Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 01, 2019

Hamas Fires Rockets Into Mediterranean To Train For When Jews Already Driven Into Sea (Preoccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Gaza City, May 1 - Military planners of the Islamist movement that governs this territory conducted a missile test today that involved shooting a salvo of the weapons into the waters off the coast, in preparation for the eventual defeat of the Zionist Entity and the consequent forcing of all its Jews into those waters.

Hamas fired the rockets in coordination with several other factions with a presence in Gaza, both as a warning to Israel and as part of a strategic effort to maintain readiness if and when the hoped-for victory over the Jews occurs and the faithful can finally achieve the vision that Palestinian leaders of the 1940's first promulgated: driving the Jews into the sea. Once that occurs, a spokesman for the movement explained, its fighters must continue to fight the Jews driven into the sea, by whatever means, and the group's continued development of missile technology aims partly toward that stage of the conflict.

"We must be prepared for victory," stated Fawzi Barhoum. "What good is defeating the Zionist usurpers if we are unready to exploit that defeat? To that end we have continued to hone our rocket capabilities along two fronts: the current stage of the war, targeting the soldiers and settlements where the rapist scum Jews ravage our native soil, and the next stage, when we have driven them all into the Mediterranean and must target them there."

Analysts note that Hamas's attention to a future without Israel marks an important shift in the movement's orientation, which until now has focused solely on ridding the world of the Zionist scourge, and not in any serious way on what to do after achieving that goal. "It's significant that there's now been some practical thought given to the post-Israel situation," remarked Phil Latio of the Brookings Institution. "Most revolutionary movements, which is what Hamas and its parent, the Muslim Brotherhood, are, need an enemy, the better to unify the masses and remove potential focus from the leadership's failings or crimes. That usually results in poor governance once the revolution succeeds, since the enemy has been vanquished, so now what? As with Iran, for example, Qaddafi's Libya, or Chavez's Venezuela, the leadership feels compelled to continue insisting the enemy remains. It's encouraging that Hamas appears to be looking beyond victory at what actual policy looks like in the absence of their lifelong enemy. It's a breath of fresh air."

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05/01 Links Pt1: Shapiro: The NYTs’ Anti-Semitism Is Shocking, but Not Surprising; Glick: NYTs, Central Clearinghouse of Antisemitism in America; Would Hamas Attack 2019 Eurovision Event in Israel?

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: The New York Times’ Anti-Semitism Is Shocking, but Not Surprising

The Times suggested that information about Palestinian payments to families of terrorists was “far-right conspiracy programming.” The Times simply ignored Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s calling U.S. ambassador David Friedman “son of a dog,” didn’t report Abbas’s comments about Jews “falsifying history,” and omitted coverage of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar telling Palestinians about to storm the Israeli border, “We will take down the border, and we will tear out their hearts from their bodies.”

Back in 2015, the New York Times printed a list of lawmakers who voted against the anti-Israel Iran deal — listing them by the percentage of Jews in their districts and noting which ones were Jewish themselves. Back in 2014, the publisher of the newspaper, Margaret Sullivan, had to remind her own reporters to cover the Palestinians as “more than just victims,” thanks to the paper’s insanely one-sided coverage.

The Times’ ugly record of anti-Semitism goes all the way back to 2000, when the newspaper printed a photo of a Jewish student beaten by Palestinian Arabs and defended by an Israeli soldier – but captioned the photo by labeling the beaten man an Arab.

In actuality, the Times cares about anti-Semitism only when it can be used as a political weapon. The Times admitted in November that it had neglected to cover anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York City specifically because such anti-Semitism “refuses to conform to an easy narrative with a single ideological enemy,” explaining that “when a Hasidic man or woman is attacked by anyone in New York City, mainstream progressive advocacy groups do not typically send out emails calling for concern and fellowship and candlelight vigils in Union Square.”

The mainstream Left has engaged in self-flattering blindness when it comes to Jew-hatred. And all too often, that blindness veers into outright anti-Semitism.

Caroline Glick: New York Times, Central Clearinghouse of Antisemitism in America

The Times’ active propagation of anti-Jewish sentiment is not the only way the paper promotes Jew-hatred. It has co-opted of the discourse on antisemitism in a manner that sanitizes the paper and its followers from allegations of being part of the problem. It has led the charge in reducing the acceptable discourse on antisemitism to a discussion of right wing antisemitism. Led by reporter Jonathan Weisman, with able assists from Weiss and Stephens, the Times has pushed the view that the most dangerous antisemites in America are Trump supporters. The basis of this slander is the false claim that Trump referred to the neo-Nazis who protested in Charlottesville in August 2017 as “very fine people.” As Breitbart’s Joel Pollak noted, Trump specifically singled out the neo-Nazis for condemnation and said merely that the protesters at the scene who simply wanted the statue of Robert E. Lee preserved (and those who peacefully opposed them) were decent people.

The Times has used this falsehood as a means to project the view that hatred of Jews begins with Trump – arguably the most pro-Jewish president in U.S. history, goes through the Republican Party, which has actively defended Jews in the face of Democratic bigotry, and ends with his supporters.

By attributing an imaginary hostility against Jews to Trump, Republicans, and Trump supporters, the Times has effectively given carte blanche to itself, the Democrats, and its fellow Trump-hating antisemites to promote Jew-hatred.

John Earnest and Robert Bowers were not ordered to enter synagogues and massacre Jews by the editors of the New York Times. But their decisions to do so was made in an environment of hatred for Jews that the Times promotes every day.

Following the Bowers massacre of Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, the New York Times and its Trump-hating columnists blamed Trump for Bowers’s action. Not only was this a slander. It was also pure projection.

NYT Suspends Publication of Syndicated Cartoons After Anti-Semitic Allegations

Brooke Goldstein on the Hannity Show, Fox News, discussing the latest anti-Semitic cartoons published by The New York Times...

Ruthie Blum: Jewish violence: What the Gray Lady knows it need not fear

It is too early to tell how many Times readers will cancel their subscriptions in the wake of the debacle. It is also unclear how long it will take for the storm to blow over.

But one thing is certain: The only worry that the left-wing daily has at the moment is about loss of revenue and damage to its already dubious reputation.

Nobody at the paper or elsewhere is bracing for an armed Jewish onslaught. You know, like the slaughter in 2015 of 12 cartoonists and editors at the left-wing satirical French weekly, Charlie Hebdo, when it went after Islam. That the Paris-based paper regularly mocked Judaism and Christianity did not factor into the Islamist terrorists’ rampage, which continued on to the district’s Hyper Cacher kosher market, where shoppers were taken hostage and four Jews were murdered.

The Charlie Hebdo office was also fire-bombed in 2011, after publishing a cartoon of Muhammad in an issue whose cover was titled “Sharia Weekly.” This was five years after the paper was sued for running a series of controversial Muhammad-based cartoons that had appeared months earlier in the Danish daily, Jyllands-Posten, and caused a global Islamic assault.

Indeed, when Jyllands-Posten published a series of Muhammad cartoons in September 2005, the angry reaction on the part of local Muslims was swift. Although the paper’s editors explained that the purpose of the cartoons had been to spur debate in Denmark about ethnicity and free speech, what the satirical illustrations sparked was a worldwide frenzy.

Indeed, as word of the cartoon controversy gradually spread—in the days before Twitter was a household name—Muslims began to riot in Europe, North America, Australia, Africa and the Middle East.

At least 200 people were killed during or as a result of these demonstrations, which were also used as an excuse for radical Muslim groups to vent their rage against Christians. Churches and Western embassies were attacked, and Jyllands-Posten cartoonists, who were receiving credible death threats, went into hiding.

The ADL Opposes Racism, But Meets With a Racist (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

On Sunday, The ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt joined in the furor over The New York Times' antisemitic cartoon -- and Greenblatt didn't hold back.

Greenblatt warned against normalizing vile antisemitism

Greenblatt went further, calling out The New York Times for "a moral failing of major proportions" -- and the need for accountability and action

He concluded with recommendations, including that a review of policy is necessary:

The fact that Greenblatt and the ADL stepped in is important. It shows that at a time when accusations are flying back and forth accusing either the left or the right of being the main cause of the rise of antisemitism in the US, the ADL takes a balanced approach and rises above the fray, addressing the incitement of hate wherever it sees it.

If only Greenblatt could spot racism when he encounters it face to face.

Hat tip: Mark Jacobs

On the one hand, who better to go to for pointers on hate crimes than Al Sharpton - After all, Sharpton has a history of inciting hatred.

Putting aside Sharpton's central role in the Tawana Brawley hoax, Sharpton's history of deliberately inciting hatred against Jews is well established.

In 1991, after a Hasidic Jewish driver in Crown Heights accidentally killed Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, antisemitic riots erupted. At the funeral, Sharpton made a point of inflaming the crowd, blaming the "diamond merchants" (Jews) with "the blood of innocent babies" on their hands. Going further, Sharpton then mobilized hundreds of demonstrators on a march through the Jewish neighborhood, chanting, "No justice, no peace." There, Yankel Rosenbaum, a rabbinical student, was surrounded by a mob shouting "Kill the Jews!" and was stabbed to death.

The Forward quotes comments by Sharpton at the time that could easily be mistaken for the racism spewed by Farrakhan:

The world will tell us [Cato] was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident...It’s an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights...Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid...All we want to say is what Jesus said: if you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffe klatsch, no skinnin’ and grinnin’. Pay for your deeds...It’s no accident that we know we should not be run over. We are the royal family on the planet. We’re the original man. We gazed into the stars and wrote astrology. We had a conversation and that became philosophy. We are the ones who created mathematics. We’re not anybody to be left to die waiting on an ambulance. We are the alpha and omega of creation itself. [emphasis added]

A few years later, in 1995, Sharpton got involved in the protests against Freddy's Fashion Mart and again raised tempers, warning "we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business." Sharpton's organization, National Action Network, set up picket lines. Customers who entered the store were spat on, cursed and accused of being "traitors" and "Uncle Toms." Some protesters starting shouting, "Burn down the Jew store!" while simulating striking a match and Sharpton's colleague Morris Powell saying "We're going to see that this cracker suffers". On December 8, one of the protestors entered Freddy's, shot 4 of the employees and set the store on fire, killing 7 employees.

And it's not as if Sharpton has lost his touch. More recently, Sharpton involved himself in the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin. Without verifying the facts, Sharpton publicly made a statement "that racial language was used" -- a claim that an investigation proved false. Sharpton also exacerbated tensions by deliberately referring to Zimmerman as "white," despite the fact that his mother is Peruvian.

But during their chummy get-together, Greenblatt doesn't say a word about Sharpton's background. These are just two activists fighting the good fight for human rights.

So despite Greenblatt's lecture to The New York Times on Twitter -

o Here we have the ADL normalizing the vile antisemitism of Al Sharpton
o It is the ADL, under Greenblatt's leadership, that demonstrates "a moral failing of major proportions"
o It is Greenblatt who should "commit to reviewing policies"

The question is how Sharpton gets away with this and has not only reinvented himself but is a figure that politicians come to in order to get his blessing.

Whatever the reason, the impunity Sharpton enjoys has spread to a new generation that includes Sarsour, Mallory (a disciple of Sharpton), Omar and Tlaib. Their immunity to criticism and ability to claim they are instead victims of smears and incitement are all part of a growing trend in the incitement of racism and antisemitism in the US.

And the ADL is no longer the champion it used to be in this fight.

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How can you satirize the absurdity of a leader of the Women's March, a huge rock star, a documentary maker who used to be a commentator on CNN and a sportswriter for a national publication complaining that they are being "silenced" at a public event at a major university?

“Israel, Free Speech, and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights” is the topic of an upcoming event at the University of Massachusetts Amherst that is already drawing its own controversy, including opposition from Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, whose mission is to fight anti-Semitism. The panel, titled “Not Backing Down,” is being put on by the Media Education Foundation and will feature prominent figures who have spoken out against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza. Some of the speakers have been labeled as “anti-Semites.”

Among the speakers: Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights who supports a cultural boycott of Israel as part of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, or BDS; Palestinian-American political activist Linda Sarsour, the co-chair of the Women’s March who also supports BDS; Marc Lamont Hill, a professor and political commentator who CNN fired last year for remarks he gave at the United Nations in support of Palestinian rights and a boycott of Israel; and Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation magazine who has been a vocal critic of the Israeli government.

Sut Jhally, a UMass Amherst communications professor and executive director of the Media Education Foundation, is the organizer of the event. Jhally himself has faced backlash over his film “The Occupation of the American Mind,” which “explores how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby have joined forces, often with very different motives, to shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel’s favor,” according to the film’s website.

“We’re not really intimidated anymore by this selective outrage,” said Ananya Bhasin, who is part of the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. “This event really is about silencing, so, the more silencing we get, the more it solidifies why this event needs to take place.”

Zirin, who is Jewish, also takes issue with those who have said Sarsour and the other panelists traffic in anti-Semitism. That rhetoric, Zirin said, is an “old tactic that’s meant to silence debate and chill discussion.”

I'm sorry, but have any of these people been "silenced?" Have they been intimidated into not speaking their minds?

These "silenced" critics of Israel - who often traffic in antisemitism as well - somehow manage to get on the front pages of major media. Their tweets get retweeted thousands of times by their fans.

It is absurd.

If anything, when people point out any antisemitism they traffic in, like Marc Lamont Hill's accusation that Israeli Jews are poisoning Palestinians' water, that doesn't get mentioned in the major media in stories about Hill. He's regarded as being merely a "pro-Palestinian activist."

That is what silencing looks like.

I also tweeted about the hypocrisy going on here:

Upcoming UMass conference with @lsarsour, @marclamonthill and @rogerwaters:: "We hate when those racist, colonialist, baby-killing, water poisoning, America controlling 'Zionists' try to silence us by calling us antisemitic." pic.twitter.com/b7MCu6E957
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) May 1, 2019

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Tehran International Book Fair includes, of course, antisemitiic books

On Monday, Iran's "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Khamenei visited Tehran’s 32nd International Book Fair.

One of the books on sale at the fair is the Farsi-language "The Secret Role of Jews in Islam" by Yusuf Rashad.

The book says that Jews have gained the ability to consolidate their dominance through Zionist lobbies that govern all the affairs of major Western countries, and this is only possible after the destruction of the religion of these countries, which is Christianity. They have replaced Christianity with philosophy, which is a Jewish idea, according to the book.

In the first chapter, it explains how the Jews found the ability to succeed, by following the steps of the devil, his army and his party, and by working hard, with precise planning, they excel, control, dominate, and ruin the Christian religion.

Here are some chapter titles:

Hostility of the Jews and their betrayal of Islam and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
Violation of the covenant of the Jews against the Muslims
Treason and betrayal of the people of Qa'a
Ka'bbn Ashraf and his betrayal of Muslims
The story of the killing of Ashraf
Betrayal, disobedience, and violation of the holy Jewish tradition
Great betrayal and partisanship of the Benghazi Jews
The betrayal of the kings of the Jews
Israelis; the role of secret Jews in the Islamic heritage
The Hidden Jewish Hand in Islamic Interpretation Books
Hidden Jews in the Territory of the Ottoman Caliphate
The relationship between the Jews and the Freemasonry movement
The influence of the two Jews on the Turkish regime
The Turkish leader, Mustafa Atatürk and the Jews of Dhummeh
The role and influence of the two Jews in the Turkish media

Just from the chapter titles we see that the book is nothing but incitement - it tells stories (whether true or not) of individual Jews as a proxy for all Jews.

Remember, Iran claims to not be antisemitic at all.

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04/30 Links Pt2: Ending the Myth of the Poor Terrorist; From Zion to San Remo and Beyond; What Does it Mean to be Pro-Israel in 2019?

From Ian:

Ending the Myth of the Poor Terrorist

However, the latest research raises some new questions about the comprehensiveness of Bueno de Mesquita’s model. In 2015, a new Palestinian terrorist campaign erupted. The attacks were substantially different than previous waves of Palestinian violence as the assailants typically worked alone instead of within a greater terrorist group. Because of this individualistic terrorist threat, the campaign is often referred to as the “Lone Wolf” intifada. The violence subsided in 2017, and an ongoing study by Berrebi and Weissbrod is working to analyze the characteristics of the individuals involved. So far, the study has found that while there are many high school dropouts in this new kind of self-selected terrorism, there are also many who are highly educated and from affluent backgrounds. Overall, both the number of highly educated professionals and university graduates among the terrorists, and the number coming from wealthier backgrounds, are well above average. What the research suggests is that although terrorist organizations may eliminate the lowest quality terrorist candidates, as claimed by Bueno de Mesquita and others, separate factors beyond the screening process must play a part in forming the connection between higher education, wealth, and terrorism.

What is clear by now is that nearly all current research shows that terrorists tend to be wealthier and more educated but we still need to test new theories to find out why. If Bueno de Mesquita’s screening model isn’t the entire story, one alternative theory could be that the educational content could itself be radicalizing, thus the more schooling someone receives in a given society the more likely it becomes that they could engage in terrorist acts. Another possible theory is that terrorism is a modern, deadlier form of political protests and revolts that have, throughout history, often been started by the intellectual communities. A third alternative may be that individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds do not have the luxury of participating in revolt as they must worry about feeding their families and the struggles of everyday life.

There are many more unexplored theories that may help to further explain the roots of terrorism, yet one thing is certain: The conventional view is far too simple. Politicians like Jeremy Corbyn need to stop treating terrorist threat as though it is a unidimensional problem which is solvable by raising individual wealth and education. Corbyn’s paeans to the noble suffering of hopeless Hamas terrorists rests on a myth. The massacre against Christians in Sri Lanka was not committed by desperate volunteers drawn from the wretched of the earth. The terrorists who carried out that mass murder were well-educated members of their society’s upper middle class, a background that is not exceptional in the broader context of terrorism and, if anything, suggests that the perpetrators were representative of a common socio-economic class of terrorist.

As terrorism evolves further, we must treat this issue as one impacted not just by poverty, education or terrorist organizations, but other factors as well. This step will allow for greater research in order to fully understand the mechanisms of terrorism and begin to find real solutions that reach beyond political expediency.

From Zion to San Remo and Beyond

Almost a century ago, the international San Remo Conference was held in Italy in April 1920. During this conference, the international community, led by the victorious allies of World War I, recognized the Jewish people’s national and historical rights in its ancestral homeland Israel. The importance of this largely forgotten conference cannot be overstated. Israel’s enemies frequently distort history by falsely presenting Israel as a “foreign imperialist implant” and a “compensation for the Holocaust.” In reality, the recognition of the Jewish people’s historical and national rights in Israel was part of a wider anti-imperialist new world order led by US President Woodrow Wilson after World War I.

This new world order recognized the national and political rights of nations worldwide. The same Arab world, which has frequently been depicted as a “victim of imperialism”, ironically gained far more from the San Remo Conference than the Jewish people did. The same international community that recognized the Jewish people’s rights to its tiny historical homeland recognized Arab political independence over much of the Middle East, including Syria and Iraq. At the time, international and Arab leaders saw no conflict between the reestablishment of a tiny Jewish state in the land of Israel and the establishment of neighboring vast Arab states. Emir Faisal, the head of the Arab kingdom Hejaz, welcomed the Jewish people’s return to its ancestral homeland Israel:

“We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement…. We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home…. We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East, and our two movements complement one another. The movement is national and not imperialistic. There is room in Syria for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be a success without the other.”

Merely a century ago, the international community understood a fundamental truth that has largely been lost today: “Palestine” is the Roman imposed term for the Jewish people’s historical homeland Judea. At the time, there were no calls for establishing a “Palestinian” Arab state because neither Arabs nor anyone else was aware of such a “nation”. Local Arabs identified either as Syrians or as part of the wider Arab world.

Document showing America’s official recognition of Israel in May 1948 up for sale

The original exhibition copy of the United States’ recognition of Israel in 1948, signed by U.S. President Harry S. Truman, is up for sale for the first time.

The document, valued at $300,000, is the only known signed copy of the final recognition of the Jewish state to exist.
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The Raab Collection, the nation’s leading dealer in important historical documents, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired the historical artifact ahead of Israel’s Independence Day in May.

Previously, the document was exhibited by the American and Israeli governments.

It reads: “This government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested the provisional government thereof. The United States recognizes the provision government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel.”

“This document speaks to the power of the Jewish hope of a homeland and its realization after World War II,” said Raab Collection president Nathan Raab. “It was signed by Truman for the New York World’s Fair and since then has been used by both the American and Israeli governments as the symbol of the great recognition of Israel by the United States.”

What Does it Mean to be Pro-Israel in 2019?

Interview with Kasim Hafeez part 3: A discussion of the Arab world and Israel

Here is part 3 of my interview with extremist-turned-Zionist Kasim Hafeez in Tel Aviv last month. In this part we discuss the Arab world's attitudes towards Israel and the Palestinians.

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"Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846" by James Richardson, includes an anecdote that explains a lot of the hate from the Arab world towards Israel today.

My turjeman is surprised we Christians receive the books of the Jews as sacred and inspired, and so are many other people. They are quite astonished when I tell them that Christians esteem the Scriptures of the Jews equally divine with their own. They have a confused notion that the whole of the Jewish Scriptures consist of the five books of Moses, which they call the Torat, and the Psalms of David. Some of them say Abraham was not a Jew. I explain to them, that the Christians give a different interpretation to the Jewish Scriptures from the Jews themselves, and believe “the Son of Mary” to be the Messiah of the Jews and all the world. They hardly believe me; and say, “The Jews are corrupt and their books corrupt.” When I told them one day before the Rais that we had had Jews in India, they flatly replied it was a lie, for said they, “It is impossible for such a miserable being as a Jew to be a soldier.”

I have long assumed that the hate that Arabs and Muslims have for Israel comes from the honor/shame dynamic - weak Jews defeating Arabs who consider themselves experts in war was a huge psychological blow, far worse than the physical defeat. This is why only the 1948 war, among all the many wars that Muslims and Arabs have lost to the West and others, is called a "nakba," a catastrophe.

Here is the first time I have seen this thinking written specifically. To the Arabs of north Africa, the idea of a Jew being a soldier altogether was not believable. Jews were "miserable beings" and "corrupt" and therefore cannot possibly learn to fight, as honorable Arabs do.

When these "miserable beings" showed that not only can they fight, but they can defeat the combined armies of the Arab world outnumbering the Jews, the psychic damage to the Arab world cannot be overstated.

The only thing that can cure this is a combination of Israeli military strength continuing to dominate the region, and time for the Arabs to get used to the fact that Jews are not what they have been taught for many centuries. Arabs measure time in centuries, not months, so it takes a few generations for changes to occur.

They are occurring, though.

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04/30 Links Pt1: Rabbi Goldstein: A Terrorist Tried to Kill Me Because I Am a Jew. I Will Never Back Down; Caricaturing Jews, Hating Jews, Killing Jews

From Ian:

Rabbi Goldstein: A Terrorist Tried to Kill Me Because I Am a Jew. I Will Never Back Down.

I do not know why God spared my life in my Poway synagogue. All I can do is make this borrowed time matter.

From here on in I am going to be more brazen. I am going to be even more proud about walking down the street wearing my tzitzit and kippah, acknowledging God’s presence. And I’m going to use my voice until I am hoarse to urge my fellow Jews to do Jewish. To light candles before Shabbat. To put up mezuzas on their doorposts. To do acts of kindness. And to show up in synagogue — especially this coming Shabbat.

I am a proud emissary of Chabad-Lubavitch, a movement of Hasidic Judaism. Our leader, the great Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, famously taught that a little light expels a lot of darkness. That is why Chabad rabbis travel all over the world to set up Jewish communities: I have colleagues in Kathmandu, in Ghana, as well as in Paris and Sydney. We believe that helping any human being tap into their divine spark is a step toward fixing this broken world and bringing closer the redemption of humanity. It is why 33 years ago my wife and I came to this corner of California to build a house of light.

Because we are obviously Jewish, identifiable by our black hats and beards, it has also meant that some of us have been targets before. Eleven years ago, my colleagues Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, who ran the Chabad of Mumbai, India, were murdered with four of their guests. They were targeted by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba because they were Jewish. And over the years people I know have been harassed and assaulted by thugs in the neighborhood where I grew up, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in incidents that typically go unreported by the press.

In his vile manifesto, the terrorist who shot up my synagogue called my people, the Jewish people, a “squalid and parasitic race.” No. We are a people divinely commanded to bring God’s light into the world.

Technology has made our lives easier. But it also means that your data is no longer your own. We'll examine who is hoarding your information — and give you a guide for what you can do about it.

So it is with this country. America is unique in world history. Never before was a country founded on the ideals that all people are created in God’s image and that all people deserve freedom and liberty. We fought a war to make that promise real.

And I believe we can make it real again. That is what I pledge to do with my borrowed time.

John Podhoretz: Caricaturing Jews, Hating Jews, Killing Jews

Last Thursday, the international edition of the New York Times published a cartoon depicting Benjamin Netanyahu, in the form of a dachshund wearing a Star-of-David necklace, leading a blind and be-yarmulked Donald Trump. Two days later, a white supremacist—who shares the cartoonist’s belief that the U.S. president is a “Jew-lover” subject to “Zionist” control—entered a Chabad house in Poway, California and opened fire, killing one and wounding three others. John Podhoretz comments:

It likely did not occur to the editor [who approved the cartoon for publication] that he was acting as the unwitting reincarnation of Julius Streicher. It is, rather, likely that this editor has not had a conversation in years with anyone who did not think Benjamin Netanyahu was a monster and therefore fair game. The idea that exactly such imagery was part and parcel of the conscious effort to gas and to incinerate the Jewish people was unknown to him. Indeed, the very idea that the Jewish people are only a few generations removed from near-destruction and that a certain degree of sensitivity is required in depicting them may not ever have occurred to him. Indeed, perhaps something close to the opposite is at work in his understanding of the world.

We know about the selective expectations involved in the unique criticism of Israel for behaving in ways that dozens of other countries behave when it comes to contested territories. The constantly harping critics of the world’s only Jewish state say disingenuously that they are doing it for Israel’s own good or to hold Israel to the standards of its own prophets when they tend to hold no other state in the world to any standards. We are told we are not to consider this anti-Semitic because criticizing a country isn’t the same as criticizing a people. Well, . . . while it is true that criticizing a country can be different from criticizing a people, it is also true that it can be, and often is, exactly the same.

Yisroel Goldstein, the rabbi of Chabad of Poway, emerged from surgery, [having been shot in the hand], and issued a statement—a beautiful, defiant, eloquent, and life-affirming declaration at the end of Passover—that while, as we say in the Haggadah, “in every generation they rise up to destroy us,” we will not be destroyed.

A Hatred Of Israel Is The One Thing All Anti-Semites Have In Common

The only anti-Semitism still widely used in public discourse is the kind masquerading as “anti-Zionism.” That is why there was warranted outrage when The New York Times’s international edition publishes a Der Sturmer-style cartoon and when members of Congress protect a woman who has persistently smeared Americans Jews as money-grubbing interlopers and when progressive activists march behind those who embrace the most noxious anti-Semitic notions imaginable.

Now, a Jew-baiting cartoon or an ugly tweet isn’t going to shoot you. But anti-Israel rhetoric doesn’t just hurt feelings, it leads to policy that puts people in danger. It is why, whatever the intentions were behind the Iran deal, many Jews were rightly disturbed when the antagonist Obama administration made a sweetheart agreement and sent pallets of cash to a Holocaust-denying terror state that openly threatens to throw six million Jews into an “inferno.” It’s a bit on-the-nose.

Since Israel is increasingly detested by the American left—often for the very same reasons the United States is detested—progressives have also been increasingly comfortable attacking Jews or defending those who do. And no, these people aren’t merely being “critical of Israel.” The New York Times cartoon depicting Trump as a blind man being led by the Star of David-bedecked Benjamin Netanyahu was a pictorial interpretation of a paranoid grievance that many anti-Israel progressives and paleocons have been peddling for years: that Jews control the U.S. government.

Claiming that Americans are dying to protect Jewish interests isn’t only a lie, it’s a fresh iteration of an old slur. Whereas once there were “bankers” and “money lenders,” today there are “Zionists.” I see this smear every day, and not merely from randos on Twitter.

Some progressives, in fact, argue that the concept of “Zionism” is itself a form of white supremacy. Liberal editors of major publications now contend that the democratically elected prime minister of this Jewish state is one of “global anti-semitism’s greatest allies.” Writers for major magazines breezily blame Jews who support Israel for their own massacres. Among them are a small number of progressives, who defraud the public by falsely using their abandoned Jewish heritage to promote their leftist ideology.

Mahmoud Abbas has property in Jordan, including a huge villa. (He's also a citizen.)

Al Resalah reports that Mahmoud Abbas is bracing for the "Deal of the Century" and how to combat it. It says that he is preparing for the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.

It also says that Abbas is planning to spend more time outside Ramallah and at his huge house near Amman so he can coordinate better with Jordan's King Abdullah.

Abbas has a huge house in Jordan? Yes, he does. He has as many as four properties in Jordan, including a home he paid more than 2 million Jordanian dinars, about $3 million dollars, in 2011. The home is in the Abdoun district of Amman.

The PA president, and his sons, hold Jordanian passports and citizenship allowing them to purchase real estate in Jordan without any red tape that foreigners usually have to go through. as far as I know, he is still a Jordanian citizen.

Abbas held meetings with John Kerry in his Jordanian villa during the Obama administration.

His Jordanian national number (as of 2011) is 93-3000-254.

Mahmoud Abbas likes to style himself as the President of the State of Palestine. How many world leaders are citizens of other countries?

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Abdul Hamid al-Hakim, the director of the Middle East Center for Strategic Studies in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has put out a series of tweets that are - for the Arab world - startlingly philo-semitic.

A video about two Jewish brothers from Iraq who were major songwriters there prompted him to say:

Iraqi-Israeli pop star Dudu Tassa, whose grandfather & great-uncle were the George & Ira Gershwin of Baghdad, has won fans across the Arab world. This clip from @JIMENA_Voice highlight's Dudu's dream: to perform in the land of his ancestors. https://t.co/WY9RsacOPO @robsatloff
— Joseph Braude (@josephbraude) April 24, 2019

The Jews are an integral part of our societies where they have risen at all levels, and the history of the Jews confirms that they are the leaders of civilization in any communities they live in.

I am certain that the dream of our friend Dudu Tassa will be realized, but we will welcome him in Riyadh as they welcome us in Jerusalem.

He visited Israel last year and tweeted this for Yom Haatzmaut:

I congratulate the Israeli society on their Independence Day and address the Arab societies on this occasion. The State of Israel is a historic right for Jews which is confirmed by heavenly books and the history of the region. In 70 years, Israel became a state of the first world and you did not escape your denial of their right to weakness and sectarian wars.

It gets better:

If we want to achieve peace and create a new Middle East that fulfills the aspirations of the peoples of the region, we must address our societies courageously to recognize the historical right of Jews to their state of Israel.
Jerusalem was not the capital of any nation in history except for the Jews. Jerusalem is the door to peace for the region.

Hamid al-Hakim also supports the Trump peace plan and says that Arab societies are getting nothing by supporting Hamas and the PLO.

Needless to say, there are plenty of Arabs who are not fans of al-Hakim's philosemitism. But the fact that there is even a debate in Saudi Arabia about Israel, and about Jewish rights to Israel and Jerusalem, is something astonishing.

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From Students Supporting Israel, Columbia:

A few weeks ago, SSI Columbia reached out to SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) and JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace) with great hope and expectations of finally doing something productive about the long-debated issue of holding civil and constructive discussion on campus regarding the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. We asked nothing more than a phlegmatic setting to discuss different views and narratives, hopefully, provided by newly elected CCSC. Today, in a public statement, SJP has not only rejected our open offer but also virulently used made up claims and half-truths to justify their insistence on marginalizing and boycotting pro-Israel voices on this campus.

SSI’s invitation to host a joint event came as a result of SJP claiming that they want to promote dialogue on this issue on campus.

SSI took up SJP on their claim of wanting dialogue - and they called their bluff beautifully.

SJP not only rejected the call for dialogue - they admitted that they would never have spoken to SSI anyway:

Normally, an invitation such as this would be rejected due to SJP’s anti-normalization policy, which means that we don’t participate in collaborative events with Zionist groups on the grounds that such events do more to obscure, rather than expose, the fundamental power imbalance at the heart of the settler-colonial situation in Palestine.

But then they said that SSI was "racist" with examples that are not at all racist by any definition. For example, "Most recently, SSI hosted a 'social activism' workshop with a representative of Act.Il, an Israeli propaganda app closely linked to the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and other clandestine intelligence organizations." All of their examples are equally bizarre.

SJP doesn't stop there. They not only say that SSI is "racist," but "We believe organizations like SSI, given their racist rhetoric and their recorded history of harassment, must be effectively deplatformed."

They don't stop there. They say that every pro-Israel organization must be boycotted: "We call on our peers and allied organizations to boycott all pro-Israel advocacy groups and clubs..."

SJP's own words show how intolerant they are towards anyone who disagrees with them. SSI is obviously the only party here that is acting like adults.

As usual with anti-Israel and antisemitic organizations, they don't want to talk or debate - because they know that they will lose on facts. Instead, they do everything they can to silence any pro-Israel voices.

Logic would dictate that the organization that wants to disenfranchise their opponents is the one that should be disenfranchised.

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