Erecting this memorial against the background of epidemic antisemitism in Britain comes perilously close to humbug. Some who lament most loudly over the Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust simultaneously bash Israel and the Jews today with assumed impunity.
Such people would claim the memorial’s existence proves there is no serious antisemitism in Britain. A memorial to dead Jews will be used as a bronze shield for the bigotry being expressed towards live ones.
Memorialising the Holocaust misses another vital point. The expansion of Holocaust memorials and education programmes has not expunged antisemitism. It has been accompanied instead by an explosion in antisemitism.
This is not to say that the one caused the other; but Holocaust memorialising has not acted as the antidote that was intended.
If we really want to build something to fight antisemitism, it should be a monument to living Jews and the State of Israel to celebrate historic Jewish peoplehood and its survival against all the odds.
Doubtless, community leaders would recoil with horror from such a suggestion and call it divisive. Which tells you all you need to know about the real fight against antisemitism in Britain.
Shireen is a Yazidi ISIS survivor from Iraq. She was held as a slave by ISIS for three years after her village in Iraq was overrun by the terror group until she was able to escape during a military onslaught on the terror group.
Listen to Clarion Project’s exclusive interview with Shireen below
Shireen (we are only allowed to use her first name) was in Israel the past two weeks with a group of other Yazidi ISIS survivors who were brought to the country for a post-trauma course at the initiative of Bar Ilan University and IsraAid.
In the group was Lamiya Aji Bashar, who won the 2016 Sakharov Prize. Lamiya lost an eye when a mine exploded near her during a daring escape. The two girls escaping with her were killed by the same mine.
Bashar now lives in Germany where more than 1,000 Yazidi ISIS survivors now reside. These survivors are assisted there by an incredible man, Mirza Dinnayi, himself a Yazidi who moved to Germany decades ago.
Dinnayi heads an NGO in Germany called Luftbrucke Irak dedicated to helping victims of terror. Dinnayi makes a point of visiting Israel every year. This year, after two years of planning, Dinnayi was able to bring the survivors (most of whom still live in Iraq) to Israel, a country which, out of necessity, has developed tools to deal with post-traumatic stress disorders in terror survivors.
It was a logistics feat, considering that Israel has no diplomatic relations with Iraq.
The dedicated course organizers, Professor Ari Zivotofsky and Dr. Yaakov Hoffman, both from Bar Ilan University, feel they have a moral obligation to study the effects of genocide and to share Israel’s expertise in dealing with it.
Three seemingly unrelated incidents occurred last week, yet all share a common denominator: They exemplify the way anti-Israel politics has corrupted the concept of human rights.
Let’s start with best-selling British novelist Richard Zimler’s report that two British cultural organizations recently refused to host him for lectures about his new book, though he has lectured many times on previous books. “They asked me if you were Jewish, and the moment I said you were, they lost all interest,” he quoted his publicist as saying.
It’s not that these groups have anything against Jews per se. They simply feared that hosting a Jew would make them a target for anti-Israel protesters.
Zimler isn’t Israeli, has no relatives or investments in Israel and doesn’t write about Israel. His latest book is set in the Holy Land 2,000 years ago, but its storyline is Christian rather than Jewish (it’s called The Gospel According to Lazarus). So he wouldn’t seem an obvious target, given BDS apologists’ repeated claim that anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitic.
Unfortunately, much of the anti-Israel crowd hasn’t gotten that memo. See, for instance, the German courts which ruled that torching a German synagogue wasn’t a hate crime, but an understandable anti-Israel protest. Or the student organizations which demanded that a South African university expel all Jewish students to show its pro-Palestinian bona fides. Or the Norwegian attorney general who ruled that “F*** Jews” isn’t hate speech, but an expression of “dissatisfaction with [Israel’s] policies,” although the speaker never mentioned Israel. Or the Dyke Marches that banned Jews from holding Jewish pride flags because they remind some people of Israeli flags. And so forth.
So despite deploring the unnamed organizations’ cowardice, I can’t dismiss their fears as unfounded. And that’s the problem.
Human-rights groups and liberals worldwide rush to defend the “rights” of BDS activists; see, for instance, their opposition to anti-BDS legislation on the false grounds that it violates freedom of speech (it actually applies only to actions, not speech). Yet they’ve shown no interest in defending Jewish rights in most of the examples cited above. Evidently, Jewish rights are acceptable collateral damage for the sacred cause of anti-Zionism.
One hundred years ago, the Zionist activist Harry Sachar wrote an essay titled “A Jewish Palestine,” which appeared in the July 1919 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. Writing less than two years after the Balfour Declaration, and a year before the League of Nations assigned the mandate for Palestine to Britain, Sachar made an impassioned plea for the creation of a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel:
The Zionist movement is a longing and striving to restore to the Jewish people normal national life. . . . The Zionist movement will continue until the Jewish people are once more living a normal national life, when it will be transformed into the active expression of that normal national life.
There are some who deny that there is such a thing as the Jewish people, but the denial is a modern innovation. Very rare is the non-Jew who thinks of Jews as merely a sect without national quality; and it is doubtful whether among the Jews themselves there could be found a single instance of such a denial much earlier than the second decade of the 19th century.
Let us try to clear the ground by attempting not so much a definition as a characterization of Judaism. Judaism is not a religion in the Western sense of the word. Judaism is the precipitated spiritual experience of the Jewish people. The idea of Judaism is inseparable from the idea of the Jewish people, and the idea of the Jewish people is inseparable from the idea of the Jewish land. You may see this in every form and expression of Jewish religious life. Individual prayer, prayer for the individual Jew alone, is exceedingly rare. When the Jew prays, he prays not simply for himself, but for all Israel; and this national conception permeates prayer even in what might be considered to be the most personal and individual incidents of life: birth, marriage, death. The welding of the idea of the Jewish people with the idea of the Jewish land is manifest in every page of the Jewish liturgy.
Continuing my re-captioning of single panel cartoons...
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The indifference shown to this Jew-baiting over the past two decades and more has helped legitimize and embolden ever more unambiguous demonstrations of this deranged mindset, along with a wider cultural confusion.
Four months ago in Britain, upon learning that the best-selling novelist Richard Zimler was a Jew, two cultural organizations dropped their invitations to him to appear at their events. They said they feared protests by their members and others if they invited a Jewish writer.
Against the backdrop of a bill in the Irish parliament, the Dail, to boycott Israel, an Irish News columnist Brian Feeney wrote that Iran was “the only democracy in the region—no, Israel isn’t.”
After U.S. Rep.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) demeaned the Holocaust by comparing detention centers on America’s Mexican border to Nazi concentration camps, political and cultural figures piled in to support her. When the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum voiced concern about using Holocaust analogies in this way, more than 430 scholars who research the Holocaust and genocides urged it to retract its criticism as “fundamentally ahistorical.”
In Britain, the government wants to build a Holocaust memorial next to the Houses of Parliament to combat Holocaust denial. Yet Britain is still an enthusiast for the Iran deal, even despite the recent discovery of a Hezbollah bomb factory in London.
Sweden, where the authorities notoriously turn a blind eye to rampant anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement, intends to hold a conference on antisemitism next year in Malmö. That’s quite a statement. For Jew-hatred in Malmö is so bad that last month the spokesman for its Jewish community said it might close down altogether in the coming decade.
This is the international background against which Iran is ramping up for war. In Israel, there’s a grim acknowledgement of a world which, while paying ever more extravagant lip service to the victims of the Holocaust, prepares to betray them at every turn.
More than half-a-century ago, the West fought off Nazism. That fight is what it really means by “never again.”
Two thousand years ago Jews walked the Pilgrimage Road as they came from around the world to visit the Temple. Rabbinic texts abound with descriptions of the processions that occurred, and the road - first discovered 15 years ago - parallels these details in an exquisite way. Now pilgrims will be able to ascend stairs as their predecessors once did.
But the Pilgrimage Road is located on land in eastern Jerusalem that Palestinians claim for themselves. Palestinian official Saeb Erekat contended that the road is a "lie that has nothing to do with history." Erekat and many other Palestinian leaders have long denied what archaeologists and historians consider basic and uncontroversial facts, such as the existence of the Temple.
The excavated path is only one bit of a literal mountain of archaeological evidence, uncovered in most cases by secular archaeologists, that confirms the historical fact of Jerusalem's ancient connection to the Jewish people. In an age where actual facts are all too often eschewed for "personal narrative," the Pilgrimage Road is another reminder that peace can only be attained through the recognition of historical truth.
RT! The Truth is revealed! The ancient Philistines from the Bible were Greek Europeans! They had NOTHING to do with the current “Palestinians” who are Arabs that came from Arabia! האמת נחשפת! הפלשתים היו אירופאים, ללא כל קשר ל״פלסטינים״ שהם ערבים מערב https://t.co/AKHpCJNug8
Ramadan is a holy month in the Sunni-ruled Gulf monarchies. In addition to daylong fasting, one other aspect of the festival in this region is that governments sponsor a range of religious programming in order to burnish their religious credentials, particularly at state-run mosques and on state-owned television stations.
However, many Gulf governments fail to provide adequate oversight when sponsoring Ramadan programming, arranging events that feature religious leaders who have a longstanding record of anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry. Even if such preachers are more measured in their remarks at these particular government-sponsored events, their state hosts still run the risk of legitimating proponents of bigotry.
Qatar
The Government of Qatar continued to be the worst offender in this regard.
The global media outlet Al Jazeera, which the State Department describes as “government owned,” published an offensive video during the second week of Ramadan this year that denied and distorted basic facts about the Holocaust. Following outcry, the network removed the video, suspended two journalists, and said it would apply some sensitivity training.
Yet at this same time the religious fundamentalist most empowered by Al Jazeera, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, continued to remain in the regime’s good graces.
Even though Qaradawi has advocated genocide against the Jewish people and advocated terrorism against American civilians and soldiers in Iraq, Qatar’s ruler kissed Qaradawi and gave him the seat at his side at his Ramadan iftar, ahead of all other preachers and for at least the fifth year in a row.
Less than twenty-four hours later, Qaradawi published a column in a Qatari paper dehumanizing Jewish people by calling them the offspring of apes and pigs.
Nor were the views broadcast by Al Jazeera or published by Qaradawi an isolated phenomenon during this Ramadan.
Why is the right of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland - including in areas where Jews were ethnically cleansed - not a human rights issue, but instead a "far right wing" issue? https://t.co/V3qJqe87pT
What former diplomat and pundit is stupid enough to compare the discovery and preservation of priceless archaeological treasures with their willful destruction?
If you've said Kaddish more times over Gazans and immigrants than for actual victims of the Holocaust, you don't have the right to invoke the Holocaust.
Does any sane person doubt that the Palestinian leadership, including @ErakatSaeb and @abbaspresident, have been hysterical and stupid by rejecting every single peace initiative? Backing every despot? Being blind to how their fellow Arabs are sick of their antics? https://t.co/DBxXEvPjWJ
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Palestinian Children Burn U.S. Flag, Pictures of Trump in PA-Run Summer Camp That Integrates Children with Special Needs
On July 3, 2019, the Palestinian Authority's Higher Council for Youth and Sports uploaded to its Facebook page a video about a summer camp that it was running in Tulkarm in the West Bank. Ihsan Hattab, the camp director, said that the camp's goal is to provide children with a patriotic education and that the camp is under the Higher Council's auspices and is run by the Society for Children with Autism and Learning Disabilities. He added that 25 special needs children aged 13-15 were participating in the camp along with 100 non-disabled Palestinian children. Yaman, a young boy participating in the program, said that in the first day of the program, they discussed the Deal of the Century and that the following day, they tore up and burned pictures of the American flag and U.S. President Donald Trump. The video shows young children tearing up and burning the pictures and stepping on pictures of the flag and of Donald Trump with horns.
This is not as bad as the paramilitary summer camps of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but it is still teaching hate - even to children with disabilities.
Many years ago I made a video about Gaza summer camps, inspired by a post title by Soccer Dad, called "Hello Martyr, Hello Fatah." YouTube took down one of my channels last year and the video along with many others are no longer on that platform, but here it is again:
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The reason? To protest against the seating of its delegation site near to an Israeli delegation!
Al-Qar'an said that his delegation, which includes other Jordanian members of parliament, withdrew after he was surprised that the seat allocated to him was at the same table prepared for the Israeli delegation.
The Jordanians made several attempts to pressure the organizers of the conference to change the seat of the Jordanian delegation or to remove the Israeli delegation. They refused, properly.
Al-Qar'an said that despite the delegation's keenness to participate in the conference, the principle of not sitting next to Israeli Jews "came from our principles and ethics and our noble religion that does not allow us to sit with this occupier of our holy sites."
This puerile snub was not reported in Western media. The conference didn't tweet about it. As is normally the case, an Arab country acting like a spoiled child is coddled and accepted. (And the stories are reported triumphantly in Arabic media.)
The only way to handle these sorts of situations is to publicly shame the nation that refuses to treat Israel as an equal, and to expel them from the organization that they are boycotting.
Sweeping it under the rug helps no one except the offender.
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On July 4, 1976, Yonatan Netanyahu re-sent America and the entire world a message that Jews have been delivering for thousands of years.
Yes, we have such things as the Hebrew Bible’s message of proclaiming liberty throughout the land on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, and the first colonists seeing Americas as the “New Zion” and such. But, for now, I’m referring to something post-biblical…
Rabbi Hillel, a contemporary of Yehoshua/Jesus, who lived during the Roman occupation of Judaea, restated already ancient Jewish teachings when he proclaimed: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am not for others, what am I?"
Israel has tried very hard to come to fair accommodations with the "others" in its neighborhood…indeed, those who see the entire region as merely purely Arab patrimony: Justice through Arab eyes only.
The compromises Israel has already accepted (i.e., Jordan was created in 1922 on almost 80% of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine--just for starters) and has subsequently sought with Arabs, who already possess almost two dozen states, are light years beyond what Arabs have offered to scores of millions of non-Arab, native peoples with whom they have clashed and competed themselves.
As I’ve often stated before, nothing will really change until the oppressive, self-centered, supremacist Arab mindset changes. Until then, Israel must concentrate on the first part of Rabbi Hillel's famous quote--seeing that its own resurrected nation and millennially-persecuted people not only survive but prosper.
Reflecting on One of Israel's Most Daring Rescue Missions
Forty-three years ago, Israeli forces executed one of the most brave and daring missions in the country's history — the rescue of the over 100 hostages at a Uganda airport. Ex-Mossad agent Avner Avraham discusses with host Jeff Smith.
📅#OnThisDay in 1976, in perhaps the world's most famous counterterrorism operation, Israel successfully rescued 102 hostages from PFLP terrorists at Entebbe Airport.
Continuing on my series of re-captioning single panel cartoons....
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Gaza City, July 4 - Authorities in this Mediterranean coastal territory announced today (Thursday) that the unplanned demonstration planned for tomorrow at the barrier separating the territory from Israel, under the leadership of ordinary folks, will not take place.
A Hamas spokesman issued the notice this afternoon after receiving word from his superiors that the movement has called off such politically sensitive measures for now, which sprang up in the moment from the Gaza street without input from the organization.
"The Islamic Resistance salutes those who take the initiative and show their displeasure with the occupier with no prior input," stated Barhoum Brol. "However, when we planned tomorrow's spontaneous demonstration and allocated incendiary devices and helium tanks for it last week, as well as arranging buses to move people to the protest site, we could not know that it would prove imprudent to go through with the protest given the current progress in negotiations over fishing limits and transfers of cash from Qatar."
"While we laud whose who, without our prompting, would have gotten up Friday morning and decided to cut fences, launch bombs on balloons, and try to harm Israelis using materials that, hey, would you look at that, just happened to show up near the barrier, we must inform those who would take such spontaneous action tomorrow that no such protest will take place, at least this week," he continued.
Some Gaza residents expressed frustration with the decision. "I've been planning for two weeks to participate in this spontaneous protest," lamented Bashmi Heddin, 22. "I've got balloons, I've got condoms, I've got kite-making materials - whatever is most useful when the time comes. I can't tell you how much preparation went into this thing. Now I'm told it's not happening? Not cool. Not cool at all. I might have to express my anger by launching a few incendiary balloons at the Jews. But I'll have to clear it with my commanding officer first. And he was going to supply some wire-cutters, too. This sucks."
Informal reports from within Hamas and allied Islamist terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad indicate that the hiatus of spontaneous Friday riots will last only a short time, as both groups need Gazans to have an anti-Israel outlet for their economic and political frustrations, one that does not hold Palestinian leadership responsible for their misfortune. "I've heard the next spontaneous protest will happen three Fridays from now," disclosed Heddin. "That's a long time to wait, though. This next spontaneous demonstration better be good, with that much time to plan it."
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While the world has pressed Israel for years to accept a land-for-peace formula, Dov Lipman explores the Arabs’ three noes in response to Israel’s peace offer immediately after the Six-Day War.
Demands from the international community that Israel remove its military and citizens from areas it took control of during the Six Day War ignore a simple fact: Immediately following the war, Israel was willing to do just that.
And the Arabs refused. With three noes.
In June 1967 the combined armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan planned to attack Israel from the north, south and east. While Arab leaders made grandiose declarations regarding the imminent destruction of the Jewish state, Israelis prepared themselves for mass casualties and to fight for their lives.
Israel managed to defeat these massive armies in just six days, starting with a preemptive strike that destroyed the Egyptian air force on the ground. In just six days Israel not only fought off these armies but also won control of land which these countries previously held – the West Bank, (from Jordan), the Gaza Strip (from Egypt), the Golan Heights (from Syria), and the Sinai Desert (from Egypt).
Israel never had plans to gain control over these areas and immediately following the war was prepared to remove its forces from these regions in exchange for peace with its Arab neighbors. Moshe Dayan, Israel’s then minister of defense remarked that “Israel is waiting for a phone call from the Arabs.” Abba Eban, Israel’s foreign minister made an open declaration at “everything is negotiable.”
Israeli chief rabbis, rabbi Itzhak Yosef and rabbi Dabid Lau met with the chief rabbi to the Ethiopian community and heads of the Ethiopian community in Israel on Thursday to bring an end to the riots following the death of Solomon Tekah, who was killed by an off-duty police officer.
The rabbis claimed that members of the Ethiopian community have the right to demonstrate and that the discrimination against the community must not be brushed aside, and added that the police must show restraint and allow the protesters to demonstrate.
In exchange to working to calm the spirits around the police forces, the rabbis requested that the community heads promise to call upon the protesters to cease the violence and demonstrate in a lawful manner.
"We call upon the members of the Ethiopian community to hold their demonstrations peacefully, as well as call upon the police forces to show restraint towards the pained protesters," commented rabbi Yosef at the end of the meeting.
Rabbi Lau joined in with Yosef's comments and added that "We are all brothers and the correct way to settle the issues is in conversation while holding mutual respect."
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan on Thursday paid a condolence visit to the family of an Ethiopian-Israeli teenager who was shot dead by police, sparking widespread protests this week, and said the entire nation was grieving with them.
“Millions of citizens are sharing your grief,” Erdan told the parents of Solomon Tekah, 19, who was killed in Haifa on Sunday. “What happened with Solomon is sad and tragic, and I hope this is the last [such] case.
“No words can truly comfort you, but you should know that your pain and the pain over what happened to Solomon is the pain of us all,” he added, expressing condolences on his behalf and on behalf of the government.
Since Monday, protesters across Israel have blocked roads, burned tires and denounced what they say is systemic discrimination against the Ethiopian-Israeli community, after an off-duty police officer fatally shot Tekah. The demonstrations escalated after the funeral on Tuesday, and some protesters set vehicles on fire, overturned a police car and clashed with officers and others who tried to break through their makeshift roadblocks.
According to police, more than 110 officers were wounded in the clashes, including from stones and bottles hurled at them, and 136 protesters had been arrested for rioting.
The Birthright program is often in the news, mainly because of the tremendous work it does to strengthen the Jewish sense of identity of young Jews by creating the opportunity for them to visit Israel for free.
The Birthright trips have expanded over the years and now you can choose your own theme/itinerary:
o Active: Dive-in to the ultimate outdoor adventure and get ready to hike, bike, and climb your way through Israel o Professional: Delve deeper into your professional industry by experiencing the best of Israel through an occupational lens o Culinary: Savor the flavor of Mediterranean cuisine and develop your palate and culinary skills alongside some of Israel's finest chefs o Spiritual: Embark on a meaningful quest through mystical Israel. Connect with the land, the people and yourself o Cultural: Get lost in Israel's thriving city centers and explore music, theatre and award-winning film o LGBTQ: Join like-minded peers on a curated tour of Israel's thriving LGBTQ culture Study Abroad: Make the country your classroom and travel Israel for 12-14 days. You will experience all the best parts of our Classic trip and master a topic of your choosing earning 3 credits in the process
Birthright Israel seeks to ensure the future of the Jewish people by strengthening Jewish identity, Jewish communities, and connection with Israel via a trip to Israel for the majority of Jewish young adults from around the world.
Our hope is that our trips motivate young people to continue to explore their Jewish identity and support for Israel and maintain long-lasting connections with the Israelis they meet on their trip. We encourage our alumni to take active roles in Jewish organizations and to participate in follow-up activities worldwide.
But Birthright also gets into the news because of the attempt by left-wing groups to politicize what the program does. These groups offer suggestions -- if not outright demands -- that the Birthright 10-day program includes a 'balanced' introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The J Street U campaign emphasizes that it is important for American Jewish students to be well-informed and to receive a full and nuanced picture of the challenges facing Israel today, including the threat that the occupation presents to its long-term future as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people. The petitions warn against the damaging consequences of excluding and omitting Palestinian voices and narratives from the conversation.
So now J Street has started its own alternative to Birthright trips.
Why is this a concern?
Because of J Street's controversial agenda to use the US to impose its politics on Israel.
Israel’s supporters have the right and the obligation to speak out when the policies or the actions of the Israeli government are hurting the long-term interests of Israel and the Jewish people.
J Street presents itself as a more liberal alternative to AIPAC. But it is more than that. Unlike AIPAC, which advocates for Israeli policy independent of politics and who leads the Israeli government, J Street actively pushes its own agenda in the US in order to influence the policy in Israel. For example, unlike AIPAC, J Street actively involves itself in US elections and supports only Democratic candidates. Considering how Democratic candidates are moving the left and are less supportive of Israel, that is a major concern that needs to be addressed.
While J Street U has put together its own "Birthright trip, this is not the first time J Street has tried this.
The blog Mystical Politics has a copy of the original press release from J-Street posted by J Street U director Daniel May on January 25, 2011, announcing a trip in conjunction with Birthright. (The press release has been removed from the J Street site):
J Street U is very happy to announce that we will be leading a free, ten-day Taglit-Birthright trip this summer titled, "Explore Israel: Progressive Zionism and Social Justice."
This trip is an incredible opportunity to connect with the Israel that isn't on the front page or in the guide books. Move beyond the headlines, and see what's really happening on the ground.
If you're Jewish, age 18 - 25, and have yet to take a peer group trip to Israel, we strongly encourage you to sign up and be the first to know when registration opens.
The trip is a chance to appreciate the vibrancy of Israel's history, culture and landscape from a perspective that acknowledges your Jewish and progressive values.
The best way to discover the richness of Israeli society and the full contours of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to travel around Israel and meet people from the diverse groups of the region. There is simply no substitute for seeing the land and connecting with the people.
On the trip, we'll speak with members of Israeli civil society working to advance the goals of democracy and human rights. Our itinerary will provide a cross-section of Israeli opinion.
This trip is a gift of Taglit-Birthright Israel and will be provided by The Israel Experience, Ltd. [emphasis added]
The intended focus of the trip was political -- from a 'progressive' perspective, focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and meeting representatives of human rights groups -- as opposed to Jewish identity and connection to Israel. That was, and is, their prerogative. However, the description does not seem like it would mesh with the Birthright goals of identity and connection
He contacted Birthright and encouraged others to as well, and in the end, the Birthright trip was canceled.
Moriel Rothman, President of the J Street U student board, issued a statement which read in part:
J Street U had planned our trip in order to forge an avenue through which liberal-minded college students – who may otherwise not engage – could develop a deep and lasting relationship with the Jewish homeland. The trip was to include the traditional highlights of a Taglit-Birthright experience – visits to Masada, the Kotel, and Yad Va’Shem – as well as opportunities for students to engage with Israeli human rights advocates, journalists, and politicians involved in the struggle to preserve the democratic future of the Jewish homeland.
...Despite their initial approval for a trip that would provide just such an experience, Birthright’s leadership has now decided that it is inappropriate for JStreetU to organize a trip because we are politically oriented. Nonetheless, comparable organizations with different politics than ours participate and help organize trips every year. For instance, AIPAC’s “Capital to Capital” Birthright trip is designed for Jewish political activists who are “significantly involved in the American political process.” Given that other such trips are regularly offered, we were surprised and saddened that our trip was suddenly deemed inappropriate. [emphasis added]
Again, there are politics and there are politics. FresnoZionism in the same post makes reference to the politics of Moriel Rothman:
What is J Street U? Its National Board President U is a Middlebury College student named Moriel Rothman. Here is how he explains the controversy around the Sheik Jarrah / Shimon haTzadik neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Pay attention not only to his words, but his tone:
…the Jerusalem municipality has been bending to the will of fanatic Jewish settlers, and producing - based on archaic documents from the Ottoman period and manufactured Israeli law - eviction notices to a number of Palestinian families, and in some cases - such as with three families in Sheikh Jarrah- acting on those eviction notices by force and removing those Palestinian families from their homes. The municipality’s actions are hugely problematic from a moral standpoint: not only are Jews buying up and/or stealing Arab land in East Jerusalem, but Arabs are moreover unable to buy land in the primarily Jewish West Jerusalem… These policies are also hugely problematic from the standpoint of peace, as East Jerusalem must be the capital of the future Palestinian state, and the Clinton Parameters, which state that Palestine will get control of Arab neighborhoods and Israel will control Jewish neighborhoods, are made harder and harder to implement with each infiltration of Jewish settlers into Arab neighborhoods like Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah. [emphasis in the original]
This is the example set by a head of J Street U at the time.
In the end, it appeared that the provider J Street U was working with, Israel Experience, did not clear the arrangement with Birthright in advance.
J Street U students are petitioning Birthright CEO Gidi Mark to “provide more Birthright trips that speak to the values of social justice, democracy, and peace that are so important to young, progressive Jews. [emphasis added]
“We said such a trip, as described in a brief conversation with the Israel Experience, would likely be out of keeping with our longstanding policy of not conducting trips with a political orientation,” Birthright said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Birthright subsequently confirmed that the policy was adopted in 2009, when the organization decided not to partner any longer with groups that are “overtly political.”
Prior to 2009, Birthright trips were run in conjunction with the Zionist Organization of America and the Union for Progressive Zionists, the precursor to J Street U.
Birthright continues to partner with AIPAC, though references to the pro-Israel lobby group were scrubbed recently from the website of the Israel Experience. Birthright said AIPAC did not fall under the 2009 policy change because the organization does not generally seek to influence Israeli policy. [emphasis added]
For years, we have run a Capital-to-Capital trip through another trip provider, which focuses on the Israeli political system. The provider has been running this trip, with input from AIPAC, a mainstream Israel advocacy group, long before JStreet was established. It focuses on Israel’s political structure, with an approach similar to a political science class; the trip has never been tilted to one side of the political spectrum. [emphasis added]
In the end, J Street went on the trip on their own.
How did it go?
In a J-Street U mailing no longer online, Daniel May, Director, J Street U, wrote on June 21, 2011
I can tell that these two weeks are making a life-long impact on the participants. And amidst the painful stories of this conflict, that fact is giving me tremendous hope. But I don't want you to hear it from me. I want you to hear it directly from the students...
Simone Zimmerman, Berkeley ‘13 – Read her whole post here.
As aspiring peacebuilders, we have already been given so much to challenge us, and we have barely chipped the surface. I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility already, and a tremendous amount of privilege for being able to participate in this journey with J Street U. I’ve been to Israel many times in many different capacities, but this is my first trip where I am finding that I can, without contradiction, bring together my deep love for this country with my deep commitment to exploring the toughest challenges facing Israel today. [emphasis added]
After Zimmerman, a former J Street student activist, was hired by the Sanders campaign, it was discovered she previously wrote on Facebook, “Bibi Netanyahu is an arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative asshole,” according to the Washington-based Free Beacon.
She continued: “F— you, Bibi, for daring to insist that you legitimately represent even a fraction of the Jews in this world, for your consistent fear-mongering, for pushing Israel in word and deed, farther and farther away from the international community, and most importantly, for trying to derail a potentially historic diplomatic deal with Iran and thus trying to distract the world from the fact that you sanctioned the murder of over 2,000 people this summer.”
She edited the post on March 3, 2015, changing “asshole” to “politician” and the second expletive to “shame on you.” She was dismissed by the Sanders campaign after being its Jewish outreach coordinator for only two days.
Simone Zimmerman. Screengrab from Haaretz video on YouTube
Considering the example of J Street's past activities against Israel, the attitude demonstrated in the past by J Street U leaders like Moriel Rothman and the activities of the products of J Street U leadership such as Simone Zimmerman -- who is one of the founders of the virulently anti-Israel If Not Now -- suspicions of J Street "Birthright-style" trips are natural.
Day 6: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Occupation 101
Morning: Settlement Tour and Palestinian Village
Afternoon: Hebron
Evening: Group conversation
Overnight: Jerusalem
Day 7: Israel and Palestinian Perspectives Over the Green Line
Morning: Ramallah–Palestinian self-rule under occupation.
Afternoon: Conversation with Settlers
Evening: Israeli and Palestinian Peace Activists
Overnight: Ein Gedi
There is nothing wrong with criticism of Israel.
The issue is not criticism but rather J Street's record of undercutting Israel and its subversion of support for it.
o We see it reflected in J Street statements o We see it reflected in J Street's actions. o We see it reflected in J Street's support for anti-Israel Democratic candidates o We see it reflected in J Street 'graduates'
J Street is a special interest group with its own agenda.
It is a political agenda that contrasts with AIPAC, just as its politicized idea of an Israel trip contrasts with Birthright trips that encourage Jewish identity and connection with Israel.
Neither AIPAC nor Birthright have a particular agenda that it imposes or politics it is trying to push onto others.
The same is not true of J Street.
The goal of its trip is just one more way for J Street to push its agenda.
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