Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 07, 2019

03/07 Links Pt1: How Influential Is AIPAC? Less Than Beer Sellers, Public Accountants, and Toyota; PA warns: 'Without terrorist salaries we will nix Paris Protocol'; Debating pay-to-slay at the UN

From Ian:

How Influential Is AIPAC? Less Than Beer Sellers, Public Accountants, and Toyota

AIPAC has a somewhat unique model that a simple dollar comparison might miss. AIPAC-linked activists often begin donating to future members of Congress early in their political careers, thus encouraging other pro-Israel donors to fund and otherwise support candidates with long-term promise. Pro-Israel activists are a political force, but the reasons apparently go beyond sheer spending power or the influence of AIPAC-linked networks. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, pro-Israel donors were’ the 34th largest-giving interest group to members of Congress in 2018, slightly behind the nonprofit sector and slightly ahead of building-trades unions, neither of which are generally thought of as the invisible hand guiding American policy.

Even a large and impactful donor network is fairly useless without a Washington operation that can translate its priorities into actual legislation. The way AIPAC is talked about, you’d think they’d be a lobbying juggernaut, surely one of the largest in the nation’s capital.

Wrong again: For the period between 1998 and 2018, AIPAC didn’t make a dent in the Center for Responsive Politics’ list of the top-spending lobbying groups. The US Chamber of Commerce spent $1.5 billion during that span, with the National Association of Realtors coming in a distant second, at $534 million. In 2018, top spenders included Google parent company Alphabet, which spent $21.7 million in Washington, and Facebook, which shelled out over $12 million to lobbyists that year. The third-largest spender of 2018 was the Open Society Policy Center, a project of the notably Israel-critical billionaire George Soros, which ran up a $31.5 million tab in its attempts to influence the federal government. That nearly doubled the organization’s $16 million in spending in 2017, another year that AIPAC failed to crack the top 50, unlike such notorious civic menaces as American Amusements and AARP.

In 2018, total pro-Israel lobbying spending was around $5 million, of which AIPAC accounted for $3.5 million. In contrast, Native American casinos spent around $22 million that year. By Tablet’s count, AIPAC was the 147th highest-ranked entity in terms of lobbying spending in 2018. Their expenditures were about the same as International Paper, a company which is seldom tweet-stormed or even written about. The American Association of Airport Executives and Association of American Railroads outspent AIPAC by nearly a million dollars each—sensible, given the rivalry between the respective modes of transportation whose interests they represent. It’s $2 million behind both American Airlines and the Recording Industry Association of America, entities whose malign influence has gone regrettably underexamined over the years.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Arresting, Torturing Journalists

Under both the PA and Hamas, Palestinian journalists are expected to serve as faithful soldiers and mouthpieces for both their leaders and their people. In the world of the Palestinians, a journalist who dares to criticize his leaders is typically denounced as a "traitor" or "Zionist agent." That is undoubtedly the reason Palestinian journalists living under the PA and Hamas are afraid to report anything that would reflect negatively on Palestinian leaders.

In the world of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the only "good" journalists are those who report negatively about Israel. Independent journalists therefore find themselves forced to seek work in non-Palestinian media organizations, including some in Israel. Even then, these journalists, especially those who live under the PA and Hamas, engage in massive self-censorship.

The PA and Hamas crackdown on journalists is not a new practice and does not come as a surprise. On the contrary, the surprise would be the day we see a Palestinian journalist living in Ramallah open his or her mouth concerning Abbas or any of his top officials.

What is hard to understand are the continued closed mouths of the international community and media towards this ongoing assault on the freedom of the media in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Had Nasser and Abu Arafeh been arrested by the Israeli authorities, their "plight" would have been splashed over headlines across the globe.

What Declassified Vatican Archives Might Reveal about the Church and World War II

On Monday, Pope Francis announced his intention to open in their entirety the Vatican archives of Pius XII, who served in the papacy from 1939 to 1958. Even after the publication of thousands of documents in the 1960s and 1970s, Pius’s wartime activities have remained the subject of intense controversy, with one author dubbing him “Hitler’s pope” while others have argued that he saved hundreds, if not thousands, of Jewish lives. David Kertzer, a scholar of the wartime church, explains why the archives matter:

Less noticed in initial accounts of the announcement is the fact that Francis’s opening of the Pius XII archives makes available not only the seventeen million pages of documents in the central Vatican archives, but many other materials in other Church archives. Not least of these are the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition) and the central archives of the Jesuit order. They, too, are likely to have much that is new to tell us. . . .

In an effort to respond to critics, the Holy See commissioned four Jesuits to plow through the archives and publish a selection of documents shedding light on the controversy. The result, over a sixteen-year period beginning in 1965, was twelve thick volumes containing thousands of documents. Although skeptics suspected the Jesuit editors of selecting out documents unflattering to the Church, the volumes are far from a simple whitewash of this troubled history. . . .

[In 1999], the Vatican announced the creation of an unusual interreligious historical commission, composed of three Catholic and three Jewish scholars, tasked with shedding light on the role played by the Vatican as the Holocaust unfolded. After examining the twelve volumes of documents that had earlier been published, its members concluded that they could not draw any adequate historical conclusions without access to the archives themselves. When the Vatican refused to grant their request, the members decided to suspend their work, a decision that generated both embarrassment and polemics. . . .

Why does anyone take the idiot hypocrite Ariel Elyse Gold seriously?

Code Pink leader and anti-Israel activist Ariel Elyse Gold was on i24News yesterday defending Ilhan Omar's antisemitism.

But why does anyone take this idiot hypocrite seriously enough to even put her on the news?

Yesterday she proudly disrupted a press conference by former Muslim women who are now pro-Israel. Obviously those women must be silenced. Only some women have the right to free speech, according to this idiot.

She published an article yesterday entitled "Enjoy Your High, But Not at the Expense of Palestinian Human Rights" which is breathtaking in how little it makes sense. She claims that Israel's booming medical cannabis industry is a cover to whitewash Israeli crimes because ...some of the people involved were probably in the IDF. Like nearly very Jew in Israel.

Here's a section:

The company Together Pharma lists Guy Atia, an “expert in the security field,” as co-director and controlling shareholder, and retired Brigadier General Meir Ben Yishai as being in charge of “defense and security.” While it isn’t clear exactly what roles these two men play in the company, usually in Israel, the terms “defense” and “security” have some link to Israel’s military occupation and settlement economy.

Something bad is going on - she just knows it!

Is there any indication that buying Israeli medical marijuana products helps Israel's "occupation?" Not the slightest. And Gold doesn't bring any. She just reports "links" between people and their IDF activities because that is prima facie evidence that every Israeli industry is evil.

But links only go one way. Here she is at Representative Rashida Tlaib's office supporting Ilhan Omar:

Behind her we can see members of Neturei Karta, the fringe anti-Israel Jewish group.

Who are also anti-gay.

Gold is in solidarity with the most anti-liberal group one can imagine. She has links with an anti-gay organization - and by her logic in the cannabis article, that makes her anti-gay!

If she was "progressive" she would never agree to be linked to NK. But since NK is anti-Israel, then she is proud to be associated with them, no matter their own politics. (Miko Peled was also there.)

To Gold, wanting the destruction of the Jewish state is more important than any other so-called "progressive" principle. That is the basis of her intersectionality.

Which proves that she is not progressive at all - just a publicity hungry airhead.

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Yesterday I "stormed Al Aqsa" and "performed Talmudic rituals"

Yesterday, my wife and I were privileged to visit the Temple Mount, on a personal tour by Rabbi Chaim Richman of the Temple Institute.

I hope to make a video about the visit where you can hear what Rabbi Richman has to say about the holiest place in Judaism.

We were in a group of perhaps 20 Jews, men and women and even an infant, along with a number of police. Most of the group listened to a charismatic barefooted Israeli who described the Temple and the importance of the site in Hebrew.

At one point, though, we were able to pray the afternoon Mincha service - with a minyan, a quorum - facing the place of the Holy of Holies, from the east. Answering "Amen" to a Kaddish prayer that has a different wording when said on this holy spot.

Yes, I was one of the "settlers" who performed a "Talmudic ritual" while "storming Al Aqsa," as the Arab media likes to characterize this.

The prayers were mostly silent, but there is no way that the Muslim Waqf guards were not aware of what we were doing. After all, in years past, people would be warned and harassed for just moving their lips, pretending to be on the phone - anything that looked like prayer. And here we were, openly praying, for nearly five minutes, quietly and with utmost respect for the holy site.

Certain parts of the Amida have a lot more meaning when praying at that spot!

I'm not saying anything new that isn't already known. I posted a video of people praying only a few weeks ago from that same spot, published on an Arab site.

By the way, those stones visible in the lower picture are debris from previous building activities by Muslims on the site, and if one has time to spend (which the guards don't let one have) you can see that some are clearly parts of columns that were carved - possibly from the Second Temple itself.

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In its hatchet job on Israel released last week, the UN Human Rights Council wrote:

Some activities, such as the launching of incendiary kites, cutting barbed wire or tyre burning, began to be organized by self-declared “units”, some of them through their own Facebook pages. The commission found no evidence to suggest that they were directed or coordinated by armed groups.

The document later on referred to incendiary balloons as well, but only said that they were launched by "demonstrators" - which means civilians to them - and with no reference to such attacks being launched by armed groups.

The only problem is that Gaza terror groups happily brag about being the organizers of units to launch firebombs on balloons.

I already posted one video by Islamic Jihad about their balloon firebomb unit. They just posted another one, seemingly to mock the UNHRC report that effectively exonerated them.

The video also shows Islamic Jihad members engaging in the "demonstrations" making it very clear that from their perspective, these border riots are purely military.

The UNHRC bent over backwards to ignore any evidence that the demonstrations had a military component because then the rules that apply to them are the laws of armed conflict, quite different from the laws that govern police actions towards civilians.

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03/06 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Why the Labour party cannot deal with its antisemitism; Sanders Fills Ranks With Anti-Israel Advocates Tied to Anti-Semitism Scandal

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Why the Labour party cannot deal with its antisemitism

The left has absorbed the Marxist concept that the world is divided into the powerful and the powerless. Those with power can never be good; those without power, like the Palestinians, can never be bad. Those who make money have power over those who don’t. Those who make money are bad; those without money are good. Jews make money. Therefore Jews are powerful and bad.

Worse, Israel is militarily powerful. That is seen as its crime; and it’s also why anti-Israelism is umbilically connected to antisemitism. The fact that Jews are now equipped with military power, albeit solely to defend themselves against annihilation, breathes life into the paranoid delusion that the Jews are so powerful they pose a threat to everyone else.

Antisemitism is now surging across continents in an unholy alliance between the left, neo-Nazis and the Islamic world.

Such a derangement of reason on a global scale is terrifying and, as with antisemitism throughout the ages, ultimately unfathomable. For the west, however, support for Palestinianism has clearly destroyed its moral compass.

The left believes that it is morally unimpeachable and simply incapable of racism. Its support for the Palestine cause demonstrates and reinforces its self-righteousness.

It won’t begin to address its own antisemitism, therefore, until and unless it acknowledges that the evil it has supported abroad has seeded itself not just in the Labour party but throughout the “anti-racist” world.

Sanders Fills Ranks With Anti-Israel Advocates Tied to Anti-Semitism Scandal

Two of Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I., Vt.) top advisers have deep ties to the anti-Israel community and were chastised several years ago for their involvement in an anti-Semitism scandal that gripped a prominent Washington, D.C., think-tank.

Sanders, a self-proclaimed Democratic-socialist who has once again thrown his hat into the ring for a 2020 presidential bid, has begun to rely in recent months on two staffers: Foreign policy adviser Matt Duss and campaign manager Faiz Shakir, both of whom faced charges of promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories during their time at the Center for American Progress, or CAP, a liberal think-tank.

Sanders's dependence on Duss and Shakir has been making waves in the pro-Israel and Jewish community in recent months, given the duo's prominent role in CAP's 2012 anti-Semitism row, which saw several staffers at the organization's Think Progress blog rebuked for invoking age-old canards about Jewish control of money and politics. Duss has faced additional scrutiny in the subsequent years for publishing Nazi-era propaganda posters and steadfastly standing against the U.S.-Israel alliance

As the matter of anti-Jewish bias in prominent D.C. political circles makes its way back into the news following a series of anti-Semitic comments by freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), many in the pro-Israel community are beginning to raise questions about Sanders' choice to fill his ranks with individuals closely tied to some of the most prominent anti-Israel causes.

In 2012, Duss was CAP's Middle East director, while Shakir served as editor-in-chief of the group's Think Progress blog, which has since become regarded as a hotbed for anti-Israel activism.

During their tenure at CAP, Duss and Shakir emerged at the forefront of a scandal involving several Think Progress bloggers who accused pro-Israel Jews and members of Congress of being "Israel firsters," a term implying that those who support the Jewish state have dual loyalties.

The scandal rocked CAP for several months and drew condemnation across the board, including from the Obama administration, which distanced itself from Duss, Shakir, and the rest of Think Progress's former staff.

Bernie Sanders staffer fired for anti-Netanyahu rant hired to run B’Tselem USA

The Israeli human rights organization B’tselem said Tuesday that former Bernie Sanders adviser and long-time anti-occupation activist Simone Zimmerman has been appointed the new director of its American operations.

Zimmerman is an “American Jewish anti-occupation activist” who will “work to amplify B’Tselem’s voice among US policy makers and the broader public,” the rights group said in an official statement.

“As a Jewish activist who has worked for years to challenge my own community’s denialism about the reality of the occupation, I am excited to take on my new role,” the statement quoted Zimmerman as saying. “I hope to deepen the partnership between the anti-occupation movements working on the ground and those working here in the USA.”

In 2016 Zimmerman was suspended from her role as adviser to US Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign after reports surfaced of her harsh and foul-mouthed criticism of Israeli policies and of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

After Zimmerman, a former J Street student activist, was hired by the Sanders campaign, it was discovered she previously wrote on Facebook, “Bibi Netanyahu is an arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative asshole,” according to the Washington-based Free Beacon.

Honest Reporting: Boycotting Israel – Is it Free Speech?

Boycotting Israel and other Western countries
Most of the Western world treats boycotts similarly to the United States. For example, courts and legislative bodies in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Chile, and others have struck down local or private BDS activities or even passed anti-BDS laws, on similar principles.

The Irish senate advanced legislation banning products originating from Israeli settlements in disputed territories, yet Ireland’s attorney general opposes passing the measure into law, warning that it may violate European Union trade rules, which supersede the individual laws of EU member states.

Indeed, even the less onerous measure of applying special labels to settlement goods has been struck down in other EU countries, such as Greece.

While EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, declared that boycotting Israel constitutes “free speech,” this is merely a talking point which does not constitute binding law. By contrast, the EU’s 2016 Report on Competition Policy interprets the EU trade law as including, “the need to fight against unfair collective boycotts.” The chair of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Israel confirmed that this language was indeed intended to prevent private boycotts against Israel (as well as others) as a matter of EU trade law.

EU law is evolving, but its underlying philosophy appears to be that no party should be allowed to interfere with the trade priorities set by the EU itself.

In conclusion
There was indeed an American boycott against South Africa: enacted by the United States Congress under the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. The United States also enacted an embargo against Cuba, waged economic warfare against Japan, imposed sanctions on Iran, and more. The common denominator among them is that they were imposed by the United States federal government. The Constitution does not hold that boycotts are illegal, only that private, concerted boycotts of foreign nations are illegal.

Once we strip away the slogans and propaganda we see the truth: a boycotting Israel has never been “free speech,” by any laws. Open debate is essential to democracy, but taking illegal, private actions against foreign nations undermines our entire system of government.

70 years of transcripts from UK’s parliament show clear ‘obsession’ with Israel

Using a new analytics tool, researcher David Collier picks up 17,667 parliamentary references to the Jewish state — more than Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine combined

By expending so much energy discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, West Bank settlements or Gaza, parliamentarians – who have only a finite amount of time to spend in debates – grapple less with issues around Islamist extremism, terrorism, corrupt and undemocratic governance, economic weakness, and Iranian expansionism which lay at the root of the Middle East’s ills.

Collier also notes the rise in mentions of anti-Semitism in parliament in recent years.

“It is part of a trend. It isn’t tied to a single individual, nor can accusations of anti-Semitism simply be a plot to unseat Corbyn,” he asks. “If the anti-Semitism ‘smear’ exists to unseat Corbyn, why were there spikes of discussion in 2004, ‘8, ‘9, ’11 and ’14?”

“The rise of Corbyn is linked to the rise of anti-Semitism, in that extremist ideologies have entered the mainstream … Corbyn is a symptom of a problem that is getting worse,” he writes.

Collier argued to The Times of Israel that the increasing preoccupation with Israel and rising anti-Semitism were “absolutely connected.”

“Whilst not all anti-Israel activity is rooted in anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism is part and parcel of anti-Israel activism,” he said. “Any rise in one, will inevitably bring about a rise in the other.”

Cartoon of the Day: Fine wine

Continuing my re-captioning of single-panel cartoons....

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Democrats Relax On Global Warming After Ayatollah Issues Fatwa Forbidding Climate To Change (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Tehran, March 6 - A group that, in its efforts to persuade the public to support a treaty governing Iran's nuclear program assured the public of a religious ruling by a leading Iranian Islamic scholar against the development of atomic weapons, announced today that the same Islamic authority has issued a ruling that bars earth's atmosphere from increasing in temperature to any degree that threatens ecological stability, obviating international efforts to prevent climate change. As such, the group declared, climate change will no longer occupy a place in the group's ideology, campaigns, or rhetoric.

Leaders of the Democratic Party and former Obama administration officials told reporters at a Washington, DC press conference that the inviolate nature of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's fatwas renders further efforts to forestall atmospheric and oceanic warming pointless, just as an earlier fatwa they claimed he had issued rendered unnecessary any meaningful enforcement measures to ensure Iran complies with the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry urged his Democratic colleagues to free up organizational resources and time for other important areas of concern now that Khamenei had solved the climate crisis. "Just a few short weeks ago our own Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez raised the alarm that we have only twelve years to address climate change," he noted. "But that's no longer the case. My friend Foreign Minister Javad Zarif assures me the ayatollah has now put out a fatwa forbidding the climate to change, and whatever his fatwas say, Javad tells me that's what happens. A Democratic refocus on other issues such as Israel-Palestine will bring significant benefits, in addition to shutting down right-wing criticism of our sincere efforts to avert crisis."

Obama thanked Iran's Supreme Leader for the fatwa. "I wish to express my gratitude to His Excellency Ayatollah Khamenei for yet another important step in making the world a better place," he declared in a written statement. "Just as I referred to an anti-nuclear-weapons fatwa that [former adviser] Ben Rhodes and I promised Americans definitely exists, and definitely means we can trust Iran, I am gratified that we now have another reason to say wonderful things about our partners in Tehran."

Obama and Kerry made sure to note that President Donald Trump, by contrast, had made no such pronouncement barring the climate from change, a fact that they claimed calls into question his administration's willingness to tackle the real threats facing the country and the world.

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03/06 Links Pt1: Ruthie Blum: Nothing new in Ramallah; Honest Reporting: Debunking the ‘Disproportionate Force’ Charge; Germany’s celebration of Iran’s murderous regime is nothing new

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Nothing new in Ramallah

Abbas clearly intends to adhere to this fatwa, as he made clear during a trip to Egypt in January.

"I will not end my life as a traitor," he told reporters in Cairo. "I can say 'no,' and I have a people that can say 'no' beside me. … The doors are closed to the U.S. As long as it does not retract its decisions against the Palestinian people, no Palestinian should meet with the American leadership, no matter what their role is."

More recently, on a visit to Iraq on Monday, Abbas told leaders in Baghdad that the Trump administration "is encouraging Israel to be a state above the law," as well as "biased and not suitable to be a sponsor of peace talks."

So much for the "deal of the century," whose details have yet to be revealed. So much for the fantasists in Israel and abroad who continue to harbor any hope.

Honest Reporting: Debunking the ‘Disproportionate Force’ Charge

It’s unequivocal that greater numbers of Palestinians than Israelis have been killed or injured during periods of intense conflict. This has repeatedly led to accusations that Israel has employed “disproportionate force” for security measures and during military operations over the years.

The term has has been abused by activists, journalists, non-governmental organizations and politicians who have employed it without bothering to research precisely what disproportionate actually means in terms of international law. One thing it does not mean an imbalance in casualty figures proves Israeli disproportionate force.

So what does it mean? Here are some explanations.

Operation Cast Lead

The UN’s Goldstone Report into the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead, later recanted by its author Judge Richard Goldstone, asserted that Israel had launched a “deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”

Back in 2011, former commander of UK forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp stated in response:

no one has been able to tell me which other army in history has ever done more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone.

In fact, my judgments about the steps taken in that conflict by the IDF to avoid civilian deaths are inadvertently borne out by a study published by the United Nations itself, a study which shows that the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in Gaza was by far the lowest in any asymmetric conflict in the history of warfare.

The UN estimate that there has been an average three-to one ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in such conflicts worldwide. Three civilians for every combatant killed.

That is the estimated ratio in Afghanistan: three to one.

In Iraq, and in Kosovo, it was worse: the ratio is believed to be four-to-one. Anecdotal evidence suggests the ratios were very much higher in Chechnya and Serbia.

In Gaza, it was less than one-to-one.

Critics of America's Support for Israel Cannot Escape History

Certain of our recently elected congressional representatives view U.S. support for Israel as inexplicable. They are dismissive of explanations of shared values or strategic importance. They ask what reason other than a malignant influence could possibly explain why the U.S. has supported Israel and Zionism.

They fail to appreciate the extent to which the restoration of the Jewish people to sovereignty in their ancient homeland has been deeply ingrained in the religious, political and social fabric of America.

Even before there was a U.S., our Founding Fathers and even their forefathers longed to restore the Jews to their ancient homeland. The Puritans saw themselves as a "New Israel." Increase Mather, the Puritan leader, taught his followers that one day the "Jews would return to their homeland and establish the most glorious nation in the world." The Yale University coat of arms is adorned with the Hebrew words meaning "light and perfection."

Benjamin Franklin recommended that the Great Seal of the United States be an illustration of the Hebrews fleeing Egypt for their homeland. John Adams wrote in 1819: "I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation." This all occurred when the Jews in America numbered only in the thousands.

Abraham Lincoln wrote of "restoring the [Jews] to their national home in Palestine" and that relieving their oppression was "a noble dream and one shared by many Americans." This support was echoed by Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover.

While recent congressional critics of America's support of Israel might dismiss this history, they cannot escape it.

Gallup: Americans still overwhelmingly support Israel, antisemitic conspiracy mongers hardest hit

The Democrat Party is trying to come to grips with the antisemitic agitation by Minnesota Rep. Ihlan Omar, backed by Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that Americans who support Israel do so for money and have pledged allegiance to Israel.

These dual-loyalty and disloyalty accusations are echoed by left-wing and Islamist Democrat activists.

We have made the point in the past that support for Israel was at historical highs, as measured by Gallup. When Gallup released its results in March 2018, Gallup: Americans’ support for Israel increases to historical high:

These findings reinforce a point I’ve made many times. The so-called “Israel Lobby” is the American people.

Gallup just released its 2019 report, and finds that support for Israel over the Palestinians has dropped slightly, returning to the level in 2009. This drop was largely due to a drop in support among Republicans, which is hard to understand. So we’ll have to see if this is a blip, or a long-term trend. As other polling has showed, the weakest support for Israel comes from liberal Democrats.

Gallup reports, Americans, but Not Liberal Democrats, Mostly Pro-Israel:
The majority of Americans remain partial toward Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with 59% saying they sympathize more with the Israelis whereas 21% sympathize more with the Palestinians. While still widespread, sympathy toward Israel is down from 64% in 2018 and marks the lowest percentage favoring Israel since 2009. Meanwhile, the 21% sympathizing more with the Palestinians, statistically unchanged from a year ago, is the highest by one point in Gallup’s trend since 2001.

These results are based on Gallup’s annual World Affairs survey, conducted each February. The 2019 poll was conducted Feb. 1-10 prior to Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s recent remarks questioning U.S. support for Israel and suggesting that some supporters of Israel are pushing for “allegiance to a foreign country.” ….

This story is from AFP but variants of it are all over Arab media.

A Moroccan atheist of Jewish descent but who describes himself as Arab and Berber is telling the world what the Israel-haters want it to hear:

For rights activist Sion Assidon, a Moroccan of Jewish descent who also describes himself as Berber and Arab, Zionism breeds anti-Semitism in today's Arab world but aversion to Israel's policies is not a form of racism.

"Anti-Zionism is a political position and if declaring oneself to be 'anti-Zionist' is seen as a racist act, that is serious," said the 70-year-old campaigner who opposes French President Emmanuel Macron proposal to turn anti-Zionism into a crime.

A keen historian and business owner based in Mohammedia, a city on the Atlantic between Rabat and Casablanca, Assidon believes "anti-Semitism is above all a form of Judaeophobia within the European space linked to the view of the (Catholic) Church" over the centuries.

There is of course a long history of Arab and Muslim antisemitism, Not nearly as bad as in Europe but not trivial, either, with blood libels, pogroms and rampant discrimination. "Jews are descended from apes and pigs" is hardly a Catholic church doctrine.

"Coexistence between communities has worked quite well, but today there's a dangerous slide: the Jews, far fewer in number, are becoming an abstraction and their image, in the minds of the young, tends to be reduced to the one who is imposing the brutal occupation of Palestine," said Assidon.

As a result, according to Assidon, anti-Semitism in Morocco and other Arab countries is fed in part by the resurgence of conspiracy theories born in 19th century Europe and reinforced by "the total impunity granted to Israel" despite its policies of "bloody repression" censored on numerous occasions by the United Nations.

Assidon, ironically with the first name of Sion (Zion), is Jewish by an accident of birth but it is enough for him to make headlines "as a Jew" and to act as an apologist for Arab antisemitism, blaming it all on Europe - as if Arabs deciding to hate Jews is somehow less disgusting because part of it comes from the influence of Christian antisemitism.

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The Arab Organisation for Human Rights in Britain republished a report from Middle East Monitor late last year complaining about Lebanese Palestinians who are leaving terrible conditions in Lebanon for Europe.

One wonders what "human rights" actually means in Arabic.

The depopulation of Lebanon’s refugee camps, which is happening at an alarming rate, should worry Palestinians more than any other current issue.

I spoke to Samaa Abu Sharar, a Palestinian activist in Lebanon and the director of the Majed Abu Sharar Media Foundation. She told me that the topic of conversation among refugees has changed in recent years. “Whereas almost everybody from young to old once spoke about their wish of returning to Palestine one day,” she explained, “at present the majority, particularly the youth, only express one wish: to leave for any other country that will accept them.”

It is common knowledge that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are marginalised and mistreated more than most when compared with other refugee populations in the Middle East. They are denied most basic human rights enjoyed by Lebanese citizens or other foreigners in Lebanon, and even rights granted to refugees under international conventions. This includes the right to work, as they are denied access to 72 different professions.

Apparently abandoned in a hopeless situation, with a life of neglect and utter misery in 12 UN-registered refugee camps and a number of unofficial “gatherings” across Lebanon, Palestinian refugees have striven to better themselves for many years, driven by the dream of going back to their homeland one day.

However, the refugees and their Right of Return are no longer a priority for the Palestinian leadership. In fact, this has been the case for nearly two decades, and now the situation has worsened. Since the start of the Syrian war in 2011, tens of thousands more refugees have flooded the camps, which already lacked most basic services. Their misery was accentuated further when UNRWA, under intense US pressure and funding cuts, was forced to cancel or downgrade many of its essential services upon which refugees depend.

A suspiciously-timed census, the first of its kind, by the Lebanese Central Administration of Statistics and conducted jointly with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics last December, resolved that the number of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon stands at only 175,000. The timing was interesting because the survey was conducted at a time that the US Administration was keen to reduce the “official” number of Palestinian refugees in anticipation of any future agreement between the PA and Israel. According to UNRWA statistics, though, there are more than 450,000 Palestinian refugees registered with the agency in Lebanon alone.

Clearly there are those who are keen to rid Lebanon of its Palestinian population....

“There is more than one organised network facilitating the migration of Palestinians at prices that have recently gone down to make it more accessible to a larger number of people,” Abu Sharar told me. The conclusion that many of these young men and women refugees now draw is that, “There is no future for them in Lebanon.”

This is not the happy, triumphant ending that generations of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have hoped and fought for over the years.

Ignoring the miserable plight of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is now coming at a heavy price. Relegating their plight to “final status negotiations”, a pipe dream that never materialised, is now leading to a two-fold crisis: the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people is getting worse, and we are witnessing the systematic destruction of one of the main pillars of the Palestinian struggle — the refugees’ inalienable Right of Return.

While the article makes it clear that Palestinians in Lebanon have it really, really bad, to the AOHR the real problem is that when they leave they may no longer be pawns to pressure Israel for "return."

Which is an amazing stance for a supposedly human rights group to take.

Somehow, they are claiming that the exodus of Palestinians from Lebanon, which has been going on for decades, is connected with Trump's "Deal of the Century."

If the US was really behind finding new homes for oppressed Lebanese Palestinians, it should win a Nobel Peace Prize!*

A supposedly human rights group is upset that Palestinians are leaving a hellhole to find a better life elsewhere, The entire reason is because the fewer Palestinians in UNRWA camps, the less of a problem they are for Israel.

It is a breathtakingly cynical thought process that prefers that their human rights be abused daily just for the tiny extra amount of symbolism that comes from pointing to their miserable conditions and pretending that it is Israel's fault.

* (Not in 2019, though - I want to maximize my chances...)

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Yes, these are Palestinian Arabs in an Israeli prison

Palestine Today quotes an Arab NGO as saying that Israeli actions to jam illegal cell phone use in Israeli prisons is harming the health of Palestinian prisoners.

According to the quoted report supposedly from the British-based Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK, electronic jamming devices recently provided to Israeli prisons from a company called Netline with jammers manufactured in China use the frequency of 2690 MHz "in closed areas in violation of international standards" set by the World Health Organization.

I couldn't find the report from the AOHR site. I found nothing at the WHO site that said that there was any evidence of health risks from RF radiation at any but the most extreme levels, although it pointed to some recommended standards.

The story goes on to say that Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons have appealed to the international community to dismantle these devices and prevent their use, and they are certain that the radiation issued by these devices affect their health. They claim headaches and ear pain, saying it feels like their brains are in a microwave.

If the prisoners were so concerned about their health, of course, they merely need to stop smuggling in cell phones so Israel wouldn't need jammers. Not to mention that there are equally unreliable reports that cell phone use itself is dangerous.

Somehow that solution seems too extreme to them, and their worries about their health do no extend to actually stopping using the equipment that is causing them this alleged pain.

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03/05 Links Pt2: Growing anti-Jewsh retoric in the U.S.; The U.N.’s eroded legitimacy; Trump: Ilhan Omar comments are a ‘dark day for Israel’; Israeli spacecraft snaps Earth ‘selfie’ with flag

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: Growing anti-Jewsh retoric in the U.S.

The general trend is not a good one. There is no other minority group in America today being systematically told that they are white and have allegiance to a foreign country, and that racism against them is not systemic. No one uses this rhetoric against Hindu Americans and no one so frequently attacks Chinese Americans with this rhetoric. And that’s how we know it’s an anti-Jewish agenda. Only Jewish candidates for office today are attacked for being “white”; not even white candidates are constantly berated for “whiteness.”

It is almost like the rhetoric is designed to turn Jews into a caricature as the highest example of “white supremacy” – as if saying “white Jews, white supremacy” enough will eventually get Americans to think “Jews are white supremacists.”

In case you were wondering if that’s exaggeration, The Boston Globe this week ran an op-ed titled “A shocking number of Jews have become willing collaborators in white supremacy.” Are Irish complicit? Catholics? Protestants? Nope. Just Jews. The narrative is: Jews and the slave trade. Jews and white supremacy. Antisemitism isn’t systemic. Jews have foreign allegiance.

The campaign is designed to attack other Jewish Americans and make them responsible for all of America’s problems.

If you don’t think this resonates across the political spectrum in the US, you need only look at the 2017 scandal in which former CIA agent Valerie Plame tweeted an article titled “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars.” She then claimed that it wasn’t an endorsement, but “Yes, very provocative, but thoughtful. Many neocon hawks ARE Jewish.” So she called an article “thoughtful” that was titled “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars.” That’s what they are calling “thoughtful” today in America. It’s only one step from there to “foreign allegiance.”

What’s important to point out is that no other group in America is blamed for “driving America’s wars.” Not white Protestants. Not Catholics. No one else. Only Jews. And that’s antisemitism – and it is systemic. To systematically always blame Jews and always find “the Jew” behind every problem in America, from foreign wars to white supremacy and slavery, is antisemitism. And it is systemic. And it is growing.

The U.N.’s eroded legitimacy

At first glance, the recent G-77 gathering seemed like a Saturday Night Live parody of the UN’ s largest bloc. The G-77 is a coalition of 134 developing nations, created to promote the economic interests of its members and create a significant negotiating and voting bloc within the United Nations. The new chairman, with rehearsed political correctness to smiles and applause, called on “all states” (except his) to end the “epidemic” of terrorism and “work with us to put an end to this scourge.”

The speaker was Palestinian Authority President and PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas – infamous inciter and propagator of violence and terrorism against the sovereign State of Israel, and bank-roller of Palestinian terrorism to the tune of more than $138 million to terrorist prisoners and ex-convicts in 2018 alone. This PA program is commonly known as “pay for slay.” Through this program, Palestinians who commit acts of terrorism against Israelis and Americans are rewarded with lifetime financial benefits. Should the perpetrator die in the commission of his or her act of terror, their family then receives financial compensation.

Abbas’s chairmanship, which violates G-77 principles and the UN Charter, is the latest blight on the UN’s eroded legitimacy and credibility. Created to safeguard world peace, security, human rights, and the sovereign equality of states by peaceful dispute resolution, the UN has been hijacked by an antisemitic, terror-tainted political agenda – discrediting itself by violating its own charter. Mahmoud Abbas is himself a terrorist who openly calls for the destruction of Israel and the United States. While Abbas is serving as the chairman of the G-77, the Palestinians will be able to cosponsor proposals and amendments, make statements and raise procedural motions, and use every opportunity to punish Israel for some manufactured grievance. With Abbas at the helm there will be no peace with Israel. “Peace-building,” he says, “is treason.”

How did this sorry state of affairs develop? And what can be done by those states which are committed to the UN’s ethical, democratic founding principles?

Antisemitism at the UN did not begin randomly, but as a deliberate strategy. Some historians believe it started after Israel won the Six Day War in June 1967, damaging Russian prestige at home and abroad. The Soviets, enraged by Israel’s defeat of its proxies Egypt and Syria, retaliated, aiming its Cold War weapons of propaganda and disinformation against the Jewish state by a state-sponsored vilification campaign against Israel and Jews. It then did the same at the UN, where it forged a political alliance with Arab and Third World states. Starting in 1969, the General Assembly produced multiple resolutions affirming the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.”

RUSSIA USES language for totalitarian social control, said historian Joel Fishman. Following the Six Day War, the selected vocabulary was published in the Communist Party newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in October 1967: “Zionism is dedicated to genocide, racism, treachery, aggression and annexation... attributes of fascists.” In 1975, the Soviet-Arab bloc passed GA Resolution 3379, “Zionism is Racism.”

And here is the segment we did about rising anti-Semitism.
Sad that the great @WhoopiGoldberg was out sick, but very grateful to @MeghanMcCain @HuntsmanAbby @joyvbehar @sunny for making me feel so at home. https://t.co/1SZtzAfGKT
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) March 4, 2019

The young German Jews who left everything behind — and moved to Israel

People who were born and raised in Israel are not used to hearing that their upbringing is something to be envious of. The country is engaged in a bloody conflict with the Palestinians, military service is compulsory and it has one of the highest inequality rates in the West. Israelis also work some of the longest hours among states within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

These statistics do not make Israel an obvious immigration destination, particularly when coming from Germany — another OECD member that tops Israel in a number of key areas, including average wages and PISA performance. But for some German Jews, the dry figures are irrelevant. They decided to move to Israel anyway — and they have no regrets.

Read more: German politicians alarmed by rising anti-Semitism in France

"Can you really leave your house as a Jew in Germany without being treated like a museum exhibit? Not really," says Alon Kogan, a 22-year-old who was born in Offenbach and moved to Israel in 2015. "I always felt like I was a tourist attraction almost," he recalls. "Here, I no longer feel like an outsider."

Growing up near Frankfurt, Kogan was one of more than 6,500 Jews living in the area. Still, that didn't make him feel more comfortable about his religion. "People would always whisper 'look! Here are Jews! Look at what they're wearing!' if a group of Orthodox men would cross the street. It's like they were still amazed that there are Jews out there," he says.