Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, April 01, 2019

04/01 Links Pt2: From Gaza classrooms to the DNC, Palestinian female terrorists are all the rage; Father of Israeli Terror Victim Calls on Twitter to Shut Down Account of One of Daughter’s Killers

From Ian:

From Gaza classrooms to the DNC, Palestinian female terrorists are all the rage

It was an unexpected sight: A photo of Leila Khaled, the world’s first female airline hijacker, cradling an AK 47, featured in an adulating tweet from a young Socialist leader in the United States celebrating the 49th anniversary of Khaled’s hijacking of TWA flight 840.

Was it possible that an ambitious American political organizer was lionizing a terrorist who blew up a (then-empty) American plane?

The leader in question, Olivia Katbi-Smith, is co-head of the Portland, Oregon, chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America — the reformatted, millennial version of a once distinguished group whose Socialist roots extend back to Eugene V. Debs, five-time presidential candidate and one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

The membership of DSA has grown fourfold since Bernie Sanders’s presidential run in 2016. Likewise, its average age decreased from 68 to 33 between 2013 and now. After Sanders’s loss in the primary to Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump’s subsequent presidential win, on a national level the DSA’s new, young members marshaled their efforts to help elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Rashida Tlaib (MI), and Ilhan Omar (MN) to Congress on a progressive platform that promoted Medicare for all, quality housing, and free college tuition.

Since the election, the group has tipped further left and Katbi-Smith is part of a movement that is challenging traditional Democratic governance. But for supporters of Israel, there is a troubling side to her agenda: She helped lead the DSA to adopt a pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) plank in the group’s charter during its national convention on August 5, 2017, at the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago. When 90 percent of the 697 delegates voted in favor of the BDS resolution, Katbi-Smith was jubilant. She and the other attendees waved a Palestinian flag and chanted, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.”

The political writer Paul Berman recently wrote in Tablet that, “Lately, DSA has had the misfortune to get taken over by a flash mob of fresh-faced hipsters just out of college. And the hipsters have naturally turned the august organization into a zoo of political fantasies of every preposterous and grisly sort, unto the people who … do not go very far to disguise the fact that they are chanting ‘Death to the Jews.’”

Father of Israeli Terror Victim Calls on Twitter to Shut Down Account of One of Daughter’s Killers

The father of an Israeli terror victim is calling on Twitter to shut down the account of one of his daughter’s killers.

Arnold Roth — whose 15-year-old daughter Malki was murdered in the August 2001 Jerusalem Sbarro bombing — is seeking action against Palestinian terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, who drove the suicide attacker to the restaurant and now resides in Jordan after being freed from an Israeli prison in the 2011 Shalit deal.

Two of the 15 people killed in the bombing — including Roth’s daughter — held US citizenship, and Tamimi has been put on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list.

Roth tweeted on Sunday, “The fugitive @FBIMostWanted terrorist who says she carried out the #SbarroPizzeria massacre, who is wanted in the US on terror charges, who has a busy Twitter account, who lives free in Jordan… still has an active Twitter account. Why?”

He added, “Yes, I’ve already asked @Twitter’s guardians of decency to shut #Tamimi’s account down. Their response so far: ‘You can learn more about reporting abusive behavior here. If we take further action, we’ll let you know.’”

“Are there other fugitive jihadists with @Twitter accounts?” Roth concluded.

Of Tweets and Termites: The mainstreaming of antisemitism

American Jewry is at a crossroads. The vast majority of American Jews will continue to cling to their familiar ancestral belief system; it’s all they know. To change now would be to deny everything their family members and they, themselves, have lived for. But before they bury their heads in the sand once again, they should at least hear these simple truths:

When our enemies came for us during the Holocaust, they did not ask if we were Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or secular Jews. Neither were they interested in any past service we rendered for the state. WE WERE JEWS. That was all that mattered; and if history repeats itself, when our enemies come for us once again in the future; they will not ask if we are Israelis or Zionists. They will not care if we marched in Selma, Alabama; protested against apartheid in South Africa; supported equal rights for women; advocated for the LBGTQ community and campaigned for Hillary or Bernie. It will only matter that WE ARE JEWS.

Today’s anti-Semitism, unleashed by the left and Islamists is so visceral, virulent, vile, vicious, and vitriolic that it can no longer be justified under the guise of anti-Zionism. In form, content, and message, it is EXACTLY what was seen and heard during the heyday of the Third Reich. It is what made the Holocaust possible. What begins with a parade float in Belgium inevitably ends in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka. This is the fate our enemies want for us. This is why Tehran’s Ayatollah Khameini rejoices that more Jews are moving to Israel – for one grand target.

Meanwhile, most of the Jews will continue entrusting their safety to their religious and political leadership. They will continue to vote for, support, and finance the party and the ideology that will ultimately lead them to their own destruction and that of the state of Israel. Vladimir Jabotinsky recognized that, “The Jew learns not by way of reason, but from catastrophe. He won't buy an umbrella merely because he sees clouds in the sky. He waits until he is drenched and catches pneumonia."

History may yet prove that when it comes to the Jews, Jabotinsky was an optimist.

Cartoon of the day - They can't call me antisemitic

Continuing on my series of re-captioning old cartoons....

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One of the reasons why fights over the Middle East (whether they involve BDS or some other propaganda effort) tend to immediately be cast in terms of Left vs. Right is because the majority of attacks on the Jewish state these days come wrapped in Left-leaning vocabulary.

This is not to say that card-carrying right wingers like Pat Buchannan or outright fascists like David Duke don't also hurl thunderbolts at the Jews and their state on a regular basis. But even they tend to use terminology that has long become familiar to both Israel's defenders and defamers.

For instance, with a few exceptions you will no longer even hear Israel's most ardent foes talk about throwing the Jews into the sea or readying for a massacre that would rival the Mongols (language Israel's hostile neighbors used repeatedly during the first two decades of the state's existence). Instead, complaints (which range from reasonable-sounding to hysterical) draw upon the language of human rights and international law to make the case that Israel is the world's greatest violator of both.

In fact, individuals and groups who use this terminology to make their case against the Jewish state do not simply see themselves as Progressives but insist that their issue defines who does and who does not deserve this label.

This is why those traveling under the BDS banner routinely accuse liberals who do not follow their lead of being PEPs ("Progressives for Everything but Palestine"), encapsulating in a single inelegant phrase the assumption that support for anything other than Palestinian demands (whatever they happen to be this week) represents an abandonment of liberal principles.

The key to understanding this phenomenon is seeing how ineffective it is trying to use this same accusation in reverse. For instance, I don't think I've met a single Israel supporter who, at one time or another, has not expressed the notion that Progressives who claim to champion the rights of women and gays (for example) can possibly favor the Arabs (who crush the rights of both) as opposed to Israel (which probably has the best record with regard to gender and sexual equality in the world).

Activists with this mindset (which I once had and still possess to some degree) are perpetually shocked to find out how ineffective such "reverse-PEP" arguments are when directed against Israel's most ardent foes. Gay rights are the perfect example of an issue that should demonstrate both the yawning chasm between Israel's approach to human rights vs. its opponents, and the hypocrisy of anyone claiming to champion liberal values who fights to expand the territory in which the murder of gays is politically and religiously sanctioned.

But try to bring this contradiction to the attention of self-styled, pro-Palestinian, "progressive" groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and you will soon find yourself being accused (and accused and accused and accused) of "Pinkwashing," a fake phenomenon invented by JVP types to avoid this issue entirely by casting it as part of an evil plot by Israel's friends to "change the subject" from whatever it is the Israel-dislikers insist is the only thing we're allowed to talk about.

The reason behind this strategy of avoidance (as well as the shrillness that accompanies it) is that Israel's foes (who have no answer regarding the glaring contradictions of their claimed ideology) assume that if they simply ignore their opponents and shriek their own accusations ever louder, eventually others will tire of trying to get a response out of them, leaving the field open for debate to continue on the Israel-haters own terms.

The behaviors we see from Israel's loudest accusers (dividing the Left into "true Progressives" who toe the BDS party line and fake ones who do not, ignoring all facts and arguments that they cannot respond to, and never relenting from perpetual attack mode) all have precedent in the argument which framed the Left during the last century as much as hostility to Israel defines it for this one: the role of the Soviet Union (and support thereof) as the touchstone for commitment to revolutionary change.

It is to this subject that I shall turn to next.

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04/01 Links Pt1: Dore Gold: Why Israeli Sovereignty Over the Golan Heights Matters; Good job, Grenell; NGO Medic Killed in Bethlehem Clashes Had Ties to PFLP Terror Group

From Ian:

Amb. Dore Gold: Why Israeli Sovereignty Over the Golan Heights Matters

Critics of the U.S. decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights misread the legal significance of the preamble to UN Security Council Resolution 242, from November 1967, which contains a reference to the principle of the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.”

Legal scholars have drawn a distinction between the seizure of territory in wars of aggression, which is illegal, and the seizure of territory by a state exercising its lawful right of self-defense.

Writing in the American Journal of International Law in 1970, Stephen Schwebel, who became the legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State and then President of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, wrote about the legal significance of this difference. He also cited the great British scholar Elihu Lauterpacht, who argued that “territorial change cannot properly take place as a result of the unlawful use of force.”

What about cases of the lawful use of force? In the aftermath of the Second World War, significant territorial changes were implemented in Europe. For example, Germany lost considerable land to Poland and to the Soviet Union. It was clear that the UN Charter recognized the right of states to use force in self-defense, which is the case of Israel’s entry into the Golan Heights.

In 1967, when the Soviet Union undertook to obtain condemnation of Israel in the UN Security Council as the aggressor in the Six-Day War, it failed, losing the vote by 11 to 4. The Soviets then went to the General Assembly and failed yet again. It was clear for the member states of both UN bodies that Israel had acted in self-defense.

It is also not true that the Golan decision represents a major shift in U.S. policy. In 1975, President Gerald Ford wrote to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that the U.S. “will give great weight to Israel’s position that any peace agreement be predicated on Israel’s remaining on the Golan Heights.”

Arab Leaders to Seek UN Security Council Resolution on Golan

Arab leaders said on Sunday they would seek a UN Security Council resolution against the US decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and promised to support Palestinians in their bid for statehood.

Arab leaders, long divided by regional rivalries, also ended their annual summit in Tunisia calling for cooperation with non-Arab Iran based on non-interference in each others’ affairs.

Arab leaders who have been grappling with a bitter Gulf Arab dispute, splits over Iran’s regional influence, the war in Yemen and unrest in Algeria and Sudan sought common ground after Washington recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan.

But the abrupt departure from the summit shortly after it began by Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who is locked in a row with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, suggested rivalries were not easily buried. No reason was given for his departure.

“We, the leaders of the Arab countries gathered in Tunisia … express our rejection and condemnation of the United States decision to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan,” Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said.

Jpost Editorial: Good job, Grenell

German exports to Iran dropped 9% last year, Benjamin Weinthal reported in Sunday’s Jerusalem Post.

Large German banks like Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank stopped doing business with Iran. German engineering companies have stopped exporting engineering equipment to Tehran. Well-known companies like Volkswagen, BMW, Siemens and Daimler are withdrawing from Iran’s volatile market.

The reason? US sanctions on Iran – and the unyielding efforts of America’s Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell.

In fact, in the German state of Lower Saxony, Weinthal reported, trade with Iran rose in the first half of 2018, but then dropped drastically in the second half of the year, due to US sanctions on Iran and Grenell’s arrival in May.

Grenell has made sure that the American position is amply clear. On his first day on the job, he tweeted: “US sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.”

Palestine Today has a heartwarming story (for Palestinians) about a mother who brought her daughter to Palestinian Land Day protests, exposing the toddler to danger.

When she was born, her mom named her after Reem Saleh Riyashi, a terrorist who killed 4 Israelis at the Erez crossing in 2004.

Riyashi left behind two small children of her own and a Hamas commander husband. She apparently decided to blow herself up because she was having an affair with another Hamas commander, and the news about the affair was starting to get out. Her lover convinced her to blow herself up and become a heroine rather than be exposed to the shame of being an adulteress.

Here's the role model for today's Palestinians:

When little Reem grows up her mother wants her to blow up.

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At least three Israelis will be speaking at the Global Entrepreneurship Conference in Bahrain later this month, upsetting Arabs who are against normalization with Israel and putting them further on the defensive.

There are reports that Israeli Economy Minister Eli Cohen was added to the list of participants on the first day of the conference.

The Bahrain parliament issued a statement denouncing the conference for allowing Israelis, saying "The House of Representatives has condemned the hosting of Israeli speakers at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress and the support of the Palestinian cause will continue to be our priority," the House of Representatives said in a statement posted on its official Facebook page.

Kuwait announced Sunday its withdrawal from the conference because of the participation of the Israeli delegation.

The cases of Arab "normalization" with Israel are accelerating and the frustration from the old school Israel haters is increasing.

It is fun to watch.

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Does Moroccan King Mohammed VI realize that he just affirmed Jews' rights to worship on the Temple Mount?

Here is the full statement jointly signed by Pope Francis and King Mohammed VI in Morocco on Saturday:

On the occasion of the visit of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Kingdom of Morocco, His Holiness and His Majesty King Mohammed VI, recognizing the unique and sacred character of Jerusalem / Al-Quds Acharif, and deeply concerned for its spiritual significance and its special vocation as a city of peace, join in making the following appeal:

“We consider it important to preserve the Holy City of Jerusalem / Al-Quds Acharif as the common patrimony of humanity and especially the followers of the three monotheistic religions, as a place of encounter and as a symbol of peaceful coexistence, where mutual respect and dialogue can be cultivated.

To this end, the specific multi-religious character, the spiritual dimension and the particular cultural identity of Jerusalem / Al-Quds Acharif must be protected and promoted.

It is our hope, therefore, that in the Holy City, full freedom of access to the followers of the three monotheistic religions and their right to worship will be guaranteed, so that in Jerusalem / Al-Quds Acharif they may raise their prayers to God, the Creator of all, for a future of peace and fraternity on the earth”.

Rabat, 30 March 2019

While it is presumptuous for Muslim and Christian leaders to sign a declaration on Jerusalem without including any Jews, this statement includes an assertion that every member of the three major monotheistic faiths should have full access to their holy spaces in order to worship there.

Which means that Jews have the full right not just to visit but even to pray at the Temple Mount, the holiest spot in Judaism.

King Mohammed's part of the statement is even more interesting because he chairs a committee created by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on Jerusalem.

The mere visits of Jews to the Temple Mount cause daily uproars in Arab and Muslim media, let alone the very rare expressions of prayer by Jews there (which I was privileged to witness and participate in last month.)

The only people trying to limit freedom of access and worship to all holy sites in Jerusalem are the Muslims. (And, ironically, the Israeli government which officially does not allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount to maintain an antisemitic "status quo.")

This statement is fully compatible with international law on freedom of religion. But that hasn't stopped Muslims from protesting Jewish access not only to the Temple Mount but to all of Judaism's holiest sites, in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron.

Does King Mohammed realize what he just signed? Does the rest of the Muslim world?

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FDR's letter to the Palestine Pavilion at the World's Fair and the legality of Jewish settlements

In 1939, this letter by President Franklin Roosevelt was published by the organizers of the Palestine Pavilion at the New York World's Fair:

THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
Out of the world War came a matter of great spiritual significance — the establishment of a Homeland for the Jewish people, recognized as such by the public law of the world. In the realization of this aim the United States played a leading role. I know how close it was to the wish of President Wilson. The formal terms of its expression during the War, the so-called Balfour Declaration, had his personal approval, and he did much to have it written into the peace treaty. The subsequent unanimous endorsement or the Balfour Declaration by both Houses of the United States Congress gave further proof of the deep interest or the American people in the purposes of the Declaration and in the fulfilment the moral obligation which it involved.

Jewish achievement in Palestine since the Balfour Declaration vindicates the high hope which lay behind the sponsorship of the Homeland. The Jewish development in Palestine since the Balfour Declaration is not only a tribute to the creative powers of the Jewish people, but by bringing great advancement into the sacred Land has promoted the well-being of all the inhabitants thereof.

I shall personally watch with deep sympathy the progress of Palestine.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

It looks like most of this letter was actually written in 1932, with the last paragraph perhaps added for the exhibition.

In this letter, FDR confirms that the building of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was enshrined in international law. This means building through the entire area of the British Mandate.

Has the status of the land changed since then?

The areas illegally seized by Jordan in 1948, now known as the "West Bank," did not change their status since Jordan's annexation was not recognized by the international community. In 1967, when Israel gained those lands back, nothing changed from the San Remo conference and other nations' recognition of all of British Mandate Palestine as being the area where the Jewish homeland should be built - which of course includes towns and villages.

The first change to the status of those territories came during the Oslo process when Israel apparently gave Area A to the PLO. The areas where Jews have moved to live are still fully within the areas covered by San Remo and international law since the early 1920s.

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03/31 Links: Dershowitz: Trump Is Right about the Golan Heights; PA prioritizes salaries to terrorists over medical care for Palestinians; Shapiro: America Still Needs Athens and Jerusalem

From Ian:

Alan M. Dershowitz: Trump Is Right about the Golan Heights

I had the opportunity to discuss this issue with U.S. President Donald J. Trump two weeks before he announced his decision. I provided him with the battleship analogy, which he seemed to appreciate. I told him that I thought the Sunni Arab world might complain, but that they really do not care about the Golan, which has no religious significance to Islam. There were in fact, some minor protests, but nothing of significance.

Predictably, the European Union opposed the U.S. recognition of the annexation. But it provided no compelling argument, beyond its usual demand that the status quo not be changed. Israel's control over the Golan Heights has been the status quo for more than half a century; and Israel's legitimate need to control the heights has only increased over time, with war in Syria, and the presence of Iranian and Hezbollah military in close proximity. Would the European Union demand that Israel now hand over the Golan Heights to Assad? Has any European country ever handed over high ground, captured in a defensive war, to a sworn enemy?

Recall that at the end of the first and second world wars, European countries made territorial adjustments to help preserve the peace. Why should the European Union subject Israel to a double standard it has never demanded of itself? The answer is clear: The European Union has always acted hypocritically when it comes to Israel, and this is no exception.

So three cheers for President Trump for doing the right thing. I will continue to criticize him if and when he does the wrong thing -- such as separating families at the U.S.'s southern border.

That is what bipartisan means: praising the President I voted against when he does the right thing, and criticizing presidents I voted for (such as Barack Obama) when they do the wrong thing (such as abstaining on the Security Council Resolution declaring Jewish holy places to be occupied territory).

Israel's continuing control over the Golan Heights increases the chance for peace and decreases the chances that Syria, Iran and/or Hezbollah will be able to use this high ground as a launching pad against Israelis. That is good news for the world, for the United States and for Israel.

Amb. Alan Baker: U.S. Recognition of Israeli Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, March 2019: Some Legal Observations

This legislation was accompanied by an assurance, conveyed in Israel’s Knesset by Prime Minister Begin,12 as well as by Israel’s UN ambassador in a communication to the Secretary-General of the UN, according to which:
The government of Israel wishes to reiterate that it is willing now as always to negotiate unconditionally with Syria as with its other neighbors for a lasting peace in accordance with Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973). The Golan Heights Law does not preclude or impair such negotiations.13

While the laws of armed conflict address situations in which a state, in exercising its inherent right of self-defense, takes control of, or occupies territory of the offensive state, the question of the length of time such a situation of control or occupation may last is not addressed. Furthermore, a long-term continuation of belligerency, an ongoing threat of aggression by the state concerned, and a lack of any foreseeable chance of peace negotiations all generate a unique situation facing the state controlling the territory, with no foreseeable chance for a peace settlement.

In his publication “Justice in International Law:” “What Weight to Conquest? Aggression, Compliance, and Development” (1970) Stephen Schwebel, former judge in the International Court of Justice, refers to the situation of the Golan Heights as follows:
…as regards territory bordering Palestine, and under unquestioned Arab sovereignty in 1949 and thereafter, such as Sinai and the Golan Heights, it follows that no weight shall be given to conquest, but that such weight shall be given to defensive action as is reasonably required to ensure that such Arab territory will not again be used for aggressive purposes against Israel.14

The recent civil war in Syria, the continued lack of any stable government, the flagrant and willful crimes committed by the Syrian president against those elements opposing his regime and against Syrian civilian population, as well as the emplacement of Iranian armed facilities on Syrian territory directed against Israel, all serve to indicate the utter lack of any hope that Syria will in the near future be prepared to recognize Israel as a legitimate neighbor, accept a common border, and enter into a peaceful relationship with Israel.

These factors are also indicative of a total lack of reliability by the Syrian leadership, and capability of genuinely taking upon itself any international responsibility, especially vis-à-vis Israel.

With this background, the proclamation by the U.S. President recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights is logical and necessary.

Map proves Syria recognized Banias as Israeli before 1967

Following U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights, researchers at Tel-Hai College have discovered that prior the 1967 Six-Day War, even Syria recognized the Banias plateau – the site of a spring at the foot of Mount Hermon that feeds one the main tributaries of the Jordan River – as belonging to Israel.

The researchers discovered a map drawn by Syria's planning and construction agency in 1965, two years before the Six-Day War, which places Banias on the Israeli side of the border.

"Even before Israel was founded, Banias was part of the British Mandate in Palestine, flush up against the border of the French Mandate in Syria," explains Shalom Tarmachi, head of the Tel-Hai College map collection.

The 1965 Syrian map shows the Banias plateau in red

"In 1939, the Jewish National Fund purchased land in the area of Khan a-Duar at Banias, so the area belonged to Israel, both legally and politically. The cease-fire agreement of 1949 that ended the War of Independence decided that the area would be demilitarized, under the assumption that its status would be regulated in a future peace treaty. But until 1967, communities in the Hula Valley suffered heavy Syrian fire from Banias, and it became part of [Syria's] attempt to divert the sources of the Jordan River," Tarmachi said.

Tarmachi said that before the college's map archives began working with an advanced system that allows multiple maps to be overlaid on top of each other and adjusted to the same scale, it was "very hard" to identify to whom the Syrians assigned the territory in their maps. Now, he says, the new system makes it "very clear that the Syrians did not consider the demilitarized area as theirs, even though they used it for military activity."

Israeli maps, he explained, show Syrian tank posts, minefields, and attempts to divert the sources of the Jordan River, but it is actually the Syrian map that shows that the Banias plateau lies on the Israeli side of the border. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Nathan Thrall has written a 11,000 word article in the New York Times magazine today that is essentially a huge rose bouquet to people who want to boycott the world's only Jewish state.

The article is filled with slanted and often wrong reporting.

Here's an example of an outright lie:

Last October, nearly a year after the University of Michigan’s divestment vote, there was an “apartheid-wall demonstration” co-sponsored by the campus Latinx group, La Casa. Pro-Palestinian students erected two cardboard walls, modeled after the 25-foot-high concrete slabs that intertwine with fences and barbed wire to encircle Palestinian communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Really? The fence is meant to encircle (i.e., imprison) Palestinians?

The only communities in the territories that are encircled by fences are the Jewish villages and towns who are trying to avoid their residents being murdered by Thrall's wonderful Palestinian muses.

Palestinians claim that the barrier "encircles" Bethlehem or parts of Jerusalem, but it isn't true.

Here's an example of the more popular of Thrall's methods of bias - to say something that the BDSers claim which isn't true and pretend that there is no counterargument:

The B.D.S. movement casts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a struggle against apartheid, as defined by the International Criminal Court: “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” (The United Nations defines racial discrimination as directed at “race, color, descent or national or ethnic origin.”) B.D.S. leaders often cite South Africa’s sixth prime minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, who likened Israel to South Africa in 1961: The Jews “took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel like South Africa is an apartheid state.”

But given that the definition of apartheid means domination of one racial group over another, and Israel doesn't discriminate against its Arab citizens, Israel cannot be an apartheid state. Every nation discriminates against non-citizens!

Thrall doesn't bother to point that out and the NYY editors didn't insist that he give another point of view that would demolish the argument.

Even more egregiously, Thrall uses the insane argument that BDSers like to use to support the idea that Israel loves white nationalist antisemites:

To bolster the argument that the Palestinian struggle is a fight against racism, B.D.S. leaders have highlighted the support for Jewish ethno-nationalism by far-right European politicians like President Viktor Orban of Hungary, alt-right figures like Steve Bannon and white supremacists like Richard Spencer, an organizer of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. That year, Spencer told an Israeli television interviewer: “You could say that I am a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people. I want us to have a secure homeland that’s for us and ourselves, just like you want a secure homeland in Israel.”

It is elementary logic that A liking B doesn't mean that B likes A. It is outrageous to quote the antisemite Richard Spencer's support for the idea of a Jewish state as evidence that Israel supports Richard Spencer.

Far-right websites love to quote BDS leaders - does that mean that BDS is far right? By Thrall's logic, sure. But for some reason this travesty of an argument is only used to damn Israel.

If one believes that connections like these prove how people think, then the fact that Thrall works for the International Crisis Group which is funded by Qatar - a major supporter of Hamas - means that, by Thrall's own logic, he is a Hamas supporter.

I could fisk the entire piece. One last example:

Ben-Youssef said most of the members of Congress and staff members she spoke to were aware of Israeli human rights violations against Palestinians under blockade and occupation but were largely uninformed about Israeli discrimination against Palestinian citizens. It was news to many that tens of thousands of Palestinian citizens live in villages that predate the creation of Israel and are unrecognized by the state, receiving little or no water and electricity.

Is the fact that Israel doesn't provide electricity to unrecognized Bedouin villages in the middle of the Negev evidence of apartheid? Israel has tried for decades to organize and improve the lives of Bedouin by building towns for them with schools and water and electricity. If Israel is against providing electricity to Arabs, why on earth would they spend tens of millions to build entire communities for them with full infrastructure instead of trying to criss-cross the Negev with pipes and wires to scores of tiny villages, almost all built illegally?

How many examples of lies and bias does one need to know that this article does not illuminate anything but is meant to obscure the truth about Israel?

The problem isn't Thrall, whose bias is obvious. The problem is that the New York Times publishes his "reporting" without informing their readers of his obvious bias, as well as without fact checking even the basics of what he wrote.

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From Times of Israel:

Two minuscule 2,600-year-old inscriptions recently uncovered in the City of David’s Givati Parking Lot excavation are vastly enlarging the understanding of ancient Jerusalem in the late 8th century.

The two inscriptions, in paleo-Hebrew writing, were found separately in a large First Temple structure within the span of a few weeks by long-term team members Ayyala Rodan and Sveta Pnik.

One is a bluish agate stone seal “(belonging) to Ikkar son of Matanyahu” (LeIkkar Ben Matanyahu). The other is a clay seal impression, “(belonging) to Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King” (LeNathan-Melech Eved HaMelech).

This burnt clay impression is the first archaeological evidence of the biblical name Nathan-Melech.

The inscriptions are “not just another discovery,” said archaeologist Dr. Yiftah Shalev of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Rather, they “paint a much larger picture of the era in Jerusalem.”

According to Shalev, while both discoveries are of immense scholarly value as inscriptions, their primary value is their archaeological context.

“What is importance is not just that they were found in Jerusalem, but [that they were found] inside their true archaeological context,” Shalev told The Times of Israel. Many other seals and seal impressions have been sold on the antiquities market without any thought to provenance.

This in situ find, said Shalev, serves to “connect between the artifact and the actual physical era it was found in” — a large, two-story First Temple structure that dig archaeologists have pegged as an administrative center.\

This video shows much more:

The name of Nathan Melech as a high officer of the kingdom is found in in 2 Kings Chapter 23.

First Temple-era finds that confirm Biblical accounts are rare but not unheard of. Still, Arabs will often pretend that there is no archaeological evidence of an ancient Jewish kingdom in Israel, and the Givati parking lot and City of David finds show that they are not only lying, but know they are lying.

(h/t Yoel)

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03/30 Links: Ben Rhodes Blames Jewish Donors for Obama Not Being More Anti-Israel; NYTs Anti-Israel Writer Works for Qatar Funded Group; The ‘Wag the Dog’ conspiracy that never happened

From Ian:

Ben Rhodes Blames Jewish Donors for Obama Not Being More Anti-Israel

Ben Rhodes, a former national security aide to President Barack Obama, told the New York Times this week that the “donor class” had prevented Obama from taking more anti-Israel steps than the administration had wanted to take.

Rhodes spoke to author Nathan Thrall for a feature article titled, “How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics.” The headline describes “politics,” but Thrall focused on policy debates within the Democratic Party, which has seen the rise of an assertive anti-Israel constituency in recent years. That constituency has included overtly and unabashedly antisemitic critics, largely but not exclusively from the Muslim community.

Thrall writes about the “boycott, divestment, sanctions” (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel as apartheid South Africa was once isolated — a comparison that BDS critics find not only factually wrong, but also offensive.

Enter Rhodes — one of the architects of the Iran nuclear deal, which was vehemently opposed by Israel and by pro-Israel Americans. He blamed Jewish donors for the Obama administration’s supposed restraint towards Israel:

According to Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national-security adviser and one of Obama’s closest confidants, several members of the Obama administration wanted to adopt a more assertive policy toward Israel but felt that their hands were tied. “The Washington view of Israel-Palestine is still shaped by the donor class,” Rhodes, who does not support B.D.S., told me, when I met with him at the Obama Foundation in October. “The donor class is profoundly to the right of where the activists are, and frankly, where the majority of the Jewish community is.”

Rhodes’s claims were echoed by “[a]nother former member of the Obama White House,” who told Thrall that the Obama administration had prevailed upon the United Nations Security Council to delay a vote against Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) to after the 2016 election. (The resolution also declared Israel’s presence in eastern Jerusalem — including the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, inhabited by Jews for millennia — to be illegal.)

Thrall noted: “The fear of losing Jewish donors as the party moves left on Israel may well be overstated.” He also observed that many Jewish donors to the Democratic Party have left-wing views on Israel. Yet the antisemitic canard that Jews use money to control U.S. foreign policy persists within the Democratic Party at the highest levels, and is used by insiders like Rhodes as an excuse — a scapegoat — to deflect criticism of insufficiently radical policy stances.

Notably, Rhodes was appointed by President Obama to the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council in the closing days of his administration. It was a controversial appointment, given Rhodes’s role as the “Iran deal salesman,” and Iran’s leading role in promoting Holocaust denial worldwide as an official ideology.

Dimitri Lascaris, who was condemned for "vile antisemtic smear" by Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, reveals that his friend & ally Michael Lynk—the UNHRC's Palestine monitor—is lobbying to change the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement. Lynk did same as anti-Israel activist in the 90s. pic.twitter.com/h3Tv4fRhEY
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) March 29, 2019

Author of NYT Anti-Israel Piece Works for Group Funded by Qatar

The author of this Sunday's New York Times magazine cover story about the campaign to boycott, divest, and sanction the state of Israel works for an organization whose major donor, Qatar, is also the largest state funder of the terrorist group Hamas. Other significant donors to the author's organization, the International Crisis Group, are leading supporters of the anti-Semitic boycott movement the author describes in his piece.

The publication of the article, "How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics," represents another salvo in the New York Times‘ continuing promotion of anti-Israel writers and views.

The author, Nathan Thrall, is tied to a large network of BDS supporters that are funded into the millions by the Qatari government, which has long been engaged in efforts to spy on the American Jewish community and pro-Israel officials. Qatar's foreign influence operations in Washington, D.C., have flown mostly under the radar, but are part of a larger proxy battle being waged by wealthy Middle Eastern governments eager to peddle influence in powerful D.C. circles.

Thrall, who the Times presents as a disinterested expert, serves as director of the Arab-Israeli Project at the International Crisis Group, or ICG, a left-leaning advocacy organization that has received around $4 million from the Qatari government in the just the last year. Qatar's donations represent around 23 percent of ICG's total budget. Qatar is not mentioned in Thrall's 11,500-word piece.

Is The Left's Anti-Semitism A Problem For Leftist Jews?

The Economist apologizes for headline tagging Ben Shapiro as 'alt-right sage'

The Economist labeled Ben Shapiro an “alt-right sage” in a headline, then apologized after the right-wing pundit protested the characterization.

The British weekly’s apology was added Thursday to a profile about Shapiro that originally carried the headline “Inside the mind of Ben Shapiro, the alt-right sage without the rage.” It also called Shapiro “a pop idol of the alt right.”

After an exchange on Twitter between Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, and Anne Mcelvoy, one of the article’s two authors, The Economist changed the headline to “Inside the mind of Ben Shapiro, a radical conservative.” The apology said the references to the alt-right — a loose right-wing movement that includes white nationalists and anti-Semites – was made “mistakenly,” adding “In fact, he has been strongly critical of the alt-right movement. We apologize.”

Founded in 1843, The Economist is one of the world’s most reputed [and anti-Semitic] periodicals.

In the exchange, Shapiro wrote: “This is a vile lie. Not only am I not alt-right, I am probably their leading critic on the right. I was the number one target of their hate in 2016 online according to ADL data. I demand a retraction.”

He added: “If you lump me in with people who are so evil I literally hire security to walk me to shul on Shabbat, you can go straight to hell.” (h/t Elder of Lobby)

The ‘Wag the Dog’ conspiracy that never happened - analysis

The 1997 movie Wag the Dog stars Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman as a political strategist and a film director enlisted to do damage control in light of a sex scandal involving a president running for reelection. They concoct a fake war in Albania, releasing footage of fictional battles, destruction and a photogenic orphan.

When Palestinian terrorists shot rockets into central Israel and completely destroyed a house in Moshav Mishmeret, injuring all three generations of one family, some thought that instead of condemning Hamas for targeting infants, toddlers and their grandparents, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the real problem here.

A conspiracy theory in the style of Wag the Dog began to be floated in news outlets of varying levels of respectability – like the UK’s Independent – and on the social media accounts of anti-Israel organizations that Netanyahu wants a war, because it’ll somehow help him ahead of the April 9 election. They claimed that Netanyahu intentionally sparks wars right before elections to help him win.

“History shows a terrible pattern of Netanyahu heightening violence right before Israeli elections,” Jewish progressive group IfNotNow tweeted.

“We cannot give in to this pattern of fear – it keeps fascist leaders like Netanyahu in power.”

This claim is not only false, but is preposterous for many reasons.

First, the dry facts: the only wars – really operations – that have taken place while Netanyahu was in power were Pillar of Defense in 2012 and Protective Edge in 2014.

Protective Edge began eight months before the 2015 elections. It’s true that in Israel’s chaotic political system, an election could break out at any time, but July 2014 wasn’t a time when it seemed particularly likely. And the coalition was relatively united after the operation, reflecting a public rallying around the flag. It took a few more months for Netanyahu to summarily fire ministers in his coalition and trigger an election.

One thing I'll add to this excellent piece: the Steele dossier pushed a Jew-baiting conspiracy theory that cast Jews in America as disloyal. Everyone who just tossed this sh*t-schnitzel into the public consciousness ought to be making apologies and amends https://t.co/xpMS0vzqJh
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) March 29, 2019