Al Ahram, one of the oldest newspapers in Egypt, is not happy about the series of reports CNN aired last week showing how much antisemitism there still in in Europe.
The article starts off by saying that CNN is attempting to create "emotional blackmail" to help Jews in the United States and Europe by showing this series.
Anecdotes about how Jews are targeted today are dismissed by Al Ahram as events that could happen to anyone, anywhere.
Why would an Arab news outlet be concerned about a report that says that Jews are still targeted in Europe, today?
One reason is that Egypt is still a deeply antisemitic country, and Jews being perceived as victims rather than as oppressors is a challenge to the hate that is taught implicitly and explicitly by the schools and the media.
The other is that a lot of antisemitic attacks against Jews in Europe comes from Muslims and Arabs, and that story must be dowbplayed or ridiculed.
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Indonesian rent-a-crowd 'protesters' were paid less than $3.50 each to attend a rally opposing any move by the Australian government of its Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
About 250 people attended the rally on Friday, the fourth rally in the last five days, outside Australia's sprawling embassy compound in Kuningan, south Jakarta and which was organised by the Indonesian Muslim League, a little-known group.
Protesters, some of whom were paid to attend, sit around bored at a rally outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta.
Protesters, some of whom were paid to attend, sit around bored at a rally outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta.
But while some attending the protest appeared to be genuinely fired-up by the prospect of Australia shifting its embassy to Jerusalem, perhaps half the crowd appeared largely disinterested and showed little enthusiasm for the speaker imploring them to agree to "occupy" the embassy.
Fairfax Media confirmed with three of the 'protesters' hanging around on the fringes of the rally that many had been paid to attend.
Many members of the crowd looked bored, posed for selfies, played with their phones, hid in the shade away from the afternoon sun and appeared not be listening to the speakers at the rally.
The 'protesters' said they and at least 35 of their friends had been paid to come to the rally on Friday and express their 'opinion' - a practice that is common in Indonesia.
Professor Eugene Kontorovich, director of International Law at the Kohelet Policy Forum, said the Airbnb policy is discrimination.
"Airbnb's policy discriminates grossly against people of the Jewish faith and people of the Jewish ethnicity. They treat Jews living in the West Bank different[ly] from any other group," he said.
Kontorovich said that in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, the PA punishes Palestinians who sell land to Jews with death.
"So if you have an area where Jews are not allowed to buy houses, Jews are not allowed to live and Airbnb says, 'there we have no problem listing.' You have the Jewish areas where anybody can come, anybody can go, there's free access and Airbnb says, 'you're not allowed to list'. So Jews living in their biblical homeland is the one group that Airbnb is keeping off their platform and that should be very disturbing," he said.
Kontorovich also noted that in the whole world, Airbnb chose to make its point here.
"There is indeed a political dispute about the West Bank, but they're not saying, 'we're not taking listings from the West Bank, they're saying, 'we're not taking listings from Jews in the West Bank. That's not just a double standard, that's naked discrimination," he said.
Last week I broke the story of how National Geographic said that the Oslo Accords were meant for Israel to "return" land to Palestinians, even though no Palestinian entity or people ever had control of that land to begin with. Honest Reporting contacted them and the story was corrected.
CAMERA contacted them and they issued a speedy correction:
Also last week I also reported on a bizarre conspiracy theory in a Canadian Arab newspaper involving Jewish Freemasons building the Titanic in order to kill three (Jewish) businessmen who were on its voyage because they were against the idea of the Federal Reserve, controlled by Jews. The editor of the paper that published this was running for office in Ottawa.
A Canadian journalist saw this and made a couple of calls to ensure that the editor would not be chosen to represent anyone:
Nice fast work by National Council @CPC_HQ. Medhat Oweida will *not* be the party's candidate in Mississauga Streetsville, no way, no how. Confirmed. pic.twitter.com/nvU0SmqFu4
Also, the article itself has been removed from the site (you can see it archived here.)
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When challenged about the comment on Twitter, Hill responded to say that he believes in a "single secular democratic state for everyone." [At this point Newsweek has a tweet from Hill where he adds "This is the only way that historic Palestine will be free."] However, Hill's statement about a "historic Palestine" appears to be inaccurate as no Palestinian state has ever existed.
Newsweek was quite accurate.
"Historic Palestine" is a fiction of how modern Palestinians farcically refer to the area of the British Mandate, although it was never an independent state and its borders were drawn by Western powers. There is nothing historic about it.
Any map of Palestine prior to World War I includes parts of what became Jordan and Lebanon, and none of the Negev.
Marc Lamont Hill, by invoking "historic Palestine," is consciously choosing a false construct meant to completely overlap with the territory that modern Israel controlled in 1967. The very term "historic Palestine" has zero to do with Palestine or Palestinian land, and everything to do with taking away any rights of Jews to any land in the Middle East.
It is an antisemitic term.
Newsweek was right in saying that no Palestinian state never existed. Hill know this very well. He knows that he is consciously choosing the areas that Israel controls, and nothing else, when deciding that this is what the borders of "Palestine" should be - just like the 1964 PLO Covenant explicitly excluded the West Bank that was then controlled by Jordan as part of "Palestine."
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Recently there was a conference in Istanbul for journalists to meet and to discuss how to push the Palestinian narrative in world media.
Not how to be objective.
No, every so-called "journalist" who attended the conference was there to figure out how to demonize Israel and make Palestinians look as sympathetic as possible to the world.
Every "journalist" who attended makes a conscious decision to violate all journalistic ethics and push an anti-Israel agenda. There was even a workshop on how to address Arab media that is not hateful enough towards Israel.
The forum published a list of the attendees. I highlighted the ones from Western countries and media outlets.
Aarfa Khanum (India) Senior Editor at Thewire.in
Abdallah Elbakkali (Morocco) Director of the National Syndicate of Morrocan Press
Abdallah Marouf (Palestine) Professor of Jerusalem Studies
Abdullah Abu Awad (Morocco) Academic Professor & Communications Expert
Abdullah Al-Saafin (Palestine) Media Trainer
Abdullah Almosawi (Kuwait) Researcher and Political Analyst
Abdullatif Najim (Palestine) Digital Media Expert - Tawasul
Adam Ali Adam (Chad) President of the Association of Arabic-Speaking Chadian Journalists
Adam Bensaid (Algeria) Deputy Producer at TRT World Digital
Adnan Abu Amer (Palestine) Expert in Israeli Affairs
Ahmad Hasan Al Zoubi (Jordan) Jordanian Journalist and Writer
Ahmad Hela (Palestine) Palestinian Media Consultant
Ahmed Al-Shaikh (Palestine) Veteran TV Journalist
Ajša Hafizovic Hadzimesic (Bosnia And Herzegovina) Editor at IIN Preporod Newspaper Alfredo Jalife Rahme (Mexico) Professor & Political Analyst
Ameen Izzadeen (Sri Lanka) Editor of Intl Desk at Wijeya Newspapers Group
Amer Lafi (jordan) Correspondent of Aljazeera - Istanbul
Angel Phiri (Zambia) Broadcaster at MUVI TV Zambia Angela Lano (Italy) Journalist & Editor of InfoPal Press Agency Antony Loewenstein (Australia) Australian Journalist, Author & Filmmaker
Anwar Abdelhadi Abu Taha (Palestine) Director General of Palestine TV today Anwar Farrán Veloso (Chile) Journalist & Filmmaker Ashraf Ali (India) Founder Editor of Asia Times Online
Asma Alhaj (Palestine) TV Presenter at TRT Arabic
Assaad Taha (Egypt) Documentary Filmmaker and Audio-Visual Expert
Ayman Gaballa (Egypt) Director of Aljazeera Mubasher TV
Ayman Zeidan (Palestine) Deputy Director-General of Al Quds International Institution
Azzam Al-Tamimi (Palestine) Director of Alhewar TV Channel Ben White (UK) British Journalist & Author Britt Hendrix (Netherlands) Human Rights Advocate Carmen Corda (Italy) Italian Journalist & Researcher
Catherine Dorcas Ageno (Uganda) News Producer at NTV Uganda Clare Short (UK) Former Secretary of State for Intl Development of UK
Dareen Abughaida (Palestine) Principal Presenter at Aljazeera English Daud Abdullah (UK) Director General of MEMO - UK Dorothea Ionescu (Romania) Journalist & Strategic Communications Consultant
Edison Mutumba (Kenya) Cinematographer & Drone Operator
Elijah Mwangi (Kenya) TV Producer & Media Consultant
Farid Abudhier (Palestine) Professor of Media at Al-Najah University - Nablus Farrah Adeeba (Malaysia) TV Presenter
Fatih Er (Turkey) Director of News, Programmes & Visual at TRT World
Francis Ameyibor (Ghana) Deputy News Editor at Ghana News Agency Gustavo Abu Arab (Argentina) Acredited Journalist at National Governemt House - Argentine
Hani Al Masri (Palestine) Director of Masarat Research Center
Hasina Kathrada (South Africa) Senior correspondent at SABC
Hassan Haider (Palestine) Executive Director of Quds Press International News Agency - UK
Hisham Qasem (Palestine) Director General
Hossam Shaker (Palestine) Media Consultant
Houreye Thiam (Senegal) TV Programs Presenter Hugh Miles (UK) Editor of ArabDigest.org
Imad Musa (Palestine) Digital Media Expert
Isra Al-Modallal (Palestine) Journalist & TV Presenter
Issa Qaraqe (Palestine) Ex-Minister of the Bureau of Prisoners Affairs
Jaber Alharmi (Qatar) Chief Editor of Al-Sharq Newspaper - Qatar
Jamal Rayyan (Palestine) Media Expert & TV Presenter
Jasim Al-Azzawi (Iraq) Anchor and Media Expert
Jimi Matthews (South Afrıca) Veteran Journalist & Former Head of News at SABC John Quigley (USA) Professor of Law at Ohio State University
Johnny Mansour (Palestine) Palestinian Historian and Writer Jonathan Steele (UK) Veteran Journalist & Guardian Columnist
Jorge Ramos Tolosa (Spain) Professor of Cont. History at the University of Valencia
Khaled Taha (Jordan) Technical and Media Consultant
Khalil Mabrouk (Palestine) Correspondent of Aljazeera.net - Turkey Leila Nachawati Rego (Spain) Spanish Writer & Human Rights Activist Luca Steinmann (Italia) Italian Journalist & Political Analyst Luisa Morgantini (Italy) Former Vice President of the European Parliament
Malik Ayub Sumbal (Pakistan) Political Commentator, Award Winning Journalist & Broadcaster Martin Lejeune (Germany) Journalist, Photographer & Human Rights Advocate
Marwah Jbara (Palestine) Palestinian Filmmaker & CEO of Zainab Productions Matteo Meloni (italy) Italian Journalist & Communication Professional
Metin MutanoÄŸlu (Turkey) Chief Editor of Anadolu Agency
Moeti Mohwasa (Botswana) Journalist and Writer
Mohamed Mansour Injay (Senegal) An announcer in Tubah channel - Senegal
Mohiyiddin Haris (India) Executive Editor at Tejas Daily Monica Maurer (Germany) International Filmmaker
Montaser Marai (Palestine) Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Journalism - Al Jazeera Media Institute
Mouad Khateb (Palestine) Human Rights Activist
Muad Zaki (Maldives) Journalist & Writer
Nada Atieh (Palestine) Ù€ournalist at Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ)
Nafiz Abu Hasna (Palestine) Director of Palestine Today TV
Noureddine Miftah (Morocco) Moroccan Federation of Publishers
Nur Hasan Murtiaji (Indonesia) Deputy Chief Editor of Republika Newspaper Olivier Pironet (France) Journalist at Le Monde Diplomatique
Omar Abu Arqoub (Palestine) Researcher in Media Issues & Engineering of Consent Omar GarcÃa (Nicaragua) TV & Radio Newscaster
P. KOYA (India) Managing Editor at Tejas Daily PatrÃcia Campos Mello (Brazil) Journalist & Special Reporter
Pizaro Gozali (Indonesia) Chairman of JITU - Moslem Journalists Union
Prashant Tandon (India) Media Strategist & Consultant
Ramzy Baroud (Palestine) Journalist and Media Consultant
Rawan Damen (Palestine) Filmmaker and Media Consultant
Resul Serdar AtaÅŸ (Turkey) Director of News & Visuals at TRT Araby Romana Rubeo (Italy) Editor at The Palestine Chronicle
Saadiah Mufarreh (Kuwait) Kuwaiti Journalist and Writer
Said Abu Moalla (Palestine) Lecturer at Arab American University of Jenin
Salma Aljamal (Palestine) Palestinian Journalist at Aljazeera TV
Samia Labidi (France) Coordinator of the Palestine Films Meetings, Filmlab: Palestine
Seema Mustafa (India) Editor-in-Chief of "The Citizen"
Shafeeq Al-Ghabra (Kuwait) Political Analyst & Writer
Shafiq Morton (south Africa) RADIO JOURNALIST
Shahin Hasnat (Bangladesh) Vice President of Dhaka Union of Journalists
Shaker Aljawhari (Jordan) Director of Jordanian Digital Journalism Society
Siddharth Varadarajan (India) Founding Editor of thewire.in & former Editor of The Hindu
Sles Nazy (cambodia) President of Cambodian Muslim Media Center Soraya Misleh (Brazil) Member of International Ciranda of Shared Communication & Director of Institute of Arab Culture Susana Mangana (Spain) Columnist & Political Analyst Sylvain Cypel (France) Veteran French Journalist with Le Monde & Orient XXI
Talib Al Maamari (Oman) Journalist & Writer
Temiloluwa Bamgbose (Nigeria) Communications Consultant
Umud Mirzayev (Azerbaijan) President of International Eurasia Press Fund
Urmilesh Singh (India) Former Executive Editor at RSTV
Yassir Abu Heen (Palestine) Director of Safa News Agency - Palestine
Yousef Alshouly (Palestine) Palestinian Journalist
Zainab Ismail (Kenya) Senior news Anchor at Nation TV Ãngel MartÃnez (Spain) Chief Editor of International Section at El Confidencial
Ä°smail Sinani (Macedonia) Chief Editor of News at TV SHENJA
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Last Saturday, Iran’s “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani called Israel “a cancerous tumor” in a speech at the regime’s annual Islamic Unity Conference.
Rouhani’s fellow speakers included deputy Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh. Both terror bosses called for the destruction of the “cancerous tumor.”
With the predictability of a Swiss clock, the Europeans rushed to condemn Rouhani. The EU in Brussels condemned Rouhani. The German Foreign Ministry condemned Rouhani. And so on and so forth.
We could have done without their statements.
Just two days after Rouhani’s Jewish cancer speech, his representatives sat down with senior EU officials in Brussels to discuss Iranian-EU nuclear cooperation in the framework of the 2015 nuclear deal. Following the talks, EU Foreign Affairs Chief Federica Mogherini’s office put out a statement claiming that the sides “expressed their determination to preserve the nuclear agreement as... a key pillar for European and regional security.”
As Mogherini and her colleagues were sitting with the Iranians, the Wall Street Journal reported that the French and German governments have agreed to set up a back channel, in the form of a joint corporation, owned by European governments, whose job will be to arrange for payments for Iranian exports in a manner that bypasses and so undermines US financial and trade sanctions on Iran.
How are we to understand Europe’s behavior? What is possessing Germany and France and Brussels and even Britain, (which is reportedly considering joining the Germans and French in their sanctions-busting operations) to stand with Iran against the US?
It isn’t because Iran has proved its good intentions to them. To the contrary, over the past six months, Iran has plotted three terror attacks in Europe. In June, Iranian operatives murdered a regime opponent in Holland. In July, Belgian authorities prevented an Iranian plot to attack a regime opposition rally in Paris. And in October, Danish authorities intercepted an Iranian terror squad en route to assassinate the head of an organization of Ahwaz Arabs, Iran’s Arab minority that suffers from harsh repression at the hands of the regime.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday accused Iran of testing a medium-range ballistic missile capable of “carrying multiple warheads,” which he said could strike “anywhere” in the Middle East and even parts of Europe.
In a statement, Pompeo said the missile test violated United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, which was adopted as part of the 2015 nuclear deal curbing Iran’s nuclear program and bans Iranian tests of nuclear-capable ballistic weapons.
He not specify when the test took place, but said it had “just” occurred.
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“As we have been warning for some time, Iran’s missile testing and missile proliferation is growing. We are accumulating risk of escalation in the region if we fail to restore deterrence,” Pompeo said.
He also called on Iran to “cease immediately all activities” related to the development of ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads.
No one should whitewash, rationalize, or excuse what former CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill did this week. He spoke at a gathering of anti-Semites at the UN, a notoriously anti-Semitic institution, and called for violence against Israel and for destruction of the Jewish state. There is no other explanation for his actions that make the slightest bit of sense. He did not use a “dog whistle.” He stood and shouted.
Simply put, his actions were the left-wing anti-Semite version of walking into a white nationalist meeting and speaking the infamous 14 words.
On Wednesday, Hill spoke at a U.N. event honoring the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People and made two despicable statements. First, he at length defended violent Palestinian resistance against Israel. He condemned romanticizing or fetishizing peace, scorned the politics of “respectability,” and compared Palestinian resistance to slave rebellions. He added that while “we must promote non-violence at every opportunity” he could not “endorse narrow politics that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in ethnic cleansing.”
This is important context for his second statement, an explicit call for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea.” In other words, he called for violence with an explicit anti-Semitic goal — the physical destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.
Why do I compare this statement to the white supremacist’s 14 words? (For those who are blessedly ignorant of white-supremacist propaganda, the 14 words are “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”) Because of content and context. The content is plain enough. “Palestine” is not Israel and Israel is not Palestine. Any two-state solution would not result in a Palestine “from the river to the sea.” He is expressing a desire for a one-state solution, and that state is not Israel. A free Palestine in that context means the destruction of the Jewish state. Full stop.
Mediaite reported first on Thursday that Hill had been dismissed, quoting a CNN spokesman with a one-sentence statement: "Marc Lamont Hill is no longer under contract with CNN." That same statement went out to multiple other outlets, although it was unclear at first when he had been dropped—an IQ Media search showed he hadn't been on the network since September. The Washington Free Beacon confirmed with a separate source that Hill had been terminated that day.
The spokeswoman handling the matter, Barbara Levin, did not return multiple calls and emails on Thursday and Friday asking for elaboration. CNN also did not outright condemn his comments in any statement. The Free Beacon will update the story if it gets responses.
Some labor disputes end with both sides agreeing to remain silent, although it's unclear if that's the situation regarding Hill and CNN.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a nonprofit that works to combat global anti-Semitism, praised CNN for its reporting on anti-Semitism in Europe and for terminating Hill, but he said it would be "appropriate and helpful" for CNN to be explicit about what merited the firing.
"The Simon Wiesenthal Center is appreciative that CNN, through its poll and reportage on anti-Semitism, has generated a global focus on history’s oldest hate that will hopefully help to break down the apathy and lack of understanding of the scope that it poses to Jews here in the Americas and Europe," Cooper told the Free Beacon in a statement.
"We are also grateful that CNN took decisive action in firing Marc Lamont Hill as a commentator after his horrible speech at the United nations," Cooper continued. "This is one of the few times in recent memory where there has been a price to pay for this kind of behavior. It would be appropriate and important for CNN to add in a sentence or two, linking their decision to Lamont Hill’s extreme anti-Israel/anti-Semitic and pro-terrorist views and rhetoric. It would be appropriate and helpful if CNN would state for the record, if they haven’t already, that he was let go for those reasons."
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Bigotry extends to the ballot box. The Alternative für Deutschland, led by a man who dismissed the Nazis as a mere “speck of bird poop” in Germany’s otherwise glorious history, is now the country’s third-largest party. The National Front in France, founded by a man who called the gas chambers a “detail in the history of World War II,” got 33.9 percent of the vote in the last presidential runoff elections. The Freedom Party in Austria, founded by ex-Nazis, is now part of the governing coalition. Then there is the rise of Law and Justice in Poland and Golden Dawn in Greece — developments cheered by those countries’ Jew haters.
But the story of European anti-Semitism isn’t simply a case of the resurgence of the neo-fascist right.
A large number of physically violent acts committed against Jews in Europe are perpetrated by radical Muslims. The incidents at the top of this article were not carried out by far-right goons but by Islamists, most of them young and some of them immigrants.
Now add a third ingredient to this toxic brew: the fashionable anti-Semitism of the far left that masquerades as anti-Zionism and anti-racism.
No political leader in Europe embodies that sentiment more than Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. He paid respects at the memorial of the Palestinian perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. He objected to the destruction of a street mural depicting despotic hooknosed Jewish bankers. He participated for over a decade in the activities of a group called Deir Yassin Remembered, which was led by a Holocaust denier. He publicly defended a virulently anti-Semitic vicar named Stephen Sizer. He invited an Islamist preacher who believes Jews use gentile blood for religious reasons to tea at Parliament. And so on.
And yet he adamantly denies being an anti-Semite, on the grounds that he has devoted his life to “exposing racism in any form.”
Anti-Semitism, though, isn’t just a brand of bigotry. It’s a conspiracy theory in which Jews play the starring role in spreading evil in the world. While racists see themselves as proudly punching down, anti-Semites perceive themselves as punching up.
When supporters of Israel worldwide think about November 29, they think about miracles.
In the year 1897, Theodore Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country.
This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its national home.
November 29, 1947, marked one of the greatest milestones along the road to realizing the miracle of the modern Jewish state. On that day, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their state is irrevocable.
Subsequent events cemented this miracle, including how the nascent Jewish state proceeded to declare independence, and then to defy the odds by overcoming formidable Arab armies in the War of Independence. But the roots of miracle were planted at the UN on November 29.
I’ve dedicated both my career and personal life to appreciating, advocating for, and preserving this miracle. Now, quite fittingly on the date of November 29, I’ve added an even more personal layer as to my part in the sacred responsibility that we all share of securing this miracle.
On Thursday, I began my new role as world chairman of Keren Hayesod – UIA (United Israel Appeal). Born and raised in a religious Zionist environment in Miami Beach, I’ve long savored the realization of a modern Jewish state and the Jewish people’s miracle of sovereignty in their ancestral homeland. But even as I advanced in my career working on behalf of the State of Israel, it would have been hard to imagine that I would find myself at the helm of an organization that has the most direct connection possible to the state itself by serving as the fund-raising arm of the global Zionist movement.
.@CNN's @marclamonthill told the UN today "There are more than 60 Israel laws that deny citizenship rights to Palestinians just because they are not Jewish."
EoZ #Israel News: While The Forward praises Muslim charities, it asks for help to dig up dirt on Jewish charities. Plus, a quick look at the Forward's own non-profit paperwork. (It isn't pretty.) https://t.co/4ulK1km6Uq
And Hill's being on the record AGAINST Israel being able to defend itself against Hamas rockets makes one wonder why the hell you want to defend him to begin with.
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The Europeans’ eagerness to continue to trade with Iran is disgusting. The United States lists Iran as the world’s principal state sponsor of terrorism. The regime has been in a state of self-declared war against the West since it took power in 1979. It regularly denies the Holocaust and re-states its intention to wipe Israel off the map.
It is funding, arming and training Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, where more than 120,000 Iranian rockets are pointing at Israel; it supports the Bashar Assad regime in Syria, where there are now Iranian troops on Israel’s border; it is supporting the Houthis in the civil war in Yemen in order to attain unrivalled dominance in the region.
So it should simply be unconscionable to trade with Iran. Yet the Europeans are bending every sinew to continue to do so.
The behavior of France and Germany in spearheading the subversion of U.S. sanctions is particularly odious. France’s President Emmanuel Macron, the E.U. fanatic who by his own account is a cross between Napoleon and Jupiter and has taken to lecturing the world about the supposed evils of nationalism, runs a country in which Jews are being regularly attacked and murdered by Muslims.
His foreign ministry has said there is no doubt that Iran’s intelligence ministry was behind a foiled attack last June on an Iranian opposition group in Paris. Yet Macron opposes U.S. sanctions on the grounds that this would not improve regional stability. Instead, he is busy trying to enable the continued flow of money to prop up the Iranian regime. Is this what he means by improving regional stability?
Germany’s hypocrisy is stomach-turning. In 2008, its chancellor, Angela Merkel, came to Israel to say: “The Shoah fills us Germans with shame. I bow before the victims. I bow before the survivors and before all those who helped them survive.” Germany, she said, would always stand by Israel’s side; and she singled out Iran as the greatest threat to its security.
Yet although her foreign office condemned Rouhani’s remarks “in the strongest possible terms,” Merkel is now Europe’s principal champion of his regime.
In the words of Dr. Josef Schuster, president of the country’s Central Council of Jews: “It seems paradoxical that Germany—as a country that is said to have learned from its horrendous past and which has a strong commitment to fight anti-Semitism—is one of the strongest economic partners of a regime that is blatantly denying the Holocaust and abusing human rights on a daily basis. Any trade with Iran means a benefit for radical and terrorist forces, and a hazard and destabilization for the region.”
As Benjamin Weinthal recently wrote in Tablet magazine, the explanation may not lie merely in Germany’s huge export trade with Iran, worth $3.42 billion last year. It may also be a pathological refusal to forgive Israel for the Holocaust, as demonstrated by its preoccupation with turning Israel into a punching bag.
Germany’s pious memorializing of the Holocaust, he suggested, “can be a way for German politicians to inoculate themselves against criticism for their unwillingness to confront the lethal anti-Semitic Islamic regime in Tehran.”
On Thursday night social media accounts that follow Syria lit up with reports of airstrikes south of Damascus. SANA, the Damascus state media, claimed that “air defenses of the Syrian Arab Army responded to an aggression on the southern region” and had prevented the attack from achieving objectives. However Syrian state media and allies of the Syrian regime have downplayed the incident in the twelve hours after it happened. From wild claims that the air defenses had down rockets and even a plane, Syria’s allies now appear to want to sweep the incident under the carpet. This may be to protect the regime from embarrassment.
A variety of social media accounts that support the Syrian government were active Thursday night, but many now seem disinterested in the aftermath. This is also true of Iranian media, which supports Syria, and media that tends to be pro-Hezbollah. On Thursday night some of these outlets, such as Al Mayadeen, showed images purportedly of air defenses over Damascus. Reports began around ten in the evening and continued for more than an hour. By midnight it was all over and what appeared to be a serious incident had gone quiet. Most of these reports followed the message from Damascus. “Our air defenses met hostile targets over the area of Al-Kiswah” and had intercepted the attack.
What’s particularly interesting is that none of the media sought to point fingers at who the aggressor was. In the past the Syrian regime has blamed Israel and the US. One of the only major accounts that have kept on the story is Sputnik News in Arabic, a Russian channel. Russia supports the Syrian regime. On Friday Sputnik claimed that shrapnel from Syrian air defenses was found on the Golan Heights. It based its report on an announcement from Israel. Sputnik also noted that Syrian air defense had used the S-200, not the more advanced S-300 system that Russia supplied to Syria in October and which the Syrians are still being trained to use. Sputnik also reported that Syrian officials told them the S-300 was not used.
This was a major climb-down from Thursday night when the same news channel had tweeted reports that Syrian air defense intercepted four cruise missiles and a jet that was involved in the attack. By Friday morning, all those reports had stopped. Iranian media also did not report heavily on the incident. Tasnim entirely ignored it. Fars News did the same. PressTV claimed Syria had downed targets over Damascus. However PressTV also made sure to emphasize that it was unclear if the S-300 had been used and noted that a “military source [in Syria] did not specify the targets but dismissed reports that an Israeli plane had been downed.”
Israeli troops on the Golan Heights on Friday found a number of fragments of a Syrian surface-to-air missile that was fired during an alleged Israeli airstrike on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria the night before.
According to the Israel Defense Forces, the remnants of the missile were found in an open field on the Golan heights. The pieces have been taken in for further examination by the military and the police, the army said.
Also on Friday, the Syria Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said it identified several of the sites hit in what it said was an Israeli bombardment that lasted “for an hour.”
The Israeli military refused to comment on the raid, but denied a report in Russian media that an Israeli plane had been shot down. The Syrian military claimed its air defenses shot down all incoming “hostile targets” late Thursday. However, many security analysts believe Syria often falsely claims to have intercepted missiles that successfully penetrated its air defenses.
According to the director of the Syria Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, the Israeli bombardment hit two positions in the south of Damascus province, including an area believed to be an Iranian weapons depot near the capital.
This past week, 150 bloggers from 30 countries around the world came to Israel at the invitation of the Israeli General Press Office for the 3rd Jewish Media Summit, on the theme: Israel and the Jewish World Relationship: It's Complicated.
That doesn't mean that Israeli/Diaspora relations were the only topic.
On Monday, one of the topics was Antisemitism - discussed on a panel featuring Lior Weintrab (media advisor and former diplomat), Anshel Pfeffer (Haaretz), Caroline Glick (Jerusalem Post, Maariv and Breitbart) and Efraim Zuroff (Israeli historian and Nazi Hunter). Haviv Rettig Gur of The Times of Israel moderated.
There were a number of insights, some of them cynical.
For example, Haviv Rettig Gur started the ball rolling with a comment on the difficulty that antisemite Linda Sarsour and her friends were having in distancing themselves from Farrakhan -- despite his best efforts to make easy.
Weintraub made the required comment that criticizing Israel in and of itself is legitimate.
Personally, it is unfortunate that we feel the need to even state this. But of course we do, because one of the common tactics antisemites use to fend off accusations of Antisemitism is to claim that the label is being used in order to defend Israel from criticism of any kind.
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
By itself, this is a rather dry definition. The controversy enters with the examples, which include, but are not limited to:
o Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
o Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
o Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
o Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
o Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
o Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
o Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
o Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
o Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
o Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
o Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
This is the meat of the definition and goes beyond the 3 D's definition of Natan Sharansky, which was not even mentioned during the discussion and perhaps has fallen into disuse despite its brevity.
But even the IHRA definition does not address what, if anything, is new about Antisemitism today and how it is different from Jew-hatred in the past.
That is where Caroline Glick came into the discussion, saying that hatred of Jews should be seen in terms of the prevalent Gestalt of the time.
Glick said that the term 'Antisemitism' itself is antiquated. It goes back to a time when Jew-hatred was based on race. It was a time when the eugenics was considered the height of science and Jews were hated as a people -- as opposed to an early time when Jews were hated as followers of a particular religion.
After periods when religion and then race were part of the Gestalt, now we have 'Anti-Zionism' -- a hatred of Jews in an era where globalization and post-nationalism are the influential sentiments.
What did not come up in the discussion, and perhaps should have, is that there has to be more to it than that, if for no other reason than the fact that Islam and the Islamic countries also stand against - and are resistant to - the same globalization and post-nationalism (unless we talk in terms of the Islamist goal of the globalization of Islam)
Glick referred to Airbnb, whose boycott of Israel she described as a big blow, and a big smack in the face. Airbnb decides that they cannot rent out a basement in Efrat on land bought lawfully, cannot rent out because they are Jews. That is the very definition of anti-Jewish discrimination.
Like Glick, Zuroff also went into how the definition of Antisemitism has changed. Classicly it is based on differences in religion -- a distinction which today is not considered politically correct. Today it has morphed into Anti-Zionism.
This he sees as the reason for the difference in reactions to the massacre in Pittsburgh on the one hand and the missile attacks on Gaza on the other. There is an outpouring of support for the former, but not for the latter. This is despite the fact that there are 500 rockets being aimed at civilians.
As Zuroff put it: "The world loves defenseless Jews."
And when Sarsour claims that some of her best friends are Jews, she means that is because they are the right kind of Jews. As Glick put it, according to the left, there are certain Jews who deserve to be hated. To me, that is reminiscent of Farrakhan's distinction between 'satanic Jews' and 'good Jews' -- as if he had been put in charge of deciding who fits in which category. The problem, as Glick put it, is that for those on the left to take a hard look at progressive Antisemitism is just "too ideologically expensive."
At this point, the abstract discussion of Antisemitism turned into a critique of Netanyahu's foreign policy.
As opposed to Western Europe, Eastern Europe may hate Jews, but they are beginning to profess a love of Israel. Zuroff was very vocal in his dislike of the overtures Netanyahu has been making to Eastern Europe, where during WWII they were not merely accessories but actively helped the Nazis kill Jews and went so far as to kill Jews on their own initiative.
Zuroff criticized Netanyahu for being silent about the past history, instead of using the "Holocaust card". One example is the friendship Netanyahu has extended to Viktor Orban, the far right Prime Minister of Hungary. A Hungarian blogger at the conference described it as Netanyahu giving the "kosher seal" to Oran, protecting him from the criticism that he is an Antisemite.
Here Rettig Gur explained Netanyahu's actions. They could be an attempt to weaken the EU's hostile strategy against Israel. For example, last December, Hungary abstained when the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly rejected the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and also joined with the Czech Republic and Romania to block an EU statement that criticized the US for moving its embassy to Jerusalem.
On a final point, Pfeffer differed from the rest of the panel. He insisted that Israel was doing a good job in Hasbara and went so far as to say that the EU was being maligned.
It actually makes a lot of sense that Pfeffer would hold such an opinion.
According to Pfeffer, Israel is violating international law in terms of the occupation and the settlements. That being the case, he sees eye-to-eye with the EU both in terms of the illegality and in terms of the measures the EU is taking against Israel. Since Pfeffer sides so heavily with the EU, he would see what few successes Israeli hasbara has as a clear measure of success.
But at least all 4 agreed that Antisemitism is a bad thing.
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Monday, December 03, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
