Back in 2013, the Israel Foreign Ministry launched a Twitter account, @IsraelintheGCC, to speak directly with the Arabs of states in the Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.
It fizzled out in 2014 with very few posts, all of which were in English.
Now it has been relaunched, in Arabic. Ofir Gendelman, the spokesperson to Arab media for Israel, announced on his Twitter "To our dear Gulf followers, follow this account, which is intended for you to broaden the dialogue between us and you."
One of the first posts shows a video of Israeli innovations narrated by an Arabic speaker.
إبتكارات إسرائيلية تجعل حياتنا أفضل
هل تعلم أن إسرائيليين اخترعوا جهازًا يحول الهواء إلى ماء وتكنولوجيا تمكن السيارات من القيادة بشكل ذاتي؟ فيما يلي معلومات عن ابتكارات إسرائيلية قد تجعل حياتنا أفضل. pic.twitter.com/gsLdCw2Ezu
Most of the responses are typical of the Arab responses to any Israeli initiative in Arabic - cursing Israel. But as you scroll down there are a significant number of Arabs who are fans of Israel, who support peace and who see positive possibilities in normalizing relations with Israel.
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The current Wired magazine has a "Jargon Watch" article about a hot phrase, "Stochastic Terrorism:"
In 2011, after the shooting of US representative Gabby Giffords, a Daily Kos blog warned of a new threat the writer called stochastic terrorism: the use of mass media to incite attacks by random nut jobs—acts that are “statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.”
As is often the case with all forms of terrorism, like suicide bombing and airplane hijackings, Palestinians are the innovators of this type of terrorism.
During the Oslo process in the 1990s, Israel insisted on a committee to monitor Palestinian media for incitement to terror, for precisely this reason - people could perform attacks or join terror groups based on what they read in their media.
The "lone wolf" attacks against Israeli Jews have ramped up in recent years, notably the "knife intifada" that started in 2015 with a wave of "random" stabbings and car rammings that were done by individuals. But the wave started shortly after Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech where he said, “Al-Aqsa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won’t allow them to do so and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem.”
This was a call to violence where Abbas could claim that he was not directly inciting. But the effects could be predicted. And sure enough, the attacks came.
Similarly, a wave of violence in 2017 after Israel installed metal detectors around the Temple Mount in response to another terror attack was prompted by media coverage of the defensive measures.
Israel has been working hard to try to predict the unpredictable, by monitoring social media posts that often can indicate that a person is preparing an attack. The entire reason that they have to do this is because Palestinians are the world leaders in stochastic terrorism.
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Cast aside from El Salvador’s ruling party, a businessman, former mayor and figure of Palestinian descent surged to a decisive victory by carving an uncustomary path to the top.
Nayib Bukele, a 37-year-old who was dubbed the “millennial mayor” of San Salvador, won around 54 per cent in the election to secure the presidency of this small Central American nation, representing the right-wing party known as Grand Alliance for National Unity. That was after being expelled from the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front party and then prevented from forming his own party.
His victory was not only notable in that he became the first ruler to end a two-party system that had presided over the country since the end of its civil war in 1992, but he became its second-ever leader of Palestinian descent after Tony Sacca, who led from 2004 to 2009.
Around 100,000 Salvadorans with Palestinian ancestry live in the country out of a population of 6.5 million, ranking it as the second highest population of Palestinian descendants in Central America behind Honduras.
The former mayor traces his Palestinians roots to the early 20th century, when many left the cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem to find a new home in El Salvador. Some left for a better life while others were escaping from conscription under Ottoman rule at the time.
Palestinian joy at this victory has been short-lived. Because a year ago. Bukele, as mayor, visited Israel.
He was honored by Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat. (He also met with the mayor of Tel Aviv.)
He laid a wreath at Yad Vashem:
And he visited the Kotel:
An analyst in El Salvador praised Bukele at the time, saying that while the government and leading parties at the time were visiting Venezuela and Cuba, Bukele wanted to visit Israel where the Jews made the desert bloom, where Israelis can teach El Salvador how to farm more efficiently and a much better partner for the future.
Palestinians were upset at Bukele's visit at the time, and they are not celebrating his election now. Al Araby is typical in saying that by this visit "denies the suffering of his ancestors." Video of his visit to Israel is being shared on social network sites.
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In the view of Philip Roth’s narrator in The Plot Against America—a fictional account of how fascism might have come to the United States in 1940—history as schoolchildren study it is the story “turned wrong way around”: a tale told after the fact, with “everything . . . chronicled on the page as inevitable.” By contrast, the narrator asserts, history experienced in real time is a story of the “relentless unforeseen.”
Historians have a term—“hindsight history”—for accounts that ignore the daunting uncertainties and moral dilemmas presented by history as it actually unfolds. That is precisely what Jehuda Reinharz and Yaacov Shavit set themselves against in their important and provocative book The Road to September 1939: Polish Jews, Zionists, and the Yishuv on the Eve of World War II (2018). Bringing us right up to the edge of the destruction of European and particularly of Polish Jewry, they seek to recover the story of the “relentless unforeseen.” As they put it in the book’s preface:
We do not intend to describe the events by reading history backward. We have tried not to read the story from its endpoint, but rather to tell it as much as possible in the “present.” Before August 1939, as well as during that month, no one really knew what was in store. It is only a retrospective reading that determines that the events moved inexorably toward an unequaled calamity and that it was impossible to halt their course.
The authors are themselves distinguished historians. Reinharz has to his credit a magisterial two-volume biography of the great Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, a major figure in the events narrated here, and Shavit is a longtime scholar of another major figure of the time, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, and of Jabotinsky’s Poland-centered Revisionist Zionist movement. With an important exception to be discussed below, the two authors succeed admirably at their task. Theirs is an extraordinary account of a horrific time, told mostly through the letters, diaries, and recorded thoughts of those who lived through it.
Moreover, in telling this tale of uncertainty, the authors shed light on a key question that has troubled—and still troubles—countless minds: could Jewish and Zionist leaders have done more than they did to rescue the Jews of Poland?
Jabarin denies his PFLP connections while he continues to assail Israel through his NGO, which has called for a European boycott on Jewish goods from the West Bank and a French financial boycott of Israel. Jabarin submitted several reports to the International Criminal Court as part of an anti-Israel lawfare campaign, and he was instrumental in the recent push in Ireland to criminalize business transactions with Jewish businesses in the West Bank.
Jabarin is not al-Haq’s only contribution to HRW. A former legal researcher with al-Haq, Anan AbuShanab, is currently HRW’s West Bank researcher. There is also Charles Shamas, a co-founder of al-Haq, who has been an HRW adviser since at least 2002. Shamas also founded the MATTIN Group, which lobbied Europe to exclude Israeli products from free trade agreements.
HRW has since joined several other controversial BDS campaigns. This includes the malicious 2015 effort to lobby the U.N. to blacklist Israel as an abuser of children in armed conflict. In 2016, the group unsuccessfully petitioned the world soccer federation FIFA to block matches in Israeli settlements.
In January 2016, HRW published “ Occupation, Inc.,” a report claiming Israeli businesses in the West Bank contribute to Palestinian human rights violations. The U.N. Human Rights Council, the group former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley blasted as a “cesspool of political bias,” soon called for a blacklist of companies operating in Israeli settlements, in line with HRW’s vision. HRW brass cheered the move and even recommended three companies to blacklist for good measure.
In October 2016, HRW hired BDS advocate Omar Shakir as its new Israel-Palestine director. In 2017 and 2018, HRW began pressuring banks to cease operations in Israeli settlements. It was also around this time that HRW began lobbying Airbnb and Booking.com to delist Jewish properties in the West Bank. When Airbnb relented in November, Arvind Ganesan, business and human Rights director at HRW, crowed, “Airbnb has taken a stand against discrimination, displacement, and land theft.”
While HRW may do serious work on other issues, it is now an activist group aligned with a vitriolic movement. The connection to al-Haq may explain some of this. But it’s unclear why HRW’s leadership, beginning with Executive Director Kenneth Roth, allowed an otherwise mainstream group to become a ringleader for BDS.
This is why it is so troubling that WCC and EAPPI officials have not responded to queries posted on Twitter regarding the party. The question is a pretty simple one: Did EAPPI activists attend a propagandistic birthday party promoted by Palestinian Human Rights Defenders, an anti-normalization organization that seeks to drive Jews from their homes in Hebron?
If the answer is no, great!
If the answer is yes, well, then the WCC owes Israel and its citizens an apology for allowing its peace activists to affiliate with people who promote hatred and hostility toward Jews in the Holy Land in clear contradiction of the organization’s stated opposition to antisemitism and violence.
This would not be the first time EAPPI activists have associated with promoters of hatred in the West Bank. They made regular visits to Hasan Breijieh, coordinator for the Committee Against the Wall and spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in the 1990s.
Watch this video here to see Breijieh being accompanied by two EAPPI activists as he harasses Jews outside their homes — on shabbat no less — in the West Bank. He's also written a poem that looks forward to the murder of Jews living in the West Bank.
I've noted before that neo-Nazi websites love to quote left-wing Jewish publications and people like Max Blumenthal to prove their points that Jews are all evil.
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Arab News has a typical anti-Israel screed by Chris Doyle, director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding.
He writes, "Israel was a child of the UN, born out of a General Assembly resolution. Yet, as many children often are, it has remained distinctly ungrateful. "
No, the UN resolution that partitioned Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state is not what created Israel.
UN General Assembly Resolutions have no legal weight unless all parties agree to them, in which case it is their agreement that gives it legal status. When the Arabs rejected the resolution, it lost any legal force it may have potentially had.
The UN didn't create modern Israel. Zionist Jews did, by building the institutions of a state while resisting the attempts of the Arab world to eradicate them.
I see even Zionists make this argument as well.
Israel wasn't created by a piece of paper. It was created by sweat and blood of Jews who have dreamt and prayed for returning to Zion for two thousand years. They built the state, they declared the state, they defended the state - and the world accepted the state despite the opposition of the Arab world.
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A Strategic Affairs Ministry report released this week with the catchy title “Terrorists in Suits,” reveals more than 100 different connections linking terrorists groups to organizations that promote anti-Israel boycotts, including “the employment of 30 current and ‘retired’ terror operatives.”
Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan said: “Terrorist groups and the anti-Israel boycott campaign have united in their goal of wiping Israel off the map. Terrorist groups view boycotts as a complementary tactic to terror attacks.”
We’re not talking about Roger Waters and his ilk: This is not just the ugly face of an artist who has decided to make it his life’s work to present a false image of Israel as an apartheid-era South Africa and call for the boycott of events, such as the Eurovision Song Contest scheduled to be held in Tel Aviv in May.
The report reveals a deeper, darker phenomenon: It shows how Hamas and the PFLP (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) have ties to at least 13 anti-Israel NGOs, and have managed to place more than 30 of their members in senior positions inside these groups. This includes 20 members who have previously sat in jail, some for murder. The report “shows how boycott organizations and terrorist-designated organizations raise finances together and share the same personnel – and showcases that, contrary to popular belief, these officials have not abandoned their support for terrorism, but instead continue to maintain organizational, financial and active ties with terrorist groups.”
The BDS organizations were shown to have received millions of euros in funding from European countries and philanthropic foundations, in addition to funds raised through crowdfunding, banks and other means.
One of the most notorious names in the report is Leila Khaled, who became the poster girl of the PFLP in the 1970s for her involvement in the hijacking of two airliners. According to the report, in 2011 she was found to have taken coordinated actions for a terrorist cell planning to attack sites in Jerusalem, and has not renounced “armed struggle.”
Khaled remains active in the PFLP, a designated terrorist organization, but has been invited to address the Irish National Teachers’ Organization and to appear at an arts festival in Barcelona, for example. The Johannesburg City Council in South Africa last year even proposed that a street be named after her.
On Sunday, Pope Francis became the first pontiff to visit the Arabian Peninsula when he arrived in Abu Dhabi for an interfaith conference sponsored by the United Arab Emirates’ Muslim Council of Elders. Sohrab Ahmari puts the visit in context: The invitation to the [pope] solidifies the UAE’s status as the most responsible power in the Persian Gulf region. And it gives testament to the Emirati leadership’s determination to transcend the bloody, cruel fanaticism that has disfigured the House of Islam and brought ruin to Christians and other minorities unfortunate enough to dwell inside it. . . .
A reform vision defines the UAE’s geopolitical posture as well. Threatened by the expansionist Tehran regime, Abu Dhabi (along with Riyadh) has forged a strategic partnership with Jerusalem that is the region’s worst-kept secret. But in the UAE’s case, the ties go beyond “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Since 2010, three Israeli cabinet ministers have visited the UAE to discuss infrastructure, energy, and sports. As Zaki Nusseibeh, a minister of state and adviser to the late Sheikh Zayed, [the Emirates’ founder], told me: “There is no enmity between us and the state of Israel.”
Opinion polling suggests that the UAE leadership’s enlightened attitudes have begun to filter down to the populace. A YouGov survey conducted ahead of the pope’s visit found that Emiratis are much less likely to be concerned if a close relative marries a Christian than their neighbors in Saudi Arabia and Egypt would be. And while only about a third of Egyptians and Saudis expressed fears about Islamic extremism, more than half of Emiratis did. . . .
[T]rue, the country isn’t any sort of liberal democracy. Virtually all UAE Muslims, for example, hear the same sermon at Friday prayers—one drafted by a government-approved committee charged with countering radicalism. That goes against every liberal instinct in the West’s bones, but if it means fewer Islamic State atrocities here or in our homelands, I’ll take
it. The common good isn’t always and everywhere served by our form of government.
Two Democratic lawmakers from New York signaled on Monday that they might support the United States officially recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
"The only thing the Golan has ever been used for by the Syrians is to bombard Israel," Rep. Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.) told Jewish Insider. "They can’t have that again. It’s unsafe."
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.) said she would support U.S. recognition of Israel's sovereignty over the region if Democratic leadership is on board.
"If our leadership supports it, I don’t see what the problem is," Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.) said. "So I will be supporting it, but only if it goes through the [House Foreign Affairs Committee] and is supported by the committee."
Israel has maintained control over the contested region for 51 years after taking control in 1967 during the Six Day War. Israel defended itself during the conflict from attacks brought by Syria and other Arab nations in the region. In 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights. Since then, the U.S. has refused to recognize the region as sovereign territory of Jewish state.
Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) introduced a resolution in December of last year that would have the Senate recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressed the matter with John Bolton, the U.S. national security advisor, when the two met last month.
Democratic support for the measure appears to be growing. Rep. Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said last month that he supports the measure.
On March 18th, the UN Human Rights Council will launch an unprecedented assault on Israel, with 7 reports accusing the Jewish state of war crimes.
There'll be 0 on China, Turkey, Cuba & other of the world's worst regimes.
So new, that when I did a search by name to find their website -- it showed up at the bottom of the first page of hits -- and that was a paid advertised link.
o Maintain and Strengthen Support for Israel Among Grassroots Progressives and Democratic Leaders o Advance Policies to Ensure a Peaceful and Secure Israel o Defend Israel’s Legitimacy o Promote a Two-State Solution and Arab-Israeli Peace through Diplomacy and Partnership o Encourage American Global Leadership o Promote Progressive Values o Educate and Support Democratic Leaders
The group even supports the 2 state solution, which leaves the question: what does DMFI aim to do that J Street has not been doing?
Mellman stated that “a central thrust for us is making sure the Democratic Party remains pro-Israel” at a time when Israel is facing increasing attacks by some within the Democratic party.
Mark Mellman, President and CEO, Democratic Majority for Israel. Screen capture from YouTube video
In his response, Jeremy Ben-Ami did not claim to be defending Israel form these attacks. Instead, he charged that the DMFI website lacked substance and asked, "would they have supported the Iran deal, do they support two states, would they support Democrats who want to reinstate funding for UNRWA."
But the group does support the 2 state solution, and as far as the Iran deal goes, Mellman responded that the deal was "old news".
It's hard not to think that to some extent, the apparent need for The Democratic Majority for Israel is an indictment of the failure of J Street.
For eight years J Street supported Obama's destructive policies toward Israel like the unilateral settlement freeze, nuclear détente with Iran, and his allowance for international condemnation of Israeli communities in the West Bank.
Roman goes so far as to say that considering the influence they had during the Obama years, J Street shares some of the responsibility for the failure to get peace talks off the ground during those 8 years.
Last year, David M. Weinberg , vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, went a step further - asking the question: Is J Street Still Pro-Israel?
J Street has become something else altogether: an organization that spends almost all its time and money besmirching Israel, smearing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other leading American Jewish organizations, boosting US-Iran relations, and backing political candidates for whom promoting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement is a badge of honor.
Even granting that J Street endorses Democratic candidates for Congress, as DMFI will do, the question remains: which Democrats has J Street been supporting?
J Street has supported allegedly "pro-Israel" Democrats such as Representative Mark Pocan, who in 2017 anonymously reserved official Capitol Hill space for an anti-Israel forum put together by organizations that support boycotts and Representative Hank Johnson, who referred to Israelis living in Judea and Samaria as 'termites.'
J Street has endorsed Keith Ellison, despite his ties to Farrakhan - and has defended Ellison, claiming that criticism of Ellison was actually "a concerted and transparent smear campaign driven by those whose true objections may be to the Congressman’s religion, strong support for the two-state solution or concern for Palestinian rights."
o supported Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh o supported Islamic Relief, which has links to the Muslim Brotherhood. o retweeted a post from Linda Sarsour supporting Ahed Tamimi, who was jailed for incitement and assaulting an IDF soldier -- and upon release voiced support for suicide bombing.
Later, J Street withdraw their endorsement -- but only because Tlaib reneged on her support of J Street's precious 2 state solution.
This problem with J Street goes back to its origins.
According to a video they put out in 2018, J Street's beginnings go back to Howard Dean's presidential campaign in 2004, when Ben-Ami defended Dean, who advocated a balanced role for the US that supported both Israel and the Palestinian Arabs:
The video itself uses articles dating back to the last few months of 2003.
A meeting in September included, in addition to Morton Halperin, a director of Soros’ Open Society Institute and Ben-Ami, members of Israel Policy Forum, Americans For Peace Now and Brit Tzedek. Those 3 groups are credited with the lobbying efforts at the time that derailed the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, legislation that would have cut off US aid to the Palestinian Authority unless it renounced terrorism and recognized Israel.
One can already see the source of J Street's current agenda.
The article noted that a second meeting was scheduled for the following month, but the goals were not clear:
Some participants speak of wrapping together a number of the existing groups at some future date; others speak of a support structure that would back the groups as they continue to operate separately.
But there are hints of other groups secretly supporting The Democratic Majority for Israel as well.
For years, even before this last election, AIPAC has been discussing credibility problems with progressives at the highest level,” a pro-Israel Democrat familiar with AIPAC’s works, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely, told the Forward. “And they have been exploring the possibility of creating a Democratic group that would push AIPAC policy and fight the pro-Israel fight within the Democratic Party. That’s something they’ve been discussing for years.
Out of DMFI's 15 board members, 11 of them have either worked or volunteered for AIPAC, or have donated to it or spoken at its events. Also, the company that made DMFI’s announcement video has a long working relationship with AIPAC, and designed their Policy Conference app.
Whether there is any truth to a direct connection between the 2 groups or not, there seem to be forces at work that may be trying to create an anti-J Street, just as J Street was conceived as an anti-AIPAC.
2019 will not be a boring year.
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On Monday night, IDF troops shot and killed a 19 year old who hurled an explosive device at them from a motorcycle.
Last week, a teenaged girl tried to stab soldiers and was shot and killed.
Both of these teens are being hailed as heroes by the party led by the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who tells people he is against violence.
Here's a Fatah poster for the 19 year old:
Although Fatah's Facebook page doesn't mention his attack, the poster calls him "the heroic martyr Abdallah Abu Taleb" - and they don't use the word "hero" for people killed unless they were attackers.
Here's a cartoon about the girl on Fatah's Facebook page:
Perhaps she is going to Paradise to have sex with the male terrorists, who Palestinian children are taught are rewarded with 72 virgins.
Anyone who claims that Abbas doesn't encourage violence never spends time reading the material put out daily by his own people.
(h/t Ibn Boutros)
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Ever since Amnesty International released its truly antisemitic report last week on how TripAdvisor dares to list Jewish-owned properties in Judea and Samaria, it is been pushing this report incessantly on Twitter.
19 out of 30 tweets since then, spread over nearly a week, have been about that topic, and all the other human rights topics of the world have been put on the back burner.
Here is a chart showing the topic of Amnesty's tweets since January 30:
What do you call it when someone is obsessed with the idea that Jews, and only Jews, living in their historic homeland, do not have the same rights as every other human being on the planet?
It sure isn't "human rights."
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Two of the most influential people in the country when it comes to American policies toward Israel are a Mormon state representative in South Carolina who used to be an Eagle Scout and a Jewish law professor in Virginia who used to study pirates. You likely haven’t heard of Alan Clemmons or Eugene Kontorovich, but around three-quarters of Americans live in states with laws written or inspired by them — laws that aim to protect Israel from the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.
Versions of their bill, which bans state entities from investing or contracting in companies that participate in BDS, have been passed by 25 other states since Clemmons shepherded it into law in his state in 2015.
Pro-Israel groups – most notably the Israel Allies Foundation, which brought Kontorovich and Clemmons together - have spread them nationwide, ensuring their passage with strong bipartisan majorities despite the complaints of civil liberties advocates and pro-Palestinian groups. Advocates have tried to keep the laws consistent across states, but have managed to adapt when necessary. Now they’re using the same viral techniques to create statewide legislation to officially define anti-Semitism in a way that includes anti-Zionism.
The anti-BDS bills have spread so far and so fast that the sponsor of the one in Missouri – who said he knows Clemmons well – told the Forward he had no idea that the South Carolinian sponsored the original law.
“The way I see it, BDS efforts are an attempt to harm America’s staunchest ally, and at worst, attempt to destroy the state of Israel,” said Bob Onder, the Republican state senator in Missouri who sponsored the bill.
Clemmons and the IAF did not respond to requests for comment. Kontorovich said he did not have time to respond before the Forward’s deadline.
It’s not just about statehouses anymore. The U.S. Senate has involved itself in protecting these bills. Senators voted this week to advance a bill that would give legal cover to states that pass the anti-BDS laws.
The law’s origin story, as The Jerusalem Post explored, goes something like this: While on a junket to Israel in 2014, Clemmons met with a factory owner who exports automotive filters to South Carolina but said the BDS movement was already hindering sales in Europe. On that same trip, Clemmons met Kontorovich, who had previously focused on international law, and shared his concerns.
The pair worked together with the IAF, a small not-for-profit whose primary mission used to be arranging meetings between Christian legislators and parliamentarians in the U.S. and Europe with their Israeli counterparts. Kontorovich crafted the law’s structure, Clemmons introduced it as a bill, and the Israel Allies Foundation secured the support of other Jewish and pro-Israel organizations to further lobby and advise its nationwide network of legislators about how to best pursue a version of their own.
And to think Syd Barrett is considered the most insane member of Pink Floyd. https://t.co/HFpcMwRPk9
The evolution for Broder from young left-wing radical to his current position entertaining neo-Nazis in the Bundestag has been a strange one. In a 2013 profile in Tablet, David Mikics called him “Germany’s Most Annoying Jew,” and compared Broder to the deceased gadfly Christopher Hitchens—another writer with a penchant for provocation and whiplash-inducing swerves in his public positions. In 1986, Broder published a book, The Eternal Anti-Semite, that took aim at all kind of anti-Semites, from conventional right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis to the far left in all its esoteric varieties. At the heart of the book, there is an argument, as Mikics wrote, that “there’s a link between the obsessive thinking about the Holocaust in Germany and what he sees as an increasing German tendency to condemn Israel.”
Yet the members of the AfD for whom Broder offered his recent friendly address exhibit a different disturbing tendency regarding the Holocaust. Rather than obsessing over it as a vehicle for condemning Israel they suggest that it wasn’t really so bad and thus not worth the fuss, let alone an historical obsession. Notoriously, AfD chapter leader Björn Höcke has called the German Holocaust Memorial a “memorial of shame.”
The younger Broder could be bold and insightful. He was correct in 1976 when he condemned the anti-Semites of the German left for joining forces with Palestinian anti-Semites in Entebbe. He was also correct in documenting the spread of anti-Americanism and pro-Islamism across vast parts of the German mainstream immediately after 9/11.
Indeed, there was a time when Broder demonstrated a degree of intellectual consistency in his condemnations of anti-Semitism; attacks on targets of both the left and the right. In 2007, he mocked Jewish journalist Michel Friedman, former deputy president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, for the foolhardy idea of interviewing Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi Horst Mahler. The incident prompted Broder to write in the leading weekly political magazine Der Spiegel, that some Jews have “no dignity” at all in their willingness to speak to Jew haters. He argued, as well, against the pro-Iranian ultra-Orthodox Vienna “Chief Rabbi” Moshe Arye Friedman who went to Tehran’s infamous Holocaust denial conference.
But a staunch opposition to Islamism and the “Red-Green Axis” of the left and political Islam, along with his fervent support for Israel made him hostile toward the values of political correctness and German immigration policies and increasingly sympathetic to the far right.
After a long drift into far-right circles, Broder’s final break with reality seems to have occurred in 2014, a few years earlier than the rise of Trumpism in the U.S., with the right-wing nationalist Pegida movement, “Patriots against the Islamization of the Occident.”
“Moon of Israel” is an epic 1924 film from the golden era of silent movies, and helped launch the directing career of Michael Curtiz, of “Casablanca” fame. Sequels seldom live up to the original.
But if Israel’s plans to put a robotic lander on the moon in February 2019 can be considered a sequel, this new “Moon of Israel” mission, led by the nonprofit company SpaceIL, will be a blockbuster in its own right.
Lunar landings date back to the 1960s. The United States landed 12 people on six separate occasions as part of the Apollo program, along with robotic spacecraft such as Surveyor, which served as a precursor to human missions. The Soviet Union preformed robotic Luna missions and landed Lunokhod automated rovers in the 1970s. Most recently China landed the Chang’e 4 robotic probe on the back side of the moon.
These missions are all amazing technical accomplishments, and marvels of human know-how, sponsored and built by large government space agencies.
The moon’s next visitor is different. SpaceIL’s Beresheet – Hebrew for “In the Beginning” — will become the first privately funded mission to launch from Earth and land on the moon, and the first spacecraft to propel itself over the lunar surface after landing by “hopping” on its rocket engine to a second landing spot. The mission marks yet another milestone, not only in the history and technical arc of space exploration, but also in how humankind goes about space exploration.
A Muslim student at Punjab University has written an article spinning a bizarre conspiracy theory where Jews were instrumental in Pakistan losing Kashmir.
The essay includes these gems:
The murder of Gandhi right after five months of India’s independence was not merely an accident it could have been a carefully planned operation by the Zionists who used Nathuram Godse (an RSS member) to kill Gandhi and to pave the way for their friend Jawaharlal Nehru to rule India. ...Nehru was a dedicated member of the Zionist Movement in India. Everyone knows that he was the father of Indira Gandhi and but very few know that he was the son of a Zionist Motilal Nehru who according to official Masonic website of India was initiated into Freemasonry at Lodge Harmony in Kanpur in 1884.
These secret relationships are still maintained today in between the ruling families in India and Israel, and are based on their mutually shared common ideology of “The End of History”. The Hindu-Judaic conception of “The End of History” is remarkably similar to each other; both the Brahman Hindu and Jew consider themselves as the elite of human civilization and consider all other non-Brahman and non-Jew to have been created with an inferior status. This laid the foundation for secret brotherhood in between the Brahman Hindus who rule India and the Zionists who rule Israel today.
This is one secret of all secrets which are only known among the elite Jewish-Kabbalistic circles and the elite Brahmans of India.
My favorite part was where he calls the Balfour Declaration an "open secret:"
It is an open secret today how British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour under Lloyd George’s administration wrote a letter to Lord Rothschild to ensure a Jewish national home in Palestine.
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A dustup within the organized Jewish community here in Boston helps clarifywho genuinely represents “The Big Tent” when it comes to coalition politics.
In many major US cities, Jewish Community Relations Councils (or JCRCs) bring together Jewish communal organizations (some religious, some cultural or political) in coalition. Boston’s JCRC has historically been one of the largest and best-organized institution of this type in the country which means their decisions (which can take a long time to make, given the opinionsthat need to be balanced) tends to establish precedent followed by other communities.
The Boston JCRC’s “Big Tent” policy has caused controversy in the past, notably when J Street was given membership without formal organization-wide approval after they had “acquired” an existing member organization called Brit TzedekV’Shalom.
During debates over that earlier controversy, J Street and its allies made the case that – regardless of what you thought of their politics – the organization has positioned itself as an opponent of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) targeting Israel. In a coalition with remarkably few red lines, support for BDS was and still is one of the few things that can get you left outside the “Big Tent.”
Although some organizations have danced close to that red line, none had ever crossed it. At the same time, organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace, which exists primarily to support BDS, understand their positions place them outside looking in.
The wisdom of such exclusion was made clear when JVP finally said out loud what anyone paying attention to the group has known for years: that they are an anti-Zionist organization dedicated not to improving the Jewish state or finding peaceful compromises between Israel and her enemies, but to denying to the Jews a right to their own nation.
As JVP’s mission expanded to include the spreading of anti-Semitic canards channeling the nation’s racial tensions towards hostility towards Israel, the wisdom of keeping distance between them and an organization (JCRC) that represents the vast majority of Jewish opinion on the Middle East seems wise indeed. But one group, the Workman’s Circle (a founding JCRC members) decided to take a step over the red line right when JVP’s anti-Zionism and anti-Jewish animus hit high gear by officially signing onto a petition, created by JVP, that condemned the equation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
I’ll leave it to readers to decide if denying Jews rights given without question to hundreds of other peoples, or telling African Americans that the Jewish state is responsible for cops killing their children constitutes “legitimate criticism of Israel.” But JCRC, in a vote of 62-13, decided that the support lent to an anti-Zionist, BDS-supporting organization like JVP was enough to get Workman’s Circle removed from the Council.
In typical Jewish-organization fashion, a vote was only taken after endless discussion and deliberation, including months of direct talks with Workman’s Circle members. But, in the end, the rest of JCRC decided overwhelmingly that anti-Zionism and BDS were positions that others were free to take – but not in the name of the rest of the community.
It is worth comparing the extended discussions, debates, editorials, offers of compromise and, ultimately, democratic voting that led to the anguished choice to ask a member to leave with the behavior of those who criticize JCRC’s decision as an attack on inclusivity.
As I’ve noted before, Jewish Voice for Peace has been very careful to insist that anyone joining its ranks, and certainly anyone who speaks in their name, tow the organization’s political line, especially with regard to support for BDS.
Pulling the lens wider, political coalitions that have formed in the last few years under the banner of “intersectionality” (based on the premise that all oppressed groups have an affinity to one another and should thus work together as a united front) have rapidly developed their own sharp red lines separating oppressed from oppressors, as well as rigid internal hierarchies to determine whose oppression counts most.
Progressive Jews find themselves in a double-bind within such intersectional boundaries and hierarchies, excluded if they show any type of support for Israel (whose role as an oppressor must remain unquestioned), and stuck on the bottom of the oppression hierarchy (as “white Jews”) even if they abandon enough Jewish identity to satisfy intersectional gate keepers.
Do choices of who is in and who is out of an intersectionality club, and who is up and down within them, bear any resemblance to the extended deliberation, search for understanding and compromise, and democratic decision-making you just read about in the story of Boston JCRC’s decision to say goodbye to a member that made the conscious decision to embrace positions rejected by the rest of the community?
Hardly. For these intersec-coalitions are driven by ruthlessness, not be conversation or democratic values. Hostility to the Jewish state has become the hallmark, if not the defining element of “the movement” not because people have agreed to it, but because those who have clawed their way to the top are ready to see the organizations they lead destroyed, rather than allow any opinion that contradicts their world view to be heard, much less gain purchase. The recent implosion of the Woman’s March is just the latest example of this toxic dynamic in action.
So, in one of the many great ironies punctuating history (especially Jewish history), it is the parochial organization trying to carefully and thoughtfully police its boundaries that represents genuine universal values, such as the virtues of negotiation, compromise and democracy, while those who insist they (and they alone) represent progress that behave the most narrowly and tyrannically.
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The Iron Dome’s-based greatest test came when IDF troops attacked Hamas positions in the Gaza strip in July 2014. Gaza militants launched around 4,600 rockets and mortar shells in response, around one-quarter of which landed near areas populated by Israeli civilians. The six Iron Dome batteries then active were hastily reinforced with three more. Together, they shot-down 735 rockets and mortar shells and failed to intercept around seventy, consistent with an 85 percent to 90 percent success rate claimed by the IDF.
In total, Palestinian rockets and mortars killed five Israeli and one Thai civilian and injured eighty in 2014. Additionally, nearly three hundred short-firing militant rockets landed in Gaza, killing thirteen Palestinian civilians, most of them children.
Despite the system’s popularity in Israel, critics have questioned whether officially successful Iron Dome intercepts are actually effective at neutralizing incoming projectiles, though some of the more sweeping critiques themselves appear flawed when given scrutiny . A more measured 2018 assessment by Michael Armstrong argues the system’s success rate against projectiles landing in populated areas may lie between 59 percent to 75 percent.
Cost-efficiency is another concern. Though some sources list the Tamir missiles as costing as little as $35,000 each, the new Pentagon’s funding request lists a price of $150,000 per missile. Even this higher figures is peanuts compared to multimillion-dollar Patriot air-defense missiles. But even going by the lower figure, each Tamir is many times more expensive than the projectiles it is destroying.
This has led some Israelis to advocate for a directed-energy weapon component to more cost-efficiently handle mass attacks. The Israeli firm Rafael has developed a laser called the Iron Beam with this capability in mind, though atmospheric diffusion limits its engagement range to a seven-mile radius.
A week after raising doubts on President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a leading Mideast policy expert reversed course and affirmed Trump as “the most pro-Israel president ever.”
Daniel Pipes, founder and president of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum think tank, had written in a January 23 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that although the specific details of Trump’s peace plan have not been publicly revealed, recent hints indicate that the proposal “doesn’t sound good.”
But on January 30, in the aftermath of his discussion on the Wall Street Journal column with U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Pipes wrote on Twitter that that Trump is “the most pro-Israel president ever.”
“In particular, the president bucked conventional thinking and made overdue changes by: Withdrawing from the disastrous Iran deal; moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, carrying out a law on the books since 1996; obstructing efforts at the United Nations to delegitimize Israel; accepting Israeli acts of legitimate self-defense; encouraging Arab countries to cooperate with Israel; cutting funds for the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA, including active support for the Taylor Force Act,” Pipes tweeted. “I hope for a continuation of this positive record despite my known concerns.”
Others have shared Pipes assessment of President Trump’s record on Israel.
I just found this video put out by the "Government of Palestine" for World Children's Day 2017 in English. Only a a couple dozen people watched it, but it shows how easily they lie.
A central point was this one:
Really?
At this moment, according to B'Tselem, there are 203 minors in Israeli prisons. 80% are over 16, none are under 14. Some more might be in IDF detention, but certainly less than 250 total.
The chances that a Palestinian minor from the West Bank is in Israeli custody right now is about 1 in 10,000.
The chances that an American minor is in detention (prison or juvenile detention) is about 1 in 1500. The chances that an American minor is in adult prison is 1 in 7500.
Canadian rates are comparable.
A Palestinian minor has a much lower chance of being in Israeli custody than an American or Canadian minor being in custody in those countries.
The Palestinian video went on to accuse Israel of torturing the children, an equally false accusation.
The obvious audience for this failed video is the English speaking world - NGOs, the UN and other Westerners, most of whom would not believe that a government that they want so desperately to succeed would lie so blatantly.
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Elder of Ziyon
