Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, March 15, 2019

Is Iran behind the rockets fired towards Tel Aviv?

Screenshot from TOI video of sirens in Tel Aviv

Last night, as Mrs. Elder and I were eating at a Tel Aviv hotel restaurant after a couple of hours hanging out with Israel advocates at a nearby bar, we heard the Red Alert sirens.

We asked two waitresses whether this was Red Alert - and one said she thought it was just a burglar alarm from a nearby store. From inside the hotel, the alarms were not loud. No one told guests to seek shelter. (Later, the other waitress admitted that it didn't occur to her that this was a Red Alert since it has been so long since there was such an alert in Tel Aviv. She herself was an Iron Dome operator and wondered if she would be called up for duty this weekend.)

I immediately opened Twitter and saw that it was indeed a Red Alert, and a minute later read that people heard a "Boom" - from Iron Dome. We didn't hear the boom. And we kept eating.

Now we know that the two rockets fell in open areas and that the "boom" was from Iron Dome rockets self-destructing. We know the rockets came from Gaza and that the IDF spent the night bombing empty terror sites in Gaza, and that a few more rockets were shot towards Israeli towns closer to Gaza overnight.

Soon, Islamic Jihad denied shooting the rockets, and this was followed by Hamas not only denying the rocket fire but condemning whoever did it.

The IDF blamed Hamas, but this is one of the rare times that I don't believe them. They hold Hamas responsible for all rocket fire from Gaza and want to create a situation where Hamas has incentive to stop rocket fire from other terror groups - a strategy that has been very effective since the last Gaza war in 2014.

I also believe Islamic Jihad's denial. They may be murderers, but they are proud murderers and are not prone to lie.

Which brings up the question: If it wasn't one of those two groups that fired the rockets, who else could it have been?

While there is no shortage of other terror groups in Gaza - Fatah splinter groups, Salafist groups, PFLP, PFLP-GC, DFLP - none of them are taking responsibility as far as I can tell, and I do not think most of them have rockets with that range.

Who would have incentive to fire rockets at this time? Hamas didn't, as they were hosting an Egyptian security delegation, which hurried out of Gaza before Israel's retaliation.

It is possible that rogue elements within Hamas or Islamic Jihad fired the rockets.

My concern, and I don't have any evidence yet for it, is that Iran has been setting up a new terror group in Gaza to disrupt the detente that exists between Israel and the other terror groups. So far, this is the only thing that makes sense to me, because Iran can help a group get longer range missiles in a relatively short time. There are still tunnels under the Rafah border that allow weapons smuggling. Plus, Iranian and Hezbollah media are celebrating the rockets, although that is weak evidence as they would celebrate no matter who shot them, there does seem to be a little more glee with this attack.

Iran is the only entity that would gain from this attack.

As I said, I have very little evidence that there is a new stealth Iranian funded terror group in Gaza. But there has been noise about Iran and Hezbollah plans to help either fund existing smaller groups or to set up new ones in the past in Gaza. Iran would love to surround Israel with rockets under their control, as they already have rockets aimed at Israel from Lebanon and likely Syria.

This doesn't feel like a one-off. There is a change in the status quo, and it might have consequences down the line.

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03/14 Links Pt2: J Street launches Birthright-style trip to Israel that will include Palestinians; Amnesty Warns Top UK Companies Over Doing Business With Israeli Settlements

From Ian:

J Street launches Birthright-style trip to Israel that will include Palestinians

After months of chastising Birthright Israel for what it calls one-sided trips, J Street U is launching its first-ever free trip to Israel and the West Bank.

Come July, 40 American college students will participate on a 10-day trip courtesy of the progressive group. Billed as an alternative to Birthright, the trip, which will be funded by J Street donors, is part of its “Let Our People Know” campaign. Group leaders hope the trip will give American Jewish youth a more complete and nuanced picture of life in Israel.

“We hope this trip will provide a model for the kind of Israel education young Jews want and need — one that engages fully with Israel’s reality, including perspectives from Palestinians living under its 52-year military occupation,” said Eva Borgwardt, president of the J Street U National Board and Stanford University senior.

“It will prove that American Jews can engage with Israel as a complex place, one that is meaningful, important and challenging. In doing so, they will meet Israelis and Palestinians who are working toward a better future, and think critically about their own role as Americans in that conversation and the push for the just, peaceful, democratic future for the country outlined in its Declaration of Independence,” she said.

The announcement for the trip comes months after J Street U circulated a petition on campuses nationwide demanding Palestinian speakers of its own choosing be included on Birthright Israel trips. More than 2,000 students signed the petition. At the time neither J Street U nor other left-leaning groups considered funding their own trips.

Additionally, those opposing Birthright also staged several civil disobedience events in the past year. In early December 2018 three students with ties to the self-described anti- occupation group IfNotNow said Birthright forced them off their trip for inquiring about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. During the summer of 2018 activists also staged several walk-offs in in protest of what they said was Birthright’s steadfast refusal to address the ongoing conflict. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Leading African Historian Urges President Macron to ‘Save France’ From Revival of ‘Colonial and Antisemitic’ Past

One of Africa’s leading historians has urged President Emmanuel Macron to “save France from itself” by confronting the rising antisemitism in the country head-on.

In an open letter to Macron published in the Malian news outlet Mali Actu on Monday, Ismaël Diadié Haïdara — a Malian scholar recognized for establishing a library that houses thousands of rare Muslim, Jewish and Christian manuscripts — told the French leader that the diverse, cosmopolitan France “which I have learned to love from my childhood is dying.”

Many intellectuals in Mali — a West African nation that won independence from France in 1960 — retain a strong affinity for French culture and history, while also being deeply critical of its colonial aspects. Citing some of France’s finest philosophers and writers — including the poet Victor Hugo, the Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne, and the great twentieth century writer Albert Camus — Haïdara contrasted them dramatically with what he called “the colonial and antisemitic France” that, he feared, was again in the ascendant.

“We are in a world that is sinking into an economic abyss with serious ecological consequences, seeking solutions to political issues that already showed their limits in Vichy [the location of the capital of the collaborationist regime in France during the Nazi occupation of 1940-44] and in Auschwitz,” Haïdara wrote.

“Mr. President, save France from itself,” he urged Macron.

Haïdara asserted that the “desperate cry” of “J’accuse” (“I accuse”) — the title of the famous 1898 letter penned by the writer Emile Zola in defense of the falsely convicted French Jewish Army officer, Capt. Alfred Dreyfus — was still relevant today. Referring to the brutal antisemitic murder in 2018 of French Jewish Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll, as well as more recent acts of vandalism and desecration of Jewish cemeteries, Haïdara argued that “to march in the streets of Paris…is no longer enough.”

Polish newspaper’s front page teaches ‘how to recognize a Jew’

A right-wing newspaper with national distribution in Poland ran on its front page an article that instructs readers on “how to recognize a Jew.”

The Polish-language weekly, Tylko Polska, or “Only Poland,” lists on its front page “Names, anthropological features, expressions, appearances, character traits, methods of operation” and “disinformation activities.”

The text also reads: “How to defeat them? This cannot go on!”

The page also features a headline reading, “Attack on Poland at a conference in Paris.” The reference is to a Holocaust studies conference last month during which Polish nationalists complained that speakers were anti-Polish. That article features a picture of Jan Gross, a Polish-Jewish Princeton University scholar of Polish complicity in the Holocaust and a frequent target of nationalist attacks.

Cartoon of the Day: Job-hunting

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

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Thanks to Rotem Sela, an Israeli actress, model, and TV personality, we can learn a lesson about Zionism, nationalism, racism, and the Israeli and American Jewish Left.

Here is what happened: Miri Regev, Likud loyalist and Minister of Culture and Sport, noted that if Netanyahu’s main opponent, Benny Gantz, were to form a government, he would have to include anti-Zionist Arab parties in his coalition. Sela, on her Instagram page (because that is how actresses, models, and TV personalities communicate), said, in part (Hebrew link, my translation):

My God, there are also Arab citizens in this country! When the hell will someone in this government broadcast to the public that Israel is a state of all of its citizens? Every person was born equal. Even Arabs, God save us, are people.

PM Netanyahu responded as follows (also my translation):

Rotem my dear, an important correction: Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the Nation-State Law that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people – and only them. As you wrote, there is no problem with Arab citizens of Israel – they have equal rights with everyone…

In Israel, the reaction to Sela’s comment was predictable – anger on the Right and agreement on the Left (and yes, Gal Gadot expressed her support for her friend Sela in a relatively non-political way).

The usual suspects in America, J Street, If Not Now, the New Israel Fund, the Israel Policy Forum, and others, were on it like one of those Israeli hopping spiders on a cockroach. “Racist,” “undemocratic,” “cynical,” “morally repugnant,” and on and on. If Not Now referred to “racism” not once but twice in their statement.

I wouldn’t have called Sela “my dear,” but Netanyahu’s response was otherwise entirely correct. Even without the Nation-State Law, Israel has never been a “state of all its citizens” as Sela, who is supposed to be well-educated, asserted. Like Japan and numerous other countries, but unlike the US, Israel is a nation-state, a state in which – or by which – a particular people or culture expresses its right of self-determination.

The USA was defined by its founding fathers to be a state of all its citizens (although it took some time before it was ready to accept all of its legal inhabitants as citizens with full rights). Israel, on the other hand, was created to be “the state of the Jewish people,” while at the same time it endeavored to provide equal rights to all of its citizens. One way to understand this is to say that there are “civil rights” – the right to vote and hold office, education and employment, and so on, and “national rights,” which include the symbols, languages, and religions of the state, and – particularly important in the case of Israel – the objectives of encouraging immigration from the national diaspora and maintaining a national majority.

The nation-state law explicitly affirms the intention of the founders that national rights in the State of Israel belong to the Jewish people, and to nobody else. It does not limit the civil rights of national minorities. Rotem Sela doesn’t seem to understand this distinction. Netanyahu does, which may be one of the reasons he is PM and she is a fashion model.

This is nothing new, and it is neither racist, undemocratic, fascist, or morally repugnant. Nationalism and nation-states are out of fashion today, particularly in Europe, whose European Union is a (failing) attempt to replace those things with a universal government, and among the American Left, which is in the grip of the pathological ideology of “intersectionalism” (this will require a dedicated post).

There is a reason that Israel’s founding fathers defined it as the nation-state of the Jewish people and not something else, and that is the Zionist understanding that only in a majority Jewish state with Jewish symbols, culture, institutions, government, police, military, and so on can Jews be guaranteed a normal life and freedom from oppression without giving up their Jewishness.

This was the conclusion drawn by the early Zionists, from on the historical experiences of their people. It was further confirmed by the Holocaust, and the mass expulsions of Jews from Muslim countries following 1948. Today it is being confirmed yet again by the worldwide resurgence of antisemitism, even in places like the US and the UK where it had been thought to be dead. And it should also be clear that even without anti-Jewish violence, in places where Jews are a minority, they will be silently swallowed up by assimilation.

The definition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people has both symbolic and highly practical consequences. It justifies the use of Jewish symbolism in the flag, the national anthem, the symbol of the state, and so forth. It justifies the decision to observe Jewish holidays as national holidays, and to use the Hebrew language. But most important, the Law of Return for Jews (and no one else) is grounded in the understanding that Israel is the state of the Jewish people. It is the most concrete expression of national rights possible.

This isn’t “racism” (although by current American standards, who knows what that means?). It is nationalism, in particular Jewish nationalism, or in short, Zionism.

If Israel were to be redefined as a state of all its citizens, as the extreme Left and many Arab citizens want (and Rotem Sela appears to believe has already happened), what would be the justification for a Law of Return for Jews? Why shouldn’t there be one for Arabs? Why should Israel act as a place of refuge for persecuted Jews such as the Jews of Ethiopia, or even European Jews fleeing antisemitism? Why would it be important to have our capital in Jerusalem?

Israeli critics of the Nation-State Law (including Benny Gantz) have said that they would like to add a statement to it guaranteeing “equality” to all citizens of Israel. This is a bad idea. Equal civil rights for all are guaranteed by other basic laws. The Nation-State Law is the only one that specifically deals with national rights, and adding a statement about equality to it could be interpreted as diluting its force. It would be like the recent action of the American Congress, which diluted-to-death a resolution about antisemitism by making it a catch-all statement against every kind of bigotry. Even the antisemites were then able to vote for it.

The reactions of J Street, et al., illustrate that they are not only critical of Israel’s actions, but that they are critical of the most basic foundation of the Jewish state, the Zionist idea itself.

Thank you for helping clarify that, Rotem.

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03/14 Links Pt1: Amb. Friedman: The Palestinians Don't Have "a Veto on Progress"; The sick stupidity of comparing Nazi-era Jews to ISIS fighters; Israel’s ambassador shocked over PFLP terrorist speech in Berlin

From Ian:

The Palestinians Don't Have "a Veto on Progress"

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman interviewed by Washington Examiner

Referring to the Trump administration's peace plan, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman explained, "There ought to be a means to get at least closer to a point where the Palestinians have more control over their lives in a way that doesn't jeopardize Israel's security." The plan "will hopefully, if nothing else, provoke a serious discussion that hasn't taken place in a long time."

Friedman has sought out business leaders and other nonpolitical figures in the West Bank to understand ways to improve Palestinians' quality of life. "I'm happy to meet with Palestinians, even if they don't agree with me or like me. Their thoughts and perspectives make me smarter, thoughtful, and more creative."

He views the U.S. embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem last year as a shift in the U.S. message, that "this is not a conflict where the Palestinians have a veto on progress. At some point...things will move forward with or without them. The U.S. is not going to ignore reality. We are not going to indulge the Palestinians in the fantasy that somehow Jerusalem can be disconnected from Israel or the Jewish people....The idea that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel is a fact...a reality, not a negotiation point," though its boundaries are negotiable.

"The idea that one could approach this conflict with a sense of neutrality...is pretty insulting to Israel. The reason Israel holds the territory it holds today, in simple terms, is because it kept getting attacked, wars kept getting fought, and Israel kept winning. The reason Israel hasn't given back all of it, and they gave back a lot, is because to give it away would be an existential risk to the country." Friedman said any other way of looking at the conflict is trying to make peace based on an "alternative reality."

"The biggest danger in this part of the world is to be consumed with wishful thinking. You should see a better future down the road, but you can't wish your way to that. You have to protect yourself along the way."

Why Israel Is Not to Blame for the Lack of Peace

As humans, one of the hardest things to do is give up something we love. When something is held so close to the heart, our strongest instinct tells us to guard it with all of our might.

The State of Israel may be relatively young, but Zionism is not nearly as new. The yearning to live in our ancestral homeland has existed for thousands of years. We’ve known, since the beginning of time, that this land was something we had to protect for eternity.

Today, despite our love for Israel, we understand that others will stop at nothing to cause it harm. This is why, on Israel’s end, there have been countless attempts to ease tensions with the Palestinians through land partitions and peace offers, all of which were rejected by the Palestinian leadership.

In 2005, in an attempt at making peace with the Palestinians, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. This decision divided the country; many believed that this was a huge mistake, while others argued that it was worth the risk.

Gush Katif was a Jewish neighborhood established in the Gaza Strip in 1970. Unfortunately, the situation there intensified during the year 2000, when the Second Intifada broke out. During this time, attacks on Israelis escalated dramatically.

Five years later, residents were notified that Israel would be withdrawing from Gaza in order to achieve peace, and to empower the Palestinian people. If this plan proved to be successful, it would have served as confirmation that the Palestinians were ready for their own state.

As part of the disengagement, the Israeli Army forcibly removed around 8,000 Jewish residents from Gush Katif, displacing hundreds of families. All of the private property within the settlement was completely destroyed, the settlement was dismantled, and the entire Gaza Strip was handed over to the Palestinians.

Ruthie Blum: Israel vs. its Enemies in Europe

What Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas -- both of which glorify terrorism against innocent Israelis and call for international sanctions against the state of Israel -- keep neatly under wraps, however, is the frequency with which they themselves have turned to Israel for medical care, often for cancer treatments.

In 2016, for instance, Abbas' Qatar-based brother, Abu Lawi, was treated for cancer at the Assuta Medical Center in Tel Aviv, and not for the first time.

In 2015, Abbas' brother-in-law received life-saving heart surgery at that same hospital. Abbas' wife, Amina, underwent surgery there in 2014.

In 2014, as well, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's mother-in-law was treated for cancer at Jerusalem's Augusta Victoria Hospital. That same year, Haniyeh's daughter was treated at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. She was among the more than 1,000 residents of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority treated at Ichilov every year.

Also in 2014, Hamas spokesman Moussa Abu Marzouk's sister was treated for cancer at an Israeli hospital.

In 2013, Haniyeh's baby granddaughter was treated at the Schneider Children's Medical Center in Petah Tikvah.

Most recently, in May 2018, Abbas himself was treated by an Israeli specialist, who joined a foreign team of doctors caring for him in the intensive care unit at a hospital in Ramallah, in the Palestinian Authority.

Israel proudly joined its counterparts around the globe on February 4 to mark World Cancer Day, initiated by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC). It is time for the world to cease and desist in its efforts to demonize Israel, and to admit to its use of and reliance on the innovation and technology for healing that Israel -- turning no one away -- always graciously provides. It would be a welcome change if its adversaries were half as ethical.

Why do only Israelis care to mark 40th anniversary of Egypt-Israel peace treaty?

If you want to learn what a "peaceful" Middle East will look like, it makes sense to look at the 40th anniversary of Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty being marked this month.

If peace is the absence of war, then the treaty is an unqualified success. From four major wars in 30 years to zero wars in 40 years is an impressive achievement.

But if peace means friendship and normal relations, this has been a failure. Anti-Israel and antisemitic articles are still commonplace in Egypt/

To see which side really wants peace, look at how each country is marking the occasion.

In Israel this week, there was a major conference at Hebrew University to mark the event:

There were many major speakers, including Israel's President Rivlin.

No Egyptians spoke..

Today, there is another major conference by INSS marking the anniversary, with many well-known speakers as well.

In this case, there are two Egyptians speaking: One is the head of the Egyptian-American Business Association and the other is an Egyptian doctoral student who studies in Tel Aviv.

No Egyptian government officials are attending.

On the Egyptian side, I cannot find any official or unofficial commemoration of the event. To Egyptians, 40 years of peace is not something to celebrate.

In fact, the Cairo24 news site is covering today's INSS conference - and the article is meant to shame the two Egyptian citizens who are speaking.

It is obvious which side actually embraces and celebrates peace and which side looked upon it as a tactical move, but not something that should actually be used to improve relations between the two countries

This is probably the best that Israel can ever hope to achieve with other Arab countries. Peace is wonderful, but realize that the Arabs will never truly accept Jews as equals in the Middle East.

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This is a wonderful and surprising story, showing that even the most liberal, seemingly anti-Israel countries have been undergoing changes.

From Mida:

An Israeli who thinks about Israel's friends in Europe would probably not rank Sweden high on the list. For many years, Sweden has been making headlines here mainly following harsh anti-Israel statements by members of its government, especially Foreign Minister Margot Wallström.

But they do not tell the whole story.

Since January, Margot Wallström and her party have led a narrow minority government that has to rely on two central parties who are not satisfied with her anti-Israel positions. In the meantime, there are a few prominent pro-Israel politicians and others who demand fair treatment for Israel. The first step in this direction is a bill to transfer the Swedish embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Similar proposals have been made by the Swedish Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Party, a relatively small right-wing party, but they are no longer the only ones in the picture. The latest proposal has attracted much interest in the parliament, which has become much pro-Israeli since the last elections and the passage of the proposal seems to be becoming a real possibility. With support from the extreme right and the center, it is hard to believe that the moderate party, the largest party of the Swedish Right and certainly pro-Israeli, will remain outside and align itself with the socialist left.

The four parties expected to support the resolution - the moderates, the democratic Swedes, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals - together represent 174 seats out of 349; That is exactly one less than most. The leftist parties are expected to object, but the centrist party (31 seats) has not yet been heard from.

Whether the proposal passes or not, and even if the embassy moves or not (in any case the proposal speaks of a future transfer and probably will not affect anything in the meantime, as long as Wallsterm is in the Foreign Minister), these numbers tell an important story: The Swedish parliament is becoming much more friendly to Israel.

Wow!

It looked like Western European countries would be the last surefire supporters of the automatic Palestinian veto on anything Israel deserves, as even Arab countries have been resigning themselves to living with and possibly cooperating with Israel.

To see the most obvious example of a country antipathetic to Israel changing like this is pretty remarkable.

To be sure, this is going to be a slow process. At DigiTell, I'm listening to a speaker from Sweden who showed antisemitic synagogue graffiti that the police call anti-Zionist.

(h/t Yoel)

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This week I am attending a fantastic gathering of pro-Israel advocates in Israel known as #Digitell19. On Wednesday we went on a tour of the Sodastream factory in the Negev.

Sodastream is very impressive in how well it is managed and it has been growing exceptionally fast - a 30% increase in sales in the past year alone. But nothing is more impressive than how seriously it takes hiring people from all walks of life. It is a diverse and happy work environment.

I hope to make a fuller video in due time, but this one video shows how all kinds of people are working together. (Since we arrived at the time of second shift, chances are the 100 Palestinians who work at this factory - coming in a bus from Jerusalem that Sodastream set up for them - are not in this video.)

Anti-Israel activists love to pretend that they support "peace." But the Jewish Voice for Peace, for example, does not want you to buy Sodastream products and help actual peace between Jews (of all colors) and Arabs.

Who really wants peace? The people who work to ensure that Jews and Arabs can work and interact with each other, every day. The ones who want Arabs to boycott Jewish businesses, the ones who sabotage sports programs between Israelis and Palestinians, the ones who scream about the dangers of "normalization" - those are the ones who don't want peace.

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03/13 Links Pt2: US calls Golan ‘Israeli-controlled,’ doesn't call WB ‘occupied’; Before Ilhan Omar, Barack Obama Mainstreamed Anti-Semitism In The Democratic Party; Where MLK Really Stood on Israel and the Palestinians

From Ian:

US calls Golan ‘Israeli-controlled,’ drops all mention of West Bank ‘occupation’

For the first time, the Trump administration referred to the Golan Heights on Wednesday as “Israeli-controlled” and ceased to refer to the West Bank as “occupied” in the State Department’s annual report on human rights around the world.

While last year’s report marked a departure from years of American foreign policy by no longer calling the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights “occupied” in the section title, this year’s report went two small steps further.

“Authorities subjected non-Israeli citizens in Jerusalem and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights to the same laws as Israeli citizens,” this year’s text says. In previous iterations of the same report, the Golan Heights was described in the text as “Israeli-occupied.”

This year’s report also refrains from labeling any of the territories as “occupied.” In last year’s document, the US government took a position in referring to these areas. “Authorities prosecuted Palestinian non-citizens held in Israel under Israeli military law, a practice Israel has applied since the 1967 occupation,” read one passage. The new report, by contrast, uses the term “occupied” just twice — and only when quoting outside organizations, such as the Israeli nonprofit Breaking the Silence and the United Nations.

Despite the change in language vis-a-vis the Golan Heights, an administration official on Wednesday denied that it amounted to American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over that area.

“Our policy on Golan has not changed,” a spokesperson for the US embassy in Jerusalem told The Times of Israel. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Before Ilhan Omar, Barack Obama Mainstreamed Anti-Semitism In The Democratic Party

Lost in the mists of the last decade is Barack Obama’s mainstreaming of anti-Semitism into Democratic and American politics. To be clear, even after two terms as president, Obama remains such a cipher that saying he mainstreamed anti-Semitism is hardly the same thing as saying he’s personally anti-Semitic. It is fair, however, to say he has consorted with Israel critics with dubious motivations and people with anti-Israel terror connections to such a degree that the most charitable thing one can say is that there’s a possibility his embrace of these people was just a way to cynically advance his political career and foreign policy priorities, priorities that were just coincidentally threatening to Israel’s security.

In fact, when Obama ran for president in 2008, people spoke openly of his “Jewish problem.” It wasn’t strictly a partisan concern, either: Hillary Clinton raised the issue in the Democratic Party. Obama did a poor job of persuading people that this wasn’t a legitimate concern.

In 2008, Jimmy Carter met with the leader of terror group Hamas, a move condemned by Condoleezza Rice, who then was secretary of state. Obama declined to condemn the meeting because “he’s a private citizen. It’s not my place to discuss who he shouldn’t meet with.” This is a remarkably calm reaction to Carter’s blatant Logan Act violation, a crime the Obama administration would later deem so serious it was used to justify investigating and surveilling the Trump campaign.

Obama reversed course a few days later, after it became obvious that refusing to condemn the meeting was damaging his campaign. As the Los Angeles Times observed then, when the condemnation finally came it was “as he tried to reassure Jewish voters that his candidacy isn’t a threat to them or U.S. support for Israel.”

Of course, there were plenty more reasons to think Obama didn’t really think that the murderous and anti-Semitic Hamas was all that bad. When Hamas came out and officially endorsed his candidacy in 2008, Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, said the endorsement was “flattering.” This is not an exaggeration. “We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it’s flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps,” Axelrod said.

Much has been made of Obama’s friendship with scholar Rashid Khalidi, who has been accused of working as an advisor for the PLO terror group (Khalidi claims he was only helping the press understand the group). Obama sat on the board of a foundation that gave $40,000 to a local charity Khalidi’s wife headed.

In 2008, the Los Angeles Times notoriously reported on a videotape of Obama speaking at an event in Khalidi’s honor, where one of the speakers compared Zionists to Osama bin Laden. While the still unreleased video of this event attracted the most attention, other aspects of the Los Angeles Times’s lengthy report on Obama’s close ties to Palestinian activists are noteworthy. For instance, in the same report Khalidi heavily implies that any pro-Israel sentiment Obama expresses while running for president was “a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S.” (h/t MtTB)

Corbynism Comes to America

A critical element of the trans-Atlantic Corbynista project is to knock Jews down a few pegs in the progressive victim hierarchy. Democratic House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn’s perverse defense of Omar–that her experience as a refugee is “more personal” than that of the children of Holocaust survivors, and that this somehow legitimates her spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories–was a clumsy effort at privileging Muslims over Jews. Omar and her defenders seek, in the words of New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, “a left-of-center politics that remembers the Holocaust as one great historical tragedy among many.” To achieve this reordering, Corbynism exploits fringe Jewish activists and organizations to deflect charges of anti-Semitism. As the most high-profile Jewish politician in America, Sanders has disgracefully assumed this role, alleging that Omar is being slandered for “legitimate criticism” of Israel, when it is her imputation of dual loyalties that is at issue. In so doing, Sanders lends credence to the view, increasingly prevalent among progressives on both sides of the Atlantic, that left-wing anti-Semitism does not really exist and that accusations of it are really just cynical attempts to forestall socialism and smear people of color. No other form of bigotry–whether anti-black racism, homophobia, misogyny, ableism–is subject to such exacting standards of proof and semiotic scrutiny by left wingers.

Obsession with Israel—the decision to make this tiny country, and America’s relationship with it, the battlefield upon which they will try to wrest control of the Democratic Party away from its establishment leadership—is a window into the worldview of the American Corbynista left. Antagonism toward the only liberal democracy in the Middle East is like an acid test for wanting to reduce American global power and influence. Asked to describe Sanders’ worldview, his chief foreign policy advisor Matt Duss, a career anti-Israel polemicist, says that the United States should be “a kind of global facilitator.” Arsenal of democracy and leader of the free world are just so passé.

For these people, condemning the U.S.-Israel alliance is a way of condemning something much larger than a country 10,000 miles away. Attacking the Jewish state is the means by which they express their broader antipathy toward American exceptionalism. America and Israel are exceptional nations, the only two founded upon an idea. They are linked by shared values and, yes, religious affinity. When Americans look at the Middle East, they naturally see Israel as the polity with which they have the most in common. American support for Israel, then, is not explained by “Benjamins,” as Ilhan Omar conspiratorially tweets, but by a deep and widely held conviction that the two nations share a providential fate. This is something which the American Corbynistas, like their British cousins, deeply resent, and thus try to undermine with their sneers and tweets and purges.

The pro-Israel blogger conference that has become a support group

Kasim Hafeez, a British Muslim and former Islamist who is now a proud Zionist who stands with Israel, will land in Israel this week for #DigiTell, a gathering of 100 pro-Israel bloggers and social network managers from all over the world.

“We are bringing together those who have fought this year against anti-Israel and antisemitic hate-writers and those promoting the boycott campaign against Israel,” said Ido Daniel, senior director for digital strategy for the Strategic Affairs Ministry, the ministry running the #DigiTell seminar. “We are opening our doors to the influencers and social media activists for Israel who are fighting our fight every day.”

Hafeez is among the most interesting and unlikely participants. He grew up being exposed to radical anti-Western, antisemitic and anti-Israel ideas on what he describes as a daily basis. During his teenage years, Hafeez embraced a radical Islamist ideology and became very active in the anti-Israel movement.

But in the early 2000s, he came across Alan Dershowitz’s book, The Case for Israel.

“I was so convinced that I was right, I bought the book and read it to essentially read the ‘Zionist lies' for myself,’” he told The Jerusalem Post. “I was presented with ideas and arguments I had never come across in all my years of being anti-Israel. While I did dismiss them all as lies, I did however want to reassure myself that I was right.”

So, he read a few more books.

“I began to see a lack of factual argument on the anti-Israel side, a lot of rhetoric and emotion but little fact,” he said.

Jewish stars are everywhere in Pittsburgh. At first, you notice only one or two, a bit limp by now from the winter weather. But soon you are seeing them everywhere. Crocheted or made of sparkly paper they hang from every available surface.

A scrawny tree in the parking lot of the Squirrel Hill Giant Eagle supermarket on Murray Avenue, for instance, was decorated with the Jewish stars like a Christmas tree, giving me a strange sense of cognitive dissonance. At the same time, I was moved to bits to see this neighborhood-wide expression of support for its Jewish population. The entire neighborhood was in mourning for the Squirrel Hill of once upon a time, before a monster shot dead 11 Jews in a synagogue.

My impression is of a city still reeling from the impact. Everyone has a story. My mother told me about her recent hospitalization. How the patient in the room next to her had a heavy police presence outside his door. She asked who was in there, no one would say. She remains convinced it was Bowers.

My mother’s helper and friend Linda told me what that day was like. She happened to be driving in Squirrel Hill at the time. But suddenly there were road blocks everywhere. Drivers were diverted from a several block radius around Tree of Life. Rumors were flying. People were scared (which is what happens when something is going on and there is very little or sketchy information). Linda was scared. Everyone was, that day.

Today, signs reading Stronger Than Hate are in every storefront on Murray Avenue, and hanging in many windows on many homes. The signs are thickest the closer one gets to the vicinity of Tree of Life. A friend brought me a t-shirt with the slogan along with a photo of the victims. He was sure I’d have a million of those t-shirts. But actually, it is the first I’ve received.

Stronger Than Hate says something important about Pittsburgh, about resilience. Pittsburgh isn’t ashamed of what happened. It repudiates what happened. Squirrel Hill is saying loud and clear, “We won’t let this shooter change our way of life or our neighborhood.”

And yet, other than this stated resolve, I fail to see practical steps to prevent antisemitism from taking another crack at Pittsburgh, or indeed take hold of America. I see a failure to prevent a second Bowers, God forbid, from repeating the deeds of the first. People don’t want guns in the synagogue. Understandably so. But what is the alternative? What plan do they have going forward?

Meantime, my Facebook feed is filled with allegations of Ilhan Omar’s antisemitism. There is article after article on the Democratic Party’s failure to name and shame Omar in their watered-down resolution that lumps antisemitism together with every other kind of hate and bigotry. But I heard about none of this on any news stations during my two-week stay in Pittsburgh. Not locally and not at the national level. The Jews, moreover, except for the orthodox, remain staunch Democrats, who look the other way at the institutionalized antisemitism in their own party.

Like Nancy Pelosi, and a million other talking heads, they make excuses: Omar is inexperienced. She grew up in Somalia, so what can we expect? Criticism of Israel is not antisemitism. Lobbying needs a closer look. AIPAC needs a closer look. The tropes, they say, are based on reality. Jews are powerful and wield too much influence.

This is shocking to me, well-versed as I am in the history of the Jews, and what these excuses and allegations have always meant in past times.

When I show evidence, in a Pittsburgh discussion group on Facebook, of an Imam in Pittsburgh who spouts antisemitic rhetoric from the pulpit, they call me a troublemaker and remind me that Muslims raised money for the victims of Tree of Life. When I explain my intent is only to disseminate information, they say, “That’s okay then. But be aware that others are attempting to cause trouble. We don’t want any trouble.”

To be frank, the attempt to stifle unpleasant truths frightens me. I fear for Pittsburgh in spite of its strength and resilience. I am scared because Pittsburgh will not look at what I see for fear of mirroring Bowers’ hatred and bigotry. They will not look at the fact that antisemitism is rampant in America, distributed as it is in coursework in universities, shouted from pulpits in mosques, and veiled as polite dinner discussion at political fundraisers.

It is not just the crazy white supremacists like Bowers. He is, rather, the trickle-down effect of the antisemitism masquerading as anti-Israelism that pervades the entire country. Bowers is the result of the propaganda that says that the Jews stole another people’s land, that Judea and Samaria are really the West Bank of the Jordan River where Jews have no right to build homes, and that American Jews have divided loyalties.

An acquaintance mourned the fact that his daughter had been brainwashed on a college campus, poisoned against Israel. “How do you get them back?” he asked.

“Birthright?”

But she’d already done a Birthright trip. She’d been fine back then. But since that time, she’s been to college. Everything she knew before she entered the ivory halls of academia was gone, all of it replaced by anti-Israel propaganda and hatred.

On the right, in the orthodox world, they think Donald Trump is the savior of the Jews. They think he will save Israel. But rumor has it that Jerusalem is to be divided in the soon-to-be-aired peace plan. And in this disturbing video, we learn that eight years after 9/11, the government body tasked with monitoring sermons in mosques in the United States, still had not a single employee who understands Arabic.

The Tree of Life massacre has left its mark on Pittsburgh. The stars are everywhere. So are the signs with their message of strength. This tells me that Pittsburghers understand that antisemitism is real. I worry, on the other hand, about the communal sense of invincibility embodied by the message of Stronger Than Hate. A feeling of invincibility is never a good thing where the Jews are concerned.

Will such city-wide declarations of strength take pride of place over identifying and eradicating hatred? Will Stronger Than Hate become just another jingoistic saying along the lines of Never Again? Or will Americans at large learn to shove aside group-think and grow the courage to see and confront what is really out there: the very real threats to the Jews who live in the heart of Squirrel Hill and in America?

h/t Ardie Geldman for bringing the video to my attention.

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2-State Solution Has So Little Traction, Now Being Used As Lubricant (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Tel Aviv, March 13 - A conceptual framework for the resolution of the century-old conflict between Jews and Arabs over sovereignty in the Holy Land once commanded majority support among Israelis, but developments of the last fifteen years have seen that support slip to such a degree that its slipperiness has led engineers to repurpose the framework as a substance that reduces harmful friction between two abutting objects.

In the mid-1990's the Two-State Solution concept gained serious traction among the Israeli public, with a consistent majority favoring it as a permanent settlement of the territorial, religious, and political conflict with the Palestinian Arabs. Significant support persisted even through the Second Intifada in the first half of the previous decade that claimed the lives of more than a thousand Israelis, albeit at a diminished level. Continued conflict, however, coupled with increasing Palestinian intransigence and refusal to conduct good-faith negotiations in the intervening years, drove Israeli acceptance of the two-state paradigm to a level so low that mainstream Israeli political parties and politicians who endorse it outright thereby doom themselves to electoral irrelevance. Scientists and engineers from the research and development divisions of several innovative chemical companies have now found a way to harness the Two-State Solution's repellent ability as a cost-effective lubricant for industrial, commercial, and household use.

"It's uncanny," remarked William Delta, 40, of Haifa Chemicals Research Division. "When 2SS first came out, everyone expected a much greater degree of adherence. And at first, that's exactly what we all observed. Evidently the properties of the substance change over time, such that now, it has a repellent effect that has myriad uses. It's twice as effective as standard motor oil, for instance, and since it was produced in huge quantities back in the 1990's and stored away for whenever it might become relevant - which turned out to be never - supply is plentiful and costs should remain low."

Un Gyuen of Ho Chi Minh University noted that preliminary test indicate the Two-State Solution retains its tractionless properties in environments outside the Middle East. "Our lab experimentation looked at applying 2SS to India-Pakistan friction and found similar results to Israel-Palestine," he attested. "What we still have to figure out is whether the lack of traction is a permanent characteristic of the Two-State Solution or whether it might revert to its previous form. The answer to that question will determine under what circumstances 2SS can be used safely."

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03/13 Links Pt1: Ya’alon: ‘Israeli-Arab’ conflict over; ‘Israeli-Palestinian’ one remains; Palestinians: Abbas Stands 'Trial' for Treason; IDF exposes new Hezbollah cell in Syrian Golan Heights

From Ian:

Former Israeli Defense Minister: Israeli-Arab Conflict Is Over

With Israel and a good part of the Sunni Arab world today sharing both common threats and opportunities, the term “Israeli-Arab” conflict is no longer applicable, former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon said on Monday.

“Today – at the present moment, in the meantime – there is not an Israeli-Arab conflict: There is an Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Ya’alon said at a conference at the Hebrew University’s Truman Institute marking the 40th anniversary later this month of the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement.

And none of that would have been possible, added Ya’alon – number three on the Blue and White Party list – had Egypt not removed itself from the circle of countries at war with Israel 40 years ago.
“When we look back at the agreement, there has not been a threat of conventional war against Israel since it was signed,” said the former IDF chief of staff. “No Arab leader or Arab army dared to challenge Israel as army-against-army, and the Yom Kippur War was the last war the Arab leaders initiated against us.”

He said that the signing of the peace agreement essentially put an end to the nationalist pan-Arabist threat to Israel, noting that a month before the agreement was signed on March 26, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in Iran heralding the Islamic revolution in that country.

And that revolution, Ya’alon said, gave support and a strong back wind to all the variations of Islamic radicalism – be it Sunni or Shia – that the region has witnessed since: from an increase in the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, to the rise of Hamas and al-Qaeda. The vacuum created by the end of the nationalist pan-Arabist ideology was filled by a radical Islamist ideology, he said.

If any man, woman or child among these victims of ethnic cleansing returned to their home 19 years later, they'd be automatically likened to Nazis by @KenRoth & @saribashi who call every Jew in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem "war criminals." https://t.co/41m4KW94Dy
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) March 13, 2019

Israeli Victims of Ethiopian Airlines Crash Identified

Two Israelis killed in the March 10 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 have been identified as Avraham Matzliah of Ma’ale Adumim and Shimon Re’em of Zichron Ya’akov.

Matzliah, 49, was identified on Monday as a victim of the plane crash on Sunday near Addis Ababa. He was described as a loving father to his twin daughters, who both serve in the Israel Defense Forces, and a man with a good sense of humor. His high-tech work led him to travel often between Israel and Africa. He had apparently been on a trip to close a business deal for the Radwin telecom firm.

Shimon Re’em, 55, the father of five children, was a 23-year retired veteran of Israel’s Shin Bet security services who was working for Israel’s Shafran security consulting company at the time of his death.

Channel 13 news said Re’em once headed up security for two Israeli embassies in South America and then served as head of regional security for El Al Airlines.

According to reports, authorities are having a difficult time locating bodies of the victims, both because some have been scattered and others were burnt in the crash.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Abbas Stands 'Trial' for Treason

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas has made no secret of its desire to see Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas stand trial for betraying the Palestinians for his alleged "collaboration" with Israel and sanctions against the Gaza Strip.

Last year, a senior Hamas official, Ahmed Bahr, called for bringing Abbas to trial for "great treason" -- a crime punishable by death. Abbas is not only refusing to make peace with Hamas, he wants it to hand over its weapons to his government, Bahr said. "For that, he should be brought before a popular and constitutional court on charges of great treason."

Earlier, another Hamas official, Marwan Abu Ras, called for Abbas to be executed by hanging in accordance with Islamic sharia law. Abu Ras, accusing Abbas of "collaboration" with Israel, claimed that the Palestinian president was depriving the Gaza Strip of international financial aid. "Abbas is the biggest traitor the Palestinian cause has known," he said. "He should be put on trial in the center of the Gaza Strip and sentenced to death by hanging in line with sharia law."

Hamas's leaders are angry with Abbas: they say that he recognizes Israel's right to exist and is even prepared to accept US President Donald Trump's upcoming plan for peace in the Middle East, known as the "Deal of the Century."

They also say they want to hang Abbas because his security forces conduct security coordination with Israel in the West Bank and because of the economic sanctions he imposed on the Gaza Strip. The sanctions include cutting salaries to thousands of Palestinian employees there.

Above all, Hamas's leaders say the organization does not -- and will not -- recognize Israel's right to exist.