Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

06/19 Links Pt2: Judea Pearl Denounces ‘Zionophobic Thuggery’; The Problem With Ocasio-Cortez’s Shameful Ignorance Of History; The shameful rise in antisemitism behind Cusack’s antisemitic tweet

From Ian:

Judea Pearl Denounces ‘Zionophobic Thuggery’ in Receiving Algemeiner’s ‘Warrior for Truth’ Award From Sharon Stone

Speaking at the inaugural Algemeiner West Coast gala last week, Professor Judea Pearl, father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, said his late son had become an icon of “three cherished values — truth, humanity and Jewishness.”

“And these are precisely three values that have been unprecedentedly attacked in our millennium,” Judea Pearl noted, as he accepted the “Warrior for Truth” award on behalf of his son in front of a crowd of nearly 300 people at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.

Those same values, Pearl pointed out, were “championed” by The Algemeiner.

“It is a paper that would not hesitate to expose fake news,” he said. “It is a paper that views the existence of Israel as a human rights issue, not as a capricious luxury of white aristocrats. And it is a paper that has given voice to Jewish students on BDS-occupied universities, and has echoed their demands for protection from Zionophobic thuggery.”

Pearl was introduced by actress Sharon Stone, who was honored with the “Warrior for Truth” award at The Algemeiner’s annual New York gala last September.

“While I haven’t had the tragedy in my life that the Pearl family has had, I do understand that without faith we do not know how to move through these dark times,” Stone said. “It is in these times that we have to rely on the integrity of what we really believe, and that we believe in the God that is within ourselves, the God that is love within, the greater love, the love that guides us.”

The Problem With Ocasio-Cortez’s Shameful Ignorance Of History

In April 1944, two Slovakian Jews named Alfred Weczler and Rudolf Vrba escaped from Auschwitz, and provided one of the first eyewitness accounts of the horrors of the European concentration camps. Both men had been rounded up with a group of their countrymen and sent to the Birkenau section of the camp in the spring of 1941, where they were immediately put to work as slave labor.

This was before the German regime had properly streamlined and industrialized efforts to destroy European Jewry. In the early days of the camp, any man incapable of labor was immediately executed. Those who survived were sent to do the grueling work of construction.

The men began their work at sunrise, and except for a half-hour break at noon, when the prisoners were fed cabbage and turnip soup, they worked until 6 p.m. For dinner, the men were given an ounce of moldy bread made from “ersatz flour and sawdust.” Lice and fleas tortured their emaciated bodies as they slept on wooden boards. “Rats were so bold they gnawed at the toes and fingers of sleepers and stole the crumbs they had left in their pockets,” wrote Robert Conot in his book “Justice at Nuremberg.”

A third of the prisoners died every week. If a worker was hurt, he was allotted three days of recovery time. If they failed to heal, the infirmary—where Dr. Mengele had already begun his nefarious work on women and children—would inject a fatal dose of phenol directly into their hearts.

Of the 2,722 Slovakian Jews who had been rounded up with Weczler and Vrba, only 159 survived to the summer of 1942. Those who died had been dumped, with another approximately 105,000 bodies, into shallow trenches around Birkenau. “As they decomposed” Conot noted, “the earth rose like a yeasty mixture of dough and bubbled up nauseating gases, which spread for miles.”

I think of that last sentence whenever some modern-day know-nothing begins comparing the United States to a proto-Nazi state. Maybe it’s because their analogies are embarrassingly ignorant and intellectually lazy, or maybe it’s because people like Ocasio-Cortez, perhaps unknowingly, diminish the suffering of millions of dead. Or maybe it’s because my own grandfather was taken as slave labor in Austria.

Auschwitz Museum Reaches Out To MSNBC’s Chris Hayes After He Defends Ocasio-Cortez

The official Twitter account for Auschwitz Museum advised MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes to follow it on the platform after Hayes tried to argue that concentration camps were historically different from death camps.

“[Chris Hayes,] Please consider following @AuschwitzMuseum where everyday we commemorate and educate about the tragic human history of [Auschwitz],” Auschwitz Museum tweeted on Tuesday.

The comment was seemingly in response to an exchange between Hayes and Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney that occurred earlier in the day. After Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed that the U.S. government is “running concentration camps on our southern border” to hold illegal immigrants, Cheney advised the freshman congresswoman to “spend just a few minutes learning some actual history.”

“[Six] million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust,” Cheney tweeted at Ocasio-Cortez. “You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this.”

“If you spend a few minutes learning some actual history, you will find out that concentration camps are different from death camps and have a history that both predates and extends far past the Nazis,” Hayes replied to Cheney.

Hayes, however, seemed to dismiss that Ocasio-Cortez was specifically referring to the concentrations camps under Nazi occupation. While on an instagram live stream, she specifically said that she wants “to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘Never Again’ means something.”

“Never Again” is the phrase that Jews all over the world use to make sure that the extermination between 1939 and 1945 never happens again.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum considers Auschwitz to be a concentration camp & says that of the 1.3 million people deported there ~1.1 million died, including one million Jews.

Does the @HolocaustMuseum need to “learn some actual history”, @chrislhayes?https://t.co/qnfJvebC4L https://t.co/XVLA3rjLdW
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) June 18, 2019

Waldorf was something I’d never written about at Smarter Parenting, the website I run as part of my day job. We had a couple of articles on the Montessori system and I’d written a piece on the democratic classroom. But I thought we needed something on the Waldorf education system to round things off. And so I began to research the topic, putting out feelers to speak with teachers and administrators in the Waldorf system.

I reached out to a friend whose wife was a retired educator. She’d taught in a Waldorf school the last five years of her teaching career. I also placed a query at HARO (Help a Reporter Out), where journalists can query other members and set up interviews or get quotes from experts on any topic imaginable for articles they are writing.

Sometimes I get deluged by HARO responses in response to a query, other times, I get nothing. So instead of sitting back and waiting to pick someone else’s brains, I hedged my bets and began to do some independent research on the net.

Now, I’d always known there was something strange, even off about the Waldorf classroom. Some aura of cultishness, perhaps even Nazism, clung to Waldorf like an unpleasant department store perfume sample that won’t be washed away with soap and water. I knew that the system was based on the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, who seemed, to put it frankly, a bit of a crackpot.

Rudolf Steiner

My impression of the Waldorf was that the schools wanted to distance themselves from Steiner, to make a distinction between Steiner’s beliefs and the schools that were spawned from them. But the more I dug into the subject of Waldorf schools, the weirder things got. It was worse than I’d thought. And no one from a Waldorf school seemed to want to go on record. I had one publicist contact me to say that she knew of a parent of a child in a Waldorf school and this parent was willing to pass on my questions to the administrator of the school.

This seemed a strange way to conduct business, like buying a watch from a guy in a trench coat in a back alley. I asked, “Can’t you just put me in touch with the administrator?”

The publicist replied only that she was sorry it had to be this way, but that she would eliminate the middle man by giving my questions directly to the administrator.

With nothing to lose, I sent on my questions, but never heard back. Follow-up messages to the publicist went unanswered.

I had thought my questions fairly innocuous. They weren’t confrontational. Were the Waldorf people just sniffing around to see whether I planned a hit piece? (And is there any other school system out there that has need to worry about hit pieces??)

What was with these people? What was with Waldorf??

My friend’s wife, the one who’d taught in the Waldorf system, also failed to respond to my questions. I went back to her husband. He said, “Oh, she never reads her email. I’ll tell her to take a look.”

But I never did hear back from her.

Which seems strange to me: why agree to be interviewed and then never check your email?

Does this say something about Waldorf or only about this woman’s email habits?

I don’t know.

But as I looked into Waldorf on my own, I found some really strange things about their philosophy. There were parents who’d had really bad experiences with Waldorf. And one name kept coming up: Dan Dugan.

Dan Dugan

Dugan is a cofounder of PLANS (People for Legal and Nonsectarian Schools), an organization that was formed to educate the public about Waldorf education. PLANS has been doing just that since 1997, acting as a clearinghouse for information on the mysterious Waldorf school system. I went to the contact page at PLANS, and sent off an email to Dan Dugan, who, as it turns out, was happy to speak with me, and gracious enough to respond in writing, at length, to the ten questions I sent him.

I needed to give my readers a rounded picture of Waldorf. So my questions to Dan ran the gamut. But what interested me most about Waldorf on a personal level, was the Nazi question. I had read that while Hitler was bent on closing down all Waldorf schools, and eventually succeeded, Rudolf Hess managed to stall him for a long time. I wanted to know why Hitler was against Waldorf, while Hess was all for Steiner’s educational philosophy, known as “Anthroposophy.”

Dan explained that Hitler didn’t like Steiner because Steiner was a cult figure with a significant following. That made Steiner the competition: Hitler didn’t want anyone to follow anyone but Hitler.

But Waldorf educators didn’t understand that Hitler saw Waldorf as a competitor. They hoped to persuade the Reich that their philosophy was in line with Nazi philosophy. So Waldorf fired all the Jewish teachers and wrote to the authorities that their program was now a perfect fit for the new regime.

The day after Kristallnacht

While this gambit didn’t succeed, it did put off the inevitable for about six years, until Hess fled to England. That’s when Hitler cracked down on occultism, outlawed Anthroposophy, and closed all the schools. For further information, Dan referred me to “Education for the National Community? Waldorf Schools in the Third Reich,” a fascinating chapter from a book by Peter Staudenmaier that shows how Waldorf tried to adapt to a changing political climate during WWII. The chapter begins:

On the 31st of January 1933, the day after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, a Mrs. Oberstein removed her daughter from the Breslau Waldorf school. Oberstein, a Nazi party member, was upset by the presence of a temporary assistant teacher from a Jewish background, and expressed her strong disagreement with the Waldorf faculty regarding “the race question.” Her daughter’s regular teacher, Heinrich Wollborn, wrote a letter the same day defending his Jewish colleague and explaining the Waldorf attitude toward such matters:

“We teachers place our complete trust in the capacity of every person for spiritual transformation, and we are firmly convinced that anthroposophy provides the possibility for an individual to outgrow his racial origin.”

So there you have it: the philosophy behind Waldorf sees Jewishness as an inborn flaw. It can be “outgrown” to be sure. But in the view of Steiner and Anthroposophy, to be Jewish is to have a racial birth defect. Staudenmaier writes:

The visiting teacher whose presence had sparked the incident, an anthroposophist named Ernst Lehrs, came from a family whose Jewish roots were notably tenuous. Not only was Lehrs himself fervently committed to Steiner’s esoteric version of Christianity, both his parents and his grandparents belonged to the Protestant church. The family had not been Jewish for generations, except in the ‘racial’ sense, and Lehrs exemplified the anthroposophical ideal of spiritual transformation and transcending one’s racial origins—the abandonment of Jewishness as the sine qua non for individuals from Jewish backgrounds hoping to become full members of the German Volk. In anthroposophist eyes, Lehrs had successfully joined the national community, whereas in Nazi eyes he was ineligible to do so.

The response by the Nazi regime to Wollborn’s initial letter was lukewarm. That's because Hitler didn’t see Judaism as a birth defect, or something that can be outgrown or overcome. Hitler saw Judaism as an infestation of vermin that must be eradicated and shown no mercy. And so it was that Wollborn and the other faculty members thought better of that initial policy position and began again:

Writing to local school authorities in October 1933, Wollborn reversed his earlier standpoint, insisting that in his January 31 letter “nothing was further from my mind than taking a principled position on the race question. I therefore greatly regret formulating the letter in such an unclear manner.” Noting that he wrote the earlier letter when the Nazi government was still forming, Wollborn now declared: “I have placed my pedagogical work entirely on the basis of the government, and have fully expressed this by joining the National Socialist Teachers League in June of this year.”

The Breslau Waldorf school, meanwhile, explained that Jews no longer worked there and that Lehrs had been only a temporary employee who left the school before the new laws regarding Jewish employees were promulgated. The school further noted that many Waldorf teachers had joined the Nazi teachers’ association and that all Waldorf schools in Germany had completed the process of Gleichschaltung, the Nazi term for bringing social institutions into line with the regime.

A local school inspector assigned to investigate the incident completely absolved both Wollborn and the school. His final report confirmed the Waldorf representatives’ claims and declared that the Breslau Waldorf school was indeed free of “Jewish influence,” observing moreover that a number of its core faculty were Nazi party members.

There is much more to the story of Waldorf’s desperate and hopeless bid to be accepted by the Nazi regime. The Staudenmaier coverage of this chapter in the history of Waldorf, is impressive and deserves to be read in full. But the main takeaways are 1) In Rudolf Steiner’s view, Judaism is a racial defect and 2) During WWII, Jewish teachers were fired to make Waldorf acceptable to Hitler (though the gambit failed).

Auschwitz

Knowing the history, these facts, it is difficult to imagine that any Jewish parent would consider enrolling a child in the Waldorf school system. One might argue that the Waldorf of today is far from these early underpinnings—that the administrators acted under duress. But having read the record, we now have a keen awareness of the inherent antisemitism of Steiner, his theory of Anthroposophy, and the Waldorf school system. Who then could embrace the system that betrayed us—and sees our Jewish birthright as a defect?

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Cartoon of the Day: Orientalism!

Continuing our series of re-captioning single panel cartoons....

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06/19 Links Pt1: The invention of Palestinians; Iran’s Liberal Conspiracy Theorists; The British Christian Volunteer Who Fought for Israel’s Independence; Don’t Blame Trump for Iran’s Aggression

From Ian:

The invention of Palestinians

Rumors circulate of an impending Israeli-Palestinian peace plan to be proposed by the Trump administration. It might, therefore, be appropriate to scrutinize the Palestinian claim—grounded in myth and not history—to national sovereignty.

Jewish sovereignty in their biblical homeland began with the rule of kings David and Solomon in the 10th-century BCE. The kingdom of Israel existed as an independent state until 722 BCE, while the kingdom of Judah maintained its independence until 586 BCE. There was no sign of any people identified, or self-identified, as Palestinians. Despite repeated claims, there is not a shred of evidence—historical, archeological or textual—to connect them with the ancient Canaanites, Philistines or Jebusites, who preceded the return of Jews from Egypt to the homeland of their biblical patriarchs and matriarchs.

Modern conceptions of Palestine began to emerge in mid-19th-century England. Artist David Roberts, following the trail of the ancient Israelites from Egypt to their promised land, filled The Holy Land with romantic depictions of local people, places and ancient Jewish sites. Rev. Alexander Keith authored The Land of Israel, based on his belief in fulfillment of the ancient prophecy that Jews would return to their homeland. In a memorable phrase, often repeated, he wrote that Jews were “a people without a country; even as their own land … is in a great measure … a country without a people.” Palestinians were not mentioned.

Several years later, Lord Shaftesbury, in a letter to British foreign minister Lord Palmerston following the Crimean War, wondered whether there was “such a thing” as “a nation without a country.” Answering his own question, he referred to “the ancient and rightful lords of the soil, the Jews.”

In the beginning of the 20th century and continuing throughout British Mandatory rule, Zionist land development and work prospects attracted Arabs from Middle Eastern countries (who eventually became known as “Palestinians”). There was little discernible evidence of Palestinian national consciousness. The Balfour Declaration (1917) further negates Palestinian fantasies. In his famous letter to Lord Rothschild, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The League of Nations adopted a resolution affirming the Balfour declaration. There was no mention of a Palestinian people, which did not then exist.

Noah Rothman: Iran’s Liberal Conspiracy Theorists

Conspiratorial thinking requires cognitive leaps, so it’s unsurprising that so many of the accusers have not reconciled these claims with their recent assertions that questioning the validity of American intelligence assessments was reckless in the extreme.

Like most conspiracy theories, the notion that Trump is spoiling for war in the Middle East is wholly resistant to contradictory evidence. Administration officials have told any reporter willing to listen that it is Tehran, not Washington, that sees utility in a set of limited strikes on Iranian targets—an overreaction that Iranian leaders believe will reinforce the regime’s faltering domestic position. Trump’s reaction to Iranian provocations, however, has been restrained almost to the point of negligence.

Despite Iran’s attacks, the president and his Cabinet officials have continued to set conditions for direct diplomatic engagement with Iran. Trump even went so far as to call the attacks on international shipping “very minor.” That is a heedless dismissal of America’s obligation as the guarantor of the collective right to freedom of navigation on the high seas and is indicative of a historical and legal illiteracy more common among his pacifist liberal critics.

Contrary to the tinfoil hat-clad opposition, the Trump administration is not warm to the prospect of war with Iran. The White House’s steadfast reliance on economic sanctions to bring Iran back to the negotiating table has led to a dangerously passive response to these audacious attacks on the U.S.-led global commercial order. The pattern of escalation in the Persian Gulf suggests that Iran is not done testing America’s lack of resolve. Absent the U.S.’s imposing unendurable costs on Iran’s bellicose behavior, the next attack could be one that Washington simply cannot afford to ignore.

The notion that Trump and company are salivating for violent conflict with Tehran is rooted not in evidence but in shared assumptions and subjective inferences. It is a conclusion in pursuit of supporting evidence. This is hardly the first conspiracy theory the Iran deal’s proponents have embraced, and it probably won’t be the last.

MEMRI: Russian Reactions To The Attacks On Tankers In The Gulf Of Oman: Once Again, We Are Witnessing Events Being 'Shaped' By Washington

On June 13, two oil tankers – the Kokuka Courageous and the Front Altair - caught fire in the Gulf of Oman in a torpedo attack.[1] The US immediately accused Iran of responsibility for the attack. The US also blamed Iran for four other attacks on tankers that occurred outside the Strait of Hormuz in May. Iran denied any involvement.

Commenting on the attack, the Russian Foreign Ministry said: "First of all, we would like to thank the Iranian authorities for assistance in rescuing eleven Russian mariners, crewmembers of one of the tankers (Front Altair). All of them were promptly evacuated from the burning vessel and taken to the port of Jask… Moscow resolutely condemns the attacks whoever might be behind them."

The Ministry then added: "We think it necessary to refrain from quick conclusions. It is inadmissible to place responsibility for the incident on anyone until a thorough and unbiased international investigation is over."

"We are worried over the tensions in the Gulf of Oman. We take note of deliberate efforts to whip up tensions, which are largely encouraged by the United States' Iranophobic policy. We call on all the parties to show restraint."[2]

Russian pro-Kremlin commentators, such as Senator Konstantin Kosachev, commenting on the attacks in the Gulf of Oman, accused the US of fabricating fake news and evidence against Iran, in order to secure a pretext for escalating tensions in the Middle East.

Below is an overview of reactions by pro-Kremlin commentators and lawmakers to the attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Oman:[3]

The terms of the 1922 Palestine Mandate included recognition of "an appropriate Jewish agency as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish National Home and the interests of the Jewish population of Palestine."

In 1923, the British High Commissioner in Palestine offered to set up an Arab Agency, parallel to the Jewish Agency that was mentioned in the Mandate, to help build local governance and fulfill a similar purpose for Palestinian Arabs as the Jewish Agency was for Palestinian Jews.

The Palestinian Arab leaders, represented by the Arab Executive Committee, flatly refused.

The entire long refusal letter is proudly displayed in the "Palestinian Journeys" website, a joint project of the Palestinian Museum and the Institute for Palestine Studies. It is a prototype of the absolute Arab refusal to allow Jews to have any rights to self determination, and their perfect record of happily punishing their own people for their own shortsighted goals.

The Jewish Agency was a quasi government that was able, in 1948, to step in and run the new State of Israel without having to build a government from scratch. An Arab Agency could have filled the same role, but Arab refusal to do anything strategic for Arabs of Palestine is a century-old constant. Saying "no" is the most consistent Arab position.

The refusal letter gives many reasons that an Arab Agency would be an insult. The main argument is that Palestine must be for Arabs only, period, and that the British had promised this to them in the controversial McMahon-Hussein correspondence. The Balfour Declaration was illegal, the Arab Executive Committee said, and even though the wording was enshrined in the League of Nations Mandate system, the Arab leaders insisted that a Jewish national home was violating the spirit of the League of Nations.

The letter even complains about the proposed name "Arab Agency," saying "the name of the agency makes them feel that they are strangers in their own country as well . "

Notably, the letter not once refers to the Arabs of Palestine as "Palestinians."

Today's Palestinians still celebrate this rejectionism.

Then as now, pride prompts Arabs to make decisions that have always proven to be disastrous to their own people,

(h/t Irene)

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Number of Palestinians working for Israelis, especially in the settlements, surges

In the Reuters article I wrote about previously, there is this little gem at the end:

The only thing staving off a major economic crisis was cash earned by the over 100,000 Palestinians who work in Israel, and remittances from Palestinians working abroad.

Reuters is understating the numbers by a large amount.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, there were 131,000 Palestinians working in Israel in the fourth quarter last year, and an additional 28,000 working in Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria.

Compare that with the 125,000 who worked in Israel and 20,000 who worked in the settlements in the first half of 2018. It is more than double the number of such workers five years previously.

That is nearly 160,000 Palestinians who are getting about 2.4x the average daily wage of those who work in the areas controlled by the PA and Hamas.

Which means that the PA economy, today, gets about 37% of its worker wages from Israel.

This is the basis for the "economic peace" that is being disparaged by the media. One cannot help but notice that the number of terror attacks have decreased from the West Bank as the number of Palestinians who work in Israel have increased. When Palestinians have something to lose, they are more likely to stay away from doing things that would cause them to lose their highest-paying jobs. If a safe way could be found to allow Gazans unaffiliated with terror groups to work in Israel, it would pressure Gaza terror groups to tamp down rocket and incendiary balloon attacks as well.

This is besides the fact that the only possible way for the PA economy to survive is by encouraging real work as opposed to do-nothing government and NGO positions that take up the bulk of the jobs that Palestinians have today.

V'hameyvin, yavin.

Yes, a better economy brings peace. When the PA says that they refuse money from the US and Israel, they are using that same calculus - they are threatening Israel with new terror attacks that would come from a collapsing economy that they are encouraging. They are threatening economic suicide unless they get the money they want without strings attached.

For people who haven't followed the PLO over the years, the willingness to screw their own people for the principle of paying terrorists and their families would be astonishing.

Keep in mind also that if the supposedly "Palestinian led" BDS had its way, those 160,000 people who work in Israel would be unemployed.

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Reuters reports:

Palestinian finances are on the brink of ruin after the suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. aid, the head of the Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) said on Tuesday.

The mounting financial pressures on the Palestinians’ self-ruling entity have sent its debt soaring to $3 billion (£2.3 billion), and led to a severe contraction in its estimated $13 billion GDP economy for the first time in years, Azzam Shawwa told Reuters.

“We are now going through a critical point,” Shawwa said with respect to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Western-backed Authority, which exercises limited self-government in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“What’s next, we don’t know. How we are going to pay salaries next month? How are we going to finance our obligations? How will daily life continue without liquidity in the hands of people?” said the head of the PMA, the Palestinians’ equivalent of a central bank.

“I don’t know where we are heading. This uncertainty makes it difficult to plan for tomorrow,” Shawwa said during a visit to neighbouring Jordan.

He doesn't mention that terrorists and their families will continue to receive full salaries, as they are the top priority in the PA budget. Reuters doesn't bother to mention it either.

But then, way down in paragraph 10, we learn something else:

Worsening the Palestinian Authority’s plight, Shawwa said, Arab countries had failed to honour their donor pledges, providing just $40 million a month, which barely dented the PA’s financing gap. Half of that sum came from Saudi Arabia.

Arab states pledged $100 million a month in April - and haven't been paying. I'm pretty sure that the $40 million is what the PA was receiving even before the conference from previous pledges. Either way, this is $720 million a year that is not being paid!

No one seems to talk about that!

The media is very selective in what it reports from the region. But that's par for the course.

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06/18 Links Pt2: John Cusack retweets anti-Semitic meme with neo-Nazi quote; Douglas Murray: Mahathir Mohamad and the hypocrisy of Cambridge University; Is Corbynization the Democratic Party’s Future?

From Ian:

John Cusack retweets anti-Semitic meme with neo-Nazi quote

American actor John Cusack on Tuesday retweeted an anti-Semitic meme captioned with a neo-Nazi quote, then apologized and deleted his retweet following backlash from his social media followers.

The meme retweeted by Cusack depicted a giant hand emblazoned with a blue Star of David crushing a group of people beneath it, accompanied by the quote: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”

The meme incorrectly attributed the quote to French thinker Voltaire, but it’s actually an excerpt from a 1993 essay by American neo-Nazi Kevin Strom.

Cusack added his own caption to his since-deleted tweet, telling followers to “follow the money.”

The post immediately elicited backlash from online users, who accused Cusack of promoting anti-Semitic tropes about Jews and power.

Cusack initially defended the post, saying that Israel was “committing atrocities against Palestinians” and told outraged followers that he simply retweeted the image, and did not create it.

Several hours later, Cusack deleted the post, and blamed his retweet on a bot.

3. John Cusack repeatedly defended his tweet before deleting it.

His “bot” excuse is absurd. pic.twitter.com/Jm2NArFVEO
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) June 18, 2019

Douglas Murray: Mahathir Mohamad and the hypocrisy of Cambridge University

The critiques of this write themselves. Would any guest of the Cambridge Union have been so indulged if the above had been said about people of any other ethnic group? Or of any other minority? I would have thought not.

But that isn’t what is interesting. The interesting thing is that this happened (as with LSE in 2010) in the heart of an institution that is positively bursting with what used to be called ‘political correctness’ and has now become ‘wokeness’.

Indeed as I recently wrote in the Telegraph, Cambridge University is becoming a veritable epicentre of the wokeness epidemic. This is an institution which, under its lamentable new Vice-Chancellor (one Stephen Toope) has launched an inquiry into Cambridge University’s involvement in the slave trade, has repeatedly shown that it believes academic freedom should be adjudicated by mobs, and recently removed a bell from public display in one of the colleges because there was a chance that said bell might once have been rung on a plantation.

So last night’s events provide an almost beautiful demonstration of human idiocy. For while the students and authorities at Cambridge University are running around town trying to confiscate bells that might once have been rung in the wrong place, the hall of the university’s own union was ringing out with laughter at an ugly old anti-Semite being anti-Semitic. It’s almost as though all these attempts to pass judgement on the distant past and endlessly signal our outstanding virtue in the present do not in fact make us brave or decent people. Who could have guessed?

CAA complains to Charity Commission and Home Office after Cambridge Union lets Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad spew antisemitism, unchallenged

Campaign Against Antisemitism is making a complaint to the Charity Commission after Cambridge Union, a registered charity, permitted proud antisemite, Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, to spew antisemitic comments at an event on Sunday evening without challenging him.

In a video recording of the event posted on YouTube, Dr Mohamad was questioned by the moderator, an elected official at the Union, about his past comments about Jews. He replied: “I have some Jewish friends, very good friends. They are not like the other Jews. That’s why they are my friends.” The audience laughed loudly.

When questioned on his views of the Holocaust, he said: “The Israelis should know from the sufferings they went through in the war not to treat others like that.” Although he denied saying that only 4 million died in the Holocaust, something that he has previously stated on the record. Under the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is antisemitic.

On antisemitism, he said: “Of course if you say anything against the Jews, you are labelled antisemitic. No other race in the world labels people like that, why is it forbidden to criticise the Jews when other people criticise us?” He added that: “The Jews do a lot of wrong things, which force us to pass comment.”

In response to a question about previous comments that he made calling Jews “hooked nosed”, Dr Mohamad stated: “People do generalise, in describing certain people we take some general characteristics that they have, why is it that it’s the Jews who resent this when other people don’t resent being accused of some general characteristic that they have? Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that pretty much every group of people objects to being casually racially stereotyped.” He followed this up by using an example that: “The British Jews used to say the Malays are lazy.”

It is disgraceful and unforgivable that Cambridge Union, a club affiliated to the University of Cambridge, one of Britain’s most prestigious educational institutions, rolled out the red carpet for this self-confessed and unrepentant antisemite, and presented him with a platform from which to share his dangerous views with students, unchallenged.

#TerroristsInSuits, part one: Amnesty's favorite Palestinian NGO has terrorist members

In February, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs released a truly damning report, detailing the huge number of ties between terrorist organizations and "peaceful" groups that support BDS.

By far the terror group that does this most is the PFLP, the Marxist terror group that was not only active in the 1960s and 70s with several high profile airplane hijackings but also in the 2010s with the Jerusalem synagogue massacre of 2014, which the PFLP claimed responsibility for, and a drive-by shooting in 2015, killing one.

The Marxist background of PFLP makes one wonder if this strategy of laundering terrorists as leaders in "non-violent" NGOs was part of an old Soviet plot to destroy Israel from many angles.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights is regarded as a reliable and fair NGO by the world. Amnesty has used it for much of the information in their (discredited) Gaza Platform.

But Jaber Wishah, Deputy Director of the PCHR Board until 2017, was in charge of
the PFLP military wing. He was sentenced to two life sentences and served 15 years in
prison (1985-1999).

Wishah - again, in a major position for a human rights NGO- eulogized Samir Kuntar, the child murderer who is one of Israel's most reviled terrorists. Wishah wrote that Kuntar “was an example for all the world’s dignitaries in the struggle against evil, and that there are thousands following in Samir’s footsteps today.”

Wishah isn't the only problematic person at PCHR.

PCHR Director-General Raji Sourani and Director of the Legal Department and Legal Aid Program, Iyad al-Alami, both maintained ties with Hamas (as of 2017). The two provided legal aid and consultation to Hamas, collecting materials and writing documents for the terror group’s use in legal proceedings against the State of Israel.

Aiding a terror group? Not exactly peaceful.

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Misoziony (mis-OZ-yo-nee), noun: The irrational and extreme hatred of Israel and Zionists

In 2007, I coined the term "misoziony" to describe the irrational and disproportionate hate of Israel and Zionism.

As we have seen, use of "antisemitism" when discussing people's anti-Israel views may be technically correct but it is often a distraction from the argument being made, and overuse of that term waters it down over time.

Misoziony is a term meant to solve this problem. Miso- is a prefix, based on the Greek misos, that means "hatred." Misoziony - the hatred of Israel and Zionism - is a fundamentally irrational loathing that is just as disgusting as anti-semitism but without the baggage.

We don't know for sure what is in the minds and hearts of people who spend their lives attacking Israel. Calling Walt and Mearsheimer, or Jimmy Carter, or even John Cusack "antisemitic" doesn't help anyone. But no one can argue that they are misozionist.

Hating Israel in grossly disproportionate ways compared to the behavior of any other nation is in fact part of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, but the people who espouse that viewpoint passionately disagree and the meta-argument takes away oxygen from pointing out that the misozionist hate that animates them is no different psychologically or culturally from any other hate like racism, sexism or antisemitism. "Jewish Voice for Peace" members may or may not be antisemitic but they are undoubtably proud misozionists. Changing the frame of reference allows us to engage in - and destroy - their arguments far more effectively, since they are animated by an irrational hate based on lies and gross distortions, demanding Israel adhere to impossible moral standards that no one else is expected to reach and obsessively hammering at Israel falling short of perfection as being proof of it being Nazi-like.

Anyone who would be obsessed with hating, say, Italy and Italians, writing papers and tweets to prove that Italianism is evil and must be eradicated, would be instantly recognized as a bigot. So are misozionists.

Israel-bashers like to claim that Zionists use the term "antisemitism" as a club to crush all criticism of Israel. The problem is, of course, that the same crowd uses the claim of Zionist use of anti-semitism as a means to avoid discussing real issues. The word misoziony can neatly solve that problem and can help re-focus the arguments back on their fundamentally untenable bases. Pointing out misoziony can help to sharpen the debate and point out the basic irrationality of the Israel-bashers.

No one else picked up on the term misoziony - until today, when The Jewish Press published an article by EoZ contributor Vic Rosenthal titled "Tikkunism Begets Misoziony."

It took twelve years, but maybe the time for using the term misozionists and misoziony when accusations of antisemitism would have no or negative effect.

(Rosenthal helpfully says the words are pronounced "mis-OZ-yo-nists," "mis-OZ-yo-nee".)

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06/18 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Why Foreign Governments Are Shielding Iran; Why is Trump More Popular in Israel than in the US?

From Ian:

Jason D. Greenblatt: Bahrain workshop on Palestinian economy is the opportunity of a generation

This is exciting - an opportunity of a generation. The June 25 and 26 workshop in Bahrain for the benefit of Palestinians is a pivotal opportunity to convene government, civil society, and business leaders to share ideas, discuss strategies, and galvanize support for potential economic investments and initiatives that could be made possible by a peace agreement. The results of those discussions could lead to significant investment in the talented Palestinian and regional population.

Saeb Erekat, the lead Palestinian negotiator, claims we are trying to buy the Palestinians. We know that won't work. We fully recognize that our economic plan cannot be successful without a political agreement, just as a political agreement would have little chance without an effective economic plan.

Saeb also is making claims that the Arab countries who are attending the workshop have no right to negotiate for the Palestinians. On that point, we agree. No one is suggesting that anyone other than the Palestinians have such a right. But those attending sincerely want to help the Palestinians. Those countries who are participating should be praised and thanked by Saeb and the Palestinian Authority.

It is disheartening to see the supposed leaders of the Palestinians attack Palestinian entrepreneurs and Palestinian supporters in general for supporting a better future for their people. Supporters of this workshop want only the best for the Palestinians and the region. For masked, armed gunmen to threaten Palestinians against support of a better future, as seen on official Fatah social media sites and in refugee camps, is despicable.

US Envoy Jason Greenblatt Speaks with i24NEWS

US President Donald Trump's special adviser on Israel Jason Greenblatt explained the vision for the Bahrain economic workshop to be held next week as the first part of the long-awaited peace plan to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Emphasizing the nature of the "workshop" as apolitical, Greenblatt confirmed that since the Palestinian Authority (PA) has chosen to boycott the summit, Israeli government officials would not be invited either, nor would other world leaders or foreign ministers. The Trump administration will decide when to release the peace plan following the Bahrain summit, Greenblatt said, suggesting that it would be around November due to the Israeli elections in September 17. Trump's adviser did not convey discontent over the delay, arguing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the core of the conflict in the region but that Iran was the source of it.

Why is Trump More Popular in Israel than in the US?

Speaking at a ceremonial event for the inauguration of 'Trump Heights' -- a new Israeli settlement in the Golan Heights named in honor of the US President -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel would control the northern region "with might" and that neither Hezbollah nor Iran could threaten its northern borders. “We are making an important step towards the placing on the ground of the settlement of Ramat Trump (Trump Heights), that proudly carries the name of a very great friend of the state of Israel, and I am very proud to say a great friend of mine, Donald Trump,” Netanyahu said at the event. During the speech, Netanyahu laid blame on Iran for the attack on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman last week, calling on the international community to support US efforts to curb Iran in the Middle East.

Jpost Editorial: A marriage of ideas

That any sign of carrying out normal relations with Israelis is still considered taboo among the Palestinian Authority regime does not bode well for the upcoming Bahrain economic workshop.

On Sunday, Jason Greenblatt, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy for international negotiations, told the Jerusalem Post Annual Conference in New York, that the administration is focusing on the Bahrain workshop, which is scheduled to take place on June 25-26.

Interviewed on stage by The Jerusalem Post’s editor-in-chief Yaakov Katz, Greenblatt said Palestinian negotiator “Saeb Erekat and others are distorting our message. They’re saying essentially that the Bahrain conference is about buying the Palestinians off. Absolutely not true.”

Greenblatt explained the goal of the workshop: “The Bahrain summit is aimed to show what could happen to the Palestinian economy if there’s a peace agreement. We understand completely that there is no economic vision that’ll work without a peace agreement. But we also want to make the point that there will be no peace agreement that works without true economic vision. We’re trying to break the cycle of aid and dependency and create an economy. They work hand in hand.”

The economic workshop has had a hostile reception by the Palestinian Authority although some Palestinian businessmen have stated their intention to participate – people who can envision a better future for their own people and are brave enough to try to bring it about despite the antagonism of the Palestinian Authority.

On this the PA is on the same page as the terrorist organization, Hamas, that controls Gaza.

Terrorism and anti-normalization campaigns put an end to any hope of the Oslo Accords succeeding in the 1990s and doomed all subsequent peace talks. This is the true tragedy of the Palestinians. They are being betrayed by their own leaders.

The economic workshop in Bahrain should be seen as a positive move for the whole region, but as long as the PA top ranks are not willing to see Israelis dancing together with Palestinians at a wedding, it is hard to imagine the PA allowing its own people any joy in other fields.

Caroline Glick: Why Foreign Governments Are Shielding Iran

It is difficult to imagine that mere embarrassment will pry the Europeans away from their preference for ignoring the reality of Iranian aggression in order to pursue their longstanding policy of appeasing Iran and its terrorist proxies. Germany and the EU still refuse to acknowledge that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. Hezbollah is permitted to operate openly in EU states despite the fact that it has been caught planning and carrying out terrorist attacks in Europe repeatedly in recent years. Indeed, Britain took no action against Hezbollah after Israel tipped it off in 2015 that Hezbollah had built a bomb factory in North London. The British Parliament only outlawed the Iranian proxy force in February 2019.

Whereas Britain, with its close ties to the U.S., has sometimes evinced a willingness to abandon general European appeasement of terrorists and state sponsors of terror, Germany, France, and other major European governments have never entertained the prospect of abandoning appeasement for confrontation, let alone defeating terrorists and their state sponsors. Acknowledging Iran’s aggression is largely inconceivable for Germany and its EU partners.

As for Russia and China, their refusal to take action against Iran stems in part from their strategic competition with the United States. If they admit that Iran is behind the attacks, like the Europeans and the Japanese, they will need to admit that the U.S. strategy of maximum pressure is reasonable and justified. Such an admission would strengthen the U.S. position.

Admitting Iran’s responsibility would empower the U.S. to diminish Iran’s capacity to continue committing acts of naval aggression, either directly or through its Houthi proxy. As Jim Hanson from the Security Studies Group suggested on Fox News, such action could include U.S. strikes against Houthi bases in Yemen or IRGC bases in Jask or other locations.

Given the behavior of U.S. allies and adversaries in light of Iran’s self-evident aggression against merchant tankers in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. cannot expect to operate with their support as it pursues its goal of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and denying the regime the means to continue sponsoring terrorism and aggression against the U.S. and its regional and global allies.

As a consequence, going forward, the Trump administration must continue to place all of its evidence of Iranian aggression on the table and continue to pursue its policy of maximum aggression. Unlike appeasement, the U.S.’s policy is based on reality. And so, unlike appeasement, it is a policy with the potential to actually succeed.

Google Doodle for falafel is (unintentionally) Israeli

Get ready for the next round of falafel wars.

Google is celebrating falafel in the Google Doodle today:

But notice that the falafel in the doodle goes into pita bread, along with what is presumably tehina and what Israelis call Israeli salad.

Now, no one doubts that falafel pre-dates Israel. But the idea of falafel in pita with salad and toppings came, as far as I can see, from Yemenite Jews who immigrated to Israel. I see a number of sources that say this and I cannot find an Arab source that says that it was known to have been served in pita before the 1940s, when it was already gaining popularity (and more than a few jokes) in Israel even among the Ashkenazim, as this 1940 Palestine Post story shows:

Jews in Palestine seem to be the ones who turned falafel into a street food, and a pita (or laffa) is necessary to hold the falafel when buying it on the street.

Assuming this is accurate, Google is advertising Israeli falafel.

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