Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, October 27, 2019

J-Street's panel on antisemitism excused - and even allowed - antisemitism

J-Street's conference had a panel on "Fighting Anti-Semitism and its Weaponization in American Politics."

Already by equating antisemitism with its supposed "weaponization" (which exists but is not nearly as big an issue,) the panel was doomed from the start from seriously looking at the problem.

The panelists were:

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights (Moderator)
Peter Beinart, Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York
Maya Berry, Executive Director, Arab American Institute
Haile Soifer, Executive Director, Jewish Democratic Council of America
Eric Ward, Executive Director, Western States Center

The entire discussion was naturally about antisemitism on the Right. It is a real problem, but not the way it was framed here. Haile Soifer wasted no time in attacking Donald Trump, the only president who has a Jewish daughter and grandchildren. She claimed falsely that he excused the white supremacists in Charlottesville, and she claimed that he failed to condemn antisemitism ever (although she accidentally said "condone.") She also claimed that the white nationalists who have attacked blacks and Jews in the US all were aligned with Trump, when they almost all hated him because he was too philosemitic.

I do not disagree that Trump has said things that embolden racists in the US. There is plenty to criticize him for in dividing the nation. (It is not so clear that the number of racist incidents increased under Trump, when the 2018 FBI hate crimes statistics are released we'll have a better idea. 2017 showed a marked increase but also many more agencies were added to the reporting compared to 2016, so the data sets may not be comparable.) But when you criticize him, do it accurately.

Peter Beinart said "I agree with everything [Haile] said." So, truth is certainly not something that this J-Street panel prizes.

Beinart also said, to applause, that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, but his reasoning was quite bizarre:

"The vast majority of Palestinians are anti-Zionist...The Palestinian experience with Zionism has been a very bitter, painful, traumatic experience. You do not have to be an antisemite...to be in solidarity with the Palestinian experience...Any definition of antisemitism that dehumanizes and silences Palestinians is not a response to bigotry - it is an expression of bigotry."

Would Beinart say that Jews who say that there is no room for Palestinians to have any political power in the region are not bigots? Of course not. But Palestinians who say that Jews have no right to live in the region as anything but second class citizens - which is the standard and mainstream Palestinian position - cannot be called antisemitic because that would "silence" them!

Sorry, Peter, antisemitism's definition is not dependent on whose feelings it might hurt. Arab and Muslim antisemitism is a thing, as much as you don't want to admit it. Saying that the Jews are not a people - the official PLO position! - is antisemitic. Saying that they do not have the right for self-determination in their historic homeland is antisemitic. And having a different standard for what Jews can say about Palestinians and what Palestinians can say about Jews in the area is itself an example of bigotry.

Maya Berry of the Arab American Institute categorically rejected the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism with no dissent from the Jewish panelists:

"The reality is that the definition of antisemitism that was developed for use overseas that has been adopted by some here in the United States ...that they are attempting to use that definition on our college campuses, that is not an acceptable definition of antisemitism. As a result, we're entering in this sort of grey space...[During a time of worries about white supremacist violence] we're trying to decide how much I can criticize the State of Israel before I get labeled a certain thing. I think that's crazy. "

So now we are told by a Muslim that Jews cannot define what antisemitism is because she demands the right to compare Israel to Nazis or say Israeli Jews love to kill children and poison the wells. IHRA has no problem with criticism of Israel, and Berry knows that - but she wants the right to demonize any Jew who supports Israel or to demonize the Jewish state for actions that would be considered nothing in every single Arab state.

(I have yet to see a critic of the IHRA definition say which specific examples given there of anti-Zionist antisemitism they do not agree with. Because they know that double standards for Israel is in fact antisemitism.)

She also said, "I think one of the biggest mistakes J-Street makes is the position its taken on BDS. [Applause!] Because if you equate the entire movement with antisemitism then the logical conclusion is Rashida [Tlaib] is an antisemite. And that is a problem we should all be very concerned about."

This is after she noted that Jews never considered the previous Muslim members of Congress to be antisemitic, and it is only because Tlaib and Ilhan Omar support BDS that they are considered as such.

This is a mirror of Beinart's argument that if a definition of antisemitism ends up calling someone you like an antisemite, it must be wrong. That is not how definitions work.

(Also, J-Street does not say that BDS is antisemitic.)

Perhaps the most offensive part of the session was a question from a J-Street board member, Victor Kovner, that was itself antisemitic:

"I'd like to ask an easy question about whether white nationalism is rising within the Jewish community....Is it true, that because of policies about Israel, that white nationalism is rising among particularly the ultra-observant community? Is that true? And is it also rising in the Israeli settler movement?"

In other words, are religious Jews the disgusting racists I think they are?

Of course no one called Kovner out for his fairly clear bigotry. Beinart tackled the question but watered it down for public consumption, saying that some Zionists naturally will ally with like-minded political groups, as if Jews are willing to accept right-wing Tree of Life-level Jew-hatred for Israel. But the question revealed much more about how the (mostly elderly) leftist J-Street attendees really think.

In short, it was an antisemitic question that was tolerated at a panel supposedly about antisemitism.

Kovner, a major J-Street fundraiser, described J-Street's goal in a 2008 New York Times article this way: "Candidates would also be able to use the group’s endorsements as a shield against accusations that they were anti-Israel."

Does this sound like someone who loves either Israel or Jews?

This panel was a disgrace for a supposedly Jewish, pro-Israel organization that pretends to care about antisemitism.

(h/t Daled Amos)

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.

10/27 Links: Trump announces death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: He died like a dog; Islamic State leader’s death is important, but not a game changer; Gaza death cult celebrates the anniversary of the Qassam Rocket

From Ian:

Trump announces death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: He died like a dog

US President Donald Trump delivered a special announcement on Sunday announcing the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a US Special Ops raid, explaining that the success could not have been achieved without the acknowledgement and help of other nations such as "Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iraq."

"The United States has been searching for Baghdadi for many years," Trump began. "He died... whimpering and screaming. The only ones remaining were Baghdadi in the tunnel, and he had dragged three of his young children with him that were led to certain death. He reached the end of the tunnel as our dogs chased him down. He ignited his vest, killing himself and his three children.

"The thug that tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in total fear," Trump continued. "Baghdadi's demise demonstrates... our commitment to the enduring and total defeat of ISIS and other terrorist organizations. Our reach is very long."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated Trump for the killing of Baghdadi, calling it an “impressive achievement.”

Netanyahu, who released a statement within moments of Trump ending his press conference where he announced Baghdadi's killing, said that it “reflects our shared determination – of the United States and all free states – to fight terrorist organizations and terrorist states.”

Netanyahu said that while this was an “important milestone,” the campaign against terrorism is “still in front of us.”

Trump additionally clarified that no US personnel were killed in the operation, though one dog was injured entering the tunnel. He stated that the number of people killed on Baghdadi's end of the operation will be announced in the next 24 hours.

He described watching the operation, which he saw along with Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, and several other military and intelligence officials, as something "like a movie."

"Today's events are another reminder that we will continue to pursue the remaining ISIS terrorists," Trump stated. "That also goes for other terrorist organizations. Baghdadi and the losers who work for him, and losers they are, had no idea what they were getting into. In some cases, they were very frightened puppies; in other cases, hardcore killers. Baghdadi was vicious and violent, and he died in a vicious and violent way; as a coward, running and crying."

Defense Officials Release Shocking Details Of Al-Baghdadi Raid: ‘Six Helicopters,’ ’50-70 Members Of Delta Force’

Defense Department officials are slowly leaking out details of the shocking raid in western Syria that resulted in the death of ISIS mastermind, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — and there may even be video of the exact moment al-Baghdadi detonated his own suicide vest, killing himself and several members of his family so that he couldn’t be taken alive by the American military.

The Daily Mail reports that “between 50 and 70 members of the US Army Delta Force and Rangers flew in on six helicopters and surrounded al-Baghdadi during the overnight raid in Syria’s Idlib province,” per sources.

The attack had been planned for weeks, President Donald Trump told reporters during a press conference Sunday morning, and a special team of soldiers was amassed for the raid. The team knew, based on information from friendly intelligence sources in the area, that al-Baghdadi was “lurking in Syrian border towns, often wearing non-traditional or ‘regular’ clothes, using a civilian car, and making sure anyone around him had no mobile phones or electronic devices in order to bypass detection,” according to Fox News.

Al-Baghdadi arrived at the compound where he ultimately perished a mere 48 hours before the U.S. military’s raid. He was accompanied there by two of his wives and several of his children, all of whom were outfitted with suicide vests.

Islamic State leader’s death is important, but not a game changer

US special forces carried out a high-level raid in Syria against Abu Bakr al-Bahgdadi, killing the elusive Islamic State terror group’s leader. The assassination of Baghdadi is a major symbolic blow to the organization and everything it represents, but its impact must not be overstated. His death does not mean the end of IS.

The organization’s modus operandi will not change dramatically and its operations are more likely to be constrained by larger military and financial issues than by the death of one man. Now, after the disintegration of its territorial empire, the Islamic State is already more of an idea than a concrete reality and, as such, it is expected to continue, in a changed form, to plague the West for years to come.

The big question we should be asking at the moment is what will happen to the larger idea of Salafist jihad? After the death of Osama bin Laden, IS stepped into the newly created jihadist leadership vacuum. The organization ascended to new levels of brutality that surpassed, in many ways, even the tactics employed by the notoriously vicious al-Qaeda.

There are still several other competing jihadist groups, such as Tahrir a-Sham, operating in Syria’s Idlib province, where Baghdadi was killed. Harried by Syrian and Russian airstrikes, their capacities are limited, and it is more than likely that we will see the ascension of another organization, led by a figure no less charismatic than Baghdadi, that will push a radical agenda, perhaps more extreme than that of IS, if such a thing can be imagined.

With a $25 million US bounty on his head, Baghdadi was the world’s most wanted man, responsible for steering his chillingly violent organization into mass slaughter of opponents, and directing and inspiring terror attacks across continents and in the heart of Europe.

Shifting away from the airline hijackings and other mass-casualty attacks that came to define al-Qaeda, Baghdadi and other IS leaders supported smaller-scale acts of violence that would be harder for law enforcement to prepare for and prevent.

The stupidity of @HRW's Sarah Leah Whitson comparing Gaza to Hong Kong

An amazingly vacuous tweet from a person and organization that we've come to expect such from:

Human Rights Watch sees a similarity between protests in Hong Kong and riots in Gaza?

The goal of the Hong Kong protests is (generally) to move towards independence from China. The goal of the Gaza protests is to destroy Israel - not to build an independent Palestinian state but to invade the independent Jewish state.

Hong Kong demonstrators don't shoot rockets into China. It doesn't start fires with balloons or kites in China. Most of all, they are not controlled by internationally recognized terrorist groups that decide if and where the protesters gather, when, and what activities they will do. Terror groups that decide how many children will approach the fence with Israel and put their lives in danger.

Hong Kong protesters don't have Molotov cocktails (as the PCHR article she links to admits) and guns.

The only comparison between Gaza and Hong Kong is that Gaza could have become a Hong Kong by now if its citizens and rulers wanted to. After Israel's disengagement they could have built a Mediterranean paradise, tourist hub and high tech center - there was no blockade then.

Instead, they decided that they wanted to keep attacking Israel.

This is a very false analogy, but HRW and Whitson have a monomaniacal hate for Israel that trumps all logic.

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.

J-Street likes to pretend that it is pro-Israel and that the people on the Right who claim to be pro-Israel are really anti-Israel by considering parts of the West Bank to be part of Israel in any final status agreement.

But as this excerpt from the J-Street Conference indicates, Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times thinks that any Democratic candidates who are "too" pro-Israel are also "far-Right."

"What I think is interesting is that this is going to be...the first presidential primary where some candidates will pay a price for being too pro-Israel, and that was never a thing before. That could potentially change politics if there is a price to be paid too far-Right as well as being too far-Left."

Even subconsciously, she associates being pro-Israel with the political right and being anti-Israel with the political Left, at an unabashedly anti-Right conference that claims to be "pro-Israel."

And yes, she actually implied that some Democratic candidates were so pro-Israel as to be considered "far Right."

(I have no idea what candidate she has in mind who could remotely be considered "too" pro-Israel to the extent that it would hurt him or her. I certainly haven't seen anyone in the Democratic presidential field who remotely qualifies as such.)

She did preface this by saying that most of the candidates were still sticking to the old "pro-Israel" playbook of supporting our only democratic ally in the Middle East, which (in my impression of what she means) sounded like everyone knows this is just something they have to say even if they don't believe it. I was honestly expecting her to finish that statement with "blah, blah, blah."

The entire video is filled with smug, "we know better than Israel" comments. Similarly, tossing around idiotic statements like the US and Israel are turning "fascist" is regarded as accepted wisdom. J-Streeters position themselves as messianic figures who are the only ones who see the truth and everyone else is simply too dense to recognize their brilliance.

The smugness inspired me to tweet this morning, "Telling Arabs how to act morally is condescending and colonialist. Telling Israelis how to act morally without bothering to ask their side of the story is woke."

The J-Street Conference also includes PLO speakers. Jeremy Ben Ami defended that, and I responded:

I read the PLO positions in the original Arabic. I know very well how they really think. If you think that what they say to a @jstreetdotorg conference is remotely accurate compared to how they speak in Arabic, you are a complete fool. And you are willing to push their lies.
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) October 25, 2019

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.

10/26 Links: Melanie Phillips: Elizabeth Warren and the destruction of the west’s moral compass; Sanders’s presidential campaign selects anti-Semitic comedian as surrogate

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Elizabeth Warren and the destruction of the west’s moral compass

The Democratic presidential hopeful, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, has suggested that she would consider cutting military aid to Israel to force it to halt construction of settlements in the disputed territories.

“It is the official policy of the United States of America to support a two-state solution, and if Israel is moving in the opposite direction then everything is on the table,” she said. To ensure that no one failed to understand her threat, she repeated her final phrase.

Her comment furnished more evidence that Warren resembles British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in her far-left and Israel-bashing views. This threatens to harm not only the sole democratic U.S. ally in the Middle East, but also the interests and security of America itself.

Nevertheless, opposing Israeli settlements and taking the side of the Palestinian Arabs is unlikely to damage Warren’s prospects in broader progressive circles because these are views that they generally share.

This is not merely a divisive policy stance. It also displays a fundamental misconception about the Arab war against Israel that is shared widely within the Jewish as well as non-Jewish world.

At the most obvious level, bashing the settlements is historically and legally wrong.

Israel is entitled to retain and settle these territories twice over. The 1922 Palestine Mandate, whose terms have never been abrogated, gave the Jews alone the right to settle in what is now Israel, the “West Bank” and Gaza. In addition, international law upholds Israel’s right to retain land taken, as it was in 1967, in a war of defense against those who still continue to use it as a landing stage for attacks.

Moreover, the belief that the settlements prevent the creation of a Palestine state that would end the Middle East conflict is transparently false and historically illiterate.

The Palestinian Arabs think all Israel is a “settlement” of squatters with no rights to the land, and they want all of Israel gone. They make this plain in their deeds, their propaganda, and their maps and flags.

Lyn Julius: Buffeted by Egyptian winds of exile

‘There is hatred for everything that is different,’ a friend tells the incredulous young woman, as their world collapses around them in Nasser’s Egypt.

‘Le dernier Khamsin des juifs d’Egypte’ is the novel (in French) which the author Bat Ye’or ( her pen name, meaning Daughter of the Nile) had always wanted to write. Instead the Cairo-born Jewess’s life was thrown off course by her pioneering research into the dhimmi, the subaltern status of Jews and Christians under Islam.

The Hamsin is the hot wind blowing in to Egypt from the Sahara. For the 80,000 Jews of Egypt, riots combine with state-sanctioned persecution to blow this age-old community out of the country, never to return.

The book is written in an impressionistic style but is nuanced and covers all aspects of the exodus. It is heavily autobiographical. Arriving in 1957 as a young refugee in London to study at the Institute Z, Elly ( Bat Ye’or) comes from a well-heeled family. Now she is struggling to survive on a handout of eight pounds a month. Depressed in the cold and the fog, she tries to make sense of what has happened. She is haunted by flashbacks and ghosts from her Egyptian past. Her long-dead, observant relatives are resigned to their fate, but Elly, of a new breed of educated, secular, independent women, can’t accept that Egyptian Jewish life is being wiped out. Elly’s father is burning their family archives lest they be accused of Zionism before their hurried departure. They can’t leave without signing a declaration forfeiting their property.

The storm has been brewing for 100 years. Egyptian nationality was only granted to those who could prove roots going back to 1845.

The Needle

Last month, the world marked the 80th anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Poland and the start of WWII. In Israel, too, this was a big milestone: Kids discussed it at school, academics held conferences at the various universities, newspapers ran articles and editorials. But this wasn’t, of course, always the case in Israel. For years, the war—and the Holocaust—were taboo topics. European Jews, many Israelis felt, had gone to the camps like sheep to the slaughter, without resisting, without putting up much of a fight.

Then that perception changed, almost overnight, as a result of one major event: the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann. Every other Israeli, it seems, claims to have been connected to that heroic operation. But for years, one man who actually was at the heart of the covert kidnapping did all he could to erase himself from the history books. Gregory Warner and Daniel Estrin bring us the complicated story of Dr. Yonah Elian, the anesthesiologist who sedated one of the world’s most notorious Nazis. Today’s episode comes from Rough Translation, an NPR podcast that tells stories from around the world that offer new perspectives on familiar conversations.

10/25 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Trump, Israel and the Democratic crackup; Palestinian Advocacy Group Touring US Has Ties To Terrorist Organization; Exposé: Antisemitism at Columbia/Barnard

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Trump, Israel and the Democratic crackup

In March, when the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) held its annual policy conference, the Democratic presidential candidates opted not to attend. This weekend, five Democratic presidential hopefuls will participate in J Street's national conference.

And they aren’t alone. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are also scheduled to address the J Street audience. J Street’s ability to draw top Democrats, including the presidential candidates who refused to attend the AIPAC conference, makes clear just how comfortable the Democratic leadership has become with their party’s sharp turn away from Israel. This weekend the top Democrats will publicly identify with an organization whose easily discerned purpose is to water down and undermine the US-Israel alliance.

Then too, last weekend two top Democratic presidential candidates, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Mayor Pete Buttigieg indicated they supported using US military aid to Israel as a means to coerce the Israeli government into denying the property rights of Israeli Jews in Judea, Samaria and unified Jerusalem. In July, their fellow leading presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) expressed a similar position.

These statements are noteworthy for two reasons. First, they show how ridiculous the impeachment hearings are. There is no substantive difference between Trump’s alleged use of US military assistance to Ukraine as a means to coerce Ukraine to bow to his will and their intention to use US military aid to Israel to achieve a similar outcome. But of course, Warren, Buttigieg, and Sanders are coddled by the partisan media and left untouched by the bureaucracy. And Trump is being subjected to an impeachment probe.

The second noteworthy aspect of their threated action is what it means for the future of US-Israel ties in a post-Trump America. With the Democrats in the media and the federal bureaucracy now full partners in their party’s radical actions and initiatives, there is every reason to expect that after they finish with Trump, they will turn their attention to Israel.

Progressive Jewish Americans and the legitimacy of Zionism

In a column titled, “I Was Protested at Bard College for Being a Jew,” Batya Ungar-Sargan, a liberal Zionist and the Opinion Editor of The Forward, a paper that is decidedly to the left, was targeted by progressive anti-Zionists because the panel was comprised of three Jews, including the esteemed Ruth Wisse of Harvard University.

She said the university had no plans to stop “what was fixing to become an ugly disruption of Jews trying to discuss anti-Semitism.” What shocked her more was the support of the academics and intellectuals in the audience who “applauded” the blatantly anti-Semitic disruption. “These vaunted intellectuals, flown in from across the country … were commending a display of racism against Jews,” she wrote.

Welcome to a world where far-left progressives find commonality with far-right fascists.

Unlike liberal Zionists of the 20th century, many 21st-century progressives attending our leading universities learned that Israel’s founding was the original sin of the Middle East, the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Arab minority by the interloping Jewish Zionist.

As New York Times columnist and author of How to Fight Anti-Semitism Bari Weiss wrote, “Where once only Israel’s government was demonized, now it is the Jewish movement for self-determination itself” that is delegitimized.

Israel, a nation whose existence is dedicated to a particular people, is an anathema to the universalism of the progressive intellectual, whose dream is a globalized world of universal values, and a distorted understanding of human rights and social justice.

Why Israel is singled out to be the only country whose very existence offends progressives – who seem to ignore other religiously or ethnically dominated states whose actions are far more egregious than Israel’s imperfect democracy – raises troubling questions.

Southern Poverty Law Center Adds Pro-Israel Evangelical Group to Hate List

The evangelical organization Proclaiming Justice to The Nations (PJTN) has recently been placed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups.

PJTN’s main goal is to fight anti-Semitism through encouraging state legislators to act against anti-Semitism and BDS. But the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) added the group, which is headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee, to its hate group list.

This could result in the US Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) adding PJTN personnel to the national no-flight list.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president and founder of PJTN, commented: “If being pro-Israel and against anti-Semitism is now considered a hate crime, I will wear the SPLC listing as a badge of honor. Placing Proclaiming Justice to The Nations alongside bigots and Nazis minimizes the true meaning of hate. In reality, PJTN is on the front lines fighting against anti-Semitism on a daily basis. We will continue to fight hate through our thousands of PJTN Watchmen around the globe. Our answer to this absurd listing will be to open more PJTN chapters in America and fight harder to have anti-Semitism defined and confronted throughout the free world.”

But according to SPLC, the pro-Israel group was added to the list because of its anti-Muslim statements: “Anti-Muslim groups remain a force in the US with Donald Trump and important administration members as allies in the White House,” SPLC explains.

It's time for @CodePink Follies in Iran! (Featuring @ArielElyseGold!)

The pseudo-progressive group Code Pink is in Iran, and they are so happy to be there!

Unfortunately for them, their tweets and blog entries show what idiots they are.

For example, on day 2, they visited a mosque. Of course these progressive women were very happy to bring bedsheets to cover themselves up as much as possible so as not to offend their liberal hosts, while the men could be bareheaded and in shirtsleeves.

So feminist!

By way of contrast, when they visited the Western Wall in Israel, they didn't really take religious sensibilities into account:

In Israel, the are free to protest Israel. In Iran, they are free to protest - Israel.

But that's who Code Pink is. They pretend to care about human rights and feminism, but they are very selective as to whose rights they want to protect. And if visiting Iran means they must cover up, who are they to argue?

On day 2 they also visited the US Den of Espionage Museum, where they were treated to posters like this one implying Jews control America:

The group's reaction to hate and antisemitism? Wide smiles:

On Day 3, their diarist noted that they were pretty much prisoners the entire trip:

I need to share with you that we have phenomenal guides, always looking out for us, always ready with answers to my innumerable questions, and treating us, each in their own individual way, like family. They truly are a fine imitation of helicopter parents, hovering over us, and telling us mainly what not to do! I cannot say enough about their professionalism, competence and caring.

In other words, they couldn't wander over to talk to ordinary people without their "guides" approving. Who employs their "guides?" It isn't them!

Prolific tweeter Ariel Elyse Gold was ecstatic over what she believed was a synagogue:

Um, no. This is a Shiite Alam, from a tradition of Shiite metalwork.

Gold, who loudly uses her Jewishness to justify her anti-Zionism, doesn't even know what a menorah looks like.

The term "useful idiots" has rarely been more appropriate.

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.

10/25 Links Pt1: 25 years on, Israel and Jordan ignore peace treaty anniversary; Israeli Security Officials Warn of Looming Iranian Threat; Arms Embargo on Iran Due to Expire in 2020

From Ian:

Colder than ever: 25 years on, Israel and Jordan ignore peace treaty anniversary

Twenty-five years ago, on October 26, 1994, Israel and Jordan ended decades of enmity and bloody wars when they signed a “Treaty of Peace” in the Arava Valley on the Israeli side of the border.

The next day, before King Hussein flew back to Amman, his Royal Jordanian plane, escorted by Israeli F-15 jets, circled over Jerusalem several times. The king and his wife were said to have been very moved as they looked at the Old City from above.

Nearly five years later, in January 1999, the king visited Israel again, and when he left, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to honor the monarch by having two Israel Air Force fighter planes escort his aircraft in what the Foreign Ministry at the time called “a special salute fly-past.”

Royal visits have long since stopped, and so have grand gestures celebrating the bilateral relationship.

Netanyahu is again prime minister, but a quarter century after the historic peace agreement between the Jewish state and the Hashemite Kingdom was signed neither country is doing anything remotely significant to celebrate the historic milestone.

Among the Jordanian public, the so-called Wadi Araba Treaty was always largely regarded with resentment and suspicion. “It is a cold peace, and our relationship is getting colder,” Hussein’s son and heir King Abdullah II acknowledged in an interview 10 years ago.

But even Israel, where the accord is widely appreciated, and where the government often cites its peace with the Hashemite Kingdom as a blueprint for future interest-based agreements with other Arab states, has not organized any events to mark the anniversary.

Book Review: Spies in the Basement

The prime minister’s chief of staff asked me to mark off Oct. 26. “Leave it free. Don’t make any appointments that day,” he instructed.

“It’s a long time off,” I said. “The Messiah might arrive between now and then.”

“Did you hear what I said?” his voice bellowed, and Halevy added that just as I had kept silent in London, so must I seal my lips now. “Not a word to your wife or friends, Be’er,” Haber commanded.

Chapter 4. A few months later the news arrived with great fanfare: Peace with Jordan! A treaty with the Hashemite Kingdom would be signed at the Arava Valley border crossing on Oct. 26, 1994. The very date Haber had told me to reserve in my diary! Things began to become a bit clearer, but I hadn’t heard a thing from him or his office. At 2 a.m. on the night between the 24th and 25th of October a military police motorcycle screeched to a halt in front of our home, just like in an old thriller. The courier hand delivered an envelope from the prime minister, addressed to my “eyes only,” with a personal invitation to the Peace Treaty ceremony.

Epilogue. Standing by the edge of the stage, before the ceremony began, Efraim Halevy was once again engrossed in whispered conversation with the short, solid, broad-shouldered, mustachioed, Levantine-looking man. The very same man I had seen him with 15 years earlier in the London basement. It was Crown Prince Hassan bin Talal, brother of King Hussein. His back was a bit more stooped, and his hair now had a touch of gray. As soon as I could get Halevy alone I approached him with a warm greeting. He asked why I thought he and Haber had found me worthy of an invitation to this historic event, which capped countless secret meetings held over many years. “Why, indeed?” I answered his question with one of my own, in inimitable Jewish fashion. Halevy answered, “Because on that very day in London you were witness to the first contact between me and Prince Hassan, and on that afternoon at Café Apropos you caught me fresh from my return from Amman where the king and his brother and I settled on the date to sign the peace treaty. Since I didn’t want to inform the prime minister by telephone—everything was still secret, and you know how things leak—I made a date to pass the information via Eitan, who lives near the café. By fate’s guiding hand you were there at the start and also at the finish line. That’s why we thought it was only right to invite you to be here today.”

What Jordan’s plans for Naharayim mean for the Israelis near the border

Although the loss of Naharayim is painful, he has focused on what he considers to be the most important element here – that the peace has held between Israel and Jordan.

“It is a good relationship. We will not allow anyone to harm this relationship. When the ceremonies end and the politicians leave, we will still go out and work in the fields, and the Jordanians farmers will go out and work in their fields,” Grinbaum said.
Both sides will have to work together and share scarce resources, such as water.

“This is the most important thing,” he added. “There is no holiness in the land. Life is much more important than the land.”
Fifty years ago, Jordanians stood on the other side and shot at Israelis. Now the lights twinkle peacefully on the other side at night, he said.
So if leaving Naharayim is the painful price that has to be paid to maintain the peace, he is willing to pay it.

But, he added, there is a cautionary note here for those considering the details of a future peace plan with the Palestinians.
“I believe that the late King Hussein and the late Yitzhak Rabin, both of whom are not with us, when they signed the peace agreement in 1994, they never imagined that after 25 years [Naharayim] would become an issue,” he said.

When it comes to the Trump administration’s “Deal of the Century,” he said, people should ask themselves: If we do a great deal today, who will know what will happen 25 years from now?

“Consider what you sign and with whom,” he said, adding that Naharayim “should be a lesson for all of us.”

Here is Husam Zomlot, the PLO representative in the UK (who calls himself the "Ambassador of Palestine at the UK,") discussing how the Palestinians never wanted a two state solution next to a Jewish state.

Two states, he says, was merely a concession to the international community, but it is not a Palestinian desire. The entire land is solely theirs, and Jews have no rights there.

This is not usually said in English. Usually in English the Palestinians claim they want to live in peace with Israel. But now they are officially admitting that they never even wanted that; their real desire (as polls have shown) is to have a single Arab state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, and the two state idea was merely a stage towards that end.

(This was at the Pearson Global Forum in Berlin earlier this month.)

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.

Earlier this week we reported on the case of a Palestinian man who just completed his conversion to Judaism who was then, on the even of Yom Kippur, arrested and imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority on Yom Kippur and reportedly tortured.

I found two small Israeli NGOs working to help this man. One is B'Tzalmo, which works for equal rights for all concentrating on religious Jews in Israeli courts, and the other is Itim, which works to help people (including converts) navigate through Israel rabbinical bureaucracy.

One would think that this case would appeal to the larger human rights organizations working in Israel - Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, Amnesty International, Rabbis for Human Rights, Yesh Din. All these groups are pro-Palestinian, and here is a Palestinian who is being oppressed simply because of his beliefs.

Yet when B'Tzalmo asked for help from these organizations, they refused.

These organizations either don't care about human rights, or they don't consider Jews to be fully human.

All they need to do is a single tweet to defend a man who is being persecuted for his beliefs. A Palestinian, no less. Public pressure from any major human rights organization will shame the PA into releasing them.

But they refuse, even when asked.

The hypocrisy of the so called "human rights" community is disgusting.

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.

"Pro-Israel" J-Street releases another poll with laughably biased questions

J-Street released a really unprofessional survey on Democratic voters' attitudes towards Israel and the Palestinians.

The questions are so biased as to be laughable.

For example:

People often talk about being pro-Israel. Do you think someone can be critical of Israeli
government policies and still be pro-Israel?
Total
Yes.........................................................................................81
No ..........................................................................................13
(Don't know/refused) ..............................................................5

I'm actually surprised at the 13%. Every thinking person, right or left, agrees that someone can be critical of Israeli policies and still pro-Israel. J-Street, of course, is critical of virtually every Israeli government policy. If they would have asked "Do you think someone can have thousands of anti-Israel tweets and not a single pro-Israel tweet, and still be pro-Israel?" then the answer would not have pleased them, because that is what J-Street is.

Similarly, J-Street worded this question not to illuminate but to pretend that their opinions are mainstream, asking whether voters would be more likely to choose "A candidate who says he or she strongly supports Israel, and the United States must stand behind all of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's policies." Who thinks that?

Here's another loaded question that proves that J-Street themselves have no idea why anyone should support Israel:

Please tell me which statement comes closest to your own point of view, even if neither is exactly right.
1.The United States should act as a fair and impartial broker in order to achieve a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.
2. The United States should side with Israel during peace negotiations because Israel is our democratic ally and needs our support against a world that isolates them.

Is that the only reason why Americans support Israel?

Why didn't J-Street try this statement?

The United States should side with Israel because Israel shares American liberal values, giving rights to minorities, women and LGBT who are oppressed in Arab countries. Israel has offered to live in peace with its Arab neighbors multiple times yet the Palestinians have rejected every single plan. An "even handed" approach rewards Palestinian intransigence.

How would liberals answer that one? After all, only one side has liberal values and has shown a real desire for peace - but J-Street will never point that out.

The fact is that J-Street knows that most respondents don't know squat about the Middle East so it phrases questions to lead the ignorant to the conclusions they want.

While 61% of the respondents said that they followed news about Israel "very" or "somewhat" closely, only 9% said that they were very familiar with what BDS was about. If you don't know what BDS is, you aren't following the news. Meaning that the vast majority of Democratic voters do not follow the Middle East closely at all, but they think they know what they are talking about.

J-Street uses this ignorance to create a poll that provides the answers they pre-determine within the questions themselves.

Professional pollster Steve Miller called this "shitty polling and incoherent questions."

In the annals of shitty polling and incoherent questions lies this slide https://t.co/pvYnJGrsoN
— Steve Miller (@SteveMiller202) October 22, 2019

Why did J-Street release this poll, taken in May, now? Because it wants to use the results to pretend that it is mainstream ahead of its conference next week. The poll is meant to do one thing only: to make J-Street look good.

Anyone who reports on the poll as if it actually reflects reality is ignorant or knowingly deceptive.

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.

10/24 Links Pt2: Seth Mandel: Disempowered; Messi, Argentina’s national soccer team to play in Israel in November; NYU Panel Seeks To Delegitimize Jewish History

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Disempowered

Review of 'The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir' by Samantha Power

It surprised no one, least of all U.S. intelligence agencies. As Joby Warrick reported in the Washington Post the following week, “U.S. spy agencies recorded each step in the alleged chemical attack, from the extensive preparations to the launching of rockets to the after-action assessments by Syrian officials.” The administration had no doubt now, and no plausible deniability either.

Obama was now convinced he had to strike Syria. But he had a problem of his own making: UN inspectors were on the ground. So the president waited. And as he waited, he got cold feet and started looking for a way out. He chose to put the matter in the hands of Congress—he needed no authorization for strikes, he said, but wouldn’t strike without congressional say-so. No real strategy to persuade even Democrats in Congress was set forth. And there was, Power writes, no Plan B.

In the end, Obama’s desperation to be bailed out of action led him to agree to a joint U.S.-Russian plan to rid Syria of the chemical weapons. It was a sham. Assad hid some weapons from inspectors and continued bombing civilians with chemicals that were left off the list. Obama rewarded Assad and Vladimir Putin by ceding them the playing field conclusively. Power looks back on one administration meeting after the August chemical attacks:

What I did not know in that Saturday meeting was that this would end up being the only time Obama would seriously contemplate using military force against the Assad regime. We would have countless meetings and debates on Syria over the next three and a half years, but he would never again consider taking the kind of risk he had been prepared to bear in the immediate aftermath of the August 21st attack.

And why wouldn’t he ever again consider it? Because he had undertaken to strike a deal with Assad’s patron in Tehran and to reorganize American alliances to allow Iran and Russia to fill the vacuum of U.S. influence in the region, a vacuum that Obama specifically aimed to create. As Frederic Hof, a U.S. envoy to Syria in 2012, put it: “To complicate the ability of Iran’s man in Syria to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity would have placed at risk nuclear negotiations aimed ultimately at dissolving American relationships of trust and confidence with key regional powers.”

Power never realized that she wasn’t there to be heeded. Rather, she was there to be silenced. Obama’s conduct of U.S. foreign policy required the coopting of his critics. He found a way to let the world burn without running afoul of Samantha Power’s network of interventionist scolds: Make Power the public face of doing nothing.

Book review: A respectable fig leaf

A key problem is denialism. As Stellman points out, “Anti-Zionists are very sensitive when charged with antisemitism.” Anti-Zionists protest their revulsion against all forms of racism and, in an ironic twist, accuse their accusers of conspiring against them “to shut down criticism of Israel.”

What is astonishing is that this transparent ruse, itself utilizing an antisemitic trope, appears to have worked. At a recent Intelligence Squared debate in London, the motion that “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism” was defeated by a margin of 4-1. Those who applaud that result will be discomfited to read Kaplan and Small’s landmark 2006 study of 5,000 citizens in 10 European countries. Stellman quotes their important finding of a direct statistical correlation between anti-Israel rhetoric and antisemitism: “Even after controlling for numerous potentially confounding factors...anti-Israel sentiment consistently predicts the probability that an individual is antisemitic.”

The sickness that lies at the heart of the current assault on Israel’s legitimacy is laid out in forensic detail by Stellman’s dispassionate, methodologically rigorous approach. The result is this little volume packed with valuable – if often depressing – information presented in a way that activists and scholars alike should find compelling. The short chapters are easy to read, aided by bullet points and a comprehensive index. The final section contains a set of tools specifically designed for use by trainers and educators.

Some of Stellman’s assertions will elicit controversy: is there really any practical difference between “political” and “anti-Israel” anti-Zionism? Both have the same ultimate objective. And are statements lacking nuance, such as “Islam is basically an expansionist religion” and that “Muslims must wage a ‘Jihad’, a ‘Holy War’, until the whole world becomes “Dar al-Islam” appropriate in a text that explores (among other issues) religiously inspired hatred of one group by another?

The evidence for the central thesis of the book – that anti-Zionsim and antisemitism are closely interlinked – is overwhelming. This is an observation with major implications for the discourse around the Arab-Israeli conflict, yet it is one that is rarely discussed or even acknowledged by allegedly “expert” commentators, academics, politicians, NGOs and the media. That lacuna of awareness represents an existential threat to the future of Israel (and, by extension, the Jewish people) and, in consequence, the prospects for peace.

This handbook is an important contribution to the scant but growing literature on anti-Zionism. Stellman has formulated an important response to that vacuum of serious academic thought. In any future edition (and I gather that the Stellman is planning a follow-up book containing new material), it would be helpful to the reader if the author could add a section by tying together the disparate threads of his argument into a small number of key conclusions. Ideally, these would be linked to a series of recommendations as to how activists might develop practical and effective strategies for countering the anti-Zionist threat to Israel, Jews and civilized norms everywhere.

Talk about Anti-Semitism at a College Campus, and the Anti-Semites Will Show Up

At a conference held at Bard College two weeks ago on the subject of “racism and anti-Semitism,” a group of protesters—organized by Students for Justice in Palestine—attempted with some success to disrupt a talk by Ruth Wisse and two (Jewish) discussants. (Wisse, known for speaking her mind forcefully against campus anti-Semitism, thanked the protestors for “providing a demonstration” of the topic at hand.) Administrators and security did little to stop the demonstrators.

While such scenes are hardly remarkable in today’s universities, more notable was the flood of indignant denials from conference participants that followed an article by one of the discussants, Batya Ungar-Sargon, describing what happened. The indignation, perhaps, stemmed from Ungar-Sargon’s willingness to label the demonstrations anti-Semitic. Shany Mor, a professor at Bard and the third participant on the panel, defends Ungar-Sargon’s account and exposes the feeble excuses for the thuggish behavior of the students:

The protest was only against Wisse, I was told repeatedly, even though flyers against all three of us were distributed. This was the reception controversial speakers should expect, I was told, even though there were many far more controversial speakers at the conference. But this is a liberal campus, I was told, and the reception was always going to be worse for controversial speakers from the right than from the left. This was doubly odd, as neither Ungar-Sargon nor I can be fairly imagined as being on the right by anyone’s imagination.

And, while many of the more provocative lectures were not terribly provocative to a left-liberal audience, [others] were. There was a panelist who argued that black underachievement was not due to racism but to fathers. There was a panelist arguing that “chosenness” had distorted Jewish political thought and as such infected later European thought on colonialism. . . . . There was a panelist who argued that certain African and Asian countries might have been better off had they remained under European colonial rule. . . . Some had difficult questions from the audience; many didn’t even have that. None was protested.

This is what makes [one Bard professor’s] claim that the demonstration was motivated by nothing more than the fact that the three panelists “espouse political opinions with which the students disagree” so outrageous. It’s understandable that this is what he might want believe, but it’s verifiably false. The three of us up there on that stage actually have radically different political views from each other, and radically different views on the issue in question at that session. This would have been apparent had a civilized discussion taken place.

The horseshoe (cartoon)

It has been note that the left and right do not exist on the opposite sides of a straight line, but on each prong of a horseshoe, where they get close to meeting at the extremes.

Here's the horseshoe.

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.

All Knesset Parties Reaffirm Support For/From Sex Offenders As Long As Expedient (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Jerusalem, October 24 - Every delegation to the Knesset restated its acceptance of pedophiles, abusers, polygamists, and other criminals among their backers and decision-makers today, promising to maintain ties and curry favor with such persons unless and until public attention to such relationships renders those ties politically problematic.

Fractured polity notwithstanding, each of the nine factions in Israel's parliament gave its unanimous imprimatur to a statement underlining their individual and collective commitment to sex offenders, whether those offenders occupy prominent positions within the parties, make significant funding contributions thereto, or otherwise wield electoral influence, at least as long as the nature of those individuals' behavior and their relationships to their respective political parties of choice attract negative attention in measures beyond which such relationships will do the party in question more electoral harm than good.

Sex offenders around the country hailed the move, which they characterized as a crucial measure at a time when those who exploit vulnerable victims for lustful satisfaction or for a sense of power face increasing isolation and threats to their continued political influence. "I understand that certain social taboos prevent a full-throated endorsement of our demographic, but we welcome this announcement just the same," stated Rabbi Eliezer Berland, whose endorsement Haredi politicians often seek. "I, for one, commend [Minister of Health and United Torah Judaism MK Yaakov] Litzman for his steadfastness in ignoring the pernicious influence of the wider secular culture that automatically disqualifies a person from public life when credible reports emerge of his sexual misconduct, instead of waiting for the eventual reestablishment of the Sanhedrin to adjudicate such cases and in the meantime acting as if nothing is wrong."

Berland was not alone in singling out Litzman for praise. Malka Leifer, whose extradition Australian authorities have sought so that she may face child sexual abuse charges there, voiced confidence that the minister would continue to frustrate efforts to bring her to justice. "It's a community issue," she explained. "I'm Haredi; he's Haredi; we're in this together, no matter how horrific the things I might have perpetrated or abetted."

Joint List parties expressed appreciation for authorities continuing to ignore the flagrant polygamy of one of its legislators, and the Democratic Union hailed the mainstream media's curious lack of curiosity regarding Ehud Barak's documented associations with the late pedophile and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein; Likud MKs joined their colleagues in showing solidarity with sex offenders, but several privately conveyed regret that no prominent figures from the party's present composition number among the ranks of those with problematic peccadilloes. "[Former President Moshe] Katzav is already out of jail - he's ancient history," lamented one. "We don't have anyone who can compete with the other parties on this front right now, regardless of Bibi's corruption cases."

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.

10/24 Links Pt1: Hillel Neuer: Another UN blow to human rights; UN Palestinian rights official calls for ban on Israeli settlement products; Turkey’s Pyrrhic victory in Syria

From Ian:

Hillel Neuer: Another UN blow to human rights

In total, as of Jan. 1 more than half of council members will be non-democracies.

Does it matter that the world’s highest human-rights body is being subverted?

It does. The council’s pronouncements and reports are translated into multiple languages and influence the hearts and minds of millions worldwide.

Dictators on the council will continue to ensure that most of the world’s worst abusers enjoy impunity. Violators like China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia have never been the object of a single resolution, urgent session or commission of inquiry.

Instead, Israel is repeatedly singled out for condemnation, the only country targeted under a special agenda item at every meeting. Hamas terrorism is ignored.

Dictators will also make sure to appoint more anti-Western figures like Jean Ziegler, the longest-serving council official, who openly defends the Maduro regime. In 1989, he announced the creation of the Moammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize, which over the years was awarded to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and, in 2002, to Ziegler himself.

After Moammar Khadafy’s Libya was elected to the council in 2010, Swiss foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey defended the choice, saying it was “important to keep a dialogue” in order to “improve the human-rights situation across the world.” Yet after regimes like Russia, China and Cuba served on the council for a decade, their repression only got worse.

Sadly, for the foreseeable future at the United Nations, the inmates will be running the asylum.

Dictators will appoint more scoundrels like Jean Ziegler—the longest-serving council official—who defends the Maduro regime. In 1989 he co-founded the Qaddafi Human Rights Prize, awarded to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and, in 2002, to Ziegler himself. pic.twitter.com/cKsjkOyLEE
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 24, 2019

UN Palestinian rights official calls for ban on Israeli settlement products

The UN independent expert on human rights in the Palestinian territories on Wednesday called for an international ban on all products made in Israeli settlements, as a step to potentially end Israel’s 52-year-old “illegal occupation” of the West Bank.

Michael Lynk, the Special Rapporteur on Palestinian territories, told the General Assembly’s human rights committee Wednesday that the international community should also issue “a clarion call to the United Nations” to complete and release a database “on businesses engaged in activities related to the illegal settlements.”

Lynk said the international community has a responsibility and a legal obligation to compel Israel to completely end its occupation and remove barriers to self-determination for the Palestinians.

Israel is deeply opposed to a Palestinian-led international boycott movement, which it views as an attack on its very existence. Supporters of the boycotts say they are a non-violent way of protesting Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

The UN Human Rights Council has repeatedly delayed the release of a controversial report about companies doing business in Israeli settlements, which was originally to be published in 2017.