Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, January 30, 2021

01/30 Links: Natan Sharansky: Remember the People, Not Just the Atrocities; Caroline Glick: Democrats, American Jews and Politically Correct Bigotry

From Ian:

Natan Sharansky: Remember the People, Not Just the Atrocities

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, everyone around the world — individuals, leaders, communities — gather to reinforce their commitment to honor the memory of the victims of the darkest hour of human history.

But while the world bows its head to commemorate the Holocaust, it often remembers its victims as a unified collective. The very day we commemorate the victims, Jan. 27, marks the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the ultimate symbol of the Nazi terror. But not all Holocaust victims were sent to concentration camps. Far from it. The time has come to tell the all-encompassing story of the Holocaust.

Behind the monstrous number of “six million victims” stand six million individual life stories. To commemorate the Holocaust means remembering each and every one of those individually. We are committed to telling as many stories as possible, but unfortunately, too many of them remain unknown.

How many life stories will never be known after the massacre in Ukraine’s Babi Yar ravine? Within two days, the Nazis brutally murdered 33,771 Jewish men, women and children. By the end of the war, they murdered 100,000 people, including Ukrainians and gypsies.

The Babi Yar massacre destroyed the Jewish community in Kyiv. The Jews of Riga, Minsk and Vilnius encountered the same tragic fate — murdered in ravines. Some 1.5 million Jews lost their lives that way.

The central chapter of the Nazi’s “final solution” is still largely unknown. As I know from bitter experience, the Soviet regime after World War II did everything possible to erase Jewish identity and the memory of the Holocaust from collective memory.

The Jews who fought back during the Holocaust

Much has been written about what needs to be done during the remaining days of the year to properly commemorate and educate the world about the horrors of the Holocaust, and what “never again” really means. A recent Pew Research poll proves that Americans’ Holocaust education is sorely lacking. For example, only 45 percent of Americans interviewed even knew that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Even fewer knew that Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany by a democratic political process.

Surely, what is far less known is how many Jews fought valiantly against the Nazis. But fight they did. Jews fought back alongside resistance groups around Europe, organized uprisings in the ghettos, created partisan units and even fought back in the concentration camps, attempting to bomb a crematorium in Auschwitz. To properly commemorate the Holocaust, these stories must be told as well.

To that end, I commemorate and honor the story of the following Jews who courageously fought back during World War II and the Holocaust. Their stories represent the thousands who fought to the end.
- Mordechai Anielewitz. The leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In April 1943, he led 750 Jewish fighters armed with a handful of pistols, 17 rifles and Molotov cocktails—all smuggled into the ghetto—in a clash with more than 2,000 heavily armed and well-trained German troops. They held off the Germans for 27 days.
- Boris Lekach. This one is personal. My wife’s maternal grandfather. Lekach fought for the Russians against the Nazis. He enlisted at age 16 with doctored papers just so he could fight. He was also well-known to many in the Jewish community in Russia for helping Jews escape during and after the war.
- The Bielski Brothers. Made famous in a number of books and in the 2008 movie “Defiance,” the Bielski brothers—Tuvia, Asael and Zus—fled their city in Belarus after their parents and two other siblings were murdered. The brothers found shelter in the forest, where they created one of the largest and most effective partisan groups during the war, focusing on guerrilla attacks against the Nazis and their collaborators, as well as on preserving Jewish life even in their hideout. In a little more than two years, the Bielski group grew to about 1,200 people.
- Tosia Altman. A young woman who used fake papers to smuggle weapons and information in and out of Poland’s ghettos. She was an active member of the social Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, active in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising alongside Anielewitz and the other brave fighters.
- Eta Wrobel. A young woman in her 20s who helped form an all-Jewish partisan unit in the Polish woods. Her unit attacked German troops as they traveled through the area and is credited for saving hundreds of Jews.
- Rudolph Masaryk. On Aug. 2, 1943, at the Treblinka extermination camp, Masaryk and other Jewish prisoners stole 20 grenades, 20 rifles and a few handguns. Together, they attacked the SS guards, while another doused a large part of the camp with gasoline and lit it on fire. Approximately 300 prisoners escaped and 40 Nazi guards were killed during the Treblinka uprising.

Caroline Glick: Democrats, American Jews and Politically Correct Bigotry

In recent weeks, outspoken anti-Israel campaigners and BDS supporters like Representative Ilhan Omar, former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill and New York Times columnist Peter Beinart have been pushing for the new administration to reject the IHRA definition and legitimize BDS. They have attacked Jewish Democratic groups like the Democratic Majority for Israel, as well as the vast majority of all American Jewish groups, led by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations—all of which are urging the Biden administration to maintain the previous administration's policies.

These efforts are being driven both by overtly anti-Israel, nominally Jewish groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, and by ostensibly "pro-Israel" progressive Jewish groups, including Peace Now, J Street, T'ruah and the New Israel Fund. The AMCHA Initiative report found that since 2019, 44 percent of efforts to discredit the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism were carried out by these and other like-minded Jewish-run groups.

All of these groups are calling for the Biden administration to disavow the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and its examples of contemporary anti-Semitism as a legal tool for combating anti-Semitism. IfNotNow is running a social media campaign, as well, to lobby the Biden administration to appoint an official special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism who will simply ignore leftist anti-Semitism. As the group put it in a recent Twitter post, "It is important for us to demand that [President Biden] appoint someone to the special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism who'll be committed to fighting neo-Nazis and white nationalists, not Palestinians and students."

It is a peculiar thing to see ostensibly Jewish groups dedicating their efforts to removing legal protections against anti-Jewish discrimination from their fellow Jews. It is a mark of the corruption of the American Jewish far Left that this is what they wish to fight for today. But even more disconcerting is the anti-Semitic disposition of large swaths of the Democratic Party. Democratic activist circles are now dominated by anti-Semitic voices from the Left who denounce Israel and its supporters. The effort by progressive Jewish groups to deny civil rights protection to pro-Israel Jews is indicative of the prevailing winds in the Democratic Party. Progressive Jews believe that to remain relevant in their party, they must fill the role of Jewish fig leaves for their party's anti-Semitic activist base.

This then brings us to the object of their lobbying efforts—President Joe Biden. Wednesday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. To mark the occasion, Biden released a strong statement decrying anti-Semitism. Arguably more significant, however, is the fact that Trump's executive order on anti-Semitism has been scrubbed from the Biden White House's website.

Abdel Fatah Hamayel, a long time top Fatah official and former governor of Bethlehem, wrote on his Facebook page that there were death threats againt any Fatah member who dared run for office outside of Fatah's own official list.

This threat was by Fatah itself, at a meeting of the Fatah Revolutionary Council on Thursday.

Hamayel condemned the threat, saying that it is very dangerous and against the supposed democratic approach of Fatah.

Of course, Fatah was never democratic in the least. But this shows that once a terrorist organization, always a terrorist organization.

01/29 Links Pt2: Holding "Politicized, Biased" Academia Accountable; Arab Writers Slam Facebook And Twitter's Hypocrisy: They Block Trump, Yet Continue To Provide Platform For Terror Organizations

From Ian:

Winfield Myers on Holding "Politicized, Biased" Academia Accountable

Winfield Myers, director of Campus Watch at the Middle East Forum, spoke to participants in a December 18 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about Campus Watch's pivotal role in documenting the misuse of taxpayer funds and the questionable foreign funding sources of various Middle East studies centers at American universities.

A major focus of Campus Watch in 2020 was the widespread misuse of federal grants received by Middle East studies centers under Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965. The Title VI statute stipulates that these grants, usually in the neighborhood of $250,000-300,000 per year, be used for "the teaching of area studies and languages that will strengthen America's national security," said Myers. Instead, as Campus Watch research has shown, the monies are typically used to support "politicized, biased, anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Western teaching, scholarship, conferences, travel, you name it, in a variety of ways."

Campus Watch has worked in tandem with Clifford Smith of MEF's Washington Project to hold academia accountable for long-overlooked abuses. Campus Watch documents proof of the abuses, which Smith brings to the attention of policymakers, congressional leaders, and others in Washington D.C. to see "what might be done to rein them in."

Campus Watch and the Washington Project organized a congressional letter-writing campaign requesting departmental investigations into various Middle East studies centers that were abusing their grants. These letters found a "sympathetic ear" among Secretary Betsy DeVos and other political appointees in the Department of Education (DoE) during the Trump administration, who began several investigations and completed one. In prior years, the DoE had "cozy relationships" with D.C.'s higher education lobby and various directors of Middle East studies centers. The latter, whom Myers dubbed "the higher education blob," pressed "for more money and less oversight," and largely got their way.

MEMRI: Arab Writers Slam Facebook And Twitter's Hypocrisy: They Block Trump, Yet Continue To Provide Platform For Terror Organizations

Facebook's and Twitter's suspension of former U.S. President's Donald Trump's accounts following the Washington DC riots on January 6, 2021 sparked criticism from Arab writers, who accused the networks of employing a double standard. Twitter and Facebook, they said, shut down Trump's accounts on the pretext of incitement to violence, yet at the same time they continue to provide a platform for numerous terror groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, which call for murder and violence against innocent people.

January 9, 2021 Cartoon in Egyptian daily Al-Yawm Al-Sabi': Twitter and Facebook silence Trump on grounds of "public security," yet provide the "organizations of chaos and terror" with a platform on the grounds of "freedom of opinion"

The following are translated excerpts from some of the articles:
Akram Al-Qassas, acting editor of the Al-Yawm Al-Sabi' daily, which is affiliated with the Egyptian regime, wrote: "Twitter's decision to shut down the account of U.S. president Donald Trump constitutes a turning point in the practices of the social media networks [in general] and of Twitter in particular… Twitter's closing of [his] account on the pretext of incitement to violence marks a turning point, and one wonders whether Twitter will limit these rules to the U.S. alone or impose them on everyone - especially considering that Twitter is the social media network which in recent years has enabled the promotion of violence more than any other [network]. In fact, organizations like the Islamic State [ISIS] and Al-Qaeda had [Twitter] accounts on which they published statements inciting to violence, and even disseminated and marketed terror attacks. Cached Twitter accounts still include hundreds of videos in which terrorists incite terror, bombings and murder of Egyptian military personnel and police. Moreover, Twitter still provides a platform for people who call for violent demonstrations, incitement and murder, and for videos featuring religious rulings that accuse Egyptians of heresy and incite to murder them.

"[All this] may indicate that Twitter's sudden adoption of a policy opposing violence and terror applies only to the U.S., or that the [network] is employing a double standard: spreading [the messages of] terrorists and those who incite violence in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Europe, while preventing the same in the U.S. This seems to be motivated by some kind of fear by Twitter that it might be sued if it continues to allow Trump to tweet.

"Generally speaking, stopping Trump's tweets after he was accused of incitement to violence represent an important turning point, compelling all the countries in the world to apply these norms in the fight against terror and to block all accounts which call for violence and promote terror. There are hundreds of Twitter accounts… of armed organizations… which clearly incite against Egypt and other Arab countries.

"[But] it seems that the decision to suspend Trump's account is specific to him, and that Twitter will find it difficult to apply the same policy in all cases, for the network apparently profits, directly or indirectly, from fake accounts or accounts inciting violence or terror, so it will be reluctant to block them as it did with Trump."[1]

WATCH: Is the #Qatari government pushing a smear campaign against the world's most widely accepted definition of #antisemitism? pic.twitter.com/DXOyPLqnCj
— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) January 29, 2021

This is FALSE.
What Edelstein really said:
"If it is the responsibility of the Israeli Health Minister to take care of the Palestinians what exactly is the responsibility of the Palestinian Health Minister? To take care of the dolphins in the Mediterranean?" https://t.co/NTPyHAgBlK pic.twitter.com/p7cTSGROze
— Middle East Fact Check (@MEFactCheck) January 28, 2021

Cartoon of the Day: It's how you play the game

Continuing my series of recaptioning cartoons....

01/29 Links Pt1: Blast outside Israel’s New Delhi embassy - security raised worldwide; White House Punts on Condemning BDS Movement; Iran Turns Gaza Into Storehouse for Weapons

From Ian:

President Biden, please don't rock the Israel-PA boat

Please don't rock the boat. Don't stray from the path that has proven to be effective. Too many have died, too many lives ruined. Please,stay with the initiative that has ushered in one of the most peaceful times in recent history.

Why did previous administrations fail while the last administration slowed the cycle of violence and offered unprecedented hope for a true and lasting peace?

1. Examining the claims. Palestinian negotiator's claims were generally accepted outright, without much research into their validity, or consideration for the inevitable consequences of accepting such demands. This led to negotiations that started at a place much too steep for Israeli negotiators to even consider realistic talks. A basic and objective check on these claims would have quickly resulted in the nullification of many of them.

For example the demand for "the right of return". Well, why was it that so many Arabs left Israel in the first place? Were any even forced out? Why did Arab nations require the incoming refugees to remain in refugee camps, kept in squalid conditions, while other refugees have long ago been settled and rebuilt their lives?

Even the basic claim to "restore" the "Palestinian State" raises many red flags. Was there ever really a Palestinian Arab nation? Did they ever have rulership anywhere? Or perhaps it is all a pretext to simply gain valuable land? Perhaps the "poor Palestinian people" cause, is a multi billion dollar money maker where leaders like Arafat, Abbas and Hamas get filthy rich by inciting others to violence, continuously fueling the flames of hatred, while staying safely behind the scenes. Have you checked why they are sitting on billions of dollars? Why PA schools books are filled with antisemitism?

#OTD 1 year ago, US released its ‘Peace to Prosperity’ Plan, the most detailed & realistic plan for peace, taking account #Israel’s security concerns & connection to the land, with #Palestinian aspirations. I hope Biden Adm. builds on this, not reverts to failed policies of past. pic.twitter.com/qb8fAqGABq
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) January 28, 2021

Caroline Glick: Maher Bitar and Israel's ideological elections

Israel's March 23 elections are being presented as a simple referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The media and Netanyahu's opponents would have us believe that there is no ideological struggle. It's all just a question of whether you love or hate Bibi.

But this is untrue. The coming elections are primarily about ideology. To understand why this is the case, we need to look no further than President Joe Biden's appointments.

This week the White House announced that Maher Bitar has been appointed to serve as the senior director for Intelligence at the National Security Council. The position is one of the most powerful posts in the US intelligence community. The senior director is the node to which all intelligence from all agencies flows. He decides what to share with the President. And in the name of the President, he determines priorities for intelligence operations and collection.

The senior director of intelligence also determines what information the US intelligence community will share with foreign intelligence services. Likewise, he decides how to relate to information that foreign intelligence agencies share with the Americans.

As one former senior national security council member explained, "The senior director for intelligence controls the information everyone sees. And by controlling information, he controls the conversation."

Usually, the sensitive position is reserved for a CIA officer who is detailed to the National Security Council. Bitar, however, is not an intelligence professional. He is an anti-Israel political activist.

Blast outside Israel’s New Delhi embassy damages cars; security raised worldwide

A blast outside the Israeli embassy in New Delhi on Friday damaged cars but did not cause injuries, police said. Israeli authorities were treating the explosion as a suspected attack aimed at the embassy, The Times of Israel has learned, and was stepping up security precautions at missions around the world.

The district around the embassy was sealed off after the explosion and police and bomb disposal experts took over the scene.

A police statement described it as a “very low-intensity improvised device” that blew out the windows on three nearby cars and said a preliminary investigation “suggests a mischievous attempt to create a sensation.”

The New Delhi Television news channel said the explosive device had ball bearings wrapped in a plastic bag and was left on the pavement outside the embassy. There was no immediate police confirmation.

The blast in the high-security zone occurred while India’s president and prime minister were attending a ceremony marking the end of Republic Day celebrations. The venue is about 1.4 kilometers (1 mile) from the Israeli Embassy.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the blast and that no one was hurt.

“The incident is being investigated by Indian authorities who are in contact with the relevant Israeli officials,” the ministry said. “The foreign minister is being updated regularly and has ordered all necessary security steps be taken.”

Ancient cloth with "royal purple" dye mentioned in the Bible discovered

Exodus 25:2-4:

Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him.

And these are the gifts that you shall accept from them: gold, silver, and copper; blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats’ hair...

This is the first time of many that Hebrew scripture mentions that specific type of purple, known as argaman, clearly an expensive dye that was used in the Mishkan (sanctuary) and the Temple, as well as worn by royalty.

Israeli archaeologists have just announced the discovery of samples of cloth dyed with that specific purple dating to the times of King David and King Solomon.

Researchers from Israel Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv University, and Bar-Ilan University spent years studying colored woven fibers excavated at Timna in the Negev Desert, the site of King Solomon's famed copper mines. Carbon-14 dating determined that they date from 1,000 BCE, the period in which David and Solomon reigned in Jerusalem. They published their findings on Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE.

The purple color, known as "argaman" in Hebrew and extracted from a type of Mediterranean sea snail at a distance of some 300 km (186 miles) from the Timna Valley in the southern Negev Desert, is mentioned in biblical sources a number of times. However, this is the first time that a Bronze Age woven fiber dyed royal purple has been found in Israel or anywhere else in the region.

The research was carried out by Dr. Naama Sukenik from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef, from the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with Prof. Zohar Amar, Dr. David Iluz and Dr. Alexander Varvak from Bar-Ilan University and Dr. Orit Shamir from the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Sukenik, who curates organic finds at the IAA, described the discovery of the purple cloth fibers as "extremely exciting and important."

"This is the first time that woven material from the time of David and Solomon died in the precious 'argaman' has been discovered. In ancient times, purple clothing was associated with the nobility, the priestly class, and of course, kings. The beautiful color of the argaman, the fact that it does not fade, and the difficulty of producing the dye, which exists in very small quantities in the bodies of the snails, made it the most expensive dye, sometimes costing more than gold.

This discovery has other implications.

One of the researchers was able to reproduce the process needed to create the specific purple dye from three types of Mediterranean snails, each of which only produce one gram of dye. The dye was extraordinarily expensive.

And Haaretz notes that the existence of such expensive clothing in a nomadic area illuminates other Biblical issues:

The good food and elegant clothes found at Timna are all signs of cultural sophistication, that add to the massive size and standardization of the mining operation there and at other copper extraction sites, such as Feynan in nearby Jordan. All of this points to the hand of a strong, centralized kingdom, despite the fact that we don’t have major remains of permanent settlements in the Negev from this period, Ben-Yosef says.

One possible explanation is that by the 11th-10th century B.C.E. the Edomites had managed to create a sophisticated political system and a highly stratified society despite continuing their nomadic or semi-nomadic ways, Ben-Yosef suggests.

The idea that scholars too often dismiss the complexities of ancient nomadic societies because they don’t leave behind massive archaeological remains for us to find is a paradigm that Ben-Yosef has been pushing for a while, including in an article he recently published in Haaretz.

“The use of royal purple is more evidence that nomads could create a strong kingdom with an elite and vast trade ties, contrary to the traditional perception of nomadic societies as simple and isolated,” he says. “They would manifest power and wealth not by building walls and palaces but by obtaining exquisite artifacts that were mobile like they were.”

While archaeological evidence of a sedentary Edomite polity only dates back to around 8th century B.C.E., Ben-Yosef’s theory, if correct, would jive with the Bible’s assertion (Genesis 36:31) that such a kingdom existed already before the time of King David, that is, in the 11th-10th century B.C.E.

The archaeologist has suggested that this paradigm shift should apply not only to the Edomites but also to the Israelites and the longstanding debate among scholars over the historicity of the great united monarchy of Israel and Judah under David and Solomon. Most experts today argue that there is no archaeological evidence in Jerusalem or its environs pointing to the existence of a great, centralized kingdom as described in the Old Testament. Just as for the Edomites, the architectural hallmarks of political grandeur appear only in the subsequent centuries. So, this line of thought argues, David and Solomon would have been at best small local chieftains who were aggrandized by the Bible, which was put in writing centuries after these legendary rulers lived. However, Ben-Yosef counters, we should at least take into account the possibility that David’s kingdom did exist but was based on a still largely nomadic population, just like Edom apparently was, which would inevitably leave behind little tangible evidence.

At the very least, the newly discovered luxurious textiles at Timna show that the biblical descriptions of royal purple being used by the elites of the Israelites and their neighbors already in the time of King David are not an anachronism inserted by later authors projecting their own traditions back into the past, Ben-Yosef notes.

You have to admit, it is a pretty color.

Media bias illustrated: AP's "Israeli settler population surged during Trump era" (No, it didn't.)

AP published an article about Jewish population growth in Judea and Samaria that twists statistics to make a point that is not at all supported by the data.

As is often the case with the mainstream media, the facts are there - but skillfully hidden to make the reader believe something other than the truth.

Headline:

Report: Israeli settler population surged during Trump era

Usually the word "surge" would mean that the numbers increased more dramatically than previously. As we will see, this is the opposite of what happened.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s West Bank settler population has grown at a far higher rate than the country as a whole over the last four years, a pro-settler group said Wednesday, a period that coincides with the Trump administration’s unprecedented acceptance of settlement activity.

This lede is already different from the headline. It is saying that settler population is growing faster than Israel's, but not faster than its own growth before Trump.

The question is - is this unusual? Has anything changed? What does Trump have to do with it?

The report by West Bank Jewish Population Stats shows the settler population growing by around 13% since the start of 2017 to reach 475,481. During the same period, Israel’s population grew by around 8% to reach nearly 9.3 million, according to the government.

The group’s report, which is based on official government data, does not include annexed east Jerusalem, home to more than 200,000 settlers.

Note that the AP report specifically mentions 2017 as the starting point of its analysis. Yet if you download the actual report (which is woefully lacking in historical data,) it only mentions the previous 5 year period, not 4.

AP went out of its way to tie Jewish population growth to Trump when the report doesn't even mention his name.

Is this amount of growth, 13% over four years, exceptional?

Using B'Tselem's statistics and excluding Jerusalem as this report did, this is the slowest growth by far of the last five presidential terms!

Does this look like a "surge" to you?

One more thing: AP wrote essentially the same report in 2019.

This is pure bias driving the news.

Yesterday, social media (including myself) had a field day with the revelation that in 2018, Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had come up with a theory that California wildfires might have been started by public utility PG&E, which worked with the Rothschild family, using a satellite that redirects the sun's rays to Earth, in order to clear room for a high-speed rail project that the governor wanted.

Invoking the Rothschilds is of course one of the favorite memes of antisemites, using that banking family as a proxy for supposed Jewish control of the world.

This is not the only antisemitic conspiracy theory that Taylor Greene has espoused. Also in 2018, she shared a video that claimed the "Great Replacement" theory, quoting a Holocaust denier that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation” to replace white Europeans with Muslim immigrants.

She has also claimed that no plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. While she did not blame Jews for this theory, many 9/11 conspiracy theories end up pointing back to Jews as the perpetrators. There are at least six antisemitic 9/11 conspiracy theories, from the Mossad to "Israeli art students" to "4000 Jews told to stay home on 9/11."

Conspiracy theorists and antisemitism go hand in hand. Not every conspiracy theory invokes Jews, but Jews pop up very often in these theories.

It didn't start with the grand theory of the Elders of Zion secretly pulling the strings of the world. It didn't start with the blood libel or the accusation that Jews poison the wells causing the Black Death in the 14th century.

Jews have been blamed for conspiracy theories from the very first moment of becoming a people.

After all, look at Exodus 1:8-11:

A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.”

Jews saved Egypt from famine. They were model citizens. But Pharaoh created a conspiracy theory that they were a fifth column to destroy Egypt.

This is literally the first thing that scripture says about the Jewish people.

It is not the only conspiracy theory in the Hebrew Scripture involving Jews: Esther 3:8:

Haman then said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws; and it is not in Your Majesty’s interest to tolerate them."

Sad to say, no amount of education is going to eradicate this sort of antisemitism. All we can do is expose it and expose the people who are behind it.

Like Pharaoh and Haman, the haters won't change.

Palestinians quietly request 1000 vaccines. Israel quietly delivers. World keeps screaming at Israel.

Once again, the Palestinian Authority made a formal request for a batch of 1000 COVID-19 vaccines for health care workers.

Once again, Israel is providing them.

According to Ma'an quoting Walla, the delivery of the vaccines came after Palestinian officials requested from COGAT, the IDF liaison with the territories, an urgent transfer of the vaccines.

This is at least the third such transfer of vaccines. The first was earlier this month to the PA and the second was last week to Gaza.

Israel has also been coordinating with the Palestinians on importing larger quantities of vaccine from Russia.

Literally every time Palestinians ask for medical help from Israel, including COVID-19 vaccines, Israel has responded positively.

Yet 99% of the media coverage of the topic implies, or outright claims, that Israel is refusing to cooperate with them and withholding vaccines.

Perhaps this is why there is so little trust in the media nowadays.

01/28 Links Pt2: Understanding B’tselem’s “Apartheid” Libel; Tu B’Shvat: The Festival that Proves the Jewish People’s Connection to the Land of Israel; California Is Cleansing Jews From History

From Ian:

Understanding B’tselem’s “Apartheid” Libel

If you’re looking for examples of spin in B’tselem’s latest anti-Israel document, in which the organization slings around the inflammatory terms “apartheid” and “Jewish supremacy,” there are plenty.

Consider, as one small example, the report’s charge that Israel has built “hundreds of communities for Jewish citizens – yet not a single one for Palestinian citizens.” The sentence was written to sound as damning as possible, which increases its shock value, but also left the authors in the uncomfortable position of having to immediately rebut their own falsehood. “The exception,” B’tselem admits in the very next sentence, “is a handful of towns and villages built to concentrate the Bedouin population.” Image of Bedouin town

The town of Ararat an-Naqab, which Israel built for the Bedouin community.

Which is to say, Israel built “not a single” community for Palestinians, except for all the ones it did build: Rahat, Kuseife, Shaqib al-Salam, Ar’arat an-Naqab, Lakiya, Tel as-Sabi, Hura, Tirabin al-Sana, Mulada, Abu Krinat, Bir Hadaj, Qasr al-Sir, Makhul, Umm Batin. It’s Orwellian newspeak: None, but many. A lie, but with the truth appended as a throwaway-line.

This is far from the worst distortion in the document. The big lie is conveyed in the report’s title, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.” But the semantic gamesmanship here is revealing. What should be straightforward, B’tselem makes a point of muddling. And so it goes throughout the report, with the result being a mess of factoids, fibs, and fraudulence meant to inflame and misinform, and which tells us more about the organization than about Israel.

The other side of the ledger – B’tselem’s comment about communities for Jews —is hardly better. It’s true that Israel has established hundreds of Jewish communities. But the reason for that isn’t nefarious, as B’tselem suggests. These towns and cities were needed to house immigrants numbering in the millions — Holocaust survivors, Middle Eastern Jews escaping persecution in Arab countries, Jews who wanted to live near their holy sites — absorbed by a country serving as a haven for Jews everywhere. It isn’t supremacy. It’s sanctuary.

Tu B’Shvat: The Festival that Proves the Jewish People’s Connection to the Land of Israel

The Jewish calendar has many holidays. Some celebrate the survival of the Jewish people over various enemies, some are solemnly spiritual in nature, but others exist, too. One such festival, Tu B’Shvat (sometimes written Tu BiShvat), is perhaps the greatest proof of the Jewish people’s deep connection with the Holy Land.

What Is Tu B’Shvat?
Tu B’Shvat is a Jewish holiday heralding the blossoming of trees and the beginning of the coming cycle of fruit. The name actually derives directly from the Hebrew date of the holiday, which occurs on the fifteenth day of Sh’vat. “Tu” stands for the Hebrew letters Tet and Vav, which have numerical values of 9 and 6 respectively, which add up to 15. Hence Tu B’Shvat literally means the “fifteenth [day of the month] of Sh’vat.”

Where Does Tu B’Shvat Come From?
Tu B’Shvat’s roots can be traced all the way back to the Jewish Talmud. While Rosh Hashanah, the main Jewish new year festival, is familiar to many people, there are actually a number of new year dates in the Jewish tradition. The Talmud records a debate with various opinions, leading to the establishment of four new years:
- The first of Nisan as the “new year for kings and festivals”;
- The first of Elul as the “new year for the tithe of cattle”;
- The first of Tishrei as the “new year for years,” including the calculation of the calendar and sabbatical years;
- The fifteenth of Sh’vat as the “new year for trees”.

Many centuries ago, a variety of different taxation methods were employed. One of the most common was called tithing. Tithing required separating percentages of produce, and handing them over to the local authorities. And for farmed in ancient Israel, Tu B’Shvat marked the date when calculations of the forthcoming fruit crop would begin.

The Talmud records this date as being the point in time when trees in the Land of Israel are said to awaken from their winter hibernation and start the process of renewal, blooming and bearing new fruit. While the date can naturally only be approximate, the month of Sh’vat was selected because “most of the yearly rainfall has passed” (Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashana, 14a), causing the trees to renew and their fruit ripen.

So before it was ever considered a festival, Tu B’Shvat was actually a formal date which was primarily significant for its function in governance. Over the centuries, however, the day has been transformed into an opportunity to connect with the Land of Israel.

California Is Cleansing Jews From History

As a result of the outpouring of criticism of the first ESMC draft, in August 2019, Superintendent Thurmond ordered a revision. A second draft was completed in August 2020 and was immediately criticized for simply moving objectionable material to the appendices and footnotes. In the current, third draft, released in December, some of the most offensive material was actually moved back in. For example, an historical resource was added with the following description of prewar Zionism: “the Jews have filled the air with their cries and lamentations in an effort to raise funds and American Jews, as is well known, are the richest in the world.”

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director of AMCHA Initiative, which fights campus anti-Semitism, points out that all 13 founding members of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association (CESA) are BDS activists. CESA, the national home base for critical studies, passed a resolution to boycott all Israeli academic institutions in 2014, and the group’s past four biennial meetings included multiple sessions demonizing Israel. “There are a couple thousand academic boycotters of Israel in the country,” she said, “and the largest percentage of them come from ethnic studies. Anti-Zionism is built into the theory and the discipline of ethnic studies, which demonizes Israel as an apartheid settler-colonialist Nazi state.”

But of even greater concern to Jews, she believes, is the singling out of Jewish students as enjoying racial privilege. “I don’t see any way that Jewish students can sit in an ethnic studies class and not feel they have a double target on their backs,” she said, fearing hatred and violence will ensue. First, because they’re Jewish, and considered white and part of the 1%, the purported villains of the teaching, and then through an assumed association with Israel. “There’s a state requirement that you have to sit through a class that says to Jewish students they have extraordinary racial privilege and yet forbids them from speaking because ‘this course is not about you?’ If you don’t accept it, you’re publicly shamed and ostracized—you can’t even speak up and say, ‘I’m not sure if I think that all white people are racists.’”

To placate critics, the third version has added lessons about Korean Americans, Armenian Americans, and Sikhs. Two lessons have been offered about Jews. One, following crude CRT dogma, teaches that Mizrahi Jews coming to the United States from Arab lands were mistreated by “white” Ashkenazim. The other suggests that Jews of European descent have white privilege.

The Jewish Journal points out that Jews are the only group in the curriculum for whom the term “privilege” is used. And this privilege is not earned by way of talent, or educational and professional attainment, but rather trickery. The ESMC, echoing Nazi propaganda about Jews as impostors and appropriators hiding in plain sight, points out that American Jews often change their names (“this practice of name-changing continues to the present day”) to change their rank in the social hierarchy.

Cartoon of the Day: Linkage

Continuing my series of recaptioning cartoons...

God Fails To Get J Street's Approval Before Promising Land To Jacob (PreOccupied Territory)

ur weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

File source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blake_jacobsladder.jpg Beth El, January 28 - A group of left-wing American lobbyists voiced dismay today following a divine commitment to an Israelite patriarch to grant the Holy Land to his descendants, objecting that the Almighty made that promise without consulting them.

J-Street Director Jeremy Ben-Ami convened a press conference Thursday to protest his organization's exclusion from the event, which took place overnight as Jacob fled to the land of Haran, northeast of the Holy Land, to seek both refuge from a vengeful older brother and to find a wife from among his mother's clan. Ben-Ami insisted that American Jewry in general, but especially his organization, must have a say in what happens from "the River of Egypt to the River Euphrates."

"It's not just a slap in the face to the largest Diaspora community," charged Ben-Ami, "but an irresponsible move. We would have warned God that making such a dangerous promise is a one-sided measure that establishes facts on the ground prejudicing the outcome of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and weakens Palestinian moderates by undermining the assumption that non-violence and negotiations will achieve anything. It plays into the hands of the extremists on both sides. But the Lord chose not to seek our input, and that is regrettable."

Ben-Ami expressed hope that despite the divine misstep, the Biden administration and international organizations will work to put things right. "We'll always have the UN to support a more balanced - which is to say, anti-Zionist - approach," he acknowledged. "We, of course, have to dress up our uncanny agreement with anti-Zionist positions as 'pro-Israel, pro-peace,' but they don't have to resort to such mental and rhetorical gymnastics. Right now we're conducting consultations on the feasibility of bringing a case against God to the International Criminal Court for violating I'm not sure what yet. Probably something about the Geneva Conventions or that ever-shifting phenomenon called 'International Law.' We'll see."

Ben-Ami dismissed the notion that the vast majority of American Jews, and the mainstream organizations that represent them, endorse the divine promise. "If they knew better, as we do, they would think otherwise," he insisted. "We and our allies represent the true face of American Jewry; ignore all those other organizations representing only 95%. We represent right-thinking American Jews, which is to say, American Jews who think as we do, and agree with rabid antisemites on a striking number of issues."

He also suggested J-Street will not oppose efforts to boycott God over the move.

01/28 Links Pt1: David Singer: Biden declares Trump peace plan dead and buried; Vaccine found 92% effective in Israel, in first controlled result outside trials

From Ian:

David Singer: Biden declares Trump peace plan dead and buried

A Washington Post article in August 2020 summed up Biden and the Democrats position on Trump’s version of a two-state solution:

“The Democrats, led by presidential candidate Joe Biden, are determined to change course should they come to power. There are open discussions within the caucus about conditioning the billions in aid given to Israel on the basis of its actions. Biden and virtually every Democrat in Congress were vocal in their opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s now-stalled plans to start annexing parts of the West Bank.”

Any attempt by Israel to extend its sovereignty unilaterally into any part of Judea and Samaria (aka 'West Bank') – incorrectly termed “annexation” – will assuredly be opposed by President Biden.

Trump’s Vision acknowledged the historic and biblical right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in the 'West Bank' – recognized and legally authorized by the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine - and preserved under article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

A jointly-appointed US-Israel Mapping Committee - headed by Friedman – had failed – after 11 months - to produce a detailed subdivision of the 'West Bank' embracing the concept of a two-state solution proposed by Trump - before Friedman’s retirement as Ambassador.

Closing the Embassy’s second Twitter page signals such a map will never be released under President Biden’s administration.

Biden has effectively declared Trump’s peace plan dead and buried.

Ambassador Dan Shapiro Comes Home to Joe Biden’s Washington

Shapiro’s party often appeared highly factionalized during much of his post-administration life in Israel, especially on the Middle East. Jake Sullivan and Ben Rhodes might have co-founded National Security Action, an anti-Trump foreign policy-focused political organization packed with former Obama administration officials, in which Shapiro sat on the advisory council. But they represent different poles of Democratic Party opinion on the region, and perhaps on the exercise of American power in general. Whether the party would embrace Shapiro’s brand of left-leaning pragmatism, or the more ideological stance embodied in Sen. Bernie Sanders, would depend on the outcome of the Democratic presidential primary, in which Shapiro was once again an early backer of the eventual winner.

By the time Biden was elected president, Shapiro had been discussing the Middle East with Tony Blinken and the former vice president’s foreign policy team for well over a year. Blinken and Shapiro are reportedly close and have known each other for over two decades, ever since they served together on the NSC at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Blinken was later deputy national security adviser when Shapiro was on the NSC during Obama’s first term. Their career paths mirror one another’s—Blinken is not a professional diplomat but a former NSC hand who advised Biden while serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s staff in the early 2000s; similarly, Shapiro was a deputy chief of staff for a Democratic senator who went straight to a senior NSC position after being on the right side of a closely contested presidential primary.

During the 2020 race Shapiro “participated in strategy calls about policy, and about the Jewish and pro-Israel community,” according to Marc Stanley, a Dallas-based Democratic Party activist and fundraiser. Shapiro phone-banked and appeared in multiple Zoom events a week during the decisive phase of the race—in terms of Jewish outreach, the only figure within the campaign who seemed to outrank Shapiro was Doug Emhoff, the husband of vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris. At one virtual event during the stretch run of the race, Matt Nosanchuk, a former Obama liaison to the Jewish community, marveled that Shapiro was “available 24/6” for anything campaign-related, despite the time difference between the United States and Israel. At another event, attended by over 1,000 Jewish communal leaders, Shapiro was the speaker who handed things off to Biden himself, who then repeatedly stated that he would be leaning on Shapiro for help once he won the presidency.

“I don’t represent the Biden campaign,” Shapiro cautioned during a June 2020 conference call for Americans for Peace Now. Yet he spoke to Jewish audiences with a unique credibility about what his candidate was likely to do once elected. Biden, Shapiro said during that event, has a “deep, I would say very personal and emotional connection to Israel ... He calls himself a Zionist. There are not very many non-Jewish politicians who openly embrace that word.”

Whether the capital that Shapiro has amassed with both Israeli and American Jewish audiences and decision-makers will be put toward a historic peace breakthrough with the Palestinians, or will simply cushion a series of conflicts and disappointments that will push Democrats further from Israel and Israel further from the United States, could end up depending on a single issue alone, one which Shapiro successfully insulated himself from during his ambassadorship: Iran.

Few people are in a position to know whether and in what fashion President Biden will try to reenter the Iran Nuclear Deal, the centerpiece of Obama’s second-term foreign policy, as he has repeatedly and publicly pledged to do. Until the new administration’s policy clarifies, no one knows whether President Biden will unilaterally lift sanctions and allow the Iranians to expand their fast-accelerating nuclear weapons program, or instead attempt to utilize the leverage the Trump administration has established over the Islamic Republic to create a breakthrough of a kind that both Iranians and Israelis might applaud. Shapiro is the only figure in the Biden Middle East policy world whom Israelis have known and lived beside for nearly a decade—when the time comes for attempting the near-impossible diplomatic balancing act of moving toward a new understanding with Tehran, Israelis and Americans might get to find out what Shapiro’s years in the Middle East have truly amounted to.

The Tikvah Podcast: Emmanuel Navon on Jewish Diplomacy from Abraham to Abba Eban

For much of its history, the Jewish people hasn’t had a state. The Israel described in the Hebrew Bible had emissaries and military power, and the modern state of Israel has a foreign ministry and an advanced military, yet there’s nearly 2,000 years of stateless history in between. Throughout that time, however, Jewish diplomacy has been constant. Even without a state, the Jewish people has integrated, separated, argued, and made amends with the other nations of the world. And, as a new book shows, there’s much to be learned from that long experience today, in the state of Israel and out.

On this week’s podcast, Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver speaks with Emmanuel Navon, the author of The Star and the Scepter: A Diplomatic History of Israel. Navon puts Israel’s diplomatic history in the context of the entire history of the Jews, beginning with the Hebrew Bible. In doing so, he and Silver try to dig up some eternal truths about the nature of the Jewish people.

Salon justifies comparing Israel to Nazi Germany

Salon has an article attacking the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, written by Doug Neiss, a Jewish retired business writer and editor.

The entire article is off the wall, but let's concentrate on the part where he claims that comparing Israel to Nazis is not antisemitic - in fact, it is justified.

It is clear to pretty much anyone why such a comparison is not just odious but antisemitic. The people who equate Israel to Nazi Germany are not trying to illuminate the conflict - they are delighting in the lie that Jews are acting like their murderers. They would never compare Syrians or the Taliban to Nazis: only Israel, and that is only because Israel is the Jewish state. It is a deliberate assault on the Jewish psyche. It is meant only to cause pain to Jews. It is by definition antisemitic.

It is bad enough that Neiss is oblivious to the obvious. Yet Neiss is worse - he is so proudly ignorant of both Israel and Nazi Germany that he actually believes that such a comparison is justified.

Because Jews were the principal victims of Hitler's regime — although not the only ones — Israel seeks, in our name, exemption from any and all criticism that likens Israeli actions or policies to those of the Nazis, regardless of any actual similarities.

Excuse my French, but what the fuck are the similarities? Is Israel gassing millions of Palestinians to death? Is it herding them into slave labor camps? Is it putting them in cattle cars? Is it calling for the Final Solution to the Palestinians? Because when you compare Israel to Nazi Germany, you are saying that Israel is guilty of planned, industrialized genocide.

This is like saying there can only ever be one genocide, the Holocaust, and that no other mass murder inflicted by one group of people on another can claim that distinction. Yet if the Holocaust has had value as a cautionary example, it is because it has helped sensitize the world to genocide and ethnic cleansing.

This is thoroughly offensive on two levels.

One is that even Holocaust scholars will make careful comparisons between the Holocaust and other genocides. The Armenian genocide, the genocide in Rwanda, the ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs in China today - they all have echoes from Nazi Germany. No one calls such comparisons antisemitic.

The other issue is that Neiss is indeed saying that Israel is guilty of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Otherwise his argument makes no sense. Good to know that Salon publishes writings from people who are ignorant of both current events and basic history.

In essence, Israel claims a right to persecute the Palestinian people free from any censure or criticism, based on the historical identity of Jews as a persecuted people, whose persecution culminated in the enormous historical crime of the Holocaust. Jews are the eternal victims, the Persecuted, and no other people can claim a share in the title, especially not in terms of a claim made against the Jewish state itself.

Neiss is now, literally, echoing neo-Nazis in his zeal to compare Israel to Nazis.

Here is an article is from the neo-Nazi Vanguard News. See if you can find any rhetorical daylight between Neiss and neo-Nazis.

Both Neiss and Vanguard say that Jews regard themselves as "eternal victims" who use that status to shield themselves from the consequences of their heinous crimes.

Salon found a Jew to call Jews Nazis by using Nazi rhetoric.

You can't make this stuff up.

Palestinian Authority tries to incite Muslims, claiming Israel demolished a mosque THAT NEVER EXISTED

From the official Palestinian Authority Wafa news agency:

Acting Secretary of Endowments and Religious Affairs Husam Abu al-Rub condemned that the Israeli occupation forces demolished the Umm Qisa mosque at dawn [Wednesday] in the Badawi al-Zuwaidin and Basitah community of al-Ka'abneh Village Council and Umm al-Daraj in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron .

Abu al-Rub stated that the demolition of mosques clearly indicates the barbarism that the racist Israeli incitement machine has exhibited towards Islamic and Christian holy sites in Palestine, adding that this crime is a blatant attack on Muslims and their feelings .

Abu al-Rub stressed that there are no longer safe places of worship in light of the attacks and crimes that the Israeli occupation and the herds of settlers perform, saying that this racist assault is added to the list of Israeli crimes against holy sites .

Abu al-Rub called on international Islamic institutions such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Islamic Conference, and the Arab and Islamic countries to intervene and work to stop and end these attacks.

This is being reported widely in Arabic media.

Only one problem: There was never a mosque.

Israel demolished an illegal structure in Area C that was under construction, which the Palestinians claim was going to be a mosque. A notice warning of the demolition was given ten days ago.

There is no photo of this "mosque." The photos of the area after the demolition show an amount of rubble that is not close to what a building would have.

Even if you consider the area occupied, Israel has the obligation under international law to uphold zoning laws and not allow anyone (including Jews) to throw up a building wherever they want.

Palestinians know very well the propaganda value of saying that Israel is demolishing schools and mosques, so they build or claim to build these structures in strategic locations to claim land in Area C.

So this minister gets headlines falsely claiming Israel is demolishing mosques, and he is even trying to instigate a religious war by appealing to the larger Muslim world to "intervene."

Idiots at Jewish Voice for Peace think Zionists want Facebook to ban the word "Zionist"

I am honestly not sure if this is pure stupidity or a bizarre effort to gain media attention.

Jewish Voice for Peace has launched a campaign and website to pressure Facebook not to implement a policy that there is very little evidence it was contemplating.

Supposedly, in November, a Facebook official reached out to...someone...asking for a conversation to see if the word "Zionist" is sometimes used as a pejorative term for Jews.

I'm reaching out to you about a topic which I was hoping to have a conversation with you on. As you know, in the context of our hate speech policy, we do not allow content that attacks people based on a protected characteristic (e.g., race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation). Under the same policy, we also remove violating attacks where proxies or codewords are used by way of substitute for a protected characteristic.
In that context, we are looking at the question of how we should interpret attacks on "Zionists" to determine whether the term is used as a proxy for attacking Jewish or Israeli people. The term brings with it much history and various meanings, and we are looking to increase our understanding of how it is used by people on our platform.
We wanted to ask whether you would be willing to have a conversation with us about "Zionist" in the context of our policies. We are happy to provide you with more information when we speak.

Any Zionist knows that the word Zionist is sometimes used as an insult. It all depends on context. Calling someone a "F*ing Zionist" is just as offensive as calling someone a "F*ing queer," but it doesn't mean that the words "Zionist" or "queer" are offensive.

Facebook merely wanted to clarify in what ways it might be able to tell when the word is used as a codeword for Jews, something that we have seen happen countless times.

I have no idea whether Facebook can tell the difference between when the word is used as a pejorative and when it is a compliment. I frankly don't trust Facebook to understand anything at all about offensive speech.

But JVP is hallucinating.

JVP is pretending that this letter is part of an Israeli government campaign to silence Palestinians.

What’s happening at Facebook?
Right now, Facebook is reaching out to stakeholders to ask if critical conversations that use the term “Zionist” fall within the rubric of hate speech as per Facebook’s Community Standards. Basically, Facebook is assessing if “Zionist” is being used as a proxy for “Jewish people or Israelis” in attacks on its platform.
This move is part of a concerning pattern of the Israeli government and its supporters pressuring Facebook and other social media platforms to expand their hate speech policies to include speech critical of Israel and Zionism.
Facebook says it will make a decision as soon as the end of February 2021.
Why is this happening?
The Israeli government and its supporters falsely claim that equating “Zionist” with “Jew” or “Jewish” will help fight antisemitism. In reality, they hope that that by mischaracterizing critical use of the term “Zionists” as anti-Jewish, they can avoid accountability for its policies and actions that violate Palestinian human rights.
Attempts to stifle conversations about Zionist political ideology and Zionist policies carried out by state actors — both of which have real implications for Palestinian and Israeli people, as well as Jewish and Palestinian people around the world — are part of an emerging pattern of political censorship by the Israeli government and some of its supporters.

I'm a Zionist. Israelis are, by and large, Zionists. The Israeli government is Zionist. The idea that we want to ban the word "Zionist" from social media is perhaps the dumbest thing I've heard this week. Does that mean that the Zionist Organization of America would be banned from Facebook?

(The link that they chose to pretend that Zionists are trying to ban the word "Zionist" points to a truly bizarre Salon article that claims that calling Israelis Nazis is not antisemitic - but that Zionists are the real antisemites. Yet even that crazed article doesn't claim that Israel is trying to ban the word "Zionist.")

How Israel Could Get a Stable Government (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

The challenges facing the state today are enormous. Although the vaccination project has been a success, the more-contagious mutations are spreading among groups that haven’t been vaccinated, and there are worries that new strains for which the vaccines aren’t as effective may develop. The health-care system is past peak capacity now. The economic impact on some segments of the population has been exceedingly painful already, and the costs for the vaccines and lost productivity will ultimately be felt throughout the economy.

At the same time, the IDF is asking for more money, in part to prepare for the possibility that it will be necessary to neutralize the Iranian nuclear capability by military means. That also would involve conflict with Hezbollah and Iranian militias in Syria and possibly Iraq, as well as involvement from Hamas. There still is no 2021 budget, and since the Knesset has been dissolved in preparation for the fourth election in two years, there is no possibility of passing one until there is a new government. The election is scheduled for 23 March, and then there is the interminable process of forming a coalition after that – assuming that a coalition can be formed.

The “unity” government that has just fallen apart was very expensive, since it was put together by bribing various politicians to join it with ministerial portfolios; since there weren’t enough to go around, a bunch of new ministries were created, for a total of 35. In addition, it was ineffectual: since the main partners were PM Binyamin Netanyahu’s bloc and a bloc made up of anti-Netanyahu politicians (with no other ideology besides a desire to depose him), they were permanently at each other’s throats.

In recent years Netanyahu has become obsessed with protecting himself from the corruption indictments against him. As a result, he has been unable to stand up to the Haredi parties that hold up his coalition. Their constituents seem to believe that they are Rabbi Akiva and the government which is trying to enforce the rules to contain the epidemic is the Roman Empire. Their acting as an autonomous group within the state has always been a problem, but with the advent of Covid it has become much more serious. Recently they have engaged in violent riots against the police.

Bibi has always insisted on managing everything himself. Ministers often find that their authority is very limited, limited to precisely what Bibi wants them to do. Their individual initiatives are stymied, something very frustrating to people like Naftali Bennett, who have ideas and energy but are kept on a tight leash. Bibi is tremendously competent and able to do many things at once, but this sometimes results in particular areas being neglected. And lately this problem, too, has become more serious.

Everything the government has done to control the epidemic except for the vaccination program has been poorly planned, poorly timed, and poorly executed. I judge that this is because the PM wants to control everything, but lacks the power – and perhaps also the focus – to exert that control.

Finally, the temporary vacation from American pressure that Israel enjoyed under the Trump Administration has come to an end. Biden’s promise to return to the Iran deal means that sanctions on Iran will be removed and (almost certainly) limitations will be placed on Israel’s freedom to act against Iranian bases in Syria and the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah. Israeli officials believe this makes conflict with Iran much more likely.

In the Palestinian arena, too, Biden and his Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, have reiterated their belief in the necessity of a sovereign Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. They have said that they will restart payments to UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency that exists to nurture the growth of a population of stateless refugee descendants – now more than 5 million – that is a hothouse of terrorism, and which the Palestinians and their supporters demand be allowed to live in Israel. Biden also intends to reopen the PLO mission in Washington.

The administration hasn’t done much that affects Israel yet, and I would like to be optimistic about the future. But some of his appointments are troubling. For example, his new Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the NSC, is former Obama Administration staffer Maher Bitar, a Palestinian activist who worked for UNRWA and supports BDS. Bitar will “coordinate intelligence between the White House and the intelligence community, receiving material from intelligence agencies, informing the intelligence community of White House policy, and deciding who gets access to secret information.”

All this requires a government that can pay attention to multiple issues at the same time, a coalition that can work together, and a PM that is not on trial for corruption.
How can we get one? The last three elections have been almost deadlocked. Twice no governing coalition could be formed, and the last election produced the Frankensteinian “unity” government that was almost worse than no government at all (I have discussed the technical issues in our electoral system here).

Based on recent polls, if we leave out the non-Zionist Arab parties, who will neither be invited into a coalition nor wish to be, and the Haredi parties, then neither the right- nor the left-wing blocs will be able to form a government. The Right, which has a majority of the Jewish vote, is split between pro- and anti-Netanyahu factions. With the Haredi parties, Netanyahu is very close to 61 seats – precisely the situation we were in the last time. But if he succeeds, the government will be weak, dependent on the Haredim, and will continue to be a one-man show. The Left has no chance, even with the support of the Arab parties from outside the coalition. Of course there are all kinds of imaginative solutions involving partners that would normally not be together that I haven’t mentioned. But they are unlikely.

I would like to see a fundamental restructuring of our system, but that is not going to happen under a caretaker government in the next two months. But there is one thing that could radically change the picture, and it is something that should happen in any event:

Binyamin Netanyahu should voluntarily step down as head of the Likud. This could unify the Right, and enable a solid majority right-wing coalition – without the Haredi parties, whose ability to bring down the government at will has made it possible for the Haredim to act like a state within a state.

This does not solve all of our problems. It doesn’t fix the imbalance of power between the legal establishment and the elected Knesset, for example. But it does at least make it possible to have a reasonably lean government with a unified ideological perspective that will be able to act on the problems at hand.

Since I’m dreaming, there is one other thing I would like: as part of the deal, all charges against Netanyahu – some of which are legitimate, and some fraudulent – should be dropped, in view of his service to the state.

There are only a few weeks to go before the election. Can our politicians, starting with Bibi, put aside their plans for personal glory and their thoughts of revenge, and agree to do the right thing for the Jewish state? I’m hoping they can.