Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Early sources prove that Muslims chose to build the Dome of the Rock on the site of the Jewish Temples

Arab and Muslim media, especially Palestinian media, routinely deny that there were ever any Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount.

This academic paper by Milka Levy-Rubin about why the Dome of the Rock was built to begin with gives copious amounts of proof that show that the Muslims who built the Dome chose the site precisely because of its association with the two Temples.

The main point of the paper, published by the Bulletin of SOAS at the University of London in 2017, is that the Dome of the Rock was meant to be a rebuilding of the Temple of Solomon which would fulfill the need by Muslims to have their own significant holy place in their conquered lands that could compete with the Hagia Sophia church in Constantinople which claimed to have surpassed in beauty of Solomon’s temple.

Whether she proves this or not is not the point here. She does bring lots of proof from early Muslim literature on the Dome of the Rock that leaves no doubt that Muslims understood the importance of the site and chose it because of its history and holiness to Jews.

Most scholars now agree that the initial motivation behind the Muslim sanctification of the Temple Mount and the building of the Muslim religious monuments on it was the return to the sanctified place of the Jewish Temple. Hence the use of terms such as Bayt al-Maqdis (Hebrew Beit Ha-Miqdash), a term used for both the temple itself and the city of Jerusalem, and Haykal (Hebrew – Heykhal), the search for the Rock of Bayt al-Maqdis and its sanctification and the Muslim tradition regarding the active participation of the Jewish convert Kaʿb al-Ahḅ ār, or, in a later Jewish tradition, the Jews themselves, in locating the sacred spot. The fact that they were building “The Temple of God” (naos Theou) is mentioned also by Anastasius the Sinaite, a contemporary Christian source writing at the time of the building of the Dome.

More importantly, in ʿAbd al-Malik’s Dome of the Rock the rituals themselves seem initially to have been related to Jewish Temple rituals, including the special attire worn by the performers of the ceremonies, the assignment of a special status to Mondays and Thursdays, days of special importance in Jewish liturgy, purification before the rituals, the mode in which incense was used, the call for prayer and more. Although this was short-lived, it was nonetheless the obvious reason for choosing this site. Based on artistic features corroborated by Islamic sources, some scholars, such as Soucek and Shani, claim in fact that it is specifically the Solomonic temple that was being reconstructed in the building of the Dome of the Rock.

As noted by Livne-Kafri, Muslim sources convey the pain of the Jews over the destruction of the Temple and hopes for its resurrection by Muslims. Many of these are found especially in the Fadạ̄ ʾīl Bayt al-Maqdis (Praises of Jerusalem) literature, now recognized as representing early traditions from the second half of the seventh and the eighth century CE. While these traditions have been preserved only in the compilations of al-Wāsiti (d. 1019) and ̣ al-Musharraf b. al-Murajjā (d. c. 1055), Kister discovered that many of them are found in the commentary on the Quran by Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 768).

Moreover, both were careful to note the chain of transmission of the traditions, choosing also to include in their collections Isrāʾīliyyāt, i.e. traditions received from Jews and converts, which were often criticized and omitted in other sources.

Muslim identification with the Jews regarding the Temple Mount is manifest in a rare tradition, which divulges the initial ties to Jewish sentiment, before its dissociation:

From Kaʿb al-Ahḅ ār, it is written in one of the holy books: “Ayrūshalāyim, which means Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis), and the Rock which is called the Temple (al-haykal). I shall send to you my servant ʿAbd al-Malik, who will build you and adorn you. I shall surely restore to Bayt al-Maqdis its first kingdom, and I shall crown it with gold and silver and gems. And I shall surely send to you my creatures. And I shall surely place my throne of glory on the Rock, since I am the sovereign God, and David is the King of the Children of Israel”.

Note the use of the name Ayrūshalayim in its Biblical form, with a translation of the name, and the lām and nūn al-taʾākīd, laying stress on the verbs, and giving it a prophetic aura. The last sentence has clear Jewish connotations. In fact, according to this tradition the temple will be reinstated by ʿAbd al-Malik after which God will once again place his throne of glory there.

The mention of David, the king of the children of Israel here, leaves no doubt that the aim is to restore the ancient Jewish Temple.

This rare tradition exposing the initial connection to Jewish tradition, which was identified as one of the Isrāʾīliyyāt, was later adapted and censured, leaving out David and the Children of Israel.

The idea that God’s throne was located on the rock is an ancient Jewish idea. The Ark of the Covenant was conceived as God’s throne or footstool and Jeremiah prophesies that the whole of Jerusalem will replace the ark as God’s throne (Jer. 3: 16–7). Jewish legend speaks about the “lower throne” which is found underneath the “heavenly throne” and in fact reaches all the way up to it.81 This tradition resonates in Muslim literature as well. Ibn al-Murajjā cites the convert Kaʿb al-Ahḅ ār: “It is said in the Torah that [Allah] said to the Rock of Bayt al-Maqdis: you are my lowest throne and from you I ascended to heaven...”. Rosen-Ayalon and Shani claim that the inside of the Dome itself in fact attempts to portray the setting of God’s throne. This idea goes hand-in-hand with many other features attributed to the sakhra ̣ or to bayt al-maqdis in Muslim tradition which originate in Jewish tradition.

Muslims have always known that the Temple Mount is the site of the Jewish Temples. The Arabic words to refer to the area - Bayt al-Maqdis and Haykal - are directly taken from the Hebrew descriptions of the Temple.

Only in this generation are Muslims being taught otherwise - for purely political and antisemitic reasons.

(h//t Yoel)

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Pro-Palestinian and pro-BDS social media activists are very happy to see the hip-hop group DAM announcing their tour of England next week:

What they don't mention is that DAM is based out of Lod, Israel.

They might identify as Palestinian, but they are Israeli. They might have songs that are anti-Israel, but they pay Israeli taxes. They started their career singing in Hebrew and playing in Tel Aviv clubs. Their first anti-Israel song was written after one of their friends was killed in a shooting - even though he was killed by an Arab.

Their Internet domain is registered in Israel.

By any definition, they are an Israeli hip-hop group that sings now in Arabic.

But BDS isn't boycotting this Israeli band.

No, the woke people behind BDS only boycott "Israeli" artists when they are Jewish. If DAM would bring in a leftist anti-Israel Israeli Jew to sing with them, they would lose every gig in England because of protests.

BDS is pure Jew-hatred dressed up as "anti-Zionist."

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02/26 Links Pt2: The BBC and Guardian as fake news outlets. Enabling antisemites; Thirty-million-page backup of humanity headed to moon aboard Israeli lander

From Ian:

‘Telling Israel’s story in the 21st century will have a lot less to do with the Warsaw Ghetto than it will with Kurdistan and Aleppo.’ An interview with Matti Friedman

Journalist and author Matti Friedman talks to Fathom Deputy Editor Calev Ben-Dor about his acclaimed recent book, Spies of No Country which tells the little known story of the origins of Israeli intelligence by following four of Israel’s first spies through the 1948 War of Independence. He also discusses the importance of the ‘Mizrachi’ component in Israel’s identity, arguing that without grasping its centrality, neither Israelis, Westerners nor those in the Arab world can properly understand the country

CB-D: I recently interviewed Yossi Klein Halevi about his book, Letters to my Palestinian Neighbour and one of the things he emphasised was how he wanted to tell a 21st century Zionist story. You touched on this earlier, in that the story often told is overly Euro-centric – the narrative begins with the pogroms in Russia and ends with the Holocaust. Your book, which is different in many ways, has a similar idea in that if we are to tell the story of Israel today – both to Israelis and outsiders – we need to make it more accurate to include a Mizrachi component.

MF: People still tell the story of Israel as: When the Jews of the Islamic world moved to Israel they joined the story of the Ashkenazim – so the story of Israel is the story of the Jews of Europe. But having thought about this, and having lived here for 23 years, it is clear to me that what actually happened is much closer to the opposite. The remnants of the Jews of Europe come to the Middle East and inserted themselves into the story of the Jews of the Islamic world. The State of Israel is shaped by our contact with Islam and Jews who have lived here for centuries. The dominant narrative of the European Jews is wrong.

Looking ahead, telling Israel’s story in the 21st century will have a lot less to do with the Warsaw Ghetto than it will with Kurdistan and Aleppo. And Western observers find that difficult. But if we want to understand Israel, we are going to have to make an effort to move our centre of consciousness to the Middle East because that’s where we are.

Jewish 'New York Times' writer to pen book on antisemitism

New York Times opinion editor and columnist Bari Weiss will be writing a book about fighting antisemitism.

Weiss has penned a two-book deal with Crown Publishing, a division of Penguin Random House, she announced on Twitter this week. The first book, due out in September, is titled How to Fight Anti-Semitism, and was described as “an urgent wake-up call to all Americans, exposing the alarming rise of antisemitism in this country and in Europe – and explains what we can do to defeat it.”

Weiss gave a speech on the topic of fighting antisemitism on Monday evening, at the Temple Emanu-el Streicker Center in New York City.

The Jewish writer and editor, who grew up in Pittsburgh, worked at Tablet magazine and The Wall Street Journal before landing at The New York Times in 2017.

During her time there, she has written several columns on the Jewish-American experience and antisemitism in the 21st century.

Weiss called US President Donald Trump's refusal to condemn neo-Nazis in Charlottesville an "utter moral failure," and called out Rep. Ilhan Omar for "making accusations based on nothing more than prejudiced stereotypes." Last year, after the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where Weiss held her bat mitzva, she penned a moving op-ed.

David Collier: The BBC and Guardian as fake news outlets. Enabling antisemites.

When did the BBC and the Guardian become ‘fake news’ outlets? Last week the Guardian newspaper, published a letter, written by ‘over 200 Jewish members’. It was compiled to belittle the problem of antisemitism in the Labour Party, and in support of Jeremy Corbyn. For some (as yet to be discovered) reason, BBC News even gave airtime to it. The letter is no more than a rehash of the last time the Guardian decided to give this particular rabble a voice. Nor any different from the one before that, nor the one before that. We can follow this line all the way back to 2002, when the Guardian first gave publicity to the movement that was to become BDS.

Who is inside the rabble? People like Naomi Wimborne Idrissi, who have spoken under the flag of the soon to be proscribed Hezbollah and Elleanne Green, founder of the antisemitic Palestine Live Facebook group. Without the antisemites, this group could not gather a regular ‘minyan‘, which is why they never publicly demonstrate. In other words everybody should know, including those at the BBC and the Letters Editor at the Guardian newspaper, that this fringe crowd is not a legitimate ‘Jewish’ voice.

Last September, the Independent also gave publicity to another list of Jewish organisations that upon closer inspection was also not a legitimate Jewish voice. That list even contained the vile group ‘Scottish Jews against Zionism‘. The face of ‘ScottishJAZ’ is Jolanta Hadzic:

Jolanta is just another person who spreads rabid antisemitism and Holocaust denial:

What do all these letters have in common? That it is always the same names. Some of those involved are not Jewish and some are even publicly outed hard-core antisemites. Both the Independent letter and the Guardian letter have signatories who spread Holocaust Denial. The situation is absurd. There are always people who will stand in opposition to anything. You can find Christians who oppose Christ, people who believe in Santa and Muslims who fast on Yom Kippur. There are more people who believe that they were abducted by aliens, than there are active anti-Zionist Jews in the UK. Would the BBC or Guardian run an article about alien abductees every time they aired a show featuring Brian Cox in order to ‘add balance’?

No of course not, because they would quickly be regarded as fake new junk sites. Which is exactly why we must not let them get away with how they treat Jews.

The head of the PLO's executive committee, Saeb Erekat, said that Hamas had revealed its true nature and had officially removed its mask to prove that it was an operational tool for Donald Trump's "deal of the Century" peace plan.

Erekat said to Voice of Palestine Radio that Hamas and others calling for Abbas to leave his role as president are "functional tools created to carry out the strike against the Palestinian national project and prevent the establishment of an independent state."

There have been some large rallies in Gaza recently, organized by Hamas, calling on Abbas to resign.

It used to be that Palestinians accused each other of being Zionist, or Jewish. Now they are accusing each other of supporting Trump.

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More new captions for old cartoons

Yesterday, I posted some cartoons I took from The New Yorker and changed their captions to be reflective of the casual antisemitism of today's Left.

Here are some more:

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02/26 Links Pt1: Douglas Murray: The UK’s Hezbollah ban is a victory for common sense; Denmark, Australia: UNHRC must stop biased treatment of Israel

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The UK’s Hezbollah ban is a victory for common sense

On the one hand was the military wing of Hezbollah, which has spent decades raising the levels of violence in Lebanon and bringing destruction to various neighbouring countries, including Israel and Syria, as well as further afield. But according to the UK Foreign Office this organisation was a totally separate entity from the one known as Hezbollah (political wing). Of course this division of labour within Hezbollah existed in no other realm other than the minds of a few officials in Whitehall and their counterparts across Europe. It didn’t exist in the eyes of anyone in the region. It didn’t exist when the terrorist group blew up a bus carrying tourists in Bulgaria in 2012, or attacked targets in South America. And it certainly didn’t exist in the eyes of Hezbollah itself, who must have been bemused by the division of labour which the British Foreign Office chose to impose upon people working in the same organisation.

So as I say, a victory for common sense. But also a victory for the many victims of Hezbollah’s terror across several continents. It should also be said that this is a victory for the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, who appears to be chalking up a set of wins at the moment. Though the action he announced this morning is only what any and all of his predecessors could have and should have done (these facts have all been known in Whitehall, as elsewhere, for many years) the fact that he has done it is commendable.

There is only one other thing to say. For years at radical and Islamist demonstrations in London it has been commonplace to see the flag of this terrorist organisation being waved. After such events – such as the Khomeinist ‘Al-Quds Day march’ which takes place in London each year – the police have said that they will not arrest people flying the flag of Hezbollah because the wavers might be demonstrating support for the (unbanned) political wing rather than the (already banned) military wing. From now on that distinction will quite rightly not be able to be held or claimed. So as well as pursuing any and all funds that go through the UK or UK banks for Hezbollah or any of its subsidiaries, it can be presumed from now on anybody flying the Hezbollah flag in Britain will be arrested, tried and imprisoned for supporting a terrorist group. I find myself almost looking forward to ‘Al-Quds day’ this year.

Labour Refuses to Support Hezbollah Ban

Just hours after Labour chose to impose only a one-line whip on the vote on banning Hezbollah, meaning that Labour MPs – including Corbyn – are under no obligation to vote for the ban, a Labour spokesman has gone further and directly challenged Sajid Javid’s decision to ban it:

“The Home Secretary must therefore now demonstrate that this decision was taken in an objective and impartial way, and driven by clear and new evidence, not by his leadership ambitions.”

Hezbollah is already banned in its entirety – including the political wing – by numerous states and organisations from the United States to the Arab League. Even apart from their direct terrorist and military activities, Hezbollah are prolific spreaders of Holocaust denial and egregious anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and their ultimate goal remains the destruction of Israel. Hezbollah itself has mocked the supposed distinction between its military and political wings that its apologists like to promote in the West…

Corbyn once again shows why he is completely unsuitable to be Leader of the Opposition, let alone Prime Minister. Labour MPs who talked themselves into not quitting the party yet because of his second referendum pledge must be having serious second thoughts already…

Pro-Maduro guerillas attack Jewish journalist Annika H. Rothstein

Jewish political writer and journalist Annika H. Rothstein was one of several journalists to be attacked and robbed on Venezuela’s border with Columbia.

Rothstein, a native of Sweden, was detained by paramilitary guerillas sympathetic to embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday.

“I was taken by the pro-Maduro guerilla in San Antonio del tachira, robbed and beaten along with my security and then they forced us to get on our stomachs while they held guns to the back of our heads. They took everything we had,” Rothstein tweeted on Saturday from a stranger’s phone.

“The guerilla was HEAVILY armed and I truly believed they would kill us all, they saw my camera and press pass and put guns on us all. After they finally let us go we only got 10 minutes down the road before gunfire broke out on both sides and we hid in a shed for over an hour,” she also tweeted. “They yelled at me that I was trying to infiltrate Venezuela and that what I was doing was a crime, they took my things and called it contraband and slapped me across the face when I didnt move bc of shock.”

Ricochet Podcast: Annika Rothstein Alive from Caracas

Annika Rothstein @truthandfiction, an independent journalist, has been reporting for some time on the miseries – and resilience – of the Venezuelan people. Last weekend she went to the Colombian border, where government forces had assembled to keep an aid convoy from entering the country.

The story she got was one she was lucky to survive. We speak to her in relative safety, where she recounts the story of a very bad day in a dangerous country – and what the people she encountered say about the forces wrecking Venezuela.

Check out the Palestinian cabinet's new tablet PCs

The Palestinian Cabinet meets every week and issues bland statements about how evil Israel is and what the next official holiday will be.

But this week, the image of the meeting seems to have something new.

Let's look a little closer:

These look like 10 or 11 inch tablet PCs, purchased very recently.

Somehow, there is always money for the things they really want. Which are rarely the same as what their people want.

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Who says Gazans don't have resources to build and manufacture stuff? Terror groups sure can!

A video put out by Islamic Jihad on its military capabilities completely dispels the myth that Gazans cannot get the raw materials they need to build and manufacture things.

The progressive terror group's documentary has a woman interviewing masked terrorists whose voices are electronically altered as she gets tours of their extensive tunnel network.

They built an entire (bomb-proof) Israeli village to attack and shoot rockets to, over and over again.

The video shows hundreds of rockets that were manufactured in Gaza. Plenty of metal to go around for the terrorists!

And here's a lightbox they use in the tunnel to show actual Israeli civilian targets.

Here's the entire video.

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Lately, I have been spending some time reading the Twitter accounts of the ultra-Left haters of Israel.

They live in a bubble, of course. When they get into discussions with a Zionist they will make sure that the entire frame of reference is their accusations against Israel, and Zionists are put on the defensive. One mistake in their argument and the haters claim victory. And if the Zionists point out that other countries do worse things, they are accused of "whataboutism."

It's time to change the script.

Forget defense - go after these guys. Point out how hypocritical and immoral their positions are. Put them on the defensive and make them explain why Palestinians have rejected multiple peace offers, or why ethnic cleansing of Jews is not only permitted but encouraged by these so-called "progressives."

I've changed a lot of my Twitter habits over the past few days to push things in that direction as well:

For those who still believe that Jews lived peacefully under Muslim rule, see how Muslim Jew-hatred was categorized in 1841: https://t.co/Uan9hkUByJ pic.twitter.com/fF0DrsJvwt
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) February 25, 2019

No, criticism of Israel isn't antisemitism.

But denying Jews the right to self-determination - 70 years after the Jewish state was reborn - definitely is. pic.twitter.com/BMpaQWIU4r
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) February 24, 2019

If you believe that the Palestinian Arabs, who never thought of themselves as a nation until the mid-20th century, have more of a claim to nationhood than Jews who have been a nation for 3000 years....

You just might be an antisemite.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) February 24, 2019

Here's one of many reasons no one has taken "Tikun Olam" @richards1052 seriously for years pic.twitter.com/flgfD3PgKS
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) February 24, 2019

Did you mention in your film that Jiddah was an unrepentant PFLP terrorist?

Do you believe his claim that there is no racism towards blacks by Palestinians?

If "no," do you consider the film to be based on truth or do you admit it is anti Israel propaganda?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) February 25, 2019

I have not usually been actively tweeting these to the haters, but that is where the focus should be - ridiculing them and forcing them to defend the indefensible.

And there is a lot that is indefensible. There are polls that show that Palestinians have supported the most heinous terror attacks, there is "pay for slay," there are the other surveys that show that Palestinians who do say they support a two state solution only look at it as a stage to destroying Israel.

Sure, Israel needs to do a better job in describing its side of the story. But defense only gets you so far. Giving the haters free reign over social media to throw mud until something sticks makes the onlookers think there is something to their arguments.

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02/25 Links Pt2: The U.S. Green Party’s Crusade against Israel; Don't fall for the SPLC's lies; Links Between Top Corbyn Aide and Anti-Israel Terror Groups

From Ian:

Amb. Alan Baker: The U.S. Green Party’s Crusade against Israel

Anyone who peruses the website of the U.S. Green Party or any component of the global Green movement would naturally expect to read about the noble aims of a movement devoted to such values as ecological wisdom and environment protection. Such issues touch upon the very sustainability and integrity of our existence on the planet and should logically override partisan, political issues.

In a world that is plagued by environmental and ecological catastrophes and that faces continuing and ongoing moral and humanitarian crises such as willful bombing and wholesale killing of civilians, mass murders, mass expulsions, denial of basic social, cultural and religious rights and freedoms, assaults on immigrants and others, it is curious that the U.S. Green Party has chosen to concentrate most of its efforts on hounding Israel.

This is even more astounding because Israel is one of the only states that excels in the very values treasured by the Green movement - innovative ways to protect the environment, reduce pollution, purify wastewater, desalinate seawater, reforest, and protect natural resources.

It is all the more curious that the U.S. Green Party, as a matter of policy, considers itself sufficiently credible and authoritative as to advocate dismantling the State of Israel and replacing it with "the creation of one secular, democratic state for Palestinians and Israelis on the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan."

On September 12, 2018, the U.S. Green Party wrote to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on behalf of "the oppressed and besieged people of Palestine peacefully protesting on a weekly basis for their Right of Return," accusing Israel of committing crimes against humanity, including genocide.

The U.S. Green Party ignores the grave Palestinian violations of some of the most basic and important ecological and environmental principles that should surely constitute the backbone of any genuine Green party, including deliberate pollution of the air through the massive burning of tires, the deliberate arson of agricultural produce through the use of explosive kites and balloons, and the deliberate pollution of groundwater resources.

Appeals Court reinstates suit against Sheldon Adelson and others over support for Israel

The U.S. Court of Appeals has just reinstated the lawsuit. Reuters reports:

In a 3-0 decision on Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said a federal district judge wrongly concluded in August 2017 that all of the plaintiffs’ claims raised political questions that could not be decided in American courts….

… in Tuesday’s decision, without ruling on the merits, Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson said the only political question concerned who had sovereignty over the Israeli-occupied territories.

She said courts could rule on whether the defendants conspired to expel non-Jews or committed war crimes “without touching the sovereignty question, if it concluded that Israeli settlers are committing genocide.”

Henderson said that presented a “purely legal issue” because genocide violated the law of nations, and could support the plaintiffs’ claim under the federal Alien Tort Statute.

Of note, the courts refers to the territories in question as “disputed territory,” rather than the popular “occupied territory.” Israel has a legal claim to the “West Bank” despite the propaganda otherwise:

1 The ownership of the territory, which comprises the WestBank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, is at the heart of a decades-long dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We refer to it as the “disputed territory.”

The court clearly is wrong on the issue of whether the complaint raises non-justiciable political questions. Everything in the case turns on the issue of whether Israel and Israeli settlers properly control the “disputed territory.” That is a political and foreign policy question.

Hopefully either the D.C. Circuit will hear the case en banc, or the Supreme Court will take the case.

French Philosopher: Jews First Victims of Islamic Immigration

French Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut has claimed that the populist movement in Europe has largely been a reaction to demographic changes, blaming German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Finkielkraut labelled Chancellor Merkel’s infamous “wir schaffen das!” (we can do it!) phrase during the height of the migrant crisis in 2015 as “nonsense”, saying, “You see it yourself: you can not do it. This mix of extreme moralism and economic interests was repugnant,” Die Welt reports.

“The Germans wanted to buy themselves free and finally become a morally impeccable people. But that happens at the expense of the Jews, who are the first victims, as more and more immigrants are let in,” he added.

The philosopher said he would support “responsible, if not extremely restrictive” immigration policies, explaining: “I am convinced that the integration of immigrants is becoming increasingly difficult. If immigration goes on, we will have more reverse phenomena, namely that the French adapt to the culture of Islam or convert more and more.”

Last Saturday Finkielkraut was the victim of anti-semitic abuse hurled at him by a Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) protestor who was later revealed to be an Islamic extremist.

Commenting on the attack, Finkielkraut said: “We are now trying to convince ourselves that this is a reawakening of old nationalist and anti-Semitic combat calls such as ‘France belongs to us’, ‘France for the French’.”

“But the one who called that, the most aggressive of them all, is a Salafist,” he said, adding: “If someone says: France belongs to us, then that means: France is destined to become Islamic soil.”

Yellow Vest leader: I would participate in an Anti-Zionist protest

Jerome Rodriguez, one of the prominent leaders of the yellow vests movement in France, who lost his eye from a rubber bullet fired by the police, told Maariv that his movement was not antisemitic. Nevertheless, he added, "Finkielkraut is someone who goes around letting everyone know what his views were." According to Rodriguez, he did not take part in a demonstration against antisemitism because he was "busy visiting his movement's checkpoints in various parts of the country." However, he added that if he had time, he would prefer to participate in a demonstration organized by an anti-Zionist organization that supports boycotting Israel".

Elder's ripoff of New Yorker cartoons

I had some time on Sunday so I started looking at creating new captions for New Yorker cartoons that make fun of Israel haters.

I posted some of these on Twitter, others will be posted there later this week.

Enjoy.

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Continuing from last time, if you are an aggressor, then it is easy to come up with an enact strategies and tactics involving being an aggressor against your enemies.

This observation should be obvious, yet we so often fail to appreciate its converse: that lack of an aggressive goal limits one’s ability to behave aggressively against others, especially those you have not branded as enemies.

There are many explanations as to why Israel’s friends have failed to meet the challenge of BDS and other anti-Israel propaganda campaigns with adequate force, from weak will among Jewish institutional leaders to historical factors that lead Jews to value accommodation with non-Jewish majorities over sticking up for ourselves.

Such criticisms are certainly well founded, but they fail to take into account that even if we were disposed or led to fight rather than get along, we would still need a destructive end-point to guide strategies and tactics that would get us to that destructive goal.

But if you were to ask even the most vocal critics of the Jewish community’s response to BDS, I suspect you would find almost no one who wants to see the world’s Muslim’s disbursed, Arab states dismantled, or other outcomes likely to get large numbers of people killed, despite the fact that dismantlement, disbursement and death are the fates hoped for and worked towards by Israel’s enemies.

In fact, both militant and non-militant defenders of Israel are united in the desire to see Israel left in peace, its citizens unthreatened and unmolested, and the Jewish condition normalized. But if these are the goals we seek, how can we be expected to attack those that attack us with matching levels of ferociousness?

Even if such levels of attack could be initiated, possibly through campaigns designed to tell the truth about the Arab world (including their treatment of women, gays and minorities) as incessantly and aggressively as they tell lies about us, BDS has taught us that such campaigns would need to go on not for months or years, but decades. Can a community that longs to live at peace with others be realistically expected to put in the time, effort, resources and organization into behaving in such a way for a century?

But it actually gets worse. For, as readers of Divest This know, BDS does not limit the damage it causes to Jews alone. Whenever they import the Middle East conflict onto a college campus, or drag an academic association, church, municipality, or even a humble food coop into their campaigns, they do untold damage to everyone making up those communities, creating needless strife and conflict over an issue that is only on the agenda because the boycotters want to leverage other people’s reputation for their own political gain.

Are we ready to do the same? And how about all the effort the Israel haters have been putting into ginning up hatred between races and religions in their war against the Jewish state? Are we ready to stop trying to heal rifts in our society and instead exacerbate the pathologies driving the world to ruin, just to see enemies harmed?

In addition to our lack of militant goals, another reason we’re not ready to harm others to get our way is that it is wrong, and even if we (like our foes) are able to delude ourselves into thinking a descent into evil represents virtue and courage, is this really who we want to become?

Finally, even if we can distort our souls enough to fight fire with fire for decades in hope of seeing someone else destroyed, our foes already have a fifty-year head start on us, not to mention alliances with dozens of powerful nation states controlling vast wealth and a stranglehold on organizations like the United Nations and other major institutions. If anyone can explain a strategy for generating another 49 Jewish states or finding other ways to dominate global organizations, I’m all ears.

Our inability to take on Israel’s enemies by becoming more like them should not be considered a weakness, but an opportunity since it forces us to look for alternative strategies that meet our goals while limiting our enemy’s ability to achieve theirs. This is in fact what Israel and, to a large extent, its supporters have done (however imperfectly) since Israel was founded seventy years ago.

What are the strategies that have left Israel sending spaceships to the moon while its would-be destroyers sink ever deeper into genocide, ignorance, poverty and weakness? They involve manning the walls, celebrating life over death, and making every Israeli and every friend of Israel count, while not standing in the way of Israel’s enemies having to live with the consequences of their own choices.

Thoughts on the strategies and tactics associated with those four ideas next time.

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.