PA then lied, claiming Guterres expressed “understanding” of prisoners’ “suffering,” vowing to “put an end to it” UN spokesman: “All of the quotes attributed to the Secretary-General are fabricated"
The Palestinian Authority entrapped UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres into meeting with the mother of 5 Palestinian terrorists yesterday, and then lied about what happened.
According to a UN spokesman, Guterres was not scheduled to meet the families of terrorist prisoners but were surprised by the sudden request of the PA to meet with “mothers of detained children,” as reported by The Times of Israel: “At the end of a meeting with Palestinian officials this afternoon in Ramallah, the secretary-general was informed that a group of Palestinian mothers of detained children wanted to give him a petition. Confronted with the situation, he received the group which presented him a petition.”[The Times of Israel, Aug. 29, 2017]
The PA’s official news agency WAFA presented it differently. It described Guterres’ meeting with parents of prisoners, including Latifa Abu Hmeid, mother of 5 terrorists, 1 who was killed as a “Martyr” and the other 4 who are serving between them 17 life sentences, very routinely, without any reference to it not being on the schedule: “UN Secretary-General António Guterres met this evening [Aug. 29, 2017] in Ramallah with several families of Palestinian Martyrs (Shahids) and prisoners that are sitting in the Israeli occupation’s prisons... Present at the meeting were Latifa Abu Hmeid...” [WAFA, Aug. 29, 2017] Moreover, the PA made an outright lie, fictitiously reporting that the UN Secretary-General responded favorably to statements about Palestinian prisoners and that he “understood” their “suffering,” to make it seem like he accepted their claims about the Palestinian terrorist prisoners.
This is what the PA claims to have told Guterres: “The prisoners’ families demanded that the UN secretary-general act in a serious and concrete manner to save the lives of more than 6,500 Palestinian prisoners and female prisoners sitting in the Israeli occupation’s prisons from the grave violations that the [Israeli] occupation Prison Service perpetrates against them, such as medical neglect, administrative detentions, and the arrest of women, children, and parliament members.” [WAFA, Aug. 29, 2017]
The Almagor Terror Victims' Association called on Israel's Foreign Ministry to delay the return of Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon to the UN, after UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres "blatantly evinced disrespect" for Israel's terror victims.
On Tuesday, Guterres met with the families of terrorist murderers and placed a bouquet of flowers on arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat's grave.
Almagor CEO Meir Indor said, "The fact that the new UN Secretary General visited Arafat's grave and met with the mothers of jailed terrorists and murderers, shows blatant disrespect for the graves of the murdered victims and all Israeli society."
"Unfortunately, the UN organizations for many years have chosen to aid Palestinian terrorists, either directly or indirectly. Perhaps the time has come for us to call the UN by its real title: A terror-supporting organization." If the claim, as spokesmen for the Secretary General said, is that Guterres did not know that these were the parents of terrorists, Indor indicated, he should meet the terror victims' families and apologize. To atone for the fact that he visited Arafat's grave, Indor suggests Guterres visit the graves of terror victims in Jerusalem.
Tearing down statues has become a major issue in the US these days, although one could argue there are countries where the problem is more pressing.
Consider:
Protesters have gone from demanding that the Washington Redskins change their name to advocating the removal of statues honoring the Confederacy. In the former case, they claim that name of the football team uses a disparaging name for Indians. In the latter case, they claim that Confederate statues honor what the Confederacy stood for -- owning slaves.
Matters came to a head this month when protesters in Durham, North Carolina succeeded in tearing down a statue of a Confederate soldier:
The protests go beyond just anonymous confederate statues.
There are demands that statues of General Robert E. Lee be removed as well.
The demands go beyond leaders of the Confederacy, to include removing the statues of slave owners in our nation's history, including Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
The demands go beyond American slave owners, to Christopher Columbus.
If #RobertELee is to be erased from history, why not erase #ChristopherColumbus whose arrival ignited genocide of Native Americans?
If action is to be taken on these various targets, the first step should be to figure out if there is an issue to begin with -- are people really offended?
An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll last week found that 62 percent of respondents thought statues honoring leaders of the Confederacy should “remain as a historical symbol.” Only 27 percent of those polled wanted the statues removed. It is noteworthy that, by 44 percent to 40 percent, African Americans did not support removing Confederate statues.
If action really is to be taken on statues, monuments and football team name, it should be done democratically, and reflect the opinions of those people who are assumed to be offended.
Contrary to the protesters, we don't seem to have reached that point yet and tearing down those statues at this point is just vandalism.
A better case could be made against Mt. Rushmore, which was built on land that was seized from the Lakota Indians after the Great Sioux War of 1876. Previously, the Black Hills had been granted in perpetuity to the Lakota under the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868.
Picture of Mount Rushmore monument. Credit: Dean Franklin. Wikipedia
However one feels about the Confederacy and the reasons behind the Civil War, the statues themselves are not dedicated to slavery or its defense. It was part of the of dealing with the war and its aftermath.
A different case can be made for Nazi Germany, where statues, monuments and stadiums were seen as a way of glorifying and paying tribute to the Nazi ideology.
Not surprisingly a better case for tearing down statues, with a broader consensus, was made following the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Yet history tells a more complicated story. In its initial years, de-Nazification had only limited impact. It would take time, generational change and external events to make Germany what it is today—a vibrant democracy that is notably less permissive of racism, extremism and fascism than the United States. Tearing down the symbols of Nazi terror was a necessary first step—but it didn’t ensure overnight political or cultural transformation. It required a longer process of public reconciliation with history for Germans to acknowledge their shared responsibility for the legacy of Nazism.
It was not until decades later, during the 1970's that Germany gained closure on coming to terms with its history, but not because of tearing down statues. Among the things that aided the process, both of Germany coming to terms with its history and with the Jewish state, were:
Belated public investigations into German war crimes on the eastern front
Israel’s capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann
Criminal trials in Frankfurt of Auschwitz concentration camp guards
The Six-Day War
The Yom Kippur War
The massacre of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic games in Munich
The American miniseries, "Holocaust" -- whose 4 episodes were watched by 20 million viewers
We can argue over to what degree the US needs to have a similar reconciliation with its past, especially of the Confederacy.
The US in fact might not need to go through the same kind of healing process that Germany did.
But the Palestinian Arabs do, whose anti-Israel and antisemitic cartoons still make use of Nazi imagery.
Today's Palestinian Arabs have their own ideology of hate, one which has led them beyond cartoons, to build monuments dedicated to murderers of unarmed men, women and children, in the name of "resistance"
The Jenin municipality last month named a square after “martyr” Khaled Nazzal, a Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) operative who planned a massacre in the northern town of Ma’alot in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 22 schoolchildren and four adults. It also erected a monument in Nazzal’s honor.
When the IDF took down the statue, it was put back up the next day.
---
In July 2016 Abbas ignored Israel's request and went ahead with a monument honoring the late Palestinian terrorist Ahmad Jabarah Abu Sukar. Known as "the refrigerator bomber," Abu Sukar planned the detonation of a refrigerator filled with explosives in the center of Jerusalem, murdering 15 people and wounding more than 60. The monument describes Abu Sakar as a "heroic martyr" -- an example to emulated if not glorified.
---
In 2010, in a ceremony attended by dozens of Palestinian students a public square was dedicated to Palestinian terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, who in 1978 helped carry out the deadliest terrorists attack in Israel's history. The official ceremony had been put off so as not to coincide with a visit by Vice President Biden, who was there to promote peace talks:
The woman being honored, Dalal Mughrabi, was the 19-year-old leader of a Palestinian squad that sailed from Lebanon and landed on a beach between Haifa and Tel Aviv. They killed an American photojournalist, hijacked a bus and commandeered another, embarking on a bloody rampage that left 38 Israeli civilians dead, 13 of them children, according to official Israeli figures. Ms. Mughrabi and several other attackers were killed.
While the confederate statues are a reminder of the slavery and abuse suffered, those monuments do not glorify it.
While the Nazi statues glorify the leaders of the party and of Nazi Germany, they did not explicitly glorify the murder of Jews. Most of the concentration camps themselves were in Poland. Germans at the time did go along with sending Jews to the camps and the gas chambers, but when confronted with the facts, they still retained a sense of shame.
On the Palestinian leadership of Hamas fires rockets indiscriminately at Israel, without regard as to whom may be hit. They also encourage attacks on Israeli civilians. For their part, Abbas and the Palestinian Authority incite hatred against Israel through the glorification of terrorists, whether through monuments, programs or the preaching of radical imams.
The Confederacy and Nazi Germany are in the past.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas are now in the 21st century inciting hatred and murder out in the open in a way that would surprise the Nazis.The West, meanwhile, turns a deaf ear to this in a way that would make Neville Chamberlain seem like a brave man of integrity.
No one expects those same US protesters to take note of all this and make an issue of Palestinian statues glorifying murder half way around the world, but one would think that at the very least they would demonstrate an awareness of the situation, instead of making excuses for it.
If statues and monuments are going to come down anywhere, statues and monuments glorifying Palestinian terrorists must come down as the very first step towards an honest peace plan.
(Even though there are countries with statues dedicated to Palestinian inciters of hate and terrorism who have no intention of tearing those statues down.)
Statue of Yasser Arafat in Mexico City, Mexico.
Credit: Adrián Cerón, Wikipedia
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With all the press given over the Temple Mount, people tend to forget that the Palestinian Authority (and the Muslim world as a whole) is just as adamant that Jews do not have the right to pray or even be outside the Temple Mount as well.
The Palestinian Authority Minister of Waqf and Religious Affairs, Sheikh Yusuf Adais, issued a statement yesterday on "Zionist attacks" of the "Al Aqsa Mosque" during August. Some of these "attacks" include:
- Likud MK Yehuda Glick set up a symbolic office outside one of the gates of the Temple Mount. He sat in a chair.
- Israel continues to allow archaeological research outside the Temple Mount (such as in the City of David.)
-"Dozens of settlers prayed prayers" outside one of the Temple Mount gates
And finally:
- "Thousands of settlers performed the Talmudic rituals at the Wall of Al-Buraq" - meaning thousands of Jews went to the Western Wall to commemorate Tisha B'Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple
All of these "desecrations" are just as upsetting to the Palestinian Authority as Jews calmly walking around the Temple Mount, what they call "storming Al Aqsa."
In other words, when Israel is pressured to compromise on any part of Jerusalem or the Land of Israel, its "peace partner" will go just as crazy and incite just as much terror as they insist on the next part. If Israel withdraws from territory, they ask for more. If Israel gives up all the West Bank, they would ask for more. We saw it in Lebanon when Israel left every square centimeter according to the UN - and Hezbollah made up excuses to continue to "resist."
This is a long game, and the West simply doesn't understand any mentality that goes beyond an election cycle. The Palestinians might pretend to negotiate for short term gains but they never give up on their objective of taking over all of Israel. After all, that's the entire reason for insisting on the "right of return."
And when a PA minister lists Jews praying at the Kotel as a "violation of Al Aqsa," the real outrage is that no one is reporting on what reveals the true Palestinian position, that Jews simply don't belong in Jerusalem altogether.
Here's a video apparently of Tuesday's walk by Glick and others that caused so much anger in Palestinian and other Arab media. (The video may actually be older, it was seemingly posted on YouTube on Monday but that might be a time zone issue.)
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The Tazpit News Agency story, reproduced by The Jewish Press and United With Israel, included the headline "Netanyahu: Israel Will Stay in Judea and Samaria For Ever."
I like a lot of things about Bibi, but in this case he was very careful to use words that would be interpreted by Zionists who support keeping Judea and Samaria the way this headline does.
But it isn't what he said.
We already know that Bibi has floated the idea of Jewish settlements remaining in place but under Palestinian sovereignty. That is a major part of the peace plan hat is in his head, and what he proposed to John Kerry a couple of years back.
Let's look at his actual words and see if it is consistent with his proposal to Kerry. Here are Bibi's words pieced together from Tazpit and Haaretz:
“This is the land of our fathers, this is our land. We are here to stay, forever...There will be no more uprooting of settlements in the land of Israel. It has been proven that it does not help peace. We've uprooted settlements. What did we get? We received missiles. It will not happen anymore."
Nothing about not allowing some settlements to become part of a Palestinian state. Remember, the Land of Israel isn't the State of Israel - the entire Palestinian entity would be inside the historic Land of Israel.
"And there's another reasons that we will look after this place, because it looks after us. In light of everything that is occurring around us, we can just imagine the result....From these hills we can see the Land of Israel from one end to the other.
“Imagine that radical Islamic forces were stationed on these hills. That would be a danger not only to us, but to all our neighbors. It would endanger the whole region and the entire Middle East. Given everything that is happening around us, one could only imagine the consequences....So we will not fold. We are guarding Samaria against those who want to uproot us. We will deepen our roots, build, strengthen and settle."
Israel would insist in any peace plan to maintain security control over the borders even to the Jordan. Israel would still be "guarding" Samaria even if most of it becomes part of another Arab state. Bibi would allow the strengthening of existing settlement blocs near the border and perhaps even add to them, but the settlements that are deeper inside the territories would not be under Israeli sovereignty.
Netanyahu is a politician, and a master communicator. Here is he giving one impression but he is saying something quite different, knowing that his audience would not consider the other interpretation. I wish he really did mean that Israel would hold on to every Jewish community in Judea and Samaria - but he didn't say that (unless there are other parts of the speech I missed.)
What is more concerning is that until I read this carefully wordsmithed speech, I entertained the idea that Bibi's insistence on allowing Jewish communities to stay intact under Arab rule was a bluff meant to expose the antisemitism inherent in the Palestinian leadership, as they would never accept the presence of Jewish communities. But when Bibi can't be explicit in holding onto all the settlements in a speech to settlers, it means that he really does want to transfer at least some Jewish communities to the Arabs, in the interests of territorial contiguity and the difficulty to protect the Jews in those communities as islands in an Arab sea.
I hope I'm wrong. But the matter could be cleared up in seconds if someone asks him about it in the Knesset.
(h/t Josh)
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“They asked me if it moved me when VIP’s came to visit me. And I was moved but it was even more special for me when people I have never met before showed up.”
Almost a month after the horrific attack that almost stole Niv Nehemiah’s life, preparing to be released from the hospital, Niv wanted to express his feelings about the kindness of strangers - the people who he had never met before who came to see him in the hospital, to encourage him, to tell him and show his family that they are not alone.
Have you ever gone to the hospital to visit someone you don’t know? Does that sound like a weird thing to do?
It’s something Israelis sometimes do.
Being in the hospital, being sick or wounded and needing to heal is a private sort of thing. Even the friendliest of people would normally prefer to be seen at their best, not while they are weak and suffering but in Israel strangers are just family you haven’t met yet.
In Jewish tradition, visiting the sick is a mitzvah, a good deed. I’m not sure how many of the people who visit people they have never met before do it out of the conscious desire to do a good deed. That thought comes up but, at least in my experience, it is secondary. The driving motivator is a feeling of being called to go, like it is something you should do. You hear about a story that touches you, a person that you feel special empathy for and something inside makes you feel like you should go to them.
The same is true for attending funerals of people you have never met before or visiting a bereaved family during the shivah, that mourning period. The reason for going is less a conscious thought and more a feeling that it is just where you are supposed to be.
The Yavneh supermarket terror attack on August 2nd, was particularly horrifying.
This is not the first attack to have been captured on camera but the footage made it very easy to see the cool demeanor of the terrorist as he almost casually chose Niv as his victim. The swift transformation from average man, like so many others walking those same aisles (the average places, everyone goes during their normal routine) who, in an instant, morphed in to a weapon of death thirsting for Jewish blood is sickening to witness.
But it was Niv, alone, that was particularly horrifying. Suddenly this regular man had to become a warrior, battling for his very life. And no one came to help him.
Why? I don’t know. Except for attacks that happen in locations where the victim is utterly alone, there is always someone who intervenes, someone who tries to come to the rescue. Here was Niv in a public place and no one came. In the video of the attack you can see two women running away. Were there no men in the store? (Were the only men there Arabs willing to let the attack play out?) I don’t know what happened but, like many other people in the country, I was left with the feeling that Niv should not have been alone.
Possibly that feeling is what drove strangers to visit Niv in the hospital. To show him that he is
not alone. To encourage his family. If he had been hospitalized closer to where I live, I would have gone too.
And here is Niv, a man who fought death with his bare hands, who is drawing hope from people he never met before that came to visit him in the hospital. He could have spoken about the horror of the attack, his concern about his family or how long it would take him to heal. Instead he wanted to thank God and the doctors that saved his life and speak about the kindness of strangers.
It is people like Niv that give me hope.
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Jews and other Israel supporters around the world work for the IDF in the same manner as fighters in the Syrian civil war: committing war crimes, both as volunteers and paid mercenaries on behalf of the Jewish state.
Really?
That’s the underlying message of an Al Jazeera “documentary” (it’s actually closer to a work of fiction) that skews context, overtly mistranslates statements, and even repeats outright lies in order to create this illusion.
The documentary begins with Elena Zakusilo, a Ukrainian Jewish woman who claimed on a local television game show that she served in a combat role in the IDF, including being forced by the IDF to murder innocent children: a form of blood libel that has served as an excuse for violence against Jews throughout history.
The IDF and Ukranian security services investigated: It turns out the woman had blatantly lied. In fact, the show’s producers had scripted her entire speech in a ploy to increase ratings, even though they apparently knew that Zakusilo’s role in the IDF had been low ranking, administrative and non-combat.
Al Jazeera then misleads audiences with a segment on an unrelated group called “Caliber 3,” a private firm that mostly trains civilian security contractors who work with the Israeli police. Caliber 3 also offers basic self-defense classes for private individuals, a minority of their work.
Yet Al Jazeera portrayed Caliber-3 as a military unit, and its civilian self-defense classes as a military activity. It’s like saying a person who takes a CPR class at the hospital is a surgeon. It’s just simply untrue.
Hardly a day goes by without reading about Al Jizz making a mockery of the notion of journalistic integrity and going out of their way to demonize Israel.
You know, one of the countries in which they have an office so they can provide “objective” journalism.
Last week, they came out with a report entitled Israel’s Volunteer Soldiers.
Naturally, it is a hit job on Israel and the IDF.
Naturally, it contains outright lies, none more severe than the inclusion of a proven blood libel. 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.
Seriously, it is way beyond time Al Jizz was sent packing.
CAMERA's Israel office today prompted correction of an Al Jazeera English article which falsely stated that the Israeli coastal city of Haifa is located in "northern occupied Palestine" ("UK: Palestine activists face prison over Elbit protest").
As noted earlier today in CAMERA's Snapshots blog, Al Jazeera's Shafit Mandhai had redrawn the map, writing: Based in the city of Haifa in northern occupied Palestine, Elbit produces military and civilian-use equipment, including drones, aircraft, weapon control systems, and artillery.
This is a completely false characterization of Haifa, which the United Nations designated as part of the land intended for a Jewish state under the 1947 Partition Plan. According to the United Nations' present day map (as well as an "Oslo status quo" map published by Al Jazeera) the Israeli northern coastal city of Haifa is not in the "Occupied Palestinian Territories," which include the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and by some definitions eastern Jerusalem.
In response to communication today from CAMERA, Al Jazeera commendably corrected the article, removing the erroneous reference to "northern occupied Palestine." The corrected article now accurately states that Elbit is "[b]ased in the city of Haifa."
Responding to concerns of viewers and activists over discrimination, Al Jazeera and other media operations in the Arab and Muslim world have promised to achieve a more equitable distribution of entomological and zoological terms for use in referring to Jews, spokesmen for several such outlets announced today.
Audiences and critics have criticized the networks and publication in recent months for what they have called blatant bias in favor of certain classes of unpleasant creatures over others as derogatory metaphors for Jews, leading the organizations to examine their editing practices and style policies in an effort to achieve better representation of all types of vermin in their rhetoric.
Representatives of major Arabic networks and organizations issued statements today in which they declared their intention to undertake a revamping of procedures aimed at comparing Jews to a more balanced variety of blood-sucking, unsanitary, scavenging, or disease-spreading creatures, and to correct the situation that has pertained heretofore, in which apes, pigs, rats, cockroaches, snakes, dogs, and mosquitoes have been comparatively over-represented, while gnats, maggots, flies, bats, jackals, and other animals rarely feature.
“We apologize to our viewers and readers for the insensitivity displayed to date in our reporting and analysis vis-Ã -vis the depiction of Jews as scum-sucking vermin,” read Al Jazeera’s statement. “Al Jazeera hereby commits to ensuring a variety of pests, predators, and parasites to which to compare Jews and their schemes, and henceforth not to shortchange the termite, the locust, the mouse, the vulture, and the fox, for example. That is a random list; please do not yell at us for not including your favorite disgusting creature in this apology.”
Last year, Haaretz what is actually a very informative article about archaeology in Saudi Arabia and the history of the ostensibly Jewish kingdom of Himyar in parts of today's Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
But a closer look finds the type of bias we all come to expect from the newspaper.
One of the key, but often forgotten, players in Arabia at the time was the kingdom of Himyar.
Established around the 2nd century CE, by the 4th century it had become a regional power. Headquartered in what is today Yemen, Himyar had conquered neighboring states, including the ancient kingdom of Sheba (whose legendary queen features in a biblical meeting with Solomon).
In a recent article titled “What kind of Judaism in Arabia?” Christian Robin, a French epigraphist and historian who also leads the expedition at Bir Hima, says most scholars now agree that, around 380 CE, the elites of the kingdom of Himyar converted to some form of Judaism.
The Himyarite rulers may have seen in Judaism a potential unifying force for their new, culturally diverse empire, and an identity to rally resistance against creeping encroachment by the Byzantine and Ethiopian Christians, as well as the Zoroastrian empire of Persia.It is unclear how much of the population converted, but what is sure is that in the Himyarite capital of Zafar (south of Sana’a), references to pagan gods largely disappear from royal inscriptions and texts on public buildings, and are replaced by writings that refer to a single deity.
Using mostly the local Sabean language (and in some rare cases Hebrew), this god is alternatively described as Rahmanan – the Merciful – the “Lord of the Heavens and Earth,” the “God of Israel” and “Lord of the Jews.” Prayers invoke his blessings on the “people of Israel” and those invocations often end with shalom and amen.
...One big question that remains about the Jews of Himyar is what kind of Judaism they practiced. Did they observe the Sabbath? Or the rules of kashrut?
Some scholars, like the 19th century Jewish-French orientalist Joseph Halevy, refused to believe that a Jewish king could persecute and massacre his Christian subjects, and dismissed the Himyarites as belonging to one of the many sects in which Christianity was divided in its early days.
Robin, the French epigraphist, writes in his article that the official religion of Himyar may be described as “Judeo-monotheism” – “a minimalist variety of Judaism” that followed some of the religion’s basic principles.
The fact is that the few inscriptions found so far, along with the writings of later chroniclers, who may have been biased against the Himyarites, do not allow scholars to form a clear picture of the kingdom’s spirituality.
But there is another way to look at the question.
Through Christian and Muslim rule, Jews continued to be a strong presence in the Arabian Peninsula. This is clear not only from Mohammed’s (often conflictual) dealings with them, but also from the influence that Judaism had on the new religion’s rituals and prohibitions (daily prayers, circumcision, ritual purity, pilgrimage, charity, ban on images and eating pork).
In Yemen, the heartland of the Himyarites, the Jewish community endured through centuries of persecution, until 1949-1950, when almost all its remaining members – around 50,000 – were airlifted to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. And while they maintain some unique rituals and traditions, which set them apart from Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, no one would doubt that they are indeed, the last, very much Jewish descendants of the lost kingdom of Himyar.
This is the author of the Haaretz piece, Ariel David, making up the idea that Yemenite Jews are descended from converts to a watered down Judaism in Himyar, not quoting any scholar or archaeologist.
Because they would laugh at the idea that today's Yemenite Jews were descended from Himyar converts.
For one thing, there is a record of Jews and synagogues in Yemen centuries before the Himyar kingdom conversion to Judaism. Clearly Jews were an important part of the kingdom which is one reason why the Himyarites chose Judaism as a possible unifying factor for their kingdom and conquests. But their actual interest in Judaism was political, not theological.
Secondly, DNA records show that Yemenite Jews are closely related to other Jews.
Haaretz is pushing a new type of "Khazar" theory that Yemenite Jews aren't really Jews. It's antisemitic when applied to Ashkenazic Jews and it is antisemitic when applied to Yemenite Jews.
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The fourth week of August .. 5 commando operations and wounding 3 Zionists
In the context of the follow-up and continuous statistics of the Jerusalem intifada, in the fourth week of August 2017, the Intifada site monitored 5 attacks wounding 3 Zionists in various parts of the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
In the town of Teqoa in the Bethlehem governorate, a Zionist soldier was injured by the stones of the youth of the uprising, after the clashes that took place in the town.
In Shu'fat refugee camp in East Jerusalem, a settler was injured by stones thrown at him during clashes in the camp.
In the town of Housan, Bethlehem district, a settler was injured by stones thrown by the village's residents.
The Zionist occupation forces claimed to have thwarted two stabbings in the city of Ramallah and the occupied city of Jerusalem.
During the fourth week of August, a group of young men in the occupied West Bank attacked Israeli occupation forces in the occupied West Bank with two explosive devices at Rachel's Camp and Aida camp.
Any one of these attacks, motivated by racism, would be front page news in the US or Europe.
But Palestinians are expected to act this way against "Zionists" or "settlers" (meaning Jews.)
Which is perhaps the most important reason why they do.
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When Congress returns to work in early September, pro-Israel activists will seek to put the Taylor Force Act high on the Senate and House agenda. The legislation, passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in August, would cut off all direct economic aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA)—which last year was about $300 million—with the exception of its funding for East Jerusalem hospitals. The reason? To compel the Palestinian Authority to stop handing out stipends to convicted militants who carried out attacks on Israelis and foreigners, like the March 2016 Palestinian stabbing attack that killed Taylor Force, a U.S. Army veteran. On its face, there is a compelling reason for the bill. Why should American taxpayers give aid to an authority that subsidizes payments to killers and their families? The Senators and pro-Israel activists asking this question say these payments incentivize violence, especially for young Palestinians with personal problems who know that, if they attack Israelis, their families will be taken care of by the Palestinian Authority.
It’s tough to peer deep into every individual attacker’s psyche, and in some cases the payments may help Palestinian militants rationalize their actions. However, lost in that argument is that the main reason Palestinians cite to justify violence is Israel’s punitive occupation. And more importantly, the public debate about the legislation, and the prisoner payment program, has been devoid of crucial context. No lawmaker has shown an iota of interest in exploring why it is that the payments to Palestinian prisoners and their families exist—and why the bill will likely fail in its goal of getting the PA to stop the payments.
Dozens of bereaved Israeli families whose relatives were murdered by Arab terrorists, have penned an open letter to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, demanding the UN stop funding organizations which provide terrorists with legal aid.
More than 40 families have signed onto the letter, Channel 2 reported on Tuesday, warning that groups benefiting from UN funding were “paving the way for the next murder”. The authors of the letter cited two organizations in particular which have been engaged in “legal warfare [lawfare]” against the State of Israel. Both groups – Hamoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, and Adalah – receive significant funding from the UN, despite the legal aid they regularly provide to terrorists and the families of terrorists, challenging counter-terror activities by the government in the Supreme Court.
Between the two of them, Adalah and Hamoked received more than 2 million shekels ($559,143) from the United Nations in 2016, the letter noted.
The UN’s support for groups engaged in lawfare activities against counter-terror efforts is unique to Israel, despite increased anti-terror measures in countries around the world.
“In recent years we have witnessed a significant increase in terrorism around the world,” the letter reads, “countries around the world have been harmed as a result of extremist Islamic terrorism, but we see that only in Israel does the UN take sides and fund the legal defenses of terrorists who murdered innocent people.”
An upcoming “blacklist” of major international companies with business ties to Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem represents yet another attempt by anti-Israel actors in the United Nations to single out and demonize the world’s only Jewish state, experts say.
The U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) had voted to approve the database of businesses last year, defying objections from the U.S. and Israel. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Prince Zeid bin Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein submitted a draft of the blacklist to the countries where the businesses are based. He is expected to receive a response from those nations by Sept. 1, and the UNHRC will publish the database by the end of this year.
American firms on the list include Caterpillar, TripAdvisor, Priceline and Airbnb, The Washington Post reported.
“[The blacklist] is the latest incarnation of the decades-long Arab boycott and yet another singling out of Israel by the U.N. Because Israel, the Jewish state, alone is singled out, the intent and impact is anti-Semitic,” Anne Herzberg, a U.N. expert and the legal advisor for the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor watchdog group, told JNS.org. Similarly, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon described the list as “an expression of modern anti-Semitism reminiscent of dark periods in history.” While the list will have no legal consequences for Israel or the companies involved, its opponents say it could put pressure on the U.N. Security Council to take action.
Israel's National Library has a fascinating article showing children's practice sheets to learning Hebrew from the Cairo Genizah, a thousand years of how Jewish children learned to write.
These sheets shows the child having written the Hebrew letters over and over again, just as they do today.
Younger children were given hand-crafted worksheets by their teachers with the Hebrew letters written in outline to be colored in. Coloring books are not that new!
But my favorite is this sheet of practicing writing the Hebrew alphabet that ends up with a series of doodles.
That's pretty much what my schoolwork looked like as well.
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.
Every year, the Saudi king hosts hundreds of Palestinians whose family members are "martyrs" - i.e., terrorists - for the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
Fatah's Facebook page describes the reception as "A full reception with red carpets, roses and sweets for Palestinian martyr families as soon as they arrive in Mecca for the hajj as guests of the custodian of the two holy mosques, a reception befitting the sacrifices of their martyrs."
Saudi Arabia might not like Hamas very much, but it doesn't mean that it is against terrorism against 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.
This tweet from Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch shows, yet again, that his bias against Israel is pathological.
Yes, Ken Roth has embraced the latest and wholly fallacious anti-Israel trend: to conflate Israel with white supremacists because the bigots claim to be Zionist.
Not because Israel embraces the bigots, but because the bigots pretend to embrace Israel.
I've shown how absurd these arguments are before and have shown that the exact same logic damns the "progressives" far more than Zionists because neo-Nazis love to quote the anti-Israel articles written by the supposedly liberal progressives.
The neo-Nazis know Jew-hatred when they read it, and the neo-Nazi Stormfront site has quoted both Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada over 100 times each, Ali Abunimah himself over 35 times, and Max Blumenthal over 80 times. Today's Nazis aren't approvingly quoting Naftali Bennett or Binyamin Netanyahu - they are quoting the people that Ken Roth links to on his Twitter feed.
In fact, Stormfront also quotes Human Rights Watch for fuel for its anti-Israel articles. Stormfront was just taken down, but Google cache shows several of the articles:
This article at Stormfront that quotes Ken Roth and HRW has a headline that would be right at home at "progressive" websites that HRW employees write for.
Which means, according to this logic, that HRW is a Nazi-sympathizing organization.
But Ken Roth isn't going to tweet "Many neo-Nazis embrace @HRW research against Israel." Because he is interested in his anti-Israel narrative, not the truth.
Even worse is that Roth has ignored that Arabs have embraced actual Nazi ideology. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Nazi propaganda in Arabic is still sold at Arab book fairs, the blood libel is still mentioned in mainstream Arab newspapers, and the amount of blatant antisemitism in Palestinian media fills up the Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI websites.
But Ken Roth isn't going to equate Arabs with the Nazis that they openly have admired at the highest levels. He only wants to equate Israelis with racism and bigotry, not Arabs who practice those very attributes every day, publicly, in their own media and public statements.
Once again, Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch shows that he is beneath contempt.
The article he links to, by Nada Elia, states the equivalence of Zionism and fascism as a flat truth. But she accidentally reveals her real agenda item in this one sentence:
If we are to gain anything from this critical moment, we absolutely must seize the opportunity offered us by white supremacists to foreground the similarities between fascism and Zionism.
White supremacists want to use their newfound affinity for Zionism for their own political purposes - and anti-Zionists want to use white supremacists' pretense to love Zionism to further their own political interests.
Nada Elia is acting just like the white supremacists are. And Ken Roth approves.
(By the way, Elia's Twitter handle is @NadaBDS. How twisted must one be to choose to dedicate one's entire online presence towards hating Israel? That's who Ken Roth chooses to feature.)
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.
Mahmoud Abbas has finally come up with his own detailed peace plan. Instead of waiting for others to present him with plans that he invariably rejects, he has shown the initiative and created a seven point plan to finally bring peace to an intractable conflict.
Oh, not with Israel. Abbas' peace plan is with the internationally designated terror group Hamas!
The PLO leader met with Turkish leader Erdogan and
presented him with his framework to unify with Hamas (yet again.) The points aren't important, but they include Hamas dissolving its administrative committee that controls Gaza, the forming of a national unity government including all terror groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, coming up with a solution to paying Gaza employees of the PA, allowing electricity and medicines to return to Gaza, and calling for new elections.
Abbas' strategy for peace with Israel is the same as it has been for years: keep rejecting all offers until one comes along that makes him happy.
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.
Last week, Israel hater and faux feminist Linda Sarsour spoke at a rally in support of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
Listen to who she grouped us with…before promising to “put our lives on the lines for justice.”
This is a woman who claims to fight Jew hatred. The problem is she has so many people fooled.
(Skip to 9:30 h/t Yerushalimey)
Music and song play an important role in Palestinian Authority political messaging to its children. The PA’s most fundamental message to its people and its children, that all of Israel is actually “Palestine,” is prominent in many songs broadcast regularly on the official PA and Fatah TV stations.
One of these songs depicts a bird that flies over all of “my country Palestine.” The bird “flies over” the Israeli cities Safed, Tiberias, Acre, Haifa, Nazareth, Beit Shean, Jaffa, and Ramle, all of which are depicted as part of “my country Palestine.” [Official PA TV, The Best Home, Aug. 25, 2017]
Palestinian Media Watch has noted this song at least 30 times already during 2017, on official PA and Fatah's Awdah TV. The most recent time was this week on PA TV in the new version sung by a young girl on the most important Palestinian children’s program, The Best Home.
The following are the full words to the song, that depict all of Israel as “Palestine”:
“Oh traveling [bird], I burn with envy.
My country Palestine is beautiful.
Turn to Safed, and then to Tiberias,
and send regards to the sea of Acre and Haifa.
Don't forget Nazareth - the Arab fortress,
and tell Beit Shean about its people's return.
Oh flying bird, circling around...
by Allah, oh traveling [brid], I burn with envy.
My country Palestine is beautiful. [...]
Go to Jenin and bring me from its valley
greeting to Nablus, Tulkarem and their soil.
Drink the water of Jaffa's port,
don't forget Ramle and Ramallah.
Oh flying bird, circling around...
by Allah, oh traveling [bird], I burn with envy.
My country Palestine is beautiful."
The Palestinian Education Ministry has granted any student who was arrested for throwing stones and/or Molotov cocktails at Israeli vehicles a passing grade.
Awarding passing grades to students who commit violent attacks against Israeli motorists is one of many methods of incitement to terror practiced by the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Jewish Press reported.
According to the news site, an Israeli security source told Channel 20:
“One time we stopped a terrorist who threw a Molotov cocktail and took him for interrogation, where we found out that he had decided to carry out the attack because that morning he had a matriculation exam, and it turns out that for them it is customary that someone who is arrested for carrying out an attack on the day of an exam to receive a passing grade automatically.”
“They are frightened of their fathers,” said another security source, “So if they know in advance that they are likely to fail the exam, they choose terrorism in order to get a passing grade.”
The more popular forms of PA incitement include, for example, cultural events glorifying terrorists; naming schools and city streets after terrorists; and TV shows for preschoolers, school-aged children and teens promoting anti-Semitism and lies about the “Zionist entity.”
Desperation to pass the school year is a less common reason for violence; nonetheless, several young terrorists admitted they carried out such attacks for that very reason, the Israeli security source said.
Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin said that it would be 2026 or 2027.
In 2016 Iranian Basij Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi said that Israel would no longer exist by 2025.
In 2009, Iranian TV and some other conspiracy theory sources claimed (falsely) that there was a CIA report predicting that Israel would not last 20 more years, or 2029.
Essam al-Erian, the deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt, said in 2013 that Israel would disappear within ten years, or 2023.
In 2012, the Ayatollah Khamenei predicted that Israel would disappear, but he didn't name a date. He fixed that in 2015, saying that Israel wouldn't survive another 25 years, or 2040 - well after his death.
Of course, Arabs have been predicting the end of Israel for a lot longer than this.
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.
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?)
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.
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.
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 14 years and 30,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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