Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 28, 2017

Today's academic fraud: Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. He wrote an op-ed in Al Jazeera that starts off admirably being against racism and then devolves into a large aside filled with absurd hate against Israel.

The full rant is not worth the electrons it would use to post it here, but here is his conclusion for that section:

Today, Israelis have absoletely no moral authority, not an iota, to denounce the Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, for the neo-Nazis intend to do in the United States what the Zionists have already done in Israel: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is a model for the white supremacists in the United States. Mass expulsion of Palestinians, the massacre of Palestinians in Deir Yasin and elsewhere: those are the Zionist trademarks the Neo-Nazis hope and wish and strive to replicate in the United States.

It's funny, because anyone who has ever spent thirty seconds walking around in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv can see far more Muslims walking around than can be seen in the US or most of Europe. After all, Arabs are some 20% of Israel's population.

They don't walk around with the fear that American Muslims do. They aren't worried about attacks on their homes or mosques. Their muezzin can be heard louder and more frequently than in any city in Europe. They have government funded schools. They have absolutely no worries about being ethnically cleansed. They have less fear of terror attacks than Jews do - in the Jewish state. The few anti-Arab incidents are statistically minuscule compared to the racist incidents in the US - and even compared to antisemitic incidents in the West. Arabs are safer in Israel than they are in the rest of the Western world. Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the territories are considerably more secure that they will remain in their own houses in ten years than Palestinians in Lebanon or Egypt.

In other words, Dabashi - a professor at Columbia - is a fraud and a liar. But he knows that his readers won't call him on it because they live in the hate-Israel bubble where no anti-Zionist statement is too outrageous to be confidently said, and truth is a joke.

There is a lot of outrage over lies by the far-Right. The Atlantic has a cover story about how the truth is no longer of interest to the right in the US. But it ignores the lies of the Left. And the number of academics who are willing to openly lie to advance their own political agenda is arguably more dangerous that the liars and fantasists of the Right - because the Leftist liars claim the mantle of truth and the right to judge the others.

There is no difference between those who believe in conspiracy theories from the Right and those who believe these sorts of lies from the Left. (What is describing Israel as being interested in a long term plan of ethnic cleansing for 70 years - something it could have done in months if it wanted to - if not a conspiracy theory?)

Dabashi is just another academic fraud.

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08/28 Links Pt1: PM to UN Chief: You've allowed Palestinian hatred to thrive; Hamas: Iran ties restored

From Ian:

BESA: Victory, Not Deterrence, Will Be Israel’s Goal if War Breaks Out Again in Gaza

Creating deterrence was Israel’s goal in the last three conflicts it fought against Hamas, but that objective has been cast aside. Any future armed clash with Gaza’s Islamist rulers will be guided by a new Israeli objective: that of achieving a crystal clear victory over the enemy.
In past models of conflict, Israel responded to Hamas aggression through the use of force in a way that was designed to punish Hamas and convince it to return to a state of calm. Systematically destroying Hamas’s military capabilities was not an Israeli objective.
Today, while Israel hopes to avoid war, it is preparing for the possibility of a new conflict. War could erupt again in Gaza for a wide range of reasons.
Should hostilities resume, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) plans to make sure the end stage of that clash will be an unmistakable Israeli victory, and that no one will be able to mistake it for a tie or stalemate.
This change in approach has been brewing over the past three years, ever since the end of Operation Protective Edge in 2014. That operation was launched by Israel to defend itself against large-scale projectile attacks and cross-border tunnel threats from Gaza. At two months’ duration, it was one of Israel’s most protracted conflicts.
It was also the third large-scale clash fought with Hamas since 2009. At the end of each round of fighting, the military wing of Hamas remained intact, and was able to quickly begin rearming and preparing new capabilities for the next outbreak of hostilities.

Liberman: Lebanon should know we’ll use ‘great force’ in future war

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman threatened that Israel would respond “with very great force” in a future conflict with the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terrorist group, during a meeting with the visiting United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Monday.
The defense minister told the UN leader that Hezbollah is “stashing various weapons, including missiles and rockets, that are aimed at Israeli citizens in the homes of residents of the villages and cities along the border.”
Liberman added that Iran was “working to set up factories to manufacture accurate weapons within Lebanon itself.”
According to the defense minister, that situation is “insufferable for the State of Israel, and we are determined to prevent every threat to the security of Israeli citizens.”
The presence of at least two Iranian missile manufacturing facilities was revealed by Israel earlier this summer. On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Guterres that Iran was also involved in the construction of another missile base in Syria.

JPost Editorial: IRAN IN SYRIA

Now Iran has an opportunity to establish a new center of influence, not through proxies, as is the case in Gaza, Lebanon or Yemen, but directly by having Iranian forces on the ground. From there, it could establish air force bases, deploy tanks and divisions and amplify, in an unprecedented way, the threat it already poses to the State of Israel.
Under these circumstances, Netanyahu is smartly maneuvering between Washington and Moscow. It is still not clear if he can succeed in getting a commitment, from either party, that Iran will not be allowed to stay, but there are other goals that might be attainable.
Aware that a direct conflict between Israel and Iranian forces in Syria could endanger the Assad regime, Putin might be able to distance Iran from Syria’s southern border with Israel and Jordan. There can also be a Russian-Iranian understanding limiting Iran’s deployment of missiles in Syria. The Russians can justify this by claiming to be interested in maintaining stability and preventing Iran from endangering the Assad regime by opening a front with Israel.
The problem with any deal of this kind is that the Iranians are not a party that can be trusted. They see themselves on the cusp of a historic conquest and will fight to ensure it succeeds.
In the end and like in the past, this may be a case of Israel not being able to rely on anyone but itself. Israel has proven its readiness to act in Syria over the last five years. It may need to continue doing so.

Iran says S-300 air defense system now ‘fully integrated’

Iran’s advanced S-300 air defense system, delivered by Russia after years of delay, is now “fully integrated” into the air defense network, a senior Iranian air force commander told the country’s state media Sunday.
In an interview with the Tasnim news network, Gen. Abolfazl Sepehri Rad, deputy commander of the Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense Base, said the missile defense system has been stationed across Iran and is ready for “practical operations.”
The general also said that the Iran has launched research programs to manufacture other air defense systems, and that “good results” have been achieved.
Iran had been trying to acquire the S-300 system for years to ward off repeated threats by Israel to bomb its nuclear facilities, but Russia had held off delivery until after a July 2015 nuclear deal between world powers and Iran, in line with UN sanctions imposed over the country’s nuclear program.

From YNet:

A Palestinian refugee receives a budget four times larger than a Syrian, Iraqi or African refugee, this according to a study conducted by the Abba Eban Institute of International Diplomacy at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya.

At the end of last week, UNRWA released its annual financial report, which stated that in 2016 the organization spent an average of $246 for each of the 5.3 million Palestinians it defines as refugees, while UNHCR spent only a quarter of that, $58 per refugee.

In addition, the data show that UNRWA employs some 30,000 people, while the World Refugee Agency, which handles tens of millions worldwide, employs only 10,000 people.

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor heads the Abba Eban Institute, which formulated a plan of action for structural changes that will improve the treatment of refugees around the world by merging UNRWA into the UNHCR.

"Consolidating the budgets and manpower of both agencies will lead to better treatment of refugees," Prosor said. "In Jordan, for example, there are 44 clinics that treat refugees from the civil wars in Syria and Iraq, out of 233 clinics that are required for this mission. Alongside them are 25 UNRWA clinics that ignore Syrian refugees and care only for Palestinian refugees.

"Uniting the resources of the two agencies will enable more quality and efficient assistance, and contribute to a solution for what that the UN itself has defined as the most serious refugee crisis in history."

Prosor will present these results to the UN, which explains why he is calling the people getting aid from UNRWA "refugees."

In fact, they aren't, a fact that is obvious when you consider that no Palestinian Arab has ever successfully applied for and received official asylum from other countries as a refugee from Israel (or "Palestine.") The few who have received asylum get that status because they are fleeing persecution by Syria or Hamas, not Israel.

So in reality it isn't that Palestinian refugees are getting quadruple the aid per capita, and about 30 times the manpower per capita, as other refugees.

The real story is that fake refugees are taking aid money away from real refugees.

Because only the fake refugees can claim that Jews are their persecutors. If it wasn't the Jewish state that was being blamed for the fake refugee problem, there wouldn't be an issue, and these people would have integrated into their surrounding Arab nations quietly and effectively decades ago.

Prosor is trying to do something noble but as long as the truth is being hidden, nothing can really be done. UNRWA should be dismantled but it must be done with honesty. Everyone knows the truth about Palestinian "refugees" but no one is willing to say it out loud.

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The virulently anti-Israel "Jewish Voice for Peace" has released a book that is ostensibly about antisemitism. But it doesn' ttake much to realize that the book is really about justifying the merciless criticism of the Jewish state, and only Israel, beyond any context and beyond criticism of any other country, as legitimate.

The foreword is by Judith Butler, the fundamentally dishonest academic who twists Judaism itself to find a philosophical framework for her hatred of Israel. She is also the person who absurdly called Hamas and Hezbollah "progressive."

Her foreword shows more of her duplicity in trying to reframe the question of what antisemitism is into the charge of how Zionists supposedly use the charge of antisemitism to silence criticism:

Given the contemporary framework in which the matter of antisemitism is discussed, the conflict about how to identify its forms (given that some forms are fugitive) is clearly heightened. The claim that criticisms of the State of Israel are antisemitic is the most highly contested of contemporary views. It is complex and dubious for many reasons. First: what is meant by it? Is it that the person who utters criticisms of Israel nurses antisemitic feelings and, if Jewish, then self-hating ones? That interpretation depends on a psychological insight into the inner workings of the person who expresses such criticisms.But who has access to that psychological interiority? It is an attributed motive, but there is no way to demonstrate whether that speculation is a grounded one. If the antisemitism is understood to be a consequence of the expressed criticism of the State of Israel, then we would have to be able to show in
concrete terms that the criticism of the State of Israel results in discrimination against Jews.

Already Butler is purposefully distancing herself from any definition of antisemitism that includes being against Israel. And one part of that definition is quite easy: opposition to the Jewish people's right to self determination. The more expansive definition is Natan Sharansky's 3D test: if the criticism is based on demonization, delegitimization and double standards it is antisemitic.

Naturally, Butler wants to obfuscate the issue rather than deal with it, because, well, she agrees with all three and she doesn't want to be called an antisemite.

Instead, she floats the straw man that some nefarious people are claiming that any criticism of Israel is antisemitism.

If modern democratic states have to bear criticism, even criticisms about the process by which a state gained legitimation, then it would be odd to claim that those who exercise those democratic rights of critical expression are governed only or predominantly by hatred and prejudice. We could just as easily imagine that someone who criticizes the Israeli state, even the conditions of its founding-coincident with the Nakba, the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians
from their homes-has a passion for justice or wishes to see a polity that embraces equality and freedom for all the people living there. In the case of Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews and their allies come together to demonstrate that Jews must reclaim a politics of social justice, a tradition that is considered to be imperiled by the Israeli state.

Here she uses the myth, and then she actually promulgates another myth. 800,000 Arabs were not expelled from their homes in 1948. Not even close. But Butler isn't interested in facts; she is interested in using big words to pretend that she is not avoiding the real issue of left-wing antisemitism such as is practiced by JVP.

Her zeal to divide antisemitism from anti-Zionism would be comical if only she was being honest. She admits that saying that Jews control the media and the banks is antisemitic; what about those who claim the "Zionists" do the same thing? What about those who claim the Zionists control the US and other governments? I bet most of the authors in this collection believe that fervently.

Finally Butler gets to the crux of her misdirection:

So to answer the question, why is antisemitism attributed to those who express criticisms of the Israeli state?, we have to change the terms of the question itself. We have been asking, under what conditions can we decide whether or not the charge of antisemitism is warranted? What if we ask: What does the charge of antisemitism do? ...

When the charge of antisemitism is used to censor or quell open debate and the public exchange of critical views on the State of Israel, then it is not exactly communicating a truth, but seeking to rule out certain perspectives from being heard.

Butler's straw man is complete. No one is saying that all criticism of Israel is antisemitic, but her thesis that this is what is happening allows her to create an entirely new spurious charge: that critics of Israel are being silenced by false accusations of antisemitism.

Therefore, this preface to this volume supposedly about antisemitism is really showing that the book is about justifying modern antisemitism.

Indeed, the first essay by Antony Lerman starts off with his rejection of any definition of antisemitism that includes demonization, delegitimization and double standards concerning Israel:

For activists battling daily against the abuse of antisemitism to stifle free speech on Israel/Palestine, on university campuses and in Jewish religious and communal bodies of all kinds, it may seem something of a luxury to dwell on the reasons why contemporary understanding of antisemitism has become so politicized, bitterly contested, and controversial.

A look at the authors of essays in the volume show that every one is not just a critic of Israel but they question Israel's right to exist as a Jewish homeland:

Preface by Judith Butler

Introduction by Rebecca Vilkomerson

Part I: Histories and Theories of Antisemitism
Antisemitism Redefined: Israel’s Imagined National Narrative of Endless External Threat by Antony Lerman
Palestinian Activism and Christian Antisemitism in the Church by Walt Davis
Black and Palestinian Lives Matter: Black and Jewish America in the Twenty-First Century by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Intersections of Antisemitism, Racism, and Nationalism: A Sephardi/Mizrahi Perspective by Ilise Benshushan Cohen
On Antisemitism and Its Uses by Shaul Magid
Antisemitism, Palestine, and the Mizrahi Question by Tallie Ben Daniel

Part II: Confronting Antisemitism and Islamophobia
Trump, the Alt-right, Antisemitism, and Zionism by Arthur Goldwag
“Our Liberation Is Intertwined”: An Interview with Linda Sarsour
Centering Our Work on Challenging Islamophobia by Donna Nevel
Who Am I to Speak? by Aurora Levins Morales
Captured Narratives by Rev. Graylan Hagler
“We’re Here Because You Were There”: Refugee Rights Advocacy and Antisemitism by Rachel Ida Buff
European Antisemitism: Is It “Happening Again”? by Rabbi Brant Rosen

Part III: Fighting False Charges of Antisemitism
Two Degrees of Separation: Israel, Its Palestinian Victims, and the Fraudulent Use of Antisemitism by Omar Barghouti
A Double-Edged Sword: Palestine Activism and Antisemitism on College Campuses by Kelsey Waxman
This Campus Will Divest! The Specter of Antisemitism and the Stifling of Dissent on College Campuses by Ben Lorber
Antisemitism on the American College Campus in the Age of Corporate Education, Identity Politics, and Power-Blindness by Orian Zakai
Chilling and Censoring of Palestine Advocacy in the United States by Dima Khalidi

Conclusion
Let the Semites End the World! On Decolonial Resistance, Solidarity, and Pluriversal Struggle by Alexander Abbasi
Building toward the Next World by Rabbi Alissa Wise

Omar Barghouti? Linda Sarsour? Dima Khalidi? These are the experts on antisemitism that contribute to this volume?

As far as I can tell, only one writer here does not support boycotting Israel, and that is Shaul Magid. Everyone else seems to support it, meaning that they are guilty of double standards towards Israel (no one boycotts other countries nowadays.) So the entire book is an apologia on how singling out the Jewish state for punishment for crimes that, at worst, are committed by every other nation in active conflicts is not really antisemitic.

Moreover, the nature of the arguments visible from the preview available of the book indicates that the authors not only deny that any leftist criticism of Israel can possibly be antisemitic, but also that any Arab criticism of Israel can be antisemitic. A glance through this blog, Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI shows hundreds of examples of explicit Arab antisemitism, so when Arabs cloak their criticism of Israel in human rights or international law terms, they are obviously masking their true motives. How many "progressive" critics of Israel share those same antisemitic motives? I can't say, but to ignore the issue altogether is not scholarship.

It is propaganda.

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ALESCO, the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization, is essentially the Arab version of UNESCO. It partners with other NGOs and organizations worldwide to promote and coordinate cultural and educational activities in the Arab world.

On Saturday, its Executive Committee met and issued a statement about Jews opening up a synagogue in "occupied" Jerusalem.

Ma'an Arabic reports:

The Executive Council of the Arab League for Education, Culture and Science (ALECSO) condemned the Israeli occupation forces, accompanied by a large number of settlers and members of the Knesset, for opening a synagogue in Baten Al Hawa neighborhood in Silwan, south of Al Aqsa Mosque, along with the misdeeds of the occupation, its settlers, their falsehoods and false claims.The Council said in a statement that the occupation, through its incongruous stories, its settlement tools, its fairy tales and its biblical stories, wants to change the status quo in Jerusalem. The recent targeting of Al-Aqsa Mosque is proof of the occupation's attempt to impose new facts on the ground and undermine the deep culture of Jerusalem. Where the occupation seeks through its repeated attacks and daily violation of all international laws and charters to steal the consciousness of the city through siege, killing and lies.
The Arab Organization called on the international community, human rights organizations, the United Nations and UNESCO to stop the occupation violations and to commit the occupation to the resolutions and confessions of the Arabs of Jerusalem and its components and to stop the series of domination, distortion and fabrication practiced by the occupation to change the city.

ALECSO is saying that is official position is that Jews have no history in Jerusalem and that anyone who claims there is Jewish history in Jerusalem is a liar.

This supposedly educational and cultural organization is saying that thousands of articles of archaeological artifacts as well as contemporaneous non-Jewish accounts of Jerusalem - and basic, settled history - are all fiction.

The only reason that ALECSO officially adopts a decidedly anti-science, anti-historical and antisemitic position is politics and hate.

Yet ALECSO is respected by other organizations. For example, it just reached an agreement with the prestigious Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Of course UNESCO is a partner, as is the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and many others.

Antisemitic statements by the Right are instantly and correctly condemned by the world. Yet antisemitic statements by official Arab organizations are simply ignored and those NGOs continue to be free to spout their hate as a matter of course, with the oh-so-moral Europeans not uttering a peep of protest - and eager to work together with organizations that issue press releases showing how much they hate Jews.

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Haaretz columnist Rogel Alpher compares fallen IDF soldiers to suicide bombers

Rogel Alpher continues to troll Jews. There is no way he actually believes this stuff; he just wants to get people outraged at him so he can keep his job at Haaretz.

The version of “El Maleh Rahamim” sung in official state ceremonies on Memorial Day is a jihadist text that turns fallen Israeli soldiers into shahids. The prayer begins: “God full of mercy, who dwells on high” and continues: “among the holy, the pure and the heroes ... the souls of the soldiers ... who gave their lives for the sanctification of [God] and who with the help of the God of Israel’s wars brought about the rebirth of the nation and the redemption of the land. God is their heritage, may they find rest in the Garden of Eden.”
According to the prayer, Israeli soldiers die in the sanctification of the name God. And thus in fighting and dying, they carried out the commandment that requires them as Jews to give their lives for God. This jihadism is clearly declared in the prayer commemorating the souls of the departed in state ceremonies on Memorial Day. As a result of being holy, the fallen soldiers’ place in the Garden of Eden is assured, and there they will rest. How is this different from the culture of the shahids? A shahid is also someone whose place in Paradise is assured, according to the verse in the Koran: “Think not of those who are slain for the sake of Allah as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord.”
According to “El Maleh Rahamim,” a shahid and a fallen soldier are the same. They both gave their lives for the sake of God, and in exchange, they are both in Paradise. The mentality is identical.

This is a modified version of a prayer that has been around for about a thousand years, changed to apply specifically to fallen IDF soldiers. There are versions for Holocaust victims as well as a group. It was first composed, apparently, to commemorate victims of the Crusades and of the Chmielnicki massacres

The IDF version is very close to the traditional version. It is blindingly obvious that in no way does the prayer encourage people to become martyrs.

Alpher, in his depravity, is pretending that the jihadist idea of martyrdom is the legitimate and original version, and the Jewish use of the term is simply an application of the Muslim jihadist suicide bomber version. No, Rogel, Jews don't want to die as martyrs, but too often there is no choice.

Muslim Shahids willingly die while trying to kill the infidel. Jews become martyrs while trying to save themselves and their people and their faith. To call these two mentalities "identical" is, as I said, trolling.

Alpher isn't that stupid. He just gets his jollies on making people angry. He is not worth hating - he is simply too pathetic a human being.

(h/t Yoel)

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08/27 Links: Dershowitz: 'Intersectionality' is a code word for anti-Semitism; Obama chose dishonor, and Israel will have war

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: 'Intersectionality' is a code word for anti-Semitism

What do the terrorist group Hamas and the anti-violence group Black Lives Matter have in common? What does the democracy of Israel have in common with the anti-Semitic Ku Klux Klan? What does the Islamic Republic of Iran, which throws gays off rooftops, have in common with gay rights activists? What do feminists have in common with radical Islamic sexists who support the honor killing and genital mutilation of women? Nothing of course. Unless you subscribe to the pseudo-academic concept of intersectionality. Intersectionality — the radical academic theory, which holds that all forms of social oppression are inexorably linked — has become a code word for anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic bigotry.
Nowhere has adoption of this radical paradigm been more pronounced than on college campuses where, in the name of "identity politics" and "solidarity," intersectionality has forced artificial coalitions between causes that have nothing to do with each other except a hatred for their fellow students who are "privileged" because they are white, heterosexual, male and especially Jewish.
Students at the University of Illinois recently took to social media to express their distress after flyers were plastered around campus calling for the "end of Jewish privilege." The flyer stated in bold letters that: "ending white privilege starts with ending Jewish privilege." The posters had outlines of silhouettes with Stars of David printed out, and an arrow pointing to them with the accompanying caption "the 1%." Although some of the posters identified Black Lives Matter as sponsors, it is not clear whether they were distributed by extreme right-wing groups using hard-left anti-Semitic tropes or by hard-left anti-Semites. In some respects, it does not really matter because many on the hard-right and hard-left share a disdain for Jews, their nation state and so called "Jewish privilege."
The very concept of "privilege" – the idea that white people benefit from certain privileges in Western society, compared to non-whites living in the same social, political and economic environment – has a long and complex history in the United States. The subjugation of black Americans, and other non-whites, is an endemic problem that requires far-reaching legislative and grassroots action. By attributing this domestic social problem to so-called "Jewish privilege," radicals are engaging in traditional economic anti-Semitism; attributing far-reaching societal problems to Jewish status, occupation or economic performance.

JPost Editorial: Anyone is a target: Europe has a lot to learn about terrorism

Retired British colonel Richard Kemp, the well-respected former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and a staunch defender of Israel, called Faaborg-Andersen’s statements “chutzpah.” “Not only does Israel have nothing to learn from the EU,” Kemp said, “but the EU is guilty of encouraging terrorism in Israel.”
He was apparently referring to the EU’s timid kowtowing to the narrative espoused by Abbas, while ignoring the effects of his ongoing incitement of terrorists, whom he reimburses for their “heroic martyrdom” by paying both them and their families millions of dollars in stipends.
In France the deadly terrorist attack on the Hyper Cacher kosher grocery store in Paris in 2015 sounded the red alert for the country’s Jewish communities and those of its neighbors throughout Europe. Today, security personnel take a more holistic approach, making rounds among Jewish schools and synagogues instead of being permanently stationed in front of them as was previously the case.
The French government’s deployment of soldiers in a more flexible way reflects an attempt to protect more potential targets, which now include virtually every pedestrian, whether in the capital or on the beach in Nice. Perhaps the holistic approach to defense is more democratic, since Jews are no longer the specific target of terrorism in an age where everyone is vulnerable.
As a security expert from the European Jewish Congress told The Jerusalem Post recently, “Today the aim of the attackers is to make as much damage as possible without checking who the people are,” he said, pointing to the recent terrorist attack on Barcelona’s bustling Las Ramblas pedestrian boulevard. “Today if a Jew, Muslim or Christian walks in the street, they can get hit in the same way. Everyone is a target.”

Ben-Dror Yemini: Obama chose dishonor, and Israel will have war

The nuclear agreement—misleadingly presented to the world as the lesser of evils—allowed Iran to grow rich and expand its influence in the region. Now, Tehran is taking over Syria, and the distant enemy is coming closer to Israel.
Iran is taking over Syria. The distant enemy is coming closer. The US is out of the picture. Those who put their trust in the new world sheriff, Donald Trump, have to admit he appears to be far more concerned with the American media than the Iranian imperialism. That is who he is.
The world's sheriff is not whoever has more power—the United States has a lot more—but whoever uses the power he has.
Netanyahu had to go to Vladimir Putin this week again for another round of talks with the Russian leader during his vacation in Sochi. It's not clear whether Putin is going to stop the Iranian threat. It is clear, however, that he's the only one there is any point in talking to.ISIS has been defeated on the ground. Over the last year, its fighters have been pushed out of Mosul in Iraq, and in the coming year, probably, they'll also be pushed out of Syria's Raqqa, the caliphate's capital. The problem is that the alternative for ISIS on the ground—Iran and Hezbollah—is just as bad.

Anti-Israel historian Avi Shlaim is not being honest

Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University. writes in Middle East Eye that the Balfour Declaration is an example of British duplicity:

Palestine controlled the British Empire's lines of communications to the Far East. France, Britain's main ally in the war against Germany, was also a rival for influence in Palestine.
Under the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, the two countries divided up the Middle East into zones of influence but compromised on an international administration for Palestine. By helping the Zionists to take over Palestine, the British hoped to secure a dominant presence in the area and to exclude the French. The French called the British "Perfidious Albion". The Balfour Declaration was a prime example of this perennial perfidy.

What Shlaim doesn't say is that the French officially blessed the idea of a Jewish national home in Palestine before the Balfour Declaration! As Martin Kramer wrote recently in a tour de force of scholarship about how the Zionists managed to get the entire civilized world to support the Zionist goals in the 1910s:

The French expressed a general sympathy for Zionism, but [Nahum] Sokolow then had the bold temerity to ask for it in writing. And he received it. On June 4, 1917, Cambon issued him a letter (on the prime minister’s authority), which not only anticipated the Balfour Declaration but cleared the way for it.
The Cambon letter, almost as forgotten as Sokolow, was addressed to him and is worth quoting in full:
You were good enough to present the project to which you are devoting your efforts, which has for its object the development of Jewish colonization in Palestine. You consider that, circumstances permitting, and the independence of the Holy Places being safeguarded on the other hand, it would be a deed of justice and of reparation to assist, by the protection of the Allied Powers, in the renaissance of the Jewish nationality [nationalité juive] in that land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago.
The French government, which entered this present war to defend a people wrongly attacked, and which continues the struggle to assure the victory of right over might, can but feel sympathy for your cause, the triumph of which is bound up with that of the Allies.
I am happy to give you herewith such assurance.
As Weizmann’s biographer Jehuda Reinharz has noted, the Cambon letter “in content and form was much more favorable to the Zionists than the watered-down formula of the Balfour Declaration” that followed it. The French accepted a rationale in terms of “justice” and “reparation,” and acknowledged the historical Jewish tie to the land.

Zionists received official support for their aims from Italy, Japan, the US and other nations as well.

It is true that Great Britain had its own self-interest at heart for supporting Zionism, as does every nation whenever any decision is made. And it is also true that England wanted to maximize its own position in the Middle East at the expense of the French. But Shlaim paints Balfour as a British land grab without looking at this context.

Indeed, Shlaim pretends that the universal support of a Jewish homeland in the West that led to the League of Nations making that goal part of international law is somehow an underhanded British plot rather than a Zionist triumph:

Britain compounded its original mistake by writing the terms of the Balfour Declaration into the League of Nations' mandate for Palestine. What had been a mere promise by one great power to a minor ally now became a legally binding international instrument.

Shlaim here admits that the Mandate was international law. But in this case, he is arguing that international law is wrong. And he is implying that somehow the other members of the League of Nations were somehow forced or bamboozled to support an immoral British proposal that the Jewish people have the human right of self-determination in their historic lands - hardly a controversial position to take.

Unless, that is, you hate Jews.

Shlaim admits in this essay that he was one of the people to sign a petition to force Britain to apologize for the Balfour Declaration. He was stung by the rejection of the petition:

The Balfour Declaration is an historic statement for which HMG does not intend to apologise. We are proud of our role in creating the state of Israel.
The declaration was written in a world of competing imperial powers, in the midst of the First World War and in the twilight of the Ottoman Empire. In that context, establishing a homeland for the Jewish people in the land to which they had such strong historical and religious ties was the right and moral thing to do, particularly against the background of centuries of persecution.
Much has happened since 1917. We recognise that the declaration should have called for the protection of political rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine, particularly their right to self-determination. However, the important thing now is to look forward and establish security and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians through a lasting peace.

Shlaim doesn't care about international law or human rights or even history. He just wants to use any platform he can to delegitimize the Jewish state.

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Here is how Al Jazeera starts off a news article and 45-minute film - not an op-ed - about people who volunteer to help the IDF:

In November 2013, Elena Zakusilo, a Ukrainian Jewish woman, appeared on the Ukrainian TV show "Lie Detector", revealing that she worked for the Israeli army and continued to do so.

"The first time I killed was difficult for me. I threw the weapon and said I wasn't going anywhere. But I went," she said and admitted to having killed civilians, including children.

The only problem is that Zakusilo was indeed lying on the TV show.

The IDF says that Zakulsilo was a volunteer but had no rank or any of the roles she claimed - and her stories were literally unbelievable anyway, claiming that she was in charge of training dogs who would be equipped with cameras and who would be sent to attack Palestinians from ten kilometers away.. But also that she was a combat soldier who killed children in riots after Arafat died. She claimed that she reported directly to a general. Somehow she was not investigated by the IDF after killing however many children she claims to have killed and on the program she claimed to still be working for the IDF in the Ukraine protecting Israelis on airplanes.

Her story has more holes than Blackburn, Lancashire.

Yet Al Jazeera chooses to highlight her obvious lies as the anchor to the program about how nefarious it is that Israel uses volunteers in both combat and non-combat roles:

As thousands of foreign 'lone soldiers' are serving in the Israeli military, Al Jazeera went to find out how and why Israel encourages volunteers from the Jewish diaspora and beyond to work in its army, both as paid soldiers on the front line and volunteers in non-combat roles.
What drives foreigners to join an army which is sometimes heavily criticised for its human rights violations?

Of course every army in the world that sees combat is accused of human rights violations. And dozens of armies recruit volunteer soldiers, including Great Britain, the US, France, Spain, Denmark, the UAE, New Zealand and Serbia. No doubt many more accept non-military volunteers, like Britain's Army Cadets.

In other words, there is nothing strange or underhanded about Israel recruiting foreigners and encouraging volunteers to help the army.

But Al Jazeera is not interested in context. It wants to paint the IDF as being particularly evil and therefore those who want to help defend the Jewish state from the enemies surrounding it are regarded as particularly immoral people.

The show is called "Israels' Volunteer Soldiers" but a great deal of the show deals with non-military volunteers. The screenshot above shows one of the tourist shooting ranges in Israel that has nothing to do with the army.

Al Jazeera says it spent years on this report which was "triggered" by this lying Ukrainian on a game show. Yet it couldn't be bothered to fact check the basics.

Which is why this is, in a very real sense, fake news.

(h/t Joseph Melamed)

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At a feminist blog called Feministing, a writer named Mahroh Jahangiri is incensed over Wonder Woman:

James Cameron did as white people so often do this week: he opened his mouth to share an unsolicited opinion when he could have as easily kept his mouth shut. In an interview with The Guardian on Thursday, the director called the first superhero movie directed by a woman and starring a female lead a “step backwards” for women. I agree – but for different reasons.

“All of the self-congratulatory back-patting Hollywood’s been doing over Wonder Woman has been so misguided,” Cameron said about the film. “She’s an objectified icon, and it’s just male Hollywood doing the same old thing! I’m not saying I didn’t like the movie but, to me, it’s a step backwards.” Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins fired back on Twitter Thursday night, saying female characters don’t need to always be “hard, tough, and troubled to be strong.” Jenkins added: “There is no right or wrong kind of powerful woman […and the film’s female audience] can surely choose and judge their own icons of progress.” Feminist twittersphere ripped into Cameron and gave Jenkins a standing ovation for her clapback.

Cameron wasn’t totally off-base in his comment: Wonder Woman — and lead actress Gal Gadot — are super sexualized; and the film’s success is undoubtedly tied to Gadot meeting gross beauty standards. There is a reason Jezebel asked this week if Gadot — but not a fat, disabled, or Muslim woman for example — could be cast as the next James Bond. But Cameron’s arrogance in thinking his opinion was relevant, reports of his own extremely controlling behavior around women, and the general lack of nuance in his comment makes him sound like a total buffoon. And I’m not mad about the internet going after buffoons.

What does piss me off though are the droves of feminists cheerleading Gadot in response. Women whose response to shitty old white dudes is to celebrate women who champion occupation and genocide. Women who think that experiencing sexism (or simply being a woman) is somehow sufficient for becoming an icon of progress. Jenkins assertion — that there is no right or wrong kind of powerful woman — is woefully oblivious and/or more likely, reveals a cruel disregard for the violence people of color experience at the hands of white women. There are certainly wrong ways to be a powerful woman; advocating for occupation, genocide, and colonialism, for example, fall squarely into that bucket. It is absurd to suggest otherwise.

I could care less about what James Cameron thinks of Wonder Woman’s attractiveness. But I do care about self-proclaimed feminists throwing their weight time and time again behind women who stand for state violence. IDGAF if Wonder Woman was a blockbuster directed by a woman. If its lead actress champions genocide and opposes Palestinian liberation, Wonder Woman is a step backwards for all women.

Hen Mazzig was quite upset at this article and tweeted:

@feministing editor @mahrohj attacks 2 women in white-male-dominated Hollywood industry and claims to be feminist. What I can't understand is why Jahangiri fights against the women that made it- in a movie about important women. Jahangiri does it in most bigoted way- saying Gadot has no rights because of her nationality. Yes. She's an Israeli Jew so apparently she has no rights. Fake @mahrohj has the chutzpah to call herself a civil rights fighter while judging a woman because of her ethnicity, nationality and religion. Using the same standards of phony feminism she herself should be fought against because of her country's misconduct. But @mahrohj is so fake, it's easier for her to type BS about Middle Eastern woman from a Starbucks in DC, sipping almond latte. IN DC!!!

You need to celebrate a feminist-movie by @PattyJenks, a successful female director in male-dominated Hollywood, and @GalGadot a Middle East woman who made it. Instead bigotry blinds you, fills you with hate that you attack two women that made a successful movie about a powerful woman - and claim "feminism"....Seriously?

There are a number of virulently anti-Israel articles at Feministing. I couldn't find a single one that decried Palestinian (or Hamas) attitudes towards women, but a number of articles on why feminists must be anti-Israel.

The most ironic article was from this same Mahroh Jahangiri where she argues that feminists shouldn't talk about Muslim violence towards their women, only white oppression to Muslims:

Violence against Muslim women — domestically or abroad — has not been entirely ignored by white feminists. In many ways, it’s been obsessed over. FGM, honor killings, acid attacks, sexual violence within insular Muslim communities are recognized, discussed, and fetishized. Much has been written on the problematic ways in which this obsession happens. How this discourse is instrumentalized by colonial and imperial projects. How it strips Muslim women of their contexts and intricacies. How it projects white egos onto brown and black women’s bodies.

What I want to comment on here though is not the ways in which white feminists obsess over us, but the moments in which they don’t. Hypervisibility has an insidious counterpart: “the singular obsession with private violence against ‘oppressed’ women by their ‘patriarchal’ husbands often excuses public violence perpetrated by others motivated by both Islamophobia and sexism,” explains Barbara Perry at the University of Ontario. ...

Why do white feminists only discuss violence against Muslim women when it is perpetrated by Muslim men?

So it is clear that Jahangiri is no feminist. She is a Muslim apologist who uses feminism as a cloak for her true feelings.

From what I can tell, the entire Feministing site pretty much buys into the idea that Israel is evil and Arabs/Muslims can do little wrong, with some exceptions. The idea that Israel is a liberal country where women have more opportunities is simply never mentioned in this pseudo feminist site.

And from what I can tell, Feministing's hypocrisy is representative of feminist sites, not anomalous to them.

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08/26 Links: Sarah Halimi: Beaten, tortured and killed — yet France turned a blind eye; Abbas: I'll pay terrorists' salaries until my dying day

From Ian:

Sarah Halimi: Beaten, tortured and killed — yet France turned a blind eye

The behaviour of the police was strange enough throughout this tragic night. Further questions were soon to be raised about the handling of the case. First, while the murder and its circumstances were reported almost instantly within the Jewish community and by the press agency AFP, the mainstream media didn’t mention it at all for two days until BFMTV, a 24-hour news channel, quoted at least one AFP dispatch on April 6 on its website.
Likewise, very little was shown or said about a protest march by 1,000 people in the Vaucouleurs Street neighbourhood on April 9. Considering the enormity of the crime, the reporting remained bafflingly low-key.
Things changed only after Sarah Halimi’s relatives and their lawyers convened a press conference on May 22 with the support of Jewish community leaders.
On June 1, 17 prominent French intellectuals, from philosophers Alain Finkielkraut, Marcel Gauchet, and Michel Onfray, to historians Jacques Julliard and Georges Bensoussan, to demographer Michèle Tribalat and sociologist Jean-Pierre Le Goff, called for “full light” in the Halimi case — the very words President Macron would later use — in a collective statement published by Le Figaro. From then on, the mainstream media devoted more space to the case, and, ironically, wondered why they had not paid it more attention earlier.
Axel Roux, a journalist for Le Journal du Dimanche, a widely read Sunday paper, admitted on June 4 that when he started investigating the case, he was “stunned” by the paucity of the media archives and the “minimalist” approach taken by his profession.
No less disturbing was the public officials’ silence. French members of the cabinet or government officials usually react to such crimes ex officio. Some may even take a more personal stand.
For instance, President Macron tweeted on August 14 his concern for the victims and their relatives just a few hours after a car ran into a pizzeria and killed a 13-year-old girl.
No such reactions occurred after Sarah Halimi’s murder, even though the Minister of the Interior granted an emergency audience to the leaders of the Jewish community. Neither did the political class comment publicly, except for the then National Front presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, who made an indirect statement on April 11.
Third, there is the legal angle. The issue of the attacker’s sanity, and thus of his penal responsibility, was left undecided for more than four months, and is still pending. Dr Daniel Zagury, the noted psychiatric expert commissioned to deal with the case, is due to submit his report by the end of August.
Kobili Traore was first sent to two psychiatric hospitals. It was only on July 11 that he was formally indicted for murder and kidnapping and transferred to the Fresnes prison.

Anti-Semitism in Europe: New Official Report

To some of us, it is hardly a secret that anti-Semitic violence is on the rise in Europe, or that the chief perpetrators are Muslims. But many politicians and news media have been so indefatigable in their efforts to obscure this uncomfortable fact that one is always grateful for official -- or, at least, semi-official -- confirmation of what everyone already knows.
It is a pleasure, then, to report that a new study, Antisemitic Violence in Europe, 2005-2015 -- written by Johannes Due Enstad of the Oslo-based Center for Studies of the Holocaust and the University of Oslo, and jointly published by both institutions -- is refreshingly, even startlingly, honest about its subject. Enstad notes that while anti-Semitic violence has declined in the U.S. since 1994, it has been on the rise worldwide. That, of course, includes Europe -- most of it, anyway.
Examining statistics from France, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Russia, Enstad points out that one of these seven countries "clearly stands out with a very low number" of anti-Semitic incidents despite its "relatively large Jewish population"; the country in question, he adds, "is also the only case in which there is little to indicate that Jews avoid displaying their identity in public." In addition, it is the only one of the six countries in which the majority of perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence are not Muslims. Which country is Enstad referring to? Russia.
That Russia is relatively free of anti-Semitic violence may sound surprising to anyone familiar with the words Cossack and refusenik, but it actually makes sense. Would-be Jew-bashers in Russia know that if they're arrested for committing acts of violence, the consequences won't be pretty. In western Europe, by contrast, the courts are lenient, the terms of confinement short, and the prisons extremely comfortable. And while Muslims know that they are a protected class in Western Europe, able to commit all kinds of transgressions with near-impunity, that is far from being the case in Putin's Russia.

Clifford D. May: Supremacists and revanchists

Immediately after last week's terrorist attack in Barcelona, a pro-Islamic State website ?posted a video from the scene along with a message in Arabic saying, "Terror is ?filling the hearts of the Crusader in the land of Andalusia."?
Let's unpack that. "Crusader" is a term jihadists use, pejoratively, for ?Christians. More specifically, of course, it refers to the Christian soldiers who ?fought a series of wars, beginning in 1095, to recover Jerusalem and other ?parts of the Holy Land from the Muslim armies that had burst out of Arabia ?four centuries earlier. ?
Andalusia indicates the territories of the Iberian Peninsula that were conquered ?by Muslim armies from North Africa beginning in 711. The Reconquista, a war ?waged by Christians to recover those territories, ended in 1492. ?
Here's the larger point: To those discomfited by theological or even ideological ?explanations for most modern terrorism, one alternative explanation is this: ?The killers are revanchists. Their motivation is to reverse territorial losses. ?
They have suffered such losses, they believe, in Europe, the Middle East and ?Asia. The want to fill "the hearts" of the "others" now living in such lands with ?terror in order to drive them out or at least relegate them to inferior status. In ?other words, these revanchists also are supremacists.?
In the longer term, their goal is grander. Finland, which also suffered a terrorist ?attack last week, was never part of a caliphate or Islamic empire. ?Islamic State publishes an online magazine called Rumiyah, Arabic for Rome, ?which they believe must be conquered by Muslims, as was the Christian ?capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul). But priority goes to formerly Muslim ?lands.?

08/25 Links Pt2: Shapiro: Antifa, Nazism and the opportunistic politics that divide us; Why Is the SPLC Targeting Liberals?

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: Antifa, Nazism and the opportunistic politics that divide us

Yet many on the left have justified their behavior as a necessary counter to the white supremacists and alt-righters. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) justified the violence by appealing to the evils of the neo-Nazis. Professor N.D.B. Connolly of Johns Hopkins University wrote in the pages of The Washington Post that the time for nonviolence had ended — that it was time to “throw rocks.” Dartmouth University historian Mark Bray defended antifa by stating that the group makes an “ethically consistent, historically informed argument for fighting Nazis before it’s too late.”
This is appalling stuff unless the Nazis are actually getting violent. Words aren’t violence. A free society relies on that distinction to function properly — as Max Weber stated, the purpose of civilization is to hand over the role of protection of rights to a state that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Breaking that pact destroys the social fabric.
Now, most liberals — as opposed to leftists — don’t support antifa. Even Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) denounced antifa’s tactics in Berkeley, for example. But in response to some on the left’s defense of antifa and their attempt to broaden the Nazi label to include large swaths of conservatives, too many people on the right have fallen into the trap of defending bad behavior of its own. Instead of disassociating clearly and universally from President Trump’s comments, the right has glommed onto the grain of truth embedded in them — that antifa is violent — in order to shrug at the whole.
The result of all of this: the unanimity that existed regarding racism and violence has been shattered. And all so that political figures can make hay by castigating large groups of people who hate Nazism and violence.
Let’s restore the unanimity. Nazism is bad and unjustifiable. Violence against those who are not acting violently is bad and unjustifiable. That’s not whataboutism. That’s truth.
If we can’t agree on those basic principles, we’re not going to be able to share a country.

Introducing: A New Column From The Forward

Think the ZOA is just as bad as Hezbollah? Believe The New York Times secretly harbors white supremacists? We have just the column for you.
Here are 19 people Jews should actually be more worried about than Linda Sarsour… Morton Klein; Ayatollah Khamanei (The Forward, August 3, 2017)
During the course of my conversations with several senior ayatollahs and prominent political and government officials, it became clear that there is high-placed dissent to the official line against Israel. No one had anything warm to say about the Jewish state. But pressed as to whether it was Israel’s policies or its very existence to which they objected, several were adamant: It’s Israel’s policies. (The Forward, August 12, 2015)
There is no shortage of think pieces these days — many from Jews — accusing the left of divisiveness and hate. Bari Weiss’ “When Progressives Embrace Hate” and Ann Lewis’ “I Did Not March for Hate” are two of the latest examples of white Jewish leaders employing the same talking points the white nationalist movement uses to attack Palestinian Muslims and Black people. (The Forward, August 22, 2017)
Richard Spencer Might Be The Worst Person In America. But He Might Also Be Right About Israel. (The Forward, August 17, 2017)
Introducing the latest column from The Forward, by Hannah Virtuestein, New York’s most woke social diarist. She can be reached here:
Javad Zarif is an honorary Jew in my book. Such a Mensch. Even with his busy schedule he agreed to come all the way out to Brooklyn to address our chapter of Iranian Centrifuges Matter. He’s right too. Netanyahu and the Likud in Israel are just a bunch of Chazars. That’s right. Iran’s foreign minister speaks Yiddish. I wish Bubbe was still alive, She’d like him.
Here’s my dilemma. I want to invite Linda Sarsour to our social justice Shabbaton at B’nai Ramallah, but the community can’t agree to separate seating by gender. I argued that we can support our Muslim sisters and still hold the line on gender equality. Rebecca Cohen-Shabazz and Running Deer Goldmanberg told me I was being problematic and Islamophobic. Double whammy! I wish I had more Muslim friends to dialogue with on this.
I wish more blue checkmarks on twitter would get behind my petition to require incoming Brandeis students to take a course on the Muslim Brotherhood, Queer Liberation and Climate Change in the Era of Netanyahu.

08/25 Links Pt1: Israel has nothing to learn from Europe in fighting terror; Western Women are Islamists’ target of choice

From Ian:

Why Israel has nothing to learn from Europe in fighting terror

In November 2015, the European Union issued guidelines for labeling products made on land Europe considers occupied by Israel. This included products made in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Israel, naturally, claimed that the move was discriminatory and denounced it as a political move aimed at pressuring the country into making concessions to the Palestinian Authority. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the decision “hypocritical and a double standard.”
A few months later, I happened to meet the European Union’s Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen and asked him a simple question. Let’s assume, I said, that labeling products in the West Bank and east Jerusalem is understandable. Those are territories in dispute between Israel and the Palestinians and their status will need to wait to be resolved in a comprehensive peace agreement between the sides.
“But what about the Golan,” I asked. “Who exactly does the EU want Israel to give it back to?” My question referred to the ongoing civil war in Syria, which erupted in 2011 and has seen the rise of ISIS, and al-Qaida as well as the entrance of Iran and Hezbollah into the country, now the focus of Netanyahu’s most recent diplomatic efforts. I did not receive an answer but the question lingers still today as just one example of how Europe lacks a clear understanding of the Middle East.
I mention this story since on Tuesday, in a final briefing to the press before leaving the country after four years as the EU envoy, Faaborg-Andersen said that Israel can learn from Europe how to effectively combat terrorism.
“Fighting terrorism,” he said, “is an endeavor that requires the whole tool box of instruments.” One of those tools, he went on to explain, is a “strong security dimension,” which Israel uses effectively. But, he added, there are other aspects involved as well, including “de-radicalization,” working with social services, and education.
Now that is an interesting idea considering how many of the terrorist attacks perpetrated in Europe are carried out by citizens, some born and bred in their respective countries. In Israel, a small percentage of the attacks - like the recent one at the Temple Mount - are carried out by Israeli Arabs. Most are perpetrated by Palestinians.
Looking at the numbers this is an even stranger idea. According to EUROPOL, the EU agency for law enforcement cooperation, 142 people were killed in terrorist attacks in EU member states in 2016. In Israel, on the other hand, 17 people were killed. While 2017 is not yet over, the discrepancy is stark. In Israel 12 people have been killed, nine of them soldiers and policemen, while in EU member states there are already nearly 60 people who have been killed in Islamic terrorist attacks.
While the numbers don’t tell the full story, they are definitely part of it. So what exactly was Faaborg-Andersen referring to? Richard Kemp, the former British military officer and staunch defender of Israel, called Faaborg-Andersen’s statements “chutzpah,” citing the numerical discrepancy. “Not only does Israel have nothing to learn from the EU,” Kemp said, “but the EU is guilty of encouraging terrorism in Israel.”

Col Kemp: Brexit Terror Study

Letter to the editor of The Times, published 24 August 2017. © Richard Kemp
The leaked Home Office report (Aug 23) warning of an increased terrorist risk to the UK after Brexit is pure fiction. The opposite is true: Britain will be safer after Brexit.
No longer will we have to allow known terrorist suspects who are EU citizens to enter the UK as we do now. We should not forget that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian ringleader of the November 2015 Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed, travelled freely to Britain beforehand despite being known to be involved in extremism. Such is the EU’s security regime that he boasted in Islamic State propaganda of being able to travel unnoticed into and around Europe.
The report says that security co-operation would be ‘less effective or slower’ once Britain left the EU. Why should it be? The UK has the most effective counter-terrorism operational capability in Europe with the most extensive liaison relationships in countries from where the greatest Islamic terrorist threats emanate.
Our intelligence services have prevented numerous terrorist attacks in the UK and elsewhere in the EU in recent years. In the fight against terrorism the EU needs us far more than we need them.
Colonel Richard Kemp
Former commander of British forces in Afghanistan

Vox: Israeli-Arab Conflict One of World's "Most Violent" Disputes

According to Vox, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is one of the "most violent" in the world.
Vox gained notoriety when it reported that Israel limits traffic on the bridge connecting the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In fact, Israel doesn't limit traffic on the bridge because the bridge doesn't exist.
In this week's story about Palestinian infighting, journalist Shira Rubin writes that the battle between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas "has major stakes for one of the world’s longest-running, and most violent, political disputes."
Is that a fair characterization? A recent Reuters overview shows that, even during the he bloodiest year of Arab-Israeli fighting in decades, 2014, the number of casualties in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank paled in comparison to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, South Sudan, Pakistan, Sudan, Ukraine, Somalia, Central African Republic, and Libya. The 2014 Gaza conflict accounted for about 2,000 of 100,000 battle-related deaths worldwide that year. (The graphic along the left margin, by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), shows the fatalities from Arab-Israeli fighting in the context of 2014's conflicts worldwide.)
And again, 2014 was an an outlier. A year earlier, in 2013, fewer than 50 people were killed in Israeli-Palestinian fighting, less than 0.1 percent of the 70,000 killed in the rest of the world's conflicts. In 2015, there were roughly 150 killed as a result of violence in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and 100,000 fatalities from conflict worldwide. You can check out PRIO's graphic of 2016's most deadly conflicts on page three of this document. Can Vox find Israel on the chart?

By "progressive" logic, they themselves are neo-Nazis

Anti-Israel commentators and self-styled "progressives" have seized white supremacist Richard Spencer's ridiculous assertion that he regards his movement as a type of "white Zionism" as proof that Zionism is akin to white supremacy.

This absurdity has been published not only in Electronic Intifada and by idiots like Ben Norton but also in The Forward (by a "Jewish Voice for Peace" leader).

So if a neo-Nazi says they support a movement, that means that the movement is neo-Nazi?

From Kentucky.com:

[

Matthew] Heimbach, a 26-year-old Indiana resident, is an emerging leader of the white nationalist movement in the United States. He has appeared with and supported the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Terror Network and a variety of Nazi organizations, according to news articles and reports from the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Heimbach was involved in the planning for a 2013 Nazi rally in Kansas City to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Kristallnacht occurred on the night of Nov. 9, 1938, when paramilitary civilians associated with the Nazi Party rampaged through German streets, destroying and ransacking Jewish homes, synagogues, schools and businesses.

In 2014, Heimbach was a keynote speaker at Stormfront’s “Death to America” meeting in the Smoky Mountains. In that speech, Heimbach repeated tired old theories about a Jewish control of the federal government and international banking. But he went even further, arguing that the United States was created as part of Jewish/Freemason conspiracy.

Heimbach also allied his group with the Aryan National Alliance. At a joint meeting in Salem, Ohio, Heimbach said, “We must support the creation of an ethno-state.”

In 2014 he said: “When the Jews are strong, the Jewish people engage their supposed foes with cold-blooded cruelty. This is why we must understand a unity between those who struggle against the Zionist State and International Jewry here in the West and those on the streets of Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon. We face the exact same enemy, one who doesn’t care if they kill our women, children, and elderly. We are facing a truly Satanic enemy, one that cannot be understood except through the lens of Christianity and Christian prophecy.”

Like Abunimah, Heimbach supports Palestinians in Gaza! Like Max Blumenthal, Heimbach supports Bashar Assad! Heimbach supports Hezbollah, whose fans have described it as "progressive!"

It seems very clear - according to the "logic" of these so-called "progressives" - that they are linked to neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

And I haven't heard any of them denounce the words of Matthew Heimbach. QED.

So since the anti-Israel "progressive" left is neo-Nazi, by their own thinking, then it is legitimate to engage in physical violence against them.

In other words, they should commit suicide.

If they are to be intellectually consistent, that is.

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It's official: J-Street doesn't want peace

I found these two stories interesting. From Haaretz:

Left-wing Jewish group J Street attacked the Trump administration on Thursday for refusing to endorse a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In a statement sent by email, with the headline "Trump Admin becoming Obstacle to Middle East Peace," the group's president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said that by taking up such a stance, the administration was hurting its own efforts to reach peace.
Ben-Ami's statement came after a spokeswoman for the State Department, Heather Nauert, said on Wednesday that the administration is not endorsing any specific formulas for ending the conflict, because that could create "bias towards one side or the other." Nauert was responding to a question about the two-state solution during her daily press briefing.
The State Department's spokeswoman "displayed dangerous ignorance about the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and what it will take to end it," Ben-Ami said.
He added that, "The Trump administration has spoken often of its desire to broker a comprehensive and transformative peace agreement in the Middle East. Early steps taken by the special envoy and others suggested a real interest in constructing a viable approach to achieving that objective. But there is no way to accomplish that goal without a two-state solution."

Also from Haaretz:

"We very much appreciate the efforts of President Trump, who announced from the beginning that he will work to reach a historic peace deal and has repeated this more than once during the meetings we held in Washington, Riyadh and Bethlehem," Abbas said before his meeting with Kushner.
"I want to stress that the American delegations is working for peace and we will work with them to reach what Trump calls a peace deal. We know things are hard and complicated, but nothing is impossible if you put in an honest effort," he said.

"Pro-peace" J-Street is saying that peace is impossible with the Trump administration refusing to say the magic words "two state solution" - but Abbas says it is possible.

Obviously both parties are being driven by political considerations, not reality. J-Street looks for any opportunity to insult Trump and Abbas is not willing to publicly go against him. (In this case Abbas is like Netanyahu who received criticism for not directly condemning Charlottesville neo-Nazis; apparently Abbas is far more immune to criticism for wanting to stay in Trump's good graces than Bibi is.)

J-Street apparently wants Abbas to angrily slam the door in Kushner's face until he says the magic words. Because Jeremy Ben-Ami's hubris overrides any desire for real peace.

The more important question to J-Street is: What progress, exactly, towards peace did the Obama administration accomplish in eight years of pressuring Israel and adopting the Palestinian talking points? Ben-Ami is so sure that an American push towards a pre-defined solution is a prerequisite for peace, but how much closer was that goal in 2016 compared to 2008 with a president whom J-Street supported to the hilt?

The fact is that despite the Trump administration's many problems, it has done more for Middle East peace than Obama ever could. Obama's vision was bilateral peace with Abbas having veto power over any Israeli position; Trump is pushing for a regional solution that involves Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries in a more comprehensive solution. This makes perfect sense because Israel can help Arab states in many ways, from technology to coordinating a strategy against Iran, and Arab states host hundreds of thousands of people who have Palestinian ancestry that they refuse to give citizenship to. They must be involved. Indeed, Trump's strategy for peace is one of the smarter things we've seen out of the White House, and Arab leaders are making decisions that are good for the entire region, not just narrow Palestinian interests where Abbas can continue to just say no to everything as he has done consistently.

J-Street wants to continue to give Abbas the right to be a rejectionist, something that he did even more during the "two-state" Obama administration. That is not pro-peace - that is anti-Israel and, indeed, anti-peace.

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