Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, May 20, 2019

05/20 Links Pt2: Hen Mazzig: No, Israel isn’t a country of privileged and powerful white Europeans; 75 Years Since Elie Wiesel Was Sent to Auschwitz; Why is Al Sharpton speaking at a Jewish conference in Washington?

From Ian:

Hen Mazzig (L.A. Times): No, Israel isn’t a country of privileged and powerful white Europeans

Along with resurgent identity politics in the United States and Europe, there is a growing inclination to frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of race. According to this narrative, Israel was established as a refuge for oppressed white European Jews who in turn became oppressors of people of color, the Palestinians.

As an Israeli, and the son of an Iraqi Jewish mother and North African Jewish father, it’s gut-wrenching to witness this shift.

I am Mizrahi, as are the majority of Jews in Israel today. We are of Middle Eastern and North African descent. Only about 30% of Israeli Jews are Ashkenazi, or the descendants of European Jews. I am baffled as to why mainstream media and politicians around the world ignore or misrepresent these facts and the Mizrahi story. Perhaps it’s because our history shatters a stereotype about the identity of my country and my people.

Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, was not established for just one type of Jew but for all Jews, from every part of the world — the Middle East, North Africa, Ethiopia, Asia and, yes, Europe. No matter where Jews physically reside, they maintain a connection to the land of Israel, where our story started and where today we continue to craft it.

The likes of Women’s March activist Tamika Mallory, Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill and, more recently, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) falsify reality in their discussions of Palestinians’ “intersectional” struggle, their use of the term “apartheid” to characterize Israeli policy, and their tendency to define Israelis as Ashkenazi Jews alone.

I believe their misrepresentations are part of a strategic campaign to taint Israel as an extension of privileged and powerful white Europe, thereby justifying any and all attacks on it. This way of thinking signals a dangerous trend that positions Israel as a colonialist aggressor rather than a haven for those fleeing oppression. Worse, it all but erases the story of my family, which came to Israel from Iraq and Tunisia.

What Israel Can Teach the U.S. about Religious Pluralism and Tolerance

To many Americans, the fact that Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, like its maintenance of a separate school system for its Arab citizens, seems foreign, if not downright unsettling. But, argues Megan McArdle after a recent visit, it gives the country’s minorities something hard to find in other Western countries:

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 doesn’t want his community’s children to attend a separate school system for Arabs, true, but that’s because he wants a separate school system for their own identity.

Many governments that constitute themselves along ethno-religious lines oppress minorities, of course. But if a country protects the civil rights of minority citizens, as Israel generally does, 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 [such minorities] more tolerantly not despite its particularist self-definition but because of it. . . .

[T]he United States, a country that espouses tolerance as a prime virtue, has recently been struggling with how far to accommodate ancient and obdurately illiberal faiths—as when we catapulted almost immediately from “legalize gay weddings” to “force Christian bakers to make [gay couples’] wedding cakes.”

Thinking about the unrepentant ethno-religious identity of Israel, and of many Israeli minorities, and indeed of our own traditionalists, forces us to explore the limits of our self-proclaimed tolerance for dissenters. Which is why we need to grapple with that very different way of looking at faith.

Shmuley Boteach: 75 Years Since Elie Wiesel Was Sent to Auschwitz

Seventy-five years ago this week, Elie Wiesel was deported from Sighet, Romania — a small town in the Carpathian mountains — at the age of 15. Within three days, he would arrive at Auschwitz, where his mother Sarah and baby sister Tziporah were instantly murdered. Elie’s story of survival in the hell of Auschwitz, along with his father Shlomo — who would later die at Buchenwald just before the war’s end — would become one of the most famous Holocaust memoirs of all time, equaled only by the diary of Anne Frank.

Visiting Sighet and seeing Elie’s childhood home — today a museum — is a sobering experience. I was there to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the deportations and subsequent slaughter of the local Jewish community, which also saw 90 percent of Romanian Jewry annihilated.

In 1944, Sighet had about 27,000 inhabitants. A staggering 12,000 were Jewish. Then, in the space of just four transports taking place between May 16 to 22, 1944 (Elie Wiesel was on the final transport), the entire Jewish community was gone. Disappeared. Vanished. A few days later, upon arriving at Auschwitz, the vast majority went up in smoke, literally.

Over the past few years, I have visited many of Europe’s Holocaust death camps and killing fields with my family. I have done so for my children to know what happened to our people. I have come because I am certain that the six million want us to come — and they demand to be remembered. I have come because I am a Jew, and part of my identity is understanding the great triumphs and unspeakable tragedy of my people. And I have come despite how it is has made me feel toward God.

Elie Wiesel believed that the victims had the right to spar with God, show defiance at His seeming indifference, and express righteous indignation at His apparent abandonment of the Jews of Europe. Others misguidedly tried to find a reason, a purpose, or a meaning behind something so utterly senseless.

PLO's Erekat complains to Germany about its message on Israel's UN anniversary

For the anniversary of Israel's membership in the UN, the foreign ministry of Germany sent this message:

Seventy years ago today, on 11 May 1949, Israel was admitted to the UN as a full member. That’s a whole human life ago. On this occasion, the Federal Government would like to reiterate once again today in New York that Germany stands, also in the UN, shoulder to shoulder with Israel, whose security and right to exist must never be called into question by anyone anywhere.

Nevertheless, Israel is still being denounced, treated in a biased manner and marginalised inappropriately in UN bodies to this day. This state of affairs is painful and unsatisfactory, and especially since the UN is at the heart of the multilateral, rules-based order and vital to international security and peace.

We will continue, including as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, to support Israel’s legitimate interests, to help strengthen its representation in the UN and to do our utmost to oppose any attempt to isolate or delegitimise Israel.

The PLO's Saeb Erekat was not happy that Germany pointed out the bias that the UN has against Israel.

Erekat claimed that Israel's membership to the UN was conditional on the implementation of the Charter of the United Nations, accepting the "right of return" for Palestinians.

He's made this claim before and it is not true.

As I have written previously:

The easiest way to find out is to read the text of the resolution accepting Israel itself:

Having received the report of the Security Council on the application of Israel for membership in the United Nations,

Noting that, in the judgment of the Security Council, Israel is a peace-loving State and is able and willing to carry out the obligations contained in the Charter,

Noting that the Security Council has recommended to the general Assembly that it admit Israel to membership in the United Nations,

Noting furthermore the declaration by the State of Israel that it "unreservedly accepts the obligations of the United Nations Charter and undertakes to honour them from the day when it becomes a member of the United Nations,"

Recalling its resolutions of 29 November 1947 and 11 December 1948 and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representative of the Government of Israel before the Ad Hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions,

The General Assembly,

Acting in discharge of its functions under Article 4 of the Charter and rule 125 of its rules of procedure,

1. Decides that Israel is a peace loving State which accepts the obligations contained in the Charter and is able and willing to carry out those obligations;

2. Decides to admit Israel to membership in the United Nations.

While the resolution "recalls" UNGA 181 and 194 there is no conditional language in this resolution at all. The actionable part of the resolution is unambiguous. Beyond that, the preamble explicitly notes that Israel clarified - at length - its interpretation of those resolutions in a number of now obscure UN documents (here and here, among others.) Abba Eban was, as usual, masterful in explaining Israel's position, and his explanation is referred to in this resolution just as the UNGA resolutions are. The language of the resolution seems to accept Eban's words as being just as important as the texts of the earlier resolutions themselves.

Erekat is lying to the government of Germany.

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While I could spend weeks listing everything I loath about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) “movement,” if there is one quality they possess that I both despise and admire it is their relentlessness.

This is a term you hear quite often in discussions of the behavior and activities of Israel’s enemies. For week after week, month after month, year after year they are at it – smearing the Jewish state with every conceivable accusation, from stealing land to swiping organs. And whenever they hit a wall, they lick their wounds and show up yet again to repeat their campaigns over and over until they get what they want.

We’ve seen this on college campuses where years of rejection of divestment motions by student governments was finally overcome when the BDSers simply packed those bodies with their own supporters for the sole purpose of getting their squalid little measures passed.

Yes, by the time those votes were taken, no one took them seriously as actually representing the opinion of the student body, and administrators were only too happy to tell these “representatives” that they had no plans to ever act on their demands. But, giving credit where credit is due, our foes kept at it until they got what they wanted.

You saw this also in places like the Presbyterian Church where our opponents simply waited decades for members who stood against boycott and divestment targeting Israel to die or leave the church, providing them an opening to get divestment made the policy of a smaller, more politically homogenous institution. As much as I despise those who have bent that organization to their will, regardless of the cost to the others, you’ve got to admire the stick-to-it-of-ness of those whose only purpose in life is to see an end to the Jewish state.

One of the things contributing the BDSers’ persistence is the fact that they have clear-cut enemies to attack: Israel and its supporters (or even anyone who dares to not think ill of the Jewish nation). With such well-defined targets in their sights, and a lack of any restraint, the Israel haters can continue their campaigns year in and year out, regardless of how many times any particular campaign might fail.

I suspect that it is a lack of a comparable enemy that keeps our side from attacking our opponents as relentlessly as they assault us. After all, the dream of even the most fervent friend of Israel is that the Jewish state eventually lives in peace with those around them. Given that, is it any wonder we cannot muster the will to persistently smear those we want to live in peace with for years and years on end?

That said, there are missions Israel and its supporters have taken on that demonstrate we also have a streak of relentlessness that can and has paid off.

For example, the German government recently declared BDS to be a form of anti-Semitism and ended any funding for organizations associated with that propaganda campaign. Other European governments have also (albeit slowly) opened their eyes to the fact that the money they give to the Palestinians is either being wasted or invested in hate indoctrination (or in buildings named after murderers).

These successes on our side cannot simply be attribute to Europeans waking up to fact that were obvious for all to see during years they sunk money into corruption and incitement on the part of Israel’s “peace partners.” Rather, it was the result of the relentless work of people on our side, notably groups like NGO Monitor and Palestinian Media Watch which have, for years and years, exposed those who would rather not see the truth to facts they cannot ignore, and lobbied to get governments and non-government organizations to live by their principles by rejecting BDS.

In this case, the enemy was not Muslims, Arabs or Palestinians but a specific group: BDS supporters, who in no way can be considered people we can ultimately live in peace. Having such a deserving target allows our own relentless campaigns to take root and pay political dividends.

You can see similar positive relentlessness in the success of groups like AIPAC which has spent decades cultivating strong relationships between Israel and members of the United States congress. These relationships helped Israel weather storms (most recently during the Obama administration) and stand as a bulwark against present attempts to turn the Democratic party against the Jewish state. Time will tell if AIPAC’s work will stem that particular tide, or if we will need to find some additional ways to relentlessly pursue our just cause.

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05/20 Links Pt1: Trump Admin Kicks Off Plan to Foster Israeli-Palestinian Peace; Greenblatt: PA Can Pay for Health Care But Prefers to Pay Terrorists; Ex-Fatah prince, E.Jerusalem lawyer indicted for attempted terror attacks

From Ian:

PMW: The figures show that the PA financial crisis is fake

The Palestinian Authority is currently facing a financial crisis. The crisis is self-induced and caused as a direct result of a decision by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to drag the Palestinian economy into an abyss, in order to preserve the PA's policy of encouraging terror and rewarding terrorists with generous salaries.

The sole reason for the economic crisis is the refusal of the PA to accept the tax revenues that Israel collects and transfers to the PA. These tax revenues - over 8 billion shekels in 2018 - account for, on average over the last five years, 50% of the PA's annual operating budget.

The PA is refusing to accept the taxes due to the decision of the Israeli Security Cabinet, taken in February this year after the murder of Ori Ansbacher, to deduct 502 million shekels (in twelve equal deductions each in the sum of approximately 42 million shekels) from them. The amount the government decided to deduct is the amount that the PA publicly admitted that it paid in salaries and various benefits to imprisoned terrorists and released terrorists in 2018.

The refusal of the PA to receive the remaining amount of tax money was made clear immediately after Israel's decision to deduct the funds, as explained by PA Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki:
PA Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad Al-Malki: "It was agreed yesterday in a meeting with His Honor the President [Abbas] to send an official message to the Israeli side, according to which we will not agree to accept any partial amount of the tax money that is to be officially transferred to the Palestinian side. This message has been conveyed to the Israeli side in a clear manner." [Official PA TV, Feb. 21, 2019]

Greenblatt: PA Can Pay for Health Care But Prefers to Pay Terrorists

Greenblatt began his attack with a tweet in which he shared a Palestinian Media Watch report showing how PA officials were receiving medical care in Israel because the Palestinian Authority was depriving its own citizens with the right to get proper health care by denying them the option of getting treatment in east Jerusalem.

“Good report for all who think the PA ended medical care for Palestinians in Israel. What about everyday Palestinians? The PA can pay hospital bills if it doesn’t give $ to terrorists for its “pay to slay” program. Dig deeper folks, not all is what it seems,” Greenblatt tweeted with to a link to a PMW report.

The tweet generated controversy, with Israeli reporter Barak Ravid asking, “Why did the U.S. stop funding Palestinian hospitals in east Jerusalem that are the only place in Palestine that can give treatment to cancer patients?”

Greenblatt replied: “The PA incurred bills @ the hospital & assumed someone else would pay. We want those patients to receive the best care, the PA could easily pay its own bills to the hospital by ending incentive payments to terrorists/their families & use the $ to care for their ppl.”

Later Greenblatt provided an exclusive statement to Israel Hayom, elaborating on why the U.S. shared no blame for the bills.

“Despite the Palestinian Authority’s refusal to pay the health care bills of its own people, members of its senior leadership — even individuals who have threatened terror attacks on Israel – continue to receive treatment in Israeli hospitals. This just goes to show the hypocrisy of the Palestinian Authority’s position. Senior Palestinian officials and terrorists are taken care of, while ordinary Palestinians are put at risk. Anyone seeking to blame the United States for this situation needs to review the facts,” Greenblatt told Israel Hayom.

NGO Monitor: Letter to the Editor of The Washington Post (Unpublished)

Re: Have the Palestinians received ‘more aid than any group in history’? (May 8, 2019)

Many assertions in “Fact Checker: Have the Palestinians received ‘more aid than any group in history’?” Glenn Kessler, May 8, are uncertain or incorrect. Although other countries such as Syria or Kiribati (a tiny Pacific island) receive bursts of aid in response to immediate crises, the scale of assistance (estimated at $1.7 billion annually) to the Palestinians and the sustained flow year after year is far beyond any other recipient. In addition, in calculating an average amount, the $79 per capita listed by the World Bank for 1993 is clearly incorrect – UNRWA (the unique agency created in 1949 to promote the Palestinian cause) alone provided double that amount. Furthermore, the USAID and the World Bank estimates are based on official Palestinian claims for the combined West Bank and Gaza population, while evidence suggesting a lower population raises per capita aid calculations by twenty percent. In addition, the comparison with Israel, a democracy and US ally, mistakenly labels grants to repay defense loans, including for relocating military bases under the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, as general economic assistance. In summary, the evidence supports concerns regarding the high level of sustained aid provided to the Palestinians.

Ex-Fatah prince, East Jerusalem lawyer indicted for attempted terror attacks

Former Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade Commander Zakariya Zubeidi and east Jerusalem lawyer Tareq Barghut have been indicted in the IDF West Bank Courts for attempted terror attacks in which they allegedly fired on Jews in the vicinity of Ramallah in the West Bank.

The indictment of each man is explosive.

Zubeidi at one point has been considered among the most powerful strongmen in the Palestinian Authority and was given amnesty for his role as one of the leader's of terror during the Second Intifada.

Barghut is a well-known lawyer for Palestinians, is certified as an Israeli lawyer and his arrest and the arrest of his wife in February led the entire legal community defending Palestinians in the IDF West Bank Courts to strike, bringing the entire system to a halt.

While not unprecedented, it is highly unusual for Israel to arrest top Fatah officials or a lawyer for Palestinians, who are generally considered off limits.

The announcement came from the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agnecy) on Monday which said, “Intelligence gathered by the Shin Bet pointed to the involvement of Zakariya Zubeidi and Tareq Barghut in a series of attacks in the Beit El area.”

The two were arrested on February 27 during an operation by the agency and IDF forces at the end of the night of another attack which had been thwarted by the security forces due to earlier assessments on the ground.

Barguth has been employed as an attorney in the PA’s Ministry of Prisoner’s Affairs and there have been indications that part of what led to his arrest was internal Palestinian tensions, possibly leading to a fellow Palestinian informing on his alleged double-life as a lawyer and a terrorist.

Did the Iceland Eurovision band demean a Jewish symbol?

When the Iceland band Hatari was announced to have received 186 points in Eurovision, members displayed Palestinian banners - which was against the Eurovision rules.

But one of the members of the BDSM-themed band had leather straps wrapped around his arm that look suspiciously like tefillin, the straps attacked to leather boxes that Orthodox Jewish men put on during prayers every weekday.

Hatari:

Tefillin:

In previous videos for Hatari, I see someone wearing straps around his arm sometimes - but never in a way that resembles tefillin:

Only in Tel Aviv do we see any of their members with more than three wraps around one of their arms:

It could be a coincidence, but given their animosity towards Israel and the Jewish state, I'm not so sure.

Incidentally, Madonna was appropriated the symbol as well in one of her videos, which is assumed to be due to her following Kabbalistic influences:

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Did Israel target the headquarters of a disabled rights organization in Rafah?

The Guardian writes:

Rafah, Gaza

Staff inspect damage to the Confederation of Disabled People’s building, which was the only centre to serve people with disabilities in Rafah, after Tuesday’s Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Photograph: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The implication is that Israel was indiscriminately targeting buildings including the Confederation of Disabled People building. One can imagine that reader believes that this center housed rehab facilities, enrichment programs and similar programs to help disabled people.

Immediately, stories appeared in Palestinian media about how disabled people in Gaza had their "dreams destroyed" by the bombing.

The reality is that the target was a six-story building with both offices and apartments as well as a cafe. The building was known as the Zurob Tower.

Three Fatah operatives were killed in the bombing, and no civilians.

The Confederation of Disabled People was one office of many in the building.

The Facebook page of the Confederation of Disabled People has not been updated since February, so it is hardly a hotbed of activity. In fact, its purpose is to fight for the rights of disabled persons, but there is no indication that it housed anything else to help the disabled. Any photos from inside the office shows it is sparse, most of the Facebook page has photos of demonstrations outside the offices.

To say that Israel bombed the headquarters of the Confederation of Disabled People is technically accurate, and highly misleading. It was not the target, it was only in a single office in the building, and the target was (at least) Fatah operatives, and possibly other terror related spaces in the building.

(h/t Adam Levick)

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Teaneck protest against MDA, like all such protests, are not "pro-Palestinian" but anti-Israel

On Sunday, there was a fundraising event in Teaneck, NJ, to raise money for an ambulance for Israel's Magen David Adom service.

A dozen people counter-protested, because, apparently, God forbid that Israelis have the ability to save people's lives.

Here is how the counterprotest was reported in the North Jersey Record:

Across the street from Congregation Beth Sholom, where the event was held, protesters waved signs and chanted “Free Palestine.”

“I’m not opposed to ambulances, but you have to understand this ambulance is part of the larger picture of Israel,” said Rich Siegel, a Teaneck resident and co-director of Deir Yassin Remembered, which organized the protest. “Any time there is a pro-Israel event we need to be out here to support Palestine.”

The demonstrators were joined by a group of anti-Zionist Orthodox rabbis from the Neturei Karta movement. As the event went on, counter-protesters gathered nearby and the two groups began chanting back and forth.

Were the protesters "supporting Palestine" or protesting Israel? The signs they were waving, and the comment by Siegel, show the answer:

There is nothing "pro-Palestinian" in these protests. The one sign that says "free Palestine" says "End Israel" before that. In video, the only chant that one can hear from the purported "pro-Palestinian" protesters is "Baby killers" - protesting a service that saves babies' lives.

The caption for the photos, however, say "A group of pro-Palestinian supporters organized by 'Deir Yassin Remembered' protest outside of the event."

This protest, tiny as it was, shows the truth: that there is no such thing as a "pro-Palestinian" movement. It is all anti-Israel. If Israel would disappear and be taken over by an Iranian proxy like Hezbollah, not one of these people would be in the streets chanting "Free Palestine," just as no one was in the streets protesting Jordan's annexation of the West Bank in 1949.

Again, they are not protesting Israel's government policies nor are they saying they want Palestinian independence. They are protesting an Israeli ambulance response service that saves lives without asking the religion of those they help.

Teaneck's Muslim mayor, who is far more pro-Israel than the pseudo-Jews protesting the ambulance service, was at the fundraiser:

Mayor Mohammed Hameeduddin said he saw firsthand the diversity and skill of Magen David Adom’s volunteers while visiting Israel in 2014.

Hameeduddin was dining in a restaurant when a man had a seizure. Within minutes, the ambulance service responded to help.

“The vans arrived and out came people of all different backgrounds, working together to save lives,” he said. “This organization gives us all hope for the future, hope for our children and hope for peace. That’s what we all want.”

If protesters were truly pro-Palestinian, they would support Magen David Adom, not protest it.

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Gazans who enter Egypt must fly out the very same day

Haaretz has a story about how 35,000 Gazans managed to leave Gaza last year, and how many of them were doctors who Hamas has now banned from leaving altogether because there is a huge brain drain. Entire hospital departments have been closed.

One detail mentioned in the article I was not aware of:

Egypt also earns money from the Palestinians who leave, as they have to pay for the trip from Rafah to the airport. To pass through Rafah, they must present a plane ticket for the day of their arrival, and they are not allowed to stay anywhere in Egypt except the airport.

Since Gazans who try to leave via Rafah have no idea if they will make it onto a bus - only a small percentage do - showing a plane ticket for a trip they might never make seems like a huge burden.

What this effectively means is that the only people who can leave Gaza are those who are rich enough to bribe Hamas officials to guarantee a spot that day.

Egypt hates Palestinians so much that they do not let a single one stay overnight.

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05/19 Links: The real winner of Eurovision was Israel; Al Jazeera pulls video claiming Jews exploited Holocaust to create Israel; Anti-Israel bias at HRW: Two decades of anti-Zionism

From Ian:

The real winner of Eurovision was Israel

Israel’s Eurovision entry barely made a dent on the scoreboard but there’s no doubt that the Jewish State was the real winner of the Eurovision Song Content 2019.

Israel was hosting the competition for the fourth time in history but for the first in twenty years – and in an era where Eurovision is simulcast on YouTube and more and more countries have joined the contest, in an age of age of instant responses and scrutiny via social media with a global viewing audience that has swelled to 200 million people.

Eurovision is always loud, often garish and I admit to watching some of the songs with the “Mute” button pressed - but to be the host is a big deal and for Israel more than most. It also requires a lot – and Israel more than delivered. When Netta Barzilai triumphantly lifted the trophy last year, questions and concerns loomed: Which city would host? Would the contest be derailed – or even cancelled – by BDS, the anti-Israel boycotters? Could Israel do it and not go bankrupt in the process, or would the whole thing be a disaster?

Israel can feel vindicated on every level.

Tel Aviv was the natural home for camp, party-loving Eurovision with no disrespect to any other city including the capital. Jerusalemites also hosted Eurovision celebrations and the tourism influx was a boon to Jerusalem as it was to Tel Aviv and elsewhere with thousands of visitors converging on the Jewish State. In 2018, tourism was at an all-time high with 4.1 million people coming to Israel, up 14% on the previous year; with the Eurovision boost, 2019 could surpass even that.

And to answer the question of if geographically-small Israel could host a major event, the largest music competition in the world, the answer this week is a resounding: YES. Israel’s national broadcaster, Kan put on a slick, polished, dynamic production. The stage looked every bit as fabulous as previous venues. Outside the concert hall, Tel Aviv’s Eurovision Village was heaving all week and the positivity of the event resounded.

Fans sing along to most pro-LGBT Eurovision, though winning song isn’t kitschy

This year’s Eurovision Song Contest went to the Netherlands and its 25-year-old Dutch singer Duncan Laurence, with his solo piece “Arcade.”

The country hasn’t won the Eurovision since 1975, and Laurence was a fan favorite from the start, although he was told in rehearsals that he needed to look more closely at the camera to engage the television audiences.

Laurence’s song is a sweeping ode with a strong refrain to love and loss, and was in stark contrast to many of the other songs, which were high on camp, kitsch and dance tempos.

Fans loved “Arcade,” but they didn’t sing along or clap to it, simply because it’s not that kind of song. And Eurovision fans love a good refrain and an opportunity to clap in time.
Fans at the Eurovision press screening in the Tel Aviv Expo on May 18, 2019 (Jessica Steinberg/Times of Israel)

Despite the nature of the winning song, Saturday night’s show may have been the campiest Eurovision yet, with France’s gay Muslim singer Bilal Hassani bringing his message of tolerance, the bondage-happy trio Hatari from Iceland with their techno punk thrust, the presence of Israel’s Dana International and Austria’s Conchita Wurst, and Madonna’s monk-like choir wearing gas masks for her rendition of her new song, “Future.”

It was a show that thrilled the many LGBT fans who converged on the Expo Tel Aviv venue and are among the most die-hard Eurovision fans; many of them had carefully learned about the contestants from each country, even memorizing the words to the songs.

Petra Marquardt-Bigman: Anti-Israel bias at Human Rights Watch (Part 2: Two decades of anti-Zionism)

Conclusion – HRW’s anti-Israel bias is beyond repair

Just following some of the leading HRW officials on Twitter and looking for their pronouncements on Israel would provide almost daily new evidence that they don’t even bother to pretend to be impartial and fair.

But I think all you really need to know about HRW and its attitude to Israel is that almost 20 years ago, when peace still seemed possible and a U.S. president did all he could to achieve it, HRW decided to endorse Palestinian demands for a “right to return,” thereby endorsing Palestinian demands to transform the world’s only Jewish state into yet another Arab-Muslim majority state.

For all practical intents and purposes, HRW has therefore been an anti-Zionist organization ever since. As far as HRW is concerned, Israel’s existence as a Jewish state is a violation of Palestinian human rights.

Whether Omar Shakir sits in an office in Jerusalem or in New York will not make a difference to his output, and whoever might replace him will obviously also toe the HRW line on Israel. At the same time, I don’t quite see why Israel should give a work permit to employees of foreign NGOs who come to work for the demise of the Jewish state. By trying to force Israel to host a longtime anti-Israel activist, HRW has provided a stark reminder of its bias and its arrogant attitude that it has no need to even pretend to be impartial.

But this is arguably not only about Israel. If an organization is so shameless about its bias towards one country, it seems reasonable to question how much ideological fixations affect its work on other countries. The apparently widespread idea that an organization working on human rights must be assumed to reflect the highest ethical standards and should be automatically exempt from scrutiny and criticism is certainly not justified.

In addition, HRW staff will also use their social media clout to tout political viewpoints that may not have all that much to do with their work.

Rashida Tlaib’s recent revolting effort to rewrite history by claiming Palestinians provided a safe haven for Jews during and after the Holocaust provides a good example. As of this writing, the timelines of Sarah Leah Whitson and Omar Shakir feature a combined 15 re-tweets—in just 24 hours—in defense of Tlaib. But perhaps Tlaib, just like HRW, has the human right not to be criticized, especially not by Israel supporters, who, as Ken Roth has decreed, come up only with “lies and deception” or “lies and obfuscation.

Anti-Israel bias at Human Rights Watch is so pervasive, and has gone on so long, that it is beyond repair. HRW should be disregarded as a legitimate neutral voice on anything related to Israel. (h/t IsaacStorm)

John Podhoretz: Herman Wouk, 1915-2019 Entertainment with a deeper purpose.

In 2013, I commissioned and published an apology to a writer who I felt had been mistreated in the pages of COMMENTARY—and by my father, no less!

“How This Magazine Wronged Herman Wouk” was the name of the article by Michael J. Lewis, and the occasion for it was the fact that the then-97-year-old Wouk had just published a new novel called The Lawgiver—a comic epistolary novel, no less, concerning the making of a movie about the life of Moses in which Wouk himself appears as a character. As Lewis wrote, “Wouk adapts the form to the modern world of instant messaging, faxes, and Skype, and pulls it off successfully—a startling achievement by an author who was born two years before the United States entered World War I.”

Wouk, who died Friday just two weeks shy of his 104th birthday, was extraordinary not only for his age, his durability, and the freshness of his ageless mind, but for his career as a popular novelist determined to explore themes of the deepest seriousness with all their moral complexities for a mass-market audience.

It was, I have to say, the very reason his work came in for scornful or dismissive treatment in the pages of COMMENTARY. The New York literary highbrows may have delighted in the frivolities of Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley, but they stood at the gates with buckshot at the ready against the philistine hordes of popular culture when the barbarians sought venture onto the turf of the Great Novel or the Great Play. Wouk’s breakthrough work, The Caine Mutiny, sold millions and was made into a successful movie and a smash-hit play, but in these pages it was found wanting as a seafaring tale next to Herman Melville—which is rather an impossible standard to which to hold a book that deserved and deserves to be measured on its own merits.

And when Wouk was garlanded by the middlebrows of the news magazines and the Book of the Month Club audience with the publication of his most ambitious novel, 1955’s Marjorie Morningstar, which was also an enormous bestseller, this meant war. The book came under withering assault from a 26-year-old whippersnapper named Norman Podhoretz for its “indigestible prose.”

Shorouk News from Egypt has been summarizing the doctoral thesis from former Egyptian Grand Mufti and former Grand Imam of Al Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, written in 1969.

The subject of the thesis was the history of the Jews from the Exodus from Egypt to modern times.

Apparently, chapter 5 was about "the grace of Allah on the children of Israel and their arrogant attitude towards him."

For "balance," chapter 6 is about how evil Jews are, where you can read about "examples of their corruption in the land through murder, assassination, espionage, provocation, wars and revolutions, including the fact that they provoked the two world wars, they the only ones who benefited from the abundant money behind them, and that the tripartite aggression against Egypt (in 1956) was theirs...

"They were behind the Communist Revolution in 1917, and took over the reins after its success. The Communist Office was composed of seventeen members, including fourteen Jews and three whose wives were Jewish.

"They are behind the establishment of the Masonic movement, as they spread vice."

"Jews, without distinguishing between Judaism as a religion and between Zionism as a colonial political movement, are the most brilliant people in promoting principles, doctrines, philosophies and theories, which benefit them and harm others.

" Examples include Nietzsche's philosophy which ridiculed virtuous morality, such as mercy and compassion, and called for the ethics of violence and contempt for values, which conforms to the evil Jewish spirit and its black history.

"Darwin's theory of evolution is used to their advantage in undermining religions and ethics..."

This is a major newspaper that just decided that their audience needed some additional Jew-hatred in their lives. Tantawi is regarded as a major figure in modern Islam, so who is going to argue that he was a bigoted piece of trash?

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.@UNESCO Artist for Peace tweets picture of a Rothschild to illustrate corruption

Ahlem Mosteghanemi is a UNESCO Artist for Peace because, in their words, "of her commitment, through her writing, to causes such as social justice and the education of young people affected by armed conflicts. Mosteghanemi is widely regarded as one of the most read writers in the Arab world. Through her works, she provides unwavering support to intercultural dialogue, women's rights and the fight against violence."

Apparently she also believes that Jews control the banks by stealing money and lending it out.

Last week, she tweeted this:

It is a photo of Jacob Rothschild with the caption, "We will have them steal the money of their people and deposit it in our banks and then loan that money back , it only takes a finance minister from our soldiers." Her comment is "And that is exactly what happened!"

Apparently there is a banking scandal in Algeria, and Mosteghanemi is using a fake quote from the person that antisemites love to pretend runs the world banking system to say that the Algerian bankers are taking a page from the evil Jews.

I bet she doesn't see anything wrong at all about this.

(h/t WC)

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What Einstein would have thought of J-Street, JVP. IfNotNow

The American Council for Judaism was an anti-Zionist Jewish group that started in 1942 for the purpose splitting the American Jewish community.

Its position (since somewhat moderated) was that it "deplores the view that American Jews
should develop any kind of special identification with Israel. Its basic proposition is that Judaism 'is a religion of universal values, not a nationality.' It held that American Jews who associate themselves with the cause of Israel are playing straight into the hands of anti-Semitism because they open themselves up to charges of dual-loyalty.

Although far smaller than the Zionist groups at the time, it received a fair amount of news coverage.

Essentially, it was the J-Street, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow of the 1940s and 1950s.

I just saw this short essay from Albert Einstein, taken from the book Out of My Later Years:

I AM VERY HAPPY INDEED to hear that the platform for which the American Council for Judaism stands is meeting with strong opposition. This organization appears to me to be nothing more than a pitiable attempt to obtain favor and toleration from our enemies by betraying true Jewish ideals and by mimicking those who claim to stand for 100 per cent Americanism. I believe this method to be both undignified and ineffective. Our opponents are bound to view it with disdain and even with contempt, and in my opinion justly. He who is untrue to his own cause cannot command the respect of others.

Apart from these considerations, the movement in question is a fairly exact copy of the Zentralverein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens ("Central Association Of German Citizens of Jewish Faith") of unhappy memory, which in the days of our crucial need showed itself utterly impotent and corroded the Jewish group by undermining that inner certitude by which alone our Jewish people could have overcome the trials of this difficult age.

No doubt his opinion today of the Jewish groups that are attempting to drive a wedge between American Jews and Israel would be equally disdainful.

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