Thursday, March 24, 2016

Use the BDS tools against them! Thank McGraw Hill for withdrawing the textbook with The Map That Lies

The BDS crowd was taken by surprise by how fast McGraw-Hill acted after I reported that one of their textbooks included the famous Map That Lies. McGraw-Hill properly withdrew the book from circulation and said it would destroy all copies of the textbook, offering refunds.

Now they are trying to pressure McGraw-Hill executives to change their minds. The Israel-haters set up a page to automatically write letters to McGraw-Hill executives and to tweet what they've done.

Luckily, that page can also be used to email the executives a thank you for how well they responded to the discovery of lying, anti-Israel propaganda in their textbook,

Click on their page and write a letter of appreciation to McGraw-Hill using the BDSers' own tools.

The chances of McGraw Hill changing their minds is essentially zero, but supporting them in their decision can create positive dividends in the future. And it won't take too many "thank yous" to counter the dozens of insulting anti-Israel letters they are receiving. People like to hear compliments, after all, and McGraw-Hill acted like a company that cares about the truth in their textbooks - a very admirable trait indeed.

So take the three minutes to write the letter and thank them. The BDSers set the page up, the least you can do to thank them would be to use it.

The BDSers have a lot of other letter writing campaigns as well, especially to state legislators who are considering bills to condemn or outlaw boycotts of Israel. Those same tools can be used to counter their lies and tell the legislators the truth. So click away!

(h/t YMedad)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

03/24 Links Pt2: UN approves blacklist of "settlements" companies; UC condemns “anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism”

From Ian:

UN approves blacklist of companies profiting from settlements

The United Nations Human Rights Council on Thursday voted in favor of creating a “blacklist” of companies operating in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, a motion that passed with no countries voting against.
The resolution required UN human rights officials to produce a database of “all business enterprises” that have enabled or profited from the growth of Israeli settlements, Haaretz reported.
The proposal, put forward by the Palestinian Authority and Arab states, included a condemnation of settlements and called on companies not to do business with Israeli settlements.
Its most contested clause was that calling for the formation of the database. While European Union nations opposed the creation of the list, they did not vote against the resolution, electing merely to abstain. It passed with 32 nations votes in favor and 15 abstentions.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the outcome of the vote Thursday evening, saying the international body “has turned into an anti-Israel circus, which attacks the only democracy in the Middle East and ignores the blatant violations of Iran, Syria and North Korea.”
The prime minister accused the council of ignoring more urgent issues such as terrorism in order to rebuke the Jewish state.

UN Watch: French role in selecting anti-Israel activist for UN post undermines credibility on peace move

France’s claim to be a fair broker which can move Israelis and Palestinians peace is now being called into question by the actions of its UN envoy in selecting a prominent anti-Israeli activist to investigate “Israel’s violations” for the next six years, a critical post.
A 5-member UN committee, on which the French delegate in Geneva serves by virtue of being named by the Western group, recommended Canadian academic Michael Lynk as one of two candidates that it found to be impartial and objective — this despite his leadership role in pro-Palestinian lobby groups, and his long record of inflammatory statements against Israel.
That a representative of France would join others on an Egyptian-led committee to select such a manifestly partisan candidate — someone who three days after 9/11 blamed the West for provoking the attacks on the World Trade Center — constitutes a travesty of justice and a breach of the world body’s own rules.
Someone who accuses Israel of “Apartheid” and openly seeks to dismantle the Jewish state is neither impartial nor objective.

Israel envoy to UN: International community must disarm Hezbollah

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon sent a letter to the UN Security Council on Wednesday demanding that they condemn the latest threats by Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Nasrallah threatened on Monday that if a future war breaks out with Israel, his Shi'ite Lebanese terrorist group will strike all targets in the Jewish state "without any limits."
"If the Israeli army escalates its aggression against Lebanon, Hezbollah will strike all the strategic targets in the occupied Palestinian territories, including the nuclear facilities," Hezbollah-linked TV station Al Manar quoted Nasrallah as saying in a televised interview on Al Mayadeen.
"Hezbollah possesses all the details about the positions of the petrochemical, biological and nuclear facilities across Palestine,” he added.
In his letter to the Security Council, Ambassador Danon made clear Israel will not accept any violation of its sovereignty, and will take all necessary measures to protect its citizens.

From Reuters:

Obama 'Not Hopeful' on Peace: We Can't Force Israel and Palestinians
U.S. president says peace was 'not something I was able to get done,' says one-state solution not realistic in light of mistrust.

...Despite his skepticism about progress anytime soon, Obama reinforced his commitment to that prospect.

"There's been talk about a one-state solution or sort of a divided government. It's hard for me to envision that being stable, there's such deep distrust between the two peoples right now," he said. "And the neighborhood is in such a mess that I continue to believe that a two-state solution is the best way. Now, over time that could evolve."

From his words, his preference is two states at this time because the two sides cannot live together peacefully, not because there is any inherent value in having a state for the Jewish people.

I found the entire context of the remarks. A high schooler who identifies as an Arab-Israeli asked if there wasn't some value in having a bi-national state with, say, and Israeli prime minister and a Palestinian president or vice versa.

Obama says that both sides have their narratives and both sides have a hard time listening to the valid points of the other. This is typical "let's call them equal because it sounds better" thinking. The Israeli media gives plenty of coverage to the Palestinian side of the story, but there is nearly no reciprocation (although some Palestinian newspapers will publish selected Hebrew op-eds translated into Arabic.)

Obama then goes into the demographic issue, with the J-Street talking points. What no one seems to mention is that there is a great deal of daylight between a demographic threat and the Green Line. Israel can remain a democracy, maintain a Jewish majority and annex all of Area C. Maybe they should and tell Obama - hey, you keep talking to us about how terrible the demographic threat is to us and how we cannot remain a democracy (despite the fact that the US has plenty of territory where residents cannot vote in national elections.)

If Area C was Israel's starting point in negotiations, the Palestinians would have a lot more incentive to compromise than when President Obama says that he agrees that the Green Line is the basis for negotiations. Now there is no incentive because the US and EU have declared that the Oslo process to determine borders is really to determine land swaps on either side of the Green Line. (And Israeli politicians haven't helped the cause, either.)

Now the Palestinians don't even have incentive to stop terror attacks, and their polls show that most of them think that terror is the best way to get a state, rather than compromise - which really would get them a state.

But it appears that Obama thinks of even the idea of separate Jewish and Arab states as a temporary measure until the kumbaya moment of both sides realizing that they must live together in peace, where the Jews can peacefully resume their dhimmi status in the Arab world and wait patiently for the next pogrom.

One other part: Obama wants to be the next Jimmy Carter. He ends off saying that after he is no longer president he hopes to continue to impose his naive view of Middle East peace on Israel (he says he will "continue to promote that peaceful dialogue.")

Judging from his words, we know that he will be much more publicly anti-Israel as soon as he leaves office.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

So there was a bloody terrorist attack – two bloody terrorist attacks – in Brussels on Tuesday. Dozens murdered, more injured seriously. The Islamic State took responsibility, and threatened more attacks.

The overwhelming feeling one gets is a combination of depression and boredom. Oh no, not again. Since 9/11, terrorism has been followed immediately by outrage, sometimes even by military action that may or may not be targeted accurately. After a while things go back to normal. But the enemy is never named. And nothing changes. The jihadists regroup and return.

Is anything different today? Will anything be different for the European leadership, now that the foolishly-named ‘capital of Europe’ has been struck? “Europe is at war” said the headline on Wednesday’s newspaper. But I doubt that they think so.

I’m sure that security will be beefed up. They will arrest IS sympathizers and activists. Maybe they will support air attacks against the IS in Syria. But as an EU statement issued after the attacks indicates, a change in the suicidal worldview that has led to more and more terrorism is not in the offing:

… This latest attack only strengthens our resolve to defend the European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant. We will be united and firm in the fight against hatred, violent extremism and terrorism.

It isn’t “European values and tolerance” that is under attack, and the attacker isn’t “the intolerant.” Europe does not need to declare war on “hatred, violent extremism and terrorism.”

The truth is that whether they know it or not, all of the non-Muslim world is at war, a war being fought by unconventional means, but a war nevertheless. The enemy is a loose confederation of Muslim groups, from militias to nations, that agree on little other than that the entire world should be ruled by Islam, and that jihad is the way to bring this about. It is entirely correct to call it a war of Islamic conquest.

It has nothing to do with intolerance. It has everything to do with jihadist Muslims wanting to rule over non-Muslims and to take their property (incidentally including humans as property). The goal of Muslim domination is spelled out in the Qur’an and other Islamic texts. The jihadists are trying to implement these prescriptions.

There is a seam, an interface between Islam and not-Islam, which runs through the world. It is found in China, the Philippines and much of southeast Asia, India-Pakistan, the Caucasus, much of Africa, of course Israel, and now Europe. Everywhere along this seam there are regular flare-ups of violence. Of course there is also intra-Muslim strife, but – as Iranian support for Hamas shows – there is often cooperation between disparate groups when there is a common non-Muslim enemy.

Israel is very much on the front line of this war. Her location is highly strategic; she is considered a Western outpost in a region that by rights should be Muslim. She has become symbolic of the struggle since the Crusades. Many Muslims live in the territory Israel controls – that Jews control – a situation that is intolerable for them.

This is a tough war for our side to fight, because it takes different forms in different places, and the enemy does not follow the traditional rules or have a centralized command structure. But in general there are two strategic principles that we must apply: one is disproportionate pushback against violent attempts to extend Muslim sovereignty and the other is cutting the heads off snakes. Let me explain.

Disproportionate pushback means preventing successes that whet the appetites of the jihadists for more. Because their objective is domination, it isn’t possible to defuse their violence by appeasement. This something that Israel has (I hope) learned through her experience with the ‘Palestinian’ incarnation of the jihad. This is why I advocate building in the territories as a response to terrorism, as well as collective punishments for collective crimes. We need to teach the lesson that if you hurt us, expect to be hurt worse.

Cutting the heads off snakes (an expression used by a previous king of Saudi Arabia to refer to Iran) is the idea that there are foci of Islamic jihad – individuals, groups and even nations – that initiate, develop, promote, support, arm and fund the multiplicitous hands of jihad, and that they should be extirpated. So targeted assassinations of individuals like bin Laden or Mugniyeh, the elimination of jihadist organizations like Hezbollah, and the destruction of Iran’s nuclear capability and promotion of regime change there, are all indicated.

Some of these techniques have been used by Israel, the US, and even Russia with varying degrees of consistency and success. The US has never defined the enemy and has inconsistently mixed military action together with appeasement. Europe, though, has almost always taken the path of appeasement.

Both Europe and some circles in the US have been prepared to sacrifice Israel to the jihadists, on the remarkably stupid assumption that that they can protect themselves by doing so. A combination of this tendency to appeasement with the antisemitism that has characterized Europe for millennia has resulted in Europe actually cooperating with Israel’s enemies by financing subversive activities in Israel, supporting BDS by requiring labeling of products from across the Green Line, and trying to force Israel to withdraw to non-defensible boundaries.

The EU Foreign Minister, Federica Mogherini, who was visiting Jordan when the Brussels attacks happened, burst into tears at a press conference with her Jordanian counterpart. “It’s also a very sad day for Europe, as Europe and its capital are suffering the same pain that this region has known and knows every single day, be it in Syria, be it elsewhere,” she said. Does she understand that her pain is caused by exactly the same elements that she criticizes Israel for opposing? Those, like Mogherini, who believe that the greatest evil in the world is “intolerance” also believe that Israel is attacked by terrorists because it is not sufficiently tolerant of Palestinian Arabs, some of whom are the terrorists that attack us. She thinks we deserve what we get.

After the Brussels attacks, will the Europeans begin to take strong measures against terrorism, like profiling at airports and railway stations, controlling their borders, or setting up checkpoints near known terrorist neighborhoods?

Probably not. That would make them intolerant like us.

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03/24 Links Pt1: The ‘Obama Doctrine’ Has Led to Global Chaos; Dying for Allah

From Ian:

Isi Leibler: The ‘Obama Doctrine’ Has Led to Global Chaos

President Barack Obama’s determination to downgrade US international power has generated massive global instability and chaos with especially ominous implications for Israel.
The Obama policies have undermined longstanding alliances within the Western bloc. By supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and allying with terrorist and rogue states like Iran, the US has alienated Arab states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which consider themselves abandoned and betrayed.
The wooing and groveling toward Iran has empowered the world’s leading Islamic terrorist state, enabled it to become a threshold nuclear power and exacerbated the conflict between the Shiites and Sunnis, which has led to the emergence of new Islamic barbarian groups like ISIS. The Islamic fundamentalists have reintroduced the Dark Ages to the region in which mass murder, rape and beheadings of civilians have become rampant.

JCPA: Dying for Allah

The sensitivity to criticism of the Islamic fundamentalist attitude on the “death for Allah” concept, which has been fully adopted by the Palestinian cultural code, is a further instance of our difficulty in understanding a different culture, which leads us to project our own values onto the other in a mirror-perfect image.
President Barack Obama exemplified this mindset in his 2009 Cairo address and in his address in Jerusalem in 2013 when he said there was no real difference between his daughters and the Palestinian youths he had met in Ramallah or the Egyptian youngsters he had encountered in Cairo. Like his daughters, they wanted to get an education, worship God in their way, raise a family, and make a good living, even if there were political or religious differences between them.
Really, Mr. President? Do your daughters identify on Facebook with the worldview of radical Islam, which calls on one to seek “death for Allah”? Palestinian youth indeed wear jeans and do not look religious. Yet almost every Palestinian child you ask will tell you he wants to be a shahid [martyr], and many believe that by attempting to stab a Jew-Zionist to death they increase their chances to attain that honor. This is a direct result of the education they receive.

Last week, in a secret mission, 17 Jews were smuggled out of Yemen and into Israel.

Arab media has shown a keen interest in this story - especially one detail, that the Jews arrived in a flight from Sanaa to Amman, Jordan and from there they went to Israel.

The idea that Jordan helped Jews who then met with Netanyahu did not sit well with some Arabs, but they know very well that the Houthi slogan includes the phrase "Damn the Jews."

So they instead questioned whether Jordan violated its own policies on dealing with people on flights from Yemen, Jordan has set restrictions on passengers from Yemen since the Houthis took over large parts of that territory.

Jordan responded that they only restrict Yemenis if their final destination is Jordan, not if they are ending up elsewhere.

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Woman with hijab rips apart Israeli flag at Brussels victims memorial (video) update

From Jewish News UK:

Footage has emerged of a Muslim woman tearing up an Israeli flag at a memorial for the victims of the Brussels terror attack.

French television station RTL captured the incident in Brussels’ Place de la Bourse, where an Israeli flag had been placed at a vigil to more than 30 victims of Tuesday’s bombings.

The woman, pictured in a headscarf, appears to replace it with a larger Palestinian flag, before tearing up the Israeli flag, hiding the pieces under a banner.

Mourners have been placing flowers, candles and flags to show solidarity with the victims of the attack.

Following the removal of the flag, a video emerged of mourners putting an Israeli flag back at the memorial.

After an anti-Israel activist replaced an Israeli flag for a Palestinian one at a memorial for this weeks victims of...
Posted by Israel Advocacy Movement on Thursday, March 24, 2016

UPDATE: Another:

خلال التضـامن العالمي مع بروكسل ..ماذا فعل شاب فلسطيني عندما رأى علم "اسرائيل" يتوسط الشموع؟
Posted by Shehab News Agency on Thursday, March 24, 2016

(h/t Vandoren)

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Anti-Israel groups at Ohio State University attempted to push through a BDS resolution on Purim night.

Ohio's members of Congress sent letters to members of the Student Union saying that they are against BDS, which greatly upset the Israel-haters.

On the other side, the BDS thugs threatened the lives of everyone who opposed the resolution. . (This tweet has been taken down.)

The resolution failed decisively, 9-21-15.

USG General Assembly Resolution 48-R-43 failed tonight with a vote of 9 ayes, 21 nays, and 15 abstentions (9-21-15).
— Ohio State USG (@usgosu) March 24, 2016

Whether Cailin Pitt will be prosecuted for threatening to kill everyone who voted against BDS is yet to be seen.

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03/23 Links Pt2: Will the Uni of Cal Support anti-Semitic anti-Zionism?; UN nominates anti-Israeli professor

From Ian:

Mike Lumish: Will the University of California Support anti-Semitic anti-Zionism?

As someone familiar with California university anti-Semitism, I would very much like to see the UC Regents suggest that the movement to rob Jewish people of self-determination and self-defense stands in direct opposition to its own proposed standards of social justice and universal human rights.
Needless to say, anti-Semitic anti-Zionist students and professors claim that their hatred of Jewish people, via their hatred of the Jewish State, is a matter of free speech. They should be allowed to defame Israel, and thereby defame the great majority of Jewish people, as a matter of liberal democracy, despite the fact that such defamation tends to result in violence against the Jewish people and young Jewish students on campus.
They honestly seem to believe that kicking Jewish students in the teeth on a regular basis is a privilege of liberalism and perhaps they are right. If liberalism means anything it means that you have the right to offend anyone. If that defamation results in violence toward the Jewish people, as we are currently seeing with the Children's Intifada in Israel, so be it.
I tend to think, of course, that kicking around Jewish students on California university campuses is not such a good thing and that university officials should look into means of reducing it, if they honestly care... which I also tend to doubt.

UN Watch: UN nominates anti-Israeli professor to 6-year post investigating “Israel’s violations”

Amid intense pressure and a flurry of letters sent from Arab and Islamic states, the South Korean president of the UN Human Rights Council today cancelled his decision to postpone the appointment of a new monitor charged with investigating “Israel’s violations of the principles and bases of international law.”
Instead, the president today nominated Canadian academic Michael Lynk — despite global objections over Lynk’s leadership role in Palestinian campaign groups and his record of inflammatory statements on Israel — and declared that the labor lawyer from London, Ontario, was both impartial and objective. The 47-nation plenary is slated to vote on the president’s proposal tomorrow. A UN Watch report two weeks ago documented the bias of the Arab states’ favored candidates, prompting outrage from the Palestinian ambassador.
“The UN’s selection of a manifestly partisan candidate — someone who three days after 9/11 blamed the West for provoking the attacks on the World Trade Center — constitutes a travesty of justice and a breach of the world body’s own rules,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a watchdog organization in Geneva whose work has been praised by top UN officials including former Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
“Someone who accuses Israel of ‘Apartheid’ and openly seeks to dismantle the Jewish state is neither impartial nor objective. We call on Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and all other Council members to uphold the Council’s own basic principles and oppose Lynk’s nomination in tomorrow’s vote,” said Neuer.

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We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

After Brussels Attacks, Europe Promises Stronger Cowardice (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Brussels, March 23 - The deadly terrorist attacks in the Belgian capital yesterday morning have sparked a fierce desire across the Continent to depart from the complacency and accommodation of the past in the face of growing Islamist violence, and instead engage in a new form of more severe, harsher cowardice.

After dozens of people were killed in bombings at an airport and subway station in Brussels Tuesday morning, political leaders in the European Union voiced frustration with the multicultural model that has for so long defined Europe's attempt to foster tolerance, and called for a sharper practice of avoiding potential offense to Muslim immigrants by implying that Islam has anything to do with the deadly Islamist violence that has plagued France, Germany, Sweden, Britain, Belgium, Denmark, Turkey, and other European countries.

"We're going to have to step up our game," admitted EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini at a press conference in Amman, Jordan. "When terrorist opposition to European values of tolerance, liberalism, and democracy rears its head in ever-increasing fury, we have no choice but to find the strongest possible way of shrinking from confronting it."

European leaders acknowledged the difficulty of the prospect, but vowed to persevere. "Our ancestors did not fight the Nazis so that we could surrendre our future to latter-day Nazis," insisted French President François Hollande. "We know better than to let a fascist ideology creep across the continent without taking forceful measures of abject surrender in response. France intends to take a lead role in such endeavors, as it has for most of the last century and a half."

US President Barack Obama offered whatever help the Europeans would find appropriate in pursuing their new, uncompromising line of compromise. "We are here for Brussels, for Paris, for Istanbul," announced Obama from Havana, Cuba. "Our resources will be made available to our allies in the way they feel is best suited to avoiding the issue in the most decisive manner."

Analysts see a new maturity on the part of European leaders in response to the ongoing terrorism. "It takes a certain threshold of emotional growth to acknowledge one's limitations, and that humility is part of the core of European tolerance," explained commentator Rella Tivist. "The newly emerging approach evidently involves a strict adherence to open-mindedness, such that, for example, it is considered bigoted to assert that the Nazis were evil, or developed and implemented evil policies. The mature European asks, 'Who are we to judge?' That humble, tolerant attitude will now also govern all major European policy decisions regarding Islamist terrorism, instead of merely informing it."

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03/23 Links Pt1: Murray: A terrorist attack has happened in Europe. Let the standard response begin…; Europe must confront its reality

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: A terrorist attack has happened in Europe. Let the standard response begin…

Well at least we all know the form by now. This morning Islamist suicide-bombers struck one of the few European capitals they haven’t previously hit in a mass-casualty terrorist attack.
The standard response now goes as follows. First the body parts of innocent people are flung across airport check-ins or underground trains. Briefly there is some shock. On social media the sentimentalists await the arrival of this atrocity’s cutesy hashtag or motif and hope it will tide them over until the piano man arrives at the scene of the attack to sing ‘Imagine there’s no countries’. Meantime someone will hopefully have said something which a lot of people can condemn as ‘inappropriate’. I see that the Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson was this morning’s Twitter miscreant, foolish enough to say in the wake of the Brussels attack that the EU might not make us very safe. One may agree or disagree with this sentiment, but Ms Pearson should have known that the only acceptable thing to do after a suicide bomber detonates beside the European Commission is to acclaim the Commission as one of the few entities able to keep us safe.
We will shortly move to the next phase, which is to find a good news story amid the rubble. Anything will do, but best of all is a Muslim good news story. After Paris it was swiftly reported that one of the suicide bombers at Stade de France had been turned away by a brave Muslim security guard. The story whizzed around the world before anyone could check whether it was true. It wasn’t. But people needed it to be. Not because Muslims don’t do good deeds, but because in the wake of any Islamist terrorist attack people need people opposed to the bombers to be Muslim and the bombers themselves not to be Muslim. Then the good Muslim can represent Islam while the bad Muslims can be said to have nothing to do with it.

Ben-Dror Yemini: Europe must confront its reality

Belgium schools teach their students the Holocaust. One textbook includes a caricature of a Jew on a barbed wire fence with the inscription "never again." Just beside him, there is a Palestinian on the same fence with the inscription "once again!" The text book includes an explanation of the caricature, making clear its message: "The interpretation for 'never again' is what happened under Hitler will never happen again. The interpretation of 'once again' is what is happening today is exactly what happened under Hitler. Concentration camps were fenced off by barbed wire and today the border between Israel and Palestine is barbed wire and a wall."
When polls in Europe indicate that Europeans think what the Jewish state does to Palestinians is what the Nazis did to Jews, one should recall public education. This poison has not been injected only into the older generation of Belgians, but also the hundreds of thousands of Muslim youth studying in Belgium's education system. Combined with incitement in mosques, frustration with discrimination and claims of discrimination, propaganda from Arab TV networks, it becomes clear dangerous weeds are growing in the backyard.
The Belgians like many others in Europe believe that their enmity towards Israel grants them immunity from attacks. They do not understand that exactly the opposite is true: As long as incitement against Israel rises to new heights, hatred for Europe will rise to new heights. Europe will have to explain why its relations with Israel are flourishing, if Jews behave like Nazis. How can Europeans cooperate with Nazis? Not only Jews deserve to be punished, but also young Belgian collaborators as well.