Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, April 19, 2021

04/19 Links Pt2: Macron calls for change in law following Sarah Halimi ruling; When did Palestine become Palestine?; Why do Jewish academic centers smear Israel?

From Ian:

France's Macron calls for change in law following Sarah Halimi ruling

French President Emmanuel Macron has called for a change in the law after the highest French court of appeals last week ruled the murderer of Sarah Halimi could not be held criminally accountable for his actions since he took cannabis before he committed the crime.

“Deciding to take drugs and then ‘becoming mad’ should not in my eyes remove your criminal responsibility,” Macron told Le Figaro in an interview published Sunday.

“On this topic, I would like the minister of justice to submit a change to the law as soon as possible,” he said.

“It is not for me to comment on a court decision, but I would like to tell the family, relatives of the victim and all fellow citizens of the Jewish faith who were awaiting this trial of my warm support and the determination of the Republic to protect them,” Macron said.

The French Jewish community was angered by the Court of Cassation’s ruling.

In April 2017, Kobili Traoré, a 27-year-old Muslim man, beat Halimi, his 65-year-old Jewish neighbor, while screaming “Allahu Akhbar” and antisemitic slogans before throwing her out of the window of her third-floor apartment.

A lower court ruled in December 2019 that Traore was not criminally responsible for his actions since his heavy intake of cannabis had compromised his “discernment,” or consciousness.

When it comes to Jews, everyone always has their excuses Kenneth.

For example - if this exact same thing had happened in Israel - you wouldn't call it antisemitism either.

In fact, you probably wouldn't mention it at all.
— David Collier (@mishtal) April 19, 2021

Martin Sherman: When did Palestine become Palestine?

With Joe Biden in the White House, the question of Palestinian statehood is now back on the international agenda, after being largely sidelined under the Trump administration.

For decades, the discourse on the “Palestinian issue” has been dominated by the Palestinian-Arabs contention that Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. “The West Bank”) has long been their ancient homeland.

Preaching Genocide
However, many would probably be interested—and certainly very surprised—to learn just when realization dawned on the Palestinian-Arabs that this territory supposedly comprised their yearned-for motherland.

Indeed, long before Israel held a square inch of “the West Bank”—before there was any “occupation” or “settlements”—the Arabs claimed all the territory of pre-1967 Israel i.e. within the Green Line—as “Palestinian” territory and threatened to reclaim it by force of arms, and annihilate all its Jewish inhabitants.

Thus, in March 1965, over two years prior to the 1967 Six-Day War—after which the “West Bank” came under Israeli administration—Egyptian President, Gamal Abdul Nasser threatened, with chilling genocidal malevolence: "We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand, we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood".

No less blood-curdling were the words of Yassir Arafat’s predecessor as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Ahmed Shukeiry, who on the very eve of the Six-Day War—in a somewhat premature flush of triumph—crowed:

“D Day is approaching. The Arabs have waited 19 years for this and will not flinch from the war of liberation…This is a fight for the homeland – it is either us or the Israelis. There is no middle road. The Jews of Palestine will have to leave.[but] is my impression that none of them will survive...We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants and as for the survivors — if there are any — the boats are ready to deport them.”

“…Jordanians & Palestinians are considered … one people."

Significantly, the first version of the Palestinian National Covenant was formulated three years before the Six-Day War—in May 1964—in East Jerusalem (then under Jordanian control).

In it, the Palestinian-Arabs explicitly foreswear any sovereign claim to the “West Bank” (or to Gaza):

At NY Times, Myth of Edward Said’s Jerusalem Home Is Tenacious

A book review in The New York Times’ print edition yesterday (“The provocative polymath,” page BR17, and online here) repeats an error about Edward Said’s childhood that The New York Times twice previously corrected, most recently on March 25.

Ayten Tartici errs, writing about Said:
At the time [1986], he had not been back to the place of his birth, what was then Mandatory Palestine, since fleeing in December 1947 at the age of 12.

While Said was born in Jerusalem in 1935, his family left for Cairo at a very young age, and that is where he spent his childhood — not in Mandatory Palestine. He did not “flee” Palestine, a falsehood about his life story that he told “as an allegory of the Palestinian people,” as the late scholar Justus Weiner, who uncovered the truth about Said’s biography, said.

As the March 25, 2021 Times correction, about a separate Times review of Timothy Brennan’s book about Said (“Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said”), states:
An earlier version of this review misidentified the city that was Edward Said’s childhood home and misstated details about Jerusalem’s division into Jewish and Arab areas. Although Said was born in Jerusalem, his family’s home was Cairo; they did not move from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was not partitioned into Jewish and Arab halves in 1947. In 1949, control of the city was divided as part of an armistice.

When the digital article was amended March 25, the false claim that “Said’s family moved to Cairo in 1947 after the United Nations divided Jerusalem into Jewish and Arab halves” was replaced with accurate information: “Said grew up in Cairo.”

Previously, on Oct. 1, 2003,The Times published the following correction regarding Said’s obituary:
An obituary on Friday about Edward W. Said, the Columbia University literary scholar and advocate of a Palestinian state, misidentified the city that was his childhood home and misstated the date of Jerusalem’s partition into Jewish and Arab areas. Although Mr. Said was born in Jerusalem, in 1935, his family’s home was Cairo; they did not move from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was partitioned in 1949, not 1947.

According to British Mandate records, Said’s parents neither owned nor rented the Jerusalem dwelling that he at times falsely portrayed as his childhood home.

An Islamist is left speechless after a Zionist educates him about Jewish refugees from the Arab world. pic.twitter.com/txUkvL9MSw
— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) April 18, 2021

Elder Comix redux!

Last year I made a series of comic panels from frames in old public domain comic books. As always, tey are written from the perspective of the terminally woke.

I don't think these are quite as good, but they aren't bad. Enjoy!

Just some Holocaust denial and anger when Arabs commemorate the Holocaust, on Lebanese Al Mayadeen TV:

Jordanian analyst Muhammad Faraj denounced a Holocaust memorial ceremony held in the UAE, saying that restoring the memory of the Holocaust is a UAE attempt "to cover up the real massacres" perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians and Arabs. He made his remarks in an interview that aired on Mayadeen TV (Lebanon) on April 8, 2021.

Narrator: "Tel Aviv is rejoicing today. For the first time in an Arab country, Holocaust memorial ceremonies were held in the UAE, with the participation of Emiratis and Israelis. They commemorate the so-called Jewish Holocaust, while ignoring the holocaust of the Zionist enemy against the Palestinians."

Muhammad Faraj: "Commemorating the Holocaust is an Emirati attempt to bring the occupiers victimhood to the forefront, in order to cover up the real massacres that were perpetrated against the Palestinians and the Arabs, and which are still taking place here and now.

[...]

"Under no circumstances does Israel have the right to play the victimhood card - especially not here in the East. As the Jordanian poet Assad Qasim said: 'I was not a guard in Auschwitz oh child killer.' The second depiction included in the message [of the ceremony] has to do with the lighting of six candles, symbolizing six million [Jewish victims]. It should be noted that the death toll in World War II was 42 million. Focusing on a specific group is a Zionist strategic policy, with is followed by the UAE today. Another important issue concerns senior writers and historians, such as Roger Garaudy and David Irving, who argued that this number is historically incorrect. Some said that there were only hundreds of thousands, others said that the main cause for these deaths was typhus, and so on. These senior historians and thinkers were persecuted by the Zionist lobby through fierce Zionist propaganda."

Some Arabs are being progressive. Some Arabs, like these, are remaining regressive.

The irony is that self-described "progressive" Westerners support the regressive Arabs.

04/19 Links Pt1: America’s Racial Self-Flagellation at the UN Only Helps Rogue States; In J Street speech, Abbas urges Biden to scrap US law deeming PLO a terror group

From Ian:

America’s Racial Self-Flagellation at the UN Only Helps Rogue States

Racial discrimination against minorities is a chronic sickness in American society.”

“…the challenges facing the United States in human rights are deep-seated. They did not just emerge over the past four years, such as Black Lives Matter.”

“[S]lavery is the original sin of America. It’s weaved white supremacy and black inferiority into our founding documents and principles.”

What distinguishes these relatively similar remarks about America’s flawed past and imperfect present? The first two were delivered by Communist Chinese officials in an effort to embarrass the United States on the world stage. The third is an indictment of the United States by the United States itself.

That particular remark comes from the head of the American mission to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, in a March speech before the UN General Assembly. She recently reiterated the themes of that speech in an address to the non-profit group founded by Rev. Al Sharpton, the National Action Network. “Of course, when we raise issues of equity and justice at the global scale, we have to approach them with humility,” Thomas-Greenfield conceded. “We have to acknowledge that we are an imperfect Union and have been since the beginning.”

Thomas-Greenfield is presently focused on getting the U.S. back into the United Nations Human Rights Council, an organization from which the U.S. withdrew in 2018—and for good reason.

The UNHRC is an organization plagued by corruption. It elevates miscreants like China, Algeria, Congo, Cuba, Pakistan, Venezuela, Russia, and Qatar to membership. It maintains a permanent agenda item—Item Seven—dedicated to the criticism of Israel. It elects people like Richard Falk, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and obsequious apologist for the terror group Hamas, to oversee the situation in the Palestinian territories. It selects individuals like Jean Ziegler, a co-founder and recipient of the preposterous “Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights,” to defend Venezuela’s murderous Maduro regime as a victim of America’s “economic war.” And so on.

In J Street speech, Abbas urges Biden to scrap US law deeming PLO a terror group

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday urged the Biden administration to revoke a US law that deems the Palestinian Liberation Organization and its affiliates a terror group.

In a video address to the national conference of the left-wing, pro-Israel J Street lobby, Abbas said he looked forward to “develop[ing] and strengthen[ing]” ties with Washington, which Ramallah severed in 2017 after the Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

However, he noted that doing so would require “the elimination of some obstacles, most important of which” was addressing the 1987 Anti-Terrorism Act.

Abbas maintained that the law’s relevance had elapsed, as the PLO and Israel both recognized one another as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples in the 1993 Oslo Accords, with Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Washington subsequently signing agreements to fight terrorism together.

The Times of Israel reported in December that the PA is prepared to alter the way it pays stipends to Palestinian security prisoners, as well as the families of terrorists and others killed by Israelis, in an effort to convince the Biden administration to scrap the law.

Abbas appeared to hint at such plans during his J Street address. The PA president first called for the dovish lobby’s “assistance with the US administration and Congress to repeal all laws that block the road toward enhancing Palestinian-US relations.

“On our part, we will remove all obstacles to achieve this goal,” he added, not specifying which steps the PA plans to take.

No, this is him calling on Congress to repeal the Taylor Force Act so the PA can continue collecting hundreds of millions in American aid while paying terrorists and their families for murdering Americans https://t.co/BeWhe8wMXt
— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) April 18, 2021

Media Silent as Abbas Calls on Biden to Remove PLO’s Terrorist Designation

Abbas’ ‘Sole Path to Achieving Peace’
During his J Street address, Abbas claimed:
We are ready to resume peace negotiations with our Israeli counterpart on the basis of international legitimacy resolution, the signed agreements, and under the auspices of the international Quartet…. We believe that dialogue and negotiations are the sole path to achieving peace.”

Yet, the reality on the ground effectively reduces the probability of this potentiality to almost zero. In this respect, the PA continues to incentivize the murder of Jews with its “Pay-for-Slay” policy, which entails paying “salaries” to those who perpetrate violent attacks — with more money being doled out to terrorists who shed the most blood.

Though every public record of the law requiring that seven percent of the PA’s budget be allocated toward this “Martyrs Fund” was removed in 2018, former Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Avi Dichter, who is fluent in Arabic, has confirmed its existence.

Indeed, it was this PA- mandated rule that led to the passage in 2018 of the Taylor Force Act, which suspended American aid to Ramallah so long as it continued to pay reward terrorism. Congress passed the law following the murder of Taylor Force, a 28-year-old US Army veteran who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian in Tel Aviv.

Turning ‘Palestine’ Into One of the Most Antisemitic Places on Earth
Moreover, Abbas used the opportunity to address some 4,000 people who reportedly registered for J Street’s virtual event to tar Israel, blaming the Jewish state for the failure to implement a two-state solution.

That this is a patently false assertion — especially when considering that Abbas in 2008 rejected a comprehensive peace offer by then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert — is underscored by the PA chief’s rampant antisemitism. Abbas has accused Israeli rabbis of planning to poison Palestinian water wells, and claimed that Jews fabricated their ancient connection to Israel.

In 2018, Abbas argued that the Holocaust was not the end-result of rabid antisemitism but, rather, a response to the financial activities of European Jewry.

It is not surprising, then, that the Anti-Defamation League found that Palestinians in the West Bank are, on the whole, one the most antisemitic people in the world, with more than 90 percent of them harboring racist attitudes toward Jews.

This is from an English-language PLO press release for Palestinian Prisoners Day:

The spread of CORONA-19 [sic] pandemic caused the prisoners' infections rose to (368), as a result of poor health care and protection measures, and a scarcity of protective tools, which led to the death of 4 prisoners inside the Israeli occupation prisons during the year 2020, PNC added.

It is hard to parse the poor English but either the PLO is saying that prisoners died of COVID-19 or of Israeli medical negligence.

Here were the prisoners who died while in Israeli custody in 2020:

Jaber Al-Barghouthi - fell unconscious while in a bathroom

Daoud al-Khatib - heart attack

Sa'di al-Gharabli - 75, cancer and diabetes

Kamal N. Abu-Wa’ar- throat cancer

If the critics can think of ways to keep people with terminal cancer or heart attacks alive, I think that not only Israel would welcome the news, but the entire world.

Of course the PLO is still a terror group. Its 1968 charter is still in force, today.

At the J-Street conference yesterday, Mahmoud Abbas said, "We seek to develop and strengthen bilateral relations with the new US administration for the common interest of both countries and the interest of peace and prosperity in our region. However, this requires the elimination of some obstacles, most important of which is removing the PLO name from the terrorism list pursuant to the Congress Anti-Terrorist Act of 1987."

The Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987 does not give a list of terror groups. It refers only to the PLO. It says:

...Congress determines that the PLO and its affiliates are a terrorist organization and a threat to the interests of the United States, its allies, and to international law and should not benefit from operating in the United States.

...

It shall be unlawful, if the purpose be to further the interests of the Palestine Liberation Organization or any of its constituent groups, any successor to any of those, or any agents thereof, on or after the effective date of this chapter
...
(3) notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, to establish or maintain an office, headquarters, premises, or other facilities or establishments within the jurisdiction of the United States at the behest or direction of, or with funds provided by the Palestine Liberation Organization or any of its constituent groups, any successor to any of those, or any agents thereof.

The prohibition of having an office in the US can be waived annually, first by the President and since 2010 by the Secretary of State. But the law is still in force, and that is what Abbas wants to abolish.

One of the proofs given by the law of the PLO's terrorist nature was a reference to its 1968 charter, which ways (among other things) that "armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine, thus it is an overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase."

The 1968 PLO Charter supporting terror is still in force, today. It is shown in PLO websites today without any caveat or indication that it has been superseded.

Don't take my word for it. An analysis by Heba Baydoun in Ma'an last year looked at this exact question and concluded that the supposed vote to change the charter held in front of Bill Clinton in 1998 was all a show and had no legal force.

She says that the meeting that was held on December 14, 1998 in Gaza with Clinton in attendance where there was a supposed "vote" to amend the charter was not an official meeting of the Palestinian National Council. If you look at the list of official meetings of that council, it isn't listed - it happened between the 21st (1996) and 22nd (2009) meetings. The official invitation to the meeting didn't indicate that it was anything other than a gathering to listen to Clinton speak. Unlike official meetings, there was no opening session, no count of a quorum - many of the attendees who "voted" were not members of the National Council. There was no agenda, the president and vice presidents of the National Council did not attend (which is mandatory,) the secretary didn't lead the session, there was no final statement at the end of the meeting, and it was never recorded among the records of official National Council meetings.

It was political theatre to fool the US into thinking that the charter was changed. The show of hands vote was purely symbolic.

Moreover, if the charter had been amended and the offending terrorist sections removed, where is the new charter? It has never been published.

Because it doesn't exist.

(On April 24, 1996, during the official 21st PLO National Council meeting, one decision was that its Legal Committee would reformulate the National Charter, and it will be presented to the Central Council. That never happened.)

So the current PLO charter says:

Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it .

Commando action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war.

The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in their homeland.

The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

The Arab Palestinian people, expressing themselves by the armed Palestinian revolution, reject all solutions which are substitutes for the total liberation of Palestine and reject all proposals aiming at the liquidation of the Palestinian problem, or its internationalization.

Zionism is a political movement organically associated with international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods. Israel is the instrument of the Zionist movement, and geographical base for world imperialism placed strategically in the midst of the Arab homeland to combat the hopes of the Arab nation for liberation, unity, and progress. Israel is a constant source of threat vis-à-vis peace in the Middle East and the whole world. Since the liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence and will contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East, the Palestinian people look for the support of all the progressive and peaceful forces and urge them all, irrespective of their affiliations and beliefs, to offer the Palestinian people all aid and support in their just struggle for the liberation of their homeland.

The demand of security and peace, as well as the demand of right and justice, require all states to consider Zionism an illegitimate movement, to outlaw its existence, and to ban its operations, in order that friendly relations among peoples may be preserved, and the loyalty of citizens to their respective homelands safeguarded.

Anyone who says that the PLO has abandoned these principles needs to show proof. There is none.

Therefore, the PLO is still a terror organization, even if it has temporarily chosen for tactical reasons not to emphasize that aspect of its "resistance." And we know that because the Fatah political platform of 2009, way after Oslo, still emphasizes that "armed struggle" as legal and rightful - and that platform is also in force today.

From Naharnet:

Hizbullah party is reportedly making preparations in anticipation of the “complete collapse” of Lebanon’s faltering economy, media reports said on Saturday.

The party is reportedly issuing food ration cards, importing medicines and equipping tanks to store fuel from Iran.

The move is a response to a serious economic crisis in Lebanon, which will represent an expansion of the services provided by the group to its Shiite base, with a network that includes charities, a construction company, and a compensation system, said reports.

It sheds light on the growing fear of the collapse of the Lebanese state, a situation in which the authorities become unable to import food or fuel.

Hizbullah sources said on condition of anonymity that the plan prepares for the worst-possible scenario, that accelerated with the state approaching a halt on subsidies on basic goods like wheat, fuel and medicine, raising concerns of unrest and hunger.

The growing role of Hizbullah in dealing with the crisis is highlighted by the services it provides that are usually the government's prerogatives.

The plan also reflects concerns in Lebanon that the collapse will lead people to depend on political parties for food and security, as was the case with militias during the Lebanese civil war between 1975 and 1990.

The sources added that "Hizbullah’s" ration card actually helps hundreds of people to buy basic Iranian, Syrian and Lebanese commodities in Lebanese pounds, at a much cheaper price and with a discount of up to 40% with the party's support.

The card, bearing the name of a Shiite imam, could be used in cooperatives, some of which are new in the southern suburbs of Beirut and parts of southern Lebanon where Hizbullah has influence.

The Lebanese currency has lost more than 85 percent of its value on the informal market since 2019, as the country runs out of dollars. Food prices rose by 400 percent with no government plan in sight to salvage the country.

It sounds like Hezbollah would benefit from an economic collapse, relatively speaking. Since it has built its own state within a state, with its own imports and its own aid from Iran, it would emerge the as the best organized group - and if it is the only place to get food in Lebanon, then it can impose its will on the entire country.

The Jerusalem Post notes that food is only the latest way Hezbollah is build a parallel state that would be all that's left:

Hezbollah has created parallel construction and development entities such Jihad Al-Binaa and the Waad project, its own communications network, TV stations and radio communications networks. It has taken over healthcare, education, welfare and finance in parts of the country. ...
Hezbollah even undertook projects like providing drinking water for parts of Lebanon, claiming this was part of its “resistance” against Israel. In short it got the government to outsource part of government responsibilities to Hezbollah and then it had an iron grip on the country. It even put its own fiber optic communications network to use to bypass the government. Any attempt to stop the takeover is met with Hezbollah violence.

This does not look good for Lebanon at all.

If Lebanon would throw a Hail Mary and make peace with Israel, it could leverage that into turning the entire country around. Not only Israel but the Gulf states would be happy to work to bring Lebanon into the orbit of the Abraham Accords and inject billions into its economy, as well as guide it towards a functioning market system. (France would probably have to play a large role.)

Lebanon is so dysfunctional, the idea that it would save itself by doing something that would benefit the entire Middle East and resurrect Lebanon itself is more a joke than a possibility.

Yet Lebanon does have a choice: fall apart and let Hezbollah run the country, or join with the more liberal states in the Middle East and plan a real future.

Cartoon of the Day: Almost Islamophobic (plus video of Brooklyn attack)

This is inspired by an insane video of an attack last night by a hit and run driver against a group of Chassidim in Brooklyn, that was clearly deliberate.

Here's a photo of the driver from another video.

He doesn't look like a white supremacist, meaning that the usual "Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism" crowd will be silent, as they always are.

04/18 Links: Cary Nelson: Accommodating the New Antisemitism: a Critique of ‘The Jerusalem Declaration’; In France, Antisemitism Is Systemic; Jaffa yeshiva rabbi assaulted - 2 arrested

From Ian:

Cary Nelson: Accommodating the New Antisemitism: a Critique of ‘The Jerusalem Declaration’

In this comprehensive critique Cary Nelson argues that the recent ‘Jerusalem Declaration’ on Antisemitism should be rejected because it accommodates, rather than challenges, what has been called ‘the new antisemitism’. After reviewing the debate (and the falsehoods) about the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism, to which the Jerusalem Declaration presents itself as an alternative, Nelson rejects the Declaration for several reasons: for defining antisemitism in an excessively narrow way, uncomprehending of the ideological versions of antisemitism that are now so influential; for dissolving antisemitism into antiracism, discrediting and obliterating Jewish identity; for employing rhetorical strategies that repeatedly draw empty or banal distinctions to disclaim antisemitic content; for naively absolving the anti-Zionist industry of any probable freight of hatred; and for being marred by a conceptual confusion about, and an impoverished history of, antisemitism. Nelson also reviews, and more positively, the ‘Nexus Declaration’ on antisemitism, described by its authors at the University of Southern California as complementing and clarifying IHRA. We invite the signatories of the Jerusalem Declaration and the Nexus Declaration to respond to Nelson’s essay in Fathom.

Controversy is swirling anew around the Working Definition of Antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2016 and subsequently endorsed by a wide range of nations, agencies, and organisations. The Definition opens with a brief summary definition of antisemitism and then lists eleven major forms or examples of contemporary antisemitism, such as ‘accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust’ and ‘using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis.’ [I use ‘Definition’ in initial caps to refer to the entire document, not just the brief definition at its outset]. The Definition includes numerous warnings that these examples should not be applied without analysis that takes their contexts into account. Nor does the Definition claim the list of examples is exhaustive; it does, however, enumerate much of the antisemitism encountered in contemporary writing and daily life, including the antisemitism now focused on the State of Israel and the antisemitism that proliferates on the internet and through social media.

The history of the Definition dates to 2005, when the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) issued the first version of a Working Definition. From the outset, it provoked warnings that it could inhibit free speech or even be used to sanction it. Indeed, in 2011 I coauthored an open letter (distributed by the AAUP) stating that the EUMC Working Definition should not be used ‘to censor what a professor, student or speaker can say.’ But debates about that potential intensified after IHRA issued a version of the Working Definition that began to be both endorsed and officially adopted worldwide. Widespread commitment to free speech, academic freedom, and the IHRA Definition’s own guidelines have prevented the fears of pervasive restrictions on speech from ever materialising, though a growing chorus of dire warnings and unfounded complaints about the IHRA Definition persists nonetheless. The mounting number of attacks on the Definition suggest frustration at its increasing legitimacy.

Lara Friedman, who runs a left-wing organisation called the Foundation for Middle East Peace, has been among the Definition’s leading critics. Her annotated list of ‘Challenges to the IHRA Definition’ has 21 entries for 2018, 23 for 2019, 41 for 2020, and 55 for the first three months of 2021.The 2021 increase is due in part to the publication of two new formal definitions of antisemitism, both adapting the structure of the Working Definition. Like the IHRA Definition, they begin with a revised definition and general comments, and then follow with examples. Instead of just listing examples of antisemitism as the Definition does, however, they each offer two lists—with examples differentiated between those the authors consider antisemitic and those they think are not. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism criticises IHRA and aims to replace it. The Nexus Document has been described by its authors as complementing and clarifying IHRA, effectively a friendly amendment. But these new lists have generated a further round of critical debate and multiplied the confusion over what IHRA does and doesn’t say or do. After giving an overview of the current state of competing views about the IHRA’s Working Definition, I will discuss the Jerusalem Declaration in detail, followed by comments on the Nexus Document.

Funding the Palestinian Authority Is a Betrayal of American Values

The Biden administration has announced that payments will be “consistent with US law,” but that is impossible. Any money the United States gives the Palestinian Authority frees up funds to be used for the nefarious activities of the dictatorship.

Only recently, the PA, through its propaganda machine, accused Israel of failing or refusing to provide COVID-19 vaccines to Palestinians — something that the Israeli government, of course, has no obligation to do. However, the Israeli government did in fact make such an offer, but the Palestinian Authority turned it down. They proudly claimed they could — and would — get the vaccine on their own.

The PA continues to deny Israel’s right to exist, and continues its relationship with other terrorist groups, especially those in the Gaza Strip. The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that for prior fiscal years, the USAID office “did not consistently ensure” that grants would not be passed along to terrorist groups and individual terrorists.

Why, when our own needs are so great and we are in terrible debt as a result of the recent pandemic, are we giving money to those who not only hate our country, but are waging a continual war of annihilation against the Jewish people? Have we not learned the lessons of the Holocaust and genocide throughout the world? When a nation as great as the United States empowers and finances terrorism, the consequences will always rebound to our detriment.

By supporting those who do not share American interests and whose continuing goal is the destruction of the Jewish state, we are betraying our country’s founding values and principles.

Biden’s funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency harms Palestinians

For years, Congress has attempted to shed light on this farce by demanding the State Department release a congressionally mandated report that gives the number of refugees under a normal definition. While this number technically remains classified, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tipped his hat to this truth toward the end of his tenure, pointing out the real number is less than 200,000. While it is probably far less than that, perhaps 30,000, his statement at least acknowledges that people generations removed from the 1947 conflict aren’t meaningfully “refugees.”

The agency’s real job in practice isn’t taking care of refugees but propagandizing against Israel’s existence. Anyone who has seen an agency “refugee” camp firsthand, as I have, will immediately notice two things. First, it’s not a “refugee camp” in any normal sense of the word. There are no tents, temporary facilities, or other signs of a recent catastrophe. Instead, it resembles a poor area of most any city, complete with institutions aimed at helping the needy. Second, it features nonstop propaganda aimed at telling Palestinians that the “right of return” to a country that 99.5% of them have never known is their ultimate goal in life, with a few homages to suicide bombers thrown in. These messages are repeated ad nauseam.

But it isn’t limited only to public artwork. The agency's schools frequently laud violence and demonize Jews, and teachers employed by the agency even praise Adolf Hitler.

These unfortunate realities do not mean that there are no Palestinians in need. Corrupt leadership and the futile, propaganda-spurned efforts to destroy Israel have left many Palestinians far worse off than they ought to be. However, funding the agency is not the right way to help needy Palestinians. The State Department simultaneously announced new funds for Palestinians to be administered through the United States Agency for International Development and not through the agency. While the USAID has its own problems, such as funding extremism, at least it isn’t institutionally dedicated to eliminating Israel.

In other words, the effect of funding the agency is to perpetuate a status quo that leaves Palestinians poor, stateless, oppressed, and dedicated to eliminating Israel rather than building their own polity, economy, society, and culture.

Were the agency to adopt a normal definition of a refugee, not one aimed at ending Israel, and cease funding violent, anti-Semitic agitprop, it could help alleviate problems. But the agency has rebuffed attempts at change from its foul mission of destruction.

The Biden administration should reverse course.

This video shows an Arab slapping a religious Jewish boy on the Jerusalem light rail line, with clear premeditation.

According to the tweet that publicized this video, a companion of the Arab says to him beforehand, "Go on, kick him or give him a headache."

A musical version of this video was on TikTok as something to be proud of.

Arutz Sheva reports that after an outcry, the Arab was arrested - and then released, because no one could prove "intent."

Excuse me? What possible intent can there be besides naked antisemitism?

And this is happening in Israel!

In the latest Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll, Palestinians say that they are living in a deeply corrupt society.

84% of Palestinians think there is corruption in Palestinian Authority institutions and 70% think there is corruption in Hamas institutions.

Yet when asked if they think that corruption would increase or decrease after elections, if Hamas wins 26% say corruption will decrease and 28% say it will increase. If Fatah wins 16% say corruption in the PA will decrease and 36% think it will increase even more.

Only 43% of West Bankers think people in the West Bank can criticize the PA without fear while 53% think they cannot without being punished. In the Gaza Strip, 40% think people in the Strip can criticize Hamas leaders without fear and 58% think they cannot without being arrested or persecuted.

30% of Palestinians say they want to emigrate due to political, security, and economic conditions. In Gaza the number is 40% and in the West Bank, 23%.

Another interesting statistic you won't find reported in Western media: 49% of Palestinians in the West Bank have no intention to take the COVID-19 vaccine. (35% of Gazans would refuse to take it as well.) Which means that even if Israel did provide vaccines for free, COVID-19 would remain rampant in the territories anyway - and you can be sure if the vaccines came from Israel, the number of people who would want the vaccine would plummet because of rumors that the Jews are trying to poison them with the shots.

A majority of 62% believes that the vaccination process in the West Bank has been lacking in transparency and justice while only 33% believe the process has been transparent.

55% (36% in the Gaza Strip and 67% in the West Bank) are dissatisfied with the efforts made by the PA to obtain the vaccine and 43% (63% in the Gaza Strip and 30% in the West Bank) are satisfied.

A small plurality of 37% say the best means of ending occupation is terrorism ("armed struggle") while 36% think it is negotiations.

All of these statistics contradict what you read about the Palestinian Arabs in Western media, where the impression you get is that corruption is on par with other countries, people are fiercely tied to the land and would never want to leave, the coronavirus pandemic is largely Israel's fault and terrorism is widely opposed by most.

Salon insinuates Zionists caused 92-year old Helen Thomas' death

We last saw Salon writer Doug Neiss with a thoroughly insane and truly antisemitic article that justified comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, insisting that the similarities are so strong that one cannot consider the comparison antisemitic.

Now Neiss has another, equally crazy article. Fisking this idiot is too easy, but this one section astonished even me - not that the moron wrote it, but that Salon editors thought it was reasonable enough to publish:

Venerable White House reporter Helen Thomas was forced to retire — and died not long after — for letting her sympathy for the Palestinian cause get the better of her discretion. That would never happen to a Jewish reporter for a comparable pro-Israel lapse — for suggesting, say, that Palestinians should simply resettle elsewhere and give up their doomed claim to any piece of Palestine, because no one's eyebrows would be raised. Jewish reporters advocate for Israel all the time. They themselves may be unaware of the extent of their bias.

Helen Thomas was forced to retire from UPI after she said in 2010 that Jews in Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go back" to Poland and Germany - the sites of their genocide.

She doubled down on her antisemitism, telling an Arab audience "Congress, the White House, Hollywood and Wall Street are owned by Zionists. No question, in my opinion." and later saying in a thoroughly antisemitic Playboy interview the following year that "Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies, which are funded by wealthy supporters, including those from Hollywood. Same thing with the financial markets. There’s total control."

This classic Elder of Zion-style antisemitism is what Neiss calls "sympathy for the Palestinian cause."

After that, Thomas got another newspaper job. She died three full years after her leaving Hearst Newspapers, weeks short of her 93rd birthday.

The implication that she died a broken woman because of Jews forcing her out of her job for no reason is beyond what I ever expected to see in mainstream media.

Of course, this was followed by an assertion that Jewish reporters cannot help themselves but to be hopelessly, helplessly Zionist. (Except for the righteous Neiss himself!)

And a reiteration that Israel is Nazi Germany, reincarnated.

But, this is what we can now expect from Salon.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

04/17 Links: Diplomatic Arson in the Middle East; Analysis of the 2021 McCollum-NGO Anti-Israel Bill; Abbas to address J Street conference; Kristen Clarke, Bigot and Liar

From Ian:

Diplomatic Arson in the Middle East

The Biden administration says it intends to engage less in the Middle East. Several senior officials and surrogates repeated this point during the new presidency’s first 100 days. Yet the administration went out of its way in its first few weeks to make three consequential moves in the Middle East that may backfire on America for years to come.

On February 4, the White House announced that the Pentagon would cease its support for Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against the Iran-backed Houthi militia that has terrorized Yemenis and Saudis for the better part of a decade. Two weeks later, on February 16, the State Department rescinded the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation of the Houthis (also known as Ansar Allah). Ten days after that, the Biden administration instructed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to release a report that confirmed the Saudi government’s responsibility for the brutal 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

Democrats have criticized the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen for years, pointing to air strikes that have killed large numbers of civilians, including children. They steadfastly opposed, ostensibly on humanitarian grounds, the Trump administration’s January 11 FTO designation of the Houthis only days before Biden was set to take office. And since Khashoggi’s killing, they have sought to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for the horrific assassination and mutilation of a U.S. resident because it was approved by the Saudi government at the highest levels.

Nonetheless, these three moves were surprising because of their close proximity in time and just how quickly they happened. Taken together with announcements that the U.S. is removing military assets from the Kingdom and re-entering diplomacy with Saudi Arabia’s arch-rival Iran, Riyadh today must feel a frigid wind blowing from Washington.

Now, the Saudis undoubtedly have made terrible mistakes in recent years. But the long-term impact of the Biden administration’s actions could be wide-reaching and deleterious to American interests, especially given the extraordinary changes the region has seen in just the past year.

ON AUGUST 13, 2020, Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates made history and peace at the same time with the signing of the Abraham Accords. The Accords marked the culmination of years of quiet cooperation and diplomacy between Israel and the Gulf States that was steadily drawn out of the shadows by the Trump administration. Shortly after the White House ceremony, Sudan and Morocco followed suit. Other Arab League states such as Oman and Mauritania could still follow.

It is no secret that these states found common cause with Israel not out of a deep commitment to Zionism but rather because they all believe in the necessity of opposing Iranian and Sunni extremism. They also want a politically stable and prosperous Middle East, with a prominent role for the region’s traditional monarchies and nondemocratic regimes that increasingly view Palestinian nationalism as less than a core national interest.

NGO Monitor: Analysis of the 2021 McCollum-NGO Anti-Israel Bill

Representative Betty McCollum (D-MN) has announced that, on April 15, 2021, she will introduce the “U.S. Commitment to the Universal Human Rights of Palestinians Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act.” This is McCollum’s third such bill in recent years – written in conjunction with anti-Israel non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and meant to advance BDS (boycotts, divestment, sanctions) and demonization of Israeli companies and defense forces.

NGO Monitor has analyzed the draft bill and notes the following fundamental failings. Some of them were included in the 2017 and 2019 versions of the legislation and were highlighted in our earlier analyses, but McCollum chose to nonetheless retain the false claims. Involvement of NGOs, including terror-linked actors

Like McCollum’s previous bills filled with false allegations regarding Israeli treatment of Palestinian children, the current version relies on Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), as acknowledged by a DCI-P official in a March 9 2021 webinar. These have been, essentially, DCIP projects under McCollum’s name.

DCI-P is linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terror organization as listed by the US and other governments. To date, NGO Monitor has identified 11 current and former DCI-P board members, officials, and employees linked to the PFLP – some of whom have been convicted of terror offences such as planning and carrying out attacks targeting Israeli civilians (for more details, see Appendix 1 below and NGO Monitor’s report “Defense for Children International – Palestine’s Ties to the PFLP Terrorist Organization”).

On the basis of this information, financial institutions such as Citibank, Arab Bank, and Global Giving have acted to close DCI-P’s accounts. Additionally, in March 2019, the City University of New York (CUNY) launched an investigation into a partnership between CUNY Law and the Palestinian group.

Moreover, members of DCI-P’s board have utilized social media to glorify terrorists who murdered Israeli civilians, including a baby. Such vile celebration of violence is incongruous with the façade of human rights activity that the NGO presents. (For more details, see Appendix 1 and NGO Monitor’s report, “DCI-P’s New Board: Celebrating Terrorists.”)

David Singer: Jordan reaches 100 as its ruling Hashemite dynasty implodes

Jordan continues to be the stumbling block to ending the 100 years old conflict between Jews and Arabs as it celebrated its founding 100 years ago on 11 April 1921 - whilst simultaneously 100 years of unbroken rule by the Hashemite dynasty has been publicly imploding.

Initially called the Emirate of Transjordan - the Hashemites - hailing from the Hejaz - now called Saudi Arabia – were anointed as Transjordan’s future rulers by Britain at the 1921 Cairo Conference as part of the machinations between Britain and France in the carve up of the territory of the defeated Ottoman Empire in World War 1.

99.99% of Ottoman-liberated territory was designated for Arab self-determination under the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon and the British Mandate for Mesopotamia - whilst the remaining 0.01% was to be set aside for the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in the area today called Israel, Jordan, Gaza and Judea and Samaria (West Bank) pursuant to the British Mandate for Palestine.

Two and a half of the twelve tribes of Israel had settled in Transjordan: Gad, Reuben and half the tribe of Manasseh:

Transjordan – 78% of the territory comprised in the Mandate - was however completely excluded as the site for any part of the future Jewish National Home - when Article 25 was inserted in the Mandate document unanimously endorsed by the League of Nations on 22 July 1922.

Transjordan’s exclusion from future Jewish settlement came after the exchange of the following telegrams between Britain’s State Secretary for the Colonies – Winston Churchill – and British Colonial Administrator – John Schuckburgh in March 1921:

04/16 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Israel has made it, now it needs to grow up; Melanie Phillips: Isi Liebler's moral courage; Eventbrite Removes SFSU Webinar With Leila Khaled

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel has made it, now it needs to grow up

At independence, Israel was little more than a spark of light – a tiny spark – in the Jewish world. From a total of 11.5 million Jews alive on the 5th of the month of Iyyar in the Jewish year 5708, (May 14, 1948), only 650,000, or 6% lived in Israel. In contrast, the day Israel was founded, some five million, or 43% of world Jewry were living in the United States.

Fast forward 73 years and that little spark of light is now the sun in the Jewish solar system. With 6.9 million Jews out of a total of 14.9 million, not only is Israel the largest Jewish community in the world by far with 47% of world Jewry living within its boundaries, by 2030, the majority of world Jewry will be living in the Jewish state.

As for America, although half a million Jews immigrated to the US since Israel was founded, the total number of Jews in America stands today at a mere 5.7 million. American Jewry has been reduced to just 38% of the world Jewish population. The implications are straightforward. Since 1948, virtually all of the growth in the Jewish world population has happened and is continuing to happen in Israel.

Israel's transformation into the center of the Jewish world isn't just a question of demographics. Most Torah learning that is happening in the world is happening in Israel. Most Jewish literature is being written in Israel. Jewish advances in everything from medicine to economics and business, to science, engineering, culinary arts, visual arts and more are happening in Israel. Jewish history is being researched in Israel and is being made in Israel. Israel is the present of the Jewish people and the future of the Jewish people.

Aside from everything else, this state of affairs exposes the manifest stupidity of the claim that anti-Zionism is anything other than antisemitism.

Although Israel's position at the center of the Jewish world is undeniable, it has gone largely unnoticed by most Israelis. Most of the Israelis who are engaged with Diaspora Jewry continue to act as though Israel – with a per capita GDP higher than Japan's – is an underpopulated, impoverished backwater that cannot survive without the support of our wealthy and more secure brethren in America, Australia or France.

So too, most Israelis are unaware of the revolution the country has brought to Judaism itself. In the space of three generations, Israelis have taken their grandparents' practices from the ghettos of Europe and the melachs of North Africa and Arabia and turned them into a dynamic, eclectic living, breathing creed. Judaism is the rhythm of life in Israel. In every neighborhood, village and town, the Judaism that is lived in Israel has an electric vibrance. Israeli music, fashion, customs, prayer, settlement, religious studies, agriculture, and cooking are separately and together expressions of a spiritual renewal the likes of which no one imagined, or planned.

It is the organic outgrowth of the reunification of the people of Israel and their faith in their land. Few have noticed any of this or considered its spiritual and cultural significance, let alone recognized its potential.

The reformation of Jewish life is not Israel's only huge achievement that has been largely overlooked and underappreciated by the people of Israel. They have also largely missed the transformation of Israel's global position. The ongoing domestic debate regarding the goal of Israel's policies in relation to Iran's nuclear program is a testament to this lack of national self-awareness.

Melanie Phillips: Isi Liebler's moral courage

The death in Jerusalem of Isi Leibler at the age of 86 has robbed the Jewish world of one of its towering figures at a time when it is particularly ill-equipped for such a loss.

Leibler, who was head of the Australian Jewish community before he immigrated to Israel, became a multi-millionaire global Jewish leader who was influential for decades on the international stage. His efforts helped pave the way for diplomatic relations to be established between Israel and China and for full diplomatic relations between Israel and India.

Counting Benjamin Netanyahu as a personal friend, he didn't flinch from criticizing Israel's prime minister in public – and reportedly to his face – when he thought Netanyahu was getting things badly wrong.

He gathered round his Shabbat table like-minded thinkers, writers, academics and public figures who could help supply his voracious need to inform himself ever more widely, as well as bolster what increasingly felt like the resistance movement of the Jewish people against a world spinning off its moral and political compass.

Leibler is perhaps best known for his seminal role in the campaign to free Soviet Jewry and his single-handed battles against the World Jewish Congress.

In 1959, he launched a press and lobbying campaign that brought the plight of Soviet Jewry first before the Australian parliament and then to the United Nations. Arguably, no other individual made a more significant contribution to the eventual exodus of the Soviet Jews some three decades later.

Eventbrite Removes San Francisco State University-Sponsored Webinar With Palestinian Terrorist Leila Khaled

Eventbrite has removed a San Francisco State University-sponsored event featuring Leila Khaled — a member of US-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — from its platform for violating its terms of service.

The move comes after The Algemeiner reported that SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicity and Diaspora Studies (AMED) program was planning an April 23 Zoom webinar, facilitated by the Eventbrite platform, featuring Khaled as a speaker.

“Eventbrite is committed to empowering event organizers to gather for their chosen purpose, so long as they don’t violate our Terms. Due to one of the speaker’s affiliation with a foreign terrorist organization, this event violates our Terms of Service, so we have removed it from our platform,” an Eventbrite spokesperson wrote in an e-mailed response to The Algemeiner.

The April 23 event, “Whose Narratives? What Free Speech for Palestine?”, is co-sponsored by SFSU’s AMED program and moderated by the university’s Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, who has previously been criticized by Jewish groups for her rhetoric against pro-Israel students. It marks the second attempt by the organizers to host an event with Khaled as a speaker. In September 2020, an online seminar featuring Khaled — who took part in the hijacking of a Tel Aviv-bound commercial flight in 1969 — was dropped by Facebook and the videoconferencing provider Zoom, and was taken down from YouTube after partially airing.

Asked about the April 23 event, a Zoom spokesperson told The Algemeiner that the company was “reviewing the facts of this event to determine if it is consistent with our Terms of Service and Community Standards and will decide on an appropriate course of action after that review.”

From Ma'an:

Restrictions and military checkpoints prevented worshipers from reaching the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque to perform the first Friday prayers in the month of Ramadan.

The occupation forces set up their checkpoints and spread in large numbers in the streets, roads and neighborhoods of Jerusalem leading to the Al-Aqsa Mosque (Wadi Al-Joz, Al-Sawana, Sheikh Jarrah, Bab Al-Sahira and Al-Amoud), in addition to an intense spread in the old roads of Jerusalem and the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Zionist criminal occupiers must have really been working overtime to prevent tens of thousands of Muslims from reaching the site.

But the very next part says:

The Islamic Endowments Department estimated the number of worshipers in Al-Aqsa who were able to reach it on the first Friday of the month of Ramadan at 70,000.

Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib, Director General of the Endowments for Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque Affairs, said: “The conditions are promising and the numbers are flocking to Al-Aqsa with a continuous increase, a year after it was closed during Ramadan and the people were unable to pray there under the shadow of the Coronavirus."

Sheikh Al-Khatib added, "The numbers that arrived from the West Bank are estimated at 10,000, as he stated, in addition to the worshipers from inside Palestine" who continue to arrive today to perform the Maghrib, Isha and Taraweeh prayers at Al-Aqsa.

It is almost like the article is written by a robot. The contradiction between "Israelis are preventing Muslims from worshiping" and "tens of thousand of Muslims are worshiping" is simply not noticed.

04/16 Links Pt1: How Israel kept the Arab Spring from becoming the winter of its discontent; Israel’s three-front conflict with Iran; Media Ignore Outrageous French Court Acquittal of Antisemitic Murderer

From Ian:

How Israel kept the Arab Spring from becoming the winter of its discontent

Israel had much to fear 10 years ago. But the scenarios its leaders feared either didn’t come to pass, or occurred at a much lower level than expected. Chemical weapons did not reach the hands of terrorists; Egypt remains very much committed to security cooperation with Israel; jihadist organizations did not emerge as a major threat to Israeli citizens or soldiers; King Abdullah sits securely on the throne in Jordan.

The outcome is even better when one surveys how Israel’s adversaries fared. Iran, which enjoyed a wave of success in the early years of the Arab Spring, has been on the defensive of late. Senior commanders like Qassem Soleimani and key allies have been killed, it continues to suffer stunning intelligence failures around its nuclear program and its economy is in shambles under US sanctions.

The Sunni jihadist networks have also been hit hard. The Islamic State’s caliphate was smashed, and al-Qaeda-linked groups have rejected it in Syria as senior leaders continue to be eliminated or spend long stretches in hiding.

At the same time, moderate Sunni states have come together around opposition to Iran and Turkey, while signing normalization agreements with Israel.

Though a number of factors played into the outcome, Netanyahu is credited for his leadership in navigating the drastic changes over the last decade, even by many who are not supporters of his policies in other realms.

“I personally disagree with Netanyahu’s views on peace with the Palestinians and the JCPOA,” said Byman, of the Brookings Institution. “However, given his beliefs, he played his hand very well. He helped foster discontent with the [Iran nuclear deal], which Trump withdrew from, and in general was able to use Iran to forge new relations with important states like the UAE. More broadly, he was able to work with Russia — though it was often difficult — as the US decreased its role in the region. Overall, Israel has emerged from the last decade with new or stronger ties to important regional players and has not had to make concessions on the Palestinian issue.”

“I think that some of his decisions have been correct,” said Svetlova, who served in the opposition as an MK while Netanyahu was prime minister, “such as the non-involvement in the Syrian civil war.”

Looking at the entire period, Netanyahu’s overall policy was correct, said Brun. “Israel took advantage of the chaos, or the war, to operate with relative intensity against existing and emerging threats. “

Analysis: Israel’s three-front conflict with Iran

The attacks noted above have generally been measured and below a particular threshold as not to elicit a military response that would ignite a regional conflict. However, the amount of attacks on the nuclear, Syrian, and maritime fronts are intensifying during a time when Iran is seeking a renewed nuclear deal after years of heavy sanctions by the Trump administration.

It is also noteworthy to mention the uncharacteristic amount of leaks sourced from unidentified Israeli security officials about the maritime and Natanz attacks. The policy of strategic ambiguity has seemingly disappeared as detailed reports attributing Israel to attacks have been published mere hours after military operations have been executed – which in itself has caused a stir among some Israeli defense officials.

Additionally, Israel’s former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert added to the cascade of leaks by revealing detailed information to the Israeli media by remarking that the April 11 explosion at Natanz was caused by a bomb planted over ten years ago.

The leaks about covert operations only encourages an Iranian response and serves no operational purpose.

It is difficult to ignore the significance of Iran being attacked on three fronts in the span of less than a week. It isn’t a coincidence and the attacks are meant to send a message that Israel is willing to escalate the conflict despite the Biden administration’s attempt to salvage the nuclear deal.

Whether this strategy will deter Iran or force it to harden its position has already produced some unfavorable results. Nevertheless, what is occurring is unprecedented, and on a course towards a regional conflict that neither country is likely looking for.

Media Ignore Outrageous French Court Acquittal of Antisemitic Murderer

France’s highest court has ruled that a man who savagely attacked and killed his Jewish neighbor by throwing her out of the window of her Paris flat was not criminally responsible as he had smoked a large amount of marijuana, and therefore will not stand on trial.

The decision sparked outrage and shock from the local and global Jewish community, with many Twitter and Facebook users taking to social media to express their disgust at the atrocious miscarriage of justice.

However, virtually the entire media has elected to turn a blind eye to this grave injustice, with the result being zero mainstream coverage. To date, only Jewish news outlets and French media have touched the story.

On Wednesday, the Court of Cassation, the highest court in the French judiciary, upheld a 2019 Paris court decision that Kobili Traoré, who in 2017 broke into the home of his 65-year-old Orthodox Jewish neighbor, Sarah Halimi, before proceeding to beat and then kill her, was not fit to stand trial.

The police reports of the incident documents claims that Traoré shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great” in Arabic) before throwing her out of the balcony of her home in a clearly antisemitic crime. However, because Traoré had consumed a significant quantity of marijuana, the court ruled that he could not be held responsible for his actions.

The media serve the critical role of keeping our public officials honest, and exposing injustice where it occurs. It is HonestReporting’s role to keep the media honest, and ensure that the public can trust news coverage, safe in the knowledge that it fully, fairly and accurately reflects developments so that injustice is not allowed to occur unchecked.

ATTENTION THOSE IN L.A. - mark your calendars!

April 22nd at 2pm - Justice for Sarah Halimi
Consulate General of France
10390 Santa Monica Blvd. LA 90024#JusticeForSarahHalimi https://t.co/i0rHz7d0v2
— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) April 16, 2021