Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, March 05, 2017

Over 100,000 Palestinian Arab patients treated in Israel in 2015 - and the Israelis pay for their treatment

Makor Rishon has a recent article that describes the statistics of Palestinian medical patients in Israel. (I found the statistics online as well from a May 2016 article in Mako.)

In 2015, Israeli hospitals treated over 97,000 Arabs from the West Bank (allowing over 100,000 people to accompany them). In addition, over 31,787 Gaza patients and escorts arrived in 2015.

At any given time there are 60-70 Gazans receiving care at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv alone.

Only 10% of the cost to care for these patients comes from the Palestinian Authority. The rest is paid for by the Israeli taxpayer.

This is while the Palestinian leadership continues to pay full salaries to terrorists and their families. But they can't be bothered to pay for medical care of their regular populace - because the Israelis will.

It is one thing to show compassion and help all people who need help. I'm happy to see sick kids get the help they need, no matter who they are.

It is another thing to be a sucker.

The EU happily pays for illegal schools and homes to be built, willy-nilly, in the West Bank that they know Israel will demolish, but does it pay for actual medical needs of Palestinians being treated in Israel?

Why should they when they know that Israelis will pay the price? Israel gets next to no media attention for the help it gives to those who want to destroy it, but if Israel would insist on full payment, you can be sure that sob stories will be published by Reuters about how heartless Israelis are for refusing to allow unlimited Palestinian patients.

(h/t Yenta Press)

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Ma'an News has a story about how the beloved dog of Abdel-Hamid Abu Srour went missing.

Abu Srour was heartbroken, going sleepless nights and posting "lost dog" notices on Facebook for his favorite pet Cinderella.

The timeline of the story isn't clear, so we don't know if the dog was found by April 18, 2016.

That is the day that Abu Srour - who came from a well-to-do family - took a bomb on Egged Bus #12 in Jerusalem, sat on top of the fuel tank, and detonated it, turning the bus into a fireball and injuring 20 innocent Israelis.

He was killed by his device, which seems likely to have been built by Hamas.

Abu Srour's body has still not been returned, so Ma'an apparently decided that they must publish a story to make their audience even more sympathetic towards a cold-blooded terrorist than usual.

Ma'an is not an Islamist newspaper. It is not associated with either Fatah or Hamas. It prides itself on its journalistic standards and objectivity. And Ma'an - as a mainstream, modern and moderate news source - humanizes terrorists by describing how much more they care about their dogs than about Jews.

And Arabs revile dogs.

Here is the list of funders of Ma'an as of 2014. So-called "human rights groups" and even the US Consulate gave thousands of dollars to an organization that glorifies terrorists.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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03/04 Links: Media Misfeasance Exposed in "Eyeless in Gaza"; Marc Lamont Hill’s hypocrisy on racism in the Middle East

From Ian:

Explain it to me

Explain to me how a woman who planted a bomb which killed two young men at the Supersol market in Jerusalem on February 21st 1969 is now an organizer of the upcoming Women’s Strike. The stated goal of this strike is “to increase equality, justice, and human rights for women around the world.” I unequivocally commend this goal.
But, explain how my family is supposed to reconcile the reality that the woman who stripped my uncle of his life is now deemed a hero by many of my fellow Americans. What justification is there for Rasmea Odeh, a woman who killed two people (with the intention of killing more!) to lead a peaceful fight for human rights? In the documentary, “Women in Struggle”, Odeh and her accomplice, Ayesha, talk in detail about their gruesome acts. Ayesha names Odeh as the ringleader. Explain to me how explosives found at Odeh’s home matching those used in the bombings sits with your conscience.
What is the difference between the acts of Omar Mateen, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Dylan Roof, and Rasmea Odeh? There is no difference. They all carried out acts of terror in the name of their causes, which resulted in the death of innocent civilians. Whether they were targeting the LGBT community, Americans, African Americans, or Jewish Israelis, these were all terrorist acts.
Explain to me how Odeh, who was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a US designated terrorist group, was chosen to represent American feminists who seek to peacefully stand up for women’s rights. The Women’s Strike lists as its Principle #1 that “Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people. It is a positive force confronting the forces of injustice and utilizes the righteous indignation and spiritual, emotional, and intellectual capabilities of people as the vital force for change and reconciliation.” Rasmea Odeh signed her name to this movement. And she did so with blood on her hands.

Media Misfeasance Exposed in "Eyeless in Gaza" Documentary

Hamas operatives burst into the Associated Press (AP) Gaza bureau during the 2014 war with Israel, angered by a picture shot by an AP photographer. Gunmen threatened the AP staff, which never reported the incident.
The incident shows that Hamas can control what journalists report, and what they don't, former AP Middle East reporter Matti Friedman says in a new documentary, "Eyeless in Gaza."
Producer Robert Magid's 50-minute film, which is screening via pay-per-view online, examines the flaws and challenges in reporting on the 50-day war.
Magid said he wanted to "set the record straight and provide context," after being appalled at news coverage that ignored Hamas' practice of launching rockets from civilian areas. That omission allowed the media to push a false narrative that "Israel was callous in their bombing."
The sullied moral image of Israel that emerged from the media's biased coverage sparked public outrage and anti-Semitism. "Muslims will crush the Jews as they did in Khyber 14 centuries ago," protestors in the film shout. Another says: "I see the Jews in Israel as total Nazis."

‘The Settlers’: An effective work of left-wing propaganda

I would not say it if it were not true. As I emerged from the press screening of Shimon Dotan’s “The Settlers” I met the eyes of a widely read Jewish-American film critic. With a smile he sighed, “Well, at long last it’s happened — I’ve become an anti-Semite.”
He was kidding, of course, but even those of us who watch movies professionally still fall under their spell. (Perhaps more so, and that’s why we choose this trade.)
Dotan’s documentary, which opens in New York this Friday, is a commendable and effective work of propaganda. It gives you just enough of the “other side” to make it seem fair and balanced.
Of course, it isn’t — it has an agenda. Any documentary that employs edits and doesn’t stash its cameras behind potted plants does. This makes “The Settlers” frustrating because so much of it is so very good and, as the most thorough film about this ongoing crisis from which there seems no easy escape, it is likely to become something of an authoritative text.
Dotan digs deep, starting with new interviews of Jews in West Bank settlements, then jumping back to historical news footage. We get another look at the 1948 partition plan and the 1967 Six-Day War. Some credit is due for leaving in what so many leave out: that the preemptive 1967 strike was necessary in the face of Nasser’s military build-up, an obvious point that is more and more forgotten as history turns to misremembered mist.

Tommy Robinson: The Oscars lied about Islam

03/03 Links Pt2: Phillips: Viewing antisemitism through a glass darkly; Facebook enables Fatah terror promotion

From Ian:

David Collier: From Manchester to Brunel, polishing the propaganda machine

Brunel 2 March
Last night, 2nd March 2017, I was in Brunel for yet another event during ‘Apartheid Week’. There is a difference between an argument shaped to reflect your perspective and delivering raw propaganda. Opposition to ‘Apartheid week’ is not about a difference of opinion. The endless distortion provided by speakers is supported by pillars of outright deceit. Those standing in front of the students on campus must *know* they are telling lies. They *know* they are purposefully omitting information. I have seen scores of speakers at dozens of events deliberately mislead students. This is fodder for the pulpit, not the campus.
This propaganda is designed to incite hatred towards the Jewish state. Logically, it has no other purpose. These events are created to sell an image of an Israel so twisted, so beyond ethical reach, that only mass global action will save the Palestinians from their fate. At the same time, the image has to be so terrifying, so inhumane, that someone walking onto a bus and killing civilians, becomes the understandable event born of lack of choice and frustration.
Only when both of these elements have been successfully delivered, is the true anti-Israel activist created. Therefore the movement has to take university students on a journey to accept horrific attacks against innocent Israeli civilians. A clear strategy of demonisation through propaganda. We have been here before.

Melanie Phillips: Viewing antisemitism through a glass darkly

Suddenly, everyone’s worried about surging antisemitism. Remarkable.
In recent decades, antisemitism has been the prejudice that dare not speak its name. The “Israel apartheid weeks” on campus, the blood libels about Israelis wantonly killing Arab children, the high proportion of attacks on Jews by Muslims – no one was allowed to call this anti-Jewish hatred.
Anyone who did so was accused of Islamophobia, sanitizing the crimes of Israel by waving the shroud of the Holocaust and so on.
Now people are shouting about antisemitism almost every day. Recent events are certainly alarming. Last month, Jewish cemeteries in Philadelphia and near St. Louis, Missouri were vandalized. Hoax bomb threats have forced the evacuation of nearly 100 Jewish community centers and other institutions across America.
No one knows who or what is behind all this. Some people, though, explain it in two words: Donald Trump. They just know it’s the work of white neo-fascists empowered by “dog-whistles” emanating from President Trump, who is said to harbor antisemitic sympathies, and his Svengali, Steve Bannon, who is held to be a white supremacist.
These are ludicrous smears. Trump is one of the most pro-Jewish US presidents ever to be elected. Bannon is also deeply pro-Jew and, far from being a racist or fascist, merely believes in restoring and defending the Judeo-Christian basis of Western national identity.
In any event, attacks on Jewish targets were going on long before Trump’s ascendancy.
From 2008 at least, Jewish cemeteries have been desecrated across America. And Jewish students on campus have long run a gauntlet of anti-Jewish hate and intimidation.

Fred Maroun: Anti-Semitism: Staring straight into darkness

There is no valid excuse for having failed to help Israel become the secure state of the Jewish people. We reflect on anti-Semitism, we ho and we hum, then we sit back down and let the anti-Semites continue on their merry way.
When a Jewish center is threatened, it is not only an afternoon that is lost. When a Jewish cemetery is desecrated, it is not only a tombstone that must be replaced. It is 3000 years of hatred that come rushing back. It is the painful memories of the family members who died in Nazi crematoria that resurface. It is a very current reminder that a nation that is 79 times the size of the Jewish state has threatened to wipe it off the map and continues on its quest to acquire nuclear weapons.
After 3000 years of antisemitism, with countless pogroms, deportations of Jews from their own lands, and the cold-blooded murder of half its population in the interval of five years, how can we accept that Jews still today do not have one secure place on earth to call home? How can we get up in the morning, look at ourselves in the mirror and not feel the angst of having failed so miserably in the most elementary task that we “intelligent” animals have ever been given?
Why has no government anywhere in the world, other than Israel, placed the fight against antisemitism amongst its top priorities? Why do politicians keep repeating the same foolish lines about negotiating peace when there is no credible entity to negotiate with? Why do they denounce anti-Semitism but then do nothing to stop it? The security of a people that has been forced to struggle for its security for 3000 years is not a game. It is not a political chip to be negotiated.
I am ashamed of my leaders. I am ashamed of my society. I am ashamed of the human race.
If God exists, we will be judged, and the judgement will not be kind. If there is no God, there will be no one to redeem us, and we will always be guilty of the darkest crime in the sorry history of humanity.

It is worth watching this video:

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03/03 Links Pt1: Arrest made in bomb threats against US Jewish centers; Jewish cemetery in Rochester vandalized

From Ian:

Man arrested for bomb threats against 8 US Jewish centers

US law enforcement agencies have arrested a man suspected of being behind at least eight bomb threats against Jewish organizations in recent week, Federal authorities said.
Authorities named the suspect as Juan Thompson, 31, and said that the threats were made as a campaign to harass a former girlfriend, using her name to make some of the threats.
“Today, we have charged Juan Thompson with allegedly stalking a former romantic interest by, among other things, making bomb threats in her name to Jewish Community Centers and to the Anti-Defamation League,” New York-based US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.
“Threats of violence targeting people and places based on religion or race –- whatever the motivation –- are unacceptable, un-American and criminal.”
Thompson was arrested in St. Louis, Missouri and was expected to appear in a Missouri court later Friday on one count of cyberstalking.

Juan Thompson: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

1. Juan Thompson, 31-years-old, Is Suspected of Making Threats Against JCCs Using the Name of a Woman He Had Dated
2. He Has a Twitter Account Where He Says His Ex-Girlfriend Sent a Bomb Threat in His Name
3. Juan Thompson Was Fired from the Intercept for Fabricating Quotes and Sources
4. He Planned to Run for Mayor of St. Louis in 2017, According to His Twitter Account
5. Thompson May Have Made at Least Eight Threats, Which Leaves Many Bomb Threats Still Unaccounted For

The Intercept: Statement on the Arrest of Former Intercept Reporter Juan Thompson

We were horrified to learn this morning that Juan Thompson, a former employee of The Intercept, has been arrested in connection with bomb threats against the ADL and multiple Jewish Community Centers in addition to cyberstalking. These actions are heinous and should be fully investigated and prosecuted. We have no information about the charges against Thompson other than what is included in the criminal complaint. Thompson worked for The Intercept from November 2014 to January 2016, when he was fired after we discovered that he had fabricated sources and quotes in his articles.

NY governor orders probe as Jewish cemetery in Rochester vandalized

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Thursday ordered state police to launch a full investigation after a Jewish cemetery in Rochester was vandalized, the third such incident in the United States in less than two weeks.
Five headstones were found toppled Thursday morning at the Waad Hakolel Cemetery, also known as the Stone Road Cemetery, in the city in western New York.
“A number of headstones were recently vandalized and toppled over at Waad Hakolel Cemetery in Rochester,” the governor said in a statement. “Given the wave of bomb threats targeting Jewish community centers and disturbing vandalism at Jewish cemeteries nationwide, I am directing the State Police to immediately launch a full investigation into this matter.”
The president of the nonprofit managing the cemetery said he did not want to call the incident a hate crime or anti-Semitism.
“I don’t want to label it a hate crime. I don’t think there’s any proof of that. I don’t want to label it anti-Semitism. I don’t think there’s any proof of that,” said Michael Phillips, president of the Britton Road Association, according to The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

Walla reports that IDF reservists in the North were surprised to see that many of their vegetables came from Gaza.

Ran Reuven Golan wrote on Facebook, "Shame shame shame. I'm in the army reserves. Today the supply truck came into the kitchen. All cartons of cucumbers are labeled that they are made in Gaza. Palestine is written on them in Arabic. Israeli farmers are struggling to survive and the IDF is buying vegetables made in Gaza. Not to mention the security risk. Please share..."

Golan told Walla, "At night they shoot missiles at us and in the morning we buy from them. It's absurd."

The IDF spokesman said in response that the IDF buys the food from companies that win contracts from the Ministry of Defense, according to the law and with the approval of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Defence as required by law.

While there are legitimate reasons - including security reasons - to help Gaza's private sector, this is not something that the IDF should be doing directly. The priority should be to buy domestic goods when possible, as any army would do. And now that Hamas knows that the IDF eats Gaza cucumbers, there is an increased chance of tampering. This is altogether a bad idea.

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Two weeks ago:

The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs announced that two detainees, Jamal Abu Allel and Raed Fayez, have entered an open hunger strike today, protesting against the extension of their Administrative Detention in a punitive manner that includes all the Administrative detainees.
The commission declared that the Negev prison administration yesterday informed detainee Abu Allel that his administrative detention will be renewed to six months for the third time respectively.

Opponents of administrative detention claim that Israel gives no reason for detaining suspects. So why indeed is Israel detaining Jamal Abu Al-Leil?

A hint comes from this article from today.

The Al Aqsa Brigades of the Qalandiya camp plans to close a major road between Jerusalem and Ramallah next week for three days in support of Abu Al-Leil.

Guess what? Abu Al-Leil is their leader!

He was arrested a year ago because Israel linked him to the series of shooting attacks that was occurring during the "knife intifada" as terror groups tried to capitalize on the "lone wolf" attacks.

This terrorist leader Jamal Abu Al-Leil is also a member of Fatah's Revolutionary Council, the top legislative body of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah.

In summary, a terror group associated with Fatah will make the lives of Palestinians miserable by closing a road in support of their leader, who also happens to be a respected politician under Mahmoud Abbas.

Here are the members of the Fatah terror group in the Qalandiya camp showing support for Abu Al-Leil's hunger strike by shooting rifles in the air.

There is no line between the "political" and "military" wings even of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah. But good luck seeing that reported anywhere.

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Iraqi musician, praised by Electronic Intifada for his "resistance," says he'd gladly play in Israel (update)

In 2010, Electronic Intifada wrote a fawning profile of Iraqi musician Naseer Shamma and his "music of resistance.:" It quoted him as being strongly pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel.

How things have changed.

Israel's UNESCO representative, Carmel Shama HaKohen, also of Iraqi origin, met with Naseer Shama at a UNESCO event.

After performing, HaKohen approached Naseer in front of the Iraqi minister, MPs and other Iraqi officials, congratulated the musician and wished him success in his mission to promote peace.

The Israeli representative noted that he shared the same surname and his parents came from Baghdad as well.

"Whatever the relationship between our countries, you as an artist for peace should come and perform with your talent and convey the message of peace in Israel, too - and I am sure that the community of Israel from Iraq would be happy to invite you," said Carmel Shama to the musician.

Carmel was sure that he would get brushed off, but instead Naseer gave him his business card and said, 'I'll gladly perform in Israel."

Here they are shaking hands in front of UNESCO head Irina Bokova.

It's one thing when a Radiohead or Aerosmith plays in Israel. But when a popular Iraqi musician says he would be happy to play, the BDSers must be going absolutely crazy.

Even if he never comes, this picture is enough to cause some sleepless nights among those who cannot even get Arabs to adhere to their demands of "no normalization."

UPDATE: Shama now claims that he did not know that the person he was speaking to was from Israel and he denies that he accepted any invitation, saying that he supports Palestinians unconditionally.

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03/02 Links Pt2: Collier: You think there is no Antisemitism? Take the anti-Zionist test; Hugging Antisemitism at the Labour Party Conference

From Ian:

David Collier: You think there is no Antisemitism? Take the anti-Zionist test

This is designed for people who think there is no antisemitism in the anti-Zionist, anti-Israel movements. If you know any, ask them to take the test.
Before you begin.
Imagine: Someone you are connected to continually posts racist memes and comments on Facebook. On his time stream are constant references to racial slurs, using words and phrases that are unacceptable in society. Viscous, vile, offensive posts that draw on awful stereotypes and link back to white supremacy websites. What would you do when you saw them? I hope, as an anti-racist, you would delete him from your friends list or at least confront them about their offensive views.
You may now begin the anti-Zionist test. When you have finished, please pass it on to your friends, or other anti-Israel protesters you know.
THE ANTI-ZIONIST TEST
A few days ago, I posted the result of an investigation into antisemitism inside Palestinian activism in the UK. Since its release, I have received abuse and threats. Some of the more measured criticism has been absurdly to throw the line that ‘anti-Zionism’ is nothing to do with antisemitism. So, I have designed a test to assist in measuring the level of ‘neo-Nazi’ antisemitism ‘IN YOUR ONLINE ENVIRONMENT’.
The test starts with an easy exercise in identifying blatant antisemitism.
Do you consider any of these comments to be antisemitic?
- The Jews were behind 9/11
- The holocaust is the biggest myth of our time
- Charlie Hebdo was a false flag carried out by Mossad to make Jews go to Israel
- Ashkenazi Jews are all fake Jews
- Kristallnacht was instigated by Jews to promote War against Germany
- Babylonian Talmud advocates sex with child age three
- Israel kills people to harvest their organs
The answer to this question is ‘all of the above’ and there is little ambiguity here. Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians has nothing to do with any of the above statements.

No Safe Space for Jews at KCL

Given what was to follow, this announcement was a kick in the teeth to any Israel supporters in the audience, including most of the Jewish students there (see below). The speakers simply assumed that Israel was The Great Satan and needed to be boycotted. There was simply no discussion of this and also no mention of Israeli casualties, eg those who have died in the stabbing and car ramming incidents in recent months and of those in Judea and Samaria who have been killed by Palestinians. No mention. Zilch.
The Chair was Rafeef Ziadah, a ‘Palestinian poet and human rights activist’ (she also seems to have a position at SOAS). She was on her best behaviour but it is not hard to find her extremist connections. She claims her family was ‘forced out’ of Haifa. The truth is that the Arabs who left Haifa in 1948 were not ‘forced out’ at all. And she has praised a terrorist member of Islamic Jihad, Khader Adnan. As Richard Millett commented at IAW five years ago, ‘when he is not on hunger strike he does a nice sideline in inciting the killing of Jews.’. Ziadah has also worked for War On Want (who sponsored the KCL meeting).
Aja Monet Farid is from Brooklyn. She began with a ‘statement’ which included the phrase ‘Zionists, racists and colonisers demean me’. She is a member of ‘Black Lives Matter’. She wants ‘Intersectionalism’ which is the theory that all the causes of the Left are connected, so for example ‘Black Lives Matter’ and anti-Israel activists need to work together. Her metaphor for the Israel/Palestinian conflict: “If you have a foot on your neck, what are you going to do to get it off?”. She is not a fan of ‘safe spaces’ either. “We need to stand for what’s right .. What does love look like as a political technology?” Pretty meaningless stuff so far …. Surprisingly little insights about (or even mentions of) Israel – just the assumption it’s the Great Satan.

Gerald M. Steinberg: Empty slogans and half truths

With the release of its 2016/2017 annual report, which was published with much fanfare a week ago, Amnesty International, the strongest international human rights organization, first decided to distribute it to a limited number of "friendly journalists" by conducting closed briefings designed to produce instant headlines, without affording enough time for these journalists to independently examine the report and analyze its findings.
The organization acted to gain sympathetic media coverage instead of allowing free access to all those reporters that might have actually asked questions and checked the data. Amnesty International's conduct was the embodiment of a political system seeking to control information.
An article on Amnesty's website presenting the report is full of empty slogans, claiming that "today's politics of demonization shamelessly peddles a dangerous idea that some people are less human than others," and quoting the organization's secretary general, Salil Shetty, as saying that "the need for all of us to stand up for the basic values of human dignity and equality everywhere has seldom been clearer." Ironic declarations, given the fact that Amnesty employees have been accused several times of employing anti-Semitic rhetoric and the organization even refused to add the war on anti-Semitism to its agenda.
The report's section titled "Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories" employs the same tone, shamelessly exploiting legal terms and hurling accusations such as the "excessive use of force" and "subject[ing] Palestinian detainees, including children, to torture," to attack the Israel Defense forces without providing any evidence or source.

I have a Jerusalem ritual.
Whenever we visit, before we leave, we go to visit the Kotel.
It doesn’t matter what time of day it is. The Kotel is always there, waiting.

The Kotel. A wall so important it needs no other name, besides: “The Wall.”

Cutting through the heart of Jerusalem, she stands.
Golden and patient.

She calls, beckoning silently:
“Come to me. You belong to me. I am your past, your present, your future.
I have remembered you for centuries. I am waiting for you now.”

There are always people at the Kotel; at 2:00 am. When it’s cold. When it’s hot. When it’s rainy.
Sometimes it is so packed you can hardly move. Sometimes there are only a few people.
There’s always someone: singing, dancing, praying, learning, teaching, sleeping, weeping, coming of age, alone, with friends, with brothers in arms... the Nation of Israel, in all her colors and variations.
And visiting friends – not of our Nation, but welcome just the same.

When I visit the Kotel I get dizzy.
Every time.

The closer I get, the louder I hear the throbbing in my veins.
And when I place my hands on the stones so many others have touched,
My head begins to ache.

Like blood pumping through clogged arteries,
A heart beating, strong and hard,
Blood trying to bring oxygen to every cell of the body -
Succeeding,
But with difficulty.

The Kotel is not the heart,
It stands between me and the heart.

It is the Temple, not the Kotel.
As the wall, next to where I park my car, outside my home is not the place that calms my heart.
My soul breathes easy after I walk inside.

Being almost there isn’t enough.

How long would you stand beside the wall that stands outside the home that was once yours?
How many times would you come back to it, just to be there?
To be close to the place where your heart rested easy?

Would you teach your children about the home of your heart?
And your children’s children?
And their children?

Stolen from you, destroyed, reused by other people,
Would you keep coming back to stand next to the wall,
To touch it, to speak the yearnings of your soul?
The only remaining part of the place where your heart belongs
Or, to be more accurate, the only place you can freely approach.

Year after year, generation after generation...
Would you remember?

After you had a new place to live, would you remember that it is only temporary?
Comfortable as it may be, that it is not your true home?
Would you remember?
For how long?

How many times a day would you speak of the place where your heart belongs?
How many times would you utter its name in your prayers?
How many times would you tell your children: “Next year we will be there and it will be rebuilt”?

Generation after generation, century after century,
Everywhere Jews have lived
No matter how easy or how hard their lives were,
In Europe or the Middle East,
Ethiopia,
Russia,
India,
America…

There was always Jerusalem
And in her heart,
The place where our hearts belong.

My Jerusalem ritual keeps calling me back to the Kotel.
Keeper of our memory,
Witness of our yearning.

I touch the wall and feel the weight of centuries.
Of my people,
And our longing.

Being almost there isn’t enough.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

It seems like every day brings a new anti-Jewish incident in the US. Journalists are harassed by anti-Jewish Twitter trolls, cemeteries are desecrated and Jewish organizations receive bomb threats. Of course it is not like Jew-hatred in France, where Jewish fingers are sawed off, but it is still shocking. People expect it in Europe, much of which agreed with Hitler that the Jews were the misfortune of the countries they lived in, but America since WWII has been the one place in the world other than Israel where a Jew could forget (most of the time) to watch his back.

The ADL and FBI maintain statistics on anti-Jewish acts. The FBI’s “hate crimes” numbers are available from 1996 to 2015, and show a steady decline in anti-Jewish crimes from over 1100 in 1996 to 664 in 2015. The ADL keeps track of “incidents” which may or may not be crimes, and statistics have been presented in annual “audits” since 1979. The recent trend is similar to the FBI statistics, although the numbers are somewhat higher (for example, they report 941 incidents in 2015). The peak year was 1994, in which the ADL reported 2,066 incidents, including 25 arsons, 10 attempted arsons, and a mass shooting in which one person was murdered (by a Lebanese immigrant as revenge for the Baruch Goldstein massacre). One of the changes over the years is an increasing number of incidents on college campuses, mostly on background of the Middle East conflict.

But with the 2016 presidential campaign, it seems as though there has been an explosion of Jew-hatred. Is this true? Who is responsible?

It seems to me that there are three kinds of perpetrators of anti-Jewish acts. First there are the organized neo-Nazis, skinheads, white supremacists, and so forth. Then there are anti-Israel “activists.” Finally, there is the kind of Jew-hatred that I remember from my childhood, ordinary people who express their dislike of Jews in the context of neighborhood disputes, teenage bullying, or petty crime.

Has there been a sudden increase in membership among neo-Nazi groups? I doubt it. And I think that the “ordinary people” category has been becoming smaller in recent years. On the other hand, anti-Israel activity, especially on campuses, has grown rapidly. Radical delegitimization of Israel in the alternative media (and even in the left-leaning segments of the mainstream media) has motivated and excused extremist activists to express themselves in anti-Jewish ways. It really doesn’t make sense to hate Israel and love Jews, as some suggest they do, and how better to support the Palestinian people than by drawing a swastika on someone’s door?

There is also a revival of traditional anti-Jewish attitudes on the Left, such as appeared in the Occupy Wall Street movement, which liked to talk about Jewish control of banks and media. And more recently, the Black Lives Matter movement’s “intersectional” embrace of the Palestinian movement has given impetus to already simmering black antisemitism.

But despite all this, the “explosion of Jew-hatred” associated with the election has been blamed on Trump and the Right.

In 2016 a very well-publicized anti-Jewish event occurred: Jewish journalists were harassed by thousands of hateful tweets. Interestingly, while they included the usual traditional memes (banks, Holocaust, media control, etc.) the most common subjects had to do with Zionism and Israel. The ADL’s analysis showed that 68% of some 20,000 anti-Jewish tweets directed at journalists came from only 1,600 Twitter accounts, illustrating the force-multiplier effect of social media. And since journalists were targeted, we were guaranteed to hear about it. Much of the activity could have been automated. We saw a technically similar (but far less vicious) phenomenon when Ron Paul ran for president in 2012, and online polls and website comments sections were inundated with pro-Paul material. A small group was able to have a disproportionally large effect.

The campaign against the Jewish journalists was related to the campaign of Donald Trump, both as a trigger (journalists who criticized him were targeted) and in content (anti-Jewish tweeters suggested that Trump was on their side). The tweeters were encouraged by white supremacist web sites, and it is clear that this element has adopted Trump as its champion. I don’t intend to try to analyze Trump’s thinking and motivations here, but I do not believe that he shares their ideology. And he definitely does not benefit from the association.

The public manifestation of Jew-hatred by white supremacists adds to the anti-Jewish signals coming from the pro-Palestinian Left. The fact that people now hear and see this stuff all the time legitimizes it and emphasizes it. Just as words can be said on television today that once were never heard at all in polite society, ideas that were considered too ugly to be expressed in public have become not just thinkable, but sayable. Many Americans have always held classically anti-Jewish beliefs (see Tuvia Tenenbom’s book The Lies they Tell), but the public expression of these ideas has always been socially unacceptable – at least until recently. This adds to the impression that Jew-hatred is at an all-time high.

Now we come to the latest manifestations of Jew-hatred in America, the bomb threat campaign in which at least 100 threats have been made against Jewish institutions in 5 waves (as of Wednesday), and the damaging of headstones in two Jewish cemeteries.

The bomb threat is one of the easiest and most inexpensive means to create chaos – and get media attention – imaginable. In about 10 seconds of googling, I found countless websites that offered services and applications to make anonymous phone calls. Some bragged that they don’t log IP addresses and some were outside of the US. Some offered text-to-speech conversion, so the perpetrator doesn’t even have to disguise his or her voice. The use of a VPN with such a site would make it doubly hard to track down the caller (although there are ways…).

Something which in the past was risky – I remember “bomb scares” at my middle school in which the perpetrators were caught the next day and expelled, sent to what was called “reform school” – is now trivial and safe. Any 14-year old can do it and not get caught, at least for a while. All 100 calls could easily have been made by one or two persons. It is not indicative of a wave of Jew-hatred.

The cemetery vandalism has also been given publicity far beyond its importance. Cemetery vandalism happens all the time, including to Jewish cemeteries. Sometimes it’s anti-Jewish and sometimes not. According to a blog written by Emily Ford, who owns a company that provides planning, maintenance, restoration and research services to cemeteries, there were 127 incidents of vandalism affecting “at least 1,811 individual markers … costing at least $488,000” in the US in 2016. And this is a conservative estimate, because much vandalism isn’t reported. Three Jewish cemeteries were among those hit last year, but so was a cemetery containing the graves of notable Confederate figures, which were tagged with “anti-racist” graffiti. “Vandalism is almost inevitable in any sparsely-staffed cemetery,” Ford writes. “If 2016’s data is any indicator, nobody should be shocked by cemetery vandalism.” Indeed, and normally it is not of interest to the media.

To summarize:

With the exception of certain highly publicized events, there are fewer anti-Jewish hate crimes and incidents than in the recent past.
Neo-Nazis and white supremacists are still around, but more and more of the Jew-hatred is coming from the pro-Palestinian extreme Left.
A smallish group of provocateurs was responsible for the massive anti-Jewish harassment of journalists on Twitter.
It has become more acceptable to publically express dislike or even hatred of Jews. But there’s no reason to think these attitudes have suddenly gotten stronger or more popular.
The bomb threat calls could have been made by one or two people and have no real significance as an indicator of a “spike” in Jew-hatred.
Cemetery vandalism is common. There is nothing out-of-the-ordinary in two Jewish cemeteries being vandalized, except the media attention. Usually it’s teenagers that knock down headstones.

So, should we just say “nothing to see here, move along?”

No, I don’t think so. It is probably true that the country is not becoming more anti-Jewish. There is not a real spike in anti-Jewish incidents or behavior. But there may be something else.

Trump has claimed that “the other side” is responsible for the bomb threats. Ha ha, that crazy narcissistic Trump. But what if he’s right? What if the tweets and bomb threats were part of a plan, a plan that may just be getting off the ground, to delegitimize him and destabilize his administration? What if the idea is to make it impossible for him to make appointments or to get congressional support for his initiatives? To build an increasingly numerous and vociferous group of protestors that won’t give him a moment’s rest?

Add to this the fabrications against Bannon and Gorka throughout liberal media. If it’s possible to tar Trump and his key people with the brush of antisemitism, it will go a long way toward destroying him.

They don’t need a complicated conspiracy. Just the ability to do a few simple dirty tricks and to use fortuitous events, perhaps like the cemetery vandalism, to amplify the effect. And a media “echo chamber.” Sound familiar?

I have no idea who “they” might be – his domestic opposition, people in the intelligence community, or even an international actor. Maybe I’m as hysterical as the rest, and there are no connections between events, just a few delinquent teenagers making sophisticated prank calls.

But if there is something to it, then – whatever you may think about Trump – it is one of the most profoundly anti-democratic maneuvers in American history

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