Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 02, 2017

Strange NYT op-ed claims Abbas already accepted a Jewish state before he was president

From Tablet's Elhanan Miller in the NYT:

As he stood next to President Trump at a news conference in Washington on Feb. 15, Mr. Netanyahu cited two prerequisites for achieving peace with the Palestinians: Under any deal, Israel must maintain full security control west of the Jordan River; and Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state. But Mr. Abbas already made this recognition of Israel’s Jewish character — more than two decades ago.

In an interview with the London-based daily newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat in 1994, Mr. Abbas argued that the Jewish presence in Palestine was fundamentally different from any other Western colonization. Contradicting the Arab view of Jews as purely a religious group rather than also a national one, Mr. Abbas acknowledged that what motivated Jews to immigrate to Israel was a mixture of religious and national aspirations.

“Due to various causes, they have managed to establish a Jewish state in Palestine,” he said. “Most of its inhabitants were born in the state. This is a painful truth that many refuse to understand.”

Mr. Abbas’s loaded language of “national struggle” masks a surprising truth: He is the only Arab leader to publicly acknowledge Israel’s Jewish character and tacitly validate its claim to nationhood in a hostile political climate that generally likens Israeli Jews to Crusader invaders.

This sentence, “Due to various causes, they have managed to establish a Jewish state in Palestine,” is the thread that the entire article is hanging on.

And it is a very, very thin thread.

[T]hat landmark interview was printed in Ramallah as a booklet in 2011 and uploaded to the presidential website; he has never disavowed it.

Has anyone ever asked him? Ever?

And if uploading information to his website reveals Abbas' character, then his Holocaust denial book that was uploaded there would seem to be more indicative of his true character and opinions than a single sentence in an interview.

Some might say that Mr. Abbas accepts Israel’s Jewishness only as a fait accompli, not as a matter of historic right. But for the purposes of a peace deal, what difference does that make?

Again, a very strange question. Abbas has said scores of times that he will never accept Israel as a Jewish state. All more recently than this 1994 interview. And far more explicitly.

So the question is not what difference it makes whether Abbas' supposed acceptance of a Jewish state is made as a fait accompli or not. The question is what difference does it make that he said those words in an interview in 1994 when he has said the opposite so many times since, and so much more clearly?

Fears on the Israeli right that Palestinians would use a nonrecognition of the Jewish state to swamp Israel with Palestinian immigrants and change the demographic balance are unfounded. Not only is Israeli security built on maintaining control of its borders, but Mr. Abbas has explicitly ruled out such a strategy. In a 2012 Israeli TV interview, Mr. Abbas renounced the unlimited return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, himself included, to Israel proper.
“It’s my right to see it, but not to live there,” he said of his native city of Safed, which he left as a 13-year-old child during the war of 1948. Asked whether he considered Safed part of Palestine, Mr. Abbas replied that for him Palestine means the territory beyond the 1967 lines, including East Jerusalem, “now and forever.”

Miller is being dishonest here. Abbas followed up that interview, a day later, by saying "my talk about Safed was my personal position, but it does not mean a waiver of the right of return. No one can waive the right of return, all international texts and resolutions of Arab and Islamic states speak of 'a just and agreed solution on the issue of refugees in accordance with UN Resolution 194', and the words 'agreed' means the agreement must be made with the Israeli side."

And two years later he even changed his "personal position" by saying "[Israel] will not allow the return of refugees. There are six million refugees who wish to return, and by the way, I am one of them."

Miller then asks, "Since all this is so, why does Mr. Abbas now decline to restate his recognition of Israel as a Jewish state?"

He comes up with some answers that are pure conjecture. The actual answers are in a PLO memo revealed by the Palestine Papers on this very subject. Here is every reason given (not counting the political/talking points listed:)

Recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” has substantial implications for many permanent status issues. The most serious implications are:

Recognizing Israel as a “Jewish state” would likely be treated by Israel and third states as Palestinian recognition of Israel’s demographic objections to the right of return and, by extension, an implicit waiver of the right of return. This would undermine the legal rights of the refugees and make it practically even more difficult to negotiate a resolution of the refugee issue.

Recognizing Israel as a “Jewish state”, particularly in advance of agreeing to the final border between Israel and Palestine, could also strengthen Israel’s claims of sovereignty over all of Historic Palestine, including the OPT. Recognizing the Jewish state implies recognition of a Jewish people and recognition of its right to self-determination. Those who assert this right also assert that the territory historically associated with this right of self-determination (i.e., the self-determination unit) is all of Historic Palestine. Therefore, recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people’s claim to all of Historic Palestine.

Recognizing Israel as a “Jewish State” would also give impetus to the view which is becoming increasingly popular that land swaps should be based on demographic considerations and include populations. Namely, the view that Palestinians living inside Israel would be swapped with Jewish settlers living in the occupied Palestinian territory. Therefore, if Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state the next demand at negotiations may be to accept inhabited land swaps and/or Israel may use this recognition to move toward denationalizing Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The PLO explicitly denies that there are a Jewish people, a manifestly antisemitic position and one that is at odds with Miller's assertion that Abbas implied that there were a Jewish people in 1994. Moreover, the "return" issue is so central to the PLO's position - again, contrary to Miller's assertions - that they are willing to deny basic facts of the history of a Jewish people to protect that claim.

Now let's pretend, despite the avalanche of evidence to the contrary that Miller ignores, that Miller is right: Abbas really recognizes Israel as a Jewish state deep down in his heart. How does this matter? It is still undeniable that Abbas has not prepared his people for peace with Israel in any way since Oslo. On the contrary, the PA still tells people of Palestinian descent worldwide as well as "refugees" inside their own territories that they will flood Israel with millions of Arabs and that this is their legal and moral right. No student in a PA or UNRWA school is being told that there might be a symbolic "return" in a peace deal of a small percentage of so-called "refugees" and that the rest will need to be integrated into Arab countries and perhaps compensated at best - all assumptions that you will simply never see discussed in Arab media.

Instead of preparing his people for a two-state solution, Abbas has been saying that Jews are poisoning wells (reluctantly retracted) and raising wild pigs and dogs to attack Palestinians.

Abbas is not a peace partner. It is true that the alternatives are even less so, but the issue is binary - are you interested in real peace with Israel or not? Abbas' words and actions have made it clear that he is not. Being less radical does not mean that Israel must rush to give even more concessions to him as a reward for his not explicitly calling to throw the Jews into the sea.

Altogether, this op-ed is based on a very tenuous premise that is irrelevant at best - and far more likely false to begin with.

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Official Palestinian media reports terrorist stabber as a victim of "settlers"

The truth from Times of Israel:

A Palestinian stabbed and lightly wounded a resident of the southern West Bank settlement outpost of Havat Mor inside his home on Wednesday, the army said.

The victim shot the alleged terrorist, who was pronounced dead on the scene by a local doctor, a spokesperson for the Magen David Adom ambulance service said.

The Palestinian man had broken into the West Bank outpost in the Hebron Hills, the army said.

The man was in his home when he heard a noise outside. Leaving his home to investigate, he saw a Palestinian man holding two knives, according to the Ynet news site.

The victim then ran back inside his house to get his pistol. The Palestinian followed him into the living room and stabbed the Israeli man in front of his wife and children, according to the report.

The Israeli eventually managed to take out and use his gun on the attacker.

How the official Palestinian Wafa "news" agency reported the incident:

Martyrdom of a citizen shot dead by settlers south of Hebron

Citizen Saad Muhammad Ali Qaysih (24 years) from the virtual town south of Hebron, was shot and killed by settlers Wednesday evening.

Witnesses said that the Qaysih was seriously wounded after a settler shot him under the pretext of his trying to stab him in an attack.

Witnesses said that the occupation forces arrived on the scene, but did not provide the injured Qaysih with medical treatment and he remained lying on the ground, even after he died.

Notice how so many of these stories include statements from "witnesses" that are complete fiction.

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Jews buillt a glass synagogue on Temple Mount, according to the Muslim leaders

From Turkey's Anadolu Agency:

Israel has begun partitioning East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque complex with a view to creating a prayer space for Jewish worshippers, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) warned Wednesday.

“The placement of a glass room inside the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex is a first step toward the spatial division of the mosque,” Ahmad al-Ruwaidhi, the OIC’s representative in Palestine, said at a Wednesday press conference.

The move, he asserted, “follows the imposition of a temporal division [by Israel] in the form of daily incursions [into Al-Aqsa] by Jewish settlers”.

What’s more, the move reveals “Israel’s intention to dedicate a place for Talmudic rituals inside the Al-Haram al-Sharif,” al-Ruwaidhi said, using the Arabic term for the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Dammit, no pictures! I'll have to go to Jerusalem to see it for myself!

And notice how "Talmudic rituals" sounds a lot more sinister than "prayer."

But wait - there's more!

The OIC representative also warned of the dangers posed by Israeli excavations that are reportedly being carried out under the holy site.

In light of these excavations, al-Ruwaidhi said, “we fear the Al-Aqsa Mosque could collapse in the event of a natural -- or artificial -- earthquake”.

Yes, Israel is weakening the foundations in order to create an artificial earthquake.

The question isn't why these people believe this. The question is why the rest of the world takes anything else they say seriously.

It would be so easy for a single Western leader to say, "These guys are nuts for claiming these things." It would embarrass them and shame them and it would do more to stop Arab and Muslim antisemitism than a hundred declarations at the UN.

But the fear of upsetting the Muslim leaders is far greater than the mere worry about direct incitement against Jews - incitement that still causes Arabs to stab, shoot at and run over Jews in Israel today.

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03/01 Links Pt2: Tenenbom: In the Land of the Free, the Brave Are Quiet; Phillips: Denial is a river in Londonistan

From Ian:

Tuvia Tenenbom: In the Land of the Free, the Brave Are Quiet (EXCERPT)

The following is an excerpt from theater director, author and journalist Tuvia Tenenbom’s newly released book, The Lies They Tell, an account of the Americans he encountered on a cross-country trip to meet with people from all walks of life: from ghettos to gated communities, from churches to Indian reservations, talking to skinheads and senators, soldiers and intellectuals — to get to the bottom of how they think, and why. In the passage below, he describes a New York experience.
What a show! Here I hear a lady, by the name of Suhad Babaa, who talks of “Palestinian boys killed in broad daylight by Israeli soldiers” as an example of the brutal and lawless Jews. The audience, liberal American Jews, applaud. Don’t ask me to explain.
Amira Hass, a Haaretz columnist, tells these American Jews: “Anybody who intends to emigrate to Israel is about to commit a crime.” The Jewish state, if you didn’t know, is a criminal state.
The Jews applaud.
Bridget Todd, a black lady who is associated with Black Lives Matter, shares the stage with Amira. What is she doing here? I can’t tell, but it’s definitely an effective visual tool to illustrate to Americans what the Jews are doing worldwide: murdering non-whites.
What else do I see here? Roger Waters is sitting in the front row of the main hall, being glorified by a Haaretz fellow who tells him how pleased he is to see such an important man at this conference. Roger, co-founder of the old favorite English rock band Pink Floyd, is still in the music business. But besides music, he has some other things on his mind, such as comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and engaging in endless activism against Israel.
The Jews here love him for that. And they applaud at the mere mention of his name.
This conference is called HaaretzQ, where the “Q” stands for question, but nobody is questioning anything. Everybody here has the answers, all the answers. And they talk. The forty-niners say, for example, that Jewish Voice for Peace, whose activists I met while in DC and by whom I was told that I’m a fat, filthy Jew, is an exemplary organization.
All in all, it is bizarre to watch. Every time someone says that the Jews are horrible, are criminals and thieves, one thousand American Jews applaud.

David Collier: Kings. Apartheid Week watch day two: Beauty and the beast

As I was doing my homework for the event at Kings, the information I received all pointed in one direction. All eyes were going to be on Farid Esack, a veteran anti-apartheid activist and Professor from South Africa.
Esack is a man who welcomed his “comrade” plane hijacker Leila Khaled, of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, at a fund-raiser in 2015. He also said of the attack in Paris
“”I am not praying for Paris; I am not condemning anyone. Why the hell should I? I had nothing to do with it.. (Then).. I am sickened by the perpetual expectations to condemn. I walk away from your shitty racist and Islamophobic expectations that whenever your chickens come home to roost then I must feign horror.”
This man was on display at a London university. How could I resist?
Given the participants, Kings had apparently refused to permit this to take place on campus. It seems the Student Union stepped in to ‘save the day’.

Melanie Phillips: Denial is a river in Londonistan

Ever since 9/11, Whitehall has been dominated by those who want to take the path of least resistance over the problem of Islamic extremism. In 2014 Theresa May, now Prime Minister but who was then the Home Secretary, and Michael Gove, the then Education Secretary who commissioned the Clarke inquiry, spectacularly fell out over mutual accusations that the other had failed adequately to combat Islamist extremism. At the heart of that row lay the dominant Whitehall thinking, espoused by Mrs May but strongly opposed by Gove, that the problem was not extremist attitudes but merely extremist violence. Mrs May won that bout.
Since then, government thinking has shifted in the right direction. It now acknowledges that it’s not just violent extremism that’s the problem but non-violent extremism – the attitudes that create hatred and fanaticism and swell the seas in which violence swims.
But it still refuses to acknowledge that non-violent extremism is driven by Islamic religious fanaticism. As a result, the government’s anti-extremism policy is paralysed because it can’t agree what extremism is. There are other signs that Theresa May still doesn’t get it. The inquiry she set up into sharia courts, for example, has been designed merely to tinker with marginal improvements rather than address the fundamental problem of having a parallel legal system inimical to British values.
This refusal to acknowledge the religious driver of Islamist extremism was of course a signature motif of the Obama administration. So it is extremely troubling to read that the new National Security Adviser, General HR McMaster, has reportedly said that the term radical Islamic terrorism is “counter-productive” and even that Islamic terrorists are “unIslamic.”
If the people we entrust to protect us against the threat posed by religious fanaticism cannot even bring themselves to agree that it is indeed religious fanaticism, they will not protect us at all but will assist our enemies instead.

A month and a half in, all the gung ho Trump people are still maintaining that The Donald is God’s gift to the Jews and to Israel. But if you look at his rhetoric and that of his inner circle, it’s anything but clear. Take the issue of moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, for instance. Back on October 27, Trump could not have been clearer in his speech to AIPAC. “We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.”

Donald Trump Promises To Move Embassy From Tel Aviv To Jerusalem from Now The End Begins on Vimeo.

But in January, after assuming office, Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he didn’t want to talk about it. “It’s too early,” he said.

And now? “I’m thinking about it. I’m learning the issue and we’ll see what happens. It’s not an easy decision. It’s been discussed for so many years. No one wants to make this decision, and I’m thinking about it seriously.”

Translation: he doesn’t want to make the decision. He’s thinking about it.

Then Friday night, Vice President Pence, speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas seemed to distance the prospects of an American embassy in Jerusalem even further when he said that Trump’s administration is "reviewing additional steps to demonstrate America's support including assessing whether the American embassy in Israel should be relocated to Jerusalem."

Note the use of the word “whether.” We’ve gone from “We will move the embassy,” to debating “Whether we should move the embassy.”

In the language of the Talmud, this would be going from the vadai to the safek—from the certain to the questionable, which is an unnatural order for how things should be.

In examining the shift from electoral promise to placing the issue on the backburner, one cannot discount the idea that it is Jerusalem pouring cold water on the idea of moving the embassy to Jerusalem. Netanyahu has publicly said he wants the embassy moved to Jerusalem; that in fact, Israel’s policy is that all embassies should be in Jerusalem. And still, it is possible there is more to this picture than any of us know. We the people never know what is going on behind closed doors. And if it is Bibi who doesn’t want the embassy moved, it isn’t as though it would be politic for Trump to say so.

Then there’s this: could it be that the apparent change in policy proves Trump never really intended to go through with moving the embassy in the first place? This is, of course, more than possible. Every candidate makes promises. Every candidate breaks promises.

And finally, there is the matter of Trump’s alt right base. Trump has been reluctant to appear philosemitic on several occasions. Take his alteration of the Holocaust Day speech prepared for him by the State Department. The original speech made explicit mention of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. But Trump (or one of his lackeys) changed the wording, omitting any reference to the Jewish people, to make the speech more “inclusive.”

Trump, it is said, is meanwhile thinking about cutting several special envoy positions, including one dedicated to battling antisemitism. Right at the time that antisemitic incidents are exploding all over the globe, including in the United States, where we have hundreds of gravestones overturned in Philly, swastikas sprayed on cars in Buffalo, and a wave of bomb scares hitting JCC’s all across the country. Allegations have been made that Trump said that the Jews themselves are behind these incidents. These allegations are anecdotal, however, and at least one of the parties taking umbrage, Steven Goldstein, of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect has a liberal axe to grind, hence a credibility problem.

In any event, the feeling is that Trump is not coming out sufficiently strong enough against these expressions of hatred. He had his press secretary make a statement: “The president continues to be deeply disappointed and concerned by the reports of further vandalism at Jewish cemeteries."

“Disappointment” just doesn’t cut it. Would Trump have expressed “disappointment” in Hitler (may his name and memory be erased) for gassing the 6 million? Or perhaps “deep concern?”

All this is a far cry from how Trump presented himself to the Jewish people in the run up to the election. Take, for instance, the way Trump allowed David Friedman to be his Jewish “face.” Friedman made a speech in October in which he came right out and called the State Department antisemitic for refusing to move the embassy.

"In 1995, Congress enacted a law that required the embassy of the United States to move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem," said Friedman at the Jerusalem rally while stumping for Trump. "That's 21 years ago. Hasn't happened. Why? Because the law provides that the obligation to move the embassy to Jerusalem can be waived at the desire of the State Department, the same State Department that has been anti-Israel and anti-Semitic for the past 70 years."

"Now every president gets elected and he says to the State Department, 'what about this law? Should we move the embassy to Jerusalem,'" said Friedman. "The State Department says, 'absolutely not. Absolutely not.' The lifers in the State Department are absolutely, positively committed to never moving the embassy to Jerusalem. What's different about Donald Trump? You all know Donald Trump. If there's anybody in the world of politics who could stand up to the State Department, it is Donald Trump."

But Donald Trump is NOT standing up to the State Department. He is not moving the embassy. He’s not doing anything about the sudden burgeoning of antisemitism in the United States. To the contrary, he’s mulling over cutting the special antisemitism envoy’s position.

Donald has a Jewish daughter and grandchildren. He counts a number of right wing Jews among his closest advisers and confidantes. But Trump also has a very strong alt right base and he is reluctant to appear at odds with their ethos.

Embed from Getty Images

There is no question that this is a very bad thing. Egregious. It is absolutely imperative that he stand up when it counts and face these expressions of antisemitism. He must stand up to his alt right base and denounce antisemitism in no uncertain terms. Trump cannot continue to coast on the Jewish creds of his family and advisers, but must himself take the bull by the horns. Far from cutting the antisemitism envoy position, Trump should be creating a taskforce to deal with the current rise in Jew-hatred.

None of us should be giving Trump a pass, looking the other way, insisting he wouldn’t hurt Israel or the Jews because Ivanka and Jared. It doesn’t wash. It never did.

Trump must be judged not on campaign promises or by his relatives and associates but by his own actions and deeds post-election. Now is the time for Trump to step up to the plate and show his mettle.

The Jews are the canaries in the coal mine, the harbinger of larger dangers in the immediate environment. Trump would be wise to see the warning for what it is and deal with it in no uncertain terms. He should be moving that embassy today. He should be crushing that alt right base, he needs to decry and disavow them, shame them. He needs to let them know that he is NOT their man.

And if he doesn’t, if he won’t. Well then. He IS.

This piece has been updated for clarity.

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Smashed Mt. Of Olives Tombstones Getting In Way Of Haaretz Dancing On Graves (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

: By Neu Aloyse

Jerusalem, March 1 - Vandalism at this holy city's oldest active Jewish cemetery has impeded the customary dancing activities of Haaretz writers and editors, the paper's publisher lamented today.

Amos Schocken held a meeting today with senior editorial staff and columnists to discuss the ongoing difficulty in dancing on the graves of people buried on the Mount of Olives facing the Temple Mount, and to devise ways of maintaining the practice without compromising the efforts of local enthusiasts to continue smashing Jewish tombstones.

Schocken delineated the challenges involved in dancing on those Jewish graves, including potential liability for injuries Haaretz contributors might incur while engaged in that important journalistic activity. "Our mission, as I have defined it, aims to place only certain people or institutions in harm's way," he noted. "We remain very strict about confining harm to people who are religious Jews, the political right, IDF soldiers, police, and any positive sense of Jewishness. But we draw the line at letting our people come to harm. It would just be irresponsible."

"We must find a way to adhere to our mission of inviting, justifying, and celebrating harm to Jews," continued Schocken. "But prudence demands that we exercise good judgment when it comes to placing our writers in harm's way. For the time being, dancing on the graves of Jews buried on the Mount of Olives will be restricted to those few areas of the cemetery that have not been vandalized in such a way that would pose a hazard to our dancers."

Several editors and writers objected to the decision. "I get what you're saying, Amos, but with all due respect, which I of course would deny to anyone who thinks differently from me, I'm willing to assume that risk," insisted Gideon Levy. "What right did those Jews have to be buried there before the place fell into Jordanian hands in 1948? I'm willing to absolve Haaretz of any liability for my dancing on those graves, whether their tombstones are intact or smashed."

Schocken, for his part, praised Levy's willingness to risk injury in support of his beliefs, but put his foot down. "It's inspiring to see you actually volunteer to put yourself in danger of a sprained ankle, Gideon - and I'm not being sarcastic here," he answered. "I know it's not your custom to put yourself at risk while calling for Jewish settlers or the religious to suffer. But when we dance on those graves, we might also get in the way of the Palestinian patriots who are smashing the monuments. That's a possibility I'm sure you agree must be prevented."

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03/01 Links Pt1: Glick :'US supported Israel's opponent during Protective Edge'; Iran’s Israel card

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: 'US supported Israel's opponent during Protective Edge'

Jerusalem Post managing editor Caroline Glick called Operation Cast Lead "the most successful operation" in Israeli history in response to the State Comptroller's report blasting the government for its handling of the tunnel threat.
Glick wrote on her Facebook page that Israel was facing not only Hamas during the 2014 Gaza conflict, but a hostile Obama Administration. "When talking about the political questions regarding Operation Protective Edge, we somehow ignore two important points. The first is that Operation Protective Edge was the first war Israel fought in which the US supported the other side. From the beginning, the unequivocal demand of [former US President Barack] Obama was that Israel accept Hamas' conditions for a ceasefire."
"The second point, which is a result of the first, is that politically, Protective Edge was the most successful operation in the country's history. Israel managed to avoid accepting the dictates of Hamas, which were backed by the Obama Administration, by bypassing Washington and paralyzing the anti-Israel political campaign of the White House. The Americans stood open-mouthed and helpless as the Egyptians and the Saudis went and openly sided with Israel against Hamas.
"We have to learn the details of the State Comptroller report, and I am beginning to read it right now. But make no mistake. Politically the operation was an unparalleled achievement. Israel fought against the US and managed not to surrender."

PMW: Want to learn 16 languages? Murder 3 Israelis

For a released Palestinian terrorist who murdered 3 Israeli soldiers, the 27 years he spent in Israeli prisons was his ticket to higher education.
Terrorist murderer Hilal Jaradat:
"In prison I studied at the Hebrew University in the history and political science faculties. I read approximately 6,000 books in prison, and I translated for many of the prisoners."
[Donia Al-Watan, independent Palestinian news agency, Jan. 26, 2017]
While in prison he also developed an interest in learning foreign languages:
"I began with Hebrew and English and then I moved on to many languages such as Russian, Spanish, and French, until I reached approximately 16 languages."
Jaradat was released by Israel in 2011, as part of the Shalit prisoner exchange deal brokered between the Israeli government and Hamas. In that deal, Israel released 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held hostage by Hamas for more than 5 years.

JordanTimes: Iran’s Israel card

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday used the podium of a pro-Palestinian gathering in Tehran to call for liberating Palestine from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan.
While it is the not the first time an Iranian leader calls for the destruction of Israel, this time the Iranian supreme leader threatened Israel in response to his perception that there is a sort of a Saudi-Israeli rapprochement.
If anything, Iranian leaders are used to exploiting the Palestinian cause, using it as a smoke screen, to conceal their sectarian agenda in the Levant and the Gulf.
The Arabs are not oblivious to the most recent Iranian ploy.
In fact, a considerable majority of Arabs believes that the Iranians are using the Palestinians cause as a Trojan horse for their negative influence in the Middle East.
By appearing as embracers of the Palestinian cause, many Arabs argue, the Iranian leaders seek to cover up their “terrorist” acts committed in some Arab states.

Students at Al Quds University managed to shut down a conference that was held in Jericho between Israeli Jews and Arabs because it was "normalization."

The coexistence group is named Abrahamic Reunion (h/t Bob Knot).

One of the speakers was supposed to be Mohammed Dajani Daoudi, the Palestinian professor who was forced to quit after he brought some students on a trip to Auschwitz.

Police had to escort the Jews out for their safety.

In related news, the Palestinian Ministry of Education issued a statement telling all Palestinian schools not to engage in any way with any Israelis because of the "dangers of normalization."

The idea that years of brainwashing kids into hating Israeli Jews could be undone by actually meeting some of them apparently scares them silly.

One would think that the liberal organizations who are directly affected by this systematic policy against peace by the Palestinian Authority would issue strong condemnations of the Arabs who are so allergic to Jews that they actively fight against any possible cooperation or peaceful coexistence. Yet, somehow, these supposedly pro-peace organizations blame the Israeli side exclusively for the lack of peace, and they simply do not mention the official Palestinian policies against "normalization" that proves which side is actively working against peaceful coexistence.

Which makes one wonder exactly how interested these "peace" organizations are in real peace.

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The Fateh Media site started a series of articles on the UN's proposed blacklist of companies that "profit from the occupation." It notes that the UN delayed its release of the database earlier this month.

So they decided to publicize their own list of companies that should be boycotted because they are supposedly tied to the "occupation."

It starts off with the usual suspects - Caterpillar and ReMax (which sells real estate over the Green Line.)

It's second installment adds Volvo, for Israel's use of its heavy machinery.

And then it adds Revlon.

Why Revlon?

Because its head, Ronald Perelman, gives money to the "Zionist" Chabad and to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Nothing to do with "settlements" (although they say that Chabad supports settlements.)

Adding Revlon to the "blacklist" shows that, to Fatah, it isn't about "occupation." It is about Israel and, to a large degree, it is about Jews.

But we already knew that.

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"Apartheid week" poster: Professor Mouna Maroun

It is that time of year again when idiots accuse Israel of being guilty of "apartheid."

So it is also time for me to add to my popular series of posters that disprove the slander.

The poster series has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

UPDATE: I'm not sure I ever posted this one:

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Professor Rebecca Gould's counter-factual, and antisemitic, Holocaust argument

The Telegraph reported last week:

Bristol University is investigating claims of anti-Semitism after an article by one of its lecturers emerged, in which she says Jews should stop “privileging” the Holocaust.

Dr Rebecca Gould, a reader in translation studies and comparative literature at the elite Russell Group university, has been accused of using the “language of Holocaust denial”.

The university said they are “actively looking into this matter”, which first arose when an undergraduate penned an open letter to his lecturer last month, explaining his shock at coming across the article.

Sir Eric Pickles MP, who is the UK’s special envoy on post-Holocaust issues and a former Conservative Party chairman,claimed it is “one of the worst cases of Holocaust denial" he has seen in recent years, adding that she should "consider her position" at the university.

Then came the backlash:

But now three professors have rushed to her defence, saying they see "no evidence" of anti-Semitism in the article.

Professor Gene Feder, Professor Havi Hannah Carel and Dr Tom Sperlinger Reader have written a joint letter to say they are "dismayed" at the criticism.

So was her article, entitled "Beyond Anti-Semitism," antisemitic or not?

By the definition of antisemitism that is accepted by the EU, it is.

Beyond that, it a violation of any sort of professional ethics.

Gould's entire thesis is based on lies:

Elie Wiesel did the most to popularize the use of the Greek term holokaustos ("entirely consumed by fire") to translate the Hebrew shoah. Already 20 years ago, the historian Arno Mayer contested the use of the term "holocaust" in lieu of the shoah, because he recognized that this word had spawned "a collective prescriptive 'memory' unconducive to critical and contextual thinking about the Jewish calamity.' Unfortunately, Mayer's protests have gone unheeded.

When the most religiously freighted term imaginable is used to describe a purely human tragedy, memory becomes an instrument of ideology rather than a means of connecting with the past. This problem is only exacerbated by the way "holocaust" implies divine ordination. Defining the shoah vis-a.-vis the Greek (and, incidentally, Christian) term for a sacrifice to God has helped make it available to manipulation by governmental elites, aiming to promote the narrative most likely to underwrite their claims to sovereignty. Claiming the Holocaust as a holy event sanctifies the state of Israel and whitewashes its crimes. As Mayer feared. it also forestalls objective critique of any group associated with those who were brutally "sacrificed" half a century ago.

Gould's first false assumption is that the religious etymology of the word "holocaust" limits how the word can be used in historical context. She offers no proof for this. Since the 1960s, the word has been used almost exclusively for the Nazi genocide of Jews and the earlier meaning has been all but lost; the word now transcends its etymology. If the word "Shoah" had been the word that took root fifty years ago instead of "Holocaust," there would be no difference in how the word could be used today.

The claim that Israel claims the Holocaust as a "holy event" is simply not true, and Gould brings no evidence for her assertion. The Holocaust is a uniquely horrifying event but there is no religious connotation to it and there hasn't been one since the term was coined - except, of course, for the religious dimension of the Nazi attempt to destroy the Jewish people.

Gould's second false assumption follows from her first:

Just as it is necessary to separate the past from the present in contemporary Israel-Palestine, so, too, it is necessary to separate Jewish suffering from the Palestinian crisis. One tragedy does not license another. The Holocaust does not license the Israeli occupation. Nor does it license the bulldozing of Palestinian homes or the razing of Palestinian land. To refuse the moral calculus that transforms Jewish suffering into a justification of Israeli oppression does not imply insensitivity to or obliviousness of what the Jews have faced over the course of their long, often devastating, history. Even less does it earn one the label of anti-Semite. Rather, it opens a post-Holocaust present to an ethics that looks beyond the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" principle that has undergirded all three of the world's most influential monotheisms - regardless of how they toss this label at each other, all have subscribed to such ethics in practice - at various moments in their history. Two wrongs do not make a right. Jewish suffering will never be appeased by making Palestinians pay the price for the world community's silence half a century ago, when the Jews were being exterminated.

When does Israel use the Holocaust to justify defending itself from Palestinian terror? You might hear analogies between the Holocaust and the stated genocidal aim of Israel's enemies, which are quite strong, but the basic assumption that Israel uses the Holocaust to forestall valid criticism is unfounded. No Israeli leader has ever said "we have the right to mistreat Arabs because of the Holocaust" and to claim that this is how Israelis think is simply slander. On the contrary, Israel's treatment of Palestinians is far more careful and tentative than one can find any country treating those whom it is at war with. It isn't Israel that puts Palestinians into concentration camps: it is Arab nations.

Gould's article is bookended by an anecdote of a pro-Palestinian friend of hers who is afraid to criticize Israel because he doesn't want to appear antisemitic. She takes that fear as fact and bases her thesis on it - but it is based on a false assumption to begin with. There are plenty of criticisms of Israel that are valid and that are not antisemitic.

Gould builds on her false assumptions:

The justification of silence regarding Israel's illegal expansion in Palestine on the grounds that protest against this injustice could be perceived as anti-Semitic merely extends the lifespan of anti-Jewish prejudice.

Has there been silence regarding the "occupation?" I seem to remember that every nation on the planet has criticized it. Perhaps Gould missed that, plus the hundreds of UN and UNHRC resolutions, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty articles, and daily op-eds in Western media.

If her idea that there is "silence" on Israel's actions is completely wrong, then that means that her thesis that this imaginary silence adds to antisemitism is wrong as well. The idea that relentless criticism of Israel out of proportion to its supposed crimes may be engendering antisemitism obviously did not cross Gould's mind.

So far, it would be a stretch to call this article antisemitic. But her conclusion indeed reaches that level:

Israel must find a way of not passing on the crime the Nazis introduced into the world onto the next generation of its citizens. If Israel can find a way to stop the cycle of bloodletting released into the world over half a century ago, then, even in an era weary of nations and the states that underwrite them, it will merit the world's admiration. As the situation stands today, the Holocaust persists and its primary victims are the Palestinian people.

This is antisemitism, despite the "if." This paragraph tells the reader, only slightly elliptically, that Israel is guilty of doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews, and that Palestinians are victims of the Holocaust via the proxy of the modern Israeli Nazis. Israel is repeating the "bloodletting" that the Nazis started, just this time the victims are the new Jews and the Israelis are the new Nazis.

To call Israelis Nazis is antisemitic and outrageous, and that is exactly what Gould is doing despite her wording that tries to make her accusation appear theoretical.

I am not going to weigh in on whether Rebecca Gould should be fired for this. What should definitely happen is that she must be exposed both as a person who glibly throws around antisemitic accusations, as well as an academic fraud who builds her case on her own hateful fantasies instead of the facts that academics are supposed to base their arguments on.

(There are other counterfactual points she makes in her article that invalidate her as an honest academic, such as invoking "millennia of harmonious Jewish-Arabic coexistence prior to modernity.")

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02/28 Links Pt2: Collier: Apartheid Week watch – day one; Glick: Perez, Ellison and the meaning of antisemitism

From Ian:

David Collier: Apartheid Week watch – day one. The Jew hating fetish opens at UCL

It is Apartheid ‘Week’ again. Last night, 27 Feb 2017 I was at UCL (University College London) for the opening night of UCL’s very own ‘Apartheid Fortnight’ (we were informed that their ‘classy’ week has been ‘doubled’). This event was titled ‘Apartheid: Stories from the Ground‘
The evening was put together by the UCLU Friends of Palestine Society. Which means that the welcoming committee was led by Yahya Abu Seido. A few months ago, Yahya was one of the ringleaders when the protestors tried to ‘no platform’ an Israeli speaker on this campus. In fact, Yahya was caught on camera celebrating what he had believed was the successful closing down of the event. He was part of the group that left the Jewish students locked in a room. Those that left Jewish students needing a police escort to remove them safely. Just a few months later he is happily leading a Jew hating festival on the UCL campus. Another bitter pill that the Jewish UCL students are forced to swallow.
At this event, there were two speakers and a Chair. The Chair was Dr Saladin Meckled-Garcia, the ‘co Director of the UCL institute of Human Rights’. Just in case anyone is foolish enough to believe that a Chair should at least maintain the veneer of impartiality, we can see that Meckled-Garcia has signed petitions against Israel, here, here, here and here. Just for good measure he signed one titled ‘Israel must lose’ in 2009. This ‘impartiality’ was visible throughout the evening, especially in the way the Q&A was handled.
The evening opened with the Chair announcing he wanted to make a political statement. Meckled-Garcia then proceeded to object to the use of the adopted definition of antisemitism for what he suggested was a way of silencing ‘free speech’. How anybody can address the thugs of the UCLU Friends of Palestine Society about free speech and keep a straight face is beyond me. At least we were left in no doubt as to which side the Chair was on from the very beginning.

Caroline Glick: Perez, Ellison and the meaning of antisemitism

This sad state of affairs has been on prominent display in the wake of the recent spate of antisemitic attacks against Jewish cemeteries in the US. Muslim Americans with records of antisemitism have been quick to condemn the attacks.
On the face of it, statements by Ellison, Hamas supporter Linda Sarsour and others condemning the attacks on Jewish cemeteries are welcome. Sarsour’s support for Palestinian mass murderers of Jews and open calls for Israel’s destruction have been ongoing for more than a decade. It’s nice that she is suddenly raising money to repair broken Jewish graves in St. Louis.
The problem is if Sarsour and her Jew hating comrades are viewed as legitimate partners in fighting antisemitism, when they themselves are abetting and popularizing antisemitism, then the notion of fighting antisemitism is destroyed.
If Sarsour, who wrote in 2012 that “nothing is creepier than Zionism,” is a legitimate voice in the fight against anti-Jewish discrimination and violence, then the fight against anti-Jewish discrimination and violence is reduced to farce.
Sarsour, like Ellison, is no fringe figure on the Left. She has become a major mover and shaker in the second party in America. Sarsour was one of the organizers of the anti-Trump women’s protests the day after the president was inaugurated.
Sarsour’s rising prominence in progressive and Democratic circles despite her open support for Hamas shows why it is important today to draw a line in the sand and reject the notion that antisemites can suddenly become defenders of Jews.

Douglas Murray: Europe: Laughing at the Messenger

How can one excavate the minds of so many European officials and the extraordinary mental gymnastics of denial to which they have become prone?
One of the finest demonstrations of this trend occurred in January 2015, after France was assailed by Islamist gunmen in the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and then in a Jewish supermarket. In the days after those attacks, Fox News in the U.S. ran an interview with a guest who said that Paris, and France, as a whole, had "no-go zones" where the authorities -- including emergency services -- did not dare to go. In the wake of these comments, the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, chose to make a stand. She announced that she was suing Fox News because the "honour of Paris" was at stake.
It appeared that Mayor Hidalgo was rightly concerned about the image of her city around the world, presumably worrying in particular about the potential effects on tourism.
Of course, Mayor Hidalgo's priorities were all wrong. The reason Paris's public relations suffered a dent was not because of what a pundit said on Fox News one evening, but because of the mass murder of journalists and Jews on the streets of the "City of Light." Any potential tourist would be much more concerned about getting caught up in a terrorist firefight than a war of words. Mayor Hidalgo's manoeuvre, however, turned out not to be a rarity, but a symptom of a wider problem.

Swedish Ambulance Union ‘We need military equipment to protect medics from hand grenades’

Det Goda Samhället (the good society) is a Swedish initiative that discusses the necessities of a good society, and is dedicated to reporting on issues in Sweden that they feel need to be addressed. To this end, it has also started up a series of interviews on YouTube and podcasts. This interview is by Paulina Neuding, with Gordon Grattidge, the President of the Swedish Ambulance Drivers Union, who makes it absolutely clear that Swedish no-go-zones are a fact of life that his personnel is faced with every day.
Some of the highlights:
“Let me ask you Gordon, I know that your union has called for military equipment in order to protect paramedics on emergency calls. What kind of equipment?”
-“That’s correct. (…) We work with lighter protection in the form of body armour and helmets.”
“In what situations does a paramedic need body armour and helmets?”
-“It’s when we enter hazardous areas and there’s a risk of putting our paramedics in danger. It’s often about these risk areas we have in Sweden. So-called ‘no-go zones’.”