On Saturday, IfNotNow protested outside a Chabad house in Austin, TX because of an Israeli speaker there.
Besides the immorality and obnoxiousness of pseudo-Jews protesting outside a synagogue during services, the group bragged about it with a crazed justification:
Today we stood outside of Chabad at UT in protest of their event, Morality and Combat. The invited speaker, Leibel Mangel, was a machine gunner in the IDF and uses the Holocaust as a way to justify the occupation. There is no denying the very real trauma that the Holocaust has left on our community; yet, our historical trauma should not be exploited to justify the oppression of Palestinian people. Our Jewish history is not only one of persecution, oppression and fear. We also have a rich history of resistance and solidarity. Jews have survived in diaspora for thousands of years, largely through solidarity with other oppressed groups. We do not need to support Israel at all costs to stay safe.
Really? Jews have been largely safe in the Diaspora because of solidarity with other oppressed groups?
Can IfNotNow name a single time in 2000 years that a pogrom or massacre was averted because of some other oppressed group sticking their necks out to save the Jews?
They are just making shit up to appeal to their "progressive" friends.
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While Israel preserves Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, Arabs have proven that they cannot be trusted to respect Jewish Holy sites.
On December 15, 2017 Nadav Shragai wrote in Israel Hayom "King Herod's grand Third Palace is being systematically destroyed by the Palestinians, who are stripping its stone and building homes around it. The site is in Area A, meters from Israeli-controlled territory, but the Israeli government can do nothing...Here is a lesson that teaches us how the Palestinians today treat remnants of the past...It is unclear how much of this beauty remains.
Yaron Rosenthal, director of the Kfar Etzion Field School, who sometimes works with the Palestinian Arabs on environmental preservation projects, finds it difficult to hide his anger. "Israel sees how one of the grandest palaces ever built in the Holy Land is being destroyed, and is standing by helplessly, because under the Oslo Accords the site, which is 30 meters from Area C, was made the responsibility of the Palestinians. It's time for Israel to say, 'No more.' With all due respect to the Oslo Accords, we will not let you destroy important [archaeological] remains linked to the history of the Jewish people in their land, remains that are part of the cultural fabric of this country," Rosenthal says..."
On Jan 6, 2018 Judith Abramson reported in Jerusalemonline "Hebrew University archaeology doctoral student Haggai Cohen Klonymus described to the Israel News Company (formerly Channel 2 TV) how Palestinian tractors and bulldozers arrived at an archaeological site where the ancient city of Archelaus once stood. The Palestinians completely leveled the compound in order to locate hidden archaeological treasures to sell in the antiquities market. "Just as ISIS destroyed sites in Iran and Syria that were thousands of years old, the same situation is occurring here," he said. "This is a deliberate and systematic destruction of an archaeological site....It's just a tragedy."
In 2000 the Palestinians destroyed Joseph's tomb. Sidney Brounstein wrote for the Los Angeles Times "Oct. 8: Where is the outrage? Imagine what would have happened if Jewish police stood by and allowed a Jewish mob to destroy a Muslim holy place! Does the destruction of a Jewish holy place by an Arab mob while Palestinian police stand by (after promising to protect it) deserve no more than inclusion in a list of other damage done by rioters? Is this an acceptance of attacks on Jews and things Jewish as a normal part of life?" "It makes a mockery of any thought of giving Arabs any control of Jewish holy places. The destruction of dozens of such places in the Old City of Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967, along with the exclusion of Jews entirely from their most holy site, the Western Wall, was clearly of a piece with the current destruction."
Vandals drew dozens of swastikas on an elementary school playground in New York City overnight Thursday.
The anti-Semitic graffiti, which included the words “Heil Hitler,” was found early Friday morning in the Rego Park neighborhood in the borough of Queens.
School staff removed the drawings and called the police, the Ynet news site reported.
The school was closed for vacation but the playground was open to the public.
“This is terrible anti-Semitism. This is a neighborhood with a lot of Jews who are proud of their Judaism and don’t hide it. It’s terrible that something like this is happening in New York,” Idan Shefi, an Israeli who lives near the school, told Ynet.
The incident comes amid a surge in hate crimes in New York City, especially attacks against Jews. The 55 hate crimes in the city so far this year represent a 72 percent increase over the same period last year, with close to two-thirds of the attacks this year targeting Jews, the New York Times reported on Monday.
New York City police are searching for a motorist who drove around a stopped school bus onto a Brooklyn sidewalk, nearly mowing down schoolchildren.
A security camera captured the startled children as they scattered outside a Jewish school in the Borough Park neighborhood.
On Saturday, authorities looked for the driver using the car’s license plate, taken from the video as the children came off the bus Thursday morning. The children are seen heading for the Yeshiva Medrash Chaim.
A police spokeswoman says the suspect is wanted for reckless endangerment.
Former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represented Borough Park, says that passing the school bus could have resulted in the driver committing murder.
I usually don't comment on internal Israeli politics, mostly because I don't feel qualified to provide an opinion any better than those of actual Israelis.
I do, however, want to make a point about the controversy of Netanyahu convincing the Jewish Home party to partner with Otzma Yehudit, a party that follows the teachings of Meir Kahane, who was banned from Knesset as a racist. The combined party would then be part of a Likud coalition should they do well enough in the upcoming elections.
The optics of this move are terrible.
But Netanyahu himself is no racist - he is just, like virtually all politicians, willing to do whatever it takes to win.
In recent weeks the Israeli media have reported that under Netanyahu's "racist" Likud:
- The number of Israeli Arab Ph.D. candidates has more than doubled
- There has been a 60 percent increase over five years in enrollment to bilingual Hebrew/Arabic schools where Jewish and Arab students share classrooms
- The number of Bedouin students who began studying for a bachelor's degree has doubled
This is only in education. The Likud-led government has put lots of money into the Arab sector, more than under any other government.
Netanyahu is a brilliant politician and he has been a brilliant statesman, and as a direct result of his decisions Israel has the best relations with the rest of the world since the Six Day War. He is a strategist, not just a tactician, and that is a highly unusual feature from a democratically elected leader. As a strategist, he knows that his vision will not continue to be implemented if he is not in charge. This is why he is trying to salvage his coalition in the next election.
Israel is already paying the price. Mainstream American organizations like AIPAC and the American Jewish Congress have issued strong statements against this, and today the New York Daily News published an editorial that sums up the mainstream Zionist American view of the move:
We, who consider ourselves proudly Zionist, who believe Palestinians' stubborn refusal to accept the Jewish state is the central problem in their conflict with Israel, who have frequently admired Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's grit, are sickened by Netanyahu's decision to bring into the fold his nation's most hateful right-wing extremists.
Alienating Israel's friends is not a smart move. And in this case, Bibi's calculations might backfire on him.
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Marc Lamont Hill, who was recently fired from CNN for his rabid hate of Israel, is releasing a documentary about supposed Israeli racism.
The trailer starts off with an interview with a self-described "Afro-Palestinian" who says that Israeli Jews oppress his people not only for being Palestinian but for being black.
The narrator for that section of the video is a terrorist.
His name is Ali Jiddah and his father came from Chad. But he considers himself a "Palestinian."
Ali Jiddah planted four hand grenades on Strauss Street in downtown Jerusalem in 1968. The blasts injured nine Israelis and Jiddah spent 17 years in Israeli prison. His cousin Mahmoud also served 17 years for a similar attack; the two were released in 1985 in a prisoner swap. Fatima Barnawi, daughter of a Nigerian father and Palestinian mother, has the dubious distinction of being the first female Palestinian arrested on terrorism charges. As a member of Fatah, she planted a bomb in the Zion Theater in downtown Jerusalem in October 1967. Although it didn’t explode, she was sentenced to 30 years in prison, of which she served 10 before being exiled.
After his release from prison in 1985, Jiddah worked first as a journalist, then started giving alternative tours of Jerusalem’s Old City, showing the Palestinian perspective of life under Israeli rule.
Tailor made for Marc Lamont Hill.
JTA described the bombing attacks in Jerusalem in 1968 this way:
Sunday night’s grenade explosions were described by observers as the most serious terrorist acts on Israeli soil since the June, 1967 Six-Day War and were obviously the work of organized professionals. The grenades, each with a Chinese-made chemical timing device, were planted in central parts of West Jerusalem, concealed in trash bins and in wastepaper cans attached to lamp posts. Five of them exploded between 9 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. local time but nine of the 10 injured persons were struck by fragments from a single grenade that detonated in a trash bin on Strauss Street, near the Bikur Holim Hospital, about 100 yards from the city’s main business crossroads.
There was an entire documentary made about Jiddah last year, that you can see here.
Some of what he says is word for word identical with the excerpts in Hill's forthcoming documentary. And they are lies.
Jiddah claims that he was jailed as a "political prisoner" for "political activities."
To prove how racist Israel supposedly is, he mentions that Israel in the 1980s (actually, 1990s) would not accept blood from Ethiopian Jews because their blood was "dirty" and Shimon Peres defended that decision. (In reality, because the incidences of HIV among the immigrants at the time were considered unacceptably high at about 1%, and the Israeli officials accepted and quietly discarded the blood so as not to embarrass them. When the news came out the Ethiopians rioted. Peres opened up an inquiry into the circumstances of the decision. The US didn't accept blood donations from Haitians and sub-Saharan Africans - including Ethiopians - starting in 1990 for the same reasons.)
Jiddah doesn't mention that he was a member of the PFLP terror group. He might still be - in 2008, when asked if he was still active in the group, he answered, "Well if I admitted to it, it would mean I would have to go back to jail again... But I will tell you... I’m addicted to politics and especially to the policy of the PFLP." (He also said about President Obama: "for me, he is not black, he is a coconut, black on the outside, totally rotten, corrupted, white on the inside.")
Ali Jiddah and Yasir Arafat after he was released from prison in a swap
In the TOI interview, he admitted that he planted the bombs:
“Due to the responses from my clients I am satisfied, and I am convinced that the work I am doing today is more effective than the bomb I planted in 1968,” he said.
In other words, he decided that it is easier to destroy Israel by pushing lies to tourists and reporters who don't even bother to check out the truth - or, in Marc Lamont Hill's case, journalists who actively try to hide the truth.
(h/t Petra)
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Sajid Javid is preparing to ban Hizbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, as soon as this week, The Sunday Telegraph understands.
The Home Secretary is expected to proscribe the entire Shia organisation as a terrorist group, preventing supporters from parading its flag through the streets of Britain.
The move will have to be approved by Parliament, raising the prospect that it could be opposed by Jeremy Corbyn, who once referred to members of the group as "friends".
It follows warnings by MPs that the UK had created a false distinction by proscribing the military wing of the group but failing to outlaw its political side.
The distinction allows demonstrators in the annual Al Quds Day protest to march through central London waving the Hizbollah flag, which features an assault rifle.
The distinction between "military" and "political" wings of Hamas was always completely artificial. It isn't like they have different flags!
This is especially notable because only recently has the new Lebanese government finally been formed, including Hezbollah as a party, which controls three ministries.
(h/t Phil D)
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I've also given talks and hosted symposia in Israel.
If anyone wants to host me speaking, or if anyone wants to give us a tour of a place that doesn't get enough publicity, let me know!
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The chief legacy of Obama's foreign policy is not the Iran nuclear deal, but rather the visceral partisanship that he fostered at home while trying to defend the deal. As the country debated whether to support the JCPOA in the summer of 2015, recall how Obama demonized the accord's critics. He went so far as to compare them to the hard men of Iran's murderous regime. "It's those hardliners chanting ‘Death to America' who have been most opposed to the deal," Obama said in August 2015. "They're making common cause with the Republican caucus." Such language is vile and dishonest, but the president and his allies employed it consistently, using an "echo chamber" of experts and media figures to drown out any opposition, no matter how genuine and well reasoned. Obama also troubled American Jews at the time with his rhetoric, singling out Israel and flirting, perhaps unintentionally, with conspiracy theories about nefarious Jewish money seeking to influence the public debate.
The Obama administration and its allies also made support for the Iran deal a litmus test of loyalty for Democrats in Congress. "Opponents of the agreement said they could not remember another recent policy battle where the White House and [Rep. Nancy] Pelosi were so driven," the New York Times reported at the time. "In tandem, they made the Iran vote a strong test of party loyalty." Several Democrats expressed strong concerns about the deeply flawed deal, but they were pressured to fall in line, no matter their reservations. Only a few voted no.
Meanwhile, as Obama waged his campaign of demonization against the deal's critics, he carried on a similar campaign against America's traditional allies in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia. Obama's contempt for the Saudis has been well documented, and, whether intentional or not, his approach to the region put the Democratic Party in the position of defending Iran and criticizing Saudi Arabia. Naturally, the Republicans did the opposite.
So what do we have now? One party effectively supports the regime in Iran and opposes Saudi Arabia, while the other party opposes Tehran and supports the Saudis. Both regimes are odious, but the Saudis are, like it or not, an essential strategic ally. They are an important security partner and ensure the free flow of oil from the Middle East. Iran's leaders, meanwhile, chant "death to America" and seek regional preeminence.
A country so divided on the Middle East cannot create effective policies in the region. American leaders cannot even agree on who their friends and enemies are. How can they possibly come to some kind of a bipartisan consensus? The DNC's resolution is a reminder of how far apart Democrats and Republicans are regarding the Middle East, and especially Iran. Of course the parties were never entirely on the same page. But the partisan divide grew substantially during Obama's presidency. His campaign to garner support for the Iran deal at all costs hurt American national security in the long run. Obama did not just cause lasting damage to the Middle East; he also caused lasting damage to Washington, D.C.
The U.S. chose not to cut off its ties with its closest allies and partners in the Arab world — but not because it didn’t recognize their responsibility for spawning and enabling the growth of the jihadist ideology that informed the actions of their nationals. The U.S. chose to remain a close ally of the Saudis and Egyptians because doing so served its strategic interests — whether in preserving the flow of oil in the world market, or ensuring the safe passage of maritime traffic across the Suez Canal.
Was that move wrong? Of course not.
If Israel were to base its foreign policy on countries’ past record of abuse of Jews during the Holocaust — and, more generally, throughout Europe’s 2,000 years of persecution of Jews — then the only European states it would be capable of having diplomatic relations with are Bulgaria and Denmark.
The point isn’t whether or not a state has a past of persecution of Jews generally. All states in Europe have such a past.
The point is that today, some European states are becoming more antisemitic and more hostile to Israel. And some European states are becoming less antisemitic and friendlier to Israel.
Poland, like the other Visegard members, is in the latter category. France, Germany, Belgium, and other Western European states are in the former category. Israel is best served by cultivating close ties to the European states that want close ties with it, and keeping its distance from those who want close ties with Iran and the Palestinians.
The U.S. is now calling for Israel to apologize to Poland for Katz’s statement. And Washington is right.
Hopefully, someday, Poland will reconcile itself with the historical truth of its people’s dubious and decidedly mixed record of behavior towards the Jews during the Holocaust. And Israel cannot accept revision of the historic record.
But Israel also has important interests in the world. Those interests are best advanced by working with like-minded countries. And in issues that matter, along a wide spectrum of areas, Poland is a like-minded country. Israel should treat it accordingly.
Rachel Riley, host of the UK television show “Countdown,” and actress Tracy Ann Oberman are preparing to take legal action against those who have targeted them on Twitter with abusive remarks over their efforts to call out antisemitism in the Labour party, the pair’s lawyer said on Thursday.
Mark Lewis said he was contacting “between 60 and 70 people” who are “almost exclusively Labour supporters” for alleged libel or harassment of his two Jewish clients, according to the Daily Mail.
He told The Guardian he would go to court and force Twitter to release details of social media users who made the Twitter posts if they did not voluntarily provide him with their contact information.
Oberman, 52, was previously a Labour member but left in April 2017 after the party’s decision to not suspend MP Ken Livingstone following antisemitism allegations. Livingstone resigned in 2018.
Riley, 33, was given extra security in January when appearing on “Countdown” after her criticism of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn resulted in her being threatened by his supporters on social media.
Inspirational: Co-founder of Israel's SpaceIL Yariv Bash, who is launching a spacecraft to the moon tonight, uses a wheelchair. pic.twitter.com/GsIwjulAkl
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And it’s why American Jews who vote Democrat are muted or silent about the virulent antisemitism of people like Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan or Democrat congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
Having told themselves falsely that Trump is a mortal threat to Jews, black people or Muslims, they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that the most dangerous enemies of the Jewish people are on their own side— and that it’s Trump who is their target, not the other way round.
Hoaxes are a kind of false flag operation to cast as villains the victims of such attacks. They are a hallmark of Soviet communism’s strategy of psychological warfare in creating a looking-glass world where nothing is what it seems.
Israel is a prime victim of this hoax politics. The whole Palestinian narrative — cooked up originally by Yasser Arafat in cahoots with the former Soviet Union—is a false flag operation, a hoax that falsely blames its Israeli victim of appalling crimes of which it is innocent but of which the Palestinian perpetrator is itself guilty.
Hoax politics is an example of cultural totalitarianism that fries the brain and creates a climate of political, intellectual and moral chaos.
It’s why so many of us feel that the world has spun off its axis of reason altogether. And it’s why the whole anti-Israel and anti-Jew pathology that has erupted in the West is part of a broader and devastating cultural nervous breakdown.
On the first day of 2018, the publisher of the New York Times wrote a letter to his readers. Quoth A.G. Sulzberger: “The Times will hold itself to the highest standards of independence, rigor and fairness—because we believe trust is the most precious asset we have.” Fairness and accuracy would be paramount, he promised, “and in the inevitable moments we fall short, we will continue to own up to our mistakes, and we’ll strive to do better.”
The date of the letter suggests it would be only fair to look closely at the 12 months of journalism that followed and judge whether the Times delivered on Sulzberger’s promise of impartial, accurate reporting. That is what the media-monitoring organization CAMERA did when producing a timeline assessing a year’s worth of the newspaper’s coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict. The timeline, alas, makes clear that the Times fell far short of those promised standards when it came to its coverage of Israel and its opponents.
Again and again, the newspaper distorted the news, downplayed inconvenient facts, and departed from journalistic norms. And while the chronological list of the newspaper’s stumbles is striking, a still more damning picture emerges when we sort those stumbles by common theme—a picture of a newspaper eager to tilt public opinion by glossing over news reflecting poorly on Palestinian actors while at the same time zooming in on perceived Israeli misdeeds.
“More Than Just Victims”
At one point during her tenure as public editor of the New York Times from 2012 to 2015, Margaret Sullivan delivered a stunning message to her colleagues. In an otherwise gentle 2014 column about the paper’s coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict, Sullivan called on Times reporters to remember that the Palestinians “are more than just victims.” Her colleagues, don’t forget, are professional journalists at the country’s most reputable newspaper. That the public editor felt the need to impart such a rudimentary lesson about the Palestinians, a multidimensional group that has experienced but also imposed plenty of suffering, raised questions then about how much Times journalists actually knew about the conflict, or about impartial journalism.
In 2018, the newspaper demonstrated time and again that it was unwilling to offer frank coverage of news that highlighted the Palestinian role in exacerbating the conflict. In one emblematic example, Times journalist Nellie Bowles described the Palestinian Authority’s payments to families of imprisoned terrorists as a figment of the right-wing imagination. Facebook, she lamented, has been “flooded with far-right conspiracy programming like ‘Palestinians Pay $400 million Pensions for Terrorist Families.’” In fact, the Palestinian government had been perfectly open about its payments. The newspaper, at least in this case, made amends after CAMERA contacted editors. “That is not a conspiracy theory,” a correction noted.
Similarly, 150 years later, addressing a people scattered worldwide, not just along America’s East Coast, Herzl said: “Zionism has already brought about something remarkable, heretofore regarded as impossible: a close union between the ultramodern and the ultraconservative Jews.... A union of this kind is possible only on a national basis.”
This is not an exercise in cherry-picking selective quotes that might fit together – their ideas flow naturally together, one of many illustrations of the natural fit linking Americanism with Zionism, Americans with Israelis, the US with Israel. True, shared interests help, too. No other country backs Israel as America does, and Israel watches America’s back. Following Franklin Roosevelt’s high standard, “Judge me by the enemies I make,” the Iranian mullahocracy’s obsessive attacks on “Big Satan” and “Little Satan” honor America and Israel.
Ultimately, it’s all about the Benjamins: thanks to shared values, not just shared interest. A certain brand of transformational, aspirational nationalism, a catalytic identity, a zeal to be useful, constructive, free and redemptive drive America and Israel more than most democracies, thereby driving them together, too.
The other Benjamins – money – lack the power such bonding ideas and defining values enjoy. No lobby could ever manufacture the overlapping images, dreams and ideals that link America with Israel, while making the two peoples so close, too.
That little Israel cheers America is not surprising. But that capitalist America – with its eye on oil – sticks by Israel; that media-driven America, despite constant campaigns to delegitimize Israel, resists such lies; and that Christian America, transcending centuries of Western antisemitism, supports the Jewish state say much about Israel’s value and even more about American values. As Franklin taught: while “a friend in need is a friend indeed,” there is “no better relation than a prudent and faithful friend.”
Lobby-libelers be damned. How lucky Israel and America each are to have each other.
On Thursday morning, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) — which exists as a discrete group solely to support those whom UNRWA identifies as Palestinian-Arab "refugees" resulting from Israel's 1948 War of Independence — claimed that it defines "refugee" in precisely the same manner as does its sister organization, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). UNHCR, in contrast to UNRWA, exists to support "refugees" resulting from every other conflict in the world besides the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The main problem, as the inestimable Hillel Neuer of UN Watch tweeted, is that this is a bald-faced lie.
Your former General Counsel says you're lying.
"UNRWA is the only refugee organization in the world that considers citizens of a state to be refugees, and there are many of these—1.8 million in Jordan—oxymoronic 'citizen-refugees' on UNRWA rolls..."
As Neuer claims, UNRWA's very own former General Counsel, James Lindsay, confirmed in a 2012 Middle East Quarterly essay that UNRWA calcualtes its "refugees" in a very different manner than does UNHCR:
The UNRWA definition makes no mention of citizenship, and UNRWA makes no effort to de-register persons who were formerly refugees but are now citizens of a state. As such, UNRWA is the only refugee organization in the world that considers citizens of a state to be refugees, and there are many of these oxymoronic "citizen-refugees" on UNRWA rolls.
As Lindsay noted in his essay, UNRWA's lack of mention of citizenship is hugely consequential — and it differs from UNHCR's definition of "refugee," which "specifically does not apply to any person who 'has acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality.'"
Therefore, all the millions of descendants of the Palestinian-Arabs displaced by Israel's 1948 War of Independence — a genocidal war launched by the Jewish state's Arab neighbors only after those neighbors flatly rejected the incipient United Nation's previously proffered two-state partition proposal — who have since acquired citizenship in a distinct sovereign nation, such as the 1.8 million Jordanians Neuer references, would not be considered "refugees" under UNHCR's definition but are considered "refugees" under UNRWA's definition.
For almost 70 years, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has created a unique category of "registered refugee" status under which the children and grandchildren of a Palestine refugee, and all their descendants thereafter, are automatically considered "refugees from Palestine."
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is responsible for all refugees except those from Mandatory Palestine. UNHCR does not define as refugees people who acquired new citizenship. More than 2 million "Palestine refugees" hold Jordanian citizenship, most of whom have been born in Jordan and have lived there their entire lives. In addition, 2/3 to 3/4 of the 1 million refugees registered by UNRWA in Lebanon and Syria have left those countries over the decades, with many acquiring citizenship in Western countries. But UNRWA's numbers never decline.
UNHCR does not define as "refugees" people who are internally displaced, that is, who have moved within the same territory. "Palestine refugees" living in the West Bank or Gaza were in fact internally displaced since they have never crossed the internationally recognized border of Mandatory Palestine. According to the rules applied by UNHCR, these people are not refugees. UNRWA is not a neutral humanitarian organization but rather a political actor aimed at perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem.
It is absurd to claim that the Arabs are the indigenous peoples of Israel because virtually all the place names used by local Arabs are non-Arabic in origin, and derived either from biblical Hebrew names or from later Greek or Roman names. The Romans renamed the entire region Syria-Palestina (named for the Philistines and Assyrians) after they destroyed the Second Temple so as to erase its Jewish roots. This was later shortened to Palestina, and it eventually became known as Palestine.
The region commonly referred to as the "West Bank" was known for three millennia as Judea and Samaria. Indeed, Jews derive the very name of their religion and peoplehood from the name Yehuda, the fourth son of Jacob, whose tribe settled in that region. In fact, UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947) referred to the region as Judea and Samaria, as do all maps published before 1948.
Israeli scholar and later president Yitzhak Ben-Zvi wrote in 1932 that west of the Jordan River, 277 villages and sites had names that were similar to or the same as Jewish villages in these locations during Second Temple times. Moreover, 1/4 of the 584 Arab localities in Israel and beyond have ancient biblical names. So, to counter those who attempt to disassociate the Jews from the Land of Israel and claim that they are colonizers, the proof is in the names
I do not know what is the defect in the Jewish religion, and I do not know what is lacking in the children of Israel, whom God preferred to the worlds. Therefore, I find myself compelled to respond to the rebuke and to make clear to the readers that the Jewish religion is a monotheistic religion. The affiliation with the children of Israel is also one of the things that man cherishes. He is proud of the fact that the Israelites are the nation whom God honored by giving the prophets. Therefore I declare that I am very proud that my ancestors were Jewish donkeys.
This is something a Western liberal would write in response to a racist statement. I've never seen anything like this in Arabic media.
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A specialist factory has been setup in the besieged Gaza Strip to peel, cut and back potatoes and provide chips to local and international restaurants, and it’s run entirely by women.
Rosetta factory manager, Riham Al-Madhoun, said the idea for the factory was thought up from the need to provide jobs to locals and protect Palestinian farmers.
She said only women work in the factory because they are more detail-oriented and it provides them with a source of income for their families. Most, she says, are university graduates unable to work because of Gaza’s struggling economy....
The potatoes are sent to restaurants either in fresh or frozen form after being peeled, cut, washed and packaged.
Uncut potatoes are currently being exported to Kuwait, as there are weekly arrangements for shipment.
This is also a remarkable achievement - people who decide on their own to make a difference and who work hard to succeed.
When I read stories like that, I have nothing but admiration for the people who overcome the odds (and who shake off the self-pity) and make a difference.
I don't know anyone who would read the Gaza story and try to come up with an angle to associate the women with terrorism or the abuses of the Hamas-led government.
Yet so many look at anything Israel does and their first, reflexive response is to figure out a way to tear it down. Either by saying that the act is directly criminal (seriously, Israel is exploiting the moon for rare minerals?) or to associate it with evil ("apartheid") or to claim that Israel is only acting that way in order to whitewash its supposed crimes.
It takes a special kind of hate to think that way. And that hate, whether it is against Israel or Jews, is an indication of the mental state of the hater far more than anything else.
Hate is inherently ugly. Even if one wants to make an artificial separation between Jews and the Jewish state to inoculate oneself against being called antisemitic, the hate against Israel is just as disgusting as hate against Jews or any other group.
If only the world could recognize that all kinds of hate are equally repugnant.
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Nashat al-Aktash, a media professor at Birzeit University, appeared on Al Jazeera at the same time as an Israeli during a debate.
That was bad enough, because it was a virtual form of "normalization."
In response to something the Israeli said, Aktash accurately said that the PLO no longer represents all Palestinians, but only a minority of them, based on the voting in the last elections in 2006.
He doubled down on this in his Facebook page about the PLO not representing all Palestinians any more, although he said he was against normalization with Israel and expressed a measure of regret for appearing on TV at the same time with an Israeli.
This is a fairly minor criticism of the PLO. However, the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education freaked out.
The ministry issued a statement saying, "While the Palestinian Basic Law and the Law No. 6 on Higher Education of 2018 guarantees the freedom of expression and academic freedom in institutions of higher education; however, the ministry rejects with clear consistency the ongoing conspiracies to liquidate the PLO, especially by one of the employees of the academic institutions. These institutions are and will remain the most important to protect the Palestinian national memory, at a time when the occupation seeks with all its force to remove the recognition of the organization and its representation as a mountain of the blood of the martyrs and the suffering of the wounded and refugees. "
The statement went on to "affirm its rejection of the ideology based on defamation and abuse of the sacrifices of the Palestinian people and its honorable history....institutions of higher education are still defenders of the rights of this people and its national constants."
The Palestinian Ministry of Education is admitting that the purpose of their universities is not the pursuit of truth but the propagation of propaganda.
There is a pervasive knowledge among Palestinians that there are certain things that one never says in public, and the consequences of admitting basic truths can be severe. It is one of the facts that Western reporters and international NGOs cannot grasp - Palestinians are reluctant to tell the truth about how they really feel about their government or even what they themselves have witnessed, because what they say might be at odds with the official position of the PLO. This is why so many "eyewitnesses" will tell reporters that an Israeli bullet or bomb killed someone even when it is proven that the fatal shot came from their own side. Anything that contradicts the official narrative of the PLO is suppressed, and certainly nothing positive will ever be said about Israel.
The credulous Westerners then go and confidently report their stories based on interviews with people who are in fear of telling the truth.
This is a minor case, but the Ministry of Education - instead of defending one of its professors - instead decided to condemn him for saying something that is an obvious fact, because facts contradict the only "truth" that is allowed to be publicly spoken under Palestinian rule.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Gallant said the vandalism at the Jewish cemetery was “reminiscent of dark days in the history of the Jewish people.”
“Last week, I visited the French Jewish community, which faces antisemitic attacks and a process of assimilation,” he said. “The State of Israel is the safe, national home for the Jews of the world. I strongly condemn the antisemitism in France and call on Jews [to] come home; immigrate to Israel.”
Meyer Habib, a Jewish member of France’s National Assembly, said the recent spate of antisemitic attacks raised “serious questions over the future of Jews in France.”
While aliyah is clearly an option, a report from Paris by Bernard Edinger in The Jerusalem Report indicates that immigration to Israel from France is on the wane rather than the rise.
After reaching a record 24,000 immigrants from 2013 through 2016, according to the Jewish Agency, annual immigration from France dropped in 2018 for the third year running, to only 2,660 (down from 3,500 in 2017, and 5,000 in 2016).
Despite the rise in antisemitism, according to Daniel Benhaim, outgoing head of the Jewish Agency in France, “French Jews feel that the situation is less oppressive than it was in the past, and there is less of a feeling that they should accelerate their departure to Israel.”
While we commend French leaders for speaking out against antisemitism, we urge French authorities to take aggressive action to combat all signs of it, and bring the offenders swiftly to justice.
As for French Jews, they must be on the alert – but should be assured that Israel stands by them, and will always be here for them.
Back in 1994, I was still a middle school student in a small Kurdistani town called Amadiya, which had been under the control of Saddam Hussein until 1991. I recall our history teacher stepping out of the curriculum line and saying, “Although the books favor Arabs over Jews, history indicates Jews lived in Jerusalem prior to Muslims.”
The teacher got away with this statement because Kurdistan was then outside the control of Saddam. Otherwise, he could have easily been executed for making such a comment to students.
The comment made by our teacher stuck in my head, so I always questioned whether the Arab media conveyed the truth regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict.
This month, I was fortunate to visit Israel. Understanding and analyzing a nation requires profound knowledge. While Israel is far from perfect, I learned there are many reasons to respect the country, and that the portrait of Israelis as portrayed by the Arab media is misleading.
When I arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport, the passport control officer separated me from the rest of the travelers and asked me to walk to a corner office where I should wait to be called. I was questioned about my visit to Israel. The officers were very professional and respectful. I did not feel any racism or ill treatment that suggested a predetermined suspicion because of my background. At the end of the questioning, an officer stepped forward with my password and entry permit, saying, “Mr. Amedi, you are good to go.”
When I entered the airport’s main terminal, I noticed many signs in Arabic. “Perhaps it is an international facility, and that could be why Arabic is used,” I thought. One of the first steps in foreign travel is to buy local currency, and I was intrigued that the Israel shekel is printed in Hebrew, Arabic and English!
As I recently reported in the Tower, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) is hosting their Minority Health Conference on February 22, featuring keynote speaker Linda Sarsour. The American-Palestinian activist is known for her hostility towards Israel, having said “nothing is creepier than Zionism” and advising Muslims not to “humanize” Israelis.
Community members are now concerned that the UNC-CH Minority Health Conference may have exploited the Holocaust by using what appears to be a picture of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial to promote the conference on social media. A number of Jewish community members confidently informed me that the image in question, posted to Facebook by the Minority Health Conference on February 19, is of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial.
Michael Abramson, Chairman of the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust, a state agency organized under the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, said, “The Holocaust or any Holocaust Memorial commemorating the Holocaust, should not be used as an advertising tool to promote a political event. When an organization invites Linda Sarsour to speak, the organization is opening itself to politicizing its conference.”
A UNC-CH graduate student remarked, “The conference organizers seem to have a definite fixation on Jews and the topic of Israel. One would expect an academic conference on public health to focus on public health.”
There was a lecture this week at the Egyptian Opera House about Theodor Herzl, described in this article as the "imam of the Zionist."
,Dr. Adel Al-Sayyid, lecturer at the Department of Political Science and Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck, just published a book about Herzl and he discussed his findings.
In the lecture, the author said that the rush of some Arab rulers today to cooperate with Israel without solving the basic question of Palestine will not contribute to resolving the crisis and will not end the conflict and the dispute between Jews And the Arabs.
Al-Sayyid emphasized that if only the Jews would have moved to Argentina or Chile, then the Jewish problem in Europe would have been solved and there would be no Israel to cause such problems.
The lecture discussed Herzl's motivation for Zionism but does not mention the Dreyfus Affair. Therefore, the author could say that the only antisemitism was in Tsarist Russia and the Western European Zionists planned to use Russian Jews as cheap labor to build the land.
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
Weekend long read
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Weekend long read
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1) The INSS reports on a ‘Russian Influence Campaign Against Israel’.
“Since the October 7th massacre, Russia has stepped up its semi-covert
disinformati...
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Sunday, February 24, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
