Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 18, 2019

A Twitter exchange with a genteel antisemite (whose opinion of Arabs isn't much better)

I was struck by this short exchange on Twitter between Honest reporting and Frank McDonald, a former editor of the Irish Times:

I noted, "A former editor of Irish Times justifies the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Iraq by saying that Arabs just can't help themselves. What a racist."

This exchange followed:

Frank McDonald
@frankmcdonald60
I never said that, and I'm not a racist in any way. What I wrote is the truth, much as you try to deny it. The fact is that Jews lived quite happily throughout the Middle East until 1948. Their expulsion from Iraq and elsewhere was a reaction to what happened in Palestine.

Elder Of Ziyon ҉
So would Arab Americans have been justified in attacking Jews in America in 1948? Can YOU attack Jews in Ireland TODAY because of, oh, Gaza or Nakba, or whatever? You are justifying Arab antisemitism by calling it "inevitable." Which means you are saying Arabs cannot help it.

Frank McDonald
Not at all. I never suggested that they should. Merely that the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries in the Middle East was a reaction to the Naqba in Palestine and that this was inevitable under the circumstances of the time. That's all.

Elder Of Ziyon ҉
People attacking Muslims after 9/11 was a reaction - but not "inevitable." It is only inevitable for bigots. Did you even bother to read the article? It highlighted the Farhud - the Iraqi pogrom against Jews in 1941. Sort of ruins your thesis of peaceful relations before 1948.

Frank McDonald
I know it was not always a bed of roses for Jewish communities in other countries, and that there were outbreaks of anit-Semitism from time to time. But Israel's dispossession & expulsion 750,000 indigenous Arabs was so outrageous that it's not surprising there was a reaction.

Elder Of Ziyon ҉
You are an object lesson in genteel bigotry, and you are completely clueless about it.

Frank McDonald
I am not a bigot, genteel or otherwise. Neither am I "clueless" about history. I suppose that we in Ireland, having been oppressed ourselves for centuries, tend to take the side of the oppressed, such as Palestinians. Others, such as you, take the side of the oppressor, Israel.

Elder Of Ziyon ҉
This thread shows otherwise. As far as your errors about Israel are concerned, if you want to be educated, you can read my blog (although we have seen you actually don't read beyond headlines) or engage with the @irlisrAlliance. Perhaps you can shake your prejudices.

Frank McDonald
I don't have "prejudices", but rather seek out & separate the truth from the miasma of mythology. I mentioned earlier that the Israeli military are currently censoring historical records about Jewish terrorist massacres during the Naqba, and hope you don't approve of that.

Elder Of Ziyon ҉
I could prove that nearly all you have said about Israel is wrong, but it is a waste of time arguing with someone who has shown little regard for truth here. For the record I am against the removal of archives from the public, and said so...after verifying the story was true.

Frank McDonald
The latter is good to hear. I'm well up on what really happened in 1948, having read David Hirst's great book, The Gun & the Olive Branch, before my first visit to Israel/Palestine in 1980, and many others since, including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappé.

Elder Of Ziyon ҉
Have you read Benny Morris, and his scathing critiques of Pappe? Or do you only choose to read history that conforms with your prejudices? I'll be writing up this exchange, and I'll add an analogy that has a 0.01% chance of getting through to you.

Frank McDonald
Likewise, I'm sure. You propagate Zionist mythology, in which right is left, black is white, up is down, etc. It is shameful that many Israelis are in the dark about their own history. At least in Ireland, we have a much more rounded view of our past, once we dispelled the myths.

So far, the thread shows a typical anti-Israel bigot who has zero ability to think critically about any accusation against Israel, repeating mantras and clueless about how he ha justified antisemitism (and how his opinion of Iraq's antisemitism as an inevitable reaction to Zionism mirrors exactly the thinking of Islamic terror groups who always say that their attacks on civilians are a "natural reaction" to whatever Israeli "crime" is the flavor of the week.

But he also commented on my tweet yesterday about the antisemitic statements of Niall Collins:

So McDonald justifies Arab antisemitism, defends Irish antisemitism and (elsewhere) defends Jeremy Corbyn as well.

Hmmm.

It is generally pointless to try to defend Israel in these sorts of exchanges because the other side will keep repeating the mantras of "apartheid" and "racism" and cherry pick examples, real or imagined. Any other facts are discarded.

Anyway, to this point, I mentioned an analogy to his biased way of looking at Israel that has a tiny chance of getting through to him.

In 2010, this same Frank McDonald was arrested for hitting a woman at a hotel for "smirking" when he complained about the noise in the nightclub which was disturbing his sleep. Someone sent me this information as a "gotcha" for my debate. I don't do stuff like that, since it is irrelevant and out of context.

Now, imagine that every single article about McDonald mentions this incident. Imagine there are demonstrations outside his house every day for his history of hitting women. Imagine that his name is associated with woman beating and the very name McDonald becomes toxic, that every time he speaks at an event there are op-eds against his being treated like a human being.

That's what it is like being Israeli in the circles he inhabits.

Most of the libels against Israel are trumped up or false or out of context. But there are sometimes things that Israel does that isn't right, like every state on Earth. The haters of Israel will harp on those, and try to take away all oxygen from any other story about Israel. They compare Israel against a mythical ideal, not against other countries that do worse - and most of them are far worse.

I have one question for McDonald. He was the Environment Editor for the Irish Times. Israel is by any measure a world leader in environmental issues, such as water recycling, desalination and re-forestation.

Has he ever once written a positive article about Israel in that area? And if so, did he manage to do it without mentioning something negative?

If not, I think it proves everything I am saying about him.

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On September 26, UNRWA's American friends will lobby Congress to support the organization.

Here's their blurb:

On Thursday, September 26, the relay runners [from another promotion] will be joined by UNRWA alumni, people who attended UNRWA schools and now live in the United States, for our first-ever Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill, including meetings with key lawmakers and their staff to educate them on how UNRWA's work represents a good humanitarian investment that also supports the national security interests of our country.

How, exactly, does donating to UNRWA support the USA's national interests?

They provide free housing, medical care and schooling to descendants of refugees from 1948. UNRWA-USA says that if those free services are discontinued, there will be threats to the US. The clear implication is that if Palestinian "refugees" don't continue to receive their free benefits, they will turn violent and attack US interests.

UNHCR doesn't beg for money by claiming that the refugees they help (who get a tiny fraction of the services UNRWA provides) will turn violent without it. No one says that the US should start to give free services to the poor of sub-Saharan Africa or other impoverished regions for national security reasons.

No, only Palestinians must be funded, forever, at the implied risk of them attacking Western targets if not.

Of all the people who need help in the world, only Palestinians are assumed to be naturally violent.

Besides the fact that this is quite racist, it brings up the question: If Palestinians are assumed to turn violent when they don't get what they want, is that a reason to fund them - or an excellent reason not to fund them?

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H.Res.496 introduced by Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib is an attempt to sanction antisemitism under the guise of "free speech."

The most offensive part is its comparison of boycotting Israel with boycotting Nazi goods:

Whereas Americans of conscience have a proud history of participating in boycotts to advocate for human rights abroad, including—
(2) boycotting Nazi Germany from March 1933 to October 1941 in response to the dehumanization of the Jewish people in the lead-up to the Holocaust;

This is Holocaust inversion and it is one of the examples of antisemitism under the IHRA definition, "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis."

Yes, US Congress now has a resolution that will be debated that includes antisemitism.

But perhaps the most insidious part of the resolution is saying that it is only supporting "boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights."

You see, boycotts are just another word for discrimination. Every boycott says that the boycotter will choose one provider of goods and services over another based on reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the product.

The exact same logic that protects boycotts of Israelis applies to bigots boycotting businesses owned by blacks or gays or immigrants or women.

In order to forestall the free speech protection of boycotts against people who fall on the positive side of intersectionality pseudo-science, Omar and Tlaib are characterizing BDS not as a product of bigotry and antisemitism but as "pursuit of civil and human rights."

Even if this resolution gets defeated, their underlying logic that implies that Israel is a violator of human rights on par with Nazi Germany will be debated in Congress and enshrined in the proceedings of Congress forever. As I have recently noted, the debate itself is what BDS is after, not the boycott - they want to normalize anti-Zionism and its antisemitic components as a mainstream opinion.

As I have noted in the past, BDS is explicitly antisemitic. The call to boycott "Israeli" goods does not extend to good created by Arab Israelis. The call to boycott "settlement" goods only applies to goods created by Israeli Jews, not Israeli Arabs. A look through the businesses in industrial parks in Mishor Adumim, Barkan, Atarot and other "settlements" show quite a few with Arab names, like Radwan Brothers Refrigeration and Air Conditioning or Khaled Ali Metals or the Shweiki Glass Factory.

None of them are on the lists of "Israeli" companies to boycott. Because they are not owned by Jews.

So, yes, BDS is antisemitic and Omar and Tlaib are defending antisemitic boycotts under the pretense not only of "free speech" but of "protecting human and civil rights." This is a very serious line being crossed.

(For a comprehensive list of legal arguments that show that there is nothing at all wrong with anti-BDS laws, see David Bernstein here and here.)

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Odeh Bisharat is an Arab novelist, political writer and activist, who is also – quite painfully for him – a citizen of the Jewish state of Israel. He recently published an op-ed in that flagship of Jewish shame, Ha’aretz, in which he describes the display at Arab schools of the flag of the state of Israel, the very Jewish magen david, as “an act of sadism:”

After all, the national flag … is related to the Arabs’ tragedies from 1948 to the present. It provokes considerable sadness, bitterness and even revulsion. It was under this flag that most of the Arab villages were captured in 1948, and later their residents were expelled under this flag, and in the shadow of this flag all those villages were destroyed. …

The Arabs don’t object to the flag because of what it symbolizes for the Jews — a state and independence — but because of what it symbolizes for the Arabs: expulsion and destruction.

I understand. After all, Jews were forced to stand in view of all kinds of flags, from the Roman standards that symbolized the destruction of our holy Temple and expulsion from our homeland of Judea, to the Christian cross of persecution, and even the twisted cross of Nazi Germany.

But painful or not, there is an important lesson conveyed by the flag of the state of Israel to its Arab residents, a lesson that Bisharat rejects with his “sadness, bitterness and even revulsion.” That lesson, which the editors of Ha’aretz also would prefer not to learn, is that the Jews won their War of Independence in 1948, a war that was forced upon them by the refusal of the Arab residents of the land and their Arab neighbors to accept any Jewish state, no matter how small.

It was a vicious war, in which the Arab armies eliminated any trace of Jewish presence in the areas they controlled, expelling or murdering the people and destroying synagogues and even cemeteries. The Arab nakba was nothing compared to the “war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades,” in the words of the Arab League’s Abdel Rahman Azzam, that would have occurred had the Arabs won.

But note: they didn’t win. A Jewish state was created, one which does not insist on ethnic purity within its borders; and Odeh Bisharat lives and works in it, received a university education in it, can vote and hold political office in it, and is not punished – indeed, he is paid – for vilely speaking out against it as he does.

Nevertheless, he should be aware that the Jews didn’t go through the trials of blood required to create their state to turn it into a “state of its citizens” or a binational state. It is and will be a Jewish state with a Jewish flag, other Jewish symbols, a right of return for Jews only, and even a Nation-State Law that asserts those propositions.

Bisharat does not like to be reminded – it is a “sadistic” torture – of the fact that a Jewish state was established on land that he believes should belong to Arabs. I am sure that if it were pointed out to him that there are 21 explicitly Arab states in the world and only this one Jewish state, he would say that there is only one Palestine, and that it should belong to the “Palestinian people.”

Excuse me, but this is rubbish. “Palestinians” didn’t even self-identify as such until the mid-1960s, when the KGB suggested that this would be a good strategy. Palestinian Arabs are mostly descended from 19^th and 20^th century migrants from various countries in the Arab world, and their culture reflects that. Unlike the Jewish people, they do not have a unique language, religion, or place of origin. What is specifically “Palestinian” about their culture is its ultra-violent hatred and rejection of Jewish sovereignty; as well as airline hijacking, suicide bombing, and stabbing random Jews in the street. What else is “Palestinian?”

Odeh Bisharat does not have a deed to this land. If the Arabs of Palestine had any claim to justice, it was blown away by the hundredth exploding bus or pizza restaurant. His “revulsion” is misdirected: it should be aimed at the real architects of the nakba, the Arab states that tried to wipe out the Jews and then put the Arab refugees of 1948 in camps instead of resettling them, as Israel did for the Jews fleeing Arab countries. It should be aimed at Haj Amin al-Husseini, who incited pogroms against Jews and then went to Germany to work with Hitler to create a Middle Eastern edition of the Holocaust. It should be aimed at Yasser Arafat, who made himself fabulously wealthy by stealing aid intended for Palestinian Arabs, while masterminding international terrorism and creating an educational system that has been successfully breeding murderers since 1993.

Arab citizens of Israel need to think regularly about these things. They would rather not. It’s more comfortable to see themselves as victims or resistance fighters. But if they want to live here, to enjoy the benefits of a relatively uncorrupt and highly developed modern society, they will have to understand that here they will always be Arabs living in a Jewish state. If displaying the flag on every school, Arab or Jewish, will help make that clear to everyone, it’s worth Bisharat’s discomfort.

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07/17 Links Pt2: Jews are routinely being attacked in the streets of New York City; “Intersectionality” has become “a toxic mixture of racial and identity politics where anti-Zionism is the unifying feature”

From Ian:

Everybody Knows

According to the New York City Police Department, the city has seen nineteen violent anti-Semitic attacks in the first half of this year and 33 in 2018, compared with only seventeen in the previous year. There is reason to believe many more unreported incidents have taken place. Overwhelmingly, the victims are Orthodox Jews in the ḥasidic Brooklyn neighborhoods of Crown Heights, Borough Park, and Williamsburg. Armin Rosen, examining this phenomenon, notes that no discernible pattern can be identified among the perpetrators, who have no links to anti-Israel groups, Islamists, the alt-right, or any known anti-Semitic ideology:

One popular explanation both within and beyond the affected communities is that Jews are being blamed for gentrification. . . But if rising housing prices really are causing the anti-Semitism surge, then it means New York’s harassers and attackers are little different from Jew-haters of centuries past, who have always blamed their Jewish neighbors for whatever the current evils happen to be—whether it’s bubonic plague or the arrival of wealthy newcomers. Nor is there a public record showing dozens of random attacks against gentrifying white hipsters in the same neighborhoods. . . .

Another explanation for the spike is that there is no spike: Orthodox Jews have always been attacked and harassed in New York. The perception of a rise in anti-Semitism may therefore be a function of heightened vigilance and reporting, social media, and omnipresent security cameras in Jewish neighborhoods.

Whatever the explanation, Rosen continues, the official response has been lackluster:

There is scant evidence that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration or local politicians have made stopping physical attacks on Jews in New York City a priority. After [he was nearly strangled to death outside of his synagogue in Crown Heights in 2018], recalls Menachem Moskowitz, “not one politician came to me to find out what happened or comforted me.”

“Intersectionality” has become “a toxic mixture of racial and identity politics where anti-Zionism is the unifying feature”

On July 15, 2019, I spoke at the Department of Justice Summit on Combatting Anti-Semitism, on a panel regarding Anti-Semitism on Campus. My presentation was on “Intersectionality.”

Attorney General William Barr, in his opening statement to the Summit, specifically noted the importance of intersectional anti-Semitism:
Another panel will focus on the problem of anti-Semitism on campus. On college campuses today, Jewish students who support Israel are frequently targeted for harassment, Jewish student organizations are marginalized, and progressive Jewish students are told they must denounce their beliefs and their heritage in order be part of “intersectional” causes. We must ensure – for the future of our country and our society – that college campuses remain open to ideological diversity and respectful of people of all faiths.”

The politics of ethnic & racial identity & grievance are both poisonous. pic.twitter.com/kBftbHWAkW
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) July 16, 2019

If you really want to help Israel, please lose the word “conflict” from your vocabulary. There is no such thing as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A conflict is two sides attacking each other. This is simply not the case when it comes to Israel and the Arabs. The Arabs attack, the Israelis defend.

People like the notion of a “conflict.” It’s the American way. It’s tidy.

Americans like to think, “It takes two to tango,” which really means “It takes two parties to have a conflict and we prefer a conflict to one party attacking the other so let’s call it that."

It's not only Americans, of course. Progressives, in general, like to say things like, “There’s bloodshed on both sides,” as if the cause of blood being shed has no import, no weight. A dead murderer is equal in death to his victim, therefore the cause of death must be also be equal. One fact creates the other, in spite of the truth.

So if you have a home invasion and the cops come and shoot someone who just killed your family member, is that also "bloodshed on both sides?" https://t.co/6kdbEZxTqQ
— (((Varda Epstein))) (@epavard) July 16, 2019

Because people have this need for parity, for fairness. But this situation does not satisfy the necessary conditions that define conflict.

A conflict must have two parties at odds with each other. You don’t have that here. In the case of Israel, you have one side minding its own business and interests.

The losers, meanwhile, can’t cope with reality. They won’t make the best of a situation and you can’t make them. They prefer to maim, kill, and destroy: an adult version of the two-year-old tantrum, albeit an evil version. Because two-year-olds aren’t responsible in any moral sense for their choices. But adults, are.

In this case, the adults, who happen to be Arabs, know just how bad it is to, for instance, kill a ten-month-old infant in her stroller by sniper fire. This makes the act evil, which means that in no sense is such an attack at all like a two-year-old’s tantrum. It is, instead, a willful act of ugly violence. A deed of the Devil.

Shalhevet Pass, HY"D, was ten months' old when she was killed by Arab sniper fire.

Anyone who describes the situation in Israel as a “conflict” needs to be told the story of Shalhevet Pass, HY”D. Because where’s the reciprocity in that? What did Shalhevet do to the man who murdered her? What was his “conflict” with her? Was she perhaps not wearing enough sunscreen that day?

“Conflict.” I hear the word and I shake my head. Because the murder of Shalhevet Pass is not even an isolated incident. Chaya Zissel Braun was only three months’ old when an Arab rammed his car with purpose into a waiting crowd of people at a train stop. Chaya Zissel was there with her parents, sitting in her stroller. She sailed into the street and then crashed into the pavement below, dead on impact. It was too fast for her parents to even try and stop the inevitable from happening.

Chaya Zissel Braun, HY"D.

But what did Chaya Zissel do to her murderer? Where is the conflict, the parity?

I will tell you where it is, what it is. It is this: Chaya Zissel was born a Jew. As was Shalhevet Pass, and Hadas Fogel, HY”D, who was the same age as Chaya Zissel when Arabs murdered her by decapitation, when she wouldn’t stop crying.

Hadas Fogel, HY"D

Ah! There you have it: she wouldn’t stop crying! A provocation if I ever heard one. Is this the locus of our "conflict?"

But no. It wasn’t about the crying. It was that Hadas Fogel was a Jew. Her mere existence was the sole locus of the "disagreement," the point of "conflict" between the "two warring parties."

This is important because so many believe that there really is a conflict and that it is about land. And the only way that any of this is connected to land is that the Arabs don’t want the Jews to have it. Land rights is a pretend issue, an excuse for Arabs to murder Jews. Because once you paint terror as a conflict about land, there's a focal point for disagreement. Which means two equal warring parties. Parties who can come to the table and negotiate. And since it's a land issue, negotiations means land concessions, which means Jews giving up bits and pieces of the Jewish State until there is nothing left.

Such a process of course, seen from a truer lens, is only Jewish victims rewarding those who murder them. Rewarding terror, alas, only makes them kill more of us to get more of what we have.

Think about it: if it were about land, why on earth would that make it okay to kill a baby? The baby is not responsible for where it is raised. The baby has no guilt, has stolen nothing, does not oppress you. It is just a baby. Something most societies hold as a value to protect and nurture.

The answer, of course, is that it is not about land, and it is not a conflict.

It is about Jews and Jewish continuity. The Jews who continue to live and the people who don't want them to. This is the locus of the conflict, the point of disagreement.

It is the Jewish identity of the victims, in fact, that gives the murderers their courage. It is what allows them to kill old people, children, pregnant women. Or rather, it is the Jewish identity of the victims that takes away any need for a murderer's courage. Because if you're taught to think of Jews as less than human: apes or pigs, as pests or some sort of vermin, you don't need courage to kill them.

From that perspective, killing Jews is like killing ants or mosquitoes. There are no moral qualms. You step on one, slap at the other. The main thing is they die instead of crawling on your food, or stinging your arm.

Once we have established the fact that a Jew is something less than human, there is no issue of killing a person with a soul. It's killing a Jew! Knowing all this, why wait until a Jewish baby grows up? It will only do more damage, become harder to kill.

This process of dehumanizing Jews makes it possible for terrorists to kill innocent infants and other vulnerable populations. But depicting Arab terror as a conflict about land, offers terrorists something more: the freedom to kill Jews at will, with impunity. Because once there is a conflict, a thing with a focal point for disagreement, you have parity: two opposing sides. And where there is conflict, there are no murderers or victims. Only parties to a disagreement. Even when those "parties" are infants.

In a conflict, there's no question of guilt or blame or innocence. There are just two rivals lashing out at each other in perfect equality, both fighting for the same thing.

Which is so much nicer, after all, than thinking about the men who kill Jewish babies in their strollers and cribs, solely on the basis of their religion.

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07/17 Links Pt1: Pakistan Arrests Mastermind of 2008 Mumbai Attacks in Which Jewish Center Was Targeted; US won't sell F-35 jets to Turkey; How Silwan Became an Arab Neighborhood

From Ian:

Pakistan Arrests Accused Mastermind of 2008 Mumbai Attacks in Which Jewish Center Was Targeted

Pakistan authorities on Wednesday arrested Hafiz Saeed, the alleged mastermind of a four-day militant attack on the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, on terror finance charges, a spokesman for the chief minister of Punjab province said.

The arrest came days before a visit to Washington by Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has vowed to crack down on militant groups operating in Pakistan.

Saeed, designated a terrorist by the United States and the United Nations, is the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or Army of the Pure, the militant group blamed by the United States and India for the Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 160 people.

He has denied any involvement and said his network, which includes 300 seminaries and schools, hospitals, a publishing house and ambulance services, has no ties to militant groups.

A spokesman for Punjab Governor Shahbaz Gill said Saeed was arrested near the town of Gujranwala in central Pakistan.

“The main charge is that he is gathering funds for banned outfits, which is illegal,” the spokesman said.

David Singer: Burying the PLO and Resurrecting Jordan in the West Bank

President Trump’s “deal of the century” – aimed at ending 100 years of conflict between Jews and Arabs over the territory once called “Palestine” – continues to flounder in the face of
· The PLO’s outright rejection of Trump’s deal – even before its details have been published
· Jordan’s continuing refusal to agree to negotiate with Israel when the deal is released

Jordan comprises 78 per cent of former Palestine and is the only sovereign Arab state to have ever occupied (albeit illegally) the West Bank – 4 per cent of former Palestine - between 1948 and 1967. Former Israeli Prime Minister – Ariel Sharon – proposed his own deal in 1992.

Sharon warned against granting autonomy to West Bank Arabs – something that occurred in 1993 after Oslo Accord I was signed and 95 per cent of the West Bank Arabs came under PLO administrative control:

“We must face a simple fact. Autonomy will inevitably lead to Palestinian statehood. The self-governing Authority will enjoy international recognition and command universal attention. Every self-respecting state will open a mission there.

Journalists will coo over keffiyeh-wrapped PLO murderers glowing with a romantic halo. The chairman of the Authority will sit in his office adorned with a wall to wall picture of another chairman, arch-murderer Yasser Arafat. And there will be a PLO flag in the front of the building.”

27 years later, autonomy has not translated into statehood – due to the PLO’s racist policy of refusing to accept the right of Jews to live in the West Bank – the ancient biblical, historic and legally-designated heartland of the Jewish people.

Netanyahu wary of West Bank-Gaza corridor in Trump peace plan

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisers told Trump administration officials they have reservations about the proposal for a passage connecting the West Bank and Gaza as part of the White House Middle East peace plan, sources briefed on the matter tell me.

Why it matters: The proposal was part of the economic portion of the U.S. plan. It was revealed by the White House to Netanyahu and his aides two weeks before the plan was made public, Israeli officials say. Netanyahu has publicly stressed several times that Israel will keep an open mind about the plan.

The big picture: The economic plan focused almost exclusively on boosting the Palestinian economy and on investments in infrastructure, health and education. But the $5 billion proposal for a highway and railway between the West Bank and Gaza has political significance.

- It showed the U.S. sees the West Bank and Gaza as one territorial unit in any future peace deal. That's in conflict with Israel's policy, in place for over a decade, of keeping the West Bank and Gaza separate.
- The main reservation Netanyahu and his aides conveyed to the Trump administration had to do with security, the sources say.
- They say Israel gave U.S. officials examples of how even today — with no transportation corridor and Israel in full control of Gaza’s borders — Hamas attempts to transfer operatives, messages and know-how from Gaza to the West Bank by exploiting entry permits granted for humanitarian reasons.

Egyptian news site Gomhuria published an article by Dr. Shaima Khattab, "Researcher in Political History and the Arab-Israeli Conflict,"where she shared some results of her research.

Apparently, the Jewish mystical teachings of Kabbalah is what is behind Zionism.

Her muddled theory goes something like this:

Among the Jews of the Middle Ages, there was the philosophy of Kabbalah, which is the study of mystical esotericism in Judaism. It expresses mythical intellectual ideas in Judaism based on magic, sorcery and mysticism. Kabbalah saw the Jewish presence as necessary for the cosmos.

The Jews lived in the Middle Ages in European countries isolated in isolated neighborhoods and did not mix with the people of the country, which affected their thought and their perception of themselves as a clean chosen people!

Since 1902, the founding conference of the "World Mizrahi" movement emerged. Some religious forces have exploited the religious feeling of the Jews to attract them to the ranks of the Zionist movement and to increase the influx of the land of Palestine.

I didn't think early religious Zionists were Kabbalists, but I don't have a Ph.D.

Dr. Khuttab also gives a quick summary of all the major facets of Kabbalah. No, not the sefirot. There are really only three principles of Kabbalah according to her:

1. Magic
2. Killing non-Jews
3. Violation of the sanctity of the Sabbath to save a life.

That makes it much easier to understand!

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"Honor:" The stunning turnaround of Islamic states from chiding to supporting Chinese oppression of Muslims

Last week a letter from 22 countries condemning China for its treatment of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region was published.

Not one of the signatories was a Muslim majority nation.

China then orchestrated a letter from 37 nations supporting its repressive policies. That letter commended China's efforts in "protecting human and promoting human rights through development," echoing Chinese propaganda points about its detention and re-education camps.

That letter was signed by 14 Muslim majority states, all members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and the United Arab Emirates.

Last December, the human rights committee of the OIC mentioned "disturbing reports" of China's actions against Muslims in a series of tweets.

That all seemed to change by March, when the OIC issued a report saying that it "commends the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China."

This was the precursor to last week's sham of a letter supporting China fully in its oppression of Muslims.

Muslim nations love to talk about pride and honor. When they attack Israel in the UN they claim that they are merely defending their fellow Muslims from attacks by others.

This willingness to suck up to China shows that they not only have no pride and no honor, but that they really don't even care about their fellow Muslims.

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Niall Collins is an Irish TD (Member of Parliament) who is the foreign affairs spokesperson with the main opposition party Fianna Fáil and one of the forces behind the "Occupied Territories Bill" banning goods and services from Israeli "settlements" to the point that tourists who buy souvenirs in Jewish-owned shops in Jerusalem could be fined up to €250,000 and subject to up to five years’ imprisonment.

Here is is interviewed on a show about how pro-Palestinian voices are supposedly silenced (not quite sure how this show wasn't affected by this insidious plot). During the interview, while answering a question on this supposed suppression of pro-Palestinian voices, he says he says that the issue cannot solely be blamed on Trump, but also that pesky huge Jewish lobby.

I wouldn't entirely blame the Trump administration either in terms of when we're apportioning blame to the United States, because right across right across corporate America and right across America I think at every level there's a huge Jewish lobby who who have helped to create the the problem that we're now discussing.

Scratch a "pro-Palestinian" voice and you find antisemitism.

The host actually cuts Collins off to go back to his Jewish guest Neve Gordon to stop Collins from embarrassing himself.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

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07/16 Links Pt2: Why Corbynistas have such a problem with Jews; Marc Lamont Hill at progressive summit: Major news outlets are ‘Zionist orgs’; Boris: Corbyn Guilty of Antisemitism

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Why Corbynistas have such a problem with Jews

Such Holocaust Relativism is rampant among Corbynistas, too, who will frequently ask why Jews keep going on about the Holocaust or will nauseatingly compare Israel to the Nazis and the Gaza Strip to the Warsaw Ghetto. Here, Holocaust Relativism reaches its dire and racist conclusion. It doesn’t only say ‘Jews are nothing special when it comes to suffering’. It also says they are the Nazis now, the genocidaires, the privileged persecutors of minority groups. This is an explicit attempt to erase or make meaningless the history of Jewish persecution by insisting they are now the persecutors, doing to others what was once done to them.

The chipping away at historic Jewish suffering can also be seen in the way the racism they suffer is always, without fail, contrasted with other forms of racism. Jews might face a little bit of hatred, but at least their white privilege protects them from the most visceral forms of hatred, the identitarian racists will argue. Against the aim is the systemised dilution of Jewish experiences to the end of demoting Jewish suffering and elevating other forms of suffering – in particular the prejudice suffered by Muslims.

When Corbynistas continually say, ‘What about Islamophobia?’, they think they are being good, progressive anti-racists. But in truth what they’re doing is reorganising ethnic, racial and social groups according to their own view of whether they are good or bad, deserving or undeserving, sympathetic or privileged. Their instinct is to demote and by extension denigrate Jews through saying: ‘You have privilege. You have media attention. You are always treated as special people. And we’re sick of it.’ And this, of course, is nothing more than a rehash of the old hard-right hatred for these arrogant, rich, well-connected ‘Chosen People’.

The Corbynistas’ anti-Semitism problem is far more profound than they could ever realise. It points to one of the most terrible things about the relentless rise of identity politics on the left – the way it unwittingly rehabilitates old racial thinking and even old racial hatred through its myopic reorganisation of ethnic groups according to the new morality of victimhood. That some leftists are denouncing the Jews as privileged and overly pampered, and are attempting to distract attention from the racism they suffer today and the horrors they suffered in the past, confirms that so-called progressive identitarianism is in truth the means through which some very old, very ugly prejudices find expression today. Identity politics looks increasingly like a gateway drug to racism itself.

🎥 What is the difference between the UK's Conservative Party and the USA's Republican Party? European Member of Parliament and author @DanielJHannan speaks with @BenShapiro about the Conservative movement in America and Europe.

WATCH HERE: https://t.co/QmFu4IMuGc pic.twitter.com/GqVgX7kZa1
— The Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) July 15, 2019

Ex-CNN commentator at progressive summit: Major news outlets are ‘Zionist orgs’

Former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill claimed that news outlets like NBC and ABC were “Zionist organizations” that produced “Zionist content,” during a panel on Friday at the annual Netroots Nation summit held by progressive activists in Philadelphia.

The summit describes itself as “the largest annual conference for progressives” and has long been a stop for Democratic presidential hopefuls, including this year.

Hill’s comments came less than a year after he lost his CNN perch after calling for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea,” during an appearance at the U.N. The statement was interpreted by many as a call for the elimination of Israel, something Hill denied.

He made his comments during a panel on “embedding Palestinian rights in the 2020 agenda,” which also featured statements that Israel was engaged in a “white supremacist” project.

In response to a question from the audience, Hill described the choices faced by young journalists when they tell stories about Palestinians.

“They’re like, I want to work for Fox, or I want to work for ABC or NBC or whoever. I want to tell these stories,” he said. “You have to make choices about where you want to work. And if you work for a Zionist organization, you’re going to get Zionist content. And no matter how vigorous you are in the newsroom, there are going to be two, three, four, 17, or maybe one powerful person — not going to suggest a conspiracy — all news outlets have a point of a view. And if your point of view competes with the point of view of the institution, you’re going to have challenges.”

At the summit, t-shirts were sold grouping Zionism with racism, sexism, homophobia and antisemitism as maladies to be “resisted.” (h/t MtTB)

Marc Lamont Hill suggests ABC and NBC are "Zionist organizations" that produce "Zionist content"

Hill was fired by CNN late last year after he called for the elimination of Israel

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) recently sat down with Hill on BET and did an interview with him pic.twitter.com/jgbbyIJKLq
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) July 16, 2019

Liz Cheney Rips Progressive Democrats: A ‘Callousness That's Born Out Of Ignorance’

Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican, has been an outspoken critic of socialism and has frequently emphasized the importance of standing in staunch opposition to an overbearing government.

“They’re wrong when they rush to blame America first, when they fail to recognize that this is the greatest nation that has ever existed, the exceptional nation,” Cheney said. “They’re wrong when they fail to recognize that no people have ever lived in greater freedom, and then they go on and fail to provide the resources our men and women in uniform need to defend that freedom.”

While abstaining from directly naming who she was reprimanding, the rebuke came only hours after four House Democrats, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Massachusetts Rep. Aryanna Pressley held a press conference of their own. During the presser, the group of freshman, referred to as “the Squad,” attacked President Donald Trump for what they considered to be racist and sexist motives.

Cheney also reiterated her condemnation of “vile anti-Semitism” that the freshman group has espoused on multiple occasions.

Omar and Tlaib became America’s first Muslim congresswomen when sworn into office in January. Along with Ocasio-Cortez, the three progressive lawmakers have been embroiled in allegations of anti-Semitism and anti-American sentiments even prior to taking office.

.@Liz_Cheney 🔥🔥🔥

"Our opposition to our socialist colleagues has absolutely nothing to do w/their gender, religion, or race. It has to do w/their policies

They're wrong on socialism

They're wrong when they fail to recognize this is the greatest nation that has ever existed" pic.twitter.com/GW6kUswZ46
— Elizabeth Harrington (@LizRNC) July 16, 2019