Monday, March 28, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
I'm pretty sure that Bassem Eid once said that if he would start an anti-Israel NGO, he'd have huge amounts of funding from Europe the next day.
Monday, March 28, 2022
Monday, March 28, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
At the opening to the weekly cabinet meeting, Palestinian prime minister Muhammed Shtayyeh effectively incited Palestinians to violence in response to the Negev Summit.
Shtayyeh said, "We will remain loyal to our land, our sanctities, our Arab nation, our history, the present of our nation, and the freedom of our heroic people who are able to thwart all schemes aimed at undermining our right to independence, sovereignty and freedom."
He then warned Israel against continuing to attack what he called Palestinian land and holy sites. The only example he gave was "allowing settlers to enter Al-Aqsa," saying that "this matter is no longer tolerated, and our people in Jerusalem will always be on the lookout for all these attempts that will inevitably lead to an unprecedented escalation, especially since we are days away from Land Day and blessed month of Ramadan."
Land Day is on Wednesday and there has been increasing calls to violence in Palestinian media for the occasion. Ramadan starts this weekend.
Only a few weeks ago, Palestinian leaders were threatening violence, claiming Jews were planning to take over Al Aqsa Mosque for Purim. Now they are saying the same for Ramadan. They've been saying it every year that Jews have been in Jerusalem for a century. It is always a lie and always pure incitement.
Note that Shtayyeh is not calling for calm from the people he supposedly leads. He is saying that Palestinians are naturally violent and cannot stop themselves from attacking Jews, so the Jews must take responsibility to not anger the half-witted Palestinians who simply cannot control their own violent tendencies.
Shtayyeh then again appealed for Palestinians to take their rightful place at the center of the universe, stressing that "Arab normalization meetings without ending the occupation are nothing but an illusion, a mirage, and a free reward for Israel." In other words, Palestinian demands should be the most important factor in every decision made by every Arab nation, forever.
No wonder Palestinians weren't invited to the summit. It was meant for adults.
From Ian:
Israel's Negev Summit wraps in unanimous condemnation of terror attack
Israel's Negev Summit wraps in unanimous condemnation of terror attack
The Negev Summit held with the participation of foreign ministers from Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco and the UAE as well as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended on Monday as participants all condemned the deadly terror attack in Hadera.Hadera attack victims buried: 'Our lives have darkened, the ground shaken'
The summit was convened as world powers were set to sign a new nuclear deal with Iran and the United States was considering the removal of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps from its list of terror organizations, a move Israel and its regional partners strongly opposed.
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid who hosted the event said the participants had decided in the wake of the terror attack, to make their meeting an annual event.
"We are today opening a door before all the peoples of the region, including the Palestinians, and offering them to replace the way of terror and destruction with a shared future of progress and success."
"What we are doing here is making history, building a new regional architecture based on progress, technology, religious tolerance, security and intelligence cooperation," Lapid said.
"This new architecture - the shared capabilities we are building - intimidates and deters our common enemies, first and foremost Iran and its proxies."
Blinken who spoke after Lapid said Washington and its allies will work together to confront security challenges and threats including from Iran and its proxies.
Speaking at a rare Arab-Israeli forum in the Negev desert in southern Israel, Blinken also said Washington would continue to support the normalisation process between Israel and Arab countries but added that this should not be a substitute for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
The Foreign Minister of Bahrain Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani said he was proud to participate in the Negev Summit and added that attacks by Hezbollah and the Islamic State must end and that goal can only be achieved by working together.
He said his country would continue to search for ways to bring Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate peace.
UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed the region lost 43 years since the signing of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt but now was happy to be in Israel and learn about the country and the Israelis.
"It is clear to me that there is at least potential in the summit," he said. "We are trying to follow Egypt's foot step to build for a better and prosperous future," he said.
Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said that his presence along with others participating in the Negev Summit was an appropriate response to the terror attack carried out in Hadera.
Yazan Falah and Shirel Aboukrat, the two Border Police officers killed in Sunday's terror attack in Hadera, were buried on Monday afternoon, with politicians and top police commanders attending the funerals.‘Salt of the earth’: Bereaved relatives mourn 19-year-old victims of Hadera shooting
Falah, 19, was buried in his hometown of Kasra Samia. Thousands of people attended the ceremony.
"Since we heard the news are lives have darkened and the ground has shaken," Falah's uncle, Amel Falah, eulogized.
"I wish the ground had swallowed me before your mother had to receive the tidings, I wish I was dead in your place," he said. "What will I say to your mother - my sister, who dreamed to see you marry? You left a wound in our hearts that will bleed forever," he said.
"He put himself in danger every day, and was and is a pillar of fire for us, the citizens of Israel," said Public Security Minister Omer Bar Lev. "We are here thanks to him and his brothers-in-arms," he said.
"You grew up to be a smiling, friendly comrade, always ready to help anyone in need," said Justice Minister Gideon Sa'ar. "All of Israel and its citizens were hit by agony and grief, and there are no words that can comfort the suffering family, who are saying goodbye with a pained, broken heart," he said.
Aboukrat, 19, was brought to rest at the Military Cemetery in Netanya. Aboukrat's mother, Dvorah, was heard shouting, "Shirel, how did I not keep you out of harm? I want you my daughter, wake up."
"How were you taken with such savagery?" said a cousin of Aboukrat. "You dreamed of being an officer in the Border Police and a police detective, you were lucky to achieve at least one," she said.
The two were killed and 12 others were injured when two terrorists, armed with 1,100 bullets, at least three sidearms, knives and wearing flack jackets opened fire on them on main street in Hadera on Sunday evening.
Families and friends of the two Border Police officers killed in Sunday’s Hadera terror attack on Monday mourned the loss of the two 19-year-olds at the hands of terrorist gunmen.
Shirel Abukarat’s family immigrated to Israel from France in 2006.
“We escaped France in pursuit of security and this is where she died, in our country. It doesn’t make any sense. I wanted to provide them with a good life,” Abukarat’s mother Dvora told the Ynet news site.
Moshe, Abukarat’s uncle, described her as a proud Zionist and a good student.
“She was full of spirit and had a big heart,” he told Army Radio. “She loved this country and was an excellent student. She achieved everything she set her mind to and was an excellent soldier. She really loved the Border Police.”
“We had everything in France,” he noted, but the family decided to immigrate as “we are very Zionist.”
“I guess this is our fate, living by the sword. I just hope the leaders at the top start making operational decisions and realize who we’re dealing with here,” he told Ynet.
Asked whether he had any complaints about the Israeli security services, Moshe said there is nothing to do when faced with lone-wolf terrorism.
“We have the best security services in the world,” he said, noting that real-time prevention is limited “when two brainwashed, highly extreme guys suddenly decide to get up and kill in the name of Islam or Islamic State.”
Despite the tragedy, he said, “we are strong. We will cope, we will overcome because we don’t have any other choice. We can’t let ourselves be weak. We won’t let them beat us. We’ll cry, we’ll mourn, it won’t be easy.”
This is Shirel Abukart, just 19-years-old.
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) March 28, 2022
Shirel joined the border patrol 6 months ago. She was murdered last night by terrorists while defending the State of Israel. ????
She is survived by her parents and a brother. My heart breaks for her family & friends ???? pic.twitter.com/9GOKDvhTWz
Hours before they were murdered in a terror attack, Yezen Falah and Shirel Abukart, both 19, were photographed together.
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) March 28, 2022
Two beautiful souls take too early. May their memories be a blessing. pic.twitter.com/NIQC3w0cL6
- Monday, March 28, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
Israeli media reported last week that the tiny remaining Jewish community of Egypt recently discovered a new collection of old Jewish documents, known as a genizah, that had been buried in a cemetery in Cairo that was being refurbished in a joint project with American organizations.
Previous genizahs found in Cairo have been invaluable in understanding the history of the Jewish community there.
However, before the community could do anything about it, the Egyptian Antiquities Authority entered the cemetery and - without any supervision from any Jewish authorities, and apparently without even trying to use modern preservation methods - grabbed the huge collection of documents, stuffing them into bags for 48 hours, and took them away.
It is theorized that the Egyptian government was worried that the documents would be smuggled to Israel so they decided to grab them all now, against the wished of the remaining Jews in Cairo, whose relatives might be mentioned in the collection.
It is unknown how old the genizah is. No one had had the chance to study it yet. The Bassatine cemetery is the second oldest Jewish cemetery in the world, built in the ninth century. The burial plot for the genizah belonged to the Moussiri family, who immigrated to Egypt from Italy in the 18th century.
Ahmed Gendy, an Egyptian professor of Jewish and Zionist Studies who has studied the famous medieval Cairo genizah confirms that the Egyptian Antiquities Authority has been negligent on how they handled that priceless collection. When he would request an item from the genizah to study, he said that they would bring them to him in cloth bags, where insects and humidity could damage them.
Nevertheless, he supports the antisemitic actions of the authority by invoking his own antisemitism:
What the members of the Egyptian Antiquities Authority did by transferring the contents of the discovered Genizah is right, from the reality of the first experience that witnessed the theft or sale of the contents of the ancient Genizah.What the Jewish community did most likely was done in coordination with the Israeli authorities, in order to internationalize the issue, so that the international community and its institutions would pressure Egypt to implement what the members of the community want in Egypt, on the basis that what was discovered may be linked to Jewish families, and that they do not belong to the Egyptian government. But the fact that members of this sect live in Egypt, and hold Egyptian citizenship, makes the issue of their resorting to the American embassy in order to pressure Egypt on this issue reprehensible, and confirms what we mentioned earlier in another place about the Jews of their constant feeling of isolation and lack of belonging to the countries in which they live.
The community saw that the Egyptian authorities were stealing their property from their own cemetery and ignoring their protests, so they appealed to the Americans who were also working on fixing up the cemetery. This "expert" who understands how little the Egyptian Antiquities Authority cares about the preservation of priceless Jewish items says that this is proof of how Jews in Egypt aren't really patriotic Egyptians.
As far as whether Israel has the right to these documents: The Egyptian Jewish community in Egypt is reportedly down to only 3 members, while there are over 50,000 Egyptian Jews in Israel. Tens of thousands of Egyptian Jews in Israel should have a large say on their own relatives' possessions, especially when the Egyptian authorities' interest in those items is more to keep them away from Jews than to benefit from them. As with priceless Jewish objects from Iraq and Yemen, it is disingenuous to say that the antisemites who drove out the ancient Jewish communities out of their countries should have the rights to the possessions of those very people they expelled.
- Monday, March 28, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
There is little doubt that the current wave of absurd charges that Israel is guilty of apartheid that kicked off a year ago has been a coordinated attack, meant to multiply its effects by keeping the charge in the news as additional organizations issue tendentious reports that ignore any facts that contradict their foregone conclusions.
This week, Jews and Arabs are holding a high level summit on regional cooperation - in Israel. No one who truly cares about peace can oppose this. Yet the "anti-racists" who have spent so much time, money and energy to normalize modern antisemitism - people who pretend to care about human rights - are silent on the miraculous progress that has been made. Ever since Israel and the UAE made their partnership public, the anti-Israel groups have tried to move the conversation back on how terrible Israel is, and additionally, how terrible Israel's new Arab friends are as well.
There is also little doubt that the strategy started at the Durban conference of 2001, where these same NGOs participated and where the apartheid libel first emerged from the fringes.
While the current wave of reports was clearly planned, after years of setting the stage with "Israel Apartheid Weeks" and similar stunts, the question comes up of the timing. Why have these anti-Israel groups decided that this was the best time to bring out the big guns of HRW and Amnesty to write these reports?
Until someone leaks the memos and emails and conversations between these organizations and the Palestinian NGOs who feed them the raw information for them to twist, we cannot be sure. But it is difficult to think that the timing has nothing to do with the Abraham Accords which were signed only months before this wave of slanderous reports.
Anti-Israel groups love to say that they are on the right side of history. As they have orchestrated this apartheid weapon, they are careful to position it as a natural progression of world awareness of supposed Israeli crimes. Even as Israeli Arabs become more and more integrated into Israeli society, which thoroughly demolishes the claim of "Jewish supremacy," the hateful NGOs know that the media won't cover Arab-Israeli cooperation and prefer to frame Israel as racist and Palestinians as hapless, helpless victims. Between their incitement against Israel and the willing media, they had a clear path towards demonization of Israel as an inexorable consequence of Israel's faux racism.
They had a solid wall of support from the Arab world, a Western Europe that hosted regular anti-Israel events, a United Nations that was reliably antisemitic, and a generation of students who had been brainwashed into thinking that hating Israel was a liberal cause along with being pro-environment, pro-LGBTQ and anti-war.
Then the Abraham Accords happened.
The consistent anti-Israel position of the Arab world had been disintegrating for years, but just as with Arab integration into Israeli society, it was under the radar and therefore could be ignored by those who think that they are uniquely able to view the great tides of history as supporting their beliefs. Even Israel's peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan didn't hurt their cause because the public rhetoric from those states remained anti-Israel.
The Israel-haters were caught flat-footed. The people who claim to support world peace and cooperation were confronted with the two enemies they could count on to further their agenda being peaceful and cooperating. The "racist" Jews welcomed the partnership with their Arab counterparts, and more importantly, the moderate Arabs were equally enthusiastic about cooperating with supposed "Jewish supremacists. "
Jewish-Arab peace was not only possible but wildly successful. And the effect on the larger Arab world was electrifying, as Israeli athletes were now appearing in events throughout the Arab world with Hatikva playing when they won, and Saudi Arabia allowing El Al planes to fly over their territory. The cold peace with Egypt and Jordan have been warming up.
The Israel haters who spent decades cultivating their aura of liberalism, their hate of hate and bigotry, and their support of peace at any price were suddenly on the wrong side of history by their own definition of how history is supposed to progress.
For the two decades since Durban, the Israel haters set the agenda of carefully inciting world hatred against the only Jewish state by preaching anti-racism. Yet even the media that they could rely on to show their side of the story could not ignore Jews and Arabs enthusiastically visiting each other's states, signing new agreements every week, and praising each other.
Their plan of making Israel look like South Africa was being destroyed with the photos of Jews and Arab Muslims literally embracing each other. Anyone could see that Israel was not racist - on the contrary, Zionist Jews and Arabs could cooperate and could work together.
Isn't that the right side of history?
The Israel haters could not stomach losing the progress they made at demonizing Israel. They need to take back the initiative of inciting hate against today's proud Jews. They need to take back the narrative of Jewish racism against Arabs, or at the very least against Palestinian Arabs. They want to control the conversation back to their agenda.
In this light, it is ever more clear that the far-Left activists of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty are in fact antisemites in every sense.
Real anti-racists would fully support Jews being treated as equals in the Arab world. Real opponents of bigotry would welcome Jewish/Arab cooperation.
Only bigots would prioritize separation and boycotts against Jews over partnership. Only antisemites would be aghast at the prospect of "normalization" between the Jewish state and its neighbors.
This week, Jews and Arabs are holding a high level summit on regional cooperation - in Israel. No one who truly cares about peace can oppose this. Yet the "anti-racists" who have spent so much time, money and energy to normalize modern antisemitism - people who pretend to care about human rights - are silent on the miraculous progress that has been made. Ever since Israel and the UAE made their partnership public, the anti-Israel groups have tried to move the conversation back on how terrible Israel is, and additionally, how terrible Israel's new Arab friends are as well. Their inability to say a positive word about the biggest earthquake in Israel/Arab relations since Camp David proves that they are the real bigots, and that their attacks on Israel in the name of anti-bigotry is in fact proof of their own bigotry and hate.
- Monday, March 28, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
The Jerusalem Post reported on March 8:
A United States grant of $5.5 million for two Israeli-Palestinian business partnerships for female entrepreneurs was awarded Tuesday under the Middle East Partnership for Peace Act (MEPPA).It’s a small part of MEPPA’s $250m. five-year program to build “people-to-people” relations through economic partnerships.
This is all very nice. But this next sentence should be troubling for anyone:
Coleman was vague on the details with regard to the grant’s recipients, noting that participants did not want their identities to be known.
Why? Why wouldn't the participants want their identities to be known?
Because Palestinian organizations are at risk for engaging in "normalization" with Israel. The Palestinian Authority itself threatens any organization that deals with Israeli counterparts.
The US wants to help cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians. (So does the EU.) But the Palestinian leaders are dead set against this.
The Palestinian Authority is trying to stymie normal relations between Israelis and Palestinians, in this case for female entrepreneurs but also for sports competitions or agriculture information or anything.
Does anyone see a problem here?
The US and EU want to promote these programs in order to create a culture of peace. The Palestinian leadership is against a culture of peace. Any US efforts are despite the efforts of the PA to thwart them.
Because the PA fundamentally doesn't want peace with Israel. And it never did.
Everyone knows it. No one wants to say it out loud.
(h/t Irene)
Sunday, March 27, 2022
- Sunday, March 27, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
Two Arabs started shooting police and civilians before they were killed.
As with last week's attack, the terrorists were Israeli Arabs who had ties with ISIS.
Another similarity is that Israeli Arabs denounced the attack, without reservation. In this case the city of Umm al Fahm and the heads of the major Arab political parties condemned the attack.
The reaction from terror groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad was identical in both cases as well - praise for the attack, and justification for it as a "natural response" to Israeli actions.
And from the Palestinian Authority and their mouthpieces, in both cases - silence. The official Wafa news agency didn't report either attack, or if they did it was buried far from their front page.
So we have three sets of people referred to as Palestinians whose responses to terror attacks are quite different.
The average Palestinian Arab in the territories is supportive of terror attacks. Opinion polls have shown this to be the case time after time. Over the years, only about half support the concept of "armed resistance" in theory, but actual attacks are overwhelmingly supported.
The Palestinian Authority has never condemned a terror attack in a way that gave the impression that they were truly horrified by it. It was always a pro forma denunciation, with a wink to the terrorists.
The terror groups, and Fatah's "military wing," are more open about their support of terror, and quite proud of the attacks. Even though the attacks are associated with ISIS, which mainstream Arabs generally hate. They are effectively allies of the Islamic State.
Israeli Arabs, on the other hand, appear to be genuinely upset. Part of it might be because of worries about any backlash against them, but their responses to these two attacks do not strike me as being insincere, unlike the reluctant condemnations that we have seen in the past from the PA which appeared to be given under pressure from the US and Europe.
So we have three disparate reactions to terrorism, but really only two: the Palestinian Authority incites terror attacks themselves and praises terrorists constantly in their media. When forced to make a statement, their condemnations ring hollow.
Deep down, they are happy.
There is another group that is important to track as well: the Western apologists for Palestinian "rights." They pretend to be against terror but they always end up justifying it. Their reactions are very similar to the Palestinian Authority. During the height of the second intifada, the Western champions of the Palestinian cause did everything they could to come up with reasons why terrorism against Jews was justified. And you can see them, today, in the pages of Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada and even UN Special Rapporteur reports.
Notably, the attendees at the Negev Summit from Egypt, the UAE, Morocco and Bahrain condemned the attack.
The Arab world has been divided. We can see these divisions in how they react to the idea of Jews having their own state. And the divisions are mirrored in the Western world - with some people who claim to want peace being the ones who justify terror.
The common denominator is old fashioned antisemitism. That is what drives both the the Western haters of Israel and apologists for terror and the Arab rejectionist front - who generally are also pro-Iran and pro-Russia.
It is a different world now, and the divisions between good and evil, moral and immoral, philosemitic and antisemitic are lined up with the divisions between those who oppose terror without any caveats and those who justify it.
- Sunday, March 27, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
The main topic is expected to be the Iran nuclear deal and its danger to the region.
Palestinian terror groups are very angry. A group of them issued a statement that "the real threat to the Arab nation is only the Israeli threat, and any other threats are fabricated illusions from the United States and its ally Israel, and aim only to justify the establishment of an Arab-Israeli alliance as an extension of NATO."
While the summit shows how the Middle East has changed dramatically in the past couple of years, and proves how wrong the critics who shrugged the Abraham Accords aside have been.
Notably, the Palestinians were not invited. After decades of them setting the agenda for the region by acting as a veto for what all Arab nations can do, they have sunk into irrelevance.
A Palestinian news site quoted an Israeli official on their absence, saying, "relations with the Palestinians are not as they should be, and therefore the summit was limited to Israel and its Arab neighbors, whether new or old friends. It is not important for the Palestinians to be on the table in any summit meeting with Arab countries."
And this is true. Palestinians overplayed their hand time and time again, and the Arab nations have had enough. Palestinians have become what they fear most: they are irrelevant, after being the center of attention in the Arab world and the West.
The only concern is that they act like toddlers - and when toddlers don't get the attention they demand, they do whatever they need to do to gain that attention.
From Ian:
David Collier: Edinburgh Council want to hug a proscribed terrorist group
David Collier: Edinburgh Council want to hug a proscribed terrorist group
On Tuesday – unbelievably -the Policy and Sustainability Committee of Edinburgh Council will debate and vote on a motion to twin Edinburgh with the HQ of a radical Islamic terrorist group. The 17 Councillors on this Committee (5 SNP, 5 Conservative, 3 Labour, 2 LibDem, 2 Green) will debate a petition concocted by an antisemite whose twisted thinking proved even too toxic for the proscribed group Labour Against the Witchhunt. Yes, that’s right, Tony Greenstein, a notorious antisemite himself, kicked this guy out over his antisemitism. That is how bad he is.New book: Arab opposition to Zionism has always been antisemitic
Yet his vile motion, that seeks to give the proscribed terror group Hamas a hug, is going be discussed. And even though it was born from the mind of a clear antisemite, two SNP Westminster MPs, Tommy Sheppard and Philippa Whitford, have disgracefully supported the proposal.
According to the original proposal in 2019, there seems to be a council process which means they have to consider a petition that garners more than 200 signatures ‘unless there is a good reason to oppose it’.
I am sure that if this were a far-right racist, asking for a debate that baited Edinburgh’s black community, the Council would have triggered the ‘opposition’ clause by now. The fact this is still going ahead because it only baits Jews – is just more proof that racism against Jews is still acceptable in Scotland.
The toxic proposer.
Anyone who is familiar with the fight against antisemitism in the Labour Party needs no introduction to Pete Gregson, the key actor behind this debate.
Gregson was expelled by the GMB union for antisemitism. Gregson has expressed a view that the Holocaust had been exaggerated. He added that this was ‘by Israel’, for ‘political purposes’. Gregson has previously made complaints about the way he has been portrayed as an antisemite in the media. IPSO did not agree with him.
He was a member of Labour Against the Witchhunt (LAW), but his association and support for 9/11 truther Ian Fantom and his bunch of extremists, along with his description of Holocaust denier Nick Kollerstrom as not a ‘denier’, but a ”Holocaust sceptic’ – led to him being ousted. It is worth noting that LAW is chock full of antisemites and conspiracy theorists itself, and it has even been proscribed by the Labour Party. Gregson was too toxic even for them.
LAW didn’t even support his twinning ideas. Too toxic for LAW, but suitable for Edinburgh Council. That surely is not something to be proud of.
Arab antisemitism is indistinguishable from anti-Zionism, suggests a new book by Elder of Ziyon, veteran analyst and blogger. Point of No Return reviews The Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism.Golda Meir, reconsidered through a feminist lens
For anyone following Middle Eastern news as it relates to Israel, Elder of Ziyon has long been the go-to blog for up-to-the minute news and analysis. No one knows Elder’s true identity, but his avatar is the supposed likeness of the medieval rabbi and thinker Rashi. Elder uses him to symbolise the cabal purveying one of the most notorious of published conspiracy theories – The Protocols of the Elders of Ziyon. It is a Tsarist forgery hatched in 19th century Russia and still a best-seller in Arab bookshops.
For 14 years now Elder of Ziyon has been stroking his beard and ruminating over modern manifestations of antisemitism, the overarching topic of his blog. Now a book in three sections distils the themes he has been exploring in over 30,000 posts. The result is The Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism.
The book is a welcome addition to any reader’s bookshelf.
In contrast to the Jerusalem Declaration which provides an impossibly narrow definition, Elder offers an even broader definition of antisemitism than the widely-accepted IHRA. Any example aimed at Jews as individuals, people, as a religion or an ethnic group can be antisemitic, he suggests. Elder’s principal preoccupation is with leftwing antisemitism, a phenomenon routinely ignored by progressives and underrated in the USA. The apathy of the Jewish community to this form of antisemitism, he claims, is exacerbated by poor leadership, ignorance, and lack of pride in Judaism and Israel.
If state-subsidized daycare is still a distant dream in most countries, it was a truly radical idea in the 1930s, when few mothers worked outside the home.
Yet that was when this social service was pioneered in Palestine. Jewish women needed safe and affordable childcare as they worked alongside their husbands to build what would become the state of Israel.
One of those women was Golda Meir.
Decades before serving as Israel’s fourth, and only female, prime minister (from 1969 to 1974), Meir was a member of the Women Workers Council and in the 1950s became Minister of Labor.
Believing that work was essential to dignity, Meir engineered Israel’s Social Security Act and guaranteed maternity leave with pay, says Boston University law professor Pnina Lahav.
Based on years of research, Lahav’s book, The Only Woman in the Room: Golda Meir and Her Path to Power, will be released on September 6 by Princeton University Press.
The book is described as a feminist biography, reexamining Meir’s life through the lens of gender.
- Sunday, March 27, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
The Israeli government is on Sunday expected to raise the number of permits for Gazans to work in Israel by an additional 8,000, to a total of 20,000, the Ministry for Regional Cooperation said.Cabinet ministers are set to sign off on a government resolution authorizing the additional permits at their weekly meeting. The decision comes as Israel seeks to reduce tensions with the Palestinians before the Ramadan holiday, with some officials fearing heightened tensions.The quota was raised to 12,000 permits just two weeks ago. An Israeli security official briefed reporters at the time that the ceiling would soon be raised to 20,000 at the initiative of Defense Minister Benny Gantz.Qatari envoy to the Gaza Strip Mohammad al-Emadi, who regularly meets with both Israeli and Palestinian officials, told Gaza media on Thursday that Israel had pledged to eventually raise the quota to 30,000 permits.
But...I thought that Israel was racist and only wanted to bomb civilians in Gaza, not help them out!
Must be that Israel wants to enslave them by paying them triple the normal wage in Gaza. Yeah, that must be it.
And that's exactly how the haters spin this sort of news. Because they start from the assumption that Jews are greedy, malicious, and murderous.
The idea that Israel has every interest in helping Gaza's economy, and that since there have been few incidents from Gaza in recent months and therefore there is little additional risk from allowing more workers with appropriate security vetting - the haters don't want anyone to think that way. The only "fact" to them is Jewish mendacity, and they twist every story to fit that predetermined conclusion.
And this includes "human rights experts" and academics and politicians. People who swear that they are against antisemitism engage in it every day by assuming that the Israeli government and Israelis are simply awful people, and they pretend that "oh, I don't hate Jews, just Israelis or Zionists." They really believe it. Yet their actions and feelings about Israel and Israelis and Zionists are exactly the same as those of right-wing antisemites against Jews.
- Sunday, March 27, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
Al Watan Voice, Arab antisemitism, conspiracy theories, Hassan M. Yousef, Jews control the world, Khazar libel, Muslim antisemitism, PEZ, The Protocols
The thoroughly discredited Khazar theory, that claims that all Ashkenazic Jews are descended from people in the Khazar kingdom that converted to Judaism in the ninth century, has been a favorite of Arab Jew-haters for at least seven decades.
A writer in Syria's Al Watan, Hassan M. Yousef, has extended this fairy tale to connect the Khazars to the Elders of Zion conspiracy theory of rich Jewish world domination.
In the year 802 AD, a number of Jewish merchants, led by Rabbi Ebadi, came to Khazaria from Iran after a revolt broke out against them. The shrewd rabbi succeeded in persuading Khagan Khazaria to convert to Judaism in order to remain independent, because his conversion to Islam would make him a follower of Baghdad, and his conversion to Christianity would make him a follower of Constantinople. After Judaism was declared the official religion of the country, the rabbi refused the entry of the entire population into his religion, and made Judaism a monopoly on the nobility of the major merchants, army leaders and notables of the people.The Russian historian and archaeologist Lev Gumilyov states in his book “The Discovery of Khazaria,” that the immigrant Jews “bloodily and brutally suppressed any popular revolt demanding a limitation of the domination of foreign Jews.”The important thing is that Khazaria, thanks to its strategic location, controlled the trade of Chinese silk and Siberian fur, and collected taxes from the caravans that passed through it. In the year 965 AD, the Russians were fed up with its policy and attacked it from the land and across the Volga River under the leadership of Prince Svetislav, and its Jews were scattered in Eastern and Central Europe. The most amazing thing that historians have reported is that the Jews of the ruling class in Khazaria disappeared with their money and gold just before it fell into the hands of the Russians. The old Russian references say: "When the Russians entered the city of Itil, the capital of Khazaria, they did not find any of its rulers or anything from the treasury." It is said that the rich Jews of Khazaria left with their money and went to Venice and Sardinia via Byzantium, where they established maritime trading companies that dominated trade in the Mediterranean, through which they doubled their wealth and then moved to Andalusia. After the weakening of Spain's role, they moved to Britain, and established the Bank of England, which collected most of the world's gold reserves. In the mid-nineteenth century, their grandchildren transferred their money to America, which is called “the second Khazaria,” and there they established Hollywood and the American Federal Treasury, and those who remained in Europe established the Zionist movement. As for the rest of the story, we not only know it, but we live it as a daily tragedy.
See? Khazars, Jews, money, brutality, theft, controlling Spain, somehow taking over England 200 years before Jews were allowed to return there, then to take over Hollywood and create the Federal Reserve and also Zionism. It all fits together so perfectly!
Hassan Yousef has a long resume of books, articles, films, stories, and awards.
- Sunday, March 27, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
Anadolu Agency reports:
OK, let's look at Jerusalem's Christian population since 1922. This is based on the Wikipedia article on Demographic History of Jerusalem and the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics for the 2020 number.
A church leader in Jerusalem has expressed concern over the steep decline of the holy city’s Christian population over the years.Wadih Abu Nassar, the spokesman for the Council of Heads of Catholic Churches in Jerusalem, said Christians constituted about 25% of the population of Jerusalem in 1922. But the number has since fallen drastically to less than 1%, he noted.According to Israeli sources, the population of Jerusalem was 936,000 as of 2019. Jews made up 62% of the city’s population, with Palestinians making up the remaining 38%.Abu Nassar said the Christian population accounts for less than 10,000 of the total number of Jerusalemites.He attributed the drop in the number of Christians to a combination of reasons ranging from economic to political....Abu Nassar has also blamed attacks by Jewish extremists on Palestinians and expansion of illegal settlements as another key reason behind the decline in Jerusalem’s Christian population."There is an increase in illegal settlement activity in many neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, and this is not a secret, and it targets many places, including some Christian holy sites," he said.
Today, there aren't less than 10,000 Christians in Jerusalem - there are 16,300, and the number has been slowly rising since 1967. There has been no decline in the Christian population since 1922.
The only time that the number of Christians has ever decreased in Jerusalem since 1900 has been under Muslim rule - both under Ottoman rule, although those numbers from the 19th century are not reliable, and most emphatically during Jordanian rule, when more than half the Christians in Jerusalem fled the city even as the number of Muslims nearly doubled.
Under Israeli rule, the number of Muslims skyrocketed while the number of Christians have steadily increased, although not close to the rate of the rest of the city.
Which shows that "Jewish extremists" have no discernible impact on Christians leaving Jerusalem - but Muslim control definitely does.
You will find that the Christian population of cities in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, like Bethlehem, have been decreasing markedly under Palestinian Muslim rule. Which means that, as with the rest of the region, Christians are fleeing because of Muslims - not because of Jews.
Wadih Abu Nassar is lying both about the absolute numbers and about the reasons. Not once does he mention Muslim intimidation and attacks on Christians that have been the primary reason for Christian flight throughout the entire Middle East.
This is not surprising - Christian Arabs are historically more antisemitic than Muslim Arabs and they are more frightened of a backlash from Arab Muslims, so they play the dhimmi role to the hilt.
Also not surprisingly, anti-Israel media like Palestine Chronicle and Middle East Monitor have picked up on this story, because the lie that Jews are discriminating against Christians (while somehow Muslims keep increasing their numbers under Jewish rule) is one of the big lies they love to promulgate.
Saturday, March 26, 2022
From Ian:
Russia bombs Drobitsky Yar Holocaust memorial in Ukraine
Biden says Putin ‘cannot remain in power’; White House: He didn’t mean regime change
Russia bombs Drobitsky Yar Holocaust memorial in Ukraine
Russian artillery hit the menorah-shaped monument at the entrance to the Drobytsky Yar Holocaust memorial complex on Saturday, the United Jewish Community of Ukraine reported via Telegram.Top Zelensky adviser opens up about his Jewish roots, urges greater Israeli support
According to the State Archives of the Kharkiv Region, between 16,000 and 20,000 victims of the Holocaust were shot and killed at the site, near Kharkivin northeastern Ukraine.
Earlier in Russia’s invasion, Russian missiles and shells struck close to the Babyn Yar site, where more than 33,000 Jews were massacred on September 29-30,1941.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took to Twitter to condemn the Babyn Yar attack.
“To the world: what is the point of saying ‘never again’ for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar?” Zelensky wrote. “At least 5 killed. History repeating…”
This is the second time Russia's "denazification" campaign in Ukraine seems to target memorials dedicated to those the Nazis hurt the most.
A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke at length about his own Jewish heritage during a conversation Thursday with Israeli journalists.
Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, conducted the hour-long briefing in Ukrainian, using an interpreter. Until, that is, he was asked about his Jewish heritage.
Yermak switched to English only for this response, speaking directly to the Israelis.
“My father is Jewish, he was born in Kyiv,” said the 50-year-old, dressed in the military fleece that Ukraine’s leadership has donned throughout the war with Russia.
“Some of my relatives were killed in Babyn Yar,” he stressed, referring to the ravine in Kyiv in which over 33,000 Jews were slaughtered by Nazi Germany and its local allies in September 1941.
“It was a shock when one of the first shells hit the city of Uman, and the next week, another shell killed the family with children who were visiting the Babyn Yar memorial,” Yermak continued. “The millions of people who died do not deserve for their memory to be burned.” A Jewish man looks at the buildings near the synagogue of Uman, central Ukraine, on March 9, 2022. (Daphne Rousseau / AFP)
“The slogan ‘Never Again’ is very relevant,” he stressed.
Earlier this month, Yermak wrote about the history of Ukraine’s Jews in a Times of Israel op-ed, and compared Ukrainians under attack from Russia to Jews murdered by Nazis.
“The Jewish people know all too well the threat of being eradicated,” he wrote. “Today, Ukraine is Israel.”
Biden says Putin ‘cannot remain in power’; White House: He didn’t mean regime change
US President Joe Biden said Saturday that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” dramatically escalating the rhetoric against the Russian leader after his brutal invasion of Ukraine.
Even as Biden’s words rocketed around the world, the White House attempted to clarify soon after Biden finished speaking in Poland that he was not calling for a new government in Russia.
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said at the very end of a speech in Poland’s capital that served as the capstone on a four-day trip to Europe.
A White House official asserted that Biden was “not discussing Putin’s power in Russia or regime change.” The official, who was not authorized to comment by name and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Biden’s point was that “Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region.”
The White House declined to comment on whether Biden’s statement about Putin was part of his prepared remarks.
The Kremlin dismissed the remarks, saying it was up to Russians to choose their own president.
Asked about Biden’s comment, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters: “That’s not for Biden to decide. The president of Russia is elected by Russians.”
Biden has frequently talked about ensuring that the Kremlin’s invasion, now in its second month, becomes a “strategic failure” for Putin and has described the Russian leader as a “war criminal.”
But until his remarks in Warsaw, the American leader had not veered toward suggesting Putin should not run Russia. Earlier on Saturday, shortly after meeting with Ukrainian refugees, Biden called Putin a “butcher.”
and the White House will walk it back and say that’s not what he meant, and much of the media will act like the president randomly declaring that American troops will be entering the Russian war against Ukraine is no big deal. https://t.co/P4UvLpWz4Y
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) March 25, 2022
Friday, March 25, 2022
From Ian:
Behind the Scenes of Amnesty International’s Report on Israel
Caroline Glick: Becoming the strong tribe of the Middle East
Behind the Scenes of Amnesty International’s Report on Israel
A recently published Amnesty International report declared that Israel practices a policy of apartheid against the Palestinians, both in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In my view, this is a ridiculous claim, but since this is a case of a detailed report by a prestigious organization, cries of antisemitism will clearly not be helpful here. Readers around the world would rather believe an organization that is considered reliable and neutral and not the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Rep. Torres urges American Jews to worry more about anti-Israel sentiment in Congress
I wish to address the report itself, particularly at the methodological level.
Amnesty International’s reports are written anonymously. There is no way to know who authored the report, how many researchers were involved in its preparation, what their professional experience is and so on. In addition, when examining the sources on which the current report is based, a disturbing picture emerges. The report contains about 1,600 footnotes, the majority of which refer to past reports and policy papers by Amnesty International, B’Tselem, Adalah, HaMoked, Ir Amim, Bimkom, Al-Haq, and additional far-Left Israeli organizations, as well as reports by the UN Human Rights Council and similar international bodies. When these are the sources for “research” that purports to examine the State of Israel’s attitude toward its Arab population from 1948 to the present, it is clear that the result will be biased and one-sided. While I am not familiar with all the legal experts quoted in the report, if one relies on people like John Dugard, who is known for his critical attitude toward Israel, it is clear that the views of people like him will lead any reasonable person to similar conclusions. Furthermore, despite the fact that the report claims to confirm the theory that Israel, since its inception, has aspired to discriminate against Arabs on racial grounds, the number of sources concerning Israel’s first fifty years is negligible compared to those concerning recent decades.
Amnesty International prides itself on the organization’s high level of research and its neutrality. This report is an extreme example of how baseless that claim is. If one writes a report based almost entirely on all one-sided sources, does not bother to engage with civil society organizations that hold a different perspective, and does not turn to mainstream academics and legal experts, then he is conducting biased and negligent research with the main purpose of smearing Israel and harming its international status. His aim is not to promote human rights. Anyone who seeks to have a dialogue with Israel and improve its human rights situation should not label it an apartheid state, which by definition makes it illegitimate.
A New York congressman who has been taken to task by the left and faced social media harassment for his strong defense of Israel is cautioning the Jewish community to avoid complacency over bipartisan support for Israel in Congress.
“We cannot afford to lull ourselves into a false sense of security,” Torres, a first-term Democrat representing the South Bronx, said in a talk at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue on Wednesday. “We live in a time where nothing can be taken for granted.”
Torres, 34, pointed to the House vote on the replenishment of Israel’s anti-missile Iron Dome defense system in September which was opposed by nine members, including eight progressive Democrats. Pro-Israel groups celebrated the fact that Israel still enjoys overwhelming bipartisan support and dismissed the opposition as a fringe group.
“But nine today could be 90 in five years,” Torres warned. “It could be 190 in 10 years.”
Interviewed by author Abigail Pogrebin, a Forward contributor, Torres was asked whether he sought to engage with his progressive colleagues about the vote. He said that while a majority of Americans “are persuadable on the issue,” he is sticking with his principle “not to reason with people who refuse to be reasoned with.”
Torres has been an outspoken supporter of Israel ever since he was elected in 2013, when he was 24, to represent the South Bronx on the City Council. His first trip to Israel in 2015 was met by protests from far-left activists, but he credits that experience with helping him form his views of the Jewish state.
Caroline Glick: Becoming the strong tribe of the Middle East
The only fight Bennett, Lapid and Gantz are (half-heartedly) waging is against the administration's reported plan to withdraw Trump's terrorist designation of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps. While this is important, it misses the point and sets a trap for Israel. The biggest problem with Biden's deal with Iran is that it legitimizes Iran's efforts to build a nuclear arsenal and become the region's hegemon. Withdrawing the IRGC's terrorist designation would be a terrible thing, but it is a much lower level of disaster than the deal itself. Moreover, if Bennett, Lapid and Gantz succeed, and Biden retains the IRGC's terrorist designation, he and his team will use the concession as "proof" that they is pro-Israel, even as their main policy imperils Israel's very existence.The Caroline Glick Show Ep44 – Biden and Obama’s Putin Two-Step in Ukraine and Iran
The Saudis and the Emiratis have responded to the administration's hostility by refusing to speak with Biden or his advisors. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who is scheduled to come to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, was forced to cancel his planned follow-on trip to Saudi Arabia and the UAE because their governments refused to host him. Rather than learn from Israel's Arab partners, and begin to extract a price from the administration for its hostility towards Israel, Bennett is reportedly trying to lobby the Saudis and Emiratis on the administration's behalf. On Thursday reports said Bennett was even trying to organize a summit in Jerusalem during Blinken's visit with MBZ.
These actions don't raise Israel's star in Arab capitals. Bennett's slavish devotion to the abusive administration makes him look weak and foolish to the Arabs who are deliberating now whether to bet their future on Israel or Iran. If MBZ does come to Jerusalem, he is liable to walk away from the summit with a US and Israeli agreement to rehabilitate Syria and so empower Iran.
It isn't that Israel doesn't have another play. It does.
Earlier this week, Bennett claimed that there was no point in campaigning against the nuclear deal because it was already completed and irreversible. This is false. The Biden administration is much weaker politically than the Obama administration was. Several Democrats are publicly opposing Biden's deal with Iran. It isn't too late to kill it.
And even if the campaign fails to stop the deal from going forward, it's still imperative that Israel fight it. Doing so will mobilize US public opinion against it, and energize politicians from both parties. It will also drive home that Israel will not be bound by the deal, which endangers its very existence.
Even more critically, in the face of MBZ's Syria initiative at Sharm Tuesday, Israel must fight it to broadcast its power and seriousness of purpose to the Arabs at this critical moment when they are trying to choose between working with Israel or groveling to Iran.
Maybe a Republican administration will be inaugurated in 2025 that will work to restore America's standing as the strongest tribe in the Middle East by reinstating its commitment to Israel and the Sunnis and fighting Iran. But Israel can't place its trust in such a prospect. Today, in the face of Biden's abandonment, Israel has but one option – to become the strong tribe of the Middle East.
How can Biden call Putin a war criminal for his aggression in Ukraine while subcontracting his signature foreign policy – cutting a deal that makes Iran a nuclear state and regional hegemon – to Putin?
For answers to this key question, in this week’s Middle East News Hour I spoke to Mideast scholar Tony Badran from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Last week Tony published an important article on this topic in Tablet online magazine.
Towards the end of our discussion we moved from the administration’s policy of empowering Iran to its policy of pretending that Hezbollah is not in charge in Lebanon.
- Friday, March 25, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
- UNRWA-USA
UNRWA USA announced some new hires that they are excited about.
Here is one of them: Diala Ghneim, Communications Manager.
Canary Mission has a page on her and says that she has supported terrorists on Facebook (she took down that link) and is/was a member of the “F**k Israel" Facebook group.
Ghneim was also a student activist with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Rutgers University.
Her current Facebook page show that she "likes" the BDS movement and many anti-Israel groups.
A typical Facebook post claims that Jesus was a Palestinian with the type of propaganda we would expect at UNRWA schools.
UNRWA-USA doesn't have the same neutrality requirements that UNRWA has, as it is not a UN agency. So the hate and lies can be freely shared, as we've seen many times in the past.
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips: Why liberals fail to equate Israel and Ukraine
Melanie Phillips: Why liberals fail to equate Israel and Ukraine
This is the same kind of mind-bending reversal that we hear from Putin, the former KGB officer, when he dismisses Ukraine as a fake country involved in aggressive action against Russia.The Lesson of Ukraine
The similarity is hardly surprising since the entire Palestinian fiction was concocted in the 1960s between the terrorist leader Yasser Arafat and the Soviet Union.
This has been nourished in the West by the liberal belief that the nation-state is the fount of all evil, and that nationalism (in this case, Zionism) leads inevitably to prejudice, aggression and war.
Yet although Putin is an advertisement for monstrous nationalist excess, the astonishing defense against him being mounted by the Ukrainians demonstrates how an aggressor can only be repelled if people have the strongest possible attachment to their nation and understand that their freedom depends upon its survival.
The idea that Western liberals will therefore now rethink their hostility to the nation is, however, surely misplaced. This is because they aren’t in favor of national self-determination so much as they are opposed to economic and military power, which they believe makes inevitable victims out of those who can’t match it.
By this standard, the West can never be victimized by the developing world, whose violence is to be excused as “resistance.”
This is why to such people the Israelis, who have economic and military power, can never be victims. More noxiously still, the endemically anti-Semitic West believes that the Jews are cosmically all-powerful, and run the world in their own interests and to the disadvantage of everyone else. So Israel is multiply damned.
The recent upsurge of attacks against Israelis has reinforced concerns that the imminent arrival of Ramadan will produce a lethal spike in incitement and terrorism.
There are particular worries that the upcoming surrender to Iran by the Biden administration over the nuclear deal will galvanize Gaza and the disputed territories into murderous attacks, in the giddy belief that the Islamic world is now on the verge of finally annihilating Israel.
Will anyone care if Israelis find themselves once again under sustained onslaught? Only if Israel retaliates with military force. Then what the West will care about—deeply—is that the Jews have the gall to fight back.
The Ukrainians are allowed to do so. The Jews are not.
But in contrast to those who believed in standing firm against totalitarian regimes, there was always a strong pacifist and left-wing voice that came to dominate the US State Department and academia, as happened in the UK. This was reinforced by a perception that the US over-reacted to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and their jihadist supporters. When Barack Obama became president with no experience in foreign affairs, he surrounded himself with people who were committed to such an ideology, one that saw America as racist and imperialist. They believed that being apologetic and nice to one’s enemies would win them over. This doctrine produced the pathetically weak deal with Iran, which they assessed as a regime one could reason with (echoing Chamberlain’s comments about Hitler). In fact, Tehran was simply playing on American naiveté to pursue its violent repressive and atomic agenda. As we know, weakness only encourages more violence.Ukraine is not Palestine, no matter what celebrities say - opinion
Obama’s passiveness over Crimea in 2014 and his refusal to stand up to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad when he used chemical weapons all contributed to a perception that the US had lost its mojo. The chaos of the Afghanistan withdrawal suggested it had lost its competence. The Biden administration’s policies have only shown America’s hitherto allies that they cannot rely on the US for protection. Is the US now just too weak to take serious, rather than token, action? To impose a no-fly zone? To provide jets and missiles? Is it just fed up with wars and weakened by internal divisions? Perhaps it is too narcissistic, cowardly, or simply in the wrong hands.
As for the United Nations, it has once again proven what a useless and morally compromised waste of time it is. Any organization that still gives Russia and China a veto has lost any moral authority whatsoever (not that it had any before). The US, despite its words of protest and token sanctions, has shown itself to be a paper tiger. Meanwhile, far poorer and weaker states are helping the Ukrainians.
Diplomacy has failed. Murder continues each day. We still do not know how this will play out. All around the world, from the Americas, to Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East, there are failed and corrupt regimes with millions of ordinary people at daily risk of murder, rape, and theft. And I do not hold out much hope of this changing soon. Yet constant acts of humanity, charity, and support show that the human spirit has not been completely crushed. And if most Russians and Chinese are happy with their totalitarian regimes, good luck to them. But as for the rest, every state must now realize how foolhardy it is to rely on the US, and do what it takes to defend themselves against violence and tyranny.
Fine words and good intentions have their place in our world. But the reality is that bullies are cowards, and the only to deal with them is to stand up to them. “ Do not trust princes,” says the Psalmist — as true today as it was then. We are as far from a peaceful Messianic world now as we have ever been.
In 2011, [Noa] Tishby founded Act for Israel. She’s brought professionals to the region to see what’s really going on “beyond the conflict,” has spoken in front of the United Nations several times, and continues to act in TV and movies, although she admits that advocacy is now her true calling.
In her most recent Facebook video, Tishby doesn’t pull any punches. Here’s a lightly edited version of her rebuttal to Hadid’s screed.
“I can’t believe I actually have to say this, but let’s be clear. Ukraine is not Palestine and Israel is not Russia. Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign democracy, in order to place it under Russian influence.
“And yet supermodels like Gigi Hadid blatantly make this false and dangerous equivalency, reporting it as fact. By trying to co-opt the war in Ukraine, one which has nothing to do with Israel, people like Gigi Hadid not only harm the real victims, the people of Ukraine, they help flame anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiments all over the world.
“If you want to help the people of Ukraine, stop hijacking their horrific war. Stop bringing the only Jewish state into your false activism. This war is caused by one man and one man only. Stop lying about it. Stop bringing Israel into it.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you, Noa Tishby. Now go out and buy her book. Or better yet, order an extra copy and have it express-mailed directly to Gigi Hadid.
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