Kuwaiti writer calls on peace with Israel and Jews

Sultan Al-Zubani, a self-described Kuwaiti media person who welcomes debate, put out  a series of tweets about Israel and Jews that raised eyebrows in that country which has a boycott against dealing with any Israeli.

He started the series by saying that Tel Aviv is an amazing, clean and tidy city.

He went on to say that he wanted to enter Israel, the land of the Prophets, but not with violence and bloodshed.

His next tweet says that it is not allowed to curse Israel since Israel is the name of one of Allah's prophets.

He goes on to describe a vision of peace: "People from the Gulf lounging in the streets of Tel Aviv, shopping from their malls and sitting in their cafes sipping coffee and going to their restaurants, eating halal meals from Palestinian-owned restaurants and praying in Jerusalem in safety and security. # Israel"

And then "If others entered Jerusalem with weapons, we will enter it with a visa and peace, away from fighting and bloodshed and destruction. # Israel_Nabi_Allah. "

He sums it up with a stunning indictment of Arab hate:

We curse #Israel although Israel is Jacob, the prophet of God, peace be upon him.
We curse the State of Israel , which is the land of prophets.
We curse the Jews , who are the people of the book and neighbors of the Prophet ...
We abhor the star of Prophet Dawood [David] peace be upon him
And we then claim that we are Muslims, the people of mercy And tolerance!

The reactions on Twitter as more muted than one might expect. But Al-Zubani doesn't have a huge Twitter following, I don't know how popular he is. I've only found one article about this tweetstorm, and its tone is more bemused than angry, pointing out that Kuwait has always been in the forefront of boycotting Israel and any company that deals with Israel, having recently rejected a major deal with French company Veolia since it does work for Israel. 

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Al Jazeera needs help to see the difference between Malala Yousafzai and Ahed Tamimi (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

Al Jazeera – or at least Al Jazeera contributor Shenila Khoja-Moolji – is desperately clueless, stumped by the question: “Why is the West praising Malala, but ignoring Ahed?” So let’s help them out a bit.

Malala Yousafzai gained prominence as a teen blogger for BBC Urdu, where she described her life under the harsh rule of the fundamentalist Islamist Taliban. The Taliban eventually decided to target Malala. On October 9, 2012, “[a] masked gunman boards Malala’s school bus and asks for her by name. He shoots Malala in the head, neck and shoulder.”

As far as Ahed Tamimi is concerned, masked gunmen are great. In September, Ahed Tamimi posted a picture of gunmen masked with Palestinian keffiyeh scarves on her Facebook page and repeated the message written on the image in Arabic: “Tell the fighters all over the world that they are my friends.”

So the masked gunman who shot Malala was someone Ahed would consider a friend.

Sadly, Ahed was brought up to consider masked gunmen as her “friends.”

Her father Bassem Tamimi has shared a propaganda video for the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, and his wife, i.e. Ahed’s mother Nariman, “liked” this video glorifying Hezbollah. Ahed’s father also “likes” the Hamas-affiliated jihadist Al-Qassam Brigades: as I documented some two years ago, Bassem Tamimi responded with a “Like” when someone praised a photo Ahed had posted on her Facebook page, showing her throwing rocks, with the short comment “Good ahed” accompanied by an image glorifying the Al-Qassam Brigades.

Then there’s the sad fact that Ahed has several relatives who are convicted terrorist murderers – and who are greatly admired by her family for the ruthless murders they perpetrated.

Here’s little Ahed back in 2012 when her uncle Nizar Tamimi – the murderer of Chaim Mizrahi – married her aunt Ahlam Tamimi – the proud mastermind and facilitator of the 2001 Sbarro massacre that claimed the lives of fifteen people, including seven children and a pregnant woman; some 130 people suffered injuries; one young mother was left in a permanent vegetative state.

Ahed’s mother Nariman Tamimi has surely taught her daughter that ruthless terrorist murderers like her aunt Ahlam are admirable rebels.

When Malala was shot by the Taliban gunman in October 2012, she was 15. She survived. Here you can read the story of Malka Chana Roth, a 15 year-old girl who didn’t survive the terrorist bombing Ahed’s aunt Ahlam Tamimi remains so proud of.

This is how the Facebook page of Ahed’s aunt Ahlam looked before it was made private – it is adorned with images of the suicide bomber who carried out the terrorist bombing of the Sbarro restaurant exactly as Ahlam Tamimi had planned. Needless to say, Ahed and her parents and many other Tamimi family members are Facebook friends with their murderous terrorist relative.

Ahed’s mother Nariman Tamimi has presumably also taught her daughter that the murder of teen girls brings honor to the cause the Tamimis are devoted to. In June 2016, Nariman Tamimi shared a Facebook post from another Tamimi family member to honor the teenaged Palestinian terrorist who had just killed the 13-year-old sleeping Hallel Yaffa Ariel after breaking into her home. As far as the Tamimis are concerned, the murder of Hallel Yaffa helped “to return to the homeland its awe/reverence.”

If Malala was an Israeli Jewish girl and the gunman who shot her was Palestinian, Ahed’s family would have cheered and considered him a hero who brought honor to their cause.

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British Naval analysis in 1943: No such thing as Palestinians or Palestinian nationalism

A tweet was brought to my attention today about a British Naval Intelligence handbook on Palestine and Jordan from 1943.

I found it online.

People who consume the news today about the Middle East would be very surprised to learn many of the facts brought up in the book. (Readers of this site know all of this.)

For example, Arabs hardly ever referred to the area as "Palestine," calling it "Southern Syria."

And the Arabs in the region likewise didn't call themselves Palestinians, but (at best) Southern Syrians:

Arabs from Palestine and Syria were dead set against "Palestine" being separated from Syria.

And the book also describes how Palestinian Arab nationalism, in the 1940s, was mostly a myth.

Amazing how a little bit of history can destroy 70 years of lies.

(h/t Igal)

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12/28 Links Pt2: How the International Red Cross failed the Jews; The Fantasy of an International Jerusalem; Confessions of a Digital Nazi Hunter

From Ian:

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How the International Red Cross failed the Jews

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has a startling and consistent history of anti-Semitism, despite its founding and reputation as an “independent, neutral organization.” Although mandated to eschew taking sides in international and internal armed conflicts and to protect victims of those conflicts — including wounded soldiers, prisoners of war, refugees and civilians — ICRC anti-Semitism emerged prior to World War II, broadened to encompass anti-Israelism after creation of the Jewish state and has continued ever since.

• In the 1940s, it failed to intercede on behalf of Jewish Holocaust victims and was complicit with the Vatican’s protection of Nazi war criminals and collaborators.
• Its modern-day expression of anti-Jewish sentiment was manifested in an initial refusal to accept the symbol of Israel’s own emergency aid organization, the Magen David Adom, while welcoming the Red Crescent of Muslim countries.
• It provided solicitous aid to Arab-Palestinian terrorists whose homes were destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces in reprisal for and to prevent deadly attacks against Israel.
• The ICRC also supported and glorified terrorism in a tree-planting ceremony honoring imprisoned Islamic terrorists who were guilty of murdering Jews.
• It has unfairly singled out Israel as an “illegal occupier” and has falsely labeled Israel guilty of an apocryphal “Jenin massacre.” In addition to these actions, the ICRC has failed to condemn Hamas’ use of human shields and has not recognized Israel’s right to self-defense. Instead,
• it has demonstrated a complete lack of sensitivity for the plight of Israeli civilians as perennial victims of rocket attacks and suicide bombings.
• Remarkably, the ICRC — arbiters of the humanitarian standards of war by dint of their stewardship of the Geneva Conventions — recently instituted new policies prohibiting return fire upon civilian-inhabited areas. In effect, it empowered terrorists to fight worry-free amongst the general population.

Given this recent history, the organization’s reputation as a purveyor of “neutral humanitarianism” rings hollow.

Josh Meyer Gets an Echo Chamber Beat-Down

A week after Josh Meyer’s Politico expose,“The Secret Backstory Of How Obama Let Hezbollah Off the Hook,” former Obama officials are still berating Meyer for his 13,000-word article detailing how the Obama administration killed a nearly decade-long DEA effort to stem a global Hezbollah cocaine-smuggling-and-organized-crime ring to help secure its nuclear deal with Iran. “This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” former Defense Department analyst David Asher explained in the article. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”

Asher helped establish and oversee the project, codenamed Cassandra, that looked into Hezbollah’s wide-range of illicit activities across the globe, including weapons procurement, drug trafficking, and money laundering. Senior Obama officials, according to Asher, ignored the legal and financial instruments that he and others had provided to target a terrorist organization with American blood on its hands and was still plotting against the United States.

In response, a Twitter mob of mid-level bureaucrats and former intelligence officers orchestrated in the usual fashion attacked Asher in tandem with the media echo chamber used to sell the Iran Deal, with former political operatives from the Obama White House supplying the usual talking points to their hatchet-men. Meyer’s “on the record sources have undisclosed anti-Iran deal bias,” tweeted former Obama speechwriter Tommy Vietor, who has remade himself as a podcast host. Meyer’s “entire piece,” tweeted Obama lieutenant and former CIA officer Ned Price, “is based on pure speculation by these ‘1 or 2 sources’ w undisclosed anti-Iran deal bias.”

The catchphrase, “undisclosed anti-Iran deal bias,” is an extended replay version of the catchy slogans Team Obama used to market the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Opponents and critics of the nuclear deal were “warmongers” beholden to “donors” with “agendas” whose concerns were shaped by their loyalties not to America but rather to the Jewish state. Now, the echo chamber insisted, Meyer’s sources aren’t to be trusted because they were against the Iran deal, or have associated with think tanks that opposed the Iran Deal—which means that they are secret neocon slaves of Israel, of course.

Yair_Rosenberg: Confessions of a Digital Nazi Hunter

Like many Jewish journalists who reported on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, I spent the 2016 election being harassed by a motley crew of internet racists who coalesced around the future president. They sent me threats, photoshopped me into gas chambers and hurled an uncreative array of anti-Semitic slurs my way. A study by the Anti-Defamation League found that I’d received the second-most abuse of any Jewish journalist on Twitter during the campaign cycle. My parents didn’t raise me to be No. 2; fortunately, there’s always 2020.

As a result, I’ve become something of an unintentional expert on alt-right trolls and their tactics. For the most part, these characters are largely laughable — sad, angry men hiding behind images of cartoon frogs, deathly afraid that their employers will uncover their online antics. But there are also more insidious individuals, whose digital skulduggery can be more consequential than the occasional bigoted bromide.

And so last November, in the wake Trump’s victory, I decided to turn the tables on them. My target? Impersonator trolls.

You probably haven’t heard of these trolls, but that is precisely why they are so pernicious. These bigots are not content to harass Jews and other minorities on Twitter; they seek to assume their identities and then defame them.

The con goes like this: The impersonator lifts an online photo of a Jew, Muslim, African-American or other minority — typically one with clear identifying markers, like a yarmulke-clad Hasid or a woman in hijab. Using that picture as a Twitter avatar, the bigot then adds ethnic and progressive descriptors to the bio: “Jewish,” “Zionist,” “Muslim,” “enemy of the alt-right.”

False identity forged, the trolls then insert themselves into conversations with high-profile Twitter users — conversations that are often seen by tens of thousands of followers — and proceed to say horrifically racist things.

In this manner, unsuspecting readers glancing through their feed are given the impression that someone who looks like, say, a religious Jew or Muslim is outlandishly bigoted. Thus, an entire community is defamed.

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Too much nuance (Vic Rosenthal)

 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

“Anyone who takes the approach that this is a black and white situation with a good side and a bad side clearly does not understand the conflict – nor could they have a peaceable solution in mind.” – Laura Ben-David

I took this quotation from an open letter to the singer Lorde (of whom I admit I have never heard), who recently announced that she would not perform in Israel after pressure from pro-Palestinian fans in her native New Zealand.

The letter was fine and I hope the young (21) performer reads it and pays attention. But the statement quoted above is wrong.

The conflict is “a black and white situation with a good side and a bad side.” As far as a solution, I admit that I don’t have a peaceable one in mind, but that’s because the people who have adopted the cause of the Palestinians are not going to give us one. They are preparing for war, and although we are doing our best to delay it, it’s just a matter of time.

Here is the conflict in a nutshell: Muslims cannot abide Jewish sovereignty in places that they have decided ought to be dar al islam, and that includes my country, Israel. That’s wrong, it’s racist, and it’s unnecessary.

The Palestinian Arabs, the point of the spear of the anti-Israel movement, have created a whole mythology to justify their opposition to our existence, but that’s all it is: a mythology. Their cause inflames Muslims everywhere in their genocidal racism, which they would quickly and happily implement if they weren’t afraid of us.

Laura Ben-David also said “the disputes and challenges in Israel are very real and very complex. If they were easy to solve, they would have been.” This, too, is misleading. There is one overriding reason that the conflict continues, and it isn’t complexity. It’s because various powerful outsiders have found it in their interest (real and imagined) to take the side of the racist Arab nations, and especially the Palestinian Arabs.

So for example, the disintegrating British Empire thought the Arabs would be far more useful than the Jews in protecting their routes to India and supplying them with oil. The KGB waged (and possibly its successor continues to wage) vicious psychological warfare against the Jewish state as part of the great-power conflict of the cold war. The American State Department’s Arabists are more comfortable with their pure desert nomads than sneaky, tacky Jews. The Europeans cancel their Holocaust guilt by assuring themselves that we are, after all, as bad as the Nazis. And today, the burgeoning Iranian empire sees Israel as standing on its path to Middle-Eastern or even world domination (not to mention the dar al islam issue).

Western leftists, like the ones that bothered Lorde, are so obsessed with escaping their inescapable whiteness that the old KGB propaganda lights them right up. For those that are themselves Jewish, the pleasure in attacking the only Jewish state is at least doubled. Not only do they escape their whiteness, but they jettison their Jewishness at the same time! Two for one.

It’s always someone, isn’t it? There’s no other place in the world besides our tiny state that so many seem to care about so much. If only they didn’t.

Regarding solutions, we’ve tried agreeing to several of them, many highly disadvantageous from a strategic standpoint, but somehow, the more we talk about peace – or worse, withdraw from some place we are ‘occupying’ – the more we get war (this in itself tells us something about the simple polarity of the conflict).

So that is the story. I apologize to Laura Ben-David, whose heart is clearly in the right place, but there can be too much nuance. Not everything is so complex, not every argument has two sides that are both compelling, and conflicts do not always evaporate when you make an effort to understand both sides. Some things provide clear moral choices – and this is one of them.

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"But....but...what about the occupation????" (Poster)

I received a very typical Twitter response to my earlier article about the high life expectancy of Israeli Arabs: "Does that legitimise occupation?"

I've noted in the past that many people, when looking at Israel, wear "occupation glasses." Nothing else matters. If the information they receive is bad, then it is the "occupation"'s fault, if it is good then it is being used to divert attention from the "occupation."

The Israel-haters think that they have a slam dunk when mentioning "occupation" - it is their shorthand for repression, injustice, and colonialism.

For some reason Israel doesn't do a good enough job when answering this. So here is a short response that works wonders:

If there was a Palestinian state, there would be no "occupation."

And the ONLY reason there is no Palestinian state is because the Palestinian leadership has rejected every offer for one.

Every time.

Pointing this irrefutable fact out does a number of things. It shows that Israel doesn't want to control another people, it shows that Israel wants peace, and it shows that Palestinians prefer "occupation" to statehood.

Moreover, it puts the Israel-hater on the defensive, forced to stutter that the peace offers weren't good enough or whatever. To which the response is....then the "occupation" cannot really be so bad, can it?

When forced to answer this simple observation, the Israel-haters show that they don't want a state either. They will say that a state without Jerusalem or without "return" of "refugees" - not to Palestine, but to Israel - is not worth it.

Showing that they don't really care about "occupation" but about destroying Israel.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Zionists said they would accept a state the size of a handkerchief. They accepted a UN partition plan that wrested Jerusalem from them. They desperately needed a state for the Jews to live in without fear of being murdered.

Palestinians, however, don't have any sense of urgency in their supposed quest for a state. They are willing to wait decades.

If that is true, then they are the ones who are prolonging 'occupation," not Israel.

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12/28 Links Pt1: Ben Shapiro: Time to defund the United Nations; Trump should crack down on UNRWA, finally end fiction of Palestinian ‘refugees’; UNRWA Steals Christmas

From Ian:

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Ben Shapiro: Time to defund the United Nations

Last week, Democrats and many in the mainstream media became highly perturbed by the Trump administration’s suggestion that the United States might tie continued foreign aid to support for its agenda abroad. Foreign dictators agreed. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who spent the last year arresting dissidents, announced, “Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkey’s democratic free will with your dollars, our decision is clear.”

Herein lies the great irony of the United Nations: While it’s the Mos Eisley of international politics — a hive of scum and villainy — and it votes repeatedly to condemn the United States and Israel, the tyrannies that constitute the body continue to oppress their own peoples. Among those who voted last week to condemn the U.S. for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving its embassy to Jerusalem were North Korea, Iran, Yemen and Venezuela. Why exactly should the United States ever take advice from those nations seriously?

We shouldn’t. And we should stop sending cash to an organization that operates as a front for immoral agenda items.

The United Nations spends the vast majority of its time condemning Israel: According to UN Watch, the U.N. Human Rights Council issued 135 resolutions from June 2006 to June 2016, 68 of which were against Israel; the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization only passes resolutions against Israel; and the U.N. General Assembly issued 97 resolutions from 2012 through 2015, 83 of which targeted Israel.

Trump should crack down on UNRWA, finally end fiction of Palestinian ‘refugees’

While an official report was eventually sent to Congress, its contents were kept classified to deny the American public from knowing the truth. The Trump administration can take a giant step toward Middle East peace by declassifying that report, updating it and formally adopting a definition for Palestinian refugees that makes a clear distinction between refugees displaced by the 1948 war and their descendants.

The administration and Congress should work together to change the way America funds UNRWA, making clear to taxpayers how much money goes to refugee assistance and how much subsidizes a culture of welfare and terrorism.

Future funding of the agency should be tied to a clear mission of resettlement, integration and economic self-sufficiency. A timetable and work plan should be established for UNRWA’s integration into UNHCR. Conditions should be set in the annual foreign bill, giving Haley the leverage she needs to force changes in the agency’s next biennium budget.

Nations of the world showed their true colors last week. Far too many cared more about castigating Israel than their relationship with the United States.

UNRWA is a case study in the institutional bias that America helps fund at the United Nations. Shining a light on this agency and making it a centerpiece of a new reform agenda would be a victory for American taxpayers and a defeat for the international movement to castigate our closest ally in the Middle East.

UNRWA Steals Christmas

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First female Druze judge appointed in Israel

The Druze community in Israel Facebook page reports that Malka Azzam Awida, a lawyer, has been appointed to be the first female Druze judge in Israel.

Surprisingly, this did not seem to make the news anywhere.

(h/t Dror)

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Columnist reminds Palestinians they are obligated to kill Jews

Dr. Essam Adwan, a columnist writing in Felesteen, says its way past time to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews.

The affirmation of Palestinian rejection of Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank requires violent resistance against the settlers, convincing them that there is no security, no peace and no rest for those who have remained in the West Bank. It remains for the various Palestinian forces to reach an understanding and even cooperation to impose violent resistance against Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Adwan says that this is something that is agreed upon by all Palestinian factions, not just Hamas.

All the Palestinian factions agreed on the National Reconciliation Document in 2006, in which all agreed to establish a Palestinian state in the territories occupied in 1967 and to use all methods of resistance against occupation in these territories. This is the minimum that has been agreed upon, without relinquishing the right to the rest of occupied Palestine. Therefore, these Palestinian factions have a national duty to carry out the armed resistance against the settlers in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority must defend and protect its back and convince the world of the legitimacy of this resistance, especially after the UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements in the West Bank.

The National Conciliation Document of 2006 was signed by  Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP and DFLP. Its wording can be interpreted to mean that all those factions agree to kill Jewish settlers, by using the formulation "To affirm the right of the Palestinian people to resist the occupation, to preserve the option of resistance by various means, and to concentrate the resistance in the territories occupied in 1967, concomitantly with political action, negotiations and diplomacy.

Adwan is saying that all major Palestinian groups had already agreed to murder Jews, so why not get moving already?

Our heroic Palestinian people, and their courageous men, should not wait for permission from anyone to do what is a national duty and a religious duty .... The quickest way to prevent Jewish immigrants from thinking about migrating to Palestine or to settle in the West Bank is armed action, supported by all other resistance tactics. It is the responsibility of the national and Islamic forces to form an incubator for the West Bank Intifada by forming a leadership for it, providing material assistance to each injured person, granting lawyers to all the detainees and signing a document of honor to punish anyone who causes the arrest of a Palestinian because of his national revolutionary struggle.

It is important to stress yet again that this is not an outlying opinion. There is no controversy in Palestinian Arab media when an explicit call to murder Jewish civilians is published.

The everyday hate and incitement to murder does not make it to the news. So the world has no clue that  Palestinians read this sort of thing every day with their morning coffee.

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Arabs in Israel have higher life expectancy than in any Arab or Muslim country

A report just released by the Taub Center in Israel on "The Health of the Arab Israeli Population" includes this interesting graph:

Given the amount of articles about Israeli "apartheid", it is notable that Israelis Arabs live longer on the average than Muslims or Arabs in their own countries. 

To be sure, the report notes that the life expectancy of Israeli Arabs is some four years lower than that of Israeli Jews. It didn't give enough details to determine if this is because of their generally lower socio-economic status. It would be interesting to compare this statistic with those of Haredi Jews, who are generally on the same socio-economic levels in Israel.

Another related reason that could explain the gap is that Israeli Jews are much more likely to seek private specialists not covered by insurance than Israeli Arabs are, according to the report.

How about Palestinian Arabs? Where do they fall in the chart above?

According to this site, the Palestinian numbers would be 73.3 (2015) and 70.6 (2000), putting them in the middle of the pack.  Given that they have been involved in three wars in Gaza and a years-long intifada in the territories, it doesn't appear that Israeli defensive actions have hurt their life expectancy at all. Their life expectancy has continuously increased since Oslo, although not as fast as those of Israeli Arabs.

(h/t UKMediaWatch)

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12/27 Links Pt2: Genocide Fail. Israeli Arabs have the highest Life Expectancy in the Arab World; Cary Nelson: The Middle East Studies Association Is Fundamentally Anti-Zionist

From Ian:

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Genocide Fail. Israeli Arabs have the highest Life Expectancy in the Arab World

According to a recently released report from the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, Israeli Arabs have the highest life expectancy in the Arab world.

According to the report "The Health of the Arab Population in Israel", the life expectancy of an Arab in Israel is higher than even those living in the wealthy gulf states.

What was that you were saying about "genocide" again?

WATCH: Anti-Semites On New Jersey Town Council Go Silent When Jews Called An 'Infection'

On July 17, 2017, Mahwah officials ordered the South Monsey Eruv Fund to stop construction of an eruv through Mahwah, despite the group getting permission from Orange & Rockland Utilities, which owned the poles where the PVC pipe was attached. Mahwah argued that the eruv violated township regulations. The Monsey group was given until August 4 to remove the eruv.

A legal firm was hired to fight for the eruv’s existence; on August 14 the eruv was reported vandalized. In late October, Christopher S. Porrino, the state's attorney general, issued a press release in which he condemned the town’s "hatred," "bigotry," "small-minded" and "bias," likening Mahwah’s citizens and leaders to "1950s-era white flight suburbanites who sought to keep African-Americans from moving into their neighborhoods."

Mayor William Laforet responded with a statement in which he cited Council President Robert Hermansen for Mahwah's "loss of reputation,” adding, "It has been a lonely and painful struggle for me and my family these past several months, having to deal with a reckless and oblivious council president, Rob Hermansen. He personally led his council mates to this action by the state's highest law enforcement official, and is most accountable."

On December 1, the Township Council unanimously approved the allocation of $175,000 to fight the two lawsuits alleging that the town discriminated against Orthodox Jews.

On December 14, the public session of the Mahwah, New Jersey town council meeting was witness to a woman telling them, “I want to make it known here, that the town of Ramapo, I’m sure, is suing the Hasidic people, because they have completely sucked the blood out of that town, from ruining their schools, from claiming that their husbandless women … complete corruption, and possibly criminality. And I want to know why it’s taken so long to remove, to remove the infection from our town. Thank you.”

The council sat silently, without offering any rejoinder to the hatred.

Yet back on August 10, Michael Cohen of the Simon Wiesenthal Center spoke to the council, stating, “You are, in fact, doing nothing more than saying Jews are not welcome.”

No friend of Israel

Around two weeks ago, and mere days after U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Berlin was opened at the Jewish Museum. Spanning over 1,000 square feet, the "Welcome to Jerusalem" exhibit is huge and includes hundreds of displays and exhibits.

One would have expected this type of exhibit at such an important Jewish museum to emphasize Jerusalem's unique character as the holiest city in Judaism and also possibly focus a bit on the historical narrative of Zionism and the State of Israel. Such an exhibit could also have presented, in a balanced manner of course, the different religions that coexist in the city in spite of the ongoing conflict. But regrettably, the exhibit does nothing of the sort, but rather serves to strengthen the theory of Muslim-Arab-Palestinian ownership of the city, mainly through a biased presentation of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

A historical documentary about the conflict, one of the exhibit's highlights, portrays Jews as domineering invaders. It notes the massacres and terrorist acts committed by Jewish paramilitary organizations while completely ignoring those same acts when they were carried out by Arab organizations at the behest of Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini; completely ignores the Arab revolt of the 1930s and Husseini's collaboration with the Nazis; presents a fairly long segment from an interview with late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from the early years of his leadership, in which the then-PLO chief explains that the Palestinians have no choice but to take up arms; and repeats the theory according to which the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is what led to the disintegration of the peace process, as well as the proven lie that then-Opposition Leader Ariel Sharon's 2000 visit to the Temple Mount sparked the Second Intifada. In short, according to the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the Jews are bad while the Arabs are victims.

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The Cycle of Antisemitism (Judean Rose)

It’s been said that quashing antisemitic speech isn’t wise, for in forbidding expressions of antisemitism, you only drive the hate underground. Better our enemies should identify themselves by their hate speech, so we know who they are. Better they feel free to say what they really think, so we can gauge the danger to ourselves and our families.

So we can leave before the gates slam shut.

But it’s far more complicated than that. You have only to look at Europe to know this. Europe knows it went much too far with the Holocaust. So now it must look contrite to itself and to the world. It must at least pay lip service to silencing expressions of antisemitism.

How do we know it’s only a show of contrition and not the real thing? We know this because of Europe’s treatment of Israel, the only Jewish State.

Europe’s active anti-Israelism, such as the recent UN vote rejecting U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, is only putting lipstick on a pig, antisemitism in drag. Like Justice Potter Stewart and porn, we know it when we see it: Jew-hate. And Europe’s financial and verbal backing for the enemies of the Jewish State, for terrorism, is just part of the ongoing effort toward the genocide of the Jews.

Now because they don’t speak of the Final Solution or shove us into gas chambers, they think we’re fooled and maybe they’ve even fooled themselves. They think that having created legislation against antisemitism in Germany, they’ve passed the morality test. They don’t speak of hating Jews, so they can claim it’s something other than Jew-hate, though it’s not.

In substituting “Israel” for “Jew” they think they have every right to their hate, that it’s not unreasonable. They think this covert form of antisemitism makes antisemitism okay, polite, Western. They pat themselves on the back, congratulate themselves for this sea change. But antisemitism doesn’t come and go. It’s cyclical, cycling between overt and covert forms of the same thing.

The cycle of antisemitism in its covert form is like a moth inside a cocoon. The moth must at some point, leave the cocoon, for this is part of the life cycle. By the same token, the cycle of overt antisemitism will always out. Just as this current covert form of EU antisemitism necessarily follows the overt antisemitism of the Holocaust.

As individuals, we tend to think of the overt form of antisemitism as being the more dangerous of the two. But the real danger is in failing to see both forms of antisemitism: overt and covert, as part of one continuous cycle, with one following the other with the inevitability of time. The covert antisemitism lulls Jews into thinking they are safe. Since they think they are safe they don’t leave the host country, become trapped, and then suffer and/or die in terrible ways.

Thinking you can stay in a place as long as antisemitism is in its covert phase of the cycle is a crap shoot. You really have no way of knowing if you’ll make it out in time. Your luck isn’t better than the luck of so many who waited too long to get out of Europe, not so long ago. And no matter where you go, you’ll experience the same cycle.

A synagogue in Tehran

These are the thoughts that occurred in relation to the vandalizing of the Chadash synagogue in the Maleh neighborhood of Shiraz, Iran. Reports have been sketchy. What has been reported thus far is that two Torah scrolls were torn to pieces, while the prayer books were found in the bathroom, many of the holy books submerged in toilets.

It’s a horrible story. An overt manifestation of antisemitism that brought to mind an incident of some 17 years ago. A friend I’d made through random chat on AIM was dating a fellow who was originally from Iran. She kept thinking he would propose any minute, but something was holding him back. I volunteered to talk to him, my friend consented.

I made my point: my friend was not getting any younger. She wanted to have children. If he wasn’t going to get serious and pop the question, he should let her move on.

He got the point and they were engaged the next day.

Why had he been dragging his feet?

It was all about his father, back in Iran.

My friend thought her suitor’s parents were divorced. But this was not so. The guy’s father was still married to her mother in-law-to-be, but he was in Iran, while his wife was in LA, for reasons unknown to my friend. My friend’s fiance didn’t want to get married without his father by his side. But it was a difficult and complicated thing to bring him to the States for the wedding.

Somehow, the father did make it over to the States for the occasion and my friend was surprised to see that her in-laws were this fabulous love story. They doted and fawned on each other.

She had assumed they couldn’t get along, which is why dad was in Iran, while mom was in LA.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Here is what really happened: they left Iran for a better life in LA. But dad couldn’t acclimate to the American way of life. He was a fish out of water.

He was miserable.

And so, even though he loved his wife and family, HE WENT BACK TO IRAN.

Unfricking real. To leave the safety of America for THAT. To leave his FAMILY for that. But so it was.

Now here he was, reunited with his family in LA, once more, for the sake of his son’s upcoming marriage.

Would he stay? They had all missed each other so much.

He stayed for two months. Pampered his wife night and day, 24/7. Enjoyed his family. Until he couldn’t. Couldn't take it anymore.

And went back to the covert antisemitism of Iran.

Because it’s what he was used to. It’s what he knew, his whole life.

Ever since then, every time there is a report of overt antisemitism in Iran, such as what happened at the Chadash synagogue, I fear for this man, though I never actually met him.

The man who went back to Iran is the prototype of the Jew who fools himself, thinks there is a lull in the hatred, while it is covert. He is the prototype of the Jew who doesn’t make it out when the cycle goes from covert to overt and the gates slam shut.

via GIPHY

He is like the Jewish community in Germany, complaining every time there is an anti-Semitic incident. What are they even doing there in that horrible country with its awful history?? WHY are they still there?

Because they’re used to it. They’ve been lulled into Jewish somnolence, by the polite, covert cycle of German antisemitism. They don’t see what’s coming next. They don’t even know they’re caught in a never-ending cycle.

They don’t want to know.

Now you might wonder: if it happens all over the world, this cycle of antisemitism, even in Israel, then why try to escape it at all? Why make Aliyah?

The answer: Israel is the only place where your life will have meant something. Where if you die because a terrorist cuts you down, you do so defending your land, so your children might stay Jewish and inherit your inheritance. It’s the only place where just walking four cubits earns you a mitzvah.

You can’t escape the cycle of antisemitism. Not the covert and not the overt. Not anywhere. But throwing your lot in with your brethren in Israel, now that’s where you can make a difference by strengthening the Jewish presence in our indigenous land. It’s where you can do something beautiful for your people, instead of toiling for the society of those awful Europeans (or Iranians, etc.).

Isn’t it time you at least considered the notion of Aliyah?

Who knows? You maybe even stop the cycle, cold in its tracks, and change the world for good.

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