem, then the Jerusalem neighborhood of Bayit Vegan, then London for a two-year emissary stint for Betar, back to Bayit VeGan and then in 1981 we moved to Shiloh.
We chose Shiloh for three basic reasons: we wanted a location about which no one could say Jews do not belong there; a place that needed us; and one where we felt we could make a contribution. As an example of such a contribution, in order to open the grade school in Shiloh, our oldest two daughters were required.
Varda Epstein: Can you tell us about your earlier work at the Begin Center and how you came to be translating Jabotinsky’s works?
A young Medad, right, with a fellow soldier in 1974
Yisrael Medad: My employment at the Begin Center began in 2000. Until then I was Geulah Cohen’s aide and director of Israel’s Media Watch among other jobs. I helped create the Begin Center’s Junior Knesset program, historical walking tours, a resource volume of national thinkers, and served in many other areas during the 17 years I was employed. I still remain as a research fellow.
As I had been in Betar and lectured on Jabotinsky and the pre-state underground struggle, joining the editorial committee for the new critical edition of Jabotinsky’s writings was, well, only natural. Then it was decided the volumes would be in English and I was appointed deputy editor. I had done translations of Israel Eldad, Uri Tzvi Greenberg and other Zionist figures and was quite familiar with the terminology, the historical framework, and other such necessary requirements for this work.
Varda Epstein: Last time we spoke you were working on the second volume, so you must be translating a lot of material. I know Jabotinsky was a prolific writer. Can you describe the scope of the items you are translating? Are you translating Jabotinsky’s plays and non-Zionist works and articles? Letters? How much material are you dealing with, exactly?
Yisrael Medad: Well, at present, due to the situation and budget considerations, my work is in low gear. We are trying to work off the Hebrew, and this was spurred by a decade-long research project in Russia to find the approximately 2000 articles Jabotinsky published prior to World War One. These articles were penned during his Odessa and St. Petersburg periods as one of that country’s outstanding Jewish journalists. And these works are in addition to some 1500 or so articles we have already archived, not including his 5000 letters, published separately in Hebrew (now in 15 volumes).
Luckily, the Czarist secret police kept good archives (Jabotinsky, after returning from Italy in 1903, was suspected of being a socialist and was arrested twice). We want to search for his “unknown” works in Russian, as well. Some of his letters are really memoranda of several pages which we’ll also be including.
Varda Epstein: Jabotinsky was fluent in several languages. Did he write in several languages, too? You’ve told me you don’t really know Russian, so how do you manage?
Yisrael Medad: Jabotinsky wrote in several languages: English, French, Italian, and Yiddish, in addition to Hebrew and his native Russian. There is one instance when he was in Belgium and spoke for an hour, and each quarter of an hour he changed languages: from French to Walloon to English and on to Yiddish.
The one major essay I translated on the Bund and Zionism was first translated from its Hebrew. I then used four different translation engines to discover oddities or unusual grammar, semantics, or terminology and then I needed to go through every sentence with my collaborator on the Russian aspect of the work, Yehiel Fishzon, and with additional assistance from Netanel Bunimovitch and his wife Miriam Feyga, to fine tune, as the original translator of this work into Hebrew took a bit of license at times and even left out of few paragraphs. It took some three months just to complete the work on this one essay. And the main part of my work is taken up in just adding the footnotes to such articles.
Varda Epstein: What are some of the difficulties you’ve encountered in your translation work?
Yisrael Medad: An example is when the translator wrote “v’shalom al Yisrael” (literally: “and there should be peace on Israel”). Is that actually what Jabo wrote? No. He wrote: “на Шипке все спокойно (everything is calm on Shipka).”
It took me a week to write this footnote: “Jabotinsky employs an idiom expressing irony about those who are trying to hide a deplorable or dangerous state of affairs. It originated in the official reports of Lt. Gen. Feodor Radetsky on the battle for Shipka Pass in the Balkan Mountains, Bulgaria in December 1877 during the Russian-Turkish war. Despite his sentries freezing to death on duty, men blown off the mountain by strong winds and one-third of the soldiers falling ill, Radetsky’s dispatches assured: “Everything is calm at Shipka.” Besides that, recognizing exactly to what event Jabotinsky was referring to is daunting.
Varda Epstein: Why Jabotinsky?
Yisrael in a TV interview
Yisrael Medad: He is the most intelligent, well-read, most cultured Zionist thinker I know and one who, besides being a novelist, poet, translator, diplomat, soldier and a host of other life’s professions, was the most calumniated. Presenting his works, even in a small quantity, beyond the mostly political works that have already appeared, is a matter of saving a soul.
Varda Epstein: When do you expect the work to be completed?
Yisrael Medad: After my own 120.
Varda Epstein: Can you describe your projected readership? Who benefits from your work and how so?
These are good books but in many places tend to be too critical and there is a need to put out the raw material. And there is the nefarious Dmitry Shumsky who corrupts Jabotinsky in too many instances.
Jabotinsky is today as relevant in the issues and themes he wrote about as a century or 80 years ago. Peter Beinart wrote recently of a semi-binational state entity of Israel-Palestine but did he reference Jabotinsky’s 1940 plan in his “Arab Angle – Undramatized?”
Varda Epstein: What do you see yourself doing next, at the end of this very long project?
Yisrael Medad: To continue doing more of what I do: blog, compose op-eds, research, translate, be funny and enjoy the family.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
They are led by a woman with a tambourine – and wearing a tallit.
Why does she need to wear a prayer shawl?
Obviously, she doesn’t. The entire reason she is wearing it is to scream “LOOK, I’M JEWISH” while protesting against Israel. To “prove” that “real Jews” oppose Israeli policies.
But real Jews don’t use sacred objects or rituals as cheap props for political theater.
Jews In Name Only (JINOs), however, love to embrace the Judaism most of them scorn to buttress their politics.
IfNotNow held a havdalah service a couple of weeks ago – the service that ends the Sabbath – while it was still daylight on the Sabbath.
They hold “seders” to tell the world that instead of Jews going from slavery to freedom in their own nation, they want Jews to go from nationhood back to the Diaspora.
Any bizarre link they can find to anything remotely Jewish they will grab, twist and publicize as if what they are doing has anything to do with Judaism.
No one is fooled. These people who want you to so desperately believe that they represent Jews are proving the exact opposite with their cynical cheapening of Jewish rituals and objects.
Some time ago I became aware that I no longer trusted it even on issues that I didn’t know about. Because on every issue I did know about, I discovered that the paper was spreading untruths and lies. Take the bizarre animus against Britain (which I have written about a number of times here). It appears that the NYT at some stage made a decision that Brexit had something to do with Trump, and since the NYT hated Trump, it must not just report negatively against Brexit Britain, but campaign against it. Its London ‘correspondents’ must be among the least informed and most campaign-minded journalists in the paper’s history. The misinformation that the NYT has now published against this country is so extraordinary that nobody who actually knows the UK could possibly trust its coverage. And if you see that this is the case with things you do know about, then why would you remotely trust the NYT on things you don’t know about? And at that stage, what is the point of the paper? It’s not as though it is worth reading for the wit.
Anyhow – after recent sackings at the paper (relating to the publication of a perfectly reasonable opinion piece by Senator Tom Cotton) it became clear that Bari Weiss was one of the last couple of liberal voices (in the true sense) left at the paper. And as you could see from the deranged online behaviour of her colleagues towards her, it was clear she was not going to be long for the role.
Her resignation letter is damning. She alleges ‘constant bullying by colleagues.’ And in a memorable line she says, ‘Twitter is not on the masthead of the New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.’ Ouch.
Of course there will doubtless now be more bullying and hectoring. All once again done by ‘liberal’ voices presuming that they are acting in the name of good. It is an extraordinary thing this, and in some ways emblematic of the age. Publications like the NYT, who profess to be most opposed to ‘fake news’, continuously turn out to have been the era’s biggest purveyors of the thing they complain of. And campaigning journalists, imagining that they are acting in the name of decency, turn out to behave so indecently that they bully out a minority, dissenting opinion from their ranks.
Bari Weiss has a bright future ahead of her. The same cannot be said of the paper she has just left.
New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss has resigned her post and, in so doing, indicted the entire enterprise of modern journalism and its woke arbiters. The podcast on that and the epistemological crisis afflicting the left.
In a sense, I am a rather unusual spokesperson for the idea that a morally neutral discursive pluralism is an inherently valuable end unto itself. Indeed, I have spent no shortage of (digital) ink arguing, in accordance with the natural and common law traditions, for the imperative of making moral judgments based on the underlying substantive content of a certain modality of speech.
But, again, I am a conservative. Bari Weiss is a liberal. And all of us, outside the echo chambers of oppressive “wokeness” that constitute the Left’s self-congratulatory institutional bastions, have an acute interest in aiding the liberals mount a comeback in their civil war struggle.
A viable Right and a viable Left have historically existed in a relationship that is, ironically, simultaneously adversarial and symbiotic. Partisans of both camps have not shied away, when need be, from the grueling work required by intellectual fisticuffs in the public square. But, crucially, both camps have also depended upon one another to refine their arguments. There is to be no argumentative refinement, alas, when the Left is overrun by the Jacobins. Robespierre was not known to take kindly to heterodoxy.
For traditional liberals, the choice is clear. As Yoram Hazony frames it, liberals can either submit to the Left or make common cause with conservatives, traditionalists, and nationalists in our struggle against the successor ideology.
Liberals have two choices:
1 Submit to the Left.
2 Alliance with nationalists, conservatives, and Christians.
There are no other choices.— Yoram Hazony (@yhazony) June 13, 2020
In making such a choice, liberals should bear in mind that they, too, will be made to care. For liberal Jews, like Weiss, the choice is even clearer. The successor ideology mollycoddles inveterate Jew-haters, peddles an intersectionality that is inherently at loggerheads with the very notion of Jewish particularism, and cavils when a proud Jewish commentator “writ[es] about the Jews again.” The successor ideology has no tolerance whatsoever for Zionism, the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination in their ancient homeland.
Cory Booker Talking by the Forward
Perhaps a more pluralistic, intellectually diverse “mainstream media” opinion will emerge from the ashes of this rock bottom. For now, the Jacobins have found the proverbial guillotine. And in forcing out Weiss, an anodyne, centrist Jewish woman, the radicals have clarified for all to see the battle lines now drawn in the fight for a nation’s soul.
In her letter, Weiss wrote that she had joined the paper to help publish “voices that would not otherwise appear in the paper of record, such as first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of the Times as their home.” She had been hired, she wrote, after the paper failed to anticipate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory because it “didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers.” But after three years at the paper, she wrote in her open letter, Weiss had concluded, “with sadness,” that she could no longer perform this mission at the nation’s ostensible paper of record, given the bullying that she had experienced within the newsroom and the almost daily attacks on her, often from Times colleagues, on social media. She deplored the paper’s unwillingness to defend her or act to stop the online intimidation. “They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m ‘writing about the Jews again,’” she wrote.
Her criticism of Sulzberger rang true to several Times veterans, who note that he has been accused before of yielding to disgruntled liberal staff members. A publisher said to have intervened often in the paper’s news decisions, Sulzberger initially defended James Bennet and the decision to publish the Cotton op-ed, for instance. But faced with a staff revolt, he criticized the essay and the paper’s publication of it, saying that the editorial process had been too “rushed” and that the essay “did not meet our standards.”
Weiss’s departure was quickly hailed by her many critics within and outside of the paper on social media, among them Glenn Greenwald, who has called her a “hypocrite” for her alleged efforts to suppress Arab professors while in college, and for her defense of Israel and some of its controversial policies as a newspaper writer. But her stinging letter rang true to many others, among them former presidential aspirant Andrew Yang and talk-show host Bill Maher. “As a longtime reader who has in recent years read the paper with increasing dismay over just the reasons outlined here, I hope this letter finds receptive ears at the paper. But for the reasons outlined here, I doubt it,” Maher wrote on Twitter.
Her resignation was also lamented by such leading right-of-center thinkers as Glenn Loury. “What a shame—for the country, and on the Times,” wrote Loury, an economics professor at Brown University, in an email. Calling Weiss “courageous,” he added that while the climate she described at the paper was “no surprise,” that it had “driven her to this point is, indeed, shocking.” He also noted that Weiss was one of the few Times writers to sign the controversial “Harpers letter,” which he speculated might have been “the last straw” for the paper.
As I was discussing the Nick Cannon story last night with Dovid Efune of the Algemeiner, I complained that the mainstream media was ignoring the story of a very famous person publicly spreading hate. (Starts at about 18:00)
I take this personally. On Saturday night, Judean People’s Front tweeted the details of the offensive video, and I put together a post about it on Sunday morning. My intent was to get the story trending in major media – it is clearly newsworthy. I pushed the story to the major news media.
And they ignored it.
Sunday afternoon Jewish Insider and the Jerusalem Post ran with the story, and other Jewish and Israeli media followed. But for two more days, every wire service, major newspaper and magazine and TV network remained silent even as social media attention kept increasing.
Efune told me that sometimes they take their time, but not to be upset – because before citizen journalism, stories like these would never get out at all. The news was completely controlled by the major media and they were the gatekeepers of what is and isn’t news. News bloggers like me are critical components of the news cycle nowadays.
Minutes after our conversation came the news that Viacom/CBS had fired Cannon. This is before major media had covered the story at all. The decision was not made because of national attention.
The entire cycle of the story – the outrageous antisemitism, people getting upset, other people defending Cannon’s racism, Cannon’s refusal to apologize, Viacom/CBS terminating their relationship with Cannon – happened over the course of 60 hours while consumers of traditional media missed it all.
What should have been a media-driven story ended up happening and partially resolving without the media.
Consumers of news media should be upset. They pay money to get the news, and the news they will read today (when US newspapers and wire services finally cover it) will be about a story that played out over two and a half days without a single mention. Whether they purposefully wanted to downplay or bury the story, as I suspect, is not so relevant any more – because news bloggers like me now have the power to make a story too big for them to ignore. (Sometimes. There are plenty of stories I break that do not get any traction.)
Either way, this Cannon story shows that the days that the traditional news media calls the shots are over. Their influence is still huge, of course, and people will rely on them as their major or only news source for years to come. But they can no longer be the gatekeepers, and their attempts to minimize a story like this one ends up making them look like they are out of touch – or worse, pushing an agenda of denying their readers stories that they think are better left unreported.
On May 16, the EU’s High Representative Josep Borrell said in a statement, “We are convinced that we need to work towards bringing a solution to the Palestinian issue and we reaffirm our position in support of a negotiated Two-State solution. For this to be possible, unilateral actions from either side should be avoided and, for sure, international law should be upheld.”
Yesterday, the EU announced it will support 16 new infrastructure projects for Palestinians in Area C.
The European Union, Denmark, and the Palestinian Authority launched today the implementation of a €5.8 million agreement to build 16 social and public infrastructure projects in Area C. This contribution represents a new package of the European Union Area C Development Programme in the West Bank.
This package is the fifth of its kind to serve public infrastructure projects in Area C. It will fund the completion of 16 social infrastructure projects in 15 localities across the West Bank benefiting over 24,000 Palestinian living in Area C. These projects include schools, roads, multipurpose buildings, water distribution networks, water reservoirs and rehabilitation of electricity networks. This contribution brings the total amount of the programme to €15.2 million intended to build 58 social infrastructure projects in 46 localities. The European Union Area C Programme is funded by the European Union and Member States.
Anyone see a contradiction here?
The EU claims to be against unilateral actions from either side – yet it supports, encourages and funds unilateral actions from the Palestinians.
Under the same international law that the EU pretends to care about, if Area C is legally considered to be occupied, Israel has the obligation – not the right, but the obligation – to administer the lands under the same laws that had been in place in the area previously. In this case it is a mix of Jordanian, British and Ottoman laws. Only Israel can legally issue permits for building.
The EU has every right to object that the permits are not given out fairly. But it has no right under the law to illegally build – unilaterally.
Meir Deutsch, Director General of the Regavim NGO that monitors and documents violations of law in the territories said, “The absurdity of today’s announcement would be laughable if it weren’t so insidious. Claiming, on the one hand, that it condemns unilateral steps, in the very same breath the statement outlines a host of projects that will create facts on the ground and lay the groundwork for the creation of a Palestinian state in Area C . In other words – we will not recognize any changes unless they are changes we make.”
Regavim added a further irony: “Oddly, the EU and its member states don’t find the housing, education, employment, water infrastructure or electricity grid in Areas A and B, the areas of Judea and Samaria under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction, worthy of similar investment.
Even more oddly, the EU seems unperturbed by the massive worldwide financial crisis caused by the corona pandemic and seems to have no qualms about diverting European taxpayers’ money to create new ‘villages’ in previously uninhabited areas of Judea and Samaria. “
Here are some EU-funded projects deliberately being built on IDF training grounds in Judea and Samaria (photos provided by Regavim.)
This is the definition of unilateralism – and land theft.
Nick Cannon has released a long statement about CBS firing him. It shows that he has absolutely no clue or regrets about his bigotry and racism and instead wants to position himself as a victim of anti-Black racism.
I am deeply saddened in a moment so close to reconciliation that the powers that be, misused an important moment for us to all grow closer together and learn more about one another. Instead the moment was stolen and highjacked to make an example of an outspoken black man. I will not be bullied, silenced, or continuously oppressed by any organization, group, or corporation. I am disappointed that Viacom does not understand or respect the power of the black community.
You see? His calling Jews and whites “savages” and spouting Rothschild conspiracy theories that have resulted in the deaths of untold numbers of people was really an opportunity for growth! A corporation that doesn’t want to be associated with blind hate is “oppressing” him.
I don’t have to defend myself here, the proof is in the history. I believed that the corporation was becoming more progressive and willing to create helpful spaces and dialogue in these difficult and uncertain times of 2020. Instead they chose to recently ban all advertisement that supported George Floyd and Breonna Taylor who we are all still seeking justice for. I also went as far to reach out to Ms. Shari Redstone, the owner of Viacom, to have a conversation of reconciliation and actually apologize if I said anything that pained or hurt her or her community. Dead Silence! So that’s when I realized they don’t want a conversation or growth, they wanted to put the young negro in his place. They wanted to show me who is boss, hang me out to dry and make an example of anyone who says something they don’t agree with. But like the great Shirley Chisholm, “I am unbossed and unbought and unbothered”. I respectfully stepped away from oppressive corporations in the past. NBC threatened and mistreated me for years, but I was the bigger person and abandoned an 8-figure salary on their number one hit show “Americas Got Talent” and currently stand by my friend and Queen Gabrielle Union in her fight against oppression.
Cannon’s lack of ability to understand the racism and hate he was proudly and laughingly engaged in, and instead to play the victim, is breathtaking. And to say that a corporation that paid him an 8-figure salary (!) and made him into a household name was mistreating him is the definition of tone deaf. (And apparently NBC wasn’t so oppressive because his new E! show is put out by NBCUniversal.)
My hope and original goal was to use this moment to show healing and acceptance and prayed that Viacom would use their powers for good. Instead I am now receiving death threats, hate messages calling me an ungrateful Nigger and beyond. Viacom’s goal to keep me from providing for my family and lineage will be foiled. They can try to kick me while I’m down or force me to kiss the master’s feet in public for shame and ridicule, but instead I stand firm on my square with my fist in the air repeating my mantra, “You can’t fire a Boss!”.
Obviously any abuse he received is unwarranted and wrong. Yet again this is disingenuous – his fans abused the real victims of this episode, the Jews and others who were maligned publicly by Cannon. All over social media, Cannon’s fans asserted that his words were true and that Jews were slave traders, fake Khazars, abusers of blacks, melatonin-deprived savages. Cannon did not say a word to dissuade them – because these are his own deeply held beliefs as well.
In a pleasant turn of events and the best blessing in all of this hurtful attack is the outpouring of love and support from the Jewish community. It has been amazing. I have spoken with many Rabbis, clergy, Professors and coworkers who offer their sincere help. I must apologize to my Jewish Brothers and Sisters for putting them in such a painful position, which was never my intention, but I know this whole situation has hurt many people and together we will make it right. I have dedicated my daily efforts to continuing conversations to bring the Jewish Community and the African American community closer together, embracing our differences and sharing our commonalities. Through the guidance of my multicultural team which embodies several people from the Jewish Community, specifically Michael Goldman my business partner for 3 decades who discovered me at the Hollywood Improv when I was doing Stand Up as a kid. Through thick and thin he has been by my side. Yelling at me when I talk too much and laughing with me as we’ve always overcome adversity together. I love you my brother, thank you for helping me become the man that I am today. And as we embark on this next “Ncredible” journey together we will bring our two persecuted communities together like we always planned. He and so many gracious people from the Jewish Community are showering me with love and helping to guide me to the Promise land, literally l am excited to announce that I have been invited to Israel which is a lifelong dream where I will receive teachings, lessons and truth about the Jewish history. As someone who is in pursuit for my PHD in Theology and Divinity and just received a degree in Criminal Justice from the Great Howard University, this will be an enriching, enlightening and overall exciting trip!
As for Viacom, who is now on the wrong side of history, I will continue to pray for you. I don’t blame any individual, I blame the oppressive and racist infrastructure. Systemic racism is what this world was built on and was the subject in which I was attempting to highlight in the recent clips that have been circulating from my podcast. If I have furthered the hate speech, I wholeheartedly apologize.
But now I am the one making demands. I demand full ownership of my billion dollar “Wild ‘N Out” brand that I created, and they will continue to misuse and destroy without my leadership! I demand that the hate and back door bullying cease and while we are at it, now that the truth is out, I demand the Apology!
Cannon claims that he wants to learn, and this is a wonderful message, but his refusal to even acknowledge the pain he directly caused to Jews with his words indicates the opposite. And while he finally issues the standard celebrity non-apology “if I offended anyone I apologize” his immediately following that up with his “demands” indicates that there is nothing heartfelt about this at all.
There is of course a danger in “canceling” him, which is that is can increase antisemitism from the Black community. But Cannon leaves his corporate sponsors no choice. Perhaps he honestly thinks that his call for education can replace a real apology, but in the end he really and truly believes that Jewish people are fakers, white people are savages and that a secret Jewish banking cabal runs the world. He has not made the slightest indication that those opinions have been modified the tiniest bit in the past three days.
In the end, Cannon remains is a racist and an antisemite. And his essay proves that he is a bully on top of it.
We discussed black antisemitism, Bari Weiss, why the New York Times allows its editorial page to be so far Left, and Peter Beinart.
This was right before Viacom/CBS announced they will fire Nick Cannon. I expressed frustration that the mainstream media had not yet covered the Cannon story that I was pushing so hard since Sunday; Dovid assured me that nowadays bloggers are often the ones who are the real news sources and the MSM will inevitably follow. He was proven right within an hour after the show aired - clearly Viacom/CBS didn't wait for any newspapers or wire services to carry the story before deciding to fire him. (As of this writing, British newspapers, entertainment media and Time magazine have the story.)
ViacomCBS condemns bigotry of any kind and we categorically denounce all forms of anti-Semitism. We have spoken with Nick Cannon about an episode of his podcast ‘Cannon’s Class’ on YouTube, which promoted hateful speech and spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. While we support ongoing education and dialogue in the fight against bigotry, we are deeply troubled that Nick has failed to acknowledge or apologize for perpetuating anti-Semitism, and we are terminating our relationship with him. We are committed to doing better in our response to incidents of anti-Semitism, racism, and bigotry. ViacomCBS will have further announcements on our efforts to combat hate of all kinds.
While I am not happy with cancel culture, from Viacom/CBS’ point of view it is too toxic to be associated with a bigot.
There is no way that Fox can continue having Cannon as host of The Masked Singer after Viacom/CBS already fired him. It is not s good look to appear to be more tolerant of antisemitism than another network.
That leaves Los Angeles radio station Power 106, where Cannon has a daily radio show. That show probably provides a decent chunk of the station’s revenue and firing him would be very expensive. It will be interesting to see how they handle this, but you can be sure they are not too happy about this.
Cannon had just been profiled Tuesday by Fast Company in a fawning piece that was written before they became aware of his racism. That article details Cannon’s other shows and businesses.
Nick Cannon has guided his career with a modest goal in mind: “to become the most powerful man in media.”
Judging by his current résumé, he seems to be on track.
In addition to hosting and executive producing Fox’s The Masked Singer, MTV’s Wild ‘n Out, and E!’s newest show, Celebrity Call Center, Cannon also launched two nationally syndicated radio shows this year on top of his #1 show on Power 106, Nick Cannon Mornings.
Of course, the above doesn’t include his film and music career that spans two decades—not to mention his businesses outside of media, which include a Los Angeles-based vegan soul food restaurant he launched this year, and his line of headphones that have generated more than $80 million in revenue.
It’s an already dizzying track record, but Cannon is about to add what he hopes will become the crown jewel of his empire to tie it all together: his nationally syndicated daytime talk show Nick Cannon premiering in September.
E! is owned by NBC Universal., so Celebrity Call Center seems to be in danger as well.
Cannon’s his headphone business is probably safe, and the poor victim of the Rothschild plot against him will have to survive on the millions that he makes a year from that.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, signed a bill into law on Monday to prohibit the state contracting with companies that boycott Israel. As such, it has become the 32nd state to enact an anti-BDS measure.
The state’s House of Representatives passed the measure, 95-40, in May. The state Senate passed it, 28-1, on April 30.
The Anti-Discrimination Against Israel Act prohibits Missouri and its political subdivisions from entering into contracts worth more than $100,000 with companies with 10 or more employees that engage in BDS.
Moreover, it exercises the state’s freedom to choose firms for contracts. It does not penalize or infringe on any individual’s right to free expression or penalize companies that choose not to do business with Israel for legitimate economic reasons.
In a statement, Christians United for Israel (CUFI) founder and chairman Pastor John Hagee said the legislation makes “clear that Missouri will not be party to the economic warfare waged by Israel’s detractors. Missourians can now rest assured that their tax dollars will not be used in furtherance of the anti-Semitic movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel.”
Canary Mission: BDS Leader Shredded by Missouri State Representatives
In May 2020, the State of Missouri passed an anti-BDS bill. The vote passed after State Representatives expressed their shock that key witness and BDS promoter, Neveen Ayesh, had lied to them.
A New York Times opinion writer and editor announced her resignation on Tuesday, castigating the newspaper for its obsequious embrace of social media.
Bari Weiss, who had been at the newspaper since 2017, posted her resignation letter, which was addressed to A.G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher, on her personal website.
"Twitter is not on the masthead of the New York Times," she wrote. "But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions."
Weiss noted the vitriol she faced from coworkers who disagreed with her columns and viewpoints. She also specified how her frequent columns about Judaism and anti-Semitism were derided by others in the newsroom.
"My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m 'writing about the Jews again,'" she added. "Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in."
She said the behavior of her former colleagues amounted to "unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong."
Weiss’s letter continues, alleging that the New York Times’s breakneck descent these past few years into left-wing purism has been fueled largely by activist staffers, social media, and the cowardice of the paper’s senior executives.
“Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times,” she writes. “But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space.”
Weiss notes, “Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.”
These trends at the New York Times have been obvious to anyone with working eyeballs.
However, Weiss continues, there is the issue that many may not know about, and that is the issue of the paper’s hostile workplace environment. She claims she was targeted specifically because she did not share her colleagues’ politics.
Weiss writes: My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m 'writing about the Jews again.' Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly 'inclusive' one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.
[...]
All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.
Is it possible to be an American Jew who proudly and emphatically supports the State of Israel while embracing the values of the left? The takeover of the Democratic Party by the ideologues of intersectionality and other far-left philosophies is making this proposition increasingly untenable.
Recent developments have rendered public representatives of the liberal but pro-Israel approach a nearly endangered political species. This trend, which shows every sign of gathering momentum, will have implications not only for American politics but for the American Jewish community itself.
One would have to be in serious denial to think that Bowman will be a friend of Israel in Congress. To the contrary, he will likely align with the “Squad” on Israel.
The recent nationwide unrest and nearly wholesale adoption by Democrats of the radical ideology fueling it have made it apparent to all but the most fervent denialists that postmodern progressivism refuses to accommodate the kind of support for Israel that was once practically taken as a given.
Few politicians have exemplified the combination of liberalism and support for Israel the way congressman Eliot Engel (D) has during his more than 30 years on Capitol Hill, most recently representing New York’s 16th district.
It now appears that his career came to a sudden end with the closing of the polls in his party’s recent primary. As of this writing, although mail-in ballots are still being counted, it seems extremely unlikely that Engel will overcome the lead of his far-left challenger, Jamaal Bowman. By the time this article is posted, the final results will probably be known.
With Bowman's win, he and the far-left forces backing him will have succeeded in taking out one of the most influential pro-Israel Jewish politicians in the Democratic Party, who currently serves as Chairman of the important House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Engel’s defeat is problematic enough on its own for those who believe that the synthesis he represents is still viable, but more is at stake since his party’s base has been all but captured by the likes of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Usually international media ignores Palestinian abuses against their own people, so kudos to AFP for this story (which was in Israeli media weeks ago):
The Palestinian Authority has arrested several people who said they would favour Israeli annexations in parts of the West Bank, corroborating sources say, despite Ramallah's denial.
In an Israeli television report aired in early June, several Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are heard expressing the hope of becoming Israelis if annexation under a US-Israeli plan moves forward.
The comments by those interviewed directly contradict the Palestinian Authority's (PA's) total opposition to any West Bank annexations, a view shared by an overwhelming majority of the Palestinian public, according to surveys.
The Palestinians featured in the programme were captured by hidden camera and their identities concealed in the broadcast through blurred faces and distorted voices.
"I want an Israeli identity card," one Palestinian is heard saying. Another stated that he didn't see "Israelis as enemies -- their government is the enemy". And a third said he "chose Israel" and wasn't afraid to speak out publicly.
The prominent Israeli journalist who made the report, Tzvi Yehezkeli, said at least six people who spoke out in favour of annexation were subsequently arrested by the PA's security services.
"I was surprised to see that even though I've blurred the faces of all the people I filmed and distorted their voices, the Authority has reached and arrested (some) of them, it's just amazing," he told AFP.
…
Yehezkeli, who has been a correspondent in the Palestinian territories for nearly 25 years, told AFP he realised there are also many Palestinians who do not share the outright opposition of their leaders.
Some interviewees had told him that "we don't care about annexation" and that "the Palestinian Authority has failed" and was "corrupt", he said, adding that he regretted not airing all those comments on television.
He insisted he had been told of their subsequent arrests by their families and stressed that he felt "responsible".
One Palestinian contacted by AFP said his relative, who had criticised the PA in the report, had been held for several weeks by Palestinian police and was due to face a court soon.
The individual said he was also in favour of annexation and, despite "fear" of being arrested, added he remained hopeful "that Israel will give us citizenship".
Who knows, maybe Human Rights Watch will even cover this one day.
All that matters in any conflict - from mere arguments on Twitter to large scale wars - is to understand which side is perceived to be the bigger victim. The victim always wins in the court of public opinion run by most of the media, academia and diplomats. Here is my attempt on calculating who is the perceived underdog, and therefore the more righteous, of each side in any conflict. The more you think about it, the more it reflects reality:
Attribute
Victimhood score
Trans
8
Black
8
Native American or other First People
7
Woman
6
Gay
6
Muslim
5
Arab, other Middle Eastern
5
Hispanic
4
Disabled, pregnant
4
Anti-Zionist Jew
4
Wears hijab
2
Palestinian
2
Asian American
1
White
-1
Republican or conservative
-3
Christian (white only)
-3
Jew
-3
Visibly religious Jew
-3
Jewish settler
-6
Identifies proudly as Zionist*
-8
Trump supporter
-8
White nationalist/neo Nazi
-18
Multiple attributes are summed. So for example, a female Muslim Palestinian Arab who wears a hijab has a victimhood score of 6+5+5+2+2, 20 in total, which is quite high. (If she is disabled and lesbian, the score soars to 30, meaning that she almost automatically wins the victimhood sweepstakes against anyone - unless the other person is similar but transsexual instead of lesbian.) The score depends on how you are perceived. So if you only start identifying as a member of a victim group later in life, as long as no one knows any different, you are in. This also applies to those who are half-or-quarter members of the oppressed group.
This calculator has been remarkably accurate. For example, Ilhan Omar ended up being a victim when Jews complained about her antisemitic statements, and Congress ended up not censuring her but instead released a statement that she could support.
There is one major revision that is needed, though, as I mentioned in my interview with Hen Mazzig this week. The attribute “*identifies proudly as a Zionist” needs a more complex calculation beyond its –8 score.
If someone has any positive victimhood scores, and they are also Zionist, their positive attributes become negative attributes of the same magnitude. Being a Zionist doesn’t blunt the victimhood scores, it inverts them.
This is why Hen Mazzig is so loathed by the Left. He is one of many pro-Israel speakers and advocates – you can list Alan Dershowitz or Bret Stephens, for example. But the Left hates Hen because he is a person of color and gay, and they feel that he is betraying them by showing that Israel is a tolerant state and the “victims” can be Zionists. (Kweansmom put out a thread from last year showing just a small but of how Mazzig was discussed last year – with so much hate that his critics couldn’t even stand to write out his name and used his initials.)
This is why women who are Zionists are sent so many sexist comments. I don’t get any, but female Zionists on Twitter are targeted with vile attacks.
This is why Professor Jason Hill was literally censured by his college for writing an article that supported Israel extending sovereignty over Judea and Samaria last year. The reaction was much more vitriolic than it would have been otherwise because Hill is a person of color, an immigrant and gay.
There is a rich irony here in that the very people who pretend to be on the side of minorities and LGBTQ and women are incensed that these people dare think on their own, in ways that do not have the socialist stamp of approval. Their hysterical reactions prove that they are the bigots.
So while I might be a –18, Hen would be a –22 and Hill would be a –25. I’m just a Zionist – but they are perceived as traitors.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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[image: Z-Grade Actor Harry Cook’s Escalating Rhetoric]
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It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
past...
‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
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Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
about the need for a ‘working’ Test & Trace system even more loudly than
the govern...
Thursday, July 16, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
