Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

04/16 Links Pt2: Jewish critics of Israel have a problem with Israelis, not with Netanyahu; Nikki Haley interviewed by Hillel Neuer; The UK Labour Party is institutionally anti-Semitic

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Jewish critics of Israel have a problem with Israelis, not with Netanyahu

The issue on which they are prepared to discard the ties between Israel and American Jews is one that is hardly worth such a split. Netanyahu made it clear that he’s not talking about annexation of the West Bank, but applying Israeli law to settlements where, it must be pointed out, Israeli law already is applied as a general practice. Doing so wouldn’t prevent a two-state solution were the Palestinians ever inclined to accept one, which Jacobs and his friends know very well they have repeatedly rejected.

What is really at stake here is nothing more than the anger of American Jews who are still shocked that Israelis don’t value their advice. The clear majority of Israelis, including many who voted for Blue and White because of disgust with Netanyahu’s legal problems and because Gantz offered no substantive disagreements with the prime minister on security issues, have rejected the blind belief of Jacobs and his friends in withdrawal from the West Bank as an end in and of itself.

We know Jacobs and ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt oppose Netanyahu and Trump. But it’s time to acknowledge that their real beef is with the Israeli people, who have repeatedly rejected their opinions by margins of landslide proportions. Most Israelis believe that endangering their security by creating a hostile sovereign power in Judea and Samaria—the way Ariel Sharon did in Gaza with his 2005 withdrawal—would be madness.

Writers like former Forward editor Jane Eisner and Peter Beinart, who are open about rejecting the political will of Israeli’s people and in abandoning the notion of Israel’s centrality (Eisner) or working to subjugate Israel to the will of foreign powers who wish to impose a solution on it (Beinart), are more honest than Jacobs and Greenblatt about their goals.

Regardless of their own opinions about Netanyahu or the conflict, it’s likely that many Reform and Conservative Jews, as well as donors to ADL, aren’t comfortable with having these organizations express such contempt for the people of Israel or for them to attempt to sabotage the U.S.-Israel relationship. Nor should they be. These unelected leaders of American Jewry who have the nerve to lecture the people of Israel about Jewish values and morals deserve to be ignored.

Nikki Haley interviewed by Hillel Neuer, King David Gala, Montreal, April 10, 2019.

Holocaust survivor Tomi Reichental: the boy from Belsen brings urgent lessons to Belfast…

Tomi’s story informs that every German family has a skeleton in their cupboard from that period. This is not to suggest that most Germans have not exorcised old ghosts and recognise uncomfortable truths. They have, as the film shows. Rather, for some it is taboo. Nazis are still admired, and anti-Semitism has not gone away.

In one clip, Tomi is in the room the Wannsee conference took place. This is where Hitler and his henchmen conceived the final solution. In typical German efficiency, everything was catalogued.

Now a museum, on the wall a list itemising the number of Jews across Europe to be exterminated, one of them being Tomi. The plan included 4,000 Jews in Ireland.

Factor in, others deemed unfit to be citizens by nationalist extremists and categorised with different coloured stars other than yellow, and the number was certain to rise.

I raised the Irish aspect with Tomi and Gerry. In Northern Ireland, unionist understanding of the Republic’s neutral role in World War II is routinely coloured. Constantly cited is De Valera offering condolences to Germany on Hitler’s death.

It may not have been Dev’s greatest moment but nor is it representative of a nation that interned IRA suspects throughout the war and executed those who collaborated with the Nazis.

My point here is this. Had Hitler had his way, the people to administer the Zyklon B in Ireland were the IRA, a sinister organisation based on whispers. Kids like Tomi Reichental would have been rounded up by men like Sean Russell, the IRA chief of staff who died on a Nazi submarine.

For the Sinn Fein family, Russell is an Irish patriot or victim, but never a perpetrator. No, never that. Each year they pay homage to his statue in Dublin. If Russell was still alive, Tomi would ask him, are you sorry for what you did?

Ten years ago I decided to make The Elder of Ziyon Haggadah, one of the very few English-language purely Zionist Haggadot with a selection of commentaries from a variety of religious Zionist sources on the themes of redemption and the relevance of the Haggadah to Zionism, today.

I can look at it more objectively today and say, it is still pretty good. It is very usable - print it out in color and get it bound with plastic ring binding so it can lay flat and you can use it during your seder. (Don't you hate haggadot that close on you when you need to make Kiddush or drink one of the four cups?)

I would need to rewrite it if i was to market it because I copied and pasted different ideas from all over the Internet. (The artwork came from a Chabad haggadah.)

While I have to give it away for free, you can still give me a donation for it!

You can download it here, and you can view it below.

Try this link if the other doesn't work.

Elder of Ziyon Haggadah 5769 by on Scribd

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Egypt's El Watan News has an article about the poor state of historic Jewish cemeteries in Cairo.

It describes how tombstones and markers in a 120 dunum area have deteriorated due to neglect, being disintegrated by mold.

Hills of rubbish mixed with sewage, accumulate, wearing away the stones and erasing history. Grave robbers steal marble and stone from the sites. There are no fences or walls protecting the areas and area children and youths hang out among the graves and the stray dogs. Witnesses in the area say they see kids go to the graveyard to party, drink and take drugs.

Zeinab Abd al-Halhi, a resident of the area, says she saw Jews visit only three times in the last 15 years, under police protection.

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04/16 Links Pt1: The False Palestinian "Nakba" Narrative; Saeb Erekat: Olmert offered Abbas more than 100% of West Bank; Abbas spokesman: If Jerusalem is off the table, Trump is off the table

From Ian:

The False Palestinian "Nakba" Narrative

The failed Palestinian Arab attempt to destroy the State of Israel at birth, and the attendant flight of some 600,000 Palestinian Arabs, has come to be known internationally as the "Nakba," the catastrophe, with its accompanying false implication of hapless victimhood.

Ironically, this was the opposite of the original meaning of the term when it was first used by Syrian historian Constantin Zureiq in his 1948 pamphlet The Meaning of the Disaster (Ma'na al-Nakba).

Zureiq wrote: "When the battle broke out, our public diplomacy began to speak of our imaginary victories, to put the Arab public to sleep and talk of the ability to overcome and win easily - until the Nakba happened.... We must admit our mistakes...and recognize the extent of our responsibility for the disaster that is our lot."

In his 1956 book Facts on the Question of Palestine, Hajj Amin Husseini, the leader of the Palestinian Arabs from the early 1920s to 1948, avoided the term "Nakba," which was widely associated at the time with a self-inflicted Palestinian Arab disaster - either through land sales to Zionists, failure to put up a fight, or the issuing of instructions to the people to leave.

"Nakba" is not a fact. It is a manipulative term designed to service the Palestinian propaganda campaign against Israel by imposing a false sense of guilt or culpability for the creation of the refugee problem. The flight of the Palestinian Arabs was the direct result of a failed "war of extermination" (in the words of the Arab League's secretary-general).

As Israeli Ambassador to the UN Abba Eban said on Nov. 17, 1958: "The Arab refugee problem was caused by a war of aggression, launched by the Arab States against Israel in 1947 and 1948. Let there be no mistake. If there had been no war against Israel...there would be no problem of Arab refugees today. Once you determine the responsibility for that war, you have determined the responsibility for the refugee problem."

PMW: Olmert offered Abbas more than 100% of West Bank, says PA leader

As Israel, the PA and the international community await the publication of the American peace plan, it is clear, based on PA leader Mahmoud Abbas' behavior in previous peace talks, that nothing the United States can offer will be enough for the PA leader.

PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat who was present at the negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas in 2008, recently told PA TV how generous Olmert's offer was on all final status issues. In fact, Olmert literally accepted all of the PA's publicly expressed demands, and even offered Abbas more than the full area of the West Bank and Gaza, and yet Abbas still rejected the offer.

Erekat explained that the area of the West Bank and Gaza Strip before they came under Israeli control in 1967was 6,235 sq. km. Olmert offered Abbas even more land than that, a total of 6,260 sq. km. At the negotiations, Erekat encouraged Abbas to accept the offer, saying that he could tell Palestinians: "I got more than the 1967 territories." And still Abbas rejected the offer.

Regarding Israel's capital Jerusalem, Olmert was likewise very generous. According to Erekat, Olmert offered: "What's Arab is Arab, and what's Jewish is Jewish." This would have kept the Temple Mount - Judaism's holiest site - under Palestinian rule with far-reaching implications for Jews and Judaism. The PA has said many times they would never allow Jews access to the Temple Mount since they consider Jews' presence on any area of the Temple Mount a desecration of the nearby Al-Aqsa Mosque. Yet Olmert still offered to give this to the Palestinians for peace - and even this wasn't enough for Abbas.

On the topic of refugees, Olmert was also forthcoming. He offered to have 150,000 refugees absorbed into the state of Israel over a period of 10 years. And still Abbas rejected it.

How the Israeli Left Has Undermined Faith in the Rule of Law

In the months leading up to Israel’s recent elections, the country’s attorney general announced that he would seek indictments against Benjamin Netanyahu on multiple charges of corruption. Nonetheless, Netanyahu’s Likud party gained seats in the Knesset, ensuring that he will retain the premiership. Evelyn Gordon points to a survey, conducted in February, that may explain why the corruption charges haven’t damaged Netanyahu at the ballot box:

Fully 65 percent of Likud voters and 75 percent of ḥaredi voters think law-enforcement agencies are simply trying to oust Netanyahu. On one level, this is shocking. But on another, it’s not shocking at all because the Israeli left has spent decades successfully subverting the concept of “the rule of law” for its own political benefit.

For instance, Israel’s Supreme Court repeatedly overturns government policies not because they violate any law but because the justices deem them “unreasonable.” . . . Moreover, in almost every Western democracy, the executive and legislative branches choose Supreme Court justices; only in Israel do sitting justices have veto power over the choice of their successors. Yet the left has branded every attempt to align Israel’s judicial appointments system with this Western norm as “contrary to the rule of law,” and has thereby successfully staved off change. . . .

[In addition], there’s the unequal application of laws, as epitomized by a pre-election [Supreme Court] ruling that disqualified a Jewish Knesset candidate but nixed the disqualification of an Arab party, Balad. . . .

So here’s how your average rightist voter understands the rule of law today: [as] a trick for ensuring that the left can continue imposing its views no matter how many elections it loses. That trick has successfully thwarted all legislative efforts at reform. But the price is that many rightists now distrust and despise “the rule of law” to such an extent that they dismiss pending indictments against a prime minister as just another attempt by the legal establishment to subvert democracy.

Assaf Voll in Israel published a Biblical-style description of Netanyahu's political career that has gone viral, and it is quite funny. (Haaretz called it "irritating.")

Here it is in Hebrew and an English translation from EoZ friend Yoel:

דברי ימי נתניהו
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איש היה בישראל ושמו בנימין בן בן-ציון נתניהו איש ימיני; ויך בנימין את שמעון הפרסי ויושע את ישראל מיד פרס; וימלוך על ישראל ימים רבים ושם אשתו שרה ושם בניו יאיר ואבנר; ויקומו אנשים מישראל ויקהלו על בנימין ויאמרו להפילו ויתמודדו עליו זה ארבע פעמים ולא יכלו לו; ויהי ה' את בנימין נתניהו והאיש הולך וגדל בכל אשר יפנה יצליח; ויפתח נתניהו את השמיים ואת השווקים, את האבטלה נתץ ואת האינפלציה שרף באש; ואת התמ"ג העלה מעלה ויעש אקזיטים ככוכבי שמים לרוב וילך בצוללות גרמניא; וכל מלכי הארץ מבקשים את פני בנימין לראותו ולשמוע דברו כי גדול האיש בעיניהם מכל אשר התהלך לפניו על פני האדמה;

ויאספו אנשי מדון אל בלפור ויזעקו אל בן בן ציון השכם והערב ויאמרו: צא צא איש הדמים המושחת המפלג ובן הבליעל; וישנאו אותו בלבם לאמור, המלוך תמלוך עלינו אם משול תמשול בנו; וישטמהו עוד על דבר סיגריו ושמפניותיו ולא יכלו דברו לשלום ויהיו לו לשטן ולמוקש כל הימים;

ויאיר בן יוסף איש לפידות מתנשא לאמור אני אמלוך; ויקשור על בנימין בן בן-ציון בירושלים; וישלח אל שר הצבא רב אלוף כנען בנימין הגנצי לאמור, לכה והיית לנו לראש ולקצין ונלחמה בבנימין בן בן-ציון; ויען בנימין הגנצי לאמור, אם ייתן ה' את בן בן-ציון לפני והייתי לכם לשר ולראש וחצי המלכות תתנו לפני; וישב יאיר איש לפידות דבר את גנץ ויאמר טוב הדבר בעיני; ויכרתו ברית ויאכלו וישתו ויחרפו את נתניהו לאמור, מי הוא זה ואיזה הוא בן-ציון כי נעבדנו; ויהי כי גבה ליבם ויוסיפו עוד דבר: מי ייתן את העם הזה בידינו והסרנו את את ראש נתניהו מעליו ונתנהו לחיית הארץ, לעוף השמיים ולבהמת האופוזיציה;

אז יחלק העם ישראל לחצי; חצי העם היה אחרי בנימין הגנצי להמליכו והחצי את בנימין בן בן-ציון נתניהו; ויאסף כל איש שמאל כל איש מצוק ומר נפש על בן בן-ציון להלחם בו. וייצעק איש ישראל אל בנימין הגנצי מרמת אביב, מבוגרשוב ומארסוף; ויתקבצו אתם משה אלוף יעלון וגבי אלוף אשכנז וניסנקורן זקן הועדים ויתקעו בשופר ותרעש הארץ ותהום עד למאוד;

ויפקוד ביום ההוא בנימין הגנצי עשתי-עשר מאות אלפים מאיש ישראל למערכה; וימלאו אנשיו את המדיה, וירבו כתביהם כחול אשר על שפת הים ולאסטרטגיהם ולדולריהם אין מספר; וישאל בנימין הגנצי בחוזים, בנביאים ובסוקרים לאמור – האעלה למלחמה בנתניהו אם אחדל. ויענוהו הסוקרים: עלה ונתן ה' בידך; והוא לא ידע כי רוח שקר נתן עם ישראל ביד סוקריו, כי מאת ה' היה הדבר למען הפילם ביד נתניהו לחזק את ליבם להלחם עמו למען החרימם לבלתי היות להם תקומה וקואליציה;

ויתראו גנץ ונתניהו פנים בירושלים אשר ליהודה ותעל המערכה ביום ההוא; וייצעק איש נפתלי לעלות לבדו למלחמה ולא שמע בקול נביאי ה' וירם יד בקהל ה' לפרוץ פרץ ויפול בשדה הוא וכל עמו אתו; ויהי לעת ערב ותעבור הרינה במחנה לאמור: היכה לפיד באלפיו וגנץ ברבבותיו; אז עשה גנץ את הבמה לעלות בה ויעמוד ויקרא קבל עם בקול גדול, אני מלכתי וישם נזר המלוכה בראשו וחמישים מאבטחים רצים לפני מרכבתו; ויריעו העם תרועה גדולה ויתקעו בחצוצרות ויעמדו לאלפיהם ולדגליהם וישמחו שמחה גדולה ויעשו עולות ושלמים ויקומו לצחק;

ויהי באשמורת הבוקר והנה רץ איש מן הקלפי ויבא אל שער היכל האולפן השקוף ודפיו קרועים ואפר על ראשו והוא אבל וחפוי ראש; ויקרב המבשר וישא קולו לאמור: נס גנץ לפני נתניהו וגם מגפה גדולה היתה בשמאל וגם אורלי אשת לוי ומשה הפייגליני אבדו וגם הקואליציה והתקציבים נלקחו; ויהי כהזכירו את הקואליציה ואת התקציבים ותזעק התקשורת זעקה מרה ותעל שוועת השמאל השמימה;

ויושע ה' את בנימין בן בן-ציון נתניהו ביום ההוא וילכוד את המלוכה על ישראל בחמישית ותינשא מלכותו מעל כל המלכים אשר היו לפניו; וכל דברי נתניהו וגדולתו אשר עשה, אשר העלה את דירוג האשראי ואשר הביא את הגז מן הים אל היבשה - הלא הם .כתובים על ספר דברי הימין למלכי ישראל; וימלוך בנימין בן בן-ציון על ישראל עד היום הזה ותשקוט הארץ 40 דקה;

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The chronicles of Netanyahu

There was a man in Israel named Benjamin son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu, a Jaminite (also: a rightist). And Benjamin smote Simon the Peresite (also: the Persian) and saved Israel from Peres (i.e. the 1996 elections). And he ruled over Israel for many years and his wife's name was Sarah and his sons' names were Jair and Abner. And men from Israel rose and gathered against Benjamin and wanted to topple him and they contested against him four times and failed. And the Lord was with Benjamin Netanyahu and the man grew greater and greater and succeeded in everything he did. And Netanyahu opened the heavens (i.e. the open skies policy) and the markets (i.e. the free market policy) and smashed the unemployment and burned the inflation with fire and raised the GDP higher and higher and made exits as many as the stars in the heavens and bought submarines from Germania. And all the kings of the world wanted to meet Benjamin, to see him and hear his word because great was the man in their eyes, greater then all the men who walked the earth before him.

And people of strife gathered at Balfour (i.e. the anti-Bibi demos) and shouted at the son of Ben-Zion day and night saying "Come out, come out, you man of blood, you corrupt and divisive and wicked man". And they hated him in their hearts saying "Who are you to rule over us? Who are you to lord us?". And they despised him even more because of his cigars and champagnes. And they were not able to say any positive thing about him and they were an adversary and rival to him all the time.

And Jair son of Joseph, a man from Lapidot (i.e. Yair Lapid), was arrogant saying "I will be king". And he conspired against Benjamin son of Ben-Zion in Jerusalem. And he sent an epistle to the lord of the military, arch chief of Canaan, Benjamin the Gantzite saying "Go forth and be our leader and general so we can fight Benjamin son of Ben-Zion". And Benjamin the Ganzite answered saying "If the Lord will deliver the son of Ben-Zion to me I will be your ruler and leader and you will give me half of the kingdom". And Jair, the man from Lapidot, answered Gantz saying "Good is the thing in my eyes". And they formed an alliance and ate and drank and cursed Netanyahu saying "Who is he and who is this son of Ben-Zion that we should be his servants?" And because they were arrogant they also said "May the people be in our hands so we can remove the head of Netanyahu from them and give him to the animal of the land, the bird of the heavens and the beast of the opposition.

Then the people were divided: half of the people wanted Benjamin the Gantzite to be king while the other half wanted Benjamin son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu. And every leftist, distressed, bitter person gathered against the son of Ben-Zion in order to fight him. And the elites of Israel cried out to Benjamin the Gantzite from Ramat Aviv (a wealthy neighborhood in northern Tel-Aviv), Bugrashov (a street in central Tel-Aviv) and Arsuf (a wealthy village north of Tel-Aviv). And gathered with them were Moses the chieftain of Yaalon and Gabby the chieftain of Ashkenaz and Nissenkorn the elder of the workers union (i.e. Histadrut). And they blew the trumpet and the land rumbled and shook very much.

And on that day Benjamin the Gantzite enlisted eleven thousand people from Israel for the battle. And his people filled the media, and their reporters were as many as the sand that is on the beach, and their strategists and dollars were countless. And Benjamin the Gantzite asked the seers and prophets and pollstets saying "Should I go up to fight Netanyahu or should I not?". And the pollsters answered him "Go up, for the Lord is with you". And he did not know that a spirit of falsehood was given to the pollsters by the people of Israel, because this was from the Lord, for to bring them down at the hand of Netanyahu and strengthen their heart so they will fight him in order that they will be destroyed and will have no revival and coalition.

And Gantz and Netanyahu faced off in Jerusalem which is in Judah and the battle started on that day. And a man from Naftali (i.e. Naftali Bennett) went up to the battle alone for he did not listen to the prophets of the Lord and struck the congregation of the Lord (i.e. the orthodox) and broke through them (i.e. left the Jewish Home) so he and all the people that were with him fell in battle. And it was evening when joy spread through the camp saying "Lapid struck with his thousands and Gantz with his tens of thousands". Then Gantz erected the stage (also: alter) and went up on it, stood and - in the presence of a great crowed - cried out with a loud voice "I am king!". And he put the crown of kingship on his head and fifty bodyguards were running in front of his chariot. And the people cheered a great cheer and blew the trumpets and stood in their thousands with their flags and were very happy and sacrificed burnt and peace offerings and they rose up and mocked their rivals.

And it was on the morning watch when - behold! - a man ran from the ballot to the gates of the temple of the transparent studio with his scrolls torn and soil on his head and he is in mourning and his head is hanging low. And the messenger was near the studio when he raised his voice and said "Gantz fled from before Netanyahu and a great plague has hit the Left and also Orly the Levite woman and Moses the Feiglinite have perished and also the coalition and the budgets have been taken". And it was when he mentioned the coalition and the budgets that the media cried out a bitter cry and the Left's shout went up to the heavens.

And the Lord saved Benjamin son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu on that day and he seized the kingship over Israel for the fifth time and his kingship lasted longer than the kings who were before him. And all the words of Netanyahu and the great things he did - like raising the credit rate and the gas he brought from the sea to the land - are written in the Book of Chronicles of the Rightist Kings of Israel. And Benjamin son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu reigned until this day and the land was quiet for forty minutes.

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Cases of Muslim extremism in the US are down sharply over recent years. Here's why.

Charles Kurzman, at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, has been tracking domestic incidences of Muslim extremism since 9/11.

Although he is biased to minimize the threat, his research is well done. In his latest report, Muslim-American Involvement with Violent Extremism, 2001-2018, he documents that "Fourteen Muslim-Americans were arrested for alleged involvement with violent extremism in 2018, the lowest total in a decade. The wave of Muslim-Americans associating themselves with the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” appears to have dwindled (see Figure 1)."

Figure 1 shows a dramatic drop in Muslim Americans arrested for terror or extremism:

He asks a number of experts why they believe that these numbers have been going down so sharply since 2015. The responses are generally thoughtful and seem on target - and also help explain why the numbers from 2012 to 2015 increased so dramatically as well.

The most common theme in the researchers’ responses involved the Islamic State’s loss of territory. Peter Bergen, a journalist and director of the national security studies program at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., suggested: “While correlation is not causation, it’s striking how these figures correlate with the rise and fall of the physical ISIS caliphate. That supposedly perfect Islamist society was a powerful pull factor in attracting idealistic young Muslim men and women from around the globe, including to a relatively small degree in the United States, to either join ISIS or attempt to join ISIS or to try and carry out attacks in ISIS’s name.”

David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University, noted that “the incidence of violence by extremist Muslim-Americans rises when foreign insurgent movements are successful – that is, they are gaining territory, they are making claims to be an authentic alternative Islamist society, and they are pushing this message aggressively through
social media. When they are ascendant in this way, their call for like-minded diaspora Muslims to 'do something’ can be compelling to at least a small cohort of Muslim Americans. When these movements don’t seem to be doing much themselves, their use of guilt or shame to compel violence by diaspora Muslims loses its bite, as has been the case as ISIS has gradually lost its so-called caliphate over the past 4 years.”

Along with the Islamic State’s loss of territory, several researchers commented on its loss of online recruitment capabilities. Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, commented: “The death of key online recruiters such as Junaid Hussain and Abu Saad al-Sudani, who were killed by airstrikes, played a role in numbers going down. It is hard to facilitate travel if there are no easily accessible online facilitators.” ... J.M. Berger, a research fellow with VOX-Pol, a European academic research network, suggested that online recruitment was particularly important for militants in the United States: “We’ve seen a major crackdown on jihadist social media and Internet presence. While I don’t want to be too aggressive in attributing causality there, it is pretty likely that this has helped depress both recruitment and the virtual/remote direction of attacks, especially relative to Europe, where there are more robust offline extremist social networks."

Seth Jones, director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, argued that “terrorism is an inherently non-linear threat. Surprise and shock are the terrorists’ age-old stock and trade. If it were predictable, terrorism would lose the power that makes it the preferred tactic of America’s most intractable enemies. So one should not assume that the levels of Islamist extremism violence will continue to decline.”

ISIS' losses of land, combined with vigorous monitoring and removal of pro-terrorist social media sites, seem to be the major factors in fighting Muslim American terrorism, because the cause itself is no longer seen as a "winner." That can change quickly, as some of the experts note.

Also notable is that many of the people who were arrested were discovered before they managed to even get close to performing the terror acts they intended.

This means that the FBI has been remarkably effective at monitoring and disrupting Muslim-American terror attacks, something I have noted before.

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Palestinian Media Watch reports:

The following is an excerpt from the article in the official PA daily:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized that hostility towards the Palestinian people is Antisemitism, and that the ugly, recurring, and deliberate Antisemitism that [US President] Trump's administration is committing against Semitic Palestine is also Antisemitism. In addition, the American administration has no right to ignore the fact that Semitism is not exclusive to the original Jews, but also includes the Arab Palestinians, and therefore any manifestation of hostility towards Palestinians is an explicit manifestation of Antisemitism. Moreover, since Zionism is hostile to Palestine, its people, and the establishment of a national homeland for the Palestinian people on the land of its homeland, this makes Zionism itself antisemitic.

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 29, 2019]

At first, this seems to be a variant of the old Arab argument that "we can't be antisemitic because we are semites ourselves," ignoring the fact that antisemitism, no matter what its etymology, exclusively means hatred of and discrimination against Jews.

But the official Palestinian Authority media is going beyond that absurd argument in two important - and ultimately, dangerous - ways.

It is trying to hijack the word "antisemitism" to apply to Palestinians more than it applies to Jews. If there is a category of victimhood, Palestinians must be considered members of that group or allied to members of that group, and the accusation of antisemitism is still emotionally charged, enough so that Palestinians want to make sure that they are much bigger victims of antisemitism than Jews themselves are. This is a deliberate attempt to water down the definition of the term so that hatred of Jews is not a unique hatred, but a generalized hatred of all people who can claim to be Semitic - and Palestinians "look" more Semitic than Jews do.

When antisemitism no longer refers to Jews exclusively, it means that there is no longer a commonly accepted term for Jew-hatred. By denying Jews their history of victimhood, the PA/PLO is paving the way for the next round of Jew-hatred.

The second, and crucial, point made by the PLO here is not only that Palestinians are the major victims of antisemitism - but that Jews themselves are not!

The are saying that most Jews are not Semites. Notice their use of the phrase "original Jews." Palestinians have long appropriated the discredited argument that Ashkenazic Jews are not Jews at all, but descended from Khazars, and have no Semitic blood.

The Palestinian leadership is saying not only that they are the major victims of antisemitism, but that they are virtually the only victims of antisemitism. They are saying that the Holocaust and the Khmelnytsky massacre and scores of pogroms, blood libels and expulsions of Jews throughout the ages were not antisemitic - since the victims were not Mizrahi Jews!

In other contexts they falsely say that Jews in the Arab world were never persecuted and they lived in harmony with Arab Muslims and Christians. Therefore, Jews have hardly been the victims of antisemitism at all - and only Arabs have!

The only reason to want to strip victimhood from Jews is to pave the way for the next chapter of massacres of Jews, since according to the Palestinians Jews are not a people nor legitimate victim group to begin with.

This is a systematic attempt to deny Jewish suffering and the very existence of historic antisemitism.

Like Holocaust denial, denial of antisemitism is itself antisemitic. The "State of Palestine" is now explicitly antisemitic.

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There was another fire in a sacred spot today - on the Temple Mount

Today, while the fire at Notre Dame in Paris raged, there was also a fire on the Temple Mount.

Arabic media reports of a fire in the Marwani Mosque, known as Solomon's Stables, on Monday evening.

Sputnik reports:

Part of the Haram ash-Sharif, the huge Jerusalem mosque built where a pivotal event in the prophet Muhammad's life is believed to have occurred, caught fire, damaging a part of the structure dating to Judean King Herod the Great's reign.

The fire broke out in the guard room outside the al-Marwani Prayer Room Monday evening, according to a statement by the mosque's Islamic Waqf (Endowments) Department. According to The New Arab, a guard reported a short gap in guard rotations between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m. local time.

The waqf department praised the responsiveness of staff firefighters, who quickly put out the blaze. The fire seems to have been started by children fooling around, and the waqf's statement urged worshipers "who live around the mosque and in the Old City to educate their children not to tamper with fire, especially inside al-Aqsa mosque."

Well, they play soccer every day there, why should they think it is a sacred area to begin with?

We don't know the extent of the damage. Tons of debris that contained priceless artifacts from the Second Temple period were removed when the Muslims illegally built the huge Marwani Mosque underground. This fire may have damaged even more irreplaceable relics.

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(Pinned at the top for today)

The Elder of Ziyon site continues to grow.

I've been spending more time on Twitter lately, as I've decided to go back to basics a lot more and publish posts that go to the fundamentals of the conflict, as well as to craft tweets that do the same. For example, this tweet did very well last week:

A reminder to all the people who say they they support a two state solution:

Israel offered it to Palestinians, not once but many times. It was rejected every time. Sometimes with terror.

When will you start blaming the Palestinians the way you love to blame Israeli leaders?
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) April 11, 2019

I've also been getting more aggressive against the haters, bursting their bubbles among their fans by pointing out their lies.

We visited Israel in March and there will be more videos from the visit as soon as I find the time to edit and upload them!

I've continued to bring you scoops and perspectives that you cannot read anywhere else.

As usual, my columnists have been doing an excellent job, bringing different perspectives to the site.

I spend lots of time and money keeping this going. I'm one of the very few Internet sites that pays its columnists, even if it is only a small amount,I would love to give them more. Every once in a while, I ask you to help defray the costs of the blog and keep it running. Which also helps Israel!

So, please donate to EoZ. You can use PayPal for a one time donation, or you can use the sidebar on the main blog site to subscribe and donate automatically every month. Alternatively, you can subscribe and become a patron through Patreon.

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Donate today, and have a wonderful Pesach!

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04/15 Links Pt2: How and Why Hamas Founded CAIR; International Union of Muslim Scholars, Which For Years Has Encouraged Jihad, Calls On The West To Prohibit The Discourse Of Hate

From Ian:

How and Why Hamas Founded CAIR

Controversy broke out last week concerning remarks Congresswoman Ilhan Omar made at a gathering of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Last week also marked the fifth anniversary since CAIR—widely regarded by American journalists and politicians as a legitimate representative of U.S. Muslims—successfully pressured Brandeis University into canceling its plans to grant an honorary degree to the apostate Muslim and women’s-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. At the time, Andrew McCarthy responded with an updated version of a chapter from his 2010 book, in which he explained how Hamas operatives created CAIR.

When 25 [Hamas] members and supporters gathered at a Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia on October 27, 1993, they were unaware that the FBI was monitoring their deliberations. The confab was a brainstorming exercise: how best to back Hamas and derail the Oslo Accords while concealing these activities from the American government? . . . In the U.S., Hamas was [by this time] perceived as the principal enemy of the popular “peace process.” . . .

That was where [a] new organization would come in. . . . The new entity’s Islamism and Hamas promotion would have to be less “conspicuous.” It would need to couch its rhetoric in sweet nothings like “social justice,” “due process,” and “resistance.” If it did those things, though, it might be more attractive . . . and effective. A Muslim organization posing as a civil-rights activist while soft-pedaling its jihadist sympathies might be able to snow the American political class, the courts, the media, and the academy. It might make real inroads with the . . . progressives who dominated the Clinton administration. . . .

Despite its Hamas roots and terror ties, the most disturbing aspect of CAIR is its accomplishment of the Muslim Brotherhood’s precise aspiration for it. Thanks to its media savvy and the credulousness of government officials and press outlets, which have treated it as the “civil-rights” group it purports to be rather than the Islamist spearhead that it is, CAIR has been a constant thorn in the side of American national defense.

Jonathan S. Tobin: The City of David and the problem with dividing Jerusalem

A few weeks ago, archaeologists announced the discovery in Jerusalem of clay seals from the 6th century BCE that appear to have belonged to one of the courtiers of King Josiah mentioned in the biblical book of Kings. The discoveries were the product of ongoing excavations of an area known as the City of David, thought to be the main part of Jerusalem in First Temple times. Persistently denying all of the facts of Jewish history in the land of Israel, pro-Palestinian activists have condemned the excavations as the work of “settlers” trying to undermine their claims to Jerusalem. Jonathan Tobin writes:

Critics of the City of David Foundation, [which oversees the excavations and the concomitant preservations efforts], are also against its activities because they believe that the area should be part of a future Palestinian state. They say that the development of the site and the digs are part of an effort to prevent a redivision of Jerusalem that would enable the Palestinian Authority to put its capital in the city. . .

[T]he effort to delegitimize the work at the City of David points to a basic problem: . . . if you’re going to deny Jewish rights to the place where King David and his descendants ruled their ancient kingdom, then you can deny them any place in the country. And that is what Palestinians have continued to do. Their effort to treat the City of David or even the Western Wall as linked to Jewish myths rather than to the beginning of Jewish civilization is inextricably linked to their refusal to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders might be drawn.

Nor can it be argued that in a two-state solution, the Palestinians could be trusted to safeguard historical sites such as these. Just this week, evidence surfaced of ancient tombs in the Jericho area—territory that is governed by the Palestinian Authority—being looted by local Arabs. This is a commonplace occurrence throughout the [Palestinian-administered] territories; the region’s ancient Jewish heritage is being systematically destroyed by those out to make a profit or whose main goal is to eradicate the abundant evidence of the ancient Jewish ties to this land.

The only way to protect the heritage of the City of David is to ensure that it and the rest of Jerusalem remain under undivided Israeli authority with the right of Jews to live in their ancient capital undiminished. Any other solution isn’t a path to peace, but something that will only further encourage the history deniers of the Palestinian Authority to keep fighting their war on Jewish history.

Eyes and ears on Poland

Poland will be very much in the news over the coming month due to ongoing celebrations of the 100th anniversary of its independence, commemorations of the 76th anniversary Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a poster exhibition at the Vitrina Gallery, Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) featuring several of Poland’s leading graphic artists. The upcoming Polish Constitution Day reception will be hosted by Polish Ambassador Marek Magierowski and his wife, Anna, who will also mark the 15th anniversary of Poland’s accession to the European Union, and, of course, the much-lauded Tulia female quartet who will represent Poland at Eurovision.

IN POLAND and in Bund circles around the world, the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is commemorated on its Gregorian calendar date, which this year coincides with both Seder night and Shabbat. Although the Bund is neither Zionist nor religiously observant, in Israel and elsewhere this year, the commemoration was nonetheless brought forward.

In Warsaw, the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra, under the baton of Gabriel Chmura, will pay tribute to the musicians of the Warsaw Ghetto in general and the Warsaw Ghetto Orchestra in particular, at a special concert to be performed at the Polin Museum of the History of the Jews of Poland on Thursday, April 18. Reports from Warsaw indicate that the concert has been sold out.

Chmura, who was born in Wroclaw, in 1946, and migrated with his parents to Israel in 1957, has returned to Poland, where he is a popular figure in musical circles.

He studied piano, composition and conducting at the Tel Aviv University Music Academy, and later in France, Austria and Italy. He won a number of international competitions and has worked with orchestras around the world. In 2001, he was appointed artistic director of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, but continued to tour abroad. Another feather in his Polish cap came in 2012, when he was appointed artistic director of the Poznan Opera. He is also the leading guest conductor of the Krakow Philharmonic and in 2013, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Wroclaw Academy of Music, and in 2017, he was conferred with Poland’s highest artistic award, the Gloria Artis Gold.

The theme of last Friday's Hamas-organized Gaza border riots was "Together to face normalization."

Other Palestinian terror groups are also deathly afraid of the idea that Israel will establish relations with Arab nations. At a rally yesterday, Islamic Jihad leader Khader Habib condemned the policy of Arab normalization with Israel, which he said was "a crime committed against the Palestinian cause and the entire Arab nation at the expense of the Palestinian cities, its villages and its permanent rights."

He said the "Israeli" entity was planted in the middle of the Arab nation as a malicious growth, and that the Palestinian people are targeted through the crime of normalization.

He warned Arab leaders that "the crime of normalization will not protect their thrones" and that "normalization will only bring them shame."

"Normalization is a betrayal of Allah and the Prophet and the nation of Islam and the Palestinian people and the prisoners of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him."

Leaders of the DFLP, PFLP, Hamas and Nasser Salah-al Din Brigades also spoke out against normalization with Israel.

The terror groups, who were considered heroes in the Arab world only a few years ago, are terrified at the idea of being further marginalized and are pulling out all the stops with what little influence they still have - appealing to religion and shame, the two most powerful arguments they can have.

(There are unfortunately no pictures of the audience, so I don't know if this rally attracted dozens or hundreds, The absence of stage indicates that this was not a very large rally and was meant not for Gazans but for the Arab world.)

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Continuing the discussion of the origins of Left-wing anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism (informed by Robert Wistrich From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews and Israel) an obvious objection to tracing the phenomenon back to Marx (and the Bolshevik revolutionaries who did so much damage in his name) is that it continues to allow current inheritors of this ideology to claim to speak for the Left as a whole.

This is actually not just a strong, but a profound argument which I plan to get to shortly. But not before covering the Betrayal portion of the story described so well in Robert Wistrich's book.

Wistrich traces the ambivalence theme in the first two sections of his book (which covers the hundred years between Marx's On the Jewish Question and the birth of the Jewish state) through a series of stories of the people who set the agenda for these ideological and political disputes.

Through brief intellectual histories of people such as Franz Mehring, Bernard Lazare, and Karl Kautsky (not to mention more well known names such as Karl Marx, Rose Luxmburg and Leon Trotsky) we can see how different individuals and groups grappled with Jews insisting on expressing their political aspirations by carving out their own portion of the labor movement (the Jewish Bund) or by developing a national consciousness (the Zionists), rather than just folding themselves into a theoretical classless society through assimilation.

Many (although by no means all) of these revolutionaries were, like Marx, estranged Jews, which might explain the extreme hostility they displayed when having to confront specific Jewish concerns. But simple politics can explain other elements of Left-wing hostility to Jewish particularism, such as Lenin's willingness to entertain the national rights of Czechs and Poles (but not Jews) since national agitation among the former could help him achieve his goal of overthrowing the Russian Czarist state, while the later were more useful providing assimilated foot soldiers for the Revolution.

The fact that almost all the Jews who threw their lot in with Communism were murdered either before, during or after the Soviet takeover of Russia (mostly by their Comrades) demonstrates just how wrong they were with regard to the fate of the Jews after the Revolution. But while Stalin relied as much on Russian nationalism (which included deep-rooted anti-Semitism) to force industrialize the USSR and get the nation through World War II, there was a brief window where state-sponsored anti-Jewish bigotry was not allowed to impact the Soviet Union's Machiavellian geopolitics.

This is why the Soviets supported creation of the State of Israel in 1948 (and allowed their emerging satellite of Czechoslovakia to provide the Jewish state with its few arms). For at the time, the Jews seem most poised to disrupt the status quo in the region, a status quo that involved an exhausted Britain trying to hold onto an Empire it no longer had the power, resources or will to continue controlling.

To a large extent, this bet paid off. For while Zionism is no longer talked about as a revolutionary movement amongst the Left, it was the example of Israel throwing off the yoke of imperial rule (while Arab opponents such as Jordan continued to ally themselves with the fading British Empire) that inspired other Third World peoples to similarly reject European rule and form their own nations.

The irony is that once those nations were formed, many threw their lot in with the new empire on the block: a Soviet Union that had mastered the ability to propagandize about creating a worker's paradise at home and liberating people abroad, while they were actually building the world's largest prison camp nternally and exporting their soldier's, propagandists and secret police forces around the globe to create a new imperial holdings.

It was during this post-war period that we get to what Wistrich refers to as "Betrayal." For once they had pocketed their gains by exploiting Israel's usefulness in cracking British rule in the region, the Soviets quickly switched their allegiance to Israel's Arab foes (as well as many other emerging states) to create the world we know today where cynical exploitation of the language of human rights and freedom is coupled with brutal repression at home and aggression abroad.

For the first two decades after 1948, the language of hostility was still driven by the fading monarchs and emerging military dictators of the Arab world who insisted their goal was to "throw the Jews into the sea." But after the 1967 Six Day War, the propaganda we see today took full flower as the real issues in the region (human rights abusing Arab tyrannies refusing to allow a Jewish presence to exist in the Middle East) was turned on its head to claim that it was the Jews who were refusing to allow an Arab (Palestinian) presence in their midst.

Given that discussion of Palestinian and general Arab responsibility for their own fate is now off limits in discussion of the Middle East within far-Left circles (a mode of discussion that has, to a certain extent, gone mainstream), we can see how successful this new propaganda message has been.

But the sheer vehemence of hostility towards the Jewish state expressed by the Soviets, their allies and (today) the post-Soviet far Left, cannot entirely be explained by opportunism or realpolitik. Annual condemnations of Israel in a Soviet (and now Arab League/OIC) dominated UN are one thing. But turning such condemnations into an hourly ritual, and coupling these with political language and imagery that would have found a home in Der Stermer represents something else entirely.

This something else might simply be the mutation of the anti-Semitic virus which once condemned Jews as a religion then as a race, now turning on them as a nation.

But as the core of the Communist belief system (the imminence of world revolution driven by the working classes) vanished as those working classes refused to budge (or – as in Germany – joined decidedly un-Marxist mass movements), something had to fill this void.

For a while, there were attempts to have the masses of the Third World take over the role that was originally to be played by the industrial proletariat (even if this meant turning that industrial proletariat from the engine of progressive revolution to part of the machinery of global repression).

But as even this hope evaporated with the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was little left for Marxist believers to actually believe in. Which may explain why a certain vanguard continues to deny so much objective reality and use the aggressive and ruthless tactics that emerged during the Age of Ideologies to propel forward the only thing left of their once eternal and global agenda: that Israel Must Go.

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