Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, May 18, 2019

05/18 Links: Arab Spring: the Second Coming?; Australia’s ruling Conservative coalition elected to surprise third term; US ambassador: German anti-BDS motion should apply to Iran's regime

From Ian:

Jonathan Spyer: Arab Spring: the Second Coming?

The camp of the generals is the camp of stability, the status quo, and of alliance with the West. The other side is with the notion of Islamic revival to the perceived glories of the Islamic past. Its partisans and allies are by definition the enemies of the West and Israel. The very fact of Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem is seen as a reminder of how low the Islamic world has fallen.

But it is worth noting that neither of these sides is for civil society, institutions, secularization, representative government. The forces that do support all these exist but are immensely weak. For as long as this remains the case, the Arabic-speaking world is likely to remain under-developed and dysfunctional – whether generals or Islamists have the upper hand in any particular context.

Remedying the poverty of choices facing Arab publics is, of course, a matter that only Arabic-speaking societies ultimately can address. Until they do so, it will be in the interest of western governments to support the conservative and authoritarian forces preventing the disaster of further victories for political Islam.

As noted above, the Israeli interest in both Libya and Sudan is not in doubt. In Sudan, the departure of President Omar al-Bashir is entirely positive from the Israeli perspective. Under al-Bashir’s 30-year rule, Sudan made itself available as a conduit for the transfer of Iranian weapons to the Gaza Strip, and acted as a portal for the entry of the Revolutionary Guards into Africa (the IRGC began to train Sudan’s army, and Sudan offered naval facilities for Iran’s use). For economic reasons, al-Bashir reversed course in 2015. But al-Bashir’s relations with Turkey and Qatar and the army’s support from Egypt, UAE and Saudi Arabia mean that his departure remains without doubt a net positive from the Israeli point of view.

In Libya, similarly, the victory of Haftar, backed by UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, would be a net positive for Israel – it would prevent the emergence and entrenchment of an ally of Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim brotherhood on the coast facing Europe. Though in this case it should be noted that even if Haftar takes Tripoli, Libya will be far from a return to stability under authoritarian rule. The south of the country remains largely ungoverned and penetrated by elements of the Islamic State. The West, meanwhile, harbors powerful Islamist militias with considerable public support who are likely to attempt a continued insurgency against Haftar even if his forces take the capital.

Palestinian activists don’t understand why they can’t enter the US

In December 1992, about nine months before the first Palestinian-Israeli peace accords were signed on the White House lawn, Hanan Ashrawi met with president George H.W. Bush in the Oval Office.

Now, 26 years later, she can’t even enter the United States.

Ashrawi, a longtime Palestinian spokeswoman and a current member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, tweeted Monday that her application for a US visa was rejected.

“It is official! My US visa application has been rejected,” she wrote. “No reason given. Choose any of the following: I’m over 70 & a grandmother; I’ve been an activist for Palestine since the late 1960’s; I’ve always been an ardent supporter of nonviolent resistance.”

Ashrawi is the most recent and most prominent of at least three Palestinian activists to be barred from entering the United States this year. In February, activist Osama Iliwat was denied entry at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and sent home. In April, Omar Barghouti, the co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, was not allowed to board a flight to the United States at the direction of the US government.

Iliwat and Barghouti held valid US visas. In March, Iliwat was told he was being deported due to a desire to immigrate to the US, which he calls spurious. Like Ashrawi, both Barghouti and Iliwat said they do not know why they were denied entry. Iliwat told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Customs and Border Protection officials questioned him over the course of eight hours about his activism before canceling his visa.

Israelis don't understand why they can't enter Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, UAE, and Yemen.https://t.co/8dI2G1qtL3
— Jerusalem of Iron (@jerusalemofiron) May 17, 2019

Australia’s ruling Conservative coalition elected to surprise third term

PM Scott Morrison praises ‘miracle’ victory after opinion polls favored opposition; Labor party had vowed to reverse Jerusalem recognition

Opinion polls prior to Saturday’s election had suggested that the coalition would lose and that Morrison would have had one of the shortest tenures as prime minister in the 118-year history of the Australian federation.

In December 2018, Morrison’s government recognized West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move the Labor party vowed to reverse if elected.

His declaration was received with disappointment and even bitterness by the Israeli government, which considers the entire city its capital, and had hoped Canberra would follow the American example. US President Donald Trump on December 6, 2017, recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, without making a geographical distinction or taking a position on the city’s borders. On May 14, 2018, the US relocated its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Morrison, who initially said he was “open-minded” to moving his country’s embassy as well, in December announced the establishment of a “Defense and Trade Office” in Jerusalem instead. It opened quietly in March, without senior officials from either country in attendance.

Earlier this year, Morrison said that Israel is “a beacon of democracy in the Middle East.”

05/17 Links Pt2: Israel's Unique Support for Preserving Minorities' Identities; Millions tune in to Tel Aviv again for second Eurovision semi-final; ‘Caine Mutiny,’ author Herman Wouk dies at 103

From Ian:

WaPo: Israel's Unique Support for Preserving Minorities' Identities

Last week, I spent some time in Israel talking to people about religion, ethnicity and identity. Viewing faith as integrally tied to your place and your ancestors and your history is probably more common worldwide than the modern American and Western European view of faith as a personal choice. That radical difference in worldviews explains much of what makes many Americans most uncomfortable about Israel: calling itself the Jewish state, maintaining separate educational systems for Arabs and Jews, excusing most Arabs from mandatory military service.

Israel gives its religious minorities ample freedom to practice their faith, as Israel defines itself by Judaism. But Israel's religious minorities don't necessarily resent that in the way Americans might expect. I spoke to Shadi Khalloul, a Maronite Christian activist in the Galilee who is working to revive Aramaic as the daily language of his community. He wants a separate school system for his community's children.

If a country protects the civil rights of minority citizens, as the Israelis generally do, it can offer the one thing that an aggressively secular liberal state can't: easy preservation of the minorities' own particularist identities, which tend to be lost in aggressively secular liberal nations as the minorities are more or less forcibly assimilated.

Israel is able to accommodate these communities more tolerantly not despite its particularist self-definition but because of it. Judaism isn't a universalizing creed - it doesn't seek converts - so the Jewish majority feels relatively little threat from other faiths.

Douglas Murray: Israel has healthier attitude toward nationalism than Europe

The first Israeli Conservatism Conference sought to bring some of the biggest conservative intellectual names to its event in Jerusalem on Thursday. In that vein, British writer and commentator Douglas Murray spoke, along with well-known Israeli right-wing figures.

Murray has given several talks in Israel this week on immigration, the subject of his hit book The Strange Death of Europe, which came out in 2017 and was released in Hebrew late last year.

“Immigration is the major issue everywhere, and even the countries where it isn’t the number one issue, it ends up becoming one,” Murray told The Jerusalem Post this week.

Murray pointed to differences between Israel and Europe on the issue: “In Israel, you see strong borders as the best way to ensure peace, while in Europe, people see it as a cause of war. Israel has had little taste of what Europe had in recent years in much larger numbers.

“People in developed countries have been lucky, and are trying to work out what latitude should be given to people born in unlucky countries,” he said. “There is a consideration of that in Israel, but the scale is very different than in Europe.”

Behind the different views on immigration is a drastically divergent understanding of the concept of nationalism, Murray explained.

“In Europe, everything to do with identity, history, patriotism and nationalism is viewed in a suspicious light, for reasons I don’t need to elaborate on,” he said, referring to fascism and World War II, “while in Israel, nationalism is viewed as good, and patriotism is good. The religious inheritance in Europe is incredibly fraught, while Israel is not lacking in friction, but people have a healthier attitude and are more engaged.”

Melanie Phillips: The groups who hand antisemites their get-out-of-jail-free card

Yet faced with this chilling display, the media could barely bring itself to shrug. This is largely because progressive people refuse to acknowledge that their signature Palestinian cause — so revealingly exposed by the mind-bending distortions of Rashida Tlaib — is the new antisemitism.

And that’s because they refuse to acknowledge that Palestinianism itself is fundamentally anti-Jew.

This denial of a most inconvenient truth—that the Arabs’ hatred of Israel derives from their murderous hatred of the Jews—was illustrated by one aspect of a BBC documentary last week about the border riots in Gaza.

In it, a Gazan boy says “the revolutionary songs excite you, they encourage you … to rip a Jew’s head off.” But, instead of accurately translating the Arabic word Yahud that he and others used for Jew, the BBC mistranslated it as “Israeli.”

The BBC insists that this was “both accurate and true to the speakers’ intentions.” This is simply untrue. In Arabic, yahud means “Jew.” When Arabic media refer to Israel, they use that word in Arabic letters.

A chant frequently heard among Islamic religious extremists is Khaibar, Khaibar, ya Yahud, Jaish Mohammed, sa yahud, which means “Jews, remember Khaibar, the army of Mohammed is returning.”

Anyone who reads Islamic religious texts can see that hatred of the Jews is embedded in Islamic religion and culture. Yet in America and Britain, this is all but unsayable.

Anyone who points out that Islamic society is fueled by hysterical and obsessional antisemitism is deemed to be Islamophobic — not least by prominent British Jews.

Astoundingly, they equate Islamophobia — the term designed to silence criticism of the Islamic world — with antisemitism. So they remain silent about this major threat to themselves from the Muslim community, the group of which the left will permit no criticism, while inflating the threat from “the right,” the group the left blames for all the ills of the world—and in which it preposterously lumps together white supremacists, anyone who criticizes mass immigration and all those who voted for Brexit.

Denial of Palestinian and Muslim antisemitism is legitimizing, mainstreaming and fueling antisemitism in the West.

When confronted with their own bigotry, people like Tlaib and Suleiman claim that the real problem of antisemitism comes from “the right.”

And which groups in both America and Britain hand them this particular “get out of jail free” card so they can continue to escalate the climate of Jew-hatred? Why, the left, of course — and the Jews.

A WaPo op-ed again lies about Palestinian history

From a Washington Post op-ed defending Rashida Tlaib's version of history, by Maha Nassar, an associate professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona:

While Tlaib certainly simplified a complex history that historians have and will continue to debate, her critics are also fundamentally misreading Palestinian history in three key ways. First, by focusing on episodes of violence, they ignore the long history of Arab-Jewish coexistence in Palestine. Second, by downplaying how harmful British colonial rule was to Palestinian society, they imply that Palestinians were driven to revolt by blind hatred rather than a desire for freedom. Finally, by citing the pro-Nazi propaganda of Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni to claim that “Palestinian leaders at the time sided with Hitler,” they conflate the statements and actions of a single individual with those of an entire people.

Throughout the 19th century, Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in Palestine in relative harmony, largely in cities like Jerusalem, Jaffa, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias. Jewish residents regularly interacted with their Muslim and Christian neighbors, speaking Arabic with one another and living what historian Menachem Klein describes as “lives in common.”

Speaking Arabic and having "lives in common" does not mean that they lived happily together. Muslims might have thought so, but they weren't on the receiving end. From Remarks on the present condition and future prospects of the Jews in Palestine, by Arthur George Harper Hollingsworth, 1852:

This Jewish population is poor beyond any adequate word ; it is degraded in its social and political condition, to a state of misery, so great, that it possesses no rights. It can shew no wealth even if possessed of it, because to display riches would secure robbery from the Mahometan population, the Turkish officials, or the Bedouin Arab. ...No advancement is made by the Jew of Palestine, in trafficking, in commerce, in farming, in the possession of settled houses or lands. There alone, where he ought to be first, he is last; and where in all other countries a Jew thrives and increases in wealth, in that one he is spiritless from oppression, and without energy, because without hope of Protection. He creeps along that soil, where his forefathers proudly strode in the fulncss of a wonderful prosperity, as an alien, an outcast, a creature less than a dog, and below the oppressed Christian beggar in his own ancestral plains and cities. No harvest ripens for his hand, for he cannot tell whether he will be permitted to gather it. Land occupied by a Jew is exposed to robbery and waste. A most peevish jealousy exists against the landed prosperity, or commercial wealth, or trading advancement of the Jew. Hindrances exist to the settlement of a British Christian in that country, but a thousand petty obstructions are created to prevent the establishment of a Jew on waste land, or to the purchase and rental of land by a Jew. “

...What security exists, that a Jewish _ emigrant settling in Palestine, could receive a fair remuneration for his capital and labour? None whatever. He might toil, but his harvests would be reaped by others; the Arab robber can rush in and carry off his flocks and herds. If he appeals for redress to the nearest Pasha, the taint of his Jewish blood fills the air, and darkens the brows of his oppressors ; if he turns to his neighbour Christian, he encounters prejudice and spite ; if he claims a Turkish guard, he is insolently repulsed and scorned. How can he bring his capital into such a country, when that fugitive possession flies from places where the sword is drawn to snatch it from the owner’s hands and not protect it ?

I have lots of other examples of how Arab oppressed Jews before Zionism. Nassar's and others' description of life as good between the groups is a myth, pure and simple.

Nassar goes on:

The question of self-rule gained greater urgency over the course of the 1920s as growing Jewish immigration led to thousands of Palestinian peasants being forced off land they had lived on for generations. Many of them migrated to shantytowns on the outskirts of nearby cities, looking for work and often unable to find any. As social and economic pressures increased, Palestinian leaders — who lacked any real power and were divided among themselves — could do little to help.

During the 1920s the Arab population of Palestine exploded because of illegal Arab immigration - immigration to take advantage of the better economy that the Jews brought. Jewish capital did not hurt the Arabs, on the contrary, it improved their lot as a group. Individuals who lost their jobs as Jews bought farmland from their owners is a disruption that happens everywhere, but to use that to claim that Arabs as a whole suffered is not the truth.

With their displacement continuing unabated, in April 1936 Palestinian Arabs launched a general strike to demand independence. While some local leaders like preacher ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam had called for attacks against British and Jewish targets, as historian Matthew Kraig Kelly has recently demonstrated, the Palestinian leadership (including the Mufti) initially tried to keep the strike unarmed. But widespread British police brutality soon led to an uptick in Arab violence, culminating in a revolt that lasted three years.

During the summer of 1936 there were many attacks and murders of Jews. It was not "unarmed" at all. The Mufti's record at fomenting violence against Jews is well known. And the strike was also explicitly aimed at ending Jewish immigration, a major point that Nassar conveniently leaves out.

The Mufti then became a prominent Nazi propagandist, becoming well known for his World War II broadcasts that called on Arabs to revolt against the British. And yet, these calls were largely ignored. In fact, recent studies have demonstrated that Arabs in Palestine were not generally pro-Nazi, and many were extremely critical of fascism, despite the Mufti’s loathsome exhortations. They were joined by a group of leftists, secular, anti-colonial Arab intellectuals who also vehemently opposed the Mufti’s anti-Jewish rhetoric, calling instead for class solidarity and Arab-Jewish cooperation.

Yes, Arabs of Palestine were not unanimous in their support of Nazism - but the Mufti wasn't an aberration, either. Arabs in Palestine were fascinated with and attracted to Nazism way before the war, as I showed in a recent article:

July 1935:

February 1937:

May 1937:

December 1937:

This is revisionist history, and the Washington Post should have fact checked it.

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05/17 Links Pt1: FM against UNRWA: 'We'll keep telling the truth'; April is first month in over a year with no Israelis killed, wounded in attacks; J Street poll: Most Democrats haven’t heard of BDS

From Ian:

Foreign Ministry against UNRWA: 'We'll keep telling the truth'

Even as the winds of war seem to have temporarily subsided in Gaza, Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees continue to butt heads over the agency’s conduct during the most recent round of violence between Israel and Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza.

Tensions began when UNRWA’s Commissioner General Matthias Schmale on May 4, intimated on Twitter that Israeli airstrikes were hindering UNRWA sponsored events to “celebrate children and their sports and fun activities.”

“Surrealistic #Gaza day: went to 2 marvelous @UNRWA events to celebrate children & their sports and fun activities & then to honor sanitation laborers followed by good working lunch with colleagues; in parallel sounds of bombs all day & we seem yet again close to war. Madness!” Schmale tweeted.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon, angry at Schmale’s one-sided depiction of events, responded to Schmale on Twitter: “The terrorists shooting the rockets are all probably @UNRWA graduates. You must be really proud of them.”

In response, Schmale emphasized he was against the firing of rockets at Israel.

“I unequivocally don’t support shooting rockets. And your unsubstantiated & defamatory claim is unworthy of a government spokesman. The children I meet in our schools all the time are no terrorists; they are peace-loving kids hungry to learn & to live a dignified life!”

This the the new generation of Palestinians raised in UNRWA schools. Dismantle UNRWA now! pic.twitter.com/qcilUmGAwi
— Pierre-REHOV (@PRehov) May 17, 2019

What Are Palestinian Children Reading in Their Textbooks?

The EU is investigating the problematic Palestinian textbooks that are being used to teach 1.3 million Palestinian children. CEO of the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education speaks, Marcus Sheff speaks with Nurit Ben and Calev Ben-David about the recent findings from this report.

Israeli ambassador's 'Bible speech' at U.N. goes viral

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon's speech several weeks ago has taken on a new life on social media and YouTube as translations into different languages have propelled the "biblical speech" well beyond the walls of the United Nations building.

Wearing a kippah and reading from the Bible, Danon defended Israel's right to the land of Israel.

Since then, translations into Spanish, Polish, French, Portuguese and Turkish have swept the internet. Last week, on Israel's Independence Day, CNN brought Danon on to discuss the speech where he reiterated the Jewish state's historical and moral claims to the country that many local Arab residents would like to see as Palestine.

A Palestinian media outlet published a lengthy editorial decrying the speech.

”From the book of Genesis; to the Jewish exodus from Egypt; to receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai; to the gates of Canaan; and to the realization of God’s covenant in the Holy Land of Israel; the Bible paints a consistent picture. The entire history of our people, and our connection to Eretz Yisrael, begins right here,” Danon stated at the UN Security council in New York.

He continued referencing the Balfour Declaration of 1971, the League of Nations mandate of 1922, and the United Nations charter of 1945 as all legitimizing Israel's right to self-determination.

"The speech has resonated thanks to the strength of the truth. Its success has been welcome news as we conveyed to the world the strength of the eternal connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel," Danon stated about the speech going viral.

Shalva's Eurovision performance

Since the YouTube version is not available in certain countries like the US...

Here's their story:

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The Palestinian Arab media today are missing something that was in every Friday for over a year: reports on the weekly Gaza "Great Return March."

There are no protests today.

If they were popular protests, then people would come anyway, wouldn't they?

All this proves is that Hamas is behind the protests. They provide the logistics, the transportation, probably the tires to burn. They position who approaches the fence and who stays behind.

A terror group is behind every aspect of the "popular, peaceful" protests.

Arutz-7 reports:

Hamas has ordered Palestinian demonstrators in the Gaza Strip who regularly participate in the weekly March of Return protests to stay home this Friday, according to a report on Army Radio on Friday morning.

Maj. Gen. (Res.) Amos Gilad, former head of the Defense Ministry's security-policy headquarters said on Army Radio that "Hamas is quieting the demonstrators so that Eurovision will pass calmly."

Channel 13 News reported on Friday that according to Palestinian media sources, the weekly protest has been canceled due to the current heatwave in Israel as well as the daily Ramadan fast.

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Is Israel guilty of the most attacks on health workers and facilities? An NGO report deceptively claims it is. (UPDATE)

Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch tweeted about a new study of attacks on health care in different countries in 2018, and he highlights a statistic to make it sound like Israel is far worse than other countries:

The chart says:

This is so misleading as to qualify to being a lie.

The report uses open sources, meaning that it can only report on attacks that it sees news or NGO reports about. Anomalies about the Israel/Palestinian territories incidents compared to the rest of the world are apparent but how many reporters will dig into them?

Most of the injuries to health care workers in the territories are from tear gas. Tear gas is not even mentioned for any of the other countries in the report. The reason is obvious - tear gas is a non lethal weapon when used properly, and Israel employs non-lethal methods when it can. Syrian or Yemeni attackers deliberately use lethal methods.

Again digging into the report, even the 40 NGOs that authored it admit that their statistics - so prominently displayed in full page charts - are woefully inaccurate.

The report dataset suffers from the typical limitations of datasets that are largely built from open sources, including reporting and selection bias. First, the available information is likely to be underreported. Selection bias in open source means that not all events are reported and that events in more remote areas or those affecting less well-connected population groups are less likely to be reported.

...In countries and territories with good internet connectivity, higher levels of English, and preexisting contacts with human rights groups and research bodies, local health professionals are likely better placed to report events in vetted formats that can be considered a trusted source.

Because Israel has more reporters and NGO workers per square kilometer, by far, than any other place on Earth, every minor report of incidents get reported and amplified. No such minor events - damage from ricocheting rubber bullets, for example - would even be reported in any other place.

A Syrian barrel bomb and an Israeli tear gas canister are counted exactly the same, as an "attack." That is a perversion of statistics.

Not to mention that there are lots of ambulances pre-staged at riot locations, so there are more "health sites" in trouble areas to begin with in the territories, and more likely to be affected by Israeli riot suppression.

Beyond that, the PA and Hamas have Ministries of Health that routinely lie, their governments are oriented to slanting or making up statistics to make Israel look bad.

The charts comparing countries are literally worthless.

But the NGOs in this report, knowing that their comparative information is worthless, still choose to highlight that - because they want to make Israel look worse than every other nation on the planet.

UPDATE: More absurdities in this chart:

In most countries, the number of health workers injured is less than the number killed. In Gaza/West Bank, on the other hand, there are nearly 200 times more injuries than deaths.

All this shows is that in other countries, most attacks on health workers are not even reported unless they result in death. But when Israel can be blamed, tear gas inhalation - something that is a temporary debilitation - is considered an "injury."

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05/16 Links Pt2: Phyllis Chesler: 'High-minded culture' is now rife with antisemitism; Skyrocketing Attacks On NYC Jews Ignored Because Of Race; US Dems Follow UK Labour Down The Anti-Semitism Rat Hole

From Ian:

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: 'High-minded culture' is now rife with antisemitism

People say that it is usually calm before a storm but I feel uneasy, unbalanced, uprooted, and set adrift in a dangerously familiar sea.

An American rabbi put it this way: “I never thought it could happen here. The Pittsburgh shooting made me angry. The San Diego shooting made me afraid.”

Wherever I turn, Israel and the Jews are being falsely accused, defamed, and attacked. Some of us cover the campuses, others cover the media, the internet, national and international politics, the Islamic world, and increasingly, the local attacks on American Jews who are visibly Jewish.

Tragically, those American Jews who are not, have not sprung to the defense of the haredi Jews who are being thrown to the ground and pummeled by young men, usually men of color; or shot down on the Sabbath while at prayer by white supremacists.

As for myself? I cover what high-minded literary types as well as feminists have to say. Doing so never fails to break my heart or strengthen my resolve. Jew hatred has, octopus-like, permeated every nook and cranny of what was formerly considered “high” culture.

Skyrocketing Attacks On NYC Jews Ignored Because Of Race

Imagine that members of a religious minority were being frequently physically assaulted in America’s largest city at alarming rates. Imagine if members of that minority were being cold-cocked or spit on randomly for doing nothing more than being who they are and dressing how they dress. Imagine what a powerful and important story this would be to our country, how mobilized the media and government would be to stop it. But what if I told you that this is happening in New York City right now, and nobody seems to care very much? How can this be? I’ll explain it.

Orthodox Jews in New York City, specifically in Brooklyn, have experienced alarming rates of physical assault over the past year. The New York Police Department says that hate crimes in the city are up 67 percent this year. Of those, a whopping 80 percent have been anti-Semitic hate crimes. Just this week an Orthodox Jew just walking down the street was attacked from behind, punched in the head by an attacker who then ran away. In another incident this week, an Orthodox Jew was attacked by a group of men, one of whom shouted “You (expletive) Jew.”

This is an all too familiar story in Brooklyn these days, and there is a reason it isn’t being treated as a crisis by our media or government. That reason is that many if not most of the assailants are black or Hispanic men. In an article in The New York Times last October that was careful to point out, although without much evidence, that people of all descriptions are committing acts of anti-Semitism, Ginia Bellafante writes (emphasis mine), “In fact, it is the varied backgrounds of people who commit hate crimes in the city that make combating and talking about anti-Semitism in New York much harder.”

We should be clear about what this means. It means that if these assaults were being committed by white men in hoods or MAGA hats, it would not be “hard to talk about.” It would be a clear-cut case of bigotry that needs to be fought with every tool in our arsenal. Instead, journalists are wringing their hands about intersectionality, and careful not to indulge the narrative that these physical attacks are coming from blacks and Hispanics in bordering neighborhoods, even though that narrative is absolutely true. (h/t Failexa)

Long Before the Holocaust, Palestinian Antisemitism Spilled into the Arab World

The Jewish world is justifiably in an uproar about comments made over the weekend by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). In an act of monumental chutzpah, Tlaib has made the claim that the Palestinians helped create “a safe haven” for Jews fleeing the Holocaust — a thought, she said, that gave her a “kind of calming feeling.”

Scholars and journalists have rebutted her revisionism by drawing attention to the pivotal role that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, played in the Holocaust and persecution of Jews — to the Arab-Nazi alliance he spearheaded, and to the antisemitic propaganda he broadcast during the four years he enjoyed Hitler’s hospitality in Berlin. They have pointed out that the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs were Nazi sympathizers; that the Arabs pressured the British to curtail Jewish immigration into Palestine that could have saved millions of lives; and that the Arab leadership led an antisemitic campaign within Palestine as early as the 1920s.

But few critics of Tlaib’s words have observed that the mufti, as well as other Syrian and Palestinian nationalists, began to sow the seeds of virulent antisemitism outside Palestine as early as the 1920s. The result was the mass displacement of 850,000 Jews from the Arab world, most of whom resettled in Israel after 1948. Does this forced exodus, directly attributable to Arab antisemitism, also give Tlaib a “calming feeling”?

Wherever the mufti went in the Arab world, persecution and mayhem against the local Jews followed. In 1921, Yemenite Jews in the Yishuv claimed it was due to Palestinian Arab pressure that the decree forcing Jewish orphans in Yemen to convert to Islam was reinstated. This, they said, had come about after a Palestinian Arab delegation had visited Yemen to demand that the Imam stop all immigration to Palestine. The Orphans’ Decree, argues scholar S.D. Goiten, was the single most important reason Jews were desperate to flee Yemen.

Beresheet's crash site photographed. (Bad pun warning)

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera took a photo of the crash site of the Israeli satellite Beresheet.

It appears to have crashed from a low angle, leaving a trail.

Here is a before and after satellite image:

That mark will remain on the Moon as a memorial forever, meaning it is.....

זכר למעשה בראשית

(rimshot)

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Rashida Tlaib, speaking at a Detroit rally in 2014, tells her audience that "We are Americans, too."

That "too" means that she, and they, identify primarily as Palestinian and only secondarily as Americans.

This seems problematic for a member of Congress.

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05/16 Links Pt1: Madonna confirmed at last for Eurovision performance in Tel Aviv; U.S. to UN: You yourself rejected withdrawal to ’67 lines; ‘Nakba Day’ Simply Infantilizes Arab Aggression

From Ian:

Madonna confirmed at last for Eurovision performance in Tel Aviv

Madonna’s producers said in April the star would perform at the contest in Tel Aviv, which was designated the host city after Israeli singer Netta Barzilai won in Portugal last year.

Her participation brought a flurry of protest from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which has for years been pushing for investors and artists to shun Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians, among other critiques.

“I’ll never stop playing music to suit someone’s political agenda nor will I stop speaking out against violations of human rights wherever in the world they may be,” Madonna said, in a statement carried by US media Tuesday.

She brings with her an entourage of 135 people, including the rapper KoVu, 40 backing singers, 25 dancers and a team of technicians, according to reports citing the Israeli-Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams, said to be footing a large part of the bill for her performance.

Twenty-six out of an original 41 contestants will battle for first place in the three-and-a-half-hour live broadcast, which kicks off Saturday at 9 p.m. Israel time.

Madonna will perform in the interval.

Shalva band readies for guest gig after nixing Eurovision bid over Shabbat

The Shalva Band, which dropped its widely supported bid to represent Israel at Eurovision after organizers refused to budge on the group’s request not to perform on Shabbat, rehearsed Wednesday for a performance as guest artists at the song contest’s semifinals on Thursday evening.

“We are very excited to get on stage with smiles on our faces,” band member Yair Pomberg told Channel 12 news. “We are going to do the best possible job we can.”

His bandmate, Yosef Ovadia, told a press conference that the group has wide-ranging support ahead of their performance.

“I think that what we are going to do here at the second semifinal of the contest — I feel that the people of Israel and the people of the world are with us,” Ovadia said.

The band — made up of musicians with disabilities, some of whom are observant Jews — was named as a finalist on the reality TV show “Rising Star,” which determines Israel’s entry for the annual song contest taking place this week in Tel Aviv.

The group quit the show over the prospect of being forced to break the Jewish day of rest if selected as the winner.

Will Ferrell, Rachel McAdams filming Eurovision movie in Tel Aviv

The 2019 Eurovision in Tel Aviv is undeniably star-studded. But on the sidelines of the show are two more world-famous celebrities: Rachel McAdams and Will Ferrell.

The duo are in town to shoot an upcoming Netflix film about – you guessed it – the Eurovision. Ferrell is the brains behind the movie, titled Eurovision, and it is being directed by David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers).

In addition to Ferrell, McAdams is appearing in the film, and even took a photo with Eurovision co-host Assi Azar on the sidelines of the contest this week.

Unlike most Americans, Ferrell is a fan of the European singing extravaganza, as he was introduced to it by his Swedish-born wife, Viveca Paulin. Ferrell was also in attendance at the Eurovision last year in Lisbon, Portugal, where Israel’s Netta Barzilai took home the top prize. Netflix announced the Eurovision satire film last summer, and Dobkin and McAdams signed on earlier this year.

PMW: Fatah calls to boycott Eurovision, adopts BDS campaign

Israel is hosting this year's Eurovision song contest, and millions across the world are watching the semi-finals this week, before the grand final on Saturday. Angry that Israel is hosting one of Europe's most important cultural celebrations, Abbas' Fatah Movement has been calling for a boycott of the event. Knowing the world's sensitivity to images of dead children, Fatah presented the libelous cartoon above of a microphone made of a rifle, and with bullets and a Palestinian child shot dead, lying in a pool of blood, as if the child had been intentionally murdered by Israel, under the hashtag #BoycottEurovision2019.

Similarly, the official Palestinian Authority daily printed this cartoon of the word "Eurovision" with a Palestinian boy being hung from a treble clef that replaces the "v" in "Eurovision."

However, it is Hamas that bears full responsibility for the civilian deaths and murdered children in the Gaza Strip because it places its missile launchers in residential areas, and proudly boasts of using civilians as human shields, as documented several times by Palestinian Media Watch.

BDS-campaigners have also called on pop star Madonna not to perform at Eurovision in Tel Aviv. Madonna is scheduled to sing during the finals on Saturday. Joining the BDS-call, Fatah posted several images under the hashtag #MadonnaDontGo, among them:

Blast from the Past: Israel's First Eurovision Win

Israel's first win of Eurovision came in 1978, followed up by another victory in 1979. Izhar Cohen, who won it for Israel the first time, remember it quite well. Our Tracy Alexander has the story.

Egyptian news site Masr al-Arabia published an obligatory article for the anniversary of Israel not being destroyed, blaming Israel for all ills, but it starts off with a startling statement for the Arab world:

The Palestinian cause is on the brink of total collapse, against the background of the deteriorating situation that faces the Arab countries at the same time as the 71st anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba.

These include the divided Arab street, the war in Yemen and the division in Libya, the famine in Gaza and split with the West Bank, massacres and genocide in Syria and the siege of Qatar by four Gulf countries, and protests in Sudan.

In other words, since there are far more important and existential issues that Arab countries have to deal with, the eighth decade of the Palestinian issue really doesn't rate very high any more.

The implication that the existence of these other issues endangers the "Palestinian cause" is a tacit admission that the Palestinian issue is really not so dire, despite decades of insistence that it is the key to solving all Middle East problems - the "linkage" idea that stubbornly remains in Western circles because of Arab diplomats repeating it like a mantra every time they met officials in the West.

Since the Palestinian issue is not inherently as big a deal as the other issues facing the Arab world, the lack of publicity is what is causing it to be on the "brink of collapse." Simply put, no one really cares anymore and putting resources into a failed cause diverts attention and money from actual crises.

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