In 2018, Wisconsin will again be the site of one of the most competitive races in the country. Senator Tammy Baldwin’s seat has been named one of the most likely to flip in 2018, based on last year’s presidential results. If we don’t fight hard for Tammy Baldwin -- if we take her reelection for granted -- we risk losing a key J Street ally in Congress.
Chip in $9 now to support J Street champion Senator Tammy Baldwin.
What does Tammy Baldwin believe?
In 2006, HR 282 entitled "To hold the current regime in Iran accountable for its threatening behavior and to support a transition to democracy in Iran" was passed by a huge bipartisan majority 397-21.
Tammy Baldwin voted against it.
In 2009, HR 2194, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009 passed by an even more lopsided, bipartisan vote of 412-12.
Tammy Baldwin voted against it.
In 2010:the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act passed with a vote of 408-8. Tammy Baldwin was one of the few who voted against it.
When Baldwin ran for Senate, suddenly she started supporting Iran sanctions bills. But she clearly doesn't really believe in them. It was considered a "full flop" by Politifact.
In 2010, Baldwin signed a letter that demanded that Israel lift the "blockade" on Gaza, saying that it was imposing "de facto collective punishment" to Gaza residents.
If you had to list the least pro-Israel members of the Senate, Tammy Baldwin would have to be in the top tier of that list.
So when J-Street claims to be "pro-Israel," their support of Tammy Baldwin shows that they are anything but.
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Joseph Massad, of Columbia University, has an article (based on a recent speech he made) in Electronic Intifada that claims - like many antisemites do - that Ashkenazic Jews aren't really Jews. But I'm not sure if he is espousing the discredited Khazar theory, or something different:
It is true that both Judaism and Christianity are Palestinian religions. It is also an established historical fact that the inhabitants of what came to be called “Europe” later, whether Christians or Jews, had converted to these Palestinian religions centuries after the Palestinians had.
It is also true that these new Christians of what would become Europe never thought of themselves as direct descendants of the ancient Palestinian Christians who spoke Aramaic, but saw themselves correctly as more recent converts to this Palestinian religion.
Yet these same Christian converts often insisted that converts to Judaism in what would become Europe were somehow descendants of the ancient Palestinian Hebrews who also spoke Aramaic at the time of the so-called Roman expulsion of the first century.
This was important because these converts to Christianity accused the converts to Judaism of killing the Palestinian Christ.
There is a lot of nonsense here, like calling Judaism and Christianity "Palestinian religions." That is an obvious attempt to claim some sort of special status for Palestinians today who have no relationship whatsoever with the biblical Land of Israel that is indeed the origin of both religions (and of course Islam is also modeled in no small part on Judaism.)
Mossad's flat assertion that Jews in Europe were converts is not footnoted so I cannot be sure which nonsense he is pushing. Outside the Khazar theory, there was a genetic study in 2013 that claimed that the matrilineal line of most Ashkenazic Jews came from women who converted to Judaism in Europe.
However, even that study was controversial and a more recent study shows that the women actually were from the Near East. And genetic studies of the patrilineal line have been almost unanimous in showing that Ashkenazic Jewish men also have origins in the Near East. Beyond that, a genetic linkage study of all Jews, Ashkenazic and Mizrahi, found them to be related and concluded "the most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant." Wikipedia has a fine roundup of the studies.
So Massad is a liar. His calling his lies an "established historical fact" is a bullying tactic to make anyone who disagrees pause - thinking that certainly a professor at Columbia wouldn't lie so blatantly. This is only one part of his writing where he is "thinking past the sale" - he wants to make it look like his assumptions for his hateful theories are "established facts" so that while you are thinking about his theories, he has already made you subconsciously believe that his assumptions are accurate.
Massad's lies are not innocent. He chooses his lies to be consistent with his anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian political beliefs (hence characterizing Judaism as a "Palestinian" religion.) And he couches them as "facts" in such a way that it takes time and effort to dissect his words to show how hollow his actual argument is.
I don't even have the time or the energy to refute Massad's other claims. (He circles back to his claim that the original Zionists were antisemites, for example.)
When the foundation of his argument is a lie, and one that is so easily disproven yet he insists is true without providing an iota of evidence, then he has already proven once again that he isn't interested in the academic pursuit of knowledge but in anti-Israel propaganda.
Columbia is right to allow all opinions to flourish on campus. It is not right to allow its professors to spout lies in a larger effort to radicalize students against Jews who believe in their right of self determination.
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As Texas continued to dry out from Hurricane Harvey, one city found itself embroiled in a bit of an imbroglio.
The city of Dickinson, a Houston suburb, announced it wouldn’t approve grants to repair hurricane damaged homes or businesses if the applicant supported boycotting Israel.
It was in the manual. The city’s flood assistance application included this clause: “By executing this Agreement below, the Applicant verifies that the Applicant: (1) does not boycott Israel; and (2) will not boycott Israel during the term of this Agreement.”
The clause was included because Texas law bars state agencies from contracting with or investing in companies that boycott Israel. The city council voted to remove the clause as it pertains to individuals. However, businesses must still pledge to not boycott Israel in keeping with the Texas law.
As controversial as the law may be, it enjoys broad bipartisan support in the Lone Star State. In fact, nearly half the states in the country — regardless of political majority — support anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) legislation, belying the popular narrative that Israel has become a polarizing issue.
“To those saying Israel is an increasingly partisan issue, that narrative is prescriptive rather than descriptive. In Congress, and across the country, Israel is, on a basic level, bipartisan and this legislation really shows that,” said Northwestern University law professor Eugene Kontorovich.
That there are now 24 states in the nation to have anti-BDS laws is a testament to that bipartisanship.
The Gaza experience—where in fact the AFSC excelled at providing relief and creating infrastructure, despite resistance from the refugees themselves—was enough to convince the leadership to get out of the relief business altogether. At the same time, a faction of the organization’s leadership advocated a radical pacifist, and anti-American, agenda, aimed at nuclear disarmament and elevating the status of the Soviet Union and Communist China. By the 1960s, the AFSC became a liberal pressure group, one that openly supported North Vietnam. Support for Saddam Hussein and North Korea quickly followed.
But the AFSC never lost entirely lost interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict. After 1967, the AFSC escalated its involvement, beginning with quasi-theological criticism of Israel, acting as PLO’s legal representatives in Jerusalem during the 1970s, and conducting ‘interfaith’ events in which American Jews were shamed for supporting Israel. The Quaker tradition of even-handedness and political neutrality was long gone; by the late 1970s the AFSC had effectively enshrined Palestinians as the “new Jews.” Support for Palestinian terror as “resistance” against Israel’s “structural violence” and against sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program is now standard.
These policies are reflected in the educational curriculum of Quaker schools across the country, but most of all in the AFSC’s leading role in the BDS movement. Today, the AFSC runs several offices dedicated to supporting the BDS movement, partners with the odious Jewish Voice for Peace and with the Muslim Brotherhood backed Students for Justice in Palestine to train BDS activists and run campus events at which Israel is vilified and its supporters are harassed, and endorses the Palestinian right of return, which would destroy Israel as a sovereign Jewish state.
Joyce Ajlouny’s appointment epitomizes the transformation of the AFSC. Quaker schools and education have long been hijacked by Palestinian advocacy, as was recently seen at Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood, PA, where BDS supporter Sa’ed Atshan was scheduled to speak to students. Ajlouny, who served for 13 years as the Director of the Ramallah Friends School, will undoubtedly increase that kind of education, given her stated desire to, “bring educational programming on Israeli-Palestinian issues into Quaker schools, where many of the students are Jewish.”
Many Jewish parents are attracted to Quaker schools, which seek to instill values mistakenly believed to be analogous to those of Judaism, especially since the Quakers and their schools have enshrined “social justice” as a guiding principle. This is misleading. The AFSC’s concept of “justice” is one-sided, and Jewish parents must decide whether Jewish values and Quaker values, as they exist today, are really the same. Ajlouny’s appointment makes this more pressing.
Israeli judoka Ori Sasson was booted from the Openweight World Championships in Marrakech, Morocco on Saturday after losing to Frenchman Cyrille Maret.
But Sasson, a 2016 Olympic bronze medalist, was at least allowed to wear Israeli insignia — in contrast to the ban imposed on Israeli national symbols at a tournament last month in Abu Dhabi.
Morocco had threatened not to grant visas to the Israeli team in the days leading up to the tournament. At one point last week team members arrived at Ben Gurion Airport only to be forced to head back home after receiving word they would not be allowed into the predominantly Muslim nation.
Eventually the matter was resolved after International Judo Federation President Marius Vizer personally intervened, and the Israeli athletes finally arrived in Marrakech, via Munich, on Thursday.
Earlier this week, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely was almost prevented from speaking at Princeton University, after left-wing Jewish students claimed her work “causes irreparable damage to the prospects of a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Meekly genuflecting to this preposterous claim, Princeton Hillel, no less, abruptly canceled her invitation. The day was saved by Chabad, which provided a venue in which Hotovely could speak.
Hillel officials subsequently apologized for this disgraceful episode, adding that this was “an isolated incident.”
Well no, it isn’t. I had an identical experience earlier this year when Berkeley Hillel, which had invited me to speak, disinvited me on the grounds that they couldn’t guarantee my safety. Similarly, it was Chabad which provided a “safe house” where I could speak to Berkeley’s Jewish students.
For years now there have been problems with “open Hillel,” a student-led movement which seeks to advance groups promoting anti-Israel agendas in mainstream Jewish campus life. It’s part of the twin phenomenon whereby pro-Israel students increasingly feel threatened and intimidated, while more and more Jewish students are frighteningly ignorant of both Judaism and the Middle East and are correspondingly hostile toward Israel.
Please join me in this video clip as I describe to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the way in which the British Foreign Office misrepresented the Balfour Declaration on its centenary, and the intellectual contortions of the Palestinian Authority in its eagerness to blame Britain both for making and not making in Balfour’s famous letter the same promise to the Arabs as to the Jews.
Please join me in this video clip as I point out to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the falsehood of the claim that there was ever an ancient Palestinian national identity, and emphasise that the Jews are the only surviving indigenous people of the land of Israel.
Take a quick look at this photograph. I have emphasised the medic in Magen David Adom (Israel’s Red Cross) uniform and the Israeli license and star of David on the Israeli ambulance to make my point.
Which headline do you think best illustrates what you see?
A. Israeli settler runs over a Palestinian child north of Salfit
–OR–
B. Israeli and Palestinian ambulance crews cooperate at traffic accident
In a reverse image search for a better resolution image I discovered this same image had appeared three different times in 2017. The first that I located, and presumably the original was published in January of this year. Then it was reused for different stories in July and then again in November.
In January, the Palestinian Information Center†, named the victim of what they called a hit-and-run attack as Emad Souf, 55, from Salfit. He was described as seriously injured and transferred to an Israeli hospital.
Also in January, Iranian PRESSTV (citing Palestine al-Yawm news agency) reported injuries to an unidentified 40-year-old Palestinian man south of the city of Hebron (al-Khalil), itself south of Jerusalem. In this case the receiving hospital was Rabin Medical Center in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva.
In July, an Internet publication named Ramallah Mix reported that a young man was killed near the town of Khader, south of Bethlehem. He was identified as Omar Ahmed Abu Ghalioun, 37. Eyewitnesses identified a settler car (not clear how a settler car differs from a car on the politically correct side of the Green Line) and identified the hospital as Shari Tzdiq (Shaare Zedek ed.) in Jerusalem. Somewhat ironically, the Internet being what it is, an ad for Magen David Adom in Israel featured above the automatically translated text.
Morocco has refused entry visas to Israel’s national judo team ahead of the Nov. 11 World Championships Open in Marrakech.
The visa ban comes on the heels of similar problems that arose prior to the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam judo tournament in October, when the host nation — the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — banned the Israeli flag and national anthem at the competition. Israeli judoka Tal Flicker, who won a gold medal at the tournament, sang the Israeli anthem, “Hatikvah,” to himself on the podium.
Additionally, UAE athlete Rashad Almashjari refused to shake hands with Israeli competitor Tohar Butbul’s after losing to him in the tournament’s first round.
The International Judo Federation sent a letter to the president of the UAE Judo Federation chastising the organization for its discriminatory treatment of Israeli athletes and demanding that “all delegations, including the Israeli delegation, be treated absolutely equally in all aspects, without any exception.”
Anyone not knowing the history of the Israeli/Arab conflict might conclude that the Arabs won all of the wars in which they fought, and could therefore dictate the terms of the peace. Dr. Alex Grobman, Alice in Wonderland
...For a war to be won it is not enough for one side to claim victory, although that is essential. It is also necessary for one side to admit defeat. The problem in the case of the Arab-Israeli wars, however, was that the side that had won every time was not allowed to claim victory while the side that had lost was prevented from admitting defeat.
This was a novel situation in history, throughout which the victor and the vanquished had always acknowledged their respective positions and moved beyond it in accordance with a peace imposed by the victor.
In the Israeli-Arab case this had not been done because each time the UN had intervened to put the victor and the vanquished on an equal basis and lock them into a problematic situation in the name of a mythical quest for an impossible peace.
...In every case the winner wins the land and gives the loser peace. In every case the peace that is imposed is unjust to the loser and just to the winner.
Now, this is no longer a claim that is being made in the abstract.
Last December, Daniel Pipes described A New Strategy for Israeli Victory, based on the continued failure of the peace process in its many manifestations and iterations. On the one hand, deterrence could not be maintained indefinitely because of its unpopularity internationally and the way it wore Israelis down. On the other hand, diplomacy became the new way to go -- and seems to be prepared to keep going, indefinitely, with no success.
The solution, according to Pipes, is victory -- The Israel Victory Project:
the key concept of my approach, which is victory, or imposing one’s will on the enemy, compelling him through loss to give up his war ambitions. Wars end, the historical record shows, not through goodwill but through defeat. He who does not win loses. Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted the will to fight. Conversely, so long as both combatants still hope to achieve their war objectives, fighting either goes on or it potentially will resume.
Despite the fact that he Arabs lost every war with Israel, in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982, they never saw their defeat as the end. Instead, they looked ahead for another opportunity to make war against Israel.
This is how Pipes described his solution to this problem back in July:
While he makes a point in the video of refraining from suggesting how to convince the Palestinian Arabs that they have lost the war, in his 2016 article, Pipes does make some suggestions how to discourage rejectionism and promote a change of heart:
When Palestinian “martyrs” cause material damage, pay for repairs out of the roughly $300 million in tax obligations the government of Israel transfers to the Palestinian Authority (PA) each year.
Respond to activities designed to isolate and weaken Israel internationally by limiting access to the West Bank.
When a Palestinian attacker is killed, bury the body quietly and anonymously in a potter’s field.
When the PA leadership incites violence, prevent officials from returning to the PA from abroad.
Respond to the murder of Israelis by expanding Jewish towns on the West Bank.
When official PA guns are turned against Israelis, seize these and prohibit new ones, and if this happens repeatedly, dismantle the PA’s security infrastructure.
Should violence continue, reduce and then shut off the water and electricity that Israel supplies.
In the case of gunfire, mortar shelling, and rockets, occupy and control the areas from which these originate.
These are described as "examples for Washington to propose," a key point since imposing these measures will require the support and assistance of the US to allow this proposed change of Israeli policy. In other words, this Israel Victory Project would not have been feasible and would never have gotten off the ground during the Obama Administration. Now, during the Trump Administration, there may be a chance.
Reps. Ron DeSantis and Bill Johnson. From the Press Release
Reps. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Bill Johnson (R-OH) will launch the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus (CIVC) on April 27 at 9 a.m. The caucus' goal: to introduce a new U.S. approach to Israel-Palestinian relations.
Cong. Johnson notes that "Israel is America's closest ally in the Middle East, and the community of nations must accept that Israel has a right to exist – period. This is not negotiable now, nor ever. The Congressional Israel Victory Caucus aims to focus on this precept, and to better inform our colleagues in Congress about daily life in Israel and the present-day conflict. I look forward to co-chairing this very important caucus with Cong. DeSantis."
At the time, no Democrats had joined the group.
In order to be successful, Pipes sees the project as being heavily dependent on US support being provided in a sustained way along with select Arab states and others in order to convince the Palestinian Arabs that rejectionism will not work:
That means supporting Israel’s taking the tough steps outlined above, from burying murderers’ bodies anonymously to shuttering the Palestinian Authority. It means diplomatic support for Israel, such as undoing the “Palestine refugee” farce and rejecting the claim of Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. It also entails ending benefits to the Palestinians unless they work toward the full and permanent acceptance of Israel: no diplomacy, no recognition as a state, no financial aid, and certainly no weapons, much less militia training.
Pipes does not sugar-coat the strategy he is proposing:
this change won’t be easy or quick: Palestinians will have to pass through the bitter crucible of defeat, with all its deprivation, destruction, and despair as they repudiate the filthy legacy of Amin al-Husseini and acknowledge their century-long error. But there is no shortcut.
Similarly, the criticism is no less direct.
J Street has attacked the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, referring to it as the “defeat Palestinians caucus,” claiming that the project is “devoted to pushing the truly terrifying myth that Israel can end the conflict by using brute force and repression to make Palestinians accept their eternal statelessness.” They urged congressmen to “stay as far away from such savage and dangerous ideas as possible. The creation of a caucus devoted to promoting them should be condemned, not celebrated.”
Pipes concisely sums up the principal point of disagreement between us: “Sherman and I directly disagree on only one point — Israel accepting the possibility of a Palestinian state.” He goes on to speculate that “the allure of a state after the conflict ends offers benefits to both sides. Israelis will be free of ruling unwanted subjects. Palestinians have a reason to behave.”
Sherman is vehemently opposed to the idea, noting that historically there is little to support the idea that the demand for Palestinian statehood is a genuine grievance.
Six months after the formal announcement of the Israel Victory Project, the strategy is still taking shape and support is still being drummed up.
Considering the need for US support to make this work and the political uncertainty facing both the Trump Administration and the Republican majority in Congress, the Israel Victory Project may not have much time to establish itself.
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.
Jonathan Power is a former international affairs columnist for the International Herald Tribune and has written columns for major newspapers. He is also the author of various books on international topics.
His knowledge of the Middle East, however, is rather lacking.
We last looked at him in 2009 when he wrote a bizarre column recommending that his daughter, looking for a safe place to vacation in the summer after high school, shoudl go to - Egypt. He based this on Egypt's low murder rate, not really too worried that the chances that his daughter would be sexually abused in Egypt over three months was pretty much 100% (and the chances for actual rape and sexual assault would be quite high, too.)
His poor grasp of facts is evident in his latest column, published (so far) in the Jordan Times.
Within the boundaries of the Holy Land, there are just over 6 million Jews and 6 million Palestinians. The Palestinian birth rate is almost three times that of Israeli Jews. If anything, the Jewish population is starting to fall as an increasing number of Jews decide that Israel has no future for them and emigrate.
The Arab and Jewish birthrates in Israel are equal at 3.13 children per woman. The most recent official birth rates for Palestinians in the territories is from 2013, at 4.1. But newer statistics indicate that for Arabs in the West Bank the number is at 2.8.
Power is using statistics from the 1970s.
Perhaps we are witnessing the death of Israel by a thousand cuts, the friction of conflict and the attrition of population.
Maybe, after all, the rabbis of Vienna who were sent in 1897 on a fact-finding mission to Palestine to investigate whether it was a suitable place for Jewish settlement were right. They reported back that the “bride was beautiful but married to another man”.
The Zionists still have the bit between their teeth on the creation of Israel, even as they face long-term self-destruction.
A few can see it coming, and among the few is the former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
In an interview he said: “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.”
For the Zionists this would be a terrible end. But need it be for rank and file Jews who just want to bring up their families and live in an atmosphere emptied of violence?
But, unmistakeably, this is the direction events and demographics are moving. Probably the best thing that outsiders can now do for Israel is to stop trying to help organise the creation of two states and let the Israelis themselves look the Palestinians in the eyes as the demographics bite.If the white South Africans can do it, so can the Israelis.
If this became the solution, the Israelis would find that the only thing most Palestinians would now want is a prosperous, capitalist economy and to live in peace with their neighbours.
Where is the evidence that Palestinians would be kind to their minority Jewish population? Besides the rampant antisemitism in Palestinian media every day, all one need to look at is what has happened to Christians under Palestinian rule since Oslo - they have been fleeing.
But that is exactly what Power wants Jews to do, too:
The Jews would not be driven into the sea. But those who want to return to Europe, America or even Russia would be more than welcome.
Both Germany and Russia, the great centres of anti-Semitism in the past, have seemed to have flushed that horror away and treat their Jews well.
Power in one breath says that Palestinians would treat the Jews just fine, but in the next recommends that Jews go back to the places where their great-grandparents were massacred because things aren't so bad there now.
Now, why would they want to move to countries that have nothing but bad memories - unless life under Arab rule would be worse?
This is hate - disguised as concern for Jews.
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Zoe Goldblum, the President of J Street U’s National Student Board, wrote a letter to the House Judiciary Committee which held a hearing on combating antisemitism on US college campuses.
She wrote in support of leftists demanding the destruction of the Jewish state, saying that such a position should not be considered antisemitic.
She starts off with something that no one would argue with:
While we work to challenge ill-informed criticism of Israel and Zionism on our campuses, we believe that such criticisms can and must be treated as constitutionally-protected free speech – not banned and suppressed by an act of Congress.
And no one says that criticism of Israel should be banned - this is a straw-man argument.
But then she eases into what she really wants to allow on college campuses:
Anti-Semitism is a real and serious problem on some of our college campuses and in communities across our country. Yet applying the label of “anti-Semite” to all those who oppose the existence of the State of Israel is unfair and unhelpful overreach that ignores the nuances and sensitivities of a complicated political debate.
Calling for the end of the world's only Jewish state, and saying that Jews are the only nation who do not have the right of self-determination, is "nuanced" and "complicated political debate"?
No, Zoe. it is modern antisemitism. It invokes age-old antisemitic tropes in a slightly newer package. Most of the modern antisemites claim that the Jewish people are not a people to begin with, in order to justify that they don't have the same human rights of other peoples.
There is no nuance in saying that Israel should not exist. It demands that Jews in Israel be treated the way that Jews in all the Arab nations are treated - meaning that they would be largely expelled from the region. It is advocating ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East.
If J-Street U thinks that such a position is "nuanced debate," then let me get rid of the nuance. J-Street U supports the right of leftist antisemites to incite hatred against Jews who support their own human rights.
In the name of "free speech."
By positioning supporters of Israel as enemies of free speech, it would in fact only strengthen and empower anti-Israel voices on our campuses.
Yes, Jewish Zionists are the only minority in the world who, when they complain about incitement against them and their families who live in Israel, should really be more sensitive to the feelings of the haters because the haters' free speech is more important than the rights of Jews to live without fear on campus.
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Freedom House is an independent watchdog organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom and democracy around the world.
Each year, Freedom House analyzes the world's nations and territories, examining the electoral process, political pluralism and participation, the functioning of the government, freedom of expression and of belief, the rule of law, and individual rights. Their results are published in their annual report, Freedom in the World.
Freedom House's 2017 rankings are out. Again, Israel is the only nation in the Middle east that is ranked as "free".
Israel scored 80 out of100 points, and is described in the report as "a multiparty democracy with strong and independent institutions that guarantee political rights and civil liberties for most of the population".
Why is the only nation in the region that is ranked as free subject to such vitriolic rhetoric across the media, in the UN and on college campuses?
Could it be because it is the only Jewish state, not only in the region, but in the world?
Arutz Sheva spoke to Ben Dror Yemini, journalist and author of Industry of Lies, at the Israeli American Conference (IAC) in Washington, DC about the distinction between legitimate debate and lies about Israel:
"Industry of lies is mainly about media and academia, and how they are lying - lying - about Israel. I'm not speaking about criticism. I'm not speaking about the debate that is taking place in Israel about many issues, which is a legitimate debate. I'm speaking about journalists, activists, scholars, that lie about Israel.
"They manipulate their students, they manipulate their leadership, and so many claims against Israel are actually a modern blood libel, not less than that."
We used to use the word "misconception".
"It's not a misconception, it's something that's much worse, unfortunately. Now I'm not dealing with opinions, I'm not dealing with somebody who is criticizing Israel. Fair enough, do it. Israel has no exemption from any kind of criticism. What I'm talking about is that people lie - blatant lies - about Israel. Sometimes they're not even aware that they are lying. There are blatant lies, like when somebody says that 'Israel is committing an extermination of the Palestinian people by increasing infant mortality among babies. Now.. what?! The infant mortality among Palestinians decreased dramatically - just the opposite.
"But there are some other lies that people are not even aware of. When Bernie Sanders, for example, is saying that Israel disproportionally killed innocent civilians, just like what Richard Goldstone said in his report, they have no idea what they're talking about. Because when you compare, when you check other battlefields - Fallujah, Afghanistan, whatever, you name it - even Kosovo - you find out that Israel is actually killing much less, much less, absolutely proportionally, but people don't know, and they keep on saying that Israel is retaliating in a very disproportional way."
Hamas spokesman Sami Abo Zuhri spoke at a seminar organized by Turkey's Al-Quds Awareness Association in Ankara to mark the centennial of the Balfour Declaration.
Among the lies he spouted came a new one: The Arabs in Palestine did not sell their land to the Jews in the early part of the 20th century, but took the land by force.
He elaborated that it was actually the British who took the land from the Palestinians by force and gave it to the Jews.
His proof?
"It is impossible that the Arabs would flee and leave their land or sell it to the Jews."
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Who among us wouldn’t – doesn’t – prioritize the well-being of members of one’s own immediate family above others? Other things being equal, if one has a chance to help a family member or a non-member (but not both), then one will choose the family member. Or, in other words, being a family member is a factor that has significant weight in decisions about whom to favor when one is forced to make a choice.
This behavior has probably developed in response to evolutionary pressures over millennia. Discussions of precisely how and why and its relationship to altruistic behavior (helping another person even if it is not to one’s advantage) are complicated, but there is no doubt that it is almost universal among humans. It can be called nepotism, to broaden the common meaning of the term.
In many cases nepotism extends beyond family to include members of extended families, tribes and even nations. The phenomenon is called ethnic nepotism. It’s argued that this preference is also caused by evolutionary pressures, both on individuals and groups.
But how far does it extend? Apparently that varies a great deal among groups and individuals. Clan loyalties, for example, are important to Arabs. Broader national loyalty – patriotism – characterizes certain groups of Americans or Europeans, but by no means all.
In addition to the intuitive feeling of affinity for members of the relevant groups, there is also the influence of ideology. This takes place at a higher level of consciousness than intuition. So a person can believe that he should prefer members of a particular group. Alternatively, he can believe that it is morally wrong to do so, and suppress any intuitive feelings to the contrary.
I call the ideological position opposed to ethnic nepotism Lennonism (not a misspelling!) Lennonists believe in part that ethnic or religious preferences are the root cause of human misery, and that if we could overcome them, everyone could be “living life in peace.” Lennonism is opposed to borders and even private property.
Lennonism appeals almost entirely to people in developed societies who are unlikely to have had the pleasure of being attacked through inadequately fortified borders by members of other ethnic groups in order to kill or enslave them and steal their private property. Lennonism is thus most popular in Western Europe and North America than in places with a more recent memory of instability.
The Jewish people meet all the criteria for a distinct nation – self-identification, a common origin, a unique language and religion, cultural similarities, and more. Many Jews feel their Jewish identity – their connection to the Jewish people – very strongly. However, in the US, where a majority of those of Jewish descent have either become completely secular, or adopted an attenuated form of Jewish observance without maintaining a knowledge of their language, their ethnic connection has weakened also.
Many US Jews, even if they haven’t adopted a Lenonnist point of view and see themselves as “world citizens,” consider themselves primarily American and only secondarily Jewish. If they do have intuitive feelings of ethnic nepotism, they choose to suppress them, consciously or subconsciously.
This suppression of ethnic feeling is necessary for survival in a culture which is ready to accuse Jews of disloyalty if they place their Jewish identity above their American one. This perhaps explains the distaste for Zionism among many American Jews. They understand, on some level, that they are living in a nation which does not belong to them, and at any moment they can become personae non gratae. Zionists who suggest that Jews should care strongly about Israel – a foreign country – endanger all American Jews, who can be tarred by the brush of disloyalty.
This points precisely to the difficulty faced by the Diaspora Jew. Even if he does feel a pull to identify strongly with his people, he is unable to express it without endangering his status in the overwhelmingly non-Jewish society.
Some Jews deal with it by insisting that their Jewishness is entirely religious in nature: Americans of the Jewish persuasion. But anybody who pays attention to the weekly Torah readings understands the true importance of Eretz Israel in Judaism.
Others redefine Judaism. They understand Biblical injunctions to treat your Jewish neighbors and the ger that lives alongside you as you would treat yourself to refer to all humankind. In effect, they claim that Judaism is Lennonism. But there is no textual support for this, and anyone who tries to take it seriously soon finds out. Judaism cannot be Lennonism.
Some simply define themselves as Americans of Jewish extraction and leave it at that.
And sometimes, the tension brings about a violent rejection of the Jewish people and their state, and drives American Jews into the arms of anti-Zionist groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now.
The fact is that Jewish nationalism or Zionism is a perfectly natural ideology for a Jew to adopt, regardless of where he lives.
If it becomes uncomfortable where you are, well, that’s why there is a Jewish state.
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.
For the Crown Prince’s supporters — vast swathes of the country’s young, eager for progressive social change — his way may be dictatorial but his motives are honourable. The purge represents the opening salvo in a fight against corruption that comes with an embrace of moderate Islam, a determination to relax the strict segregation of the sexes and introduce entertainment venues. Why should ordinary Saudis have sympathy for the arrested if they have, as alleged, been engaged in massive criminal schemes involving bribery and money laundering? When did any of those speak up on behalf of the oppressed masses?
Bin Salman’s power grab is in itself spectacular. But the wider significance of this can only be fully understood in conjunction with events in Israel. The Jewish state is hardly a natural ally for Saudi Arabia, but they have long shared a common enemy: Iran. Both fear the latter is exploiting the opening created by the fall of Isis, and the triumph of the Assad regime in Syria, to dominate the region. Iran and its proxies — whether the Houthi rebels in Yemen or Hezbollah in Lebanon — are in the ascendant, and neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia are going to sit on the sidelines.
So the two have been working together: close diplomatic cooperation, intelligence sharing and perhaps more. Israeli media recently reported that a senior Saudi prince, possibly Bin Salman himself, paid a secret visit to the Jewish state. The idea of a Saudi-Israeli alliance is still deeply controversial in both countries, but details are starting to leak out.
Amid the recent madness, for example, we saw the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a Saudi puppet. He was summoned to Riyadh, where he was forced to read a letter announcing his immediate departure, the official reason being that he feared an assassination attempt by Hezbollah. But why would a prime minister visit a foreign capital to resign? The odds are that he had no idea he was resigning until he landed in Riyadh to meet Saudis furious at him for holding talks with both Iranian and Hezbollah officials. His departure has shocked the region.
But it didn’t shock the Israelis. A leaked memo shows Israeli diplomats being instructed to back the Saudi version of events, and start to join Riyadh in denouncing the Houthi rebels. Such diplomatic coordination is dangerous, given that an alliance has the potential to create a massive backlash among ordinary Saudis. For generations, they have been taught that Jews are the descendants of apes and pigs and Israel is the eternal enemy.
This brings us back to the night of the long knives. An outpouring of anti-Israeli sentiment might, only a few months ago, have provided a rallying cry for those determined to oust the Crown Prince. They would have likely turned to Al-Waleed bin Talal, a fierce critic of Trump and the most vocal Saudi supporter of the Palestinians. But he is in prison, presumably as a warning to anyone who shows opposition to the young new broom.
For almost a decade, the Palestinian NGO Defence for Children International - Palestine (DCI-P) has unjustifiably been accusing Israel of breaching the rights of Palestinian minors who are arrested on suspicion of committing terror attacks. Most recently, DCI-P launched a campaign in the US and in Canada under the title "No Way to Treat a Child", whose goal is "to challenge and end Israel's prolonged military occupation of Palestinians by exposing widespread and systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system."
Among other baseless claims, DCI-P argues that the Palestinian minors are arrested, interrogated in breach of all of their rights, prosecuted and sentenced to prison terms.
A recent interview with DCI-P's Accountability Program Director Ayed Abu Qteish on official PA TV, shows that the claims made by his own organization are false. Abu Qteish explained that Palestinian minors do in fact commit terror attacks, and they do it, not necessarily because they want to attack Israelis, but in order to enhance or maintain their status in Palestinian society.
Ayed Abu Qteish: "There are children who, when they were in prison, told the lawyer: 'I want to be imprisoned.' The first time [the child] was imprisoned, he didn't confess, and they released him because there was no evidence to convict him in the Israeli military court. The second time, there was no evidence either. The third time, he wanted to be imprisoned so that his image won't be hurt in the eyes of his friends, even though he is actually innocent... In several cases [Palestinian children] carried out stabbing operations because of the way the public looks at them. They realized 'the best way to clear myself of this image [of helping Israel] is to participate in resistance operations.'"
[Official PA TV, Personal Encounter, Oct. 11, 2017]
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Sunday, November 12, 2017
Elder of Ziyon
