Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

03/15 Links Pt2: Amnesty International is no longer a human-rights group, it’s just another ‘progressive’ lobby; Lifting Human Rights Sanctions on Iran Would Be a Mistake

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: Amnesty International is no longer a human-rights group, it’s just another ‘progressive’ lobby

If you had any doubts that Amnesty International opposes the very existence of Israel, its executive director just made it crystal-clear: Addressing the Women’s National Democratic Club, Paul O’Brien announced his “gut” belief that even “Jewish people in this country” think Israel “shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state.”

In reality, as even left-wing Jewish outfit J Street noted, polling shows the vast majority of American Jews “support Israel’s future as a democratic state and homeland for the Jewish people.”

So do most Americans, period. But the AI chief plainly only talks to people who share his prejudices.

O’Brien later tried to cover himself by tweeting that the Jewish people have a “legitimate concern” about their existence and “that needs to be part of the conversation.” But he stands by the new AI report accusing Israel of “apartheid,” when Israeli Arabs are easily the freest Arabs in the Middle East.

As William Daroff of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations noted, “It is now abundantly clear that [Amnesty is] firmly entrenched in the cadre of extremist anti-Israel provocateurs.”

Bottom line: Amnesty’s current leadership (at least) puts left-wing dogma ahead of all other considerations, milking its prestige to push the lockstep “progressive” agenda.

Amnesty USA Director Paul O’Brien’s remarks to the Woman’s National Democratic Club

In response to claims from O'Brien regarding Jewish Insider’s reporting, JI is publishing the audio of his remarks and excerpted transcripts

On Friday, Jewish Insider published a story about an event featuring Amnesty International USA Director Paul O’Brien at the Women’s National Democratic Club in Washington, D.C. In response to O’Brien’s claims that JI attributed to him quotes that he did not say regarding whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state, JI is publishing the full audio of his lecture and his conversation with a JI reporter at the end of his speech. The following excerpts include those portions of his speech and the subsequent exchange that were quoted in the article.

The political question of Israel’s right to survive
I was with a young Palestinian lawyer and she took us to the top of the hill and pointed pretty much towards the west. And you could see, like, some buildings in the very distance, and said, ‘That is Gaza, and if you point north, you can see the beginnings of the West Bank. But my village used to be there.’ And we sort of worked out the geography of it. It was an unrecognized village. And it had been destroyed because the Israeli military were concerned that Palestinian communities from Gaza, through to the West Bank, were increasingly becoming an interconnected community that created a security threat. And so for her, she had lost her village. They had moved into another village in the area for a period. But they couldn’t get any services into the village so that in the case of having to give birth, ambulances would not go into the village. Would not. They were hoping to start a family. They moved into the city so that they could get basic service provision. We went back to visit some of their older relatives that were there. And as we were walking away, she said something like, that one day soon, they won’t be there either.

And what I experienced in listening to her story was the failure of imagination in creating a society that — I personally believe, this is not, Amnesty takes no political views on any question, including the right of the State of Israel to survive. We firmly oppose antisemitism. But if you ask most people who work at Amnesty, do you understand what it means to feel that a state that has provided you sanctuary is now under threat? I don’t know of anybody at Amnesty that would say no, I don’t understand what that means. And I don’t understand why the Jewish people in the United States and in Israel would be concerned about that.

But as a human rights activist, what I do firmly believe is that if we are going to live in dignity with each other in a secure and sustainable way, it cannot be built on a system that racially oppresses another group in order to survive. That is no pathway towards the future. And that is why I believe history is on our side. Our job by talking about it honestly is to hurry up that history. There has to be a future for the Jewish and Palestinian people to live together in peace, to know that they have a home, and to do so on the foundation of human rights.

Rabbis: Amnesty International Is an ‘Anti-Semitic Hate Group’ Promoting ‘Jew-Hatred’

Amnesty International, the human rights group whose leader recently said Israel "shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state," is blatantly promoting "Jew-hatred," according to a group of influential rabbis.

Amnesty International has been facing criticism since releasing a report last month that accused Israel of waging apartheid against Palestinians and demanded that Israeli officials face prosecution in international courts for these alleged crimes. The report was widely condemned by Israel, leading American-Jewish officials, and members of Congress—all of whom labeled the report as anti-Israel propaganda.

Amnesty International faced a wave of renewed criticism this month when the director of its American branch, Paul O'Brien, who is not Jewish, said that Israel "shouldn't exist as a Jewish state" during remarks at an event hosted by the Woman's National Democratic Club.

O'Brien's remarks are anti-Semitic and amount to "Jew-hatred, plain and simple," according to the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), an advocacy group that represents leading Orthodox rabbis.

"This is Jew-hatred, plain and simple, of a piece with Amnesty's slur of ‘apartheid' against the only ethnically diverse country, the only one with a substantial Jewish population, in the Middle East," Rabbi Yaakov Menken, CJV's managing director, told the Washington Free Beacon.

"O'Brien's reported remarks should surprise no one, as he merely said the quiet part out loud. There are 23 countries where Islam is the state religion, and 21 formally Christian states, but Amnesty only has a problem with the one identified with Jews," Menken said. "O'Brien openly argued that indigenous Jews, exclusively, should be denied self-determination in their indigenous homeland."

All 25 Jewish Democratic House members condemn Amnesty International USA’s executive director Paul O’Brien for saying that Israel shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state pic.twitter.com/IVJF13bBBQ
— Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) March 14, 2022

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Read all about it here!

Algerie Presse Service found an anti-Israel Moroccan who is foaming at the mouth over the first Royal Air Maroc flight to Tel Aviv.

The Makhzen system [Morocco] has raised the pace of normalization with the Zionist entity, in a "hysterical" manner, to include almost all sectors in a short time, including the air transport sector, where, on Sunday, the first direct flight between Morocco and the Zionist entity was launched, despite warnings of human rights organizations, and opponents of normalization, against normalization of tourism, which they considered as a "new colonization of the kingdom."

The head of the Moroccan Commission for the Support of Nation's Issues, Abdel Samad Fathi, warned ... that the opening of a direct air line between the Zionist entity and Morocco aims to "enable the Zionists to invade Morocco through the tourism gate, and this is after the doors became open for the hordes of occupying settlers, to enter the homeland."

He highlighted in this context that the opening of direct air routes between Morocco and the occupying entity also aims to “quadruple the number of Zionist visitors compared to before the fateful agreement, and to achieve 200,000 Zionist invaders annually, with the participation of the Zionist entity airline, which will make four weekly flights between the Zionist entity and Morocco."

The Moroccan human rights defender condemned the opening of this direct route, which falls under the "treason, normalized crime, and moral fallibility", for various reasons, including that "it is a welcome for killers and criminals, and a reward for those who emigrated from Morocco to engage in a Zionist project, occupy Arab land and kill and displace its Muslim people. "

And the same speaker stressed that if tourism normalization is “treason and a crime”, it is also not without risks for Morocco on several levels, including “weakening the people’s immunity from the Zionism virus, which paves the way for the intellectual and emotional penetration of the Zionist project for the Moroccan people.”

Besides, tourism normalization, according to him, “facilitates the process of espionage and recruitment for the benefit of the Zionist entity against the interest of the homeland and the nation, with the Palestinian cause at its heart, and contributes to spreading corruption by encouraging sex tourism, as well as contributing to supporting and strengthening normalization lobbies in our country and making them implement tools for its subversive projects.”

According to the head of the Moroccan Commission for the Support of the Nation, the danger of tourism normalization also lies in “facilitating the process of implementing Zionist plans, because it is an enemy and owner of a racist expansion project,” stressing that “it is an illusion to think that the presence of the Zionists in Morocco will be limited to recreation.”

Now read the first paragraph again and decide who is "hysterical."

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Read all about it here!

03/15 Links Pt1: Russia’s Anti-Ukraine Propaganda Has Its Roots in Soviet Anti-Semitism; Neoconservatism: A Vindication; Jewish groups call for pre-Purim fast for Ukraine, Zelensky

From Ian:

Russia’s Anti-Ukraine Propaganda Has Its Roots in Soviet Anti-Semitism

Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, and Ukraine’s resistance has confirmed some old assumptions, shattered prevalent illusions, and led to a remarkable response by the democracies. It also offers yet another example of the disastrous consequences of antisemitism that emerged in the Soviet Union and has persisted in the decades since its demise.[1]

Putin justified his aggression against Ukraine with a lie. Ukraine, he said, had to be “de-Nazified.”[2] Ukraine today is the only state in the world besides Israel that has a President and a Foreign Minister who are Jewish. Accusing political opponents within, liberal democracies outside the Soviet bloc, and Israelis of being fascists and Nazis is a lie with deep roots in the history of the Soviet Union’s foreign policy after World War II. In the anti-cosmopolitan and antisemitic purges of 1949 to 1953, the Soviet Union hurled the accusation at Communists who supported the state of Israel, and at political opponents who rejected the Communist one-party. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union repeatedly denounced the United States and West Germany as fascist or Nazi. In 1961, when East Germany built the Berlin Wall–a wall that turned that country into a prison with seventeen million inmates–it described it as “the anti-fascist protection wall.”[3]

In 1967, Soviet Ambassador Nikolai Fedorenko at the United Nations described Israel’s military operations as examples of “fascist aggression.” During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, his successor, Jakob Malik compared Israel’s response to the Arab state attack to Nazi aggression during World War II in Europe.[4] The Israeli as Nazi canard spread to the radical left around the world. On the West German far left, it served to justify terrorist attacks against Israelis as a form of revolutionary anti-fascism. Such falsehoods about Israeli democracy played a role in Islamist and radical leftist attacks on Israel.[5]

This reversal and transformation of the meaning of antifascism from what it meant during the years before and during World War II and the Holocaust was consequential. It lent apparent legitimacy to what were, in fact, antisemitic and false conspiracy theories about the policies of Israel. Sadly, the Soviet Union achieved great success with its “Israeli as Nazi” propaganda. Associating attacks on the Jewish state with the language of antifascism comprised a crucial chapter in the reemergence and renewed respectability of antisemitism in the international radical left during the Cold War. So, it is not at all surprising that Putin, whose roots lie in the Soviet era KGB intelligence services, denounced Ukraine as a state of Nazis and fascists.

Putin’s aim to “de-Nazify” Ukraine has had predictable and grave consequences. They are evident on our TV, computer and smart phone screens as missiles and artillery shells—and cluster bombs—crash into Ukrainian civilian areas—just as they did in Aleppo and other cities in Syria not so long ago. The Nazi accusation is enormously dangerous because, for civilized humanity, Nazism represents absolute and radical evil. Hence, if, you describe your enemy or adversary as a Nazi and assert that the Ukrainians used their rights as citizens to vote for Nazi leaders, then those civilians are also guilty of complicity in this Nazism. Thus, the cruise missiles and artillery shells crashing into civilian homes and apartment buildings in these days are, from Putin’s perspective, part of a noble battle against a Nazified Ukraine. The accusation leads to a policy that abolishes the distinction between soldiers and civilians in an era in which modern weaponry makes that distinction possible. This mendacious and corrupt version of antifascism serves as a justification for viewing the civilian population of Ukraine as a legitimate military target. It serves as an immoral justification for what international law now recognizes as war crimes.

Russia-Ukraine conflict: ICJ to rule Wednesday on genocide claims

The United Nations' International Court of Justice will rule on Wednesday regarding accusations of genocide in Ukraine.

The announcement was made on the ICJ's Twitter account that it would announce its decision on the case, which has been named "Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Ukraine v. Russian Federation)."

The ruling is set to be made at the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, at 4:00 p.m. local time.

The ruling is in response to a suit Ukraine filed on February 27 following Russia's accusations that it was committing genocide against Russian speakers. Ukraine denies these allegations, with President Volodymyr Zelensky saying that Russia is distorting and manipulating the very concept of genocide as a pretext to invade his country.

"Russia must be held accountable for manipulating the notion of genocide to justify aggression," Zelensky wrote on his Twitter account. "We request an urgent decision ordering Russia to cease military activity now and expect trials to start next week."

John Podhoretz: Neoconservatism: A Vindication

In 2022, the idea that Vladimir Putin’s Russia would actually roll the tanks and march the soldiers across the border into Ukraine seemed so irrational and peculiar to the Western consciousness that most of us—and in that “us” I would even include the heroic Volodymyr Zelensky—were living in a kind of weird haze of disbelief and denial that it could even happen.

Then it did.

And the surprise Jimmy Carter had felt in 1979 was as nothing compared to the shock wave across Europe in 2022. It took the United States three years to double its defense budget after the Soviet invasion. It took Germany three days. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced his country would increase its defense spending from 47 billion euros to 100 billion euros 72 hours after the Russians crossed the Ukrainian border.

History. Speeding up. And rhyming.

Will this be a hinge moment in history as well? If so, the rhymes of history may be heard in the surprising present urgency of neoconservatism.

Throughout the 1970s, the band of writers and thinkers who came to be known as “neoconservatives” had taken defiantly unfashionable positions when it came to matters of defense and foreign policy. The neoconservatives opposed negotiations and treaties with the Soviet Union, which they considered a great evil. They reviled the United Nations for its “Zionism is racism” resolution at a time when the UN was almost sacrosanct (millions of little boys and girls across America, including me, had proudly toted orange tzedakah boxes on Halloween to raise money for UNICEF). And they feared that the United States had, in the wake of Vietnam, undergone what a 1975 symposium in this magazine called “A Failure of Nerve” that would have global consequences.

The general opinion among the American cognoscenti was that the neoconservatives were hysterics and vulgarians incapable of seeing shades of gray. A more mature sense of the world’s complexity was supposedly represented first by the hard-won realism of the establishmentarians who had embraced the policy of détente with the Soviet Union—and second, by hipper foreign-policy thinkers whose worldview was encapsulated by Carter’s May 1977 declaration that America had gotten over its “inordinate fear of Communism.”

Then came 1979. The year began with the Iranian revolution engendering an oil crisis. By the end of the year, Iran’s fundamentalists had taken 52 American diplomats hostage as crowds chanted “Death to America” in the greatest public humiliation the United States had ever experienced as a nation. A thousand miles from the U.S. border, Nicaragua fell to a puppet guerrilla army of the Cubans and the Soviets while a similar puppet force was threatening to do the same in El Salvador—thus potentially creating a Soviet-friendly anti-U.S. bloc on the American subcontinent.

Suddenly the vulgarity of the neoconservatives didn’t seem quite so vulgar. But they remained prophets without much honor in the quarters in which they had traveled for most of their adult lives. Both the old and new establishments were largely impervious to the way history was vindicating their warnings and fears.

Tufts University's Students for Justice in Palestine wrote a "BDS Pledge."

It includes these solemn promises:

- I pledge to stand in solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle against displacement, colonization, military occupation, and apartheid by following the call for BDS.
- I pledge to boycott Sabra Hummus and Pillsbury.
- I pledge to refuse to be involved with Friends of Israel, J Street U Tufts, Tisch Summer Fellowship with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Tufts Birthright Israel, TAMID, Study abroad programs in Israel.
- Boycott targets of BDS globally including HP, Israeli fruits and vegetables, Puma, AXA, SodaStream, and Ahava.
- Commit to BDS until Palestine is free.

We've seen these sorts of things before - after all, the BDS movement itself is based on "pledging" to boycott Israeli products and institutions and more - but did you ever think about the concept of a pledge?

Does Birthright or Hillel demand that people must "pledge" to a certain way of thinking or acting in order to join?

The very concept of a "BDS pledge" is really an attempt to ensure that people are not exposed to opinions that BDS leaders find objectionable.

When they try to stop pro-Israel speakers on campus, or even Israeli speakers on topics that have nothing to do with politics, they are saying that they don't want anyone to even hear anything that they don't approve of or that normalizes the existence of Israel.

When they try to stop trips to Israel, they are saying that they do not want anyone exposed to anything they disagree with.

Their description of J Street U where they pledge not to be involved with the group is most revealing:

In the past, SJP and Tufts J Street have collaborated on educational events based on the shared knowledge that anti-Zionism is not antisemitic, and to honor the rich history of Jewish and non-Jewish anti-Zionism. Many members of SJP began their journeys with Palestinian solidarity at J Street, and we acknowledge the space it has given Jewish-American members in particular to begin to question the Zionist narrative they may have been immersed in at various Jewish institutions.

J Street officially advocates for “peace” through a “two-state solution.” While it may seem innocuous to frame the occupation as a conflict between two equal nation states, and the solution as a simple division of land right down the middle, this perspective fails to recognize Israel as a settler colonial state and Zionism as a white supremacist ideology.

J Street U is a great gateway drug to becoming an unthinking anti-Israel drone, but it doesn't agree with today's antisemites that Zionism is a white supremacist ideology, so it is verboten to associate with them.

The most glaring distinction between liberal Zionist and "progressive" anti-Zionist groups is the willingness to discuss things with the other side. This refusal by BDSers to even talk with anyone who disagrees with their extremist positions isn't a sign of strength, but of weakness. It shows that they have no confidence that their propaganda can survive when confronted with other ideas.

This pledge proves that BDS isn't a movement or a philosophy. BDS is a cult.

The best part of this pledge is that it lists lots of student groups on campus who support Israel as a Jewish state. They clearly dwarf the BDSers on campus. And the very existence of this pledge, and similar ones on other campuses, is all the proof you need that BDS makes a lot of noise but it knows that it must use brainwashing methods to keep its core members.

(h/t Andrew P.)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Read all about it here!

Suhail bin Boutros bin Matti Qasha was an Iraqi thinker, researcher, and Christian theologian from the town of Bakhdeda, east of Mosul. He died last month.

He was well respected, wrote widely and published a number of books.

According to his complimentary obituary in Al Akhbar, he was also a Jew-hater. His views show the antisemitism that is endemic in the Arab Christian world. There is no attempt at anything but a paper distinction between Zionism and Judaism, and his claims against "Zionism" exactly mirror the conspiracy theories against Jews throughout the ages. His hate shines through the pseudo-intellectualism.

Excerpts of the article are based on Qasha's book, "Zionism distorts the Bible:"

Father Suhail Qasha emphasized that the concept of Zionism is to work towards the formation of a Jewish community in Palestine, and the Zionist thought stems from the doctrines of the Torah, the laws of the Talmud, and the racist Jewish thought.

Father Qasha reviewed the relationship of Zionism to Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasonry, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Christian Zionism, and other organizations, all of which, according to his opinion, are forms and means of a single global Zionist plan “aims to dominate the world and subjugate the Jewish people on whom the Zionist movement imposed itself as a guardian.”

The Zionist movement is working, secretly and publicly, to destroy other religions, especially Christianity, in order to plunge the world into chaos and moral disintegration in implementation of the Zionist scheme to dominate the world.

This was manifested mainly in the distortion of the Bible and the issuance of an “Israeli version” of the books of the New Testament that was printed in Jerusalem in 1970. Zionism worked to spread this edition in various churches, organized conferences and supported Christian sects and heresy Zionism aimed at persuading the Christian masses in Europe and America to help the Jews to establish the state of Israel in preparation for the return of the Messiah.

The distortion and forgery movement culminated in the document acquitting the Jews of the blood of Christ, which was issued by the Ecumenical Council in 1963. Zionism took advantage of this tolerant humanitarian position of the Vatican to employ the vindication in the process of distorting the true Christian faith and encouraging heresies, movements and suspicious churches, especially in the United States of America to employ them in support of the government of Israel and the merging of the Zionist ideology with the expansionist American ideology.

Zionism first targeted Eastern Christianity because the Antiochene churches are the closest to the spirit of true Christianity, and they are the most capable of confronting the attempts of distortion and forgery carried out by Zionism.

Moreover, Zionism primarily targets eastern Christians because they are an element of resistance to its Judaization projects. Therefore, Zionism sought and seeks to displace Christians from their east, especially in Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Lebanon, so that the land would be permissible for the expansion of “Israel” and its Judaization of the region in order to build Greater Israel.

Zionism views Eastern Christianity with hostility and hatred, because the Antiochene Church is authentic and solid in its commitment to its Christian faith. The conflict of Antiochian Christianity with Zionism is an existential struggle because it is a civilizational conflict that extends to its historical roots. It is a struggle between racism and abolition on the one hand, and tolerance and love on the other.

“Zionism distorts the Bible” is not just a book that exposes the infiltration of Zionist Jews into the Church, and their control at times over centers of Christian education, interpretation of the Bible, and theological guidance through distortion and falsification. This book is not just a scientific text. Rather, it is a cry that Father Suhail Qasha wanted as a small bell with gentle ringing to save the human conscience first and the Christian second because of the Zionist plans of demolition and sabotage policies.

People who pretend that there is a distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism cannot possibly explain this.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Read all about it here!

From Naharnet:

Lebanon seems to be inclined to reject U.S. envoy Amon Hochstein’s proposal regarding the demarcation of the sea border with Israel, a media report said on Friday.

“There is an inclination to reject the proposal in a polite way that does not infuriate the American side,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported.

“The dominant inclination within the committee is to reject Hochstein’s proposal, seeing as it does not fully grant the possible Qana field to Lebanon and rather leaves a pocket under the Israeli enemy’s sovereignty, which would create a problem between the state and some domestic forces that totally reject any form of engagement in what they consider to be normalization platforms,” the sources added.

Gee, who could that be? Here's a hint:

Informed sources meanwhile warned that accepting the U.S. proposal would represent a “scandal.”

“It is like a maritime ambush aimed at preoccupying the Lebanese side with studying proposals whose unviability is known by the Americans,” the sources said.

Hezbollah has made clear that there is no choice at all. The terror group can veto anything and everything.

So instead of gaining millions of dollars of energy, Lebanon will get zilch but with the "honor" of knowing that they are choosing to starve their own people rather than agree to anything with Israel. It's a funny definition of honor, but hate does funny things to people.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Read all about it here!

03/14 Links Pt2: Amnesty International admits – it wants the destruction of Israel; Netanyahu says it’s ‘absurd’ Iran nuclear talks ongoing after Erbil attack

From Ian:

David Collier: Amnesty International admits – it wants the destruction of Israel

Tokenising Jews, silencing their voice
We are left with O’Brien sitting in his ivory tower talking about Jews. He says he knows what Jews think. He disagrees with surveys that suggest he may be wrong. O’Brien clearly thinks he knows Jews better than they know themselves. British Jews know this antisemitic feature of the hard-left all too well. We dealt with it as it ran rampant through the Labour Party. People telling Jews that they knew better than the Jews, what being Jewish was about.

Since when was it in Amnesty’s remit to cast aside surveys of American Jews and suggest that Amnesty know better?

Like many, O’Brien does not understand ‘Jews’ at all. I am sure he has one or two Jewish friends. People, with one foot already outside of the community who have turned their ‘Jewishness’ into something abstract and meaningless. Just as the Corbynites hid behind fringe hate groups like Jewish Voice for Labour, Amnesty have found their ‘acceptable’ Jews now too.

But Jews won’t be told by naive fools such as O’Brien what they do or do not want. We will reject Amnesty’s blatant antisemitism. The Jewish people were stateless for long enough. We know all too well how high the price can be for political impotence. And as we look at Ukraine – it is worth reminding ourselves of the reality of the world that we live in. The world needs a Jewish state that is independent and capable of defending itself. We need Israel. This is not up for debate.

Seeking the destruction of Israel
So now we know for sure. Amnesty International is seeking the destruction of Israel. O’Brien has his vision. He calls it a ‘Jewish safe space’. He says Israel should not exist as ‘a Jewish state’. We recognise this terminology. It is the same language that BDS uses. With Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran all making genocidal threats, O’Brien is trying to convince Jews they live in ‘Switzerland’.

He has the same problem many on the left do. He sees Jews as white and privileged and he sees Palestinians as ‘brown’ and gives them no agency. Rather than viewing the Islamist need for imperial domination as the problem, he sees the tiny Jewish safe haven as being the cause of the conflict. There is no point looking for logic, truth or consistency in this. It is the same incoherent modern leftist swamp in which antisemitism thrives.

The bottom line is this. Amnesty seeks the destruction of Israel. They want a world without an independent state for the Jewish people. They have clearly placed this at the top of their ideological wish list. There is no argument anymore. Amnesty International are as antisemitic as they come.

JPost Editorial: Amnesty International's report on Israel is full of distortions and lies

In the US, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) called the report “a gross mischaracterization of Israel, its history and its values.” State Department spokesperson Ned Price warned against applying double standards to Israel.

Most Jewish organizations also rejected the report. But O’Brien, who is not Jewish, obviously trusts his gut instinct more. He also seems to be hoping that by “changing the conversation” and repeating the apartheid lie enough times, he can create new facts.

The event is the first in a series hosted by the WNDC that will explore “Palestine past, present and future.” Israel’s own ancient past, its successful present and its future as the Jewish state is of less importance to the group.

In a separate story published over the weekend, JTA revealed that the environmental Sierra Club NGO has canceled its scheduled trips to Israel in response to pressure from progressive and anti-Zionist groups after activists alleged the organization was “greenwashing the conflict” and “providing legitimacy to the Israeli state, which is engaged in apartheid against the Palestinian people,” according to an email seen by the news agency.

This is another example of what happens when the apartheid libel is deliberately spread.

Such efforts don’t only harm Israel’s image, they cause once respected organizations to lose their credibility and standing. Above all, they do absolutely nothing to promote peace or help the Palestinians.

By criminalizing Israel and ignoring Palestinian anti-normalization and terrorism, these organizations and the progressive activists are encouraging more rejectionism and more terror.

The Palestinian Authority will see no reason to make even basic moves to peace as long as it believes it can erase Israel with progressive, Western support. The lies themselves fuel further attacks, both on Israelis and on Jews and Jewish targets around the world. The apartheid libel is not only a lie, it is a dangerous one.

Because it’s not like there’s an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Ukraine or anything, so @hrw is back to their favorite topic - Jew bashing. Of course taking everything out of context, to engage in some not-so-mild misinformation and bigotry. https://t.co/5iPbRpQYPN
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) March 14, 2022

Netanyahu: New Nuclear Agreement Will Give the Ayatollahs a Nuclear Arsenal

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu launched a scathing attack on world powers who are continuing to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran — even after the Islamic Republic fired missiles toward the US consulate in Iraqi Kurdistan.

In video messages posted to social media in both Hebrew and English on Sunday evening — addressed to Israeli and American citizens, respectively — the former prime minister said it was “absurd” for world powers to continue to negotiate in Vienna with Tehran.

“The desperate rush to sign this flawed nuclear agreement with Iran is not only absurd, it’s downright dangerous,” Netanyahu stated in his English video, posted with the caption: “Every American family should watch this video.”

“Yesterday, Iran fired missiles in the vicinity of the American consulate in Iraq, and the US continues to charge ahead, along with the other powers, to sign a nuclear agreement that will give the ayatollahs a nuclear arsenal,” Netanyahu charged.

“It would also relieve sanctions and give them hundreds of billions of dollars in order to continue the terror that they waged yesterday and wage every day throughout the Middle East and the world,” he said. “This agreement is even worse than its predecessor, because in three years’ time, under this agreement, Iran will be a threshold nuclear state. It will have enough enriched uranium to create dozens and dozens of nuclear bombs and it will have the ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] to deliver them to any place in the United States.”

The final details of the burgeoning nuclear deal between Iran and world powers have yet to be revealed, and diplomats involved have said that some remaining elements are still being negotiated. It was not immediately clear which documents or intelligence Netanyahu was basing his claims on.

Every American family should watch this video. pic.twitter.com/BVo5ZFJwKk
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) March 13, 2022

Today, Palestinian prime minister met with what Palestinian media called 300 Harvard University students to spout anti-Israel propaganda.

"The biggest challenge [for Palestinians] is national unity and ending division, and we will work to achieve it by all means. The second challenge is the Judaization of Jerusalem as the capital," Shtayyeh said.

The trip was part of Harvard Israel Trek, an annual subsidized trip to Israel and the territories during spring break.

Despite the students being exposed to unfettered Palestinian propaganda, BDSers on campus try to dissuade students from going:

Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine hung flyers across campus last week (February 25) urging undergraduates to boycott Harvard Israel Trek, an annual subsidized spring break trip to Israel and the West Bank.

Organizers for HOOP — a student group spearheaded by the Palestine Solidarity Committee that calls on Harvard to divest holdings linked to Israel’s presence in Palestine — posted flyers with QR codes linked to a document that alleges trip-goers are “complicit in apartheid and settler colonialism.”

In 2019, the PSC distributed a petition urging undergraduates to boycott Israel Trek, which was ultimately canceled due to Covid-19.

Applications for this year’s trip closed last October. According to Israel Trek student leader Ty L. Geri ’23, more than 450 students applied for just 100 spots.

The trip includes a visit of the West Bank and discussions with high-ranking Israeli and Palestinian officials. In emails about the trip sent last semester, organizers say the trip provides participants an opportunity to explore “unique and nuanced realities at the core of Israel’s geopolitical landscape.”

HOOP organizer Christian B. Tabash ’21-’22 said he rejects the idea that the trip can provide a balanced perspective on the conflict between Israel and Palestine despite including the West Bank on its itinerary.

“It doesn’t matter if you spend a few hours in the West Bank, a day in the West Bank, a few days in the West Bank, or if you talk to a Palestinian,” Tabash said. “That is irrelevant, because power is unequal and Palestinians exist as the colonized.”

HOOP's problem isn't with "balance." It is that they do not want any student to ever hear what any Zionist ever has to say. They want their propaganda to be the only thing Harvard students ever hear about the region.

And, to be honest, they probably look at Shtayyeh as a sellout for not being directly connected to terror.

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Americans still admire Israel, don't like Palestinian Authority much. Including Democrats.

A new Gallup poll of how Americans view different countries show that Americans overwhelmingly admires Israel, while they look at the Palestinian Authority worse than Cuba and Saudi Arabia:

The attitude towards Israel is a little worse than in 2020/21, a little better than 2019.

The Palestinian Authority score went up from 23% in 2020 to to 30% last year and down to 27% today.

Among Democrats, most are still favorable towards Israel and less favorable towards Palestinians - 65% to 38%.

(h/t Noah)

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03/14 Links Pt1: BHL: Ukraine and the Jews; Natan Sharansky: Putin will go as far as the world lets him; The Winner in Ukraine Won’t Be Russia or America. It Will Be China

From Ian:

Bernard-Hemri Levy: Ukraine and the Jews

And finally, President Volodymyr Zelensky, the descendant of a family decimated by the Holocaust and a living symbol of mourning done right. The first time I met him, on the eve of his election, I asked him by what turn of history might the Ukraine of the extreme-right Azov Battalion place in its highest office a Jew from Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. With his customary dry humor, leavened at that moment with unusual gravity, he replied as follows (and how well later events would prove him right!): “There remains a far right in Ukraine, of course; but you will soon see that it carries less electoral weight here than in Russia or even in France …”

Today it is Putin who threatens the city of Uman, which the Jews of Galicia brightened with their sabbaths, their Talmudic studies, their radiant Hasidism, and their modernity.

It is Putin’s missiles that, in destroying Kyiv’s television tower, barely missed Babi Yar and the 33,000 souls buried in the sandy ravine, whose guardians are the Ukrainians.

It is Putin who is pounding the Jews of Bucha, Irpin, and Borodyanka, who had been living peacefully with their fellow citizens of all faiths.

And that is why, despite the provocations that isolated bands of rogue soldiers may commit, as they do in all wars, we should be guided by a simple compass.

If there is a leader who urgently needs denazifying, it is Vladimir Putin, with his fetish for brute strength, his Slav Anschluss, and his talent for bringing back from the shadows of the 20th century the specter of total war.

Among those whom his demoniacal prestidigitation is taking hostage and victimizing with his cynical lies are the survivors—and the children and grandchildren of the survivors—of the most monstrous crime of all.

And for them, for all the world’s Jews, for Israel’s leaders who know better than anyone where the will to annihilate a people and a state can lead, there is a single categorical imperative: Refuse to be blackmailed; resist the supposed constraints of shortsighted realpolitik; and, in standing with the Ukrainians as they are bombed, starved, and massacred, remain faithful to an ancient human vocation.

'Israel could pay steep diplomatic price for Ukraine policy,' Sharansky warns

Natan Sharansky, a former prisoner of Zion and deputy prime minister, is convinced that Israel made a mistake by trying to stay neutral regarding the war in Ukraine. "We of course have interests when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, but we should have said from day one that the Russian attack and unjustified targeting of the civilian population are unacceptable."

It's not just the moral consideration that should have led Israel to adopt a clearer position, says Sharansky. The diplomatic calculation also supports this view: Ukraine is going to play an important role in the global balance of power structure, and it's in Israel's interest that Ukraine remember Israel for standing by its side and helping it in its time of need.

"How can it be that the Ukrainians beg us for a field hospital, Israel throws around promises for an entire week, and in the end, the finance minister says we don't have the funds?" wonders Sharansky.

He recalls how he acted as a minister in former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first government to thwart a supply of Ukrainian and Russian-manufactured nuclear industrial equipment earmarked for Iran. "Russia refused to listen to the Israeli case at the time, while in Ukraine we were able to convince then-President [Leonid] Kuchma not to fulfill his commitments to the Iranians and not sell them turbines for a nuclear power plant," says Sharansky.

Sharansky blames the Americans, namely the Obama administration, for teaching Russian President Vladimir Putin that he can blackmail the world in general and Israel in particular.

"Because of Obama and the West's weakness, Russia was handed the keys to Syria, and the Iranians received billions of dollars. The West's basic weakness is patently obvious: It is afraid of confronting Putin. Recently he even raised the stakes with implicit threats of using nuclear weapons, and what was the West's response? It actually canceled the annual test of the intercontinental ballistic missile that can carry a nuclear warhead. In the eyes of the West, this step was meant to avoid exacerbating tensions. In the eyes of Putin, this was a sign of weakness. In Soviet prison, I learned who controls the cell. Not the strongest, but the person willing at any given moment to fight the other, and even kill. Putin is exactly like this, and the West, instead of being a deterrent, it deterred," he said.

"Two factors woke the free world up," Sharansky continued, "Ukraine's heroism and Putin's barbarism. The methodical and brutal way he is erasing entire cities in the heart of Europe is causing alarm. Of all people, the man who claims Ukrainians are not a nation is the one making the world care about Ukraine and hold it in high regard. Just as importantly, Putin delivered a gigantic blow to Russia and its place as an influential player straddling the East-West divide. It will take Russia a very long time, perhaps hundreds of years, to restore its moral legitimacy and its place in human civilization.

"The Ukrainians' readiness to fight for their liberty surprised both Putin and Western leaders. The sanctions imposed on Russia are not enough to change Putin's course of action, but they still reflect unprecedented solidarity from the free world with a nation fighting evil. The question remains whether the West will uphold sanctions over time."

Natan Sharansky on Vladimir Putin: He will go as far as the world lets him

Famed Jewish dissident, human-rights activist and former Knesset member Natan Sharansky provided his opinion on the situation in Ukraine on Tuesday, analyzing what could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s motivations for the invasion into Ukraine, as well as the moral obligation Israel and the West have to support Ukraine.

In a Zoom session hosted by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) and moderated by JINSA president and CEO Mike Makovsky, Sharansky said that he believed that Putin is looking to recreate the Russian Empire, rather than the Soviet Union since Putin is not interested in bringing back Communist ideology. Instead, as one of the world’s longest-serving leaders, he considers his heroes Tsar Peter the Great, Empress Catherine the Great and former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan late last year and showed what Sharansky called great weakness in its dealings with Syria during the country’s civil war, Putin began to believe that the United States was too weak to respond to an invasion in Ukraine just as the world did not respond to the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Putin has also used his nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the west’s intervention, even though Sharansky thinks he won’t use them.

“I think Putin doesn’t want to use nuclear weapons. He’s not an Iranian leader who thinks about the next world,” said Sharansky. “He wants to rule this world. But to use the threat? That’s his main weapon, and it does work.” Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories

But according to Sharansky, Putin underestimated that Ukraine is also a proud nation and that Russia’s onslaught has contributed to the strengthening of Ukrainian will, having been thrust into the center of history.

Putin may also have underestimated the resolve of the rest of the world, which has united in its condemnation of the invasion, possibly believing the old Soviet saying that capitalists are never united when their profits are threatened.

The Winner in Ukraine Won’t Be Russia or America. It Will Be China.

In addition to the crimes, the heroism, and the heavy toll in blood, the struggle for Ukraine may also come to represent one of the most strategically significant events of this century, or any other—the one that established China, not America or Russia, as the dominant power in Europe.

Most Western observers have taken Beijing’s professed readiness “to play a constructive role to facilitate dialogue for peace” as a sign that Ukraine is somewhere between a headache and a disaster for Xi Jinping, who announced a Sino-Russian partnership with “no limits” at the Beijing Olympics only last month. The assumption is that Xi is now in danger of looking complicit or credulous (or both), and that the Communist Party—having argued incessantly for the sanctity of China’s own territorial integrity—may now stand accused of hypocrisy. Xi’s support of Putin is also seen as having put Beijing at risk of igniting anti-Chinese sentiment in Europe, of squandering the many investments it made and trade relationships it built in the European Union, and of pushing otherwise friendly EU capitals closer to Washington.

Triangulation between Russia and Europe will no doubt require a degree of finesse for which China’s Wolf Warriors are ill-prepared, and providing Putin with liquidity to fund his war machine, for example, is not a cost-free decision. But anyone taking pleasure in China’s supposed bind probably has it backwards. In the wake of its partial expulsion from the global trade and financial system, Russia—with its vast supply of raw materials—is likely to become a Chinese economic dependency. That is a good thing for China, and if Xi can successfully position himself as the only world leader capable of restraining Putin, it will go a long way toward extending his hegemony all the way to Lisbon, as China starts to displace the United States as Europe’s most important global partner.

After all, would a seat at the European table really be too much to ask for the man who saves Europe from nuclear war? Reading the recent statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry that promised “China’s mediation efforts for a ceasefire” in Ukraine, and the EU foreign policy chief’s concurrence that the broker of peace “must be China,” it’s not hard to see the request being made, and being answered in the affirmative—with Washington reduced to second fiddle on a continent it spent the better part of a century defending and holding together.

The strange route of the first Royal Air Maroc flight from Casablanca to Tel Aviv

From AFP:

Royal Air Maroc took off from Morocco’s economic capital Casablanca bound for Tel Aviv on Sunday, in the carrier’s first direct flight to the Jewish state since the two countries normalized ties in 2020.

Aviation sources and local media sources said a Moroccan business delegation was on the inaugural flight, delayed by three months because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Casablanca/Tel Aviv for 400 euros ($440). Who would have believed it?” tweeted David Govrin, head of Israel’s liaison office in the Arab state.

The Moroccan carrier RAM is to fly four times a week between Casablanca and Tel Aviv, while Israeli airlines launched flights to Morocco’s Marrakesh last July, although they were suspended in late November because of coronavirus travel curbs.

Here is the route that the flight took:

Flights between Morocco and Israel cannot go in a straight line because Algeria, Libya and probably Tunisia would not allow them to fly over their airspace. So the flight must pass over parts of Spain, Italy and Crete.

But that isn't the only reason for the flight path.

Algeria doesn't only block overflights from and to Israel - it bans any air traffic to and from Morocco! The ban took effect last September over their own cold war.

Flights from Casablanca to Cairo take a very similar route, avoiding Algerian airspace:

Interestingly, there do not appear to be any direct flights from Morocco to Jordan.

Which means that in one sense, Israel's ties to Arab Morocco are closer than those of Jordan.

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Hamas and the PA calls on Palestinians to attack Jews who visit the Temple Mount on Purim

This week is the holiday of Purim, celebrating the salvation of Jews from the schemes of the Persian Empire and its evil vizier Haman to destroy them.

Hamas, which shares Haman's desire to destroy the Jews, is now telling Palestinians to attack any Jews who want to visit the Temple Mount this week for the occasion.

Mohammed Hamada, a Hamas spokesman, issued a statement saying that Hamas "warns the occupation and its colonial settlers against desecrating the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque during the so-called “Feast of Purim” amid its calls for storming the Mosque on 16th and 17th of March."

He said that "the occupation's desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque is a crime and violation of all heavenly norms and laws, and a direct provocation to our Islamic nation."

Jews visit the site every Sunday through Thursday, and for the past few years they have even been quietly praying there, without incident. But Muslim fanatics want there to be an incident, and they want bloodshed.

"We call upon the masses of our Palestinian people in Jerusalem, West Bank, and 1948 occupied lands to confront the Zionist storming, protect Al-Aqsa, and prevent the Zionist extremists from desecrating it," Hamada said.

This mirrors a Saturday statement from the PA’s top Islamic judge and presidential adviser Mahmoud al-Habbash who is also trying to incite violence:

Al-Habbash said that "terrorist groups and settler gangs are taking advantage of Jewish religious occasions to storm the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and try to impose a fait accompli as part of the Judaization schemes that target the Holy City in general and the Temple Mount in particular."

He called on our people everywhere, who are able to reach the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, to intensify their presence there in the coming days, to thwart the plans of the settler terrorist groups, and to defend the mosque with all their determination.

Al-Habbash called on scholars, thinkers and governments of the Islamic world to carry out their religious and moral duty towards the city of Jerusalem and the Noble Sanctuary, “to emphasize the Islam of the mosque and to send a clear message to the world that violating Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa is a violation of the faith of more than a billion and a half Muslims in all parts of the earth, and that the religious war that the occupation seeks to ignite will burn the whole world with its fire, and no one on the face of the earth will be spared from it or its consequences.”

In other words, if a billion Muslims decide to start World War III, it will be because they were forced to by Jews walking quietly in Judaism's holiest spot. Yet, he claims, it is the Jews who want a religious war.

This is all incitement to violence. It happens every day. And the West ignores it, and acts surprised when Arabs attack Jews.

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In June, Sweden will host the conference “Stockholm+50: a healthy planet for the prosperity of all – our responsibility, our opportunity” to mark the 50th anniversary of the first United Nations conference on the human environment – the 1972 Stockholm Conference.

Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh received an invitation to attend.

So naturally, he issued a statement about how terrible Israel is.

Shtayyeh responded to the invitation by saying that the international community must pressure Israel and implement anti-Israel United Nations resolutions. He added, "We are proud of our relationship with Sweden, and we hope that it will serve as a model for the rest of Europe to recognize the Palestinian state in order to stand by truth and justice, as well as protect the two-state solution, in light of the systematic destruction that Israel is carrying out on the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state."

He didn't say a word about the environment.

In 2014, the Consulate General of Sweden in Jerusalem commissioned a team to see how well the Palestinian Environment Quality Authority was doing its job. The resulting 130 page report was polite, but withering in its criticism of how poorly the Palestinian organization tasked with protecting the environment did its job and how unprofessional it is:

The major capacity gaps in operations are:
1. Not ensuring implementation on the ground through effective operating systems
2. Not assuming lead functions for Environmental protection
3. Not assuming the role as knowledge centre and expert organization functions
4. Not sufficiently looking for partnership opportunities with other more resource-strong organizations
5. Appling a reactive approach instead of providing leadership with clear priorities
6. Insufficient monitoring and law enforcement that covers a marginal proportion of establishments.

It also found major gaps in management.

It's been nearly eight years. Has anything changed? It seems doubtful. But it is enormously difficult to find out the answer because there seems to be nobody interested in the subject.

What is clear is that the Palestinian leaders don't care about the environment - they want to hijack the environment issue to attack the Jews. Just as they don't care about women's rights, or Christian rights, or any other liberal talking point except as a means to use them as weapons against Jews.

It happens all the time. And it will happen in Stockholm. And the world leaders who will be there will smile and applaud as Shtayyeh says that Israel is the root of environmental evil.

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An Italian citizen who works at Lebanon's embassy in Italy visits Israel, Lebanese freak out

Lebanese media are going nuts over a report that an employee at their embassy in Italy visited Israel.

The employee, who is not named, is a Christian with Italian citizenship, and she visited with her Italian passport. She claims that she cleared the visit with the ambassador, Mira Daher, beforehand.

The woman says she simply wanted to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Lebanon's Ministry of Foreign Affairs says this is an explicit violation of the laws that prevent Lebanese from visiting enemy territory and it caused a cascade of events involving Lebanon's Public Security division.

However, as with everything in Lebanon, there also seems to be a political motive here. Some have had complaints against the ambassador for a while so some of this appears to be meant to embarrass her.

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03/13 Links: Iran attacks Kurdish region in Iraq in message to US; The West is selling out to Iran to lower gas prices; Lapid says ‘no justification’ for Russia invading Ukraine

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: The West is selling out to Iran to lower gas prices

The administration would like to halt the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine. To its credit, it is not so foolish as to listen to the delusional advice of those who want NATO to become a combatant in the war by imposing a no-fly zone that would have unknowable and likely catastrophic consequences. The grim truth is that after cutting the Russians off from the international economy and sending armaments, Washington has likely done all it could reasonably hope to help Ukrainians, who are bravely resisting the Russian onslaught. But if Putin is truly determined to get his way by any means possible, then he continues to hold all the cards.

Still, it's time to stop the pretense that outreach to Venezuela or Iran is really about Russia.

With respect to Venezuela, it's a tragic abandonment of the already beleaguered democracy movement in that country that has been as thoroughly squelched by the leftist regime as anything Putin has done in Russia or would like to do in Ukraine.

With respect to Iran, the rush to get their oil on the market is more than a betrayal of principle that won't help democracy in Ukraine or anywhere else. It's a sellout of American security interests, as well as allies like Israel and the Arab states that are directly threatened by an accord that doesn't put off an Iranian nuclear weapon so much as it guarantees that Tehran will get one at the end of the decade or sooner. As Gabriel Noronha details in an article in Tablet, the new deal is "much, much worse" in terms of its appeasement of Iranian terror, in addition to failing to accomplish the pact's stated goal of preventing this fanatical Islamist regime from becoming a nuclear power.

The current rush to implement this disgraceful measure is rooted in Biden's political woes. The record inflation ravaging American households is the fruit of his failed policies that downgraded American oil production – not just the recent spike in gas prices caused by sanctions on Russia. But what he's doing now is creating an existential threat to Israel and other Iranian targets merely in order to try and keep the prices at the pump from going any higher while pretending that it will stop the bloodshed in Ukraine.

It's difficult to imagine a more cynical or destructive policy than one that endangers friends merely in order to boost the president's political standing at home. Much as Americans want to put a lid on gas prices, to buy that outcome by appeasing Iran is an immoral abandonment of American interests and obligations that won't aid Ukraine or stop Putin.

Ruderman Family Slams Amnesty-USA Official Who Rejected Jewish American Support for Israel Based on ‘Gut Feeling’

After Amnesty International USA director Paul O’Brien called into question a Ruderman Family Foundation survey on the connection American Jews have to Israel, based on “his gut,” Jay Ruderman, President of the foundation issued the following statement:

“By rejecting a comprehensive survey of 2,500 American Jews that overwhelmingly support Israel saying ‘his gut’ tells him otherwise, O’Brien dismisses verified data. It is indefensible for the organization’s USA director to reject the verified opinion of the American Jewish community.”

The 2020 study, commissioned by the Ruderman Family Foundation and conducted by the highly respected Mellman Group, found that eight in 10 Jewish Americans identify as “pro-Israel,” and two-thirds feel emotionally “attached” or “very attached” to the Jewish state.

In published reports on a Women’s National Democratic Club event on Wednesday, O’Brien commented on the data saying: “I actually don’t believe that to be true. I believe my gut tells me that what Jewish people in this country want is to know that there’s a sanctuary that is a safe and sustainable place that the Jews, the Jewish people can call home.”

Having sampled 2,500 Jews representing the adult Jewish population in the US, the foundation’s survey is one of the most comprehensive studies of the Jewish community in the United States in recent years, and one of the largest ever.

“If Amnesty International dismisses American facts, it calls their own reports into question,” Ruderman quipped. “Gut instincts should not be the basis for shaping opinion and policy.”

According to Jewish Insider, O’Brien suggested at a Women’s National Democratic Club meeting that most American Jews don’t want Israel to be a Jewish state, but rather “a safe Jewish space” based on “core Jewish values.”

The Palestinian Museum has a collection of some 130,000 digitized photos and documents. A couple of them portray Jews, perhaps from the 1920s, praying at the Western Wall.

Here is how they describe the scene:

Jewish Pilgrims Pray by al-Buraq Wall, Jerusalem the 1920s

Taken in the 1920s, this photograph shows Jewish pilgrims praying by the al-Buraq Wall; which Zionists and Jews call the "Wailing Wall", located in the southern section of al-Aqsa Mosque near the al-Maghariba Gate. Although the wall is an Islamic endowment, the Jews have been trying since the end of the nineteenth century to control it, claiming that it is a remnant of the temple, but they failed. After the British Mandate in 1917, Jews began to gather in masses in an attempt to hold control over the Wall area, which led to the Buraq Uprising in 1929, which was basically a revolution to defend the Wall from Judaization, which resulted in the birth of an international commission of inquiry that issued in 1930 a decision stating that Muslims have the right to the Wall. But after the 1967 June War and the occupation of the eastern part of Jerusalem by the Israeli Occupation Forces, the Occupation Authority took control over the wall area and demolished the adjacent Mughrabi Quarter and worked to Judaize and completely change the features of the place.

Source: The Zeyad Badee' Abdallah Collection

Nearly every sentence is a lie, starting with the description of Jews whose families had lived in Jerusalem for centuries as "Jewish pilgrims."

Jews never called it the Wailing Wall - that was a Christian thing.

The Jews never "failed" in identifying it as a retaining wall of the Temple. (The commission of inquiry mentioned said in no uncertain terms that "The Wailing Wall forms an integral part of the western exterior shell of the Harem-esh-Sherif which itself is the site of the ancient Jewish temples, at the present day supplanted by Moslem Mosques.")

Jews gathered there way before the Balfour Declaration.

The 1929 pogroms against Jews were pure antisemitism and had nothing to do with the Kotel except as an excuse - what did the massacres in Hebron have to do with the Wall?

And of course Jerusalem was always Jewish, and had a Jewish majority a century before the Six Day War in 1967.

Even the source is bogus. This photo comes from the Matson Collection at the Library of Congress.

The International Council of Museums has a code of ethics that says, "Museums should ensure that the information they present in displays and exhibitions is well-founded, accurate and gives appropriate consideration to represented groups or beliefs."

This is only one egregious violation of that code.

The Palestine Museum is a propaganda museum.

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Things are getting even worse for Jews in New York City.

In January, the number of hate crimes in the city went up 75% compared to January 2021. However, most of that increase came against Jews - anti-Jewish hate crimes increased 275% in January, from 4 to 15.

February was not only worse, but much worse.

Hate crimes against Jews in New York City skyrocketed 409% compared to the same month in 2021, from 11 to 56. That means that there were nearly four times as many hate crimes against Jews in February compared to January.

How does that compare to the scourge of Islamophobic hate crimes that we hear so much about?

In those two months, there were exactly three hate crimes against Muslims. And 71 against Jews.

Yes, one is too many. But when there are over 23 times as many of one crime compared to another, making them sound equivalent is not only irresponsible - it is intentionally misleading.

Those who feel that they cannot mention antisemitic incidents without reflexively including Islamophobia are minimizing antisemitism.

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Covid-19 conspiracy theorist blames Ukraine invasion on Jews

Last year, anti-vaxxer Dr. Sherry Tenpenny was widely reported to be peddling antisemitic Covid-19 conspiracy theories, which she denied. She did quote Holocaust deniers and post that "the CEOs of the major vaccine manufacturers are Jews," which she said was written by a member of her team.

It will be hard for her to deny her latest post about Jews on Telegram.

Quoting Holocaust-denial Telegram channel EndTimesNewz, she posted:

Whilst everyone is distracted by the events in (((Ukraine))), the (((WHO))) is ramming through an international treaty on 'pandemic' procedures.

Same tribe every time 🔯