Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, August 01, 2020

08/01 Links: Caroline Glick: Riots and protests from Portland to Jerusalem; After Tisha B’Av fast, Nick Cannon reviews Bari Weiss’ anti-Semitism book

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Riots and protests from Portland to Jerusalem

In Israel, in contrast, the left is post-religious and ideologically bankrupt. Its two gods – peace and surrender – came crashing down 20 and 15 years ago, respectively. The failure of the Camp David peace summit in July 2000 and the start of the Palestinian terror war in September 2000 killed the religion of peace. The left's "unilateral withdrawal" god was shattered when months after Israel expelled its citizens from Gaza and handed the area over to the PLO in August 2005, Hamas seized power and embarked on a war against Israel that has yet to end.

Although bereft of an ideological message to sell the public, the Left in Israel has considerable power. Its control over Israel's deep state – including the entire legal system – is far more comprehensive than the American Left's control over its state apparatuses.

The Israeli Left controls most media organs, the universities, and cultural institutions. It has a limitless funding from foreign governments and private foundations in Europe and the US.

And the Israeli Left has demonstrators who are willing to cause mayhem to promote hatred of Netanyahu.

Like their American counterparts, the demonstrations in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are happening in the context of the pandemic. The demonstrators have hitched a ride on the economic distress the pandemic has induced. They also benefit from the closure of the public sphere.

With the bars and nightclubs shut down – and all travel abroad blocked until further notice – young people looking for a way to get together have only one option. The anti-Netanyahu demonstrations are the only parties in the country.

No matter who wins in November, it's hard to see how the situation in the US will stabilize and how order will be restored. The rise of progressive politicians at the expense of moderate Democrats indicates the radicalization of the American Left is not a flash in the pan. One electoral cycle won't fix what has been broken incrementally over five decades.

In Israel, in the absence of an ideological Left, the main and most tangible danger posed by the demonstrations is that one of the incited protesters will try to kill Netanyahu and his family. Threats to assassinate the prime minister and his wife and children have proliferated on social media as the massively and sympathetically covered protests have grown more incendiary.

But as far as Israeli society as a whole in concerned, so long as Netanyahu and his family remain safe, the protests are not likely to gain much traction. The public on both the Right and the Left are more moderate than they were 25 years ago. Netanyahu's public resilience – despite the Left's 25-year campaign to destroy him – is proof of the limits of the Left's power.

There are many conservative commentators on the right side of America's unbridgeable political divide that believe the US public will respond at the ballot box to the violence in their streets by reelecting Trump. Author Victor Davis Hanson wrote this week about the coming "counter-revolution."

In Israel's case, elections, and counter-revolutions, while necessary to enact the reforms required to rein in the deep state and restore Israel's democratic order, probably won't be needed to end the demonstrations. How many people will choose to stand outside screaming once the pubs reopen?

Amnesty International vs. Morocco and Israel

Amnesty International is a human rights NGO lionized by the media that disproportionately singles out Israel for condemnation. Even when occasionally denouncing human rights violations in other Middle Eastern countries, it endeavors to impute much of the responsibility directly or indirectly to the Jewish State.

Lately Amnesty has been targeting Israel through its fixation on Pegasus, a software that can be “injected” into smartphones to track the user’s location, calls, messages, etc. (a technique known as “spear phishing”). Pegasus was developed by NSO Group, an Israeli cybersecurity company founded in 2010 for combating the incessant terrorist attacks that target Israel’s civilian population. It was, and continues to be, instrumental in saving the lives and limbs of countless men, women and children.

It stood to reason that this important tool could be equally effective in preventing terrorist attacks all over the world, as well as disrupting drug and human trafficking and various other crimes. To minimize the possibility of it being misused, the company chose to sell this and other technologies only to “authorized governments,” more recently “in alignment to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.”

The Israeli Defense Ministry licenses the export of Pegasus to foreign governments but not to private entities. To cite just one of numerous examples, the Mexican government reportedly recaptured the notorious drug lord El Chapo in 2014 by means of the Pegasus software.

It is common knowledge that even life-saving medications may cause undesirable and at times dangerous side-effects. Penicillin and acetaminophen can and have caused deaths. Practically no human inventions, including software programs, are totally and predictably risk-free or immune from misuse.

That was the case with Amnesty’s allegation that Saudi Arabia used Pegasus to spy on, and later murder, Jamal Khashoggi, according to analyses performed by Citizen Lab at the behest of Amnesty that indicated that certain “domain names point[ed] to websites that appear to be part of NSO’s Group’s Pegasus infrastructure.”

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the uncertainty provided by words such as “appear to be” is often absent in Amnesty’s reports, as are other Citizen Lab caveats like “apparently,” “believe” and “suspected.”

How the Mossad hunted the ‘Butcher of Riga,’ who murdered up to 30,000 Jews

In March 1965, the West German Bundestag overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to bring to an end the hunt for Nazi war criminals and introduce a statute of limitations for their crimes.

The months leading up to the debate had seen a wave of opposition to the plans across the world. Thousands took to the streets from Tel Aviv to Toronto and Los Angeles to London. Nobel Prize winners, politicians, playwrights and the future Pope Benedict XVI raised their voices in protest. And in Germany, a bitter and divisive national debate broke out about how the country should atone for its sins and how widespread the responsibility for them truly lay.

But in those months another effort had also been launched to derail the German proposals. Hatched in secret by Israel’s intelligence chiefs and approved by prime minister Levi Eshkol, it was one that was nonetheless designed to focus the world’s attention on the hundreds, if not thousands, of perpetrators who had never seen the inside of a courtroom or prison cell — and likely never would if the Bundestag approved the statute.

It was also an effort in which Israel itself would act as judge, jury and executioner. Israel’s foreign intelligence agency the Mossad, it was decided, would hunt down and kill Herberts Cukurs — the “Butcher of Riga” — who was accused of being personally responsible for the deaths of at least 30,000 Latvian Jews.

Cukurs’s assassination, for which Israel would claim no responsibility, would publicize and punish his terrible crimes. It would serve, too, as a warning of the kind of rough justice that would be meted out to others if Germany provided an amnesty to war criminals.

The story of the mission to kill Cukurs is told in journalist and author Stephan Talty’s new book, “The Good Assassin: Mossad’s Hunt for the Butcher of Latvia.” It is a brilliantly written, heart-stopping, and, at times, heartbreaking tale; one that crosses continents from the “bloodlands” of Eastern Europe to the jungles of South America.

At the center of Talty’s retelling lie two men: Cukurs and the undercover agent dispatched by Mossad to ensnare him, Yaakov “Mio” Meidad.

Known in the agency as “the man with the hundred identities,” Meidad was a German-born Jew whose parents had perished in the death camps. He had helped abduct Adolf Eichmann and bring him to Israel for trial.

Talty, who first encountered the story of the mission when reading Ronen Bergman’s “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” was fascinated by both Cukurs and Meidad, as well as the events that had brought them together.

“It was this idea that these two characters existed on either side of a terrible historical moment and now they had to meet, and Mio had to basically form a friendship with someone who was sort of the face of the ‘ordinary men’ of the Holocaust,” Talty told The Times of Israel.

07/31 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The progressive world: An antechamber to evil; In condemning antisemitism, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is in a league of his own

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The progressive world: An antechamber to evil

That enduring moral blindness means the progressive world is fated to replicate its role as the antechamber to evil. Today, that's why it supports the anti-white racists of Black Lives Matter. It's why the universities – the supposed crucibles of reason – have turned into cauldrons of intimidation and censorship.

It's why we have descended into a nightmarish Orwellian world in which those deemed to be part of a victim group present lies as truth, justice as injustice, and their own anti-white racism as anti-racism.

And it's why Israel-bashing has become the poster cause of the Western left, and open season has been declared against the Jews.

This way of thinking now dominates progressive politics in general and the Democratic Party in particular. That's why Democrat politicians are tacitly or actively supporting violent attacks on civic order.

As Barr observed: "This is the first time in my memory that the leaders of one of our great two political parties – the Democratic Party – are not coming out and condemning mob violence and the attack on federal courts. Why can't we just say, you know, violence against federal courts has to stop? Can we hear that?"

Jews are directly in the cross-hairs of those who are intent on overthrowing Western values. That's because Judaism, mediated through Christianity, gave the west its civilized moral precepts.

So attacks on Jews are symbiotically connected to left-wing attacks on western civilization.

Of course, there are still decent Democrats and those who remain sympathetic to Israel. But in general, the Democrats, like Britain's Labour Party and other progressive folk, have drunk the anti-Western Kool-Aid.

The tragedy is that so many Jews are incapable of seeing this. So they'll continue to vote Democrat, just as they'll continue to read The New York Times.

Reaction against the onslaught on American and Western values is what brought Trump to power. Many are outraged and exasperated by him. I share many of their criticisms.

But the choice at this coming presidential election is a fateful one; and for all who care about protecting American and Western core values, as well as Israel and the Jewish people, a Democrat victory is much to be feared.

Tracy-Ann Oberman: I experience anti-Semitism online every day – all I want is for social media companies to be consistent

On Wednesday I opened my Twitter account for the first time in two days. I’d been following the 48 hour social media ban which I (and Saul Freedman) had instigated , in response to social media sites allowing grime artist Wiley to repeatedly post anti-jewish hate speech, leaving some posts visible for 12 hours.

Our grassroots ban under the title #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate snowballed into a global phenomenon with high profile politicans, journalists, lawmakers, actors, musicians and hundreds of thousand of others demanding why Twitter, Instagram and Facebook had effectively given a megaphone to Wiley to spew out Jew hate to over 600 thousand followers.

I’ve been overwhelmed by the heavyweight commitment that I have received on this. From the Prime Minister down and across the house. Most significantly social media CEOs have had to sit up and see what I have been saying for a very long time. That anti-Semitism is running rampant, unchecked, infecting social media sites.

Back to Wednesday morning. I logged in to Twitter and first tweet of the morning to me read: “Fucking shut up, sticking your nose into literally everything apart from an oven where it actually belongs”.

When I was four years old my mum and dad, in a mad moment of 1970’s parenting, took me to The Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. My Dad went into the Hall of Names to look for relatives who he wanted verified had died in the concentration camps. I was pretty much left to wander around on my own. No four-year-old should have to process what I saw that day – pictures of skeletal bodies PILED in open graves, a pile of Jewish children’s shoes, teeth and hair. The picture I have never been able to erase from my memory, even after years of trying, was of a naked dead Jewish female body being placed into an oven to be incinerated. That would be the “oven” the tweeter told me I deserved to be in.

My great Uncle Josef who survived the Warsaw ghetto and two concentration camps was my hero. When I would ask how the world allowed the Holocaust to happen, in all its modern industrial German mechanised precision, he would answer in his thick Polish accent, “because people looked the other way. They didn’t want to see it.”

I’m a successful actress and a writer. I’m not a politician or an activist. It was never my aim to take the job of speaking out against race hate especially to Jewish people so vocally and vociferously. But I have spent my life making sure that I would never be one of those people who would “look the other way”. By standing up on social media (Twitter especially) I have become the target of much anti-Semitic and misogynistic abuse.

I’ve been called a “Jewish whore”, “a zio baby killer”, “a grooming paedophile”, “a tax evading shill”, and have been accused of “exaggerating the Holocaust for my own nefarious ends” and more. I’ve been told by Twitter that many of these tweets don’t “violate their terms and conditions”.

Seth Rogen - not funny

If you never heard of Seth Rogen, just as well. He made a splash in some off-beat movies, and became famous as an actor.

Turns out he is more than an actor. Or less than an actor. But more of a comedian, and not so funny.

In a normal world we would not care either way. So why do we care?

Nowadays we have to listen to idiots because they run our world, and he is one of them. He is also Jewish, which proves it takes all kinds.

He tells us that his Canadian parents are “radical Jewish socialists.” No kidding.

So this apple did not fall far from the tree, as we hear him tell an interviewer that “Israel makes no sense.” He questions why the state should exist, a story Al-Jazeera was quick to pick up.

That’s right. We do not need Farrakhan when we’ve got varieties homegrown. Alas, Rogen’s voice makes a sound throughout his “woke” generation.

Along comes this rebuke from Richard Trank, who uses gentle persuasion in the hope of showing Rogen the way to a Jewish heart…which would mean a love of Zion.

A lost cause.

Because Israel, from the ancient to the modern, is in your heart, mind and soul, or it isn’t, and if it isn’t, nothing’s going to help if you insist on being a wise guy.

Seth Rogen, Ahmadinejad to Costar in Stoner Terrorist Comedy (satire)

Actor and comedian Seth Rogen will team up with former Iranian President and die-hard Tupac fan Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a comedy about the duo’s marijuana-filled attempt to launch a terrorist attack on Israel, Point Grey Pictures announced.

Ahmadinejad will play himself in the film, as he looks to cap off his career of public service with a devastating suicide bombing of the Dizengoff Center mall in Tel Aviv. Rogen, meanwhile, will play a Jewish millennial who becomes angry at his parents and disillusioned with his pro-Israel upbringing after reading a tweet by pop star Selena Gomez.

Ahmadinejad recruits Rogen’s pot-loving character, named Seth Rothberg, to help him carry out the attack, and smoke-filled hilarity ensues, according to a teaser put out by the studio.

“We’ve already started doing some guerilla marketing for the film,” Rogen told The Mideast Beast. “Like, I’ve been doing interviews in character as Seth Rothberg and saying all sorts of crazy shit, like ‘Hey, maybe Israel shouldn’t exist,’ and, ‘You know, those Ayatollahs aren’t such bad guys after all,’ and not telling anyone I was playing a character.”

“And everyone is like, dude, what the f#%k?” Rogen continued. “Like, even my mohel called me and said, ‘I should have cut your d#$k off when I had the chance.’ It’s been kind of fun to see everyone freak out.”

No, speaking about Black antisemitism does not make one a racist

An article in the New Socialist crystallizes the discomfort that many socialist Jews have had with the Twitter 48 hour boycott campaign – by claiming that targeting a Black antisemite is actually racist:

Recent stories, and much longer-run patterns of discourse, have seen many people, including some Jews, attempting to “ethnicise” antisemitism. To construct it as a peculiarly “Black problem” or “Muslim Problem.” This is not a new phenomenon but it does seem to be gaining ground in the current moment - not coincidentally amidst the largest global Black liberation struggle in several generations. The thinker Adolph Reed has aptly noted in his essay “What Colour is Anti-Semitism” that,

Anti-semitism is a form of racism, and it is indefensible and dangerous wherever it occurs. What doesn’t exist is Blackantisemitism, the equivalent of a German compound word, a particular - and particularly virulent - strain of anti-Semitism. Black anti-Semites are no better or worse than white or other anti-Semites, and they are neither more nor less representative of the ‘black community’ or ‘black America’.”

Part of the specification of a particularised “Black antisemitism” seems to be connected to the seeming relish with which many white people, including some white Jews, see instances such as Wiley’s outburst as an opportunity to call Black people “racist.” There is a tendency to impose collective responsibility on Black or Muslim “communities” for instances of antisemitism (and for many things other things) in ways that Neo-Nazis like David Duke or Nick Griffin (both of whom, incidentally, not banned from Twitter) [this article was written before Duke’s suspension – EoZ] are never held to be representative of white, English or American culture. Except, of course, that is what they are. The discourses and violence that make up the long history of antisemitism are far more organic to the cultures of white, Christian Europe and its settler colonies than anywhere else. Attempts to ethnicise antisemitism today are regularly mobilised, often by non-Jews, as a means to derail and discredit justice and liberation movements and their demands. This comes with its own grim irony, given that justice and liberation movements aim at the undoing of precisely these cultures of white, Christian Europe that were formative for and continue to reproduce antisemitism.

I can only speak for myself, but this is absolutely false.

Most blacks are not antisemitic. While a higher percentage of blacks are antisemitic than of the general population, the percentage of blacks who hold antisemitic opinions has gone steadily down since the 1990s when it was about 37%.

I have no glee speaking about Black antisemitism or Muslim antisemitism or white supremacist antisemitism. But I do think it is critical to not put them all in the same bucket.

If one wants to fight antisemitism, one needs to understand it. And the recent public examples of Farrakhan/Griff/Wiley antisemitism are much different from traditional Christian antisemitism, much different from neo-Nazi antisemitism, much different from Muslim or Arab antisemitism. They are also somewhat different from what Black antisemitism was like in the 1960s.

All kinds of antisemitism have a righteous justification. No one says “I hate Jews for no reason.” One way of fighting antisemitism is with education, and it is critical to take away the justifications for antisemitism by directly attacking the assumptions of the antisemites.

Just like there is no one type of antisemitism, there is no one way to combat antisemitism. (This socialist article went on to pretend that there was only one antisemitism and it looks at it through a class lens, which is ridiculous. Antisemites come in all classes, colors, political affiliations and religions.)

When Rabbi Abraham Cooper went on Nick Cannon’s show, I was upset because he did not directly attack the fundamental myths that were the basis of Cannon’s and Griff’s rants. And the comments on that YouTube video show that practically the entire Black audience were not swayed by Cooper’s words – he was speaking the language of victimhood, of the Holocaust, of historic Black and Jewish commonality, while Cannon’s fans are convinced that they are the true Hebrews. This was the wrong argument. I looked at the root of what we can call Black replacement theology, where Jews are frauds and Blacks are the true Jews. That is what Rabbi Cooper should have done.

But Muslim antisemitism is different. Arab antisemitism is different even than Muslim antisemitism although there is huge overlap. Christian and scientific and philosophical and, yes, modern anti-Zionist antisemitism are all different, and it is not racist to call that out.

Of course racism exists and it is a serious problem. But only people who already look at the world through a lens of race will find racism literally everywhere.

It isn’t about Israel (poster)

A poster I made after a comment in Facebook by Rob Levy during my Twitter boycott…

07/31 Links Pt1: GOP Lawmaker Calls on Trump to Designate Top Palestinian Official as Terror Sponsor; New UNRWA head to 'Post': No glorifying terrorists in our schools

From Ian:

GOP Lawmaker Calls on Trump to Designate Top Palestinian Official as Terror Sponsor

A US congressman with a track record of countering terrorism sponsored by the Palestinian Authority (PA) has called on President Donald Trump to blacklist a leading PA official.

In a letter to Trump on Thursday, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) urged Trump to designate the PA’s Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and its director, Qadri Abu Bakr, as sponsors of terror because of their direct involvement in providing monthly payments to terrorists and their families.

Lamborn was a principal backer of the 2018 Taylor Force Act, which conditions US aid to the PA on a verifiable abandonment its “pay‐for‐slay” policy. Two years after the legislation’s passage, the PA has not changed its policy.

“Unfortunately, the Palestinian leadership has continued to pay the terror rewards to terrorists, spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year to these monsters and their families,” Lamborn wrote in his letter to Trump. “Since the passing of the Taylor Force Act, and a similar law in Israel’s Knesset passed by my friends MKs Elazar Stern and Avi Dichter in July 2018, the Palestinian leadership has spent over 1.2 billion shekels, or $350 million, continuing to reward terror.”

“This vile practice must end, and your administration has the courage and moral clarity to do it,” Lamborn declared.

New UNRWA head to 'Post': No glorifying terrorists in our schools

The phrase “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” may be a cliché, but in the case of Dalal Mughrabi, the difference could define the political landscape of the Middle East for decades to come.

In 1978, Mughrabi took part in the Coastal Road Massacre in which an Israeli bus was hijacked. Thirty-eight Israelis lost their lives in the attack, including 13 children. To Israelis, Mughrabi is a terrorist.

To the Palestinians, she is a national treasure. Children are taught to emulate her example. Five schools under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority are named for Mughrabi, as are town squares, summer camps and a women’s center.

She also pops up regularly in textbooks, where she is lauded as martyr and a hero.

Responsibility for reaching a definitive ruling on Mughrabi’s status – if such a thing is possible – may ultimately fall to Philippe Lazzarini, the incoming commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for the Palestinians.

His agency is committed to delivering international quality education to the more than 530,000 children educated within UNRWA’s 708 elementary and preparatory schools in the region. And as we are always told, the children are our future.

So, is Mughrabi a terrorist, or a martyr? What should the children be taught?

“Let’s be clear, there is no glorification of martyrs being taught in UNRWA schools,” Lazzarini told The Jerusalem Post via Zoom from Amman, Jordan. “There is none of that. No teacher is teaching that.

“We have extremely clear guidance regarding this because UNRWA is also in disagreement with this example [of Mughrabi]. I know this keeps popping up, but UNRWA has given clear instructions that this not be taught in the schools because it can be perceived as incitement, depending on how it is brought to the attention of the children.”

Talk about Chutzpah! @Twitter literally wrote to Minister @FarkashOrit, flat out saying that Iran leader @khamenei_ir calling Israel a ‘cancerous growth’ to be ‘uprooted and destroyed’ is mere “foreign policy saber rattling”?

Seriously @jack @smcs @Policy?

cc. @CotlerWunsh https://t.co/wq7ihnQ0g8
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 31, 2020

Oh, hi 👋 Iran state propaganda mouthpiece @PressTV. Thanks for the mention, though I’m pretty sure you misquoted me!

Here’s the full video 🎥 in case you missed it: https://t.co/gSxi3XyZ9P pic.twitter.com/XuglV639GZ
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 30, 2020

Intersectionality Makes For Strange Bedfellows (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Intersectionality has been a big thing for years now, basing itself on the solidarity of various minorities against their oppression that crosses the lines of race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

Uniting all minorities, that is, except for Jews who refuse to renounce Israel.

But historically, it's not as if we needed to wait for the concept of intersectionality to come along before people would be willing able to stand up for each other. The idea of minorities standing together in defense of human rights is neither a new nor a novel idea.

For example, the history of Jews standing together with blacks is well known, and pictures of Abraham Joshua Heschel marching together with Martin Luther King in Selma are practically iconic.

Abraham Joshua Heschel with Martin Luther King. YouTube screengrab

Jewish participation in the Civil Rights Movement led King to say in 1965 that Jews

demonstrated their commitment to the principle of tolerance and brotherhood not only in the form of sizable contributions, but in many other tangible ways, and often at great personal sacrifice.

Now that the purveyors of intersectionality have made clear that they feel Jews do not qualify as oppressed minorities, what is it exactly that others gain with today's intersectionality?

These days, pro-Palestinian groups have come out in support of the human rights of blacks following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police.

But just what have these groups done for Palestinian Arabs?

Yes, we all know that for years these self-proclaimed pro-Palestinian Arab groups have attacked, harassed and muted speakers who came on campus to speak about and for Israel.

We know who these groups speak against -- but just who are they supposed to be speaking for?

They are not speaking for Israeli Arabs. A variety of different polls show that the number of Israeli Arabs who identify as "Palestinian" is down to as low as 7%. Most Israeli Arabs prefer to see themselves as Israelis (23%), Arabs (15%) or Israeli-Arab (51%). With 76% feeling a degree of Israeli identity, that shows a level of integration, contrary to the out-of-touch groups who accuse Israel of Apartheid. This is still a lot of work to do, but those groups are too busy burnishing their anti-Israel creds to offer anything constructive.

Meanwhile, Arabs in Judea/Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza have sovereign territory under Arab rule for the first time ever in their history -- under incompetent, corrupt governments with poor human rights records.

Which groups in the US are speaking out on their behalf?

At the same time, in Lebanon, Palestinian Arabs are forced to live in camps as second class citizens, suffering under Apartheid conditions where they are barred from 73 categories of jobs, suffer from 65% unemployment and 80% live in poverty.

Meanwhile, in Syria, as of 2017 there have been 3,443 Palestinian Arabs killed, with 79,000 fleeing to Europe as of 2016 and over 60,000 taking refuge in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey and Gaza.

Where are the rallies these pro-Palestinian groups have held on their behalf?

If the pro-Palestinian groups won't raise a finger for their own people, what kind of allies are these for the Black community?

Meanwhile, in China, it is estimated that 1 million Uighur Muslims are being held in detention centers. Where is the outcry from Arabs everywhere for their fellow Arabs there?

Contrast that with the Jewish community.

Jews in the old Soviet Union were refused permission to leave while at the same time prevented from practicing their Judaism and expressing their Jewish identity. Synagogues were systematically closed down and antisemitic books were published.

But their fellow Jews around the world fought for them.

And succeeded.

Among those who joined Jewish groups to protest was Martin Luther King, who back in 1966 addressed a national telephone hook-up of Soviet Jewry rallies:

While Jews in Russia may not be physically murdered as they were in Nazi Germany, they are facing every day a kind of spiritual and cultural genocide. Individual Jews may in the main be physically and economically secure in Russia, but the absence of opportunity to associate as Jews in the enjoyment of Jewish culture and religious experience becomes a severe limitation upon an individual.

These deprivations are a part of a person’s emotional and intellectual life. They determine whether he is fulfilled as a human being. Negroes can well understand and sympathize with this problem. When you are written out of history as a people, when you are given no choice but to accept the majority culture, you are denied an aspect of your own identity. Ultimately you suffer a corrosion of your self-understanding and your self-respect.

Among those claiming to support the Black community is American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) -- which the ADL already noted in 2010 "promotes extreme anti-Israel views and has at times provided a platform for anti-Semitism" -- taking up the cause of Black rights following the death of George Floyd by the police.

One difference from the historical Jewish support for Black rights is that among Jewish groups you don't have leaders like the AMP's National Development Coordinator, Mohammed Habbeh, who while president of Students for Justice in Palestine at Rutgers tweeted about Blacks being abeed, a derogatory Arabic word for “slaves,” which Canary Mission points out in their archived copies of Habehh's twe ets:

That account was closed.

In his current Twitter account, Habehh now keeps tweets private.

So much for those intersectional allies with anti-Israel, antisemitic agendas.
Come to think of it, if anything, an honest approach to intersectionality would allow for recognizing the basis for solidarity between Blacks and Jews.

In his blog on Times of Israel, Micha Danzig suggests The real ‘intersectionality’ – European and Arab oppression and persecution of Jews and Africans:

If one wants to look at credible examples of “intersecting” and “related systems of oppression, domination or discrimination” one would be hard pressed to find a better example than the millennia plus oppression and colonization by both Europeans and Arabs of Africans on the one hand and Jews on the other.

Danzig reviews the Hellenization by the Greeks, followed first by the colonization by the Romans, and then the massacre of Jews and the expulsion of millions of Jews by them -- followed then by 2,000 years of oppression and massacres of Jews in Europe.

As for the Arabs, in 641CE, the Caliph Omar had both Jews and Christians removed from all but the southern and eastern fringes of Arabia. Those Jews who remained in their homeland after the Roman expulsion were treated after the invasion and conquest of Islam as second-class dhimmis, like any other non-Muslim. The yellow star the Nazis instituted for Jews to wear dates back to the Caliph Omar.

As for Black history, the Arab slave trade in Africa continues to this very day.
And one of the loudest exponents of Black pride and empowerment covers it up.

Charles Jacobs, president of the Ameri can Anti-Slavery Group, has written about how Farrakhan betrays today’s black slaves:

Cornered at a news conference on March 14, 1996, Farrakhan was asked about the slaves of Sudan. The New York Times reported that an emotional Farrakhan shot back: “If slavery exists, why don’t you go, as a member of the press?! And you look inside of the Sudan, and if you find it, then you come back and tell the American people what you found!”

The Baltimore Sun took up the challenge and dispatched reporters to Sudan where they bought the freedom of two young African slave boys from an Arab slave retriever. Their report ran as a front-page series in the Sun and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Leaders of the South Sudanese peoples’ struggle for liberation then asked Farrakhan for his help. He promised he would help them but betrayed them instead.

Today, there could still be as many as 35,000 Africans in bondage to Arab masters in Sudan. Mauritanian blacks continue to serve as slaves to Arab and Berber masters in Mauritania. The black Muslim soldiers of Boko Haram in Nigeria enslave black Christians. CNN has video of Libyans holding black slave auctions, and in Algeria, Africans seeking a passageway to Europe are being caught and enslaved.

Farrakhan continues to stay quiet about black slavery in Muslim North Africa while blaming the troubles of black people worldwide on the Jews.

Two years later, the March 1998 edition of the Sudan Democratic Gazette had an article entitled Louis Farrakhan: Tormenting the Heart of Africa, on Farrakhan's denial of Arab slavery:

Each time Farrakhan goes on his annual world tour, which always includes Khartoum [capital of Sudan], he makes it a point to slur the struggling people of South Sudan. After the 1995/96 tour, he came back and mounted a vigorous campaign to deny reports that slavery was still endemic in the Sudan. Yet, that was the time when, due to our relative military weakness, government militia were raiding villages and taking women and children to slavery as if it were 1695. Human rights advocates and institutions have vigorously investigated and proven slavery in the Sudan. There are volumes of corroborative literature on current slavery in the Sudan recorded by journalists, human rights groups, and the United Nations. Khartoum says all this is “Zionist conspiracy.” They would say that, wouldn’t they? But why Farrakhan parrots them beats me silly.

The oppression of minorities is real.

And Jews are not the only dependable allies in the fight for human rights.

But the weaponization of intersectionality is as poisonous as the long history of the exploitation of antisemitic rhetoric and hate as a tool to mobilize followers.

The exclusion of Jewish groups by those who claim to stand for the rights of all oppressed minorities is the failure of intersectionality.

The most underreported story: Palestinians suffering from the PA’s refusal to cooperate with Israel

The Palestinian Authority’s refusal to cooperate with Israel, ostensibly because of “annexation” plans that have not happened, is only hurting Palestinians.

Which means the media is not reporting on the repercussions for fear of upsetting the narrative that Palestinian suffering comes from Israel alone.

A close reading of the UN’s OCHA-OPT reports for the last two months give a small glimpse of the issue, even though they try to downplay it as well.

From OCHA’s Gaza Strip: Snapshot June 2020, released this week:

Two infants died after their exit arrangements for treatment in Israel and East Jerusalem have been delayed due to the halt of coordination between the Palestinian and Israeli authorities since 21 May.

From OCHA’s COVID-19 Emergency Situation Report 14 (15 – 28 July 2020):

Global shortages of medical equipment and the disruption of coordination between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel, in response to Israel’s plan to annex parts of the West Bank, have significantly delayed the procurement of key medical equipment. According to the MoH, up to 150,000 tests per month will be required until the end of 2020, along with at least two million gloves and up to 750,000 surgical masks every month, until the end of the year.

The United Nations Development Programme writes in an article on the OCHA website:

The public health hazard for both waste collectors and the people living in the vicinity of these informal sites is exacerbated due to the practice of dumping hazardous medical infectious waste, along with ordinary domestic waste…leaching from solid waste that is unsafely disposed across the oPt has also contributed to the degradation of groundwater.

After considering various alternatives, UNDP has opted for the introduction of a specialized microwave device as the main method for treating infectious waste. Following consultations with the Ministry of Health, the Environment Quality Authority and WHO, and with the financial support of the oPt Humanitarian Fund, UNDP procured such a treatment unit with a 1.5-ton capacity, to be installed at the Johr Ad Dik landfill. However, due to the halt in coordination between the PA and Israel, the processing of the required importation documents has been delayed, impeding the delivery of the device from Belgium to Israel.

Mahmoud Abbas, out of a sense of “pride,” chose to hurt his own people by stopping coordination with Israel on critical life-saving projects. He also knowingly painted himself into a corner by doing so, because even though Israel hasn’t extended sovereignty over any part of the territories, Abbas cannot change his mind without looking even weaker than he is.

The only things that can force him to act like a responsible leader would be media attention to how his policies are hurting and even killing his own people. But, as usual, international media won’t touch the story.

Iran pretends to be against bigotry in English, but in Arabic/Farsi their antisemitism is explicit

The Supreme Leader of Iran tweeted his support for Black Lives Matter:

Yes, Khamanei pretends that Iran has no police brutality. Yet only last year, Iranian police killed as many as 1500 protesters. But, who’s counting?

As far as Iran’s supposed dedication to equal right goes, this week it yet again published an article in the government news site Mehr News that the Saudi royal family was Jewish, just like they did last year.

I found an English version of the bizarre conspiracy theory that says that the House of Saud was founded by a devious, murderous Jew:

In Hijra in 851, a group of people from the al-Masalih tribe, a tribe of the Anza tribe, equip a caravan to purchase cereals (wheat) and other food products from Iraq and transport them to Najd. The leader of the caravan was a man named Sahmi bin Haslul. The caravan arrived in Basra, where the caravan went to a grain merchant, a Jew named Mordahai bin Ibrahim bin Moshe. During the negotiations, the Jew asked them: "Where are you from?" They replied: "From the Anza tribe of the al-Masaleh clan." Hearing this, the Jew began to fiercely fool each of those who came, saying that he was also from the al-Masaleh clan, but that he lived in Basra because of a quarrel between his father and some members of the Anza tribe.
After he told the story he had invented, he ordered his servants to load camel goods with food in a much larger volume; this act seemed so generous that representatives of the al-Masaleh clan were very surprised and primed for their relative, who managed to become a successful merchant in Iraq…
When the caravan was ready for departure, the Jew asked to take it with him, because he really wants to visit his homeland Nedzh. Upon hearing his request, the caravans gladly agreed to take him with them.
Thus, the Jew secretly reached Nejd. In Nejd, through his supporters, whom he passed off as his relatives, he began to diligently propagate himself. …
To achieve such ambitious plans, he began to become very close to the Bedouins and in the end he declared himself their ruler!
At the same time, the Ajaman tribe, in alliance with the Banu Khalid tribe, realizing its essence and that the insidious plan drawn up by this Jew begins to produce results, decided to destroy him. They attacked his city and captured it, but could not capture a Jew who was hiding from enemies ..
This Jewish ancestor of the Saudi dynasty, Mordahai, hid on a farm that at that time was called al-Malibed-Usaibabliz al-Arid, the current name for this area is ar-Riyad

He sought refuge from the owner of this land. The owner was a very hospitable man and allowed the Jew to stay. In less than a month, a Jew killed all the members of the farm’s owner’s family, hiding the traces of his crimes and showing as if the thieves who had entered here destroyed the family. He then announced that he had bought the land before the death of the former owner and remained living there. He renamed the area, giving it a name - ad-Diriya, as well as the area that he lost.
This Jewish ancestor (Mordakhai) of the Ibn Saud dynasty built a guest yard on the lands of his victims under the name “Madafa” and gathered around him a group of his minions, hypocritical people, who began to stubbornly say that he is a prominent Arab leader. … He had a lot of wives who gave him a huge number of children. He gave Arabic names to all his children.

Since that time, the number of his descendants has increased, which allowed the creation of a large Saudi clan, following his path, controlling the Arab tribes and clans. They ruthlessly selected agricultural land, and physically eliminated the rebellious. They used all kinds of deceit, deceit to achieve their goals, they offered their women money to attract as many people as possible. They were especially zealous with historians and writers in order to forever obscure their Jewish origin and connect it with the original Arab tribes of Rabia, Anza and al-Masaleh.

If Iran wasn’t antisemitic, why is it obsessed with saying that the Saudis are Jews?

07/30 Links Pt2: Can’t get cancelled for anti-Semitism, but can for philosemitism; UN Expresses ‘Dismay’ at Antisemitic Statements by Islamic Relief Leader; Almost 1,000 Jews visit Temple Mount for Tisha B’Av; some pray, wave Israel flag

From Ian:

Can’t get cancelled for anti-Semitism, but can for philosemitism

The organizations conducting their unauthorized battles against anti-Semitism have conflated prejudice with violence. They have no clue how to fight the former and no interest in fighting the latter.

Prejudice isn’t fought with Holocaust museum tours, but with dignity. The first line of defense against it is having enough self-respect not to offer atonement to bigots who have nothing but contempt for you. Unfortunately, too many Jews on the left and the right can be counted on to launch into militant defenses, asked or unasked, of bigots on their side and to do so by leveraging their own status as Jews.

And too many organizations are happy to whitewash trendy bigots while ignoring uncool supporters.

What the fight against anti-Semitism really needs is the ability to separate class anxieties about acceptance from real threats. And that won’t be done by organizations like the ADL, whose class anxieties have transformed it into a generic leftist advocacy group with little interest in Jewish issues, or the rest of its organizational cohort whose priority is winning the acceptance of the urban upper class.

And that acceptance is premised on embracing the left-wing politics and anti-Semitism of that class. That’s how fighting anti-Semitism to mute class anxieties perversely turns into embracing antisemitism.

Distinguishing between class anxieties and real threats doesn’t require futile efforts to educate celebrities who like Farrakhan with Holocaust museum tours, but to educate Jews about dignity and self-respect. People who are less worried about acceptance by those it’s not worth being accepted by are better able to deal with real threats to their physical existence instead of threats to their feelings.

Cancel culture is the product of people who don’t have actual problems and spend all their time worrying about their feelings. Jews do have actual problems, including synagogue attacks by black nationalists and alt-right gunmen, Iranian nukes and the harassment of Jewish students on campus.

When we focus on real-world attacks, then the real problems of anti-Semitism also come into focus.

A people possessing its own dignity is able to stop chasing the affections of its enemies, whether in the Middle East or closer to home, and accept the affection of its friends even if they aren’t trendy enough.

The Voice must apologise for its disastrous interview with Wiley that failed to distinguish between reporting on antisemitism and enabling it

The Voice newspaper must apologise for its disastrous interview with Wiley that failed to distinguish between reporting on antisemitism and enabling it.

In his interview, Wiley doubled down on his previous social media comments, describing Jews as rich exploiters and slavers, using classic antisemitic tropes and generalising about an entire ethnic group following an apparent dispute with his management team.

But rather than challenge Wiley’s views, the interviewer, Joel Campbell, suggested that there might be ‘salient’ points in Wiley’s racist ranting and seemed to affirm the idea that the Jewish community has a ‘stranglehold’ on the black community. The article also failed convincingly to dispute Wiley’s unfounded and antisemitic claims that Jews are rich exploiters and slavers.

The article’s commentary was also unacceptable. “There is no way to put this all in one nutshell but the hypothesis that you need to get a Jewish lawyer in order to progress in the music business may be a complete fallacy (I haven’t done the numbers, looking into the correlation in respect of who is and isn’t successful with or without one), but yet it remains,” Campbell wrote, adding: “I’ve never seen anyone Jewish refute or confirm this (maybe there was never a need felt to do so), but maybe, it’s a discussion that needs to be had?”

The notion that artists from the black community require a Jewish lawyer to advance is not “a discussion that needs to be had”. If anything, a discussion needs to be had about how The Voice could possibly have published such a disastrous article about such a sensitive topic. There is a difference between reporting on Wiley’s antisemitism and enabling and amplifying it. The Voice’s article was very much on the wrong side of that line.

Wiley had spent the last several days spewing antisemitic bile on social media before being locked out of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram following a global #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate campaign and mass 48-hour social media boycott. Wiley’s comments were condemned by the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, politicians from across parties, celebrities and many others.

Wiley gives incendiary interviews to Sky News and The Voice Online, which depressingly suggests that some of Wiley’s views “are the great unsaid outside of the black community”

The antisemitic grime artist Wiley has given incendiary interviews to Sky News and The Voice Online.

Wiley has spent the last several days spewing antisemitic bile on social media before being locked out of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram following a global #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate campaign and mass 48-hour social media boycott, in which Campaign Against Antisemitism participated.

Wiley’s comments were condemned by the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, politicians from across parties, celebrities and many others.

In his interviews, Wiley doubled down on his previous comments, describing Jews as rich exploiters and slavers, using classic antisemitic tropes and generalising about an entire ethnic group following an apparent dispute with his management team. Nevertheless, the intensity of Wiley’s vitriol and some of the conspiracy theories he espoused indicate that these are longstanding beliefs that have incubated over time, rather than comments arising from the moment.

In a depressing passage in The Voice Online article, the interviewer explained that he had set out “to find out what had triggered [Wiley’s] outburst and why he would make such sweeping generalisations against a community of people in such a scathing manner. These questions were not being posed from an ignorant perspective, some of the views espoused by Wiley are the great unsaid outside of the black community.”

The notion that Wiley’s views may be widespread in some communities is deeply concerning.

The writer went on to say: “Putting anything remotely near considered antisemitic to one side of course, in fact out the window in the bin, not too many seem prepared to vocalise their consternation for some of the recurring themes Wiley believes is the stranglehold one community seems to have over another in particular relation but not confined to, the music business.”

Reinforcing his views, Wiley opens new Instagram account and begins uploading disturbing videos to 250,000 followers on YouTube, as CAA asks Facebook and Google to take him off air

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Online Monitoring and Investigations Unit is aware that Wiley, who has was finally banned from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram following worldwide outrage, is now uploading disturbing videos to a small Instagram account that appears to be new, and a YouTube channel with almost 250,000 followers.

The videos continue in the same vein as his previous videos and his recent interviews with Sky News and The Voice, a newspaper for the black community, in which he reaffirmed his belief in antisemitic conspiracy theories and bigoted stereotypes about Jews.

For example, in one of the new videos, Wiley demands that an unspecified “you”, which appears from the context to refer to Jews in general, try taking his passport away so that Wiley can see quite how much power Jews have.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “Facebook and Google, which own Instagram and YouTube, have been made aware of Wiley’s latest attempts to use their platforms to broadcast his appalling views. We have discussed this with them and asked that they urgently close down his remaining accounts. Wiley seems to be on a quest to discredit himself even further and to persuade his audience to hate Jews and even to go to ‘war’ with Jews. His musical career is undoubtedly over, but we are concerned that his fans could be inspired to act on his hateful broadcasts. That is why we have asked social networks to take him off air, and reported Wiley to the police and intend to privately prosecute him should the authorities refuse to act.”

Which is worse: Israeli prison or your college dorm?

Liran Levi reports for Walla News. He tweeted a video from Ofer Prison, presumably from an illegal mobile phone, that ended up on TikTok:

The person with the grapes is Akram Hamed, the Fatah spokesman for the prison.

Now, which looks worse - this prison or your college dorm?

(h/t Yoel)

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We know Israel haters like @AsaWinstanley lie. Not only that, THEY know they lie.

Asa Winstanley calls himself an "investigative journalist" for Electronic Intifada. But of course he is nothing of the kind - he is an anti-Israel propagandist.

This morning, he tweeted:

Einat Wilf's tweet referred to a Haaretz article from 2018 about how the Zionist population of Israel before 1948 closely mirrored the areas where Jews had drained the swamps and killed the mosquitoes that caused malaria. Wilf's point is that Jews did not displace Arabs, only mosquitoes.

There is no way that Winstanley could have misinterpreted the tweet to mean that Wilf was calling Arabs mosquitoes.

And after he made his ridiculous accusation, even people who are sympathetic to his anti-Israel viewpoint pointed out that he was wrong this time.

But hours later, this erstwhile "journalist" didn't acknowledge his mistake.

Because it wasn't a mistake. It was Goebbels-type propaganda, adding to the ever growing list of fake Zionist quotes we've seen over the years.

The anti-Israel crowd does not give a damn about little things like the truth. They have a crusade to wage to destroy Israel. Winstanley knows that his antisemitic fans will believe anything he says, so he'll say anything.

The real question is why anyone ever takes his "reporting" seriously when he is a proven liar?

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07/30 Links Pt1: For Israel, Not Winning is Losing; Twitter defends blocking Trump tweets but not Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei; Gaza disengagement was 'absolute mistake,' says withdrawal commander

From Ian:

For Israel, Not Winning is Losing

It used to be said that Israel required a strategic edge to survive in the Middle East, and that is why it invested in the greatest armory and technology. Nevertheless, none of this is the slightest bit relevant if there is never any will to use it.

To change the current paradigm, Israel must regain a semblance of deterrence.

To do this, it must start remembering how to win again. Of course, some will say, defeating terrorist organizations is not the same as defeating regular armies or other nations.

However, Hamas and Hezbollah are both essentially if not actually in charge of the territories they reside in. They have pressure points like all rulers and those who govern territory.

Moreover, the idea that terrorist organizations cannot be defeated is also outdated. Just ask the Islamic State in Iraq and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, both of whom were defeated and destroyed.

Israel cannot afford constant small-scale attacks from Lebanon like those we have witnessed with alarming regularity from Gaza all of these years. If the situation deteriorates, and more citizens have to live under the daily threat of attacks, with everything that means economically, socially and nationally, it could become the dreaded death of a thousand cuts.

Israel needs to change its mindset, or better still, return to its former approach, which saw it defeat its enemies so they could not raise their head again against it. We must be allowed to use our obvious military, economic and diplomatic strengths to secure a victory against those whose raison d'être is to destroy the State of Israel.

This of course might seem far-fetched to the average Israeli citizen, but the fact that it remains the goal of our enemies means that they are not being dissuaded or deterred from this dream, making them perpetually dangerous.

The situation will exponentially deteriorate the longer their dream lives on and Israel continues to display weakness. The only way to stop it is by returning to a victory mentality, because as Senator McCain said, if we are not winning, we are in fact, losing.

Twitter defends blocking Trump tweets but not Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei

A Twitter spokeswoman has defended the company’s decision to block and restrict tweets from President Trump but not those of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei which call for genocide of the Israeli people.

The reason? Because the Iranian dictator’s tweets pass as “commentary on political issues of the day” while Trump’s could “inspire harm,” Twitter claims.

During a hearing on antisemitism in front of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament in Jerusalem, lawmakers grilled a Twitter representative over why the platform was policing missives from Trump, but not other world leaders such as Khamenei calling Israel “a cancerous growth.”

“You have recently started flagging the tweets of President Trump,” noted Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Israeli-Jewish Congress.

“Why have you not flagged the tweets of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has literally called for the genocide of Israel and the Jewish people?” he asked.

In an astonishing response, the Twitter spokeswoman claimed that tweets from the Iranian leader — where he has publicly called for the “elimination” of Israel — amounted to little more than “foreign policy saber-rattling.”

“We have an approach to world leaders that presently say that direct interactions with fellow public figures, comments on political issues of the day, or foreign policy saber-rattling on military and economic issues are generally not in violation of our Twitter rules,” the spokeswoman responded.

Stunned lawmaker Michal Cotler-Wunsh interrupted: “So calling for genocide is OK?”

“Calling for genocide on Twitter is OK, but commenting on political situations in certain countries is not OK?” she continued.

A clip of the exchange was shared on Twitter on Wednesday by former acting director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell who wrote: “This should be something the US media reports. Wow.”

Iran’s leader has repeatedly shared tweets calling Israel a “deadly, cancerous growth” to be “uprooted and destroyed” — all going unchecked by Twitter.

“The long-lasting virus of Zionism will be uprooted thanks to the determination and faith of the youth,” Khamenei wrote as recently as May.

What does this say when @Twitter censors @realDonaldTrump more than the Ayatollah? Social media needs to give conservatives the same rights as they give terrorist leaders. https://t.co/HrIp2IX22r
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) July 30, 2020

Twitter's violating sanctions on Iran by providing the Ayatollah Khamenei w/ account services & I've urged AG Barr to open a criminal investigation into those violations. Now we learn Twitter is allowing him spread #Antisemitic vitriol & hatred against America on its platform. https://t.co/0UZQFglUB0
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) July 29, 2020

There has already been a lot written about Seth Rogen's interview on Marc Maron’s podcast, but I want to focus on a section that isn't getting as much attention:

I don’t understand. To me it just seems very, like an antiquated thought process. Like, if it is for religious reasons, I don’t agree with it because I think religion is silly. If it is truly for the preservation of Jewish people, it makes no sense, because again, you don’t keep something you’re trying to preserve all in one place especially when that place has proven to be… pretty volatile.

Rogen's atheism is not a surprise to those following his career - after all, his movie Sausage Party was a raunchy, funny discourse on how God doesn't exist. He is now saying that without the existence of God, then Israel has no reason to exist either, and in fact is counterproductive for the preservation of the Jewish people.

He goes on:

I don’t understand it at all. I think for Jewish people especially who view themselves as progressive and who view themselves as analytical and who view themselves as people who ask a lot of questions and really challenge the status quo — Like, What are we doing?

Rogen thinks that he is progressive and analytical and challenging the status quo.

But it is not at all challenging the status quo for an atheist to deride the idea of a Jewish state. It is far more extraordinary for an atheist to wholeheartedly support it.

Which brings me to Sophie Leib-Neri, a rising junior at Washington University in St. Louis, who wrote an excellent essay on Tisha B'Av while interning at the Israel Forever Foundation. These excerpts are the best answer I can imagine to Seth Rogen.

As an atheist Jew I have been challenged to question each of my Jewish practices. Why would I fast on Yom Kippur? Why do I keep Passover? And in regards to the upcoming holiday (which is more a holy day than a holiday), why do I care about Tisha B’Av?

Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the month of Av (Jewish calendar) is the day when both the first and second Temples were destroyed, the first by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.; the second by the Romans in 70 C.E.

The destruction of the Jewish Temple meant the destruction of the most holy, pivotal location to the Jewish religion, culture and people. Destruction of the Temple was an attempt to destroy the Jewish nation – take out the cultural linchpin, the one element that holds everyone together.

Over time, Tisha B’Av has been expanded to encompass mourning for all horrible events in Jewish history. Therefore Tish’a B’av includes the Spanish inquisition, the Holocaust, and the repeated expulsion of Jews from European countries among other horrible Jewish events. Tisha B’av is “marked” by a fast and a day of learning.

I find this to be the most inspiring aspect of the day. Not only do Jews take a day to remember these events, but they also engage in learning to further their understanding. For some Jews, this is a day to grapple with God allowing such vehement evil in the world. For others, it’s the opportunity to expand our knowledge of the seemingly constant Jewish struggle.

The destruction of the Second Temple, represents the most poignant instance in which the Jewish people faced violent adversity. The cultural epicenter of Jewish life was destroyed and the Nation of Israel was sent to a 2000 year long exile. How do a people retain their nationhood exiled from their land, scattered from their community and disconnected from the spiritual leadership that dictated the pattern and rhythms of Jewish life?

While I don’t find myself mourning the Temple as a place to pray, Tisha B’Av is an opportunity for me to contemplate the loss of culture, the shattering of the community and exile from the homeland to become strangers in a strange land, ever at the mercy of others.

In this light, the continued existence of the Jewish People as a Nation defies all understanding. And then there is Israel.

Tisha B’av is about remembering the Destruction of the Temple, the almost-destruction of the Jewish Nation, but every other day in the land of Israel is about celebrating our continued Jewish existence.

Mourning the Holocaust is difficult, but crucial in understanding the traumatic events which the Jewish people continually overcome. Tisha B’Av is similar, reaching back much further into our history - a lesson that the Holocaust is not the singular tragedy of the Jewish People but rather one of many attempts to eliminate our existence.

It is the rebirth of the Jewish State that serves as tangible proof of resilience of the Jewish nation - Tisha B’Av is a annual reminder of the difficulty in retaining Jewish Nationhood without a cultural, societal linchpin that holds us together. The Temple was the heart of the religion but it was also the place where Jews made pilgrimage three times a year, a place of ingathering, a place of unity.

While many Jews do not find themselves in practice of the religion, 2000 years have not changed the need to retain Nationhood through Jewish identity, shared values, purpose and unity. While we may not look to the Temple, we can look to Israel.

While some believe that miracles from God enabled the Jewish people to overcome, against all odds, I believe that it is the singular strength, the unique unity and spirit of the Jewish Nation, our ancestors, that has made this possible. Whether or not your Jewish identity includes the belief in God, there is always room for greater Jewish learning and understanding. If you believe in God, then Tisha B’av is a way to deepen your relationship with God by acknowledging the challenges He has given to the Jewish people and the miracles that have enabled them to be overcome.

If you identity as culturally Jewish, then Tisha B’av offers greater understanding of Jewish culture, the history from which it stems and the centrality of Zion in uniting the Jewish people over the centuries. If you identify with the tribal aspect of Judaism, Tisha B’av is a timeline of your family’s history and the obstacles they have overcome for you to be reading this today. If you identity with the land of Israel and the Jewish nation, Tisha B’av encapsulates the rarity of Jewish people having freedom to practice their religion and the miraculous achievement of the rebirth of the Jewish State and reunification of Jerusalem.

To Seth Rogen, Judaism is the Lower East Side, Yiddish and bagels. That is not "progressive and analytical" - it is puerile, yet it is the status quo among the "progressive" crowd that is now dominating American culture and media.

Contrast that with Sophie Leib-Neri - a truly progressive, thoughtful and proud Jew whose opinions are not close to the status quo. She looks at the Jewish people as a thriving, living and exciting nation and a family, and Israel is the Jewish people's only home - and the people with the most compelling claim to that home.

If Seth Rogen really cares about questioning, he should read Sophie's entire essay and try to argue against that.

Sophie has thought far more about the relevance of Judaism and Israel than Seth Rogen ever did. He can learn a lot from her.

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The 16th Kina of Tisha B'Av refers to the tragic story of the Romans, after destroying the Temple, filled up a ship with 400 Jewish boys and girls who would be forced to become prostitutes in Rome. The children all chose to throw themselves overboard to drown rather than be subjected to that.

The commentary I am reading now by Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik said that there was a similar story about a group of Jewish schoolgirls in Warsaw who were also being readied to be raped by Nazi soldiers and who likewise chose suicide.

I found the story reported on page 8(!) of the New York Times, January 8, 1943:

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Have an easy and meaningful fast

I will not be blogging or tweeting Wednesday night and Thursday until after 1 PM EDT in observance of Tisha B'Av.

May this be the last year that Tisha B'Av is a fast day.

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07/29 Links Pt2: Matti Friedman: Israel Was Ground Zero for the New Woke Religion; Jonathan Tobin: On Tisha B'Av, it's time for Americans to step back from apocalyptic rhetoric

From Ian:

Matti Friedman: Israel Was Ground Zero for the New Woke Religion

Western ideologies generally include a parable about villainous Jews. Because this is a set of ideas that sees itself as a political critique, the parable doesn’t come, as past versions have, from Scripture (in the case of Christianity), or from economic theory (as it did in Marxism), or pseudo-scientific racial doctrines (National Socialism). It comes from the news—specifically, from the mythology that I saw being constructed as a reporter a decade ago. A strange antagonism to something called “Israel” came up if you went to a Women’s March against Donald Trump in New York, or protested violence against African Americans in Ferguson, Missouri, or joined the Dyke March in Chicago, or presented an academic paper at the American Studies Association. It appears in the platform of Black Lives Matter from 2016, in left-wing politics in Britain and France, and in gender studies courses at California colleges.

These diverse applications are unique, if not entirely unprecedented, for a news story. But they make sense if we understand the Israel story as a kind of sacred template that can be used to explain many different situations. A good example became visible this spring in the wake of the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis: the myth that Israel trains American police officers in the same methods of brutality that killed Floyd, and which are deployed more generally against people of color. This conspiracy theory has been promoted as factual by (among many others) senior journalists, members of the British Labour Party, and, in early July, by the biggest Lutheran denomination in America.

That last detail supports the idea that new religions are never completely removed from the old ones. Indeed, the unique power of the Israel story is the way it takes the central preoccupation of the new thought system—the inequality of white Western power versus nonwhite Third World innocence—and projects it onto a setting already loaded with religious resonance. If you’re looking for a parable about human inequality, places called Jerusalem or Bethlehem are potent in ways that can’t be rivaled by Xinjiang or Laayoune, or Minneapolis.

A good illustration of this merger came in the form of a speech given to a convention of the Episcopal church in 2018 by a Massachusetts bishop who described atrocities she claimed to have personally witnessed in Israel. She described the murder of an innocent 15-year-old Palestinian by Jewish soldiers—“they shot him in the back four times, he fell on the ground and they shot him another six”—and the aggressive handcuffing by soldiers of a 3-year-old Palestinian boy whose ball rolled off the Temple Mount.

It later turned out that the bishop hadn’t seen any such thing, and she apologized profusely. But in a religious mindset, the question isn’t whether a story happened. The question is whether a story can mobilize believers to achieve good. If the answer is yes, the story is “true.”

This kind of thinking has now bled into newsrooms and university departments, precisely the bodies that are supposed to be engaged in observation and reasoned debate. If important parts of the press and the academy are beginning to sound like ministries, it’s happening at a time when religion and quasi-religion are on the rise everywhere—not just on the progressive left but also on the right, and not only in the West. Some of these trends are evident in Israel, too. As we speak, as if to symbolize the moment, the Hagia Sophia is being changed from a public museum back into a mosque—though in Istanbul, at least, the conversion is being done in the open.

Jonathan Tobin: On Tisha B'Av, it's time for Americans to step back from apocalyptic rhetoric

Americans are experiencing a summer of discontent in a way that exceeds any in living memory. The nation is divided not just along political lines but seems increasingly immersed in something much more dangerous – a culture war in which both sides truly believe that not only will a triumph by their opponents bring ruin, but that the very existence of the republic and American democracy is at stake.

That's why both Jews and non-Jews need to pause this week and consider the lessons that the observance of Tisha B'Av: the day on the Hebrew calendar that marks the destruction of both ancient holy temples in Jerusalem, as well as many other catastrophes of Jewish history. The day of fasting and reflection, which begins this year on the evening of July 29, is not observed by most non-Orthodox Jews and generally considered too depressing to have become part of secular American Jewish culture, which prefers holidays that follow a model that runs along the lines of "they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat."

But if there was ever a year when its lessons were needed by Americans of all faiths, it is 2020.

Tradition teaches us that the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE occurred because of "sinat hinam" – senseless or baseless hatred—that undermined Jewish resistance during the siege of Jerusalem and great revolt against the forces of the Roman Empire.

A war that pitted the forces of a small nation against the world's only superpower wasn't going to have a happy ending, no matter how united the defenders of Jerusalem had been. But the rabbis who subsequently reconstituted Jewish faith emphasized the way that the Jewish rebels were divided into competing factions within Jerusalem's walls. In the civil war that raged inside the doomed city, a Zealot faction destroyed food supplies that could have prolonged resistance. Their self-destructive behavior made the task of Roman conquest that much easier and provided Jewish history with a lesson of what not to do to survive in a hostile world.

It's an important lesson, but not one that most Jews – or non-Jews for that matter – find easy to follow.

The political lines dividing Americans are starker than at any moment in living memory. It's not just that Republicans and Democrats disagree about the issues. Most of the supporters of President Donald Trump and most of those who support his opponents seem unprepared to credit each other with good intentions, period.

The deafening silence of liberal Jewish leadership in the face of BLM anitsemitism

For those of us that are children of Holocaust survivors, we know well the hell our parents went through to survive.
They hid, had no food, no clothes, no medical attention, and no help.
They were cramped in hiding places with no fresh air and couldn' t make a sound or Nazis would kill them.
It lasted a lot longer than this will last, some for up to 4 or 5 years.
They lost their education, their souls, their youth.
There were no supermarkets,no cell phones, no radios and no outside interference.

What we can compare with deadly accuracy is 1933 Nazi Germany and the inaction of our Jewish leadership and the Stockholm Syndrome response of many liberal Jews in the face of rising, hateful antisemitism.

Just as then when the voices of the leadership might have made a difference, but was barely heard, today most liberal leaders and clergy prefer to be politically correct and support our enemies.

Had Hitler conquered America or the area that is now Israel but was then the British Mandate, no Jews would have been left alive. That means many of those reading this article would never have been born.

What is it that left liberal and progressive Jews do not understand? When I hear the rabid antisemitic lies on videos and social media, I sense that another Hitler is coming - while you are sleeping, not 'woke,' dreaming about meeting the demands of the antisemitic Black Lives Matter.

Cogwar 8 Years on: BLM BDS & the Wokeocracy

In 2012 Prof Richard Landes said "Its not every generation that gets to defend a civilisation" and he advised that silence is not an option. In view of the extraordinary events since January 2020 when he was last in London, Campaign4Truth asked him how we have done in these 8 years: Have we been silent?