The UN's Food and Agricultural Organization puts out statistics each week on Gaza's exports of fruit, vegetables and fish to the rest of the world.
Here's where the exports this year have gone so far:
Jordan's imports of Gaza goods have gone down sharply, but Israel's and especially the GCC's imports have risen a great deal.
It appears that Israel and the Gulf are putting their money where their mouth is as far as helping the Gaza economy, although these are token amounts. The vast majority of Gaza exports go to the West Bank.
To the best of my knowledge, unless something has changed since I last spoke to Israeli officials about this, there are no restrictions on Gaza exports outside the number of willing buyers.
In the past, and perhaps now as well, the IDF's COGAT unit would provide seeds and expertise to Gaza and West Bank farmers to grow new crops and improve their quality.
Another new thing is that Gaza now exports fish. From reading the news one gets the impression that Gaza fishermen can't even provide enough fish for local consumption, but in fact they are sending hundreds of metric tons of fish to the West Bank.
Something else that the news media won't bother to report.
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Every day there are stories in Arabic media about Jews "storming" the "Al Aqsa Mosque," meaning Jews visiting the perimeter of the Temple Mount. So, naturally, the writers need to find some new angle to make the stories appear more interesting.
They are mostly press releases from the antisemitic Muslim authorities on the Temple Mount, the Waqf.
According to the story, an organization called Women for the Temple has now organized tours of the most sacred place in Judaism specifically for children, where they are taught about the history of the site. (Or as the hateful Arab media puts it, "they carried out provocative tours of the Haram al Sharif and received explanations about the alleged 'Temple.'")
This is perhaps more frightening to Muslims than the daily screaming headlines of Jews "breaking in" to the site. Children, after all, are the next generation, and if they consider visiting the Temple Mount to be normal, then it will be that much harder to stop them from visiting when they are adults and want to bring their own kids.
Meanwhile, the Jordanian Waqf issued a statement that "stressed that the sanctity of all parts of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, equivalent to the sanctity of the Sacred House in Mecca, and that any infringement on part of it is an attack on every Muslim on earth."
Just some more every day incitement against Jews.
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Tonight is the traditional anniversary of the death of the Biblical Aaron.
Jordanian media is filled with stories of a group of Jews who visited the "shrine of the Prophet Aaron," as the Muslims characterize it. There they performed "religious services."
The video showing the supposed services is only 8 seconds long, and it looks like they are singing but not praying, from what I can tell.
Jews have gone there before, as in this video from last year shows:
As a result of Jews actually treating a holy place as a holy place, the Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs in Jordan, Dr. Nasser Abu Al-Basal, decided to close the building and not to allow any visitor to enter the shrine without obtaining the ministry's approval.
The ministry also said that it will open an investigation into how Jews managed to enter and chant without knowledge of the locals.
As far as I can tell, there is no mosque on the site (yet.) So Jordan's objections to Jews praying there isn't because it is desecrating a mosque, but because they simply don't want to extend any basic rights to Jews.
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And that’s the most galling part of the mainstreaming of Al Sharpton. He never sought absolution. He simply got away with it.
So at Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, no one asked Warren about Sharpton’s record or the message she might be sending with such fulsome praise. Nor was South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg — who has struck up a very public alliance with Sharpton in an attempt to burnish his standing with black voters — prodded about the hypocrisy on display. Republicans, Buttigieg lectured, “are supporting naked racism in the White House, or at best silent about it. And if you are watching this at home and you are a Republican member of Congress, consider the fact that, when the sun sets on your career and they are writing your story, of all the good and bad things you did in your life, the thing you will be remembered for is whether, in this moment, with this president, you found the courage to stand up to him or you continued to put party over country.”
What would Buttigieg say about his own support of a public figure with a long history of bigotry? We don’t know, because no one thought to ask him at the debate. (I have repeatedly asked his campaign for comment, to no avail.)
We are routinely told that harsh criticism of minority members of Congress amounts to incitement to violence. What of Sharpton, who initially made his career out of explicit incitement to violence? This is no idle concern. “The increase in the number of physical assaults against Orthodox Jews in New York City is a matter of empirical fact,” reports Armin Rosen at Tablet. “Anti-Semitic hate crimes against persons, which describes nearly everything involving physical contact, jumped from 17 in 2017 to 33 in 2018, with the number for the first half of 2019 standing at 19, according to the NYPD’s hate crime unit. … And yet, many believe the attacks are even more widespread than has been reported.” De Blasio claims anti-Semitism is a right-wing phenomenon, but in New York, Rosen writes, “the perpetrators who have been recorded on CCTV cameras are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic.”
You can believe that Jewish lives matter, or you can pepper your public career with slavish fan fiction about Al Sharpton. When the sun sets on the careers of this crop of Democrats and their stories are written, what will the record show about the choice they made?
Five years ago, I was sitting in my office trying to figure out options for a desperate Palestinian woman. Her family had found her and her boyfriend together in his apartment in Queens, and they were threatening both of them with physical harm. I had been told that the young couple feared for their lives.
To help them, I reached out to an organization that was working to train the New York City police force about the difference between honor killings and murder (the former is often perpetrated by a close family member who would not be a suspect in a murder). While I was speaking to the liaison about the couple, I happened to notice an email update from a former classmate at Barnard with some news: A Columbia student organization formed to support victims of sexual assault, called “No Red Tape,” was aligning itself with Students for Justice in Palestine, a virulently anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian group.
The irony of the moment was powerful. Here I was, a Zionist Jewish woman trying to protect a Palestinian woman from violence, while a campus group that is supposed to be devoted to protecting women had attached itself to a group known for hateful tactics that target Jewish students, rhetoric that veers into anti-Semitism and a total refusal to engage with Zionist groups.
It’s not just ironic; it’s mysterious. How did social justice warriors, committed to liberal values, find themselves using hate speech, intolerant boycotts, and demonizing tactics towards a fellow minority group?
The answer they would no doubt give themselves — that it is Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians that drives their actions — can’t possibly account for things like the a-historical nature of their critiques, the tolerance and excuses for violent resistance against civilians, and the sheer vitriol unleashed on Jewish students. For this reason, the mystery of the social justice movement’s embrace of radical pro-Palestinian groups and their corresponding rejection of Israel is usually explained as nothing more complicated than anti-Semitism, albeit cloaked in the new language of anti-Zionism.
In May 2019, the New York Times and its Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger excused deadly Hamas rocket attacks as an expression of “impatience” with Israeli bad behavior, suggested the group mistakenly hits Israeli civilians with “stray” rockets, and described Hamas gunmen killed while shooting Israelis as mere “demonstrators.”
Why does the newspaper conceal the ugly truth about the internationally designated terror organization and its war crimes?
Since supporting "Palestine" is considered a pre-requisite for being progressive and woke, here's a short list of what these "progressive" people are supporting and protecting:
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Discreet Ear Buds A Real Boon To People Who Hate When Others Talk In Shul
Giv'at Sh'muel, Aug 1 - Technological innovation has come to the synagogue in the form of wireless, hard-to-see, in-ear speakers that users can wear to block out the age-old nuisance of other worshipers disrupting the service with idle chatter.
Adopters of the technology praised its developers for their attentiveness to shul-goer needs and their willingness to tackle what sources indicate represent an ancient problem: people who deem their conversations more important than the integrity and flow of the synagogue service, when a human must view himself as standing before the Creator, or at least preparing to do so.
Spiritual leaders used to devote more energy to discouraging chatter during services, with one towering seventeenth-century authority blaming the phenomenon for the Chmielnicki massacres in which tens of thousands of Jews were killed by Cossack marauders. Through the years, however, as Rabbinic positions became subject to synagogue boards, Rabbis became less willing to call out congregants for sinful behavior, out of fear for their livelihood lest they displease members with influence. Software developments saw an opportunity for shul-goers to maintain adherence to proper standards while avoiding the tension and unpleasantness inherent in rebuking others for problematic behavior that has come to be viewed as unremarkable.
Kol D'mamah Dakkah - "the sound of silence" - as the first such app is known, uses a smartphone's camera to track the movement of the shatz's - the prayer leader - lips to identify where in the liturgy the congregation has reached, and adjusts its pre-recorded sound files to match the shatz's speed, while canceling out other ambient noise. Thus, say the developers, a davener can remain focused on his "service of the heart" and not get distracted as anyone around him taking the proceedings less seriously than they should.
"No one knows how to give rebuke properly anymore," explained chief app creator Elazar Azariah. "My colleagues and I saw a need to forestall the tension and enmity that would come of improper attempts to correct sinful behavior - so we did the next best thing and found a technological solution that makes the user unaware of any such behavior. As far as the user is concerned, the other guy is also davening or saying T'hillim. Not only does Kol D'mamah Dakkah reduce tension, it promotes fulfillment of the commandment to give fellow Jews the benefit of the doubt, to judge them favorably."
Kol D'mamah Dakkah currently exists in Nusach S'farad, Edoth HaMizrach, and Nusach HaAri of Chabad-Lubavitch, but Mr. Azariah revealed that focus groups has determined little interest among Nusach Ashkenaz adherents, who found the app got in the way of following the latest sports, stock, and real estate developments.
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President Trump cut off US funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees last September because UNRWA is “irredeemably flawed.” In fact, it’s worse than he thought.
An internal ethics report leaked to the press this week exposed a corrupt UNRWA “inner circle.”
Hah! Other nations, mostly in Europe, had been stepping up to replace the $360 million hole that Trump blew in UNRWA’s $1.2 billion budget. Switzerland was the first to announce it would suspend future payments until the scandal’s resolved.
All this, on top of the larger issues that prompted Trump’s move: UNRWA workers have been caught with bomb-making materials and even throwing firebombs at an Israeli bus; its buildings have stored Hamas weapons.
It’s really no surprise to find that so politicized an agency is also thoroughly corrupt. As Trump’s former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, put it: “This is exactly why we stopped their funding.”
Last week, the United Nations against singled out Israel for condemnation and accusations of human rights violations, while regimes with lengthy histories of abuse and well-documented violations of human rights – like Iran – were ignored.
The UN's Economic and Social Council voted last week to condemn Israel – and Israel alone – as the only country in the world that violates women’s rights. The resolution passed with 40 out of 54 member-countries backing the move, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan, the most notorious violators of women’s rights.
Nothing was said about the fact that millions of Arab women endure corporal and even punishment for the way they dress or behave; genital mutilation, honor murder, even in European countries.
By contrast, Arab women in Israel enjoy access to education, jobs, and political freedoms like any woman in any developed liberal democracy has come to expect.
Not many people around the world are aware of this, because the media conceals it from them, pushing the anti-Israel line instead.
The fact that this UN resolution is anti-Semitic goes without saying, but it is also an assault against oppressed women in Arab countries who continue to suffer away from the world's attention because everyone in the civilized world is busy condemning Israel.
For many centuries, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated, and widely neglected expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts, and malarial marshes. This was Mark Twain’s description when he visited in 1867:
A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds—a silent mournful expanse.
A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action.
We never saw a human being on the whole route.
There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country (Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (London, 1881).
As late as 1880, the American consul in Jerusalem reported the area was continuing its historic decline. “The population and wealth of Palestine has not increased during the last forty years,” he said (Melvin Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust (Bison Books: 1995 p. 29).
Take a look at some of the photos from the late 19th and early 20th century to see the desolation Twain talked about.
Member of the Executive Committee of the PLO and Head of the PLO's Department of Refugee Affairs Ahmed Abu Houli accused Israel of being behind the recent leak of an expose showing corruption in the highest levels on UNRWA.
Next month, the UN is going to vote to extend UNRWA's mandate for three more years, and Abu Houli sees a conspiracy.
"The leaking of the UN investigation report before reaching the final decision is an open attempt to weaken UNRWA and keep donors from supporting and influencing the voting process for renewal," Abu Houli said in a radio interview.
Abu Houli added, "The US and Israeli campaign targeting UNRWA and the leaking of the report facilitates the efforts of the United States and Israel to end UNRWA, and the United States is pressing countries to withdraw funding."
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine warned of attempts to use the United States and "the Zionist entity" to liquidate UNRWA and "eliminate a historical and legal witness to the plight of the Palestinian people."
Dr. Bassem Naim of Hamas said that no Palestinian can accept corruption in UNRWA but agreed that the timing was suspicious.
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“True peace is not the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
Thankful for the wide, intergenerational coalition of communities coming together - Israeli & Palestinian, Jewish & Muslim, American & around the world - seeking to advance that peace and justice. https://t.co/xs9hPp0Jv3
Her quote, from Martin Luther King Jr., is just another example of how the word "justice" has been weaponized as a dogwhistle to destroy Israel as a Jewish state.
I've noted the false use of the word "justice" before. When anti-Israel activists use the word, they don't mean real justice. They mean that Palestinians get to be the judge and jury, and only they can decide when justice is served - meaning that things won't be solved until Israel is replaced with another Arab state.
In any dispute, there are two sides, each of which has its own ideas of what justice would mean. When the Left uses the word against Israel, they aren't interested in what Israelis feel is just. They don't want to allow Jews to freely live in and visit their holy cities of Hebron and Bethlehem and Shechem (Nablus) and Jericho. They don't want Jewish claims against Arab countries that ethnically cleansed them to be part of the conversation. They don't want Jews to have their own state equal to other states of the world. Although all of those things are just, they do not fall under the false definition of "justice" used by anti-Israel activists.
By misusing the word, they are brainwashing casual observers. Who doesn't support justice? Who could be against it? No one - unless the "justice" being mentioned is inherently unjust.
Judaism has long noted the tension between peace and justice. Justice is unforgiving. One side wins, the other side loses. If God ruled the world with justice untempered with mercy, there would be no world.
Real peace means that both sides compromise. Both sides recognize the humanity of their opponents and are willing to give things up in the greater interests of peace.
Compromise is not compatible with justice in the strict sense of the word. Neither side believes that true justice has been served. Israel has always held that peace is more important than strict justice, which is why it has given up so much for peace.
But peace is not more important than "justice" to the anti-Israel crowd and to most Palestinians.
The anti-Israel activists no longer even pretend they want a two state solution any more- to them, Israel is inherently unjust and therefore illegitimate. That's what many of them mean when they say "justice." (J-Street has a different definition of justice, but, again, who is the judge? The UN? The ICJ? Or the Palestinians who greet every concession as a reason to demand more?)
The Palestinian leaders have bragged on many occasions about how they have not changed their positions since 1988 - no budging throughout Oslo, through Camp David, through Taba, through the peace plans of the 2000s and early 2010s. Their intransigence is all based on their warped idea of "justice", which fits in nicely with the anti-Israel crowd's misuse of the word.
Israel has proven time and time again that it yearns for peace, but not a peace that compromises Israel's security. The anti-Israel crowd is not willing to compromise to keep Israelis secure and at peace. The separation barrier, checkpoints, Iron Dome - literally everything Israel does to keep its citizens safe are denounced by the people who claim to want "peace."
But if you ask them how Israel can get justice for the thousands killed in terror attacks, they will change the subject. Their "justice" is not justice at all, but a dogwhistle.
At least they haven't hijacked the word "peace" yet. But they are trying.
_______________
While we are on the subject of justice, many of the Jewish anti-Israel activists love to quote the Torah, Deuteronomy 16:20, where it says, "Justice, justice you shall pursue."
Actually, the word "tzedek" is probably more properly translated as "righteousness." The proper Hebrew words for strict justice would be "mishpat" and "din." Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says:
Tzedek/tzedakah is almost impossible to translate, because of its many shadings of meaning: justice, charity, righteousness, integrity, equity, fairness and innocence. It certainly means more than strictly legal justice, for which the Bible uses words like mishpat and din.
The anti-Israel crowd ignores the real meaning of "tzedek," and they ignore that it is used in this verse in the context of appointing judges of high moral character.
But they especially ignore the rest of the verse: "so that you may thrive and occupy the land that the Lord your God has given you."
This verse is as Zionist as any in the Torah, and the anti-Israel crowd hijacking that verse is ironic but expected. To them, the Torah itself must be weaponized against Israel just as the word "justice" must be.
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I had high hopes for The Red Sea Diving Club when I saw the trailer:
I already read some of the negative reviews of Netflix film before watching it last night, and they are on target: A great story was ruined by a screenwriter who evidently felt it would do better as a series of Hollywood cliches.
The often shirtless secret agent played by Chris Evans who goes against the rules. Who recruits his own group of misfit friends for an operation. Who recklessly endangers many lives because of his deep moral convictions. Who decides on the fly to turn the resort into a real hotel without any staff to speak of. Who ends up asking America to help with one last mission (where the US ambassador inexplicably ends up on the final trip to Israel.)
But beyond that, the movie shows a startlingly incompetent Mossad. Ben Kingsley's head of the organization has no control over his agents. Evans's Ari character was already fired twice from the agency, we are told, yet he is given free reign to come up with the unlikely plan of using an abandoned Red Sea resort as a cover for Israeli agents to smuggle Ethiopian refugees out via Sudan - and to present this plan himself to the Defense Minister, the only Israeli character in the movie who even attempts an Israeli accent.
Ari is told by his boss that there is no exfiltration plan to help him and his crew in case things go south. Really?
In his very first attempt to get 179 Beta Israel out of the country, Ari chooses to run through a roadblock - and to stop all communication with his Israeli counterparts and boss waiting on a ship at sea and in Israel, giving no valid excuse but they don't investigate what he does.
He's a rogue agent who knows better than his bosses. Yet he endangers the entire Ethiopian Jewish community with his reckless decisions at every turn.
The real story is actually much better than this contrived attempt to cash in on it. It had plenty of drama, but the Mossad is the real hero, not the roadblock for Chris Evans to play another kind of superhero. Everything was planned meticulously, although there was real danger with each operation. The real life story of how the agents managed to secretly bring planes into Sudan is more impressive than the smuggling of people by boat shown in the movie, a method that was scrapped early on because it was too dangerous.
The worst and best part is the final credits.
The movie does not end with the audience being informed of how many Jews were saved from Ethiopia in this and other operations. It does not end with the William Safire quote, “For the first time in history, thousands of black people are brought into the country not in chains but as citizens.” No, the only takeaway is the generic "There are 65 million refugees in the world."
However, during the actual closing credits, photos of the actual saving of Ethiopian refugees and the real Mossad agents at the Arous on the Red Sea hotel (the real name of the resort) are shown.
There is a great movie in the story of the operation to save Jews from Ethiopia. Unfortunately, it isn't The Red Sea Diving Club.
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The long war against Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel has been going on since before the founding of the state. The identity of our enemies varies depending on their ability to fight at any given time and other factors, but – with one important exception that I will discuss later – they are drawn from the Arab and Muslim nations in our region. Our most dangerous enemy in the past may have been Egypt; today it is Iran, and possibly tomorrow it will be Egypt again. But thanks to Islamic doctrine, it will never end.
The struggle for our independence includes physical, or kinetic, warfare, which has taken the form of pogroms, large-scale regional wars, intifadas, and various manifestations of terrorism. But there are also diplomatic, legal, covert, and psychological or cognitive battles going on at the same time.
The best way to picture our position in the cognitive struggle is that of a nation besieged. Our objective is to relieve the pressure so that we can continue with our normal lives. We are not interested in conquering and holding “enemy territory,” but we do want to destroy our enemies’ stock of cognitive weapons and crush their will to fight. Note that although the objective is to defend ourselves, our strategies to do that may call for aggressive offensive tactics. In the cognitive theater of war, our Muslim enemies are joined by some of the post-Christian nations of Western Europe, who are often even more bitterly hostile than the Muslims.
All our enemies have two kinds of objectives: to target us directly in order to create confusion, dissent, and defeatism at home, and to target the rest of the world in order to make it less likely that our allies will support us in time of kinetic war. That can mean making it more difficult for us to obtain supplies and weapons, or to use air space or land bases. It can mean preparing the ground so that other nations will vote against us in the UN Security Council, or so that public opinion in democratic countries will favor our enemies. It can mean damaging us economically by persuading nations, companies, and individuals to avoid doing business with our firms.
The cognitive attacks that target the nations of the world are intended to delegitimize Israel, to present her as a usurper that has no moral or legal right to exist; or to demonize her, to suggest that her behavior is so despicable, so evil, that she has forfeited her right to be treated like a normal nation of normal people, and deserves to be destroyed.
An example of delegitimization is the narrative that describes the birth of the state as the colonization – by “white” European Jews supported by the great powers – of indigenous “Palestinian” people of color, rather than the return of the Jewish people to its aboriginal land against the racist opposition of the entire Arab world to that return.
Demonization includes traditional military atrocity stories, especially the accusation that the IDF deliberately targets children – the reverse of the actual situation – claims of “apartheid,” and even, for less sophisticated audiences, the retelling of traditional anti-Jewish blood libels.
Cognitive warfare supports and functions in tandem with ordinary kinetic warfare and terrorism (which is both kinetic and cognitive). We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the ultimate goal of our enemies is to destroy our state, and kill or disperse the Jewish people. When an Iranian mullah leads a chant of “death to Israel,” he means death to Israel (America, too). When a European government sends money to the Israeli NGO B’Tselem, they are paying for the demonization of Israel in international forums, interference with IDF security activities, and lawfare against the Israeli government and IDF in Israeli and foreign courts. And when an Israeli newspaper columnist with Jewish parents writes an article in which he accuses Israeli Air Force pilots of murder, he too is pulling the trigger of a cognitive weapon aimed at our hearts. If his checks aren’t signed in Teheran, they should be. In all cases, the final objective is the same.
Israel responds to these attacks in a purely defensive way, to try to parry their thrusts. No, we say (after months of research), we did not shoot young Mohammed al-Durah in 2000; either he was shot by Hamas terrorists or he was not shot at all. No, our treatment of our Arab citizens and Arabs living under the Palestinian Authority is nothing at all like apartheid. No, we didn’t cut down those olive trees; Arab farmers pruned them.
As I wrote in my series about fighting BDS (here and here), the reactive approach has two serious defects: first, by restating the accusations, it gives them renewed currency and makes even absurd accusations acceptable subjects of discussion. Second, the mechanism of researching and responding to exaggerated or made-up claims can easily be overwhelmed by their sheer volume (just like Iron Dome can!)
A better strategy would be to go on the offensive and take the war to the enemy. The Palestinian narrative is flimsy and easily refuted. There is a continual flow of academic papers about the “settler-colonial” paradigm attributed to Israel, but where are the papers about the Arab migrations into the land of Israel in the 19th and 20th centuries? Where are the pro-Zionist academic conferences and grants given to scholars who present our side of the story, which has the advantage of being true?
And not only do we rarely attack the Arab historical narrative – indeed, many Israelis are in the forefront of those who promulgate it – we don’t sufficiently stress the moral depravity and culpability of Palestinian leaders, past and present. Imagine if we could obtain wide distribution of the story that Mahmoud Abbas raised the funds for the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972.
There is a reason that the pro-Israel point of view has such a tough time in academia and in free, Western media. And that is that while Israel has been busy fighting wars and defending herself against terrorism, our enemies have been using their petrodollars to subvert Western universities and media. Did you know that in addition to the millions it spends on lobbying American lawmakers, Hamas-supporting Qatar has given literally billions of dollars to universities and other academic projects (like the Brookings Institution) in the US? They specialize in universities like Georgetown and Northwestern, where there are schools for foreign service officers and journalists, but haven’t stinted on their gifts to Harvard, Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and numerous others. And of course, Saudi Arabia has been doing the same for years, even subsidizing public-school textbooks in the US and Europe! Qatar also operates one of the most influential media outlets in the world (especially the Arabic-speaking world), Al-Jazeera.
Israel doesn’t have the billions of petrodollars that Qatar does, but with her technical abilities, she could do a great deal more. Unfortunately, perhaps because of inappropriate feelings of guilt over having won the wars of 1948 and 1967, fear of angering the Palestinian Authority or even Arab Israelis, and the pervasive influence of the Left in our media and academia, Israel is transfixed by the blows she has received on the cognitive battlefield, and is unable to take the initiative.
What will it take to win the cognitive struggle? Probably a wholesale change in our national consciousness. I’m not optimistic.
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Advocates of academic boycotts of the Jewish state are fond of claiming that they are motivated by a desire to punish Israel for its restrictions on Palestinian universities—in part, writes Jonathan Marks, as a counterargument to those who would point out that their movement seeks specifically to restrict the free exchange of ideas. But the boycotters have nothing to say about Turkey, where the government has severely restrained the ability of professors to write or teach on sensitive topics:
Turkish President Recep Erdoğan’s government, the Times explains, has engaged in a large scale purge of academics. Thousands have been fired. Some have been jailed. Freedom House reports that “academics and students [in Turkey] continued to be prosecuted for expressing critical views of the government or for peaceful political action in 2018.” Moreover, “government and university administrations now routinely intervene to prevent academics from researching sensitive topics.” In short, academic freedom doesn’t exist in Turkey, and its universities are, insofar as the purge has been successful, vehicles for political indoctrination.
Another thing about Turkey, though: it’s a great place to hold an International Conference on Palestine. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend this April’s conference, but the speakers listed on the roster included well-known BDS advocates like Ali Abunimah, editor of the Electronic Intifada, Rabab Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University, Joseph Massad of Columbia University, and Ilan Pappé of the University of Exeter. The roster also included BDS advocates who are not as well known here, such as Farid Esack, Chairperson of BDS-South Africa, and Frank Barat, former coordinator of a self-appointed anti-Israel “tribunal.”
About the only thing the BDS National Committee seems to dislike in Erdogan’s repressive government is its incomplete rejection of Israel. But BDS advocates don’t mind taking advantage of his hospitality, perhaps because he whispers sweet nothings like, “whoever is on the side of Israel, let everyone know that we are against them.”
The indifference of BDS advocates to the academic freedom they pretend to cherish when it suits them is nothing new. But their championship-level hypocrisy continues to impress.
The New York Times has long history of whitewashing the extremism of the BDS movement.
BDS stands for “boycotts, divestment, and sanctions,” and the BDS campaign seeks to leverage those tools to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Arab-majority state.
Although BDS leaders openly admit they seek to disenfranchise Jews by eliminating the country’s Jewish majority — BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti has admitted his goal is “a unitary state where, by definition, Jews will be a minority” — the Times has consistently downplayed the movement’s goals by reporting, for example, that BDS merely “seeks to pressure Israel into ending the occupation of the West Bank,” or that the its activists are simply “critical of Israel’s policies toward the West Bank.”
Language of this type had prompted Tablet’s Yair Rosenberg to charge the paper with having “dramatically misrepresented [BDS’s] stated aims and implicit goals, whitewashing the movement’s radicalism.”
Another Whitewash?
Days after the U.S. House of Representatives delivered an overwhelming, bipartisan rebuke to BDS with a 398-17 vote explicitly opposing “the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement,” the New York Times jumped in with a piece titled “Is B.D.S. Anti-Semitic? A Closer Look at the Boycott Israel Campaign.”
The piece purports to provide “answers to some of the most difficult questions” about BDS. And this time, the paper did manage to acknowledge that the campaign opposes the existence of the Jewish state, an improvement over earlier coverage that falsely cast the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement as merely anti-occupation. In that respect, at least, it is a needed improvement. Still, the article relies on distortions and omissions to make BDS extremism more palatable to readers.
While the competition may be stiff, few mainstream periodicals in the English language distinguish themselves in their contempt for Israel to the extent of the Guardian. But it was not ever thus, explains Robert Philpot. C.P. Scott, who served as the British newspaper’s publisher from 1872 until 1929, was in fact a crucial supporter of Zionism: That role began in November 1914 when Scott met Chaim Weizmann, a leading player in Zionist politics, by chance at a charity tea party to which the latter’s wife had been invited. Thus began the remarkable friendship and partnership between the publisher and Israel’s first president. . . . Weizmann instantly impressed the editor. For Scott, he was “extraordinarily interesting, a rare combination of idealism and the severely practical which are the two essentials of statesmanship.”
After their second meeting, Scott made Weizmann an offer: “I would like to do something for you. I would like to put you in touch with the chancellor of the exchequer, [David] Lloyd George.” He also reminded Weizmann that “you have a Jew in the cabinet, Herbert Samuel.”
Unbeknownst to Weizmann, Samuel was a committed Zionist himself, and, thanks to the favorable impression made by Weizmann, Lloyd George soon became one as well. Scott continued to provide the Zionist leader with advice and assistance, once at a highly fortuitous moment: [I]n April 1917, Scott stumbled across a crucial bit of news. At a meeting with a French journalist he discovered that the French planned to assume control of northern Palestine—areas that the Zionists hoped would become part of a Jewish homeland under British protection—while the rest of the land would fall under international control. . . . Scott immediately tipped off . . . Weizmann and began making inquiries back in London. Weizmann, too, began frantic efforts to uncover more details, pushing at the Whitehall doors Scott had previously unlocked for him.
Critically, Scott’s discovery led the Zionists, in [the words of then-Guardian columnist Harry] Sacher, to realize the urgency of getting from the British government “a written definite promise satisfactory to ourselves with regard to Palestine.” In November 1917, in the form of that famous letter from Balfour to Lord Rothschild, they finally obtained it. Days later, Scott penned a Guardian editorial welcoming the Balfour Declaration.
Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib,
two U.S. congresswomen with a penchant for making antisemitic comments and
supporting antisemitic measures, are soon to visit Israel. When they arrive, we will have had several weeks' warning. But there will be nothing we can do to stop the two from coming into our country and using the trip to hurt us. This is something we have seen before, as recently as during the Obama administration.
There is no reason to let them in. Israel has a perfectly good law
on the books denying entry to anyone supporting BDS, as these
two congresswomen do. The final decision, however, was to allow the two into Israel, as announced
by Israel Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer, "Out of respect for the US
Congress and the great alliance between Israel and America, we would not deny
entry to any member of Congress into Israel."
Friends in America wondered how I
felt about this: did I think something else should have happened, instead? It is a moot point. As a regular person and Israeli, I have no say in this, no voice, no power. I knew from the outset that it would be realpolitik that would
hold sway. Prime Minister Netanyahu would not want to offend. He would want to give proper honor to the United States. So he would look the other way, bypass the
law, and let them in.
In this light, what I wanted didn't matter. I tried to avoid getting embroiled in further conversations on the topic. My friends were missing the point: this visit was going to happen.
Other friends did understand and asked what I
thought about organizing a protest. I said, “We wouldn’t be able to get close
enough to them."
We’d be prevented by security, ours and theirs, and of course, all this would be under the guise of, well, security. As if holding up signs and
showing up and chanting slogans were somehow dangerous activities. (I hope
someone does organize a protest and I turn out to be wrong: that we won't be prevented from taking a stand in view of the two congresswomen.)
Dominating the Jews
I have tried not to think about
it too much, about the women who are to visit: what a chutzpa it is; how there's no way to
bar their entry, these people who are saying my country has no right to exist, and that the Jewish people have no right to self-determination. The dynamic, as set into place by Omar and Tlaib with this forced visit, is to dominate the Jews as Muslims. They are making that happen.
Some have suggested that the trip will open their eyes. Those who suggest this are deluded. The two women are the enemy. The very purpose of the trip is to harm Israel and Israeli Jews. Like President Obama, they will run roughshod over
Jewish and Israeli feelings.
It won't matter how bad it gets. The two will do as they wish, go where they wish to go, because
they, to all intents and purposes, are in charge. They are holding the reins. They reign. The Israeli Jews are infidels.
The public is to understand that the two
representatives are coming to Israel on a fact-finding mission. That is as much as one can glean from media reports. In reality, we know this will not be a fact-finding mission, but a fault-finding mission. The outcome is inevitable.
Keeping Us Off-Guard
It is interesting that no reports have mentioned a firm date on which the two women will arrive. Tlaib's family, according to an anonymous source, say that Tlaib and Omar will arrive on August 22. But the date was not announced or otherwise made public. (There is no doubt a
reason for this. If we don't know the arrival date, the congresswomen can, all the more so, keep us off-guard, simply for the sake of keeping us off guard.)
This is how the visit will go down: The women will assent to see the usual sights, tour Yad Vashem; take
the helicopter ride that shows our slender waistline; and view the threats that surround
us. Instead of being wowed over, when they make their statements to the press, the congresswomen will say something
like: “No one denies the tremendous accomplishments of Israel or the sufferings of the Jewish people, and still, Palestinians have a right to self-determination and a state of their own, in Israel."
"In Israel" is Code
"In Israel," in this context, is code for "all of Israel," and the suggestion is that Israel, in any shape or form is illegitimate, as the only indigenous people of the territory are the "Palestinian" Arabs. This is the latest talking point that progressives will be spouting in America after this trip: the main takeaway.
The talking point is of course, untrue. Jews can trace their heritage in the Land of Israel back to before Mohammed was born, and before there was an Arab people. The Arabs are indigenous to Saudi Arabia, perhaps. But not to Israel.
No matter. This will be the new line to regurgitate, what
everyone will be saying ad infinitum: "No one denies these things, but still, Palestinians, and so forth." Lather, rinse, repeat.
This dishonest narrative will be amplified by the media and accepted by the people, most of all by progressive JINO parrots who cannot think for themselves.
No Recognition for Jews as Indigenous
One thing is certain: during the press conference to be, there will be no recognition by
the congresswomen of the Jewish people as the indigenous people of the
territory. There will be no lip service to the fact that Arabs in Judea and
Samaria have self-rule and freedom of movement within their territory, as so
do the Arabs in Gaza. The two congresswomen will pretend that Arabs have the same rights as the Jews to the territory that is Israel and the same rights to a state. That state, of course, can only be "in Israel."
If we have a voice as citizens of Israel, it is at the voting booth, our medium the ballot. In allowing these women to enter the country, Bibi will be breaking the Entry Law. This law says that anyone who actively supports BDS must be stopped from coming into our country, Israel.
At the highest level, our elected officials are expected to uphold the law. The law expresses the values of our society; realpolitik be damned. This bypassing of the law is something we should all keep in mind come September at
the polls, no matter how it would have looked, had Bibi turned the two women away.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Of course, no one is praising Israel for the move.
The criticism of Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh is more interesting than perhaps he realizes.
He said, "the terms A, B and C no longer exist because Israel has violated the Interim Oslo Agreement , And we do not need permission from the occupying power to build our homes on our territory."
If Israel is the occupier, then legally the residents of the territory do indeed have to get permission to build homes from the military government. By definition, in a belligerent occupation, the military government is the government entrusted with upholding and maintaining the existing laws in the territory, although it can add additional rules for security purposes under the Geneva Conventions.
When Shtayyeh says that Palestinians have the right to build anywhere in the territories, he is saying that the land is not legally occupied - but disputed.
Which has been Israel's legal position since 1967!
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
17 years ago today a bomb was detonated in the Hebrew University cafeteria in Jerusalem murdering 9 people, including five American citizens, and injuring over 80 others. This attack was one of many terror attacks carried out by the same terrorist cell.
Six Palestinians were convicted of the crime and sentenced to multiple life sentences. Since their arrests, the Palestinian Authority has rewarded the imprisoned terrorists paying them no less than 4,371,100 shekels ($1,257,259).
Among the convicted terrorists for this and other attacks were Adballah Barghouti - serving 67 life sentences, one for each of the victims he murdered - and Ibrahim Hamed - serving 54 life sentences, one for each of the victims he murdered. Through June 2019, the PA cumulatively paid them 1,271,000 shekels ($339,862) and continues to pay them thousands of shekels per month.
The other four terrorists - Wael Qassem, Wassim Abbasi, Alla Aldin Abbasi and Muhammed Odeh - were residents of Jerusalem, entitling them to a salary supplement of 300 shekels/month. Each of them has been paid over 770,000 shekels ($220,733) since their arrest in August 2002. Each of them is currently receiving 7,300 shekels ($1,951) per month.
Despite its (self-inflicted) financial crisis, since the beginning of 2019 alone, the PA has cumulatively paid the terrorists almost 300,000 shekels ($86,000).
The PA obligated itself to pay monthly salaries to imprisoned terrorists when it passed the Law of Prisoners and Released Prisoners in 2004. The exact amount paid is set in regulations passed by the PA government (see chart below). Mahmoud Abbas has twice raised the salaries the PA pays to the imprisoned terrorists.
Today 17 years ago, Palestinian terrorists cynically chose a university cafeteria as the site for their latest bombing. The cafe of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University - which teaches Arabs & Jews equally - was torn apart. 9 people died in the carnage, 100 were injured. We remember.🕯 pic.twitter.com/8fIrQBQFw2
President Trump has been given the clearest notice that his deal of the century will be stillborn if he designates any role for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in its implementation.
In a remarkable outburst that can best be described as his “suicide note”– PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declared on 25 July: “I reiterate that we will not surrender, we will not coexist with the occupation and we will not deal with the deal of deal of the century, or the slap of the century or the deal of shame - all names for one title. Palestine and Jerusalem are not for sale and bargain. They are not a real estate deal in a real estate company.”
Yet for the last 25 years the PLO – aided and abetted by Jordan – has refused to yield its claim to sovereignty over every square meter of West Bank real estate – when compromise could possibly have resolved the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict.
Two days prior to Abbas’ suicide note , the US Congress in a rare show of bipartisanship had offered the PLO a lifeline to enable it to negotiate with Israel on Trump’s yet-to-be-released proposals – overwhelmingly passing House Resolution 246 by a vote of 398-17 with 5 voting ‘present’.
Resolution 246: Urged: Israelis and Palestinians to return to direct negotiations as the only way to achieve an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
...Reaffirmed: its strong support for a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in two states – a democratic Jewish State of Israel, and a viable, democratic Palestinian state – living side-by-side in peace, security, and mutual recognition.
48 hours later Abbas’s suicide note had trashed Congress’s Resolution.
So where to from here?
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Friday, August 02, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
