Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 04, 2021

05/04 Links Pt1: Mt. Meron and Israel's paradoxical nature; Are We “Judaizing” Jerusalem?; After Meron, violence, Israel needs a government now

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Mt. Meron and Israel's paradoxical nature

On Saturday night, as Tel Aviv's City Hall lit up with the image of the Israeli flag to commemorate the dozens killed and 150 injured in the crowd-crush two nights earlier on Mount Meron, Israelis of all backgrounds came together to light yahrzeit (memorial) candles.

Some of the people present at Rabin Square that evening, like others around the country, configurated tea lights in the shape of the numeral 45 – the number of people trampled to death during the Lag B'Omer celebrations.

The outpouring of nationwide grief over the victims and empathy with their families was not unusual in a state sadly accustomed to burying citizens who are, by all measures, too young to die. Nor was it novel for Israel's Kan Radio to play sad music, out of respect for the gravity of the hour.

The same can be said of the public's lining up in droves, and for hours on end in sweltering heat, to donate blood for the treatment of those still in the hospital. Though less frequent an occurrence, the offer by Israel's national carrier, El Al, of free passage for anyone from abroad needing to pay their last respects or provide bedside comfort to loved ones was also not surprising.

Even the fact that Arab villagers from the Meron area in the north rallied to help their Jewish brethren in distress – distributing free food and drink to survivors – wasn't totally out of the ordinary.

But all of the above has been noteworthy nevertheless, due to the identity of the casualties. All were ultra-Orthodox Jews who had made a pilgrimage to the gravesite of second-century sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai to dance around the holiday's traditional bonfire – hosted, as it happened, by the Jerusalem-based, anti-Zionist sect, Toldot Aharon.

Throughout the past year, since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, already strained relations between the Haredim and secular Israeli society have been particularly fraught. Indeed, COVID-19 is one force majeure that hasn't been a unifying factor in the way that other shared traumatic experiences have been, due in large part to its dragged-out duration.

Jpost Editorial: After Meron, violence, Israel needs a government now - editorial

If anyone still harbors any lingering doubts about why Israel must not go to a fifth election, but rather form a stable, workable government as soon as possible, the events of the last two weeks should put those doubts to rest.

What happened two weeks ago? Clashes began in Jerusalem between Arabs and Jews, exacerbated by a protest by a group of racist Jews, that then led to terrorists from Gaza firing rockets into Israel.

That was followed by Thursday night’s horror in Meron, and no less than three terror attacks on Sunday, including a shooting attack at the Tapuah Junction that left one yeshiva student in life-threatening condition, another in serious condition, and a third with light injuries.

Why should any of that convince people of the need for a strong government and not spin the wheel on a fifth election? Because these incidents show that while Israeli politicians are fiddling around, things out there in the real world are happening.

The world continues to spin. But while it spins, Israel is unable to prepare or respond as it should because its leaders are otherwise engaged. The recent uptick in violence and Palestinian terror came as no great surprise. First, the Muslim month of Ramadan has for years been a period of increased violence in Israel.

From Israel: Are We “Judaizing” Jerusalem??

The amusement is fleeting, however, for there is nothing funny about the Arabs’ motivation in making this charge: They are seeking to delegitimize the Jewish claim to Jerusalem, and, more extensively, to Israel.

When I wrote my last posting, I said I would return to consider other reasons why Israel needs a strong right-wing government without delay. And this, my friends, is one significant reason. We need leaders who are clear on our rights and ready to stand on them. For, just as anti-Semitism is increasing world-wide, so is anti-Zionism, the flip side of the same ugly coin.

The Palestinian Arabs and their supporters may be virulently hostile, but they are not stupid. They know that Jerusalem and Har Habayit (the Temple Mount) are an essential element of our claim to the Land.

Our claim is based on international law.
We have just celebrated the 101st anniversary of the San Remo Conference: At the end of WWI, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan – with the United States as a neutral observer, came together for the Conference in San Remo, Italy, under the auspices of the League of Nations. They met to determine the allocation of Middle Eastern lands that had been part of the defeated Ottoman Empire. Borders were drawn that defined Mandate territories. These were to be governed temporarily by either Great Britain or France, and would receive independence within a relatively short period of time.

The Mandate for Palestine was given to Great Britain, which was charged with establishing it as a Jewish homeland.

The decision made at San Remo was then officially confirmed in a unanimous vote of the League of Nations (51 nations) on June 24, 1922. Thus was the Jewish right to the land established in international law; that law still stands. Jerusalem, it should be noted, was within the area defined by the Mandate as a Jewish homeland.

Our claim is also based on heritage and history.
Incorporated into the San Remo Resolution regarding the Mandate for Palestine was the Balfour Declaration – a 1917 letter from the British Foreign Secretary declaring the government’s sympathy with Zionist aspirations and endorsing establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

The text of the Mandate for Palestine as passed by the League of Nations additionally said this:
“…recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

This is huge. The fifty-one nations of the world belonging to the League of Nations all signed on to a document recognizing the Jewish historical connection to Palestine. (See the full list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_League_of_Nations)

The US was not a member of the League of Nations, but the Lodge-Fish Resolution, passed by both houses of Congress on June 22, 1922 (before the League of Nations voted), endorsed the Mandate for Palestine; it was then signed by President Warren Harding.

Al Monitor reports that Palestinians are upset that Jews are visiting - and praying in - an ancient synagogue.

Israeli settlers have been increasing their visits to the ruins of the ancient Naaran and Shahwan synagogues in the Jericho area in the West Bank and also performing rituals in them, sparking Palestinian fears about Israeli intentions for the region.

Iyad Hamdan, the director of the Department of Tourism and Archaeology in the city of Jericho, told Al-Monitor, “The Shahwan and Al-Dyouk [Naaran] synagogues are two archaeological sites located within the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities’ sites in the Jericho area and the Jordan Valley."

He added, “The archaeological sites are not a place for worship, but the settlers treat them as such and insist on performing Talmudic rituals in the synagogues. More than 50 settlers visit the two synagogues on a weekly basis.”

Mohammad Jaradat, the director of tourism and antiquities for Jericho governorate, said that although the Shahwan synagogue in the city of Jericho is in Area A of the West Bank, which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority, the visits from Israeli settlers and tourists "stem from the terms of the Oslo Accords, which allowed in its additional annexes the Jews to visit the synagogue which is known [to them] as Shalom Al Yisrael Synagogue." Shalom Al Yisrael means “Peace Unto Israel.”

He told Al-Monitor, “Israeli army forces accompany the settlers when visiting many archaeological sites in Jericho governorate to protect them. These include the archaeological Tal al-Sultan site.”

He said the "settlers’ visits are intended to entrench settlement, as they consider the site part of the Jewish religious heritage.” He added, “The visits to the archaeological and historical sites are a Zionist attempt to Judaize the Jericho area and the Jordan Valley to implement part of the Zionist annexation plan."

He added, “The two synagogues are part of Palestinian history that dates back to thousands of years."

As usual, the Palestinian officials are not telling the truth.

1. It isn't only "settlers" visiting the Shalom Al Yisrael synagogue - Jews worldwide visit it.

2. The 1995 Oslo Accords Interim Agreement doesn't call it an archaeological site - it calls it a Jewish holy site. It "ensure[s] free, unimpeded and secure access to the relevant Jewish holy site," refers to its "Jewish religious nature" and says "existing religious practices shall be preserved."

3. There is nothing new with Jews visiting the site to pray. Jews resumed praying with a quorum after the second intifada regularly since 2007, and every Friday several years afterwards.

4. Note that Jaradat admits that the IDF needs to accompany the Jews visiting the site to protect them. It is obvious that their lives are in danger otherwise and that Palestinian police cannot be trusted to protect Jews wanting to pray in their own holy site. This article itself is proof of that - it is a new initiative to give the impression that Jews have no religious rights in Jericho.

5. Part of Palestinian history that dates back thousands of years? Please.

Incidentally, the mosaic floor there includes many depictions of heart shapes.

While the Jewish Jericho site claims that these hearts - half green and half red - symbolize the emotional and logical parts of the heart, that shape was not associated with the human heart (as far as I can tell) until the Middle Ages. In Greece, the decorative shape was more often associated with leaves.

If anyone has any idea of what heart shapes would have meant to 3rd century CE Jews , I'd love to know! This book thinks they are some sort of directional arrows.

Israel haters lie. They KNOW they are lying. We can prove it. Exhibit A: @LaraFriedmanDC. Exhibit A: @EuroMedoPt

Lara Friedman, the president of the anti-Israel Foundation for Middle East Peace, tweeted:

Israel built 5000 housing units in Jerusalem in four months?

Anyone who follows the issue of settlements would know instantly that this is a ridiculous lie. The total number of housing units that began being built in all of 2020, in all the territories, was less than half that. If 5,000 units would be built in Jerusalem it would be making world headlines. And to build and complete them in four months would be really remarkable!

The very first sentence of the EMHRM article explains the story a little better: "Israel has demolished 31 homes and 27 Palestinian facilities after plans to construct 4,982 new settlement units were approved, since the beginning of this year, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in statement. "

So no houses were built - plans were "approved." Most of the planned housing units never get built, as any knowledgeable person on the topic would know. And there are many stages of approval, which means that each housing unit can be "approved" up to eight separate times before actual building!

Lara Friedman knows all of this. She knows the headline is false and keeps the tweet up anyway.

One way we know she knows is because the error was pointed out to her almost immediately after she tweeted, and then many times again - and she didn't respond or remove the tweet, even as she continued to tweet on other topics during the day. (After I pointed it out, she tweeted the first sentence of the EMHRM article without explaining that her first tweet was wrong, giving the impression that Israel built 5000 units and approved 5000 more.)

But the other way we know that Friedman is purposely pushing lies is because of her previous job - at Americans for Peace Now:

Lara Friedman is Director of Policy and Government Relations for Americans for Peace Now. As a leading authority on US foreign policy in the Middle East, Israeli settlements policy, and Jerusalem.

Friedman is an expert on settlements! She knows that Israel doesn't build anything close to 5000 settlements a year, let alone in Jerusalem over for months. Peace Now knows the entire building process intimately - they wrote a detailed article and slide deck while she was at APN that describes the process in detail.

Friedman's knowledge is clear from her attempts to twist the facts without technically lying in this Haaretz article I picked apart when she worked at Peace Now.

Most reporters don't understand the intricate details behind the stages of building housing in Judea and Samaria - but Lara Friedman knows it well.

Friedman lied - and deliberately maintains the lie. Because she wants to demonize Israel.

Now, how about the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor? Could this have just been a headline mistake, and the article is accurate?

Nope! Here are the first two paragraphs of the article:

Israel has demolished 31 homes and 27 Palestinian facilities after plans to construct 4,982 new settlement units were approved, since the beginning of this year, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in statement.
During the past four months, Israel has escalated its policy of demolishing Palestinian homes and facilities and removing Palestinians from their neighborhoods, while building thousands of settlement units in East Jerusalem. Such a conduct aims to perpetuate racial discrimination and eliminate the Palestinian Arab presence in the city.

Right after admitting that only plans were approved, the EMHRM says again that was building thousands of units in Jerusalem!

Lara Friedman lies - and knows it. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor lies - and it knows it.

For normal people or organizations, being proven a liar over and over again tends to damage credibility. But for people who are anti-Israel, it burnishes their credibility among their audience who is eager to believe the lies - the bigger the lie, the better.

Lahav Harkov of the Jerusalem Post asked the State Department whether the US will attend the Durban IV conference in September, which seemed a distinct possibility after the Biden administration mentioned the upcoming 20th anniversary of the antisemitic "UN World Conference Against Racism" in a joint statement led by the US at the UN Human Rights Council.

The US will keep up its policy of not participating in events commemorating the 2001 Durban Declaration, which singled out Israel as racist, a State Department spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

“The United States will not attend or participate in any events commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action or the World Conference on Racism, which preceded it,” the spokesperson stated.

The State Department spokesperson said that the US “remains deeply committed to combating antisemitism at home and abroad. Furthermore, the United States stands with Israel and has always shared its concerns over the Durban process’s anti-Israel sentiment, use as a forum for antisemitism and freedom of expression issues.”

The spokesperson responded to a query from the Post about the March 2021 UN Human Rights Council Joint Statement on Countering Racism and Racial Discrimination, initiated by the US.

The State Department spokesperson said that the joint statement “includes a brief reference to the fact that the Durban conference happened 20 years ago and in no way reflects a change in our position regarding the problematic portions of the document or the process that led to its creation.”

Harkov contacted the State Department after reading my article about the UNHRC joint statement. She also quoted it in the piece.

The joint statement remains problematic, because it definitely gives Durban I legitimacy, and mentioning it was not necessary for the letter. Moreover, mentioning Durban ensured that Israel could not join the 156 signatories to the letter, which meant that the US did something to isolate Israel on the world stage. So there are still some unanswered questions.

It would also have been much better for the State Department to have issued the statement distancing itself from Durban IV publicly, rather than from an anonymous spokesperson.

Nevertheless, it is good to see this statement, and that the Biden Administration won't do what many feared, in the name of "anti-racism." Which was what the original Durban conference was supposed to be about, anyway.

I wasn't the first person to notice the US joint letter mentioning Durban. That was Anne Bayefsky, of Human Rights Voices.

05/03 Links Pt2: US will not take part in Durban IV conference; Editorial: How we must investigate Meron; Ayaan Hirsi Ali vs. the Mob; BBC quiz show describes Ashkelon as “a Palestinian port”

From Ian:

State Dept: US will not take part in Durban IV conference

The US will keep up its policy of not participating in events commemorating the 2001 Durban Declaration, which singled out Israel as racist, a State Department spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

“The United States will not attend or participate in any events commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action or the World Conference on Racism, which preceded it,” the spokesperson stated.

The UN plans to hold events marking the 20th anniversary of the World Conference on Racism, called Durban IV, on September 22, coinciding with Sukkot.

The State Department spokesperson said that the US “remains deeply committed to combating antisemitism at home and abroad. Furthermore, the United States stands with Israel and has always shared its concerns over the Durban process’s anti-Israel sentiment, use as a forum for antisemitism and freedom of expression issues.”

The spokesperson responded to a query from the Post about the March 2021 UN Human Rights Council Joint Statement on Countering Racism and Racial Discrimination, initiated by the US.

The statement mentions the Durban Declaration in a positive light: “Recalling the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action, we are committed to working within our nations and with the international community to address and combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, while upholding freedom of expression.”

The State Department spokesperson said that the joint statement “includes a brief reference to the fact that the Durban conference happened 20 years ago and in no way reflects a change in our position regarding the problematic portions of the document or the process that led to its creation.”

JPost Editorial: How we must investigate Meron - editorial

A state commission of inquiry – or a parliamentary committee of inquiry – is needed not to find who is to blame for the disaster but to establish exactly what happened, why and how, in order to prevent the recurrence of a similar catastrophe. The findings, incidentally, can be applied also to save lives at other mass events including sporting events and festivals.

Sadly, as has happened before with events like the Arad Music Festival tragedy where three teens were crushed to death in 1995, there is no investigation until there has been a loss of life.

As the Jerusalem Post’s Herb Keinon noted yesterday: “‘Don’t worry,’ goes the oft-repeated refrain if there are safety hazards in the street, or at construction sites, or at various nature reserves, ‘everything will be okay.’ One can imagine that this was the refrain heard in Meron, both by organizers before the tragedy and by celebrants at the site: ‘Sure, it seems dangerous, but everything will be okay, as it always has been in the past.’

“But, heartbreakingly, everything wasn’t all right. And now a war needs to be waged against this ‘Take my word for it, everything will be fine’ mentality.”

A state commission of inquiry has a broad mandate to investigate on a systemic level what happened to allow the Mount Meron tragedy to occur. Learning from the disaster is essential. Nothing can bring back those who died but the state does have to do everything to make sure – as much as is possible – that these senseless tragedies don’t happen again. That is why appointing a state commission of inquiry chaired by a Supreme Court justice is the only correct decision.

State comptroller announces investigation into ‘preventable’ Meron disaster

The state comptroller announced Monday that he would be opening a special investigation into the disaster at the Mount Meron compound where 45 people were crushed to death last week, saying that the tragedy was “preventable.”

“I intend to launch a special investigation into the circumstances that led to this disaster, the preparation of the various bodies, both this year and during the years that have elapsed since the State Comptroller’s report from 2011,” said Matanyahu Englman at a Jerusalem press conference.

“This is an event that was preventable, and now it is up to us to examine and investigate how and what should have been done to prevent it,” Englman said.

The state comptroller said that the investigation would focus on three main aspects: the conduct of all parties involved, starting with the decision-makers and including law enforcement system, prior to and during the event; the administration of the Rashbi [Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai] compound in Meron over the years; and steps that can be taken to prevent the recurrence of such a disaster in the future.

Englman said that if there was a suspicion of criminal conduct, the information would be passed to the attorney general for consideration. Additionally, Englman said he would examine any work done by a potential state commission of inquiry into the tragedy.

This comic was inspired by a Jewish Voice for Peace membership drive email I just saw. It said:

As we reclaim Judaism from Zionism, our opponents try to use false claims of antisemitism against us.

As we gain traction in Congress, our opponents lobby even harder to fund the Israeli military—meaning U.S.tax dollars still pay for the imprisonment of Palestinian children and the theft of Palestinian land.

As the vaccine becomes widely available, the state of Israel continues its regime of medical apartheid, withholding vaccines from the millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza—and accelerating the illegal demolition of Palestinian homes at a time when, for many of us, home is the safest place to be.

Since Zionism is an inherent part of Judaism, what sort of "Judaism" are they referring to?

One where one is obligated to lie about what US aid to Israel is used for?

One where one is obligated to lie about Israel "withholding vaccines" from Palestinians who never asked for them?

And then they complain that they aren't invited to join Jewish organizational umbrella groups!

Anti-Zionist Jews are the real clowns.

Hate crimes went down significantly in COVID NYC - but anti-Jewish hate still leads

In 2020, New York City's hate crime complaints went down significantly from 2019 - from 420 to 265.

But as in every other year, complaints about hate crimes against Jews led all others by a wide margin:

So far in 2021, however, it appears that anti-Asian hate crime complaints have overcome the anti-Jewish ones, at least based on their word chart for the first quarter:

Skipping rope on the Temple Mount (video)

Remember, Jews respectfully walking and praying on the most sacred Jewish site is called "desecrating" it, but a Muslim skipping rope in front of the site of the Holy of Holies of the Temple is something to be admired.

(h/t YMedad)

05/03 Links Pt1: Delegitimizing Israel has become a mainstream pastime; How Not to Think About the Conflict; Palestinian's celebrate murderers of U.S. citizen; will Biden's Administration react?

From Ian:

Delegitimizing Israel has become a mainstream pastime - opinion

Human Rights Watch, the US-based NGO, has indicted Israel as an “apartheid” state, accusing Israel of institutionalized racial segregation. Israel, according to Human Rights Watch, is the new South Africa.

What is the impact of this offensive onslaught on Israel?

This ugly “apartheid” smear is central to the larger campaign to delegitimize Israel. Human Rights Watch’s assault on the Jewish state is designed to undermine Israel’s international legitimacy. Isolating Israel internationally is the intention. Turning Israel into a pariah state they hope will – just like the campaign against South Africa’s apartheid – cause the Jewish state to falter and collapse in the face of overwhelming international pressure.

“Apartheid” is a loaded word. “Apartheid” implies moral bankruptcy. It presumes a willful indifference to the consequences of one’s actions. HRW’s public charge of “apartheid” provides the campaign to delegitimize Israel with “moral standing” and an ethical basis to deny Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

And this is important – the delegitimize Israel assault is no longer just a marginal concept held by a few left-wing progressive radicals... no, no, no. The delegitimization of Israel has become a mainstream mindset.

Einat Wilf: How Not to Think About the Conflict

The irony is that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict doesn’t provide much in the way of heroism anymore either. It is one of the least violent conflicts in the world, leading to far fewer violent deaths than most American cities experience each year. The contours of the slow separation between the State of Israel and an emerging Palestinian state are becoming more defined, and Israelis and Palestinians continue their close security cooperation. The growing normalization between Israel and many Arab states points to a regional exhaustion with “the conflict,” and a sense that Israel is part and parcel of the Middle East. A dull gray envelops a region that once seemed to promise grand battles between good and evil, black and white, Armageddon and salvation.

Yet, in a world where so much is colored in dull gray, the market for black and white is as strong as ever. If actual, real-life Israelis, Arabs, and Palestinians are not going to supply the grand battle for right and wrong, then those who are addicted to this hallucinatory drug will have to invent it.

Yes, there are serious, complicated, and appropriate ways to understand the conflict between Israel, its Arab neighbors, and the Palestinians. None of them includes a grand battle between good and evil. But I can testify that when I sit with audiences and talk about the history of Ottoman decline, or the rise of nation-states to replace receding empires, or the interplay of various imperial and Cold War interests with those of various ethnic and religious groups, the eyes of most people glaze over. They want to know: Who are the good guys? Who are the bad? Which side should I root for — who is my team?

But Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, are not sports teams. They are not stand-ins for good and evil, symbols for the struggles in one’s own group much closer to home — they are not a drug for generating intense feelings in a dull reality. Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, are real people. They are struggling to resolve centuries-long conflicts, which they are slowly doing. That is a far better use of their time than serving as props and collateral damage in the domestic morality tales of other countries, giving an outlet for people to channel negative emotions with which they should be dealing on their own. Which is why, increasingly, Israelis and even Palestinians watch the intense debates taking place halfway across the world in their name and are left wondering: What does all of this have to do with us?

‘We are a true friend of Israel’

PRIME Minister Scott Morrison cited the importance of community and the writings of the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks in a speech at UIA NSW’s major donors event on Thursday night.

Morrison recalled how his father, who was a “big believer in community”, would tell him, “‘If you want to understand community, understand the Jewish community’, which he loved passionately and dearly.

“When President Rivlin visited Australia, he described Australia’s Jewish community as the ‘living bridge’ between our two countries and that is indeed what you are,” the Prime Minister said.

“Though numbering only about one per cent of our population, Jewish Australians have made a remarkable contribution to our national life and our story. You have sought to be a light unto the nations, performing the mitzvot or good deeds according to the Law of Moses.

“I honour you as Australians, and as people of a rich heritage, a great culture and a tremendous faith.”

Morrison said he been “deeply influenced” by the teachings of Lord Sacks.

BDS celebrated its 15th anniversary last June with a list of 15 things you can do to "show solidarity with Palestinians."

Here they are:

Expose Israeli Apartheid:
Targeted Sanctions [against Israel]
Apartheid Free Zones in your community "as spaces free of racism, sexism, discrimination"
Corporate Complicity (pressure on companies with branches in Israel)
Racial and Indigenous Justice: Support Indigenous-led and Black-led struggles for racial justice...
Environmental and climate justice
Women’s struggles: "justice in Palestine is a feminist issue"
Ethical City Councils: "Promote an intersectional motion in your local council..."
Faith Communities & Tourism: "respect the Palestinian call for ethical tourism/pilgrimage."
Cultural Boycott of Israel
Academic Boycott of Israel
Student Activism: Organize intersectional campaigns...
Sports Boycott: Join the global campaign to boycott Puma...
LGBTQI+ Rights: "Unmask and counter Israel’s agenda of pinkwashing..."
Donate to BDS: BDS needs support from people of conscience everywhere...

Only one problem: Not one of them would actually help a single Palestinian.

Not one mention on sending money to Palestinians - only to BDS.

No request to help pay rent for Arab Sheikh Jarrah residents which would allow them to stay in their homes.

Not one mention of supporting Palestinian businesses - only boycotting Israeli businesses.

Not one mention of lobbying Israel to ease restrictions on Palestinians.

Not one mention of sending letters or tweets of support to ordinary Palestinians.

Not one mention of working to improve Palestinian democracy or its institutions.

Not even a request for volunteers to help with the olive harvest.

This isn't a list of things to show solidarity with Palestinians. It is a recruiting list for "social justice warriors."

There is nothing positive here at all. Nothing supportive of Palestinians. Only hate for the Jewish state.

This list shows, better than any hasbara ever could, that people who claim to be "pro-Palestinian" are nothing of the sort. They simply hate Israel with a passion that is only equaled by their Jew-hating cousins on the Right.

Why didn't @HRW call Israel "apartheid" in its 2010 report?

If Israel is guilty of "apartheid," as Human Rights watch and B'tselem now say in 2021, what changed that those organizations didn't use the word beforehand?

Israel's policies are identical to what they were ten and twenty years ago, and arguably they were worse before Oslo when all Palestinian Arabs really were under direct Israeli control and not the tiny percentage that are today.

HRW wrote a 170-page report in 2010 called "Separate and Unequal" that specifically attacked Israel as treating Palestinians in a discriminatory way. Surely, if a sober legal analysis from HRW today concludes that Israel is practicing apartheid (and persecution,) they would have mentioned it then in a report that was entirely about accusing Israel of discriminatory practices.

Yet neither argument was used.

One footnote does mention apartheid, though, and it is worth looking at.

HRW mentions a 2008 lawsuit brought against Israel by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel against banning Palestinians from major highways. Israel's Supreme Court actually agreed that Palestinians should have access to those roads except in extreme security circumstances - another contradiction to HRW's entire thesis.

ACRI's lawsuit did accuse Israel of apartheid, though - something that HRW was clearly aware of since it partially quotes the president of the Court who took great exception to that characterization.

President Dorit Beinisch wrote that ACRI's use of the word was wrong and insulting, and her words then are a short and powerful rejoinder against the modern antisemites making that accusation today:

Even if we take into account the fact that absolute segregation of the population groups traveling on the roads is an extreme and undesirable outcome, we must be careful to refrain from definitions that give a connotation of segregation, based on the unworthy foundations of racist and ethnic discrimination, to the security means enacted for the purpose of protecting travelers on the roads. The comparison drawn by the Petitioners between the use of separate roads for security reasons and the apartheid policy which was formerly implemented in South Africa and the actions that accompanied it, is not a worthy one. The apartheid policy constituted an especially grave crime and runs counter to the basic principles of Israeli law, international human rights law, and the provisions of international criminal law. It was a policy of racist segregation and discrimination on the basis of race and ethnic origin, founded on a series of discriminatory practices, the purpose of which is to create superiority for members of a certain race and to oppress members of other races. The great distance between the security measures practiced by the State of Israel for the purpose of protection against terrorist offensives and the reprehensible practices of the apartheid policy makes it essential to refrain from any comparison with, or use of, the latter grave expression. Not every distinction between persons, under all circumstances, necessarily constitutes improper discrimination, and not every improper discrimination is apartheid. It seems that the very use of the expression “apartheid” actually detracts from the extreme severity of the crime in question – a crime that the entire international community joined forces to extirpate, and which all of us condemn. Accordingly, the comparison between preventing Palestinian residents from traveling along Road No. 443 and the crime of apartheid is so extreme and disproportionate that it should never have been made.

HRW does not take exception to this paragraph, and even summarizes it in footnote 44.

Then as now, Human Rights Watch was looking for any excuse to attack Israel in ways far beyond how they discuss every other nation. If it thought that Israel was guilty of apartheid, it would have not only mentioned it but highlighted it. If its legal arguments are so strong, it would have argued with the legal opinion of Dorit Beinisch.

Nothing's changed since then - except that in the run up to the twentieth anniversary of the Durban conference which did accuse Israel of apartheid, NGOs who were in the forefront of pushing the pure antisemitic agenda then are coordinating to push it again today. Suddenly, "new" legal arguments are being found to accuse Israel of new crimes.

The law hasn't changed. The circumstances haven't changed. The only thing different today is that the NGOs feel that the political environment is amenable to making these accusations against Israel - and while they pretend to be objective arbiters of law and human rights, these NGOs are purely political.

Tiny anti-Israel protest in Boston gets massive Palestinian coverage (update)

The headline may be an exaggeration, but not by much.

Jewish Voice for Peace in Boston got together with Students for Justice in Palestine to hold a protest on Saturday that, judging from the photos, barely attracted 20-25 people.

I couldn't find any local coverage of this non-event.

The poster for the event listed five sponsoring organizations, and the Facebook page said 25 attended, with most of the "interested" staying away.

Despite the anemic turnout, this protest was covered in Palestinian and some Arab media:

Akhbar el-Yom

Palestine News Network

Wafa (official Palestinian news agency)

That's at least 12 news sites for a tiny protest.

Media can make anything into a story if they want to. Clearly, Palestinian media want Arabs to think there is a groundswell of American support for them during the riots in Israel.

UPDATE: Apparently, Israeli media is susceptible to the same tendency to exaggerate anti-Israel (government) protests. Lahav Harkov of the Jerusalem Post tweeted a response:

One of the times I went to the White House last year, there were about that many Israelis protesting against Netanyahu outside, and they were in basically every Israeli media outlet. It was bizarre.

Cartoon of the Day: Obvious racism

05/02 Links: A Hasidic singer, a dozen boys and teens, a father of 11: All 45 Meron victims; Wikipedia – the most active spreader of antisemitism on the planet; HRW chairman invests in Israel as he calls it ‘apartheid’

From Ian:

A Hasidic singer, a dozen boys and teens, a father of 11: All 45 Meron victims

The identification of all 45 victims from the Mount Meron tragedy has been completed, Israel’s Abu Kabir Forensic Institute said Sunday morning.

The victims, all male, included brothers, children as young as 9, young fathers, and rabbis. At least two families lost multiple children.

Among the victims of the fatal crush caused by overcrowding in a narrow walkway were 10 foreign citizens: six Americans, a British national, two Canadians, and an Argentinian.

The incident, which happened early Friday during celebrations of the Lag B’Omer festival, is the country’s deadliest-ever civilian disaster.

Police on Sunday said a man who took part in the pilgrimage was still missing and asked the public for help in locating him: Icht Haim Yitzhak, 39, was last seen at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday at Mount Meron. He is 6 foot 1 (185 centimeters), thin and bearded.

Dozens were buried Friday, but funeral services ceased during the Sabbath, from Friday evening until Saturday nightfall.

The Abu Kabir Forensic Institute said in a statement Sunday morning that by midnight it had completed the grim task of identifying all 45 victims.

By the morning 44 of the bodies had been released for burial and the last, at the request of the family, was to be released later in the day, the statement said.

High Court of Justice Torpedoed Government’s Attempt to Renovate, Secure Mt. Meron Site

In response to the State Comptroller’s warning in 2007, the state appointed a committee of five members to investigate the situation and make recommendations. By the end of 2011, the Israeli government decided to embrace the committee’s recommendation and nationalize the site, removing ownership from the trusts and transferring it to the state. This was met with a fierce struggle that was waged by some in the Haredi community, who feared losing control on the character of the site, and of their sources of income through the charity collections.

At the end of 2013, the new Minister of Finance Yair Lapid, who served in a Netanyahu coalition government without the Haredi parties, signed an order expropriating the ownership of the place from the trusts, and transferring it to a new governmental company. But in January 2016, the government decided to dismantle the new company and transfer its responsibilities to the Holy Places Administration.

The Haredi associations petitioned the High Court of Justice, which issued an interim ruling that sent the parties to negotiations in order to reach an experimental model, instead of letting the government carry out the expropriation.

An attorney representing the Haredi trusts told Calcalist at the time that the High Court considered nationalizing the site an extreme measure, which should only be used after all the other measures had been exhausted.

Let’s hope that the High Court would consider the death of 45 Jews to mean that those less extreme options have been sufficiently exhausted and that no additional Jews need to lose their lives before the government is allowed to make the site less lethal.

The proposals that have been bandied about in the Israeli media on Sunday involve D9 bulldozers that would raze all the many decrepit structures surrounding Rashbi’s tomb, to create a plaza reminiscent of the wide-open area in front of the Kotel, where hundreds of thousands have been able to crowd together (in the years without a pandemic) without being crushed.

Calls Grow for State Commission of Inquiry into Mount Meron Tragedy

The History of Israel's Mount Meron

110 years ago, 100 people fell from a balcony at Mt. Meron; 11 were killed

The deadly crush in which 45 ultra-Orthodox pilgrims were crushed to death at Mount Meron on Thursday night was not the first safety-related disaster to occur there during Lag B’Omer celebrations. Exactly 110 years ago, 11 people were killed, and more than 40 were wounded, when a balcony railing collapsed at the holy site.

On May 15, 1911, Lag B’Omer night, at the gravesite of the second-century sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, at least 100 people fell some seven meters from a balcony after the railing surrounding it collapsed.

Bar Yochai is reputed to have died on Lag B’Omer. The date, poignant in the era of COVID-19, also commemorates the end of another plague some 2,000 years ago, which saw the deaths of 24,000 followers of Rabbi Akiva.

Back in 1911, almost four decades before the establishment of the State of Israel, there were no emergency medical forces present. The event was being secured by the Ottoman Safed police unit, the Walla news site noted in a report Saturday on past disasters and alerts at the northern Galilee site, which has become the second most-visited holy place in Israel after the Western Wall.

The railing on the balcony, along with part of the roof in an area where a large number of worshippers were present, broke apart, sending dozens plunging downward. Nine died in the immediate aftermath, and two more died the next day in the Rothschild Hospital in Safed, now known as the Bnai Zion Medical Center.

Fears of further disaster at the annual celebrations were frequently raised over subsequent decades, along with numerous reports that underlined the sense of relief when tragedy didn’t strike.

1921 Jaffa riots 100 years on: Mandatory Palestine’s 1st ‘mass casualty’ event

Israel last month marked its 73rd Independence Day, observed as always directly after its Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. The latter event carried a bittersweet distinction: For Israelis, the preceding year was by far the least bloody in their history — only three died in violent attacks — and the year before was second-calmest — with 11.

That these figures should be cause for celebration is an illustration of Israelis’ resignation to living in an environment with no parallel in the developed world — a reality that one of their preeminent novelists and peace activists calls, bleakly, death as a way of life.

For there is no education like experience, and in its nearly three quarters of a century of existence, this country has known three wars with multiple neighbors, two more in Lebanon, three in Gaza, two intifadas and innumerable individual hostile acts. But to make sense of the conflict today it is instructive to look further back still to the events of exactly a century ago, before there was a Jewish state or even a Palestine Mandate.

On May 1, 1921, in the interlude between Britain’s conquest of the land and the League of Nations’ ratification of its mandate, riots shook Palestine. It was the first time since the Crusades that civilians in the Holy Land had experienced what would later be termed, with grim sterility, a mass-fatality incident. And it was, for the Zionist movement, a turning point in its perception of the “Arab question” and its own relation to armed force and retribution.

The Balfour Declaration, the British conquest of the Land and the end of the Great War had produced euphoria in the Yishuv movement — that is, the Jews living in pre-state Israel — convincing it that dreams of sovereignty in Palestine were on the brink of fulfillment. But, as Israeli historian Benny Morris writes, the “massive violence of 1921 left an ineradicable impression on the Zionists, driving home the precariousness of their enterprise.”

The necessity of a strong defense — a conviction previously limited to a few diehards — now began trickling into mainstream Zionist thought.

Hi @TwitterSafety @Twitter: Why are you allowing this hashtag #الجسر_المقدس on your platform? These sinister tweets directly violate your “hateful conduct policy” by expressing astonishing hatred in the wake of human tragedy on Mount Meron. Remove this hashtag! #EndJewHatred pic.twitter.com/k7ojlLTpTx
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) May 2, 2021

The Arabs in the WWII British Army didn't exactly distinguish themselves

From The Arab war effort, a documented account, written by the American Christian Palestine Committee.

Desertions from the armed forces of Middle East countries—both by high ranking Arab officers and by soldiers-form a chapter of their own. Desertion was repeatedly urged in Nazi radio and leaflet propaganda and by the Fifth Column in each country.

The Arab leaders in Germany vigorously propagandized against enlistment of Arabs in the British Army. This, as it happened, was hardly necessary. So few Palestine Arabs joined the Army that Syrians, Lebanese and Transjordanians were encouraged to cross into Palestine and enlist as Palestinians, to fill the quota fixed for Palestine Arab units. It will be recalled that Jewish enlistment in parallel Jewish infantry units was held down to the Arab rate-a rather peculiar service to the war effort on the part of the Palestine Administration. It took the steadily · worsening military situation in the Middle East and the continued pressure by Jewish volunteers to break down this attempt at "equality.” In all, as the Secretary of State for War stated in the 18 Al-Bilad of May 28, 1941, House of Commons on April 2, 1945, 25,714 Palestinian Jews served in the British Forces and 9,041 Arabs.

Many Arab soldiers from Palestine went over to the enemy. The Germans had some success with the help of Arab leaders in mobilizing recruits for their Arab brigades from among Palestinian Arab prisoners of war. In the liberation of Europe Allied forces took prisoner a number of Arabs in German uniform, who had formerly been soldiers in the British Army.

Apart from desertions to the enemy, there were many hundreds of cases of ordinary desertion by Arab soldiers, some of whom left their units with their arms. At least half the Arab soldiers who joined up in Palestine disappeared from the ranks of the British Army through desertion or through discharge on the ground that they were unfit for service.

I was unaware that initially Britain actually limited the number of Palestinian Jews who could volunteer for the army to keep things "equal."

The Palestine Post quotes some of the arguments in British Parliament for and against allowing Jews to fight for the Allied war effort in 1942, with some pre-emptively blaming Jews fighting with the British for Arab support for Nazi Germany.

(h/t Daniel)

The International Middle East Media Center, which pretends to be an independent and objective media outlet, "reports" about the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood that was ethnically cleansed of Jews in 1948:

Israel is planning to build and establish more than 540 colonialist units in the area, and is currently building 54 units, in addition to the ongoing efforts to link them with the Police Command in Sheikh Jarrah and the French Hill settlement in addition to the Hebrew University, as part of the so-called “Jerusalem Belt” colonialist plan linking the colonies with different Palestinian areas in al-‘Isawiya, Rad al-‘Amoud, Wadi ar-Rababa and many other areas, and aim at connecting East Jerusalem with West Jerusalem with this belt of illegal colonies after displacing the indigenous Palestinians.

The Israeli colonialist plan, which is intended to be implemented in phases through many years, was put forth by the government, the Jerusalem City council, the Israel Antiquities Authority and various colonialist organizations in Israel and other counties [sic], and has a budget of 537 Billion Israeli Shekels.

NIS 537 billion is a really specific sounding number! Where did that come from?

It was made up by "activist" Fakhei Abu Diab, whom we have seen both recently and in the past as being obsessed with telling journalists that Jewish history is all a lie.

How absurd is the NIS 537 billion ($165 billion)?

It is higher than the entire budget of the State of Israel which is NIS 426 billion!

The entire budget of the municipality of Jerusalem was NIS 11.2 billion in 2020. The entire budget of the Israel Antiquities Authority is less than half a billion shekels.

The IMEMC, which criticizes the Palestinian Authority freely but never says anything bad about Hamas, is often quoted by Electronic Intifada and other anti-Israel outlets as a reliable news source.

Which goes to show how thoroughly dishonest the entire "pro-Palestinian" media empire is.