10/18 Links Pt2: Islamist Who Defended Murderers of Jews to Speak at Tree of Life Anti-Hate Summit; Economist frames antisemitic tweets as merely 'anti-Israel'

From Ian: Islamist Who Defended Murderers of Jews to Speak at Tree of Life Anti-Hate Summit

In October, former President George W. Bush, Biden's DHS Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, ADL boss Jonathan Greenblatt, and other notables will descend on the massive Lawrence Convention Center in downtown Pittsburgh. The occasion isn’t a party convention, but the inaugural Eradicate Hate global summit inspired by the Tree of Life massacre in the area.

During the Tree of Life massacre, a white supremacist gunman opened fire on worshipers at the suburban synagogue in Squirrel Hill and killed 11 people. The shooter had told police, “All these Jews need to die”. The Eradicate Hate summit will commemorate that occasion by inviting a hater, Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), to speak.

Salam Al-Marayati has defended Hamas and Hezbollah. MPAC had called for removing them from the list of terrorist organizations. He responded to 9/11 by suggesting that Israel was behind the attacks. Just last year he came out with an op-ed accusing Jews of having “weaponized antisemitism to marginalize critics of Israel, especially American Muslims.”

In the 90s, Jewish groups protested the decision by Democrats to appoint him to a counterterrorism commission after his organization argued that the murder of Jews had been adopted by terrorists as one of the "violent reactions to express their despair and suffering".

The Tree of Life gunman would have said the same thing.

Salam Al-Marayati is one of the summit’s “global advisers” and will be appearing on three different panels, including one on deradicalization. Even if MPAC is better at radicalization.

Flora Yehiel, a 24-year-old Jewish woman, was waiting at a Jerusalem bus stop when a Muslim terrorist rammed his car into the crowd killing her and wounding 23 others. After crashing the car, the terrorist shouted “Allahu Akbar”, got out and kept coming. A survivor at the scene shot him, but he still kept coming, until he finally died. Hamas claimed credit for the attack.

2. Who has presented himself since 2013 as to the right of Likud, this is the reason. Naftali Bennett (and Gideon Sa'ar) are right wing fig leaves for the most radical government Israel has ever seen. Shai's reported participation in a conference hosted by Beinart is.../3

— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) October 18, 2021

Left-Wing Activist Slammed by Jewish Org for Claiming Attention Is Only Paid to the Holocaust Because Victims Were European

A prominent left-wing activist was criticized by a top American Jewish organization on Sunday for claiming on social media that the Holocaust is only considered important because its victims were Europeans.

Shaun King, an outspoken supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Black Lives Matter movement, posted on Instagram, “The only reason why people celebrate ‘Christopher Columbus Day’ and never ‘Adolf Hitler Day’ is because Columbus massacred non-europeans [sic].”

In response, the American Jewish Committee tweeted, “Shaun King’s comment is both deeply offensive and blatantly false, fueled by the age-old antisemitic trope of ‘Jewish privilege.’”

“Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis specifically because they were NOT considered white European,” said the AJC.

The group asserted, “King should apologize.”

.@ShaunKing‘s comment is both deeply offensive and blatantly false, fueled by the age-old antisemitic trope of “Jewish privilege.“

Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis specifically because they were NOT considered white European.

King should apologize. pic.twitter.com/Phgc1xZoKh

— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) October 17, 2021

In 2019, King drew criticism for telling a group of Sanders supporters that the senator had always spoken out for unpopular causes, and then saying, “Even today, he speaks out against apartheid-like conditions in Palestine even though it’s not popular.”

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So freaking moral (meme)

Something I came up with today.

I could have listed about 130 countries that have worse scores than Israel in Freedom House's list of free and not free countries.

But then the haters would scream "whataboutism!"

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Revisiting the EoZ Intersectionality Victimhood Calculator

My Intersectionality Victimhood Calculator is coming up to its third anniversary, and I have been amazed at how accurate it is.

To recap, the calculator is meant to determine who is the "winner" in any conflict in this new woke world. 

The actual facts in any conflict are utterly irrelevant - only the victimhood score, which is the sum of all attributes a person has.

One with a negative victimhood score is perceived as an oppressor, a positive score means that one is oppressed.

My scoring system, which holds up amazingly well, was:

Attribute	Victimhood score
Trans	8
Black	8
Native American or other First People	7
Woman	6
Gay	6
Muslim	5
Arab, other Middle Eastern	5
Hispanic	4
Disabled, pregnant	4
Anti-Zionist Jew	4
Wears hijab	2
Palestinian	2
Asian American	1
White	-1
Republican or conservative	-3
Christian (white only)	-3
Jew	-3
Visibly religious Jew	-3
Jewish settler	-6
Identifies proudly as Zionist	-8
Trump supporter	-8
White nationalist/neo Nazi	-18

The only change I made since 2018 was that would be that if the person identifies as a proud Zionist, any of his or her positive victimhood scores should be inverted to negative. That is the Jason Hill/Hen Mazzig rule - a person who is supposedly in a victimhood group of being, say,  gay or a person of color or an immigrant who is still a Zionist is a traitor to the woke and the lowest of the low, according to the calculator.

Let's look at some recent examples.

I wondered on Twitter about the difference in reactions to Dave Chappelle's transphobic and antisemitic jokes, where the anti-LGBT jokes were criticized much more harshly. The answer is that Chappelle, as a black man, has a higher victimhood score than Jews but a roughly equivalent score to transsexuals.

The May Gaza war is obvious - Israel is always wrong - but the people who hate Israel and who subscribe to this victimhood ideology went out of their way to emphasize the women and children who were killed and de-emphasize the roughly half who were terrorists, to increase the differential score.

Hamas, being a +10 of Muslim and Arab, can literally do anything it wants to Israeli Jews and still be the victim.  Supporting terror does not lower your score at all. 

Ben and Jerry might be white-passing Jews (-3-1=-4) but they are positioning themselves as being anti-Jewish Zionist settler (-3+-6+-8=-17) so they win.

David Miller, as a white non-Jewish male, has a score of -1, but he claims that he was attacked by Zionist Jews, who are at least a -11. When one has claims, the side with the higher victimhood score is the only one whose claims may be taken seriously.  (I suppose being a member of Israel's government or the Mossad would subtract a few more points.)

Bahrain allows Israel to open up an embassy - its Arab score gets inverted to -5, and its perceived as being Zionist so Bahrain (and the UAE) are now firmly oppressors with a solid -13. As such, since they started warming up to Israel, Human Rights Watch has become far more critical of them.

Iraq puts out arrest warrants to citizens who want peace with Israel. Iraq's score is +10, those traitor Arab Zionists are at least a -5. So that's why human rights groups aren't interested in a pure human rights story.

Padding the score is very important to the players. A person who becomes an As-a-Jew immediately adds four points. Revealing that one is gay, or an immigrant, or a person of color can swing more sympathy one's way. Successfully framing your opponent as a Nazi is the equivalent of capturing the Golden Snitch in Quidditch - if you do that, the game is over. (This seems to be Eli Valley's full time job.)

The only possible counterexample to these rules I can think of is the May antisemitic attack against Los Angeles diners, which is mostly being ignored by the woke and has been covered in the media. The lawyer for the attackers is trying to make them into victims, and given that one of them is Hispanic, he might yet succeed.

It is almost scary how accurate this calculator is. And most of the mainstream media slavishly follows this formula.

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10/18 Links Pt1: 89% of Palestinian films showcased by Netflix directed by BDS supporters; In Private, Iraqis Support Peace With Israel; Hamas sentences 2 to death for collaborating with Israel

From Ian:

89% of Palestinian films showcased by Netflix directed by BDS supporters

Nearly 90% of films in Netflix's recently launched "Palestinian Stories" collection of films are directed by supporters of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, according to findings from right-wing watchdog group Im Tirzu.

On Friday, Israel Hayom reported the online streaming service had announced the launch of the collection of 32 films, which it said would be expanded in the future. Sixteen of the 19 directors whose films are currently available for streaming in the Palestinian category are BDS supporters, while 12 had called for a boycott of the Jewish state when they signed a letter blasting Israel as recently as May.

In the letter titled "A Letter Against Apartheid," the directors alleged "Palestinians are being attacked and killed with impunity by Israeli soldiers and armed Israeli civilians who have been roaming the streets of Jerusalem, Lydda, Haifa, Jaffa, and other cities chanting, 'Death to Arabs.'" The letter further accused Israel's government of carrying out a "massacre" in the Gaza Strip and fomenting "murder, intimidation, and violent dispossession."

"We call for an end to the support provided by global powers to Israel and its military … Israeli apartheid is sustained by international complicity, it is our collective responsibility to redress this harm," the letter's signatories said.

The films offer a one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and include scenes depicting interrogation by Israeli security officials and life in a refugee camp.

Critics of the new Netflix collection argue that the films portray a biased depiction of the conflict while glorifying terrorism and omitting the thousands of terror attacks perpetrated against Israeli civilians.

"It is unforgivable that Netflix has become an outlet for the spread of material written by propagandists who seek to boycott Israel and remove it from the map. This at a time of rising global antisemitism, much of it disguised as anti-Israel activity," investigative journalist David Collier said.

How Media Reviews Enable Cinema to be Used as Vehicle for Palestinian Propaganda

When Linda Sarsour recently tweeted about Palestinian films and documentaries arriving on Netflix, her choice of words was telling: “Educate yourself,” she told her followers. “Learn about the Palestinian experience.”

Not a word about Palestinian culture, cuisine, architecture, music or family drama. Sarsour summarised the function of Palestinian cinema as showing viewers about “the Palestinian experience,” a codeword for the story of what Sarsour and others term “life under occupation.”

In truth, the burgeoning Palestinian cinema scene has been developing for some years now, and is a key tool in Palestinian ‘soft power’ through which to influence the hearts and minds of people around the world. The relentless drab scenery and stories of alleged injustice meted out by an uncaring, unforgiving Israeli military machine are staples of Palestinian films and serve to influence the way people perceive the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians specifically, as well as the Arab-Israeli conflict in general.

Compare this to Israeli television. Many of the films and television series made in Israel have very little to do with the Palestinians or indeed the Arab world at all. Shtisel, aired by Netflix and subject of positive reviews around the world, focuses on an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family in Jerusalem and barely mentions any non-Jewish characters.

While Israeli films and television series often do relate to the conflicts Israel deals with, their scope is far more extensive than the simple victimhood narrative that is the hallmark of Palestinian film. Instead, Israeli television wrestles with the ethical dilemmas facing Israeli soldiers and the Israeli public, and attempts to humanize the people on both sides, most notably in Our Boys (2019), based on the kidnapping and murders of young Israeli teenagers in the summer of 2014 that led to a serious escalation between Israel and Hamas.

To a lesser extent, this is also true of Netflix’s global hit show Fauda, which shows numerous Palestinian characters at home engaged in day-to-day life, as well as a romance between a Palestinian woman and an Israeli man. In some cases, Israeli television and film productions are highly critical of the Israeli government and military, and sympathetic to the Palestinians.

For example, the recent Israeli film Let There Be Morning (2021), featuring a Palestinian cast, depicts a Palestinian accountant whose path home is blocked by an Israeli checkpoint.

Overwhelmingly, Palestinian film and television, however, simply do not display anywhere near such compassion for the people on the ‘other side’ of the conflict.

Taken in comparison with the type of jingoistic fare often seen on Palestinian television, which depicts Palestinians as crushing scared Jews, and often features military parades and Islamic preaching, a stark contradistinction emerges. These themes are entirely absent from the films made for Western consumption.

UKLFI warns Amazon and Google that “workers'” BDS campaign orchestrated by anti-Israel NGOs

Anonymous Amazon and Google workers’ supposedly wrote a letter to the Guardian claiming 300 Amazon workers and 90 from Google had signed a letter calling on Amazon and Google to drop the cloud contract, which is known as Nimbus.

UKLFI has now written to Amazon and Google with information that undermines the claim that this campaign that was started by workers at Amazon and Google.

The time line indicates that the campaign was co-ordinated by anti-Israel NGOs.

On 12 October at 11.45 BST NBC News published an op-ed by two Amazon and Google workers, which attacked the Nimbus contract. One of the co-authors was Bathool Syed, a content strategist at Amazon, whose Instagram page links directly to a website called notechforapartheid.com.

A letter in the Guardian was published on Tuesday 12 October at 17.15 BST, by “anonymous Google and Amazon workers”, which stated that “So far, more than 90 workers at Google and more than 300 at Amazon have signed this letter internally “. Since the signatories were anonymous there was of course no proof of who or how many people actually signed the letter.

The “No Tech for Apartheid” website was launched on 13 October at https://www.notechforapartheid.com/, and it appeared to be in response to the Guardian article. The website urges people to add their names to an automatically generated email to these Amazon and Google executives, demanding that they should pull out of the Nimbus contract.

The Wayback Machine web archive shows that the activity on the website began on Wednesday 13 October 2021 at 14.43 BST. (screenshot at A4). The “No Tech for Apartheid” website is professionally designed and contains a great deal of content, including long articles from five different Palestinians describing “life under apartheid”. On 13 October it contained endorsements from 40 anti-Israel organisations.

Pro-Israel Advocacy Groups Send Letter to Unilever Asserting It Can Overturn Ben & Jerry’s Israel Boycott

Two major pro-Israel advocacy groups have sent a letter to Unilever, the parent company of the ice cream giant Ben & Jerry’s, arguing that, contrary to its claims otherwise, Unilever could overturn the latter’s decision to boycott the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.

Ben & Jerry’s stated in July that it will not sell its products in what it called the “the Occupied Palestinian Territory” because it was “inconsistent with our [company] values.” The ensuing backlash has seen a number of US states seek to divest from the company and its multinational parent company Unilever, on the basis of anti-BDS legislation.

In July, Unilever released a statement saying that “as part of the acquisition agreement, we have always recognized the right of the brand and its independent Board to take decisions about its social mission.”

In a letter dated Oct. 15, 2021 addressed to Unilever CEO Alan Jope and the company’s Board of Directors, StandWithUs and the Israeli-American Coalition for Action argued that the “right” referred to by Unilever is not absolute, and the company has the power to overturn Ben & Jerry’s decision.

Unilever’s contract with Ben and Jerry’s, the letter stated, “gives Unilever the power to make ‘financial and operational’ decisions for Ben & Jerry’s; the Board can make ‘social’ decisions only insofar as they are ‘commercially reasonable.’”

“Boycotting an entire country is, in fact, commercially unreasonable,” asserted the letter, “especially when it triggers counter-boycotts by states and consumer groups and divestment of state pension funds” — referring to legal and financial actions taken by various entities in reaction to boycotts of Israel in general and Ben & Jerry’s in particular.

“Ben and Jerry’s must explain — to you and to the investing public — how its social mission requires such a boycott when it signed a contract showing that doing business in Israel was consistent with its social mission,” the letter said. “Clearly, it is Ben and Jerry’s that is in breach, and it is within Unilever’s rights to reverse the Board.”

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When the Irish boycotted Jews in 1904, they also claimed it wasn't antisemitic

This headline prompted me to look up about any other time that Irish people "defied Israel."

This is the best contemporaneous article I can find about the boycott of Jews in Limerick, Ireland, in 1904.

See? They don't hate Jews because of their religion, but because they are simply all collectively guilty!

The Catholic priest's words were not quite so clear-cut, though.

Antisemites always claim that their actions come from the highest moral obligations, that they don't have any hate in their hearts but are only doing what is necessary and right to protect innocent people. 

Ireland's support for boycotting Israel today is coming from the exact same place that Father Creagh claimed to have come from 117 year ago.

And today's boycotters reject any suggestion of their own bigotry as their Irish predecessors did in 1904.

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Major Arab newspaper publishes yet another antisemitic piece

I noted last week that Al Quds al Arabi, a pan-Arab newspaper run by Palestinians in the UK, regularly posts antisemitic pieces. It is one of the most popular Arab news websites in the world, ranked #18 among all sites in Jordan and among the top 4000 sites of all kinds worldwide. In addition, the actual physical newspaper has a circulation of some 50,000 copies daily.

Today, it published another such piece, that looks at first glance to be merely "anti-Zionist" but in Arabic media there is no real distinction.

The cartoon header indicates the main idea: Jews are milking Arab money and oil from the countries that support normalization with Israel. (There is a bit of misogyny here, as the implication is that those countries are feminine and weak.)

The article, by Ihsan Al-Faqih- a new young female star in the Arab punditocracy - says:

The decision to settle the Jews in Palestine came in line with the Western imperialist vision, which aims to implant a foreign body in this region, with a different culture and a different ideology, that breaks up the unity of this region, prevents the unity of its lands, and keeps it inflamed and weak so that colonialism can control it. Behind the Western colonial trends is a religious force that intertwines with and serves political interests, giving the project a religious character, by invoking the prophecies of Armageddon and the coming of the Messiah who will rule for a happy millennium, linking this with the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, and the construction of the Temple on the ruins of Al-Aqsa, as a prelude to the coming Redeemer. Therefore, we are facing a Talmudic Zionist, Western imperialist alliance, both secular and theological, which was strongly demonstrated in the decision of the US Congress in its 104th session in 1995, to transfer the American embassy to Jerusalem, which included the meaning of “Jerusalem is the spiritual homeland of Judaism.”

Her ignorance is fairly typical - she claims that Zionism never supported a Jewish homeland in Palestine until after Herzl died. She says that "America's foreign policy project includes the fragmentation of Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and the North African countries." She fake-quotes Bernard Lewis as saying that this fragmentation is meant to ensure Israel's supremacy for at least half a century. This is, she says, "a global project that integrates the imperialist West with Talmudic Zionism."

Faqih also rails against how those who oppose normalization are cast as being against intolerant against Jews. Presumably, intolerance against "Talmudic Jews" is okay, though.

This feeds into another op-ed, in a Jordanian news site, that claims that the Abraham Accords are a scheme to create an entirely new Abrahamic religion where the Jews are the original and most faithful practitioners, ignoring that Jews were behind the crucifixion of Jesus and the murder of numerous prophets and Islam is the last and best religion to supersede Judaism and Christianity. 

Oh, and Jews aren't really Jews anyway, but Khazars. 

It is incredibly encouraging to see that the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco are fighting against antisemitism in their countries. They understand the poison that Jew-hatred brings to the Arab world. But there is a long way to go.

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Arabs habitually murdered Jews in Morocco 1898-1907

At the turn of the last century, every few years, Arabs in Morocco decided to kill their local Jews.

March 7, 1898:

July 29, 1903:

August 9, 1907, articles from Casablanca and Mazagan:

But besides that, I'm sure the Arabs respected their Jewish residents. After all, they keep telling that to us.

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The US establishing a consulate in Jerusalem for Palestinians would violate international law

The Jerusalem Post reports:

The American intention to open a consulate in Jerusalem for the Palestinians is shaking the foundations of the current Israeli coalition. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid brought that message with him to the United States this week, as did Bennett in August when he met with Biden at the White House.

Both explained that the American insistence to open the consulate will likely seal the fate of the government and bring it to an end. Coalition members like Ayelet Shaked have already warned their colleagues that if a consulate opens in Jerusalem, they will leave the coalition.

“This will bring down the government,” one top minister told me this week, “and we have explained that to the Americans.”

But the Americans are refusing to budge. Biden seems determined to press ahead with the consulate, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeated this commitment on Wednesday when he said that the US plans on “moving forward with the process of opening a consulate as part of deepening of those ties with the Palestinians.”

Why does the US insist on opening a consulate in Jerusalem and not Ramallah? The only possible reason is that the US is claiming that east Jerusalem is Palestinian territory.

Since Israel considers it Israeli territory, this is a direct challenge to Israel.

It is also a legal issue. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations says under Article 4:

1.A consular post may be established in the territory of the receiving State only with that State’s consent.

2.The seat of the consular post, its classification and the consular district shall be established by the sending State and shall be subject to the approval of the receiving State. 

3.Subsequent changes in the seat of the consular post, its classification or the consular district may be made by the sending State only with the consent of the receiving State.

Israel is the only state recognized by the US in Jerusalem. 

Up until the Trump administration, the US considered Jerusalem to be a separate entity, but with its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, plus the fact that the US Embassy is literally bisected by the Green Line, the US de facto recognized all of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Otherwise the embassy itself would be illegal!

Israel can stop the US from opening a separate consulate in Jerusalem. 

This is going to be a major issue in the coming month or two. 

(h/t YMedad and Vic)

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10/17 Links: On The Theatrics Of Inversion: How Indigenous People Became ‘Settlers’; Sally Rooney’s nonsensical anti-Israel statement; Katie Couric Wasn’t the First: FDR, Truman and the Jews

From Ian:

Anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitism - opinion

Ultimately, that is what “anti-Zionism” is. Instead of visiting or residing in Israel, one is welcome to prefer a vacation in Saudi Arabia – and please don’t forget to bring home some sand for the kids. No one has to like people who write from right to left, who have emergency medical vehicles with red Stars of David instead of red crescents or red crosses painted on the ambulances.

But to be “anti-Zionist?” That’s like being anti-kosher. Anti-matzo. Because, when it comes down to it, Zionism actually is a core part of the very definition of a Jew.

That is why “anti-Zionism” always is pure antisemitism. No one reasonable denies the Italian love for Venice, the French love for Paris, the British love for London, or the Spanish love for Barcelona. Even amid the COVID pandemic, expatriates’ hearts and minds remain fixed on lands of heritage.

To deny only Jews that simple human yearning shared by all others is to manifest something much deeper than a mere disagreement over where ice cream should be sold or fictional works should be translated. It is to be an antisemite.

On The Theatrics Of Inversion: How Indigenous People Became ‘Settlers’

Two days ago, activist JB Brager of the deceptively-named ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ published an illustrated analysis of Zionism as an indigenous rights cause in Jewish Currents.

Their picture book (a fitting medium, I suppose) is not so much an analysis as it is a puerile, recalcitrant temper tantrum. If nothing else, it is as stark an example of Jewish self-hatred as anything I could imagine from a purported Jewish outlet.

For the sake of digestibility, I’ll address everything in a piecemeal fashion.

On the meaning of indigenous – From the very first panel, we see the authors attempting to spin Jewish discourse on indigeneity into a blood and soil argument — a calculated bid at misrepresenting Zionism as the Jewish version of German Volkisch nationalism. Attempting to place us on par with our worst abusers, the Nazis, appears to be a common theme for antisemites.

To wit, the authors deliberately pervert the meaning of indigeneity, arguing that (at least in our case) it is about nothing more than blood.

While common ancestry with the land’s original inhabitants is certainly part of the criteria, it is only one part. Indigeneity is first and foremost about ethnogenesis, or ‘where a people became a people’.

Jews do not, and never have, claimed indigeneity to Israel solely on the basis of blood. We claim it because we originated as an ethnic group on that land. Virtually everything about us, from our language and alphabet to our holidays and laws and core culture, is specific to the land of Israel/Palestine.

It is true that ethnic Jews — who comprise roughly 99% of global Jewry — trace the bulk of their genetic ancestry to the Levant (specifically to Bronze Age Canaanites, from whom the Jews and Samaritans emerged as subsets), but this alone does not qualify a population for indigenous status. Ethnogenesis, core culture, national language, collective spiritual ties, etc are equally important, if not more so. Indigenous status is a package deal.

Sally Rooney’s nonsensical anti-Israel statement

That Rooney sides with Israel boycotters isn’t surprising. Her first two books included characters attending an anti-Israel protest during Israel’s war with Gaza in 2014 and expressing displeasure that “We end up asking like, is Israel ‘nicer’ than Palestine.”

In May, while Israeli civilians were racing to bomb shelters to avoid Hamas’ rockets, Rooney signed “A Letter Against Apartheid,” which called for “an immediate and unconditional cessation of Israeli violence against Palestinians.” Rooney has also called the BDS movement an “anti-racist and nonviolent grassroots campaign.” That is, as opposed to, say, an antisemitic campaign that opposes the very existence of Israel (and vilifies Zionist Jews on American college campuses).

Rooney’s statement suggests that we imagine someone who might translate this novel into Hebrew while also being BDS compliant. A Hebrew-speaking Jew from Gaza? That wouldn’t work, because Jews haven’t lived in Gaza since Israel left in 2005. Perhaps a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian? No, such a person would incur the wrath of the BDS movement. So who does that leave?

Further, “there’s no such thing as a ‘BDS-compliant’ Hebrew publisher,” tweeted Anshel Pfeffer of the left-leaning Haaretz. “To be that, a publisher would have to agree to not selling its books in Israel and to Israelis who are ... the overwhelming majority of the Hebrew-reading market.”

Like Ben and Jerry’s announcing it will continue selling ice cream in Israel — just not beyond the Green Line — Rooney’s supposedly ideal translator and publishing house are absurd. Ben and Jerry’s has operated in Israel since 1987, and Rooney’s last two books were translated into Hebrew. However, neither Ben and Jerry’s nor Sally Rooney seem interested in continuing to do business in Israel.

When ice cream makers and novelists apply a double standard to the world’s only Jewish state, there’s a term for that — and it’s not “human rights defender.”

David Collier: Attack my site all you want – you won’t stop the truth being told

For those that don’t know, my website has been under attack again. For much of the last week, I suffered sporadic down-time – until by Thursday the site was taken off-line for almost two days straight.

Two years ago, I faced persistent, brute-force, distributed denial of service attacks, and I had to reinforce my website to resist them. This time around, it appears the attack was somewhat more sophisticated.

The motive behind the attack is a simple one. I produced an in-depth report exposing horrific levels of antisemitism in Ireland. The report captured politicians, academics and activists engaged in either spreading blatant antisemitism or helping it to spread through the Irish mainstream. Obviously some people simply wanted to stop the truth being told. As an additional handicap I had my gallbladder removed on Thursday, and rather than have an opportunity to rest – I needed to spend the first two days following the operation putting the pieces of my website together again – so as to get the crucial evidence back online. As you can see from reading this – the site is now operational once more.

So for those who may have missed some of what has been taking place, this post is here as both a reminder and a reference.

Last week I produced a blog to introduce the report. There is also the report itself – an in-depth 202 page study on antisemitism in Ireland. The report was uploaded to another location during the attack on the website so people could still access it (Open cloud link) – see also an upload on the website of the Israeli Embassy in Dublin. The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland published a statement on the back of the report calling for Ireland to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

The report laid bare the scale of anti-Jewish hatred in Ireland – running freely as it does wrapped up in the mask of a social justice argument. From politicians and academics – to the activists on the street, the word being spread through Irish towns is that Zionists are a demon race who must be eradicated from the earth. The evidence is all there – and the unbelievable story of the hounding of the Former Justice Minister Alan Shatter highlights the real world cost that Jewish people in Ireland pay for the Irish anti-Jewish obsession.

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Antisemitism unites the Right and the Left - for Palestinians

It has been long long recognized that the extreme Right and the extreme Left in the US disagree on everything - except their antisemitism. 

For Palestinians, it is the same thing - but there is no "extreme" about it.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is holding a celebration today for the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi. The PFLP and its offshoots the DFLP, PFLP-GC and others are Marxist and their terrorists like Leila Khaled are the darlings of the anti-Israel Left.

Yet during the Second Intifada, the PFLP coordinated terror attacks on Jewish civilians together with Hamas and Islamic Jihad - both of them Islamist organizations whose values are polar opposites to Marxism.

Their philosophies could not be more different, but they share something far more fundamental than mere politics: both sides hate Jews, and therefore they are allies. Even today, they coordinate their activities in Gaza for fighting Israel.

The divide between Right and Left simply doesn't exist when they both share their belief in antisemitism. 

Even more amazing is that the socialist Left in the West does not seem to have any real philosophical problem with far Right, Islamist terror groups in the Middle East. This goes to absurd lengths, such as when far Left icon Judith Butler said that "understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important." She admitted to some differences of opinion with Islamist groups, but altogether they are considered part of the Left because they oppose Israel - even though their opposition is based on traditional Muslim Jew-hate and not, as she claimed, their "anti-colonialist" stance.

Similarly, Western anti-Israel rallies organized by socialist groups will include signs and banners supporting Hezbollah. 

In the end, people have their own biases and then will attach to groups that share those biases, and ignore any inconsistencies. Jew-hatred is a fundamental principle, and the haters will attach to whichever group supports that position, and not be too particular about the specifics. 

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The UN Human Rights Council is obsessed with condemning Israel - and @HRW's Ken Roth wants to keep it that way

Here is a chart (based on a database at UN Watch) of how often every country has been condemned at the United Nations Human Rights Council since it was formed in 2006.

Israel is condemned more than the next four-most condemned countries, combined. Israel is the only country to be condemned every single year. Israel has never been condemned less than five times in any year. Some of the world's worst human rights abusers - China, Russia, Turkey, Cuba, Egypt, Saudi Arabia - have never been condemned once.

In short, the UNHRC is a cesspool whose members are human rights abusers themselves that protect each other while incessantly attacking Israel.

The Trump administration properly withdrew from this travesty of an organization. The Biden administration has just re-joined. At the State Department, the spokesperson was asked why, and couldn't come up with a coherent explanation, although he said the US will oppose the the UNHRC's bias against Israel, with its only standing agenda item targeting a single country.

Enter modern antisemite Ken Roth.

His response to the US re-joining the UNHRC, partially to try to stop its anti-Israel obsession was this:

The US government complains that it doesn't like a UN Human Rights Council agenda item focused solely on Israel-Palestine. If that's not just about protecting Israel from valid criticism, then sponsor resolutions on Israel under other regular agenda items. 

Roth sees this chart and doesn't say, hey, the UNHRC really should not have so many anti-Israel resolutions and perhaps start condemning real rights abusers. 

No, he wants the UNHRC to continue to issue just as many condemnations of Israel as it has been, every year, whether under its permanent anti-Israel agenda item or not.

Given that Human Rights Watch is as obsessed with Israel as the UNHRC is, this is perhaps not so surprising. But it proves yet again that HRW is just as much of an antisemitic cesspool as the UNHRC.

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Dave Chappelle is partially right: Jews are treated as space aliens

Comedian Dave Chappelle has largely been given a pass for his antisemitic jokes in his latest Netflix special, although there is some pushback for his anti-gay and anti-transsexual jokes.

Here are his antisemitic jokes (thanks to Sasha Goodman for the transcript):

I also saw a lot of videos of UFOS. I mean WTF is going on with that sh*t? These UFOs keep coming to earth, and it made me think of an idea for a movie. Sounds dumb, but hear me out. 

In my movie idea, we find out that these aliens are originally from earth — that they’re from an ancient civilization that achieved interstellar travel and left the earth thousands of years ago. Some other planet they go to, and things go terrible for them on the other planet, so they come back to earth, and decide that they want to claim the earth for their very own.

It’s a pretty good plot-line, huh? I call it “Space Jews.” *audience laughter* Space Jews. 

(Man in audience: Free Palestine!)

It's going to get worse than that, hang in there. It's going to get way worse than that.

[The next Space Jews joke comes ~30 min later]

There was a Black man who was in South Carolina during slavery who somehow got granted his freedom by his so-called master. And when he master granted him his freedom, he also gave him a plot of land. Now it turns out this brother was brilliant. He had a good eye, good knack for farming. And he farmed this plot of land very successfully and made a lot of money. And this is where the story gets crazy. When he got all that money... this n**** bought some slaves. Have you ever heard this before? This is a true story.

 Not only was he a slave owner, he became a slave breeder, and employed tactics that were so cruel, even white slave owners were like, "Yo, my man!" He was a wild dude, but he did it just because that's what successful people did at the time, and he just wanted to be down. What a f*cking tragedy. How can a person that went through slavery perpetuate the same evil on a person that looks just like him? It's mind blowing. And, shockingly, they're making a movie about him. Ironically, it's called "Space Jews."

*laughter and cheering*

Space Jews.

It occurs to me that Chappelle has recognized something that is fundamental to antisemitic discourse, the Jew as the Other. 

There is nothing more Other than being a space alien.

In Chappelle's universe, Jews were originally human, but they distinguished themselves so much from other humans that they left them in the dust of the Earth. They are way ahead of ordinary humans in every area - and they are a danger to the rest of the world, because they are unbearably cruel. Like aliens in 1950s sci-fi movies, Jews are technologically advanced but morally corrupt. 

Now, look at this example of dozens of tweets by Human Rights Watch head Ken Roth on the topic of an Israeli company, the NSO Group. This one is from 2019 and it quotes a New York Times article that also emphasizes NSO Group's Israeliness.

At the time, no one blamed the government of Israel for what NSO's clients did with its spyware. NSO is one of dozens of such firms that market spyware, zero day bugs that can be used for spyware and surveillance software. The fact that it is from Israel was utterly irrelevant. (Since then there has been justified criticism of Israeli export laws, but not at the time of this article.)

So why does Roth and the NYT emphasize the "Israeli" part?

Just change "Israeli" to "alien" and then it makes sense. 

People are using alien technology to spy on humans. Now, that's a story!

I recently noted that Palestinian media made a big deal over Mark Zuckerberg donating $1.3 million to Jewish charities in the US. That donation is pretty much pocket change to the Zuckerbergs. So why is this even a story?

Now, replace it with "Alien tech titan donates to alien charities." Now, that's a story!

When Israel is singled out as being guilty of real or imagined crimes that every other country gets a pass on, it is because Jews are aliens whose actions are subject to much greater scrutiny. They are being judged to see if they can properly belong among human beings - or if they are a unique danger to real humans. 

Would anyone care about Jeopardy host Mayim Bialik's views if she wasn't an "alien" - a proud Jew who supports Israel? 

Not to mention that famed author Alice Walker recommends a book that portrays Jews as lizard-like space aliens. 

The idea of Jew as "alien" pre-dates horror science fiction movies.

Martin Luther referred to Jews as "alien murderers and bloodthirsty enemies." 

 In 1905, Great Britain passed the "Aliens Act" to limit immigration - and it was directly aimed at the Jews who wanted to escape Tzarist Russia. It purported to be against criminals but everyone knew it was against Jews. 

The Nazi Nuremberg laws declared Jews to be alien to all other races. 

Whether Chappelle understood this consciously or not, he is continuing in a long tradition that treats Jews as not human, as not having the same rights as humans, and indeed as being an active danger to human beings.

If that isn't antisemitism, then nothing is.

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10/16 Links: A US consulate in Jerusalem will re-divide the city; Murder of British MP David Amess being treated as terror attack; Why Ben & Jerry think they aren’t anti-Semites

From Ian:

A US consulate in Jerusalem will re-divide the city

Significantly, the Jerusalem Embassy Act explained that declaring Jerusalem the united capital of Israel was merely recognizing what was already its authentic status: “Each sovereign nation, under international law and custom, may designate its own capital. Since 1950, the city of Jerusalem has been the capital of the State of Israel... From 1948-1967, Jerusalem was a divided city and Israeli citizens of all faiths, as well as Jewish citizens of all states, were denied access to holy sites in the area controlled by Jordan. In 1967, the city of Jerusalem was reunited... Jerusalem has been a united city administered by Israel, and persons of all religious faiths have been guaranteed full access to holy sites... The United States conducts official meetings and other business in the city of Jerusalem in de facto recognition of its status as the capital of Israel. In 1996, the State of Israel will celebrate the 3,000th anniversary of the Jewish presence in Jerusalem since King David’s entry... Jerusalem should remain an undivided city... Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel.” US law is saying that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was not only to acknowledge its de facto status but also to recognize its Jewish history. In addition, the Embassy Act notes that from 1948 to 1967, part of the city was under Jordanian control, and not Palestinian. By reviewing Jerusalem’s history, the American law is recognizing that Jerusalem has a rich Jewish history when it first became Israel’s capital 3000 years ago, never had Palestinian Arab sovereignty, is currently ruled properly by Israel allowing access to people of all faiths, and therefore should remain Israel’s undivided capital.

When the American Embassy was opened in Jerusalem the US Consulate, which was superfluous in unified Jerusalem, was closed. The PA wants the US to reopen the Consulate in Jerusalem because for them it means that Jerusalem is being redivided. Certainly, much of the international community would see the opening of a US consulate as the PA sees it, which would have a detrimental impact on Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s united capital.

It is unclear whether the US Biden administration intends to undermine the goal of American law. However, even if the US does not intend to declare that it is redividing Jerusalem through reopening the US consulate, sometimes actions speak louder than intentions.

Yisrael Medad: Jewish prayer should be permitted on the Temple Mount

It should be clear: No Jew enters a Muslim building on the Temple Mount and surely not in a mosque. The compound is rather large and there is more than enough room for it to be shared. After all, in Hebron, Jews do pray daily in a structure considered a mosque (the Cave of the Patriarchs). So why is there this form of Islamic cancel culture which can be summarized so: The Temple Mount belongs solely to the Muslims and the Western Wall to the Jews.

First, the facts. Invading Muslim armies conquered Jerusalem in 638 CE and usurped, physically and theologically, Mount Moriah. Although Jews were permitted to enter at times, from the 13th century until the late 19th century, Jewish entry was prohibited. This also was the situation in Hebron. In 1947, a Jew who accidentally entered the compound was killed. Parallel to this, the majority rabbinic opinion was that, despite the compound being larger than the original sacred area, all entry would be prohibited.

On this background, in 1967, the famous status quo was adopted. But if that situation is not static – Muslims have opened three new mosques since then – do they have any right to protest? Are they the only ones who have the right to be “provoked?” The Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty’s Article 9 calls for the promotion of “interfaith relations … with the aim of working toward religious understanding … freedom of religious worship and tolerance.” Should that not be honored?

Can't we attempt to achieve peace through religious unity and compromise? Why do we need to tolerate such degrading language in the Arabic media on this issue as when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Jews “defile the Al-Aqsa Mosque with their filthy feet.” The Waqf, and its financial patron, Jordan’s Ministry of Awqaf Islamic Affairs and Holy Places, have prevented surveillance cameras that could reduce violence and encourage the bullying attitude that presages rock-throwing and worse. They need to be more responsible.

In the spirit of Isaiah 56:7, that “my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations,” can't we accept that all who seek to respect and worship at their holy sites be allowed to do so reasonably without recourse to threats of violence?

Murder of British MP David Amess being treated as terror attack

British lawmaker David Amess was stabbed to death in an Essex church on Friday by an assailant who lunged at him as he met voters, in what police said was a terrorist attack.

The alleged killer has been identified as Ali Harbi Ali, a 25-year-old British citizen of Somali heritage who is not believed to have been known to UK security, according to Sky News. He was arrested by British police, and a warrant of further detention has been granted. Amess, 69, from Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative Party, was knifed repeatedly in the attack at about midday in the Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, east of London.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett shared his condolences over Twitter on Saturday night, writing that he sent his "heartfelt condolences to the family and loved ones of British MP Sir David Amess. He was a true friend of the Jewish community and the State of Israel. His tragic loss will be felt by many."

Israel's Foreign Minister Yair Lapid also tweeted, "From Israel, we send our deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Sir David Amess. He always stood with the Jewish community and was a true friend of Israel. May his memory be for a blessing."

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said he was "deeply shocked" by the "horrific slaying."

"A true friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish People, he was cut down while serving the constituency which he loved so much," Netanyahu tweeted. "We grieve with the people of Britain over the tragic loss of a great parliamentarian and a great friend."

Slain British MP remembered as one of ‘most gentle people in politics’

He also waged a long campaign to erect a statue in honor of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from deportation to Nazi death camps in World War II.

The campaign reached fruition when Queen Elizabeth II unveiled the statue in 1997 outside a synagogue in London.

In January this year, he called the event “one of the proudest moments of my life,” and urged the government to redouble efforts against antisemitism, during a speech to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Amess was the Honorary Secretary of the Conservative Friends of Israel from 1998, and was regarded as a longtime friend of the UK Jewish community.

“Although I myself am not a Jew but a Catholic, there is Jewish blood in each and every one of us. I would certainly have been proud to have been born a Jew, and I stand shoulder to shoulder with our local Jewish community,” he said in the January speech.

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10/15 Links Pt2: What lies beneath the progressives' favourite cause; Socialism Without Antisemitism; Texas School Administrator Tells Teachers To Offer Opposing ‘Perspectives’ on Holocaust

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: What lies beneath the progressives' favourite cause

The latest such useful idiot is the best-selling novelist, Sally Rooney. She has refused to have her new novel published by Modan, the Hebrew-language Israeli publisher of her first two books, because she supports a cultural boycott of Israel.

Rooney happens to be Irish; and the Irish Republic — one of the most anti-Israel countries in Europe — is a boiling cesspool of Jew-bashing.

The dogged British antisemitism researcher David Collier has just published a 202-page report in which he chronicles horrific anti-Jewish attitudes in Ireland driven from the top down by Irish politicians and echoed by journalists, academics and other cultural leaders.

There are many plausible explanations for this Israel animus in Ireland and the west. Ireland sees itself as the victim of English colonialism and so identifies with the Palestinians’ false narrative of Jewish colonialism.

Rooney is a self-confessed Marxist. Israel is being demonised through a perfect intellectual storm: a combination of Marxist identification of capitalism with oppression; liberal internationalist hostility to the western concept of the nation-state; and the Palestinian propaganda programme cooked up in the 1960s with the former Soviet Union to turn the Arab war of annihilation against Israel into Israel’s oppression of the newly-minted “Palestinians”.

This propaganda narrative is now the signature cause of “progressive” folk who astoundingly therefore make common cause with deeply regressive Islamists, who endorse throwing gay people off rooftops and stoning women to death.

What actually binds these groups together, however, is a deadly animus against Judaism and the Jewish people.

The Palestinians’ hatred of Israel is based on hatred of the Jews founded upon Islamic theological sources. Medieval and Nazi-style antisemitism pour out of the PA in an unstoppable torrent.

Even those Palestinian supporters who harbour no ill-will towards Jews as people therefore promote a Palestinian narrative that is based on Jew-hatred. So it’s no surprise that threaded through pro-Palestinian western discourse are unambiguous antisemitic tropes.

The deeper question, though, is why it’s always the Jews who get it in the neck from so many different groups. No other people has ever had this experience.

Socialism Without Antisemitism

In “On the Jewish Question,” published in 1844, Karl Marx famously stood the notion of Jewish emancipation on its head, writing that “Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as Christians have become Jews,” i.e., admirers of Mammon. Far from being ghettoized and excluded, deprived of basic freedoms, and subjected to horrific individual and mass accusations and physical violence for centuries, Marx explained to his followers, the Jews of Europe were in fact historical oppressors bent on conquest. “The everyday Jew devoted himself to endless bartering ... It was still Judaism, practical in its nature, that was victorious,” Marx explained. “Egotism permeated society.”

Jews were not only all-conquering, Marx continued, but also maleficent. “We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time, an element which through historical development—to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed—has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.” Case closed.

Quantities of ink worthy of a Talmudic discussion have been spilled explaining away the explicit content of Marx’s essay. But his private writings make it impossible to assert that Marx was not a carrier of a virulent strain of racist Jew-hatred that has infected some of his followers to this day. In a letter to Engels on July 30, 1862, attacking Ferdinand Lasalle, Marx’s Jewish opponent among socialists, for example, Marx wrote that “It is now quite plain to me—as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify—that he is descended from the negroes who accompanied Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger).”

But even Marx at his worst did not approach the venomous opinions of his rival, the father of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon expressed his feelings for Jews in his notebooks in an entry dated Dec. 26, 1847, an entry less anti-capitalist than exterminationist: “Jews. Write an article against this race that poisons everything by sticking its nose into everything without ever mixing with any other people. Demand its expulsion from France with the exception of those individuals married to French women. Abolish synagogues and not admit them to any employment. Demand its expulsion. Finally, pursue the abolition of this religion. It’s not without cause that the Christians called them deicides. The Jew is the enemy of humankind. They must be sent back to Asia or be exterminated.”

ILF: How We Fought Against:Ep 24...the Soviet Union's Assault on Zionism

"There is absolutely nothing that anti-Zionists say that I, as a Soviet Jew, did not hear or cannot find in Soviet literature." ~ Izabella Tabarovsky.

The Soviet Union created the ideological underpinning of the modern anti-Zionist movement, including the infamous 1975 'Zionism is Racism' resolution at the United Nations, an ideological foundation that groups like BDS are built on today. Join our special guest Izabella Tabarovsky Senior Associate at the Kennan Institute (Wilson Center), as we delve into the history of the Soviet Union and how their anti-Zionist propaganda shapes the antisemites of today.

While this episode was filmed before the Durban Conference at the UN, in which 38 countries withdrew, it underscores the importance of remaining relentless in the fight against antisemitism in all its manifestations, including the assault on Zionism.

Mark Regev: Genocide, apartheid: Problems in extreme Left American Jews - opinion

I was born and grew up in the Diaspora (admittedly not in the United States) and like many of my generation my politics was of the Left – though mine especially so as I was a proud member of the Labor Zionist youth organization Habonim. At the time of Israel’s 1981 election, I eagerly volunteered to a public debate with a Likud supporter at a Melbourne University campus event. I spoke in favor of Shimon Peres’s attempt to unseat Menachem Begin, my loyalty to the Labor cause preventing me from being impressed with Begin who had signed Israel’s first-ever peace treaty with an Arab country and had just destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor.

I immigrated to Israel in 1982 with the goal of personally voting Begin’s Likud out of office. I chose to live on a kibbutz to realize my then socialist ideals, and after acquiring Israeli citizenship, I immediately joined the Labor Party. The Sabras on the kibbutz even voted this then idealistic young Australian immigrant to be their representative at the Labor Party congress (where from the perspective of defeating the Likud, I mistakenly supported Peres over Rabin).

Why is any of this important? Because I know from personal experience that disagreeing with the politics of a given Israeli government, should in no way alienate one from Israel as a country or from the Zionist vision of an independent Jewish homeland. American Jews who hated Trump didn’t stop being loyal Americans, and detesting Netanyahu is no valid reason to disengage from Israel.

That liberal American Jews would identify with the politics of their liberal Israeli cousins is understood. But there can be no excuses for those ultras who deny Israel’s right to exist and ape the lines of Israel’s sworn enemies. Such erroneous positions can only stem from alienation, ignorance and a psychological desire to fit in with a certain milieu (reminding me of my grandparents’ generation of German Jews who constantly felt the need to prove to their gentile neighbors that they were loyal Germans).

I know that there are many American Jews who are deeply troubled by the anti-Zionism and antisemitism prevalent in contemporary progressive circles. I also know that those who uncritically parrot the rejectionist Palestinian mantra are a marginal phenomenon. But while being an aberration, these young Jews repeating “Israel is committing genocide” are symptomatic of a larger failure. The incoming head of the Jewish Agency, whoever it turns out to be, has some very serious work to do.

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Cartoon of the Day: Obsessive hating of Israel has nothing to do with Jews, right?

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