Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, August 18, 2017

Let's look at Mein Kampf itself

I admit that I had never read Mein Kampf. So after this morning's story about the book being on the summer reading list of the Galloway School in Atlanta (and this is apparently not the first time this has happened in the US), I figured we should see some selections from the book itself so we can understand exactly what the students will be reading.

The blurb describing the book that claims that only 6% of Mein Kampf is about Jews is a lie. In fact, in the 736 pages, Jews are mentioned 579 times, and the word is distributed throughout the book, which you can see graphically here, each mention being a yellow line.

This comes from the official Nazi translation of the book into English.

As in all good propaganda, Hitler starts off saying that he grew up sympathetic to Jews, and only later he became aware of their essential evil. By the end of the book the evil of the Jews is a given. To imagine that high school students could read this critically without a good teacher's supervision is naive at best, and dangerous at worst.

What soon gave me food for serious thought was the
insight which I gradually gained into the activities of the
Jews in certain walks of life. Was there any shady under-
taking, any form of foulness, especially in cultural life, in
which at least one Jew did not participate? On probing to
the heart of this kind of abomination, one discovered, like
a maggot in a rotten body, a tiny Jew, who was apt to be
blinded when thus exposed to the light of day.

In my eyes the charge against Judaism became a grave
one the moment I discovered the scope of Jewish activities
in the press, in art, in literature and in the theatre. All
unctuous protests were now more or less futile. One needed
only to look at the posters and to study the names of the
authors of the appalling productions advertised as being
performed in the cinemas and theatres, in order to become
hardened against the Jews. Here was a pestilence, a moral
pestilence, with which the public was being infected. It was
worse than the black plague of long ago. And in what doses
this poison was manufactured and distributed! Naturally, the
lower the moral and intellectual level of such an author
of ‘artistic’ products, the more inexhaustible his fecundity,
and at times it even seemed as though these creatures turned
out their stuff like machines and hurled it at the public. In
this connection we must remember there is no limit to the
number of such writers. One ought to realize that for one
Goethe, Nature may bring into existence ten thousand such
scribblers who act as the worst kind of germ-carriers in
poisoning human souls. It was a terrible thought, and yet one
which could not be overlooked, that the greater number of
the Jews seemed specially destined by Nature to play this
shameful part.

Was it for this reason that they were called the chosen
people?

...In the business world the situation was even worse.
Here the Jews had actually become ‘indispensable.’ Like
leeches, they were slowly sucking the blood from the pores
of the national body.

...Emperor Wilhelm II was the first German Emperor to
offer the hand of friendship to the Marxist leaders, not
suspecting that they were scoundrels without any sense of
honour. While they held the imperial hand in one of theirs,
the other was already feeling for the dagger. There is no
such thing as coming to an understanding with the Jews.
It must be a hard-and-fast ‘Either — Or.’

For my part I then decided that I would take up
political work.

...From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known
better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be
exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great
lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas
in reality they are a race? And what a race! One of the
greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has branded
the Jews for all time with a statement which is profoundly
and exactly true. He called the Jew “the great master of
lies.” Those who do not realize the truth of that state-
ment, or do not wish to believe it, will never be able to
lend a hand in helping truth to prevail.

...If the Jews were the only people in the world they would
be wallowing in filth and mire and would exploit one another
and try to exterminate one another in a bitter struggle, except
in so far as their utter lack of the ideal of sacrifice, which
shows itself in their cowardly spirit, would prevent this
struggle from developing. It would, therefore, be a complete
mistake to interpret the mutual help, which the Jews render
one another when they have to fight — or, to put it more
accurately, to exploit — their fellow-beings, as the expression
of a certain idealistic spirit of sacrifice.

Here again, the Jew merely follows the call of his
individual egotism. That is why the Jewish State, which
ought to be a vital organization to serve the purpose of
preserving or increasing the race, has absolutely no territorial
boundaries, for the territorial delimitation of a State always
demands a certain idealism of spirit on the part of the > race
which forms that State, and especially a proper acceptance
of the idea of work. A State which is territorially delimited
cannot be established or maintained, unless the general
attitude towards work is a positive one. If this attitude is
lacking, then the necessary basis of a civilization is also
lacking. That is why the Jewish people, despite the intellectual
powers with which they are apparently endowed, have not
i culture, certainly not a culture of their own. The culture
which the Jew enjoys to-day is the product of the work of
others and this product is debased in the hands of the Jew.

In order to form a correct judgment of the place which
the Jew holds in relation to the whole problem of human
civilization, we must bear in mind the essential fact that there
never has been any Jewish art, and consequently that nothing
of this kind exists to-day. We must realize that, especially in
the two royal domains of art, namely, architecture and
music, the Jew has done no original creative work. When
the Jew comes to producing something in the field of art he
merely ‘borrows’ from something already in existence, or
simply steals the intellectual work of others. The Jew
essentially lacks the qualities which are characteristic of those
creative races that are the founders of civilization.

To what extent the Jew appropriates the civilization built
up by others — or to speak more accurately, corrupts it,
— is indicated by the fact that he cultivates chiefly the art
which calls for the smallest amount of original invention,
namely, the dramatic art, and even here, he is nothing
better than a kind of juggler or, perhaps more correctly,
a kind of monkey imitator, for in this domain also
he lacks the creative elan which is necessary for the pro-
duction of all really great work. Even here, therefore, he is
not a creative genius, but rather a superficial imitator who, in
spite of all his retouching and tricks, cannot disguise the fact
that there is no inner vitality in the shape he gives his
products. At this juncture, the Jewish press comes in and
renders friendly assistance by shouting hosannas over the
head of even the most ordinary bungler of a Jew, until the rest
of the world is persuaded into thinking that the object of so
much praise must really be an artist, whereas in reality, he
may be nothing more than a low-class mimic.

...The domination of the Jew in the State seems now
so fully assured that not only can he afford to call himself a
Jew once again, but he even acknowledges freely and openly
his ideas on racial and political questions. A section of the
Jews avows itself quite openly as an alien people, but even
here there is another falsehood. When the Zionists try to
make the rest of the world believe that the new national
consciousness of the Jews will be satisfied by the
establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine, the Jews
thereby adopt another means to dupe the simple-minded
Aryan. They have not the slightest intention of building
up a Jewish State in Palestine so as to live in it. What they
are really aiming at is to establish a central organization
for their international swindling and cheating. As a
sovereign State, this cannot be controlled by any of the
other States. Therefore, it can serve as a refuge for swindlers
who have been found out, and at the same time, a high
school for the training of other swindlers.

...The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on

end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious

girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and

removing her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew

uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundations

of a people to be subjugated. In his systematic efforts to

ruin girls and women he strives to break down the last

harriers of racial discrimination. The Jews were responsible

for bringing negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate

idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate, and

thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew

might dominate. As long as a people remains racially pure

and race-conscious, it can never be overcome by the Jew.

Never in this world can the Jew become master of any

people except a bastardized people. That is why the Jew

systematically endeavours to lower the racial quality of a

people by permanently adulterating the blood of the

individuals who make up that people.

...The destructive activities of Judaism in different

parts of the national body can be ascribed fundamentally to

the persistent Jewish efforts at undermining the importance

of personality among the nations that are their hosts and, in

place of personality, substituting the domination of the

masses. The constructive principle of Aryan humanity is

thus displaced by the destructive principle of the Jews.

They are the ‘ferment of decomposition’ among nations

and races and, in a broad sense, the wreckers of human

civilization.

This is what this progressive school wants their children to read.

They are pretending that children can ingest poison and then tell adults what the ingredients are.

The sad thing is that if someone would publish the relatively small number of statements that Hitler wrote against black people, the community would rise up in horror. So maybe instead of the passages I mentioned, some outraged parent should point this one out:

The French nation, which is
becoming more and more polluted by negro blood, represents
a menace, to the existence of the white race in Europe,
because it is bound up with the Jewish campaign for world-
domination. The contamination caused by the influx of
negroid blood on the Rhine, in the very heart of Europe, is
in accord with the sadistic and perverse lust for vengeance on
the part of the hereditary enemy of our people, just as it
suits the purpose of the cool, calculating Jew who would use
this means of beginning a process of bastardization in the
very centre of the European continent and, by infecting the
white race with the blood of an inferior stock, destroy the
foundations of its independent existence.

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CNN analysis only counts vehicle ramming attacks "in the West" - so Israeli victims don't count (update)

From CNN:

The attack on one of Barcelona's historic streets Thursday is the latest in a series of vehicle ramming incidents in the West that have killed 128 people since 2014.
At least 13 people were killed and 80 injured when a van, which witnesses said was traveling at a high speed through the tourist area, mowed down people in Barcelona.
Since 2014 there have been 14 vehicle ramming attacks in the West, according to a count by New America, a nonpartisan think tank.
Like school shooters, terrorists learn from other attacks. Vehicle attacks have become a method of choice for terrorists in the past three years since they require no training or expertise and they inflict just as much terror as more conventional tactics such as bombings.

The author, Peter Bergen, is CNN's national security analyst and a vice president at the New America thinktank that he quotes.

Indeed, there have been exactly 14 car ramming attacks (more if you count non-terror attacks) aimed at people (as opposed to buildings) since 2014 in the West.

But if you count all the terrorist vehicle attacks against people listed by Wikipedia, you see that a significant percentage were in Israel:

2006 UNC SUV attack, University of North Carolina, United States (ramming people)
2008 Jerusalem vehicular attack, Israel (ramming people)2008 Jerusalem bulldozer attack, Israel (ramming people)2011 Tel Aviv nightclub attack, Israel (ramming + stabbing)May 2013 Murder of Lee Rigby, London, England (ramming + stabbing)
2013 Tiananmen Square attack, China (ramming people + bursting into flames)
2014 Jerusalem tractor attack, Israel (ramming people + bus)2014 Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu ramming attack, Canada (ramming)
October 2014 Jerusalem vehicular attack, Israel (ramming people)November 2014 Jerusalem vehicular attack, Israel (ramming + hitting with a metal crowbar)2014 Alon Shvut stabbing attack, West Bank (failed ramming + stabbing)2014 Dijon attack, France (ramming people)
2014 Nantes attack, France (ramming people)
2016 Nice attack, France (ramming people + gunfire)
2016 Ohio State University attack, United States (ramming + stabbing)
2016 Berlin attack, Germany (shooting truck driver + ramming people)
2017 Jerusalem truck attack, Israel (ramming people)2017 Westminster attack, London, England (ramming + stabbing; some victims were thrown off Westminster Bridge by the ramming)
2017 Stockholm attack, Sweden (ramming people)
June 2017 London Bridge attack, England (ramming + stabbing).[29]
2017 Finsbury Park attack, London, England (ramming people)
June 2017 Champs-Élysées car ramming attack, Paris, France (ramming a police car)
2017 Levallois-Perret attack, Levallois-Perret, France (ramming soldiers)
2017 Charlottesville attack, during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States (ramming people)
2017 Barcelona attack (ramming people)

8 out of 23 recorded vehicular terror attacks - 34% - were in Israel, with 13 murdered (plus one stabbed to death after a failed car ramming.)

The deliberate attempt to minimize the ramming attacks in Israel continued at CNN, with a list of notable attacks since 2006 including only one attack in Israel even as it highlights non-fatal attacks in the US.

The New York Times has an analysis on why car-ramming attacks are such effective terror weapons - but the implication in that article is that it makes people fearful only if it happens in the West. There is a clear implication that most of these stories have: Those Israelis who suffered from such attacks since 2008 are not considered one of us, and their fears don't count. But European attacks are the ones that make us fearful. Europeans are more like Americans than a Israelis are.

And one reason for that is because the New York Times and other media treat Israelis as a separate category of terror victims to begin with. To an extent, those Israelis deserve it more than innocent Europeans. To an extent, Palestinian terrorists are more justified in their murder of Israeli civilians than ISIS is in their murder of Europeans.

These attempts to minimize Palestinian innovation in car ramming terrorism become even more obvious when you read this 2008 Stratfor analysis that essentially predicted this trend:

Israel has seen three attacks in three months in which Arab Israelis from East Jerusalem used vehicles as weapons. No single group has claimed responsibility for all three attacks, but their similarities suggest that Palestinian militants have discovered a new tactic that, while not thus far as deadly as suicide bombing, could prove more difficult to prevent.

The casualty rate for these most recent attacks appears to be lower than suicide-bomber attacks, but as militants carry out more of these attacks, they could learn, improve their tactics and indeed increase casualties.

Palestinians are the first to use this tactic more than once as a means of terror (there were some isolated vehicle attacks beforehand.) There can be no doubt that ISIS learned this method from the Palestinian terrorists. To write an analysis about vehicle attacks without mentioning this history of Palestinian vehicle attacks is simply dishonest.

But the Western media is loath to put Palestinian Islamic terrorists on the same level as ISIS.

So we see whitewashing instead of actual analysis.

Deep down, reporters and analysts and politicians want to believe Palestinian terror is anomalous - and at least partially justified - which is why we see such a consistent pattern of bad reporting and bad analysis.

UPDATE: There have actually been 60 vehicular terror attacks in Israel! (h/t Irene)

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The Galloway School is an exclusive and pricey (up to $27,000 tuition) school in Atlanta.

In its summer book club we see this:

Mein Kampf - Abridged VersionISBN: 0984158421
Publication Date: 2009-01-01

For the first time in 65 years, a modern, easy to understand, truly complete and uncensored edition of Mein Kampf has been released which reveals more than any past translation. This hardcover book is also the first translation available in an English language audio format. Older translations altered passages, omitted passages, mistranslated Hitler's words, made some parts more sensational while concealing the true meaning in other parts of the book. If you have read one of these older translations of Mein Kampf, then you have not read the REAL Mein Kampf which is found only in the Ford Translation. Mein Kampf is often portrayed as nothing more than an Anti-Semitic work, however only 6% of it even talks about the Jews. The rest contains Hitler's ideas and beliefs for a greater nation plus his plan on how to accomplish that goal.

He outlines his plans for not only world conquest, but the conquest of the universe. The majority of the work involves Hitler's discussion of the German people's difficult times after the First World War, his political theories and his organization of the Nazi Party, as well as many attacks against his enemies which makes it a very interesting and moving story. Mein Kampf offers an interesting interpretation of politics, people, and foreign policy matters. To characterize it as simply a racist work is to oversimplify its message. Germany did not follow Hitler because he was a racist, they followed him because he promised a great future, and Mein Kampf is where he promised that great future. This edition is the only accurate and complete English translation of Mein Kampf ever made. This Ford Translation offers:

* The most accurate translation ever produced.

* Phrases that are translated with precision and with no translator's bias.

* Uncommon words are replaced with more common and more meaningful terms.

* Any references to unfamiliar people, or places are explained in the text.

* This version is complete with all original passages and references restored, including passages omitted from other popular versions.

This translation has corrected over 1000 errors which were present in past translations. No English reader has been able to appreciate these subtleties in any previous English translation, not until the Ford Translation. Includes Photos and Illustrations of events and people in Mein Kampf Volume I and II Click the order button to receive the book so many people wish to disparage and see why they will do anything to have the printing of this book outlawed. ...

Read the hardback version, then decide for yourself if he was a mad-man or a genius.

The description is copied and pasted from the book's Amazon page.

The librarian who chose the book writes:

For those of you who may not know, Mein Kampf is Hitler's autobiography.
I chose this book because I wanted a better understanding of political systems and of the world before WWII. Like many, I am a firm believer in preventing history from repeating itself. I was also intrigued when students had questions about WWII and how it could happen. Those are difficult questions to answer. In our discussion, I would like to examine organizations today that combat hate and how youth can become involved in such efforts.

Even if she has the best of intentions for a critical reading of Mein Kampf, this is not the way to go about it. The description of the book itself on the school site is nothing if not a tribute to Hitler as a genius, and she has no problem with this.

Does she think that students can read this bile over an entire summer and then, after it enters their subconscious thinking, they can then evaluate it fairly in class discussions? To read it before a thorough understanding of what a monster Hitler was is an invitation to create a new generation of marchers in Charlottesville.

And it is beyond imagination that it is acceptable to give kids summer reading that is "only 6%" pure Jew-hatred, with weeks before a teacher can discuss it with them.

UPDATE 2: The translation is apparently not even a good one. The translator wrote a book praising his own translation and then quotes it to prove how great the translation is. Given that this blurb was written by him, it appears that this translation is not academic, but written by a fan of Hitler's, making the choice of this version of Mein Kampf by a high school librarian even more curious.

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Suddenly, Mahmoud Abbas calls vehicle ramming "terrorism" (when the victims aren't Israelis)

Ma'an Arabic reports:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas expressed his condolences to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy for the victims of Thursday's terrorist attack in the city of Barcelona, in which several people were killed and wounded.
In his condolences, he expressed his condemnation of this terrorist act, stressing his rejection of all forms of terrorism and the need to confront all terrorist organizations around the world.
He declared the sovereignty of the State of Palestine, the leadership, the government and the people, alongside its friends in Spain in the face of these terrorist incident.

How much hypocrisy can we find in this short news item?

Abbas hasn't condemned fatal car ramming attacks in Israel , as far as I can tell, in nearly ten years. He does not consider them terror. He celebrates the murderers and pays them and their families salaries for life. Despite his antipathy towards Hamas, he has never called it a terror group. Same with the other terror groups in Gaza. In fact, Abbas is the apparent head of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a US designated terror group.

That's just for starters.

Because the statement here is not meant to express real condolences. It is a political statement to enhance Abbas' and his fake government's prestige. He is acting like a head of state. The last paragraph shows that the attack is merely an excuse to act "presidential" and to push the idea of a "State of Palestine".

And, finally, he claims that "Palestine' is against terrorism when in fact the entire entity names schools and roads after terrorists, Abbas honors them by visiting their families' houses, and they spend a huge amount of time trying to get Israel to free terrorists from prison.

This is nothing by a cynical press release to whitewash Palestinian support for terror. It is not a message of condolence at all. Abbas has far more in common with the Barcelona terrorists than with the victims.

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08/17 Links Pt2: Phillips: How totalitarianism is winning in the West; Weimar America

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: How totalitarianism is winning in the West

Credit to the left-leaning Atlantic magazine for running a piece by Peter Beinart, who has actually looked at what is happening in American society and reached an uncomfortable conclusion which would be hard to find elsewhere in the media – and which is all-too pertinent in the wake of Charlottesville.
For Beinart warns that the left is lurching into totalitarianism and violence. “Antifa” purport to be anti-fascist. But they define as fascist anyone they disagree with including mainstream conservatives. Hence their violent suppression of commentators and scholars such as the conservative columnist Ann Coulter, the Breitbart controversialist Milo Yiannopoulos and the political scientist Charles Murray.
What Antifa most certainly do not do is defend democracy, freedom and liberal values. As Beinart observes:
“Since antifa is heavily composed of anarchists, its activists place little faith in the state, which they consider complicit in fascism and racism. They prefer direct action: They pressure venues to deny white supremacists space to meet. They pressure employers to fire them and landlords to evict them. And when people they deem racists and fascists manage to assemble, antifa’s partisans try to break up their gatherings, including by force.”
If this was just a bunch of anarchists, the problem wouldn’t be so bad. What takes this onto a different level altogether is the fact that the mainstream left does not disavow Antifa but tolerates, sanitises and condones it. Referring specifically to the assault last January on the white supremacist Richard Spencer, Beinart continues:
“Such tactics have elicited substantial support from the mainstream left. When the masked antifa activist was filmed assaulting Spencer on Inauguration Day, another piece in The Nation described his punch as an act of ‘kinetic beauty.’ Slate ran an approving article about a humorous piano ballad that glorified the assault. Twitter was inundated with viral versions of the video set to different songs, prompting the former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau to tweet, ‘I don’t care how many different songs you set Richard Spencer being punched to, I’ll laugh at every one.’
“The violence is not directed only at avowed racists like Spencer: In June of last year, demonstrators – at least some of whom were associated with antifa – punched and threw eggs at people exiting a Trump rally in San Jose, California. An article in It’s Going Down celebrated the ‘righteous beatings.’”
As I wrote in The Times (£) yesterday, this has produced an unholy alliance between the left and the far right:

Ben Shapiro: Trump Isn’t The Only One Lying About What Happened In Charlottesville

After alt-right demonstrations in Charlottesville turned into clashes led by Antifa, leading to an alt-right Nazi sympathizer driving a car into a group of counter-protesters, things were bad enough.
As always, both sides of the political aisle have determined to make an awful situation worse.
The big problem is that both Left and right now use President Trump as a cognitive shortcut. The Left sees everything Trump says as antithetical to truth and decency; the right sees everything the Left says as motivated by animus and untruth. This means that no matter what Trump says, either Left or right will be wrong, since the truth of his statements has no bearing on this cognitive shortcut.
This has particularly dire ramifications for Charlottesville.
The Left has determined that everything President Trump says is wildly horrifying, no matter what the content. If Trump says that Antifa is a violent group, then the Left must declare that Antifa are equivalent to the allied soldiers of World War II.
That’s absurd, but that’s the case actively being made by journalists like Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, who tweeted: “Watching Saving Private Ryan, a movie about a group of very aggressive alt-left protesters invading a beach without a permit”, and Hillary Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon, who posted a picture of Normandy with the caption, “Also confronted the Nazis without a permit”). In the pages of The Washington Post, historian Mark Bray defended Antifa as a necessary countermovement to stop neo-Nazism, gushing, “their willingness to physically defend themselves and others from white supremacist violence and preemptively shut down fascist organizing efforts before they turn deadly distinguishes from liberal anti-racists.”
The problem is that Antifa isn’t merely anti-fascist – it’s fascist in its own right. It’s a communist and anarchist movement dedicated to the use of violence against anyone they deem worthy – up to and including normal Trump voters and conservative Republicans. By allying with Antifa, the Left lends credence to the alt-right’s claim that they are victims of violence rather than perpetrators of it.

Weimar America

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to cheer on Communists and Nazis punching each other in major American cities while civil society disintegrates around them.
In Dallas, a black nationalist activist shot and killed 5 police officers at a Black Lives Matter anti-police rally. Instead of condemning BLM, Barack Obama defended a racist hate group whose role model is Assata Shakur, a wanted black nationalist cop killer, at the funerals of the murdered officers.
The left killed civil rights and replaced it with black nationalism. The racial supremacism of black nationalism that killed those officers is everywhere. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi are lionized as brilliant thinkers instead of hateful racists, Amazon has ordered a black nationalist secessionist fantasy from Aaron McGruder and Showtime aired ‘Guerilla,’ a miniseries glamorizing Black Panther terrorism.
But racism is a two-way street. So is violence. Extremists feed into each other.
You can’t legitimize one form of racism without legitimizing all of them. The media may advance this hypocritical position. Obama used the shameful “reverse racism” euphemism that distinguishes between black and white racism. But propaganda and spin don’t change the physics of human nature.
Either all racism is bad. Or all racism is acceptable.

"I am a Zionist' video by a New Zealand woman is going viral

From Scoop World:

The Auckland-based star of a video entitled “I am a Zionist”, which has been viewed by more than six hundred thousand people on social media, has admitted she is surprised by the reach.
“I didn’t expect the message to touch so many people. The responses have been overwhelmingly supportive”, said Juliet Moses, “and showed that many identified with the views I expressed. It seems most Kiwis are probably also Zionists, without knowing it”.
Produced by the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the video has been shared by more than 7,390 people. It presents a brief history of the Jewish homeland, affirms the indigeneity of the Jewish people and outlines the involvement of the United Nations in Israel’s establishment.

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Advocating aliyah creates friction. Sometimes people think you are trying to display your moral superiority (“nyah, nyah, I moved to the Jewish state and you didn’t”). Sometimes they think you are trying to steal their children – my wife was a religious school teacher in the US, and some parents didn’t forgive her when their kids became lone soldiers here. Sometimes they hate you for reminding them of what they already believe, but haven’t acted on. Sometimes they think that you are a pest, because they are happy being Americans or French or British. And sometimes they dislike Israel itself, oppose nationalism of any kind, or feel sorry for the Palestinians.

I used to avoid doing it. But not anymore.

For those living in continental Europe or Britain, it’s simply a question of how much Jew-hatred you are prepared to tolerate in your daily life. Yes, you are a tough guy, no antisemite can force you to do anything, but do you really want to live in a place where a large proportion of your neighbors dislike or even hate you? You know it’s going to get worse over time, so unless you perversely enjoy conflict, you are probably already thinking of leaving.

But what if you live in the US? The commitment to tolerance of Jews and other minorities is high, expressions of Jew-hatred have been relatively rare (until very recently), and there are large Jewish communities as well as places where there are practically no Jews at all, so you can choose whichever you prefer. You are not going to be rounded up and forced into ghettos, and your kids probably won’t get beaten up on their way to school (although that’s more likely than it was 10 years ago).

Nevertheless, you should still start planning your aliyah.

As a member of the Jewish people, can you share the national goals of your diaspora home? For example, the US has just delivered a shipment of weapons and equipment to the Lebanese Armed Forces, which we know is tantamount to giving them to Hezbollah, Israel’s most immediately threatening enemy. And this happened during the relatively friendly, if somewhat erratic, Trump Administration! The previous President did far worse, of course, making a deal with Iran that basically granted the regime the right to develop nuclear weapons in a relatively short time span, and pumped money into its economy (including delivering pallets containing millions of dollars in cash). How do you feel about the way your taxes are used?

We don’t want to admit this, but the interests of the US and the Jewish people are not the same. Support for Israel has become a partisan issue, and surveys show that the Democratic party has moved far to the left on issues related to Israel. When the Republican administration is replaced (as it surely will be) by a Democratic one led by a progressive candidate (almost a certainty) then the relationship with Israel will take a sharp turn for the worse.

Yes, you can stay where you are and try to turn it around, a frustrating and probably impossible enterprise (anyone involved in pro-Israel advocacy in the US today knows this). Or you can decide to try to strengthen the Jewish state with your own hands.

Recent news reports about violent confrontations in the US between the extreme Right and Left have been shocking. Not so surprisingly, when their spokespersons are interviewed, it turns out that they agree about one thing – the Jews. The Right prefers to say that Jews control international finance and the media, while the Left is all about intersectional anti-Zionism and how it’s Israel’s fault when black people in America are shot by police, but they both have a problem with Jews.

Don’t kid yourself, the distinction between anti-Zionism and Jew-hatred is one without a difference. Although it is still socially unacceptable on the moderate Left to directly attack Jews (but even that is changing), the Jewish state is a legitimate target. It’s not an accident that the same people support self-determination for every indigenous group except the Jewish people, ignore oppression throughout the world but discover it when Israelis defend themselves against Arab terrorism, and question the right to exist of only one out of 193 UN member states.

If you live in a large city or a suburb of one, are a student or academic, or in a coastal area – in other words, a “blue” area, your neighbors will probably share some of the “progressive” attitudes about Israel mentioned above. If you live in a “red” area, many of them will hold more traditional anti-Jewish beliefs. Which do you prefer? Neither will be comfortable.

Many of the strongest anti-Zionists (and therefore antisemites) are Jewish. This has driven a wedge through liberal Jewish congregations in which many older members still believe that the Zionist aspiration for self-determination in our historical homeland is still legitimate, and those, mostly younger, who see it as a contradiction of their intersectional progressive belief systems. This phenomenon is increasing as anti-Zionism becomes more and more entrenched in the educational system.

What should a Zionist Jew who finds him or herself in such a community do? What if even the leaders of the community share the anti-Zionist position, something increasingly common in liberal congregations?

Polarization in America is increasing. I lived in America through the Clinton, Bush and much of the Obama years, but judging by the media (mainstream, alternative and social) and my own correspondents, I don’t recognize my former home today. Social cohesiveness seem to be disappearing, divisions deepening, the economic state of the middle class never recovered from 2008, and confidence in government, media, business, law enforcement, education, health care – almost every major institution and societal function has fallen to unprecedented lows.

This is bad for America as a whole, but it is terrible for the Jews. For literally thousands of years, whenever there has been social instability, the Jews suffer. They are a visible element (even those who think they aren’t, are) and it is natural and traditional to blame them. They were blamed for the Black Death, for Germany’s defeat in WWI, for Communism, for various financial panics, for AIDS, for 9/11, for Obama and for Trump.

I am not predicting pogroms or purges of Jews. But I do think that life in America for Jews will become less comfortable, possibly more dangerous, and most importantly for those who are Zionists, without national purpose.

I’m not discussing all the problems involved in living in Israel. There are plenty. But in the diaspora, you struggle just to survive. In the Jewish state, you struggle, at least in part, for the Jewish people. If this is something you care about, it’s more significant than anything else.

There are those with good reasons to stay where they are: family, age, responsibilities. But if you believe that the Jewish people should exercise their right of self-determination in their historic homeland and are not prevented from making your own contribution, then – what are you waiting for?

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.

08/17 Links Pt1: The PA is a Genocidal Terrorist Entity; Arab League lies: Israel does medical experiments on prisoners

From Ian:

The Palestinian Authority is a Genocidal Terrorist Entity and Should be Treated as Such

The PLO became the first terrorist organization to have a seat at the UN and diplomatic representation in a Western country.
Daniel Pipes suggested measures to move the conflict in a constructive direction without causing major conflagration: require the Palestinian Authority (PA) pay for all damages inflicted by terrorists, including a very high price for each stolen life; burying the dead terrorists without returning them to their families; severely limiting access to West Bank territories ruled by the PA; banning PA leaders from entering Israeli airports if they make inflammatory remarks and each time there is anti-Israeli violence, or even asking them to use Jordanian airports from now on.
Why not tell European leaders that the Palestinian Authority is still a genocidal terrorist organization? Why not ask them how they can agree to finance in the Middle East what they claim to reject with horror in Europe?

PMW: Arab League lies: Israel does medical experiments on prisoners and murders them

The Arab League has adopted some of the Palestinian Authority’s most odious libels and is disseminating them as if they were facts. The following is from a new official report of the Arab League’s Department of Palestine and Occupied Arab Territories:
“The Arab League condemned the ongoing Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people, and particularly the holding of the Martyrs’ (Shahids’) bodies and theft of their organs, the legislation of additional racist laws, and the proposal of 120 racist laws against the prisoners... carrying out medical experiments on the prisoners within the prisons... it has even intentionally killed prisoners, whether through medical negligence or [after] abducting them to secret prisons.” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 15, 2017]
All of these libels echo lies and demonization that the PA leadership disseminates to its people. Demonizing Israelis and Jews by spreading these and a wide range of other libels is a fundamental component of PA messaging to its people. By offering its people a steady diet of lies and libels about Israel and Jews the PA leaders assure a high level of hatred and a large pool of potential terrorists.
The following are a number of examples of these libels that were included in the Arab League’s report being disseminated by PA leaders, as reported by Palestinian Media Watch:

IsraellyCool: Al Jazeera Selects Antisemitic Child Abuser Manal Tamimi As “Palestinian Supermom”

Al Jazeera has come out with a video about How to be a Palestinian Supermom.
Their supermom? Manal Tamimi of the infamous Tamimi clan, which counts unrepentant Sbarro terrorist Ahlam Tamimi (a favorite of Al Jizz) and Pallywood child star Ahed Tamimi (aka “Shirley Temper”) as their members.
So apparently what qualifies a woman as a “palestinian supermom” is bringing her kids to violent protests each and every week, encouraging them to engage in violence while taking footage of them (which you actually see in the video) – while denying this constitutes putting them in danger.
Oh, and being a vile antisemite.
But she sure makes a mean breakfast.
This video comes out around the same time as Israel invalidated the press credentials of an Al Jazeera reporter after he said his journalism was part of the palestinian “resistance.”
This is what Al Jazeera represents – not objective journalism but propaganda and terror incitement of the worst kind.
Here’s hoping we closed down their entire operation here for good.

Felesteen, a Hamas-leaning news site, has an article against the barrier Israel is building underground around Gaza.

It gives two reasons to oppose such a defensive measure.

One is that it makes it harder for the terrorists to infiltrate Israel and kidnap or kill Israelis.

The occupation leadership is seeking through the construction of the barrier to achieve several goals, such as tightening border control and preventing infiltrations as well as destruction of tunnels that can help the resistance to carry out unprecedented strategic operations.

Two is that it will hurt the environment.

Professor of natural geography at the Islamic University, Naim Baroud, said that digging the wall at deep depths in the ground will affect the soil along the eastern border of the Strip, both near and far.
Baroud pointed out that the soil of Gaza is sandy so drilling will increase the disintegration and decomposition of the soil, exposing the border area to landslides, especially the eastern region, which is agricultural land planted with all kinds of vegetables and citrus.
He explained that the wall has catastrophic repercussions on the groundwater, rain water flowing from the east from the basin of Hebron and Beersheba to the west to enter the internal reserves in Gaza.
Baroud added that according to Israeli reports, "the occupation intends to inject industrial waste which contain some dangerous and toxic substances such as mercury, and also the possibility that the water contains radioactive materials from the Dimona reactor."
"This wastewater will be inextricably linked to the groundwater reservoir close to the surface of the earth, which will have catastrophic consequences affecting the safety and quality of water and the emergence of a carcinogenic disease."

Yes, Hamas is deeply concerned about the environment. It is so liberal when it is being prevented from murdering Jews.

But you can be sure that the anti-Israel Left will latch onto the second argument as a reason to oppose Israel's defensive measures. As always, the real reason they oppose any Israeli defenses are the first reason given in this article - Israelis shouldn't be able to defend themselves, period.

Which is exactly what Yousef Munayyer, a BDS leader, tweeted the other day:

This is said about every "security measure" thousands of lives and many wars ago
— (((YousefMunayyer))) (@YousefMunayyer) August 10, 2017

You can be sure that now Munayyer will seize the supposed environmental impact to argue against the Wall to his liberal friends, many of whom won't realize that he really opposes it because he wants more dead Jews.

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.

Irony alert: Terrorist groups upset at being the target of a suicide bomber

Times of Israel reports:

A suicide bomber killed a Hamas guard in southern Gaza early Thursday when forces tried to stop him from infiltrating into Egypt, members of the terror organization said, in what sources described as a rare attack against the Islamist group.
“Early this morning security forces stopped two people approaching the southern border (with Egypt),” an interior ministry spokesman in the Hamas-run territory said in a statement.
“One of them blew himself up,” it added.
Later a medical source confirmed a member of Hamas had died in the attack.
The source named the man as Nidal al-Jaafari, 28.

Here is the late Mr. Jaafari.

Notice that he is a member of the Al Qassam Brigades, Hamas' "militant wing." But he is also a guard - which means according to the Goldstone report and the PCHR, he is a civilian.

Hamas doesn't distinguish between civilians and their "militants." Yet the world keeps pretending that there is a distinction.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Rafah crossing is open now for the first time in four months, as Egypt is allowing Hajj pilgrims to leave. Practically no one has been reporting on the actual siege by Egypt on Gazans for four long months - months during which Israel allowed thousands to pass through its own Erez crossing.

More interesting is the reaction of other terror groups to this suicide bombing, apparently by a Salafist.

Islamic Jihad condemned the bombing in Rafah as "outside religion, culture and morality."

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine stressed that it is "against the use of weapons, abuse and assault" describing the suicide attack as a "dangerous violation."

Fatah called it a "terrorist act."

The Popular Struggle Front called this a "dark act that must be combatted"

Yes, the Islamists who innovated suicide bombings as suddenly aghast at the idea of becoming the victims of Islamist suicide bombings. It's so immoral!

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.

Cloudflare is a web proxy service that protects websites from being taken down by distributed denial of service attacks. They have always been proud of the fact that they never took down a site for political reasons, no matter how odious.

But now they took down The Daily Stormer neo-Nazi site after it made headlines in the wake of Charlottesville.

We have followed Cloudflare for a while. They provide protection for jihadist websites that support murdering Jews, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. I believe that Cloudflare is breaking US law by providing this protection.

In fact, Cloudflare claimed that they refused to provide services to ISIS because it is against the law - yet Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the PFLP and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are also US-designated terror groups, and providing services to them is just as illegal.

But Cloudflare came up with a completely different explanation for dropping the neo-Nazi site, and one not involving hiding behind the law:

Our terms of service reserve the right for us to terminate users of our network at our sole discretion. The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology.
Our team has been thorough and have had thoughtful discussions for years about what the right policy was on censoring. Like a lot of people, we’ve felt angry at these hateful people for a long time but we have followed the law and remained content neutral as a network. We could not remain neutral after these claims of secret support by Cloudflare.

Gizmodo quotes it slightly differently:

[Cloudflare CEO Matthew] Prince explained in an internal email to staffers that he doesn’t think CEOs of internet companies should be in the position of policing content on their networks—he told Gizmodo he thinks that’s a job that should ultimately be left up to law enforcement if the content violates the law—but felt pushed to act because the operators of the Daily Stormer are “assholes.”
“I realized there was no way we were going to have that conversation with people calling us Nazis,” Prince said. “The Daily Stormer site was bragging on their bulletin boards about how Cloudflare was one of them and that is the opposite of everything we believe. That was the tipping point for me.”

That's the reason? Because some neo-Nazi sissies claimed Cloudflare shared their ideology and they were worried that people would believe them? I call bullshit.

While I don't doubt that some Nazi jerk might have made this claim on a bulletin board somewhere, no one in the world would have plausibly believed that Cloudflare is sympathetic to Nazis, just as it is obviously does not support the aims of jihadists. I cannot find a single news report saying that neo-Nazis claimed this. No one would have even heard of such a claim if Cloudflare's CEO hadn't himself said it to the media.

Cloudflare supports only one thing, and that's making money. That's why it built its reputation on providing services to unsavory organizations to begin with - and that's why it is dropping its service to the Daily Stormer. The neo-Nazis suddenly became too toxic for GoDaddy and Google and Cloudflare couldn't take the pressure from the media and the tweeters and the angry, angry people.

The jihadists may want to kill or subjugate all the Jews and Christians in the Middle East - but they don't wave swastikas.

Hamas and the other antisemitic jihadist groups are just as morally reprehensible as the neo-Nazis. They have also murdered a lot more people in the past couple of decades than any neo-Nazis have. Cloudflare is simply looking for an excuse to get out of the business of helping the far-Right after Charlottesville - but the lack of outrage over its support for Islamist hate sites is the reason it retains them as clients.

In the end, I still believe that there is a solid legal case to be made against Cloudflare'a aupport of terrorist sites. By protecting websites for terror groups, Cloudflare is providing "material support" to terror groups by the definition of the Patriot Act as I have shown.

I am not going to rely on their CEO's decision that neo-Nazis are assholes but Islamist terrorists aren't. His refusal to support ISIS and The Daily Stormer proves that he does make these decisions for financial reasons which includes fear of being fined by the government. Free speech and morality have nothing to do with it. Cloudflare's CEO is not moral - he is opportunistic.

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.

08/16 Links Pt2: Will the EU Stop Supporting Anti-Israel Incitement?; Prof Dissects Rasmea Odeh's Lies

From Ian:

IsraellyCool: Huge Own Goal As Israel Haters Release Video of “Palestine” Maps

Quds News Network has come out with the following video, to prove that “Palestine” existed.
I have to thank them for this. (h/t NormanF)

When Will the EU Stop Supporting Anti-Israel Incitement?

On July 26, the European Union Delegation to Israel posted a promotional video highlighting the importance of EU-Israel relations. The film is narrated by Avishai Ivry, an Israeli journalist identified with the Right. Ivry’s involvement drew criticism from across the political spectrum.
Complaints from the Right included, “How dare you promote those who try to meddle in our society?” – referring to the massive European government funding of political organizations operating in Israel. The Left asked, “How dare you oppose foreign funding and simultaneously work for the EU?” – again highlighting European funding of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), but this time condemning Ivry’s “hypocrisy” in disagreeing with the funding while also being paid to promote the EU.
The criticism, from both Left and Right, acutely reflects Israeli public discourse regarding the EU’s involvement in domestic affairs.
Beyond the partisan debate in Israel, the fringe anti-peace (and at times antisemetic) website Electronic Intifada discovered a number of Ivry’s past tweets against Palestinians.
Electronic Intifada demanded the EU remove the video, and indeed within 24 hours the film was removed. The EU’s stated reason – “We want no doubts that anything we do promotes the values the EU stands for.”
It thus appears that the EU is legitimately concerned when its public funds are distributed to individuals that contradict its values (or its image), so much so that it immediately acted on the demand made by the people who run a hate-filled website.
One might therefore imagine that if the EU was told that it was funding NGOs that contradict its values – such as groups that promote antisemitism – that they would immediately investigate and cease the funding.
To be sure, this phenomenon occurs. But the EU’s response has been quite different.

EU Support for Palestinian Security Reforms Has Not Increased Prospects for a Democratic and Viable Palestinian State as Intended

The international community fears that another intense round of violence and confrontation in the West Bank could, as in the past, threaten billions of dollars of investments in the Palestinian state-building project over the last decade. The international donor community remembers well when EU-funded premises, equipment, and PA infrastructure were flattened during the second intifada.
The EU, which is the biggest donor to the PA, has invested in the EU Police Mission for the Palestinian Territories (EUPOL COPPS), which prides itself on reforming and overhauling major elements of the Palestinian security establishment and enhancing effective policing.
From the political point of view, however, the mission has achieved little. Over the last decade, the mission has indeed carved the EU a niche in Palestinian security sector reform and increased its visibility in the Middle East peace process. Nevertheless, the EU's strategy to use EUPOL COPPS to pave the way for a democratic and viable Palestinian state by building its security capacities has fallen short.
While the EU generally refrains from supporting security services with a reputation for human rights abuse, such as the U.S.-sponsored Preventive Security agency and the General Intelligence Service of the PA, the EU-supported Palestinian Civil Police (PCP) has also been implicated in the excessive use of force against peaceful demonstrations.
If the current authoritarian backslide of the PA continues, the EU and its mission will be increasingly criticized for financing, professionalizing, and legitimizing a highly politicized and democratically unaccountable police force. This is far from the EU's envisioned approach to security sector reforms.