Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 07, 2019

Leftist antisemitism that pretends to be anti-racism is still antisemitism, @MairavZ

What do you call it when someone insults a group of people when the only thing known about them is they are religious Jews?

Next week, a group of religious Jews - we only know the name of the organizer, Lazer Scheiner of Monsey - is holding a luncheon in honor of President Trump. The official reason given is to thank him for what he has done for the Jewish community. Even though it is not officially a fundraiser, it is rumored to raise millions of dollars for his re-election campaign - the cost to attend is reportedly $25,000 a seat.

The reason given for the event when it was floated in July was the strengthen the connection between the president and the religious Jewish community in America.

This sort of thing happens all the time.

But when Orthodox Jews are the people bhind it, antisemitism cannot be far behind - the antisemitism of the Left.

Literally the only thing Zonszein knows about this group is that they are Orthodox Jews. Based on that one fact, she accuses them collectively of a "hardcore JudeoChristian fundamentalist racist ideology."

Calling someone a "racist" in Leftist circles is as insulting as the "N" word. It is the worst insult possible. And it is one that requires no evidence. This is simply an insult to Orthodox Jews as a group. It is nothing less than pure antisemitism.

I highly doubt that the Jews who support Trump believe that he is a poster child for morality, or that he is a religious man. They don't think that his values are congruent with Torah values. As with any other group, they simply want to have influence on US politics. This lunch is nothing more than politics, and this sort of event happens hundreds of times a year from other groups, whether they are Hispanics or pharmaceutical companies.

But Orthodox Jews who act in their own political interest are singled out by the Left as being hardcore fundamentalist racists. They are all lumped together as "whites" who hate people of color. There is not an iota of evidence for this. Their yarmulkas are all the evidence leftists like Zonszein need.

A similar group of Jews, including Scheiner, visited the Pope in 2017. Was that racist as well? He danced with Arab Muslims in Bahrain. Was that racist?

Since a group of visible Orthodox Jews supporting Trump hurts the Leftist talking point of Trump being an antisemite, Zonszein makes the nonsensical addendum that the "racism" of the group "transcends antisemitism." Somehow, the racism of Orthodox Jews is worse than antisemitism, because...well, Jews.

Zonszein has written for the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation and other outlets. This antisemitic bigot is respected by mainstream media.

It is significant that the very people who claim to be most sensitive to bigotry and racism can engage in bigotry like this and not get called out in it from their fellow leftists. This kind of antisemitism is perfectly OK, because it masks itself as anti-racism. That doesn't make it stink any less.

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As the Palestinians continue to go through the motions of planning for an election that will never happen - because Fatah and Hamas will never agree to how it should be done - the PLO is showing that the elections are really an excuse to wrest sovereignty away from Israel, specifically in Jerusalem.

I wrote about this last week, and events are showing it to be true. The PLO is in a full diplomatic offensive demanding that the nations of the world pressure Israel to allow Arabs to vote in Jerusalem.

PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi on Wednesday met with the Slovenian representative to the PA as well as the British consul in Ramallah and she emphasized the importance of holding elections in Jerusalem. Ashrawi "called on Britain to support the elections and to intervene to make them successful and create the right conditions for them, especially in occupied Jerusalem," reports said.

She had a similar meeting on Monday with the Swiss envoy to Ramallah, making the same demands. She frames it as how important elections would be for unity and peace, but tells these diplomats that Israel is the obstacle to the elections because it won't allow them in Jerusalem.

Ashrawi has set the stage for demanding the international community pressure Israel on elections for at least a month.

She has reason to be optimistic. In 2006, after pressure from US President Bush, Israel agreed to allow Jerusalem Arabs to vote at post offices under Israeli police supervision. However, from Israel's perspective, the post offices were areas where Arabs could submit "absentee ballots" and not official polling stations.

Interestingly, most Jerusalem Arabs in 2006 traveled to Palestinian controlled areas to vote, only 6000 voted at Israeli post offices. The 2006 elections shows that voting can happen effectively without Jerusalem.

Obviously, if the elections were the important thing, the Jerusalem issue could be worked around - absentee ballots, allowing Arabs to travel to Areas A and B, or other technical solutions that could ensure any Arab who desires could vote. But the elections aren't what the PLO cares about - taking away any amount of Israeli sovereignty is its overarching goal.

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11/06 Links Pt2: US Jewish umbrella group slams Democratic hopefuls’ calls to leverage Israel aid; Jews lobby non-Jews to browbeat Jews – what do you call that?

From Ian:

Noah Pollak: Leading Democrats Call for Conditioning Military Aid to Israel

The United States could have responded to Arab antagonism by following the European playbook and squeezed Israel for concessions. But American strategists realized the best way to stop the wars wasn't to make Israel feel less secure, but rather to make Israel less defeatable.

The U.S. military aid that started in earnest in the form of an emergency arms resupply during the 1973 war has been perhaps the single-most effective U.S. policy toward the Middle East in the past half-century. With America now in Israel's corner, the Arab states were compelled to abandon the fantasy of wiping the Jewish State off the map. That led to what had previously been unthinkable: Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, and Jordan followed in 1994.

Other benefits to the United States flowed from military aid to Israel: With the Jewish state now fielding advanced U.S. weaponry against Arab states, which were armed with inferior Soviet weapons, regional skirmishes were turned into devastating morale-killers for Moscow. In one air campaign in June 1982, Israeli-piloted F-15s and F-16s shot down 88 Syrian-piloted Soviet MiGs. Israel lost a single F-16. Battles like this clarified for the world which side was likely to prevail in the Cold War.

Today, Gulf Arab states are drawing closer to an increasingly powerful Israel, seeking protection from Iran—another way in which U.S. military aid, which maintains Israel's "qualitative military edge" in the region, is promoting American interests and decreasing the likelihood that the United States will be called upon to directly protect regional allies.

Warren, Sanders, and Buttigieg did not acknowledge this history, or these strategic benefits. Since the progressive activists of the Democratic Party view Israel largely through the lens of the Palestinians, it was only a matter of time before they began to demand that all aspects of the U.S.-Israel relationship be subordinated to the politics of that issue.

US Jewish umbrella group slams Democratic hopefuls’ calls to leverage Israel aid

An umbrella group of more than 50 Jewish organizations from across the ideological spectrum condemned calls by Democratic presidential candidates to condition military aid to Israel on its approach to making peace with the Palestinians.

“We are deeply troubled by recent statements that would place conditions, limitations, or restrictions on the US security assistance provided to Israel, so vital for the defense and security of the country, the protection of essential US interests, and stability in the region,” Arthur Stark, chairman, and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman/CEO, of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations said in a statement issued Friday.

“This approach would harm American objectives in the Middle East and would undermine the ability of our key ally to defend itself against the threats it faces on all its borders.”

Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, along with Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, recently have indicated a willingness to use American aid to force policy changes by Israel regarding the Palestinian conflict, including halting settlement construction.

U.S.-Israel Security Cooperation Is A Win-Win

Not a single American serviceperson needs to be stationed in Israel. Aside from training missions, there have been American soldiers stationed in Israel since 2009, only working with the American/Israeli co-designed X-band radar system — a deployment that helps the U.S. and Israel monitor threats from the east.

Israel’s missile defense capabilities — developed and produced in conjunction with American industry — not only protect Israel from Hamas and Hezbollah missiles, but protect the United States from emerging threats from North Korea and Iran. Various branches of the U.S. military have purchased a variety of Israeli-developed systems and participated in joint development of anti-tunnel defenses, the Arrow Missile Program, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Plane, THEL Laser Program, the Advanced Urban Combat Training Facility, as well as Iron Dome.

Israel has been a partner in U.S. and multi-lateral military exercises for years; interestingly, Israel and the United Arab Emirates flew together in one. Combined exercises have taken place on NATO territory, in the U.S., in Israel (where the Luftwaffe flew above Israeli territory, making a few people blink), and the Pacific Ocean. Not a single country has opted out due to Israel having opted in.

The two countries are drawn together by common values and common threats. The bipartisan support of our ally Israel has been a testament to those values, as well as to the practical recognition that the threats require cooperation in intelligence, technology, and security policy.

The volatility of the Middle East is unlikely to be constrained. The United States, desirous of removing its soldiers from the region even as it understands the risk attendant to a resurgent Russia and increasingly desperate Iran, is as much in need of capable allies now as it ever was. It would be a shame if rampant J Street politicization of the relationship were allowed to do damage.

Halil Mutlu with Omar in September

If Ilhan Omar has her way, all tragedies will be equalized, with none being more supreme than any other. That is the thrust of her influence and voting power on recent resolutions in Congress. There was the October 29th resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide by Ottoman Turks during WWI. On this occasion, Omar offered a rare abstention, in a vote that ran an overwhelming 405-11 in favor of the resolution.

Then there was the March 7^th resolution that was meant to condemn antisemitism, and in specific, remarks by Omar perceived by most to be antisemitic. The vote was supposed to give expression to a more mainstream Democratic Party belief that antisemitism and Omar’s remarks are wrong. Instead, Omar’s name was left out of the final text of the resolution, which many called “watered-down” and which condemned all forms of hatred, including Muslim discrimination.

What happened with the resolution is that instead of being censured, Omar got off, scot-free. And the Democrats showed they’re weaklings made of tissue paper. Omar planned things to come out this way, all the way back to when she said Israel “hypnotized the world,” and “It’s all about the Benjamins.”

Do you know how Omar characterized the “antisemitism” resolution in her statement to the media? She said she was “tremendously proud” of the resolution condemning “Anti-Muslim bigotry.”

“Today is historic on many fronts. It’s the first time we have voted on a resolution condemning Anti-Muslim bigotry in our nation’s history. Anti-Muslim crimes have increased 99% from 2014-2016 and are still on the rise,” said Omar in a joint statement with Rashida Tlaib and Andre Carson.

So there you have it: the resolution to condemn antisemitism turned into a resolution to condemn all hatred. But it didn’t stop there. Today it is a resolution that condemns anti-Muslim bigotry!

In the final draft, moreover, Omar is neither named nor censured.

The effect of this “antisemitism resolution” is to make mainstream the idea that Jews are not special and deserve no category or resolution of their own. If you buy into the “antisemitism resolution,” the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust is not a bigger deal or somehow more significant than that of Muslim suffering in the world today. Or in fact anyone’s suffering at all, at any time in history.

Jews. Are. Not. Special.

Now let’s look at the vote on the Armenian genocide. This was long overdue. But it’s tricky, because Turkey doesn’t like us to talk about its expulsion and murder of some 1.5 million people. They just play the denial game. And the US relationship with Turkey is complicated, delicate.

But everyone knows genocide is bad, (except for Omar, apparently) and so the resolution finally passed in a big way. Explaining her abstention, Omar tweeted:

“A true acknowledgement [sic] of historical crimes against humanity must include both the heinous genocides of the 20th century, along with earlier mass slaughters like the transatlantic slave trade and Native American genocide, which took the lives of hundreds of millions of indigenous people in this country.”

In other words, we can’t talk about a single genocide, without talking about all the other genocides, giving them equal time. Because no one’s tragedy is worse than any other. They are all the same. So if you are wary of Muslims in a world beset by Islamist terror, it’s exactly like the hatred of the Jews that caused the Holocaust. So all hatred? Equally bad. Jews not special. Armenians not special.

Omar's office has sent this statement to CNN explaining her present vote: pic.twitter.com/Gpj198jx0p
— Haley Byrd (@byrdinator) October 29, 2019

Muslims, on the other hand, are maybe a bit more special. Because some animals are more equal than others. We know this because of the September $1,500 donation to Omar’s campaign by top Erdogan ally (and cousin) Halil Mutlu, co-chairman of the Turkish American Steering Committee (TSAC), just one month before the vote on the resolution. Hey, “it’s all about the Benjamins,” so why shouldn’t Omar take money from the Turks to vote against recognition of the Ottoman persecution of the Armenian people?

From the Daily Caller:

“Omar and the activist, Halil Mutlu, were also photographed together at an event for the Turkish American Steering Committee (TASC), a U.S.-based nonprofit that has for years waged public relations campaigns in support of Turkish government policies and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“Mutlu, who Turkish media outlets have reported is Erdogan’s cousin, is co-chairman of TASC, according to the group’s website.

“Founded in 2015, TASC has orchestrated a public relations push to cast doubt on whether the Ottoman empire committed genocide against Armenians more than a century ago.”

There is no doubt that this donation was a kind of bribery. $1,500 is, of course, a modest amount for an abstention on a vote that is important to a Turkey that wants to revise history to save face. But it is still wrong. And no less than we'd expect from someone like Omar. A woman who commits adultery while wearing a hijab.

In addition to seeing the questionable nature of her behavior, we need to realize that nothing Omar does is by accident. Her actions regarding the two resolutions is a concerted plan to minimize the power of seminal events like the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide, by saying they are similar to other instances of bigotry and hatred. In this way, lesser events like the Arab Nakba, rise in importance, while the significance of monumental evils like genocide are diminished.

Omar's careful campaign to neutralize and defuse the power of genocide helps discrimination against Muslims gain traction as a talking point. Once that concept takes hold as valid and justifiable in the eyes of the public, it can serve to move forward progressive political aims such as the elimination of the State of Israel. The tautology works like this: In a Jewish state, Jews are sovereign over the land. This means they are preeminent above Muslims, which makes Israel a discriminatory endeavor that must cease to exist.

As society adopts the fallacy that discrimination against Muslims is bigger than it really is, there's a bonus in it for the cunning Omar and her cadre, too. Omar and her ilk will be watching on with satisfied smiles, as voters race to elect yet more Muslims to positions of power. It's the only thing society can do to correct what they now perceive as a huge societal wrong: anti-Muslim discrimination.

Something Omar would have you know, has been too long shunted aside.
Thanks to Jews and their Holocaust.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Israel is a democracy. We keep hearing this. It is “the only democracy in the Middle East,” as many of us are fond of saying. Lately, it is beginning to seem as though we would be better off with a little less “democracy.”

One election wasn’t democratic enough, so we had another. Now we are headed for the disaster of a third one. But we are very democratic, so apparently we will keep having elections until the "democrats" (small 'd') who want to have a government without Benjamin Netanyahu finally get their way.

I am absolutely certain that if it weren’t for the endless investigations against the PM and the associated leaks to the media, we would have a normal government, with Bibi at its head. A government that would not be perfect, but what coalition is?

But we are democratic. Everyone gets to have their say. The police, who – it has just been disclosed – threatened to ruin the life of one of the key witnesses against Netanyahu if he didn’t agree to turn state’s witness and say what they told him to. The Attorney General, who when asked to investigate the continuous leaks to the media over a period of years concerning the allegations against Netanyahu, as well as the content of confidential police interviews, responded that there was no place (ain makom) to investigate the leakage and punish the leakers. And of course, 90% of the media, which express their opinion that Netanyahu is the illegitimate son of the devil every day – they too, have their democratic rights.

There is plenty to criticize about Netanyahu, especially the fact that he crushes anyone who might be competition for him in his party. His wife is volatile and possibly (although this could just be more slander) has too much influence over his political decisions. His son should keep his mouth shut, both in the presence of disloyal drivers and on Twitter. His security policy, in which Hamas is allowed unlimited liberty to destroy property in the south of the country, has been criticized by many. And Bibi’s been PM long enough.

But what has been done to him by his enemies (mostly his unelected ones) is outrageous. The police and prosecution went on fishing expedition after fishing expedition, and the media gleefully reported every one. “This time he’s going down,” they implied. But he didn’t – and he may not yet, if it turns out that the investigations are poisoned by police and prosecutorial misconduct.

Polls consistently show that more Israelis believe that Bibi should be Prime Minister than his main opponent, Benny Gantz (the most recent one, right before the election, came out 46% vs. 31% for Bibi), and even 25% of Arab citizens prefer him. His right-wing bloc has one more seat in the Knesset than the opposition, and if you don’t count the declaredly anti-Zionist Arab parties, 14 more. But this is a democracy, and most of the TV stations and newspapers don’t like him, nor does the Bar Association (which provides the PM with a list of acceptable candidates for Attorney General, and has a controlling influence on the selection of Supreme Court justices), nor does a majority of academics, artists, and media personalities. They all seem to have votes in addition to the ones they put in the ballot box.

They don’t like him, and this is a democracy, so we need to democratically pick someone else. And we’ll keep democratically trying until ~~they~~ we succeed.

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11/06 Links Pt1: PA: Dead ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi was a US “pawn” and Israel and ISIS are “twins”; Israel says UNRWA chief’s stepping aside shows ‘deep’ change needed; Arab Spring 2.0

From Ian:

David Singer: Rabin’s Policies Can Help Break Gantz-Netanyahu Deadlock

The prospect of a third election in Israel within twelve months looms large – should Blue and White leader Benny Gantz be unable to form a Government of National Unity within the next two weeks.

To break the current deadlock Gantz needs at least nine members to defect from the voting bloc of 55 seats led by Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Gantz’s cause could be considerably advanced were he to publicly endorse the policies pursued by the late Prime Minister – Yitzchak Rabin – who was assassinated on 4 November 1995.

Rabin made his intentions very clear in his last speech to the Knesset on 5 October 1995 when presenting the 300 page “Israeli - Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” (Oslo Accords) for approval:

“Members of Knesset,

“We are striving for a permanent solution to the unending bloody conflict between us and the Palestinians and the Arab states." In the framework of the permanent solution, we aspire to reach, first and foremost, the State of Israel as a Jewish state, at least 80% of whose citizens will be, and are, Jews.

"At the same time, we also promise that the non-Jewish citizens of Israel – Muslim, Christian, Druze and others – will enjoy full personal, religious and civil rights, like those of any Israeli citizen. Judaism and racism are diametrically opposed.

"We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

"We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.
...
Rabin – then Defence Minister – had stated on May 27, 1985:

“The Palestinians should have a sovereign State which includes most of the Palestinians. It should be Jordan with a considerable part of the West Bank and Gaza. East of the Jordan River there is enough room to settle the Palestinian refugees. One tiny State between Israel and Jordan will solve nothing. It will be a time bomb.”

Supporting Rabin’s policies would stand Gantz in good stead as he seeks to form a Government of National Unity and – failing that – in any upcoming election that would hopefully end Israel’s current precarious political situation.

PMW: Dead ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi was a US “pawn” and Israel and ISIS are “twins” - according to the PA

While most of western society saw the death of ISIS leader and arch-terrorist Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi as a positive development in the war on terrorism, the Palestinian Authority chose to outrageously claim that Al-Baghdadi was a US "pawn" and ISIS a US creation - a terror organization only paralleled by Israel.

Muwaffaq Matar, a Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily, presented a venomous PA manifest against the US:
"They [the US] killed their pawn, who they planted in the open borderless territories of Iraq and Syria after they created an organization-state of barbarity, terror, and racism, for which they chose the name 'the Islamic State.'" [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 29, 2019]

But dealing with ISIS is not enough as it only amounts to "cutting off the tail of the monster," Matar stated, arguing that the monster's head - Israel - is yet to be fought:
"[The elimination of Al-Baghdadi] was tantamount to a strong blow that has cut off the tail of the monster of terror. However, this monster has a head, and in it is a brain that is capable of growing a different tail and wings... The occupation, settlement, terror, racism, crimes against humanity, and rebellion against UN laws and conventions have a state. They named it 'Israel' and established it on the land of Palestine, which is the Palestinian people's historical and natural right."

Comparing Israel to ISIS, Matar stated that in practice ISIS and Israel are identical:
"This [ISIS] is an organization that, in regard to its crimes, there is nothing similar to it in the modern history of the region except for a defective, colonialist, settling, occupying, and racist state for which they chose the name 'the State of Israel.' The heads of large states in the world have said that the elimination of Al-Baghdadi is not the end of ISIS' terror - and this is correct! - but not one of them referred to their responsibility and their state's responsibility to drain the greatest, deepest, and most dangerous swamp of terror for the region and the world: the defective and racist State of Israel. We know... that the Muslim Brotherhood organization... is essentially a twin of the Zionist movement."

MEMRI: Chicago Islamic Scholar Omar Baloch: Israel Arms And Trains ISIS, Uses It To Destabilize The Region, Advance Its Plans For 'Greater Israel,' Alienate Muslims From Concepts Of Jihad, Islamic State

Chicago Islamic Scholar Omar Baloch said in a video he uploaded to his YouTube channel on September 11, 2019 that Islamic State (ISIS) is now fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan because "you will always find ISIS in places that are running a Zionist agenda [for] Greater Israel." He said that Israel created ISIS in order to weaken Muslims by alienating them from ideas like an Islamic state, Jihad, and Muslim unity, without which he said Islam would not be the same. Showing pictures of ISIS fighters, Baloch said that the weaponry, uniforms, and training that ISIS has are evidence that it is trained and armed by Israel, and he predicted that Israel will use ISIS to destabilize Pakistan and Kashmir. He added that Israel is "working on Kashmir" by means of India's actions in the region and that Israel intends to do to the Kashmiris what it did do to the Palestinians.

According to the Facebook page of the Furqaan Institute of Quranic Education (FIQE), Sheikh Omar Baloch was born in Chicago and is the scholar in residence at the Al-Furqaan Foundation, of which FIQE is a division. The Facebook page also says that Baloch studied at Georgetown University, at Al-Azhar University in Egypt, at Jamia Thul Ahlul Hadith in Pakistan. For more about Sheikh Omar Baloch, see MEMRI TV Clip No. 7053 Illinois-Based Sheikh Omar Baloch: Islamic Relief Organizations Should Promote the Caliphate as the Long-Term Solution to Humanitarian Problems.

"You Will Always Find ISIS In Places That Are Running A Zionist Agenda, The Agenda For Greater Israel"

Sheikh Omar Baloch: "All of a sudden, guess what? ISIS is in Afghanistan and ISIS is killing Taliban.
[...]
"You will always find ISIS in places that are running a Zionist agenda, the agenda for Greater Israel."

Anadolu Agency reports that the United Arab Emirates has not issued a visa to the mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein.

He was slated to attend a conference in the UAE and was to arrive on Sunday.

A Palestinian official told the agency that the Palestinian authorities have been working on this, saying that a solution is on its way.

Yet it is Wednesday and nothing has been reported about this being resolved yet.

The UAE has been frosty with the PLO for a while now, partially due to its support of Abbas rival Mohammed Dahlan.

Palestinian media is bitter, pointing out that Israelis have been welcomed with open arms to the UAE in recent months, even to the point of the deputy tourism minister of one of the emirates welcoming Israelis visiting a high tech expo without a visa, telling Ynet, "Bruchim Habaim" - "Welcome" in Hebrew. And it is possible that the lift on limitations of Israeli visitors to the UAE may become permanent.

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The PLO's "Department of Human Rights" includes at least one member of a terror group

On Tuesday, Israel's High Court of Justice ruled that Omar Shakir, director of Israel-Palestine at Human Rights Watch, can be deported under Israeli law because he has encouraged boycotts of Israel while in his current position.

The most hypocritical critics of the decision are the Palestinians themselves.

Hanan Ashrawi, member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, said that this ruling "is just further evidence of the Israeli judiciary's involvement in silencing Israel's critics and covering up the escalating human rights violations against the Palestinian citizens."

She also said "our people and their leadership stand with Shakir and Human Rights Watch, and support human rights defenders and institutions working to end the culture of impunity and hold human rights violators accountable."

Isn't that something? Under PLO control, Christians are oppressed, gays are threatened, women are subject to honor killings, there is no freedom of assembly or freedom of the press, bloggers can be jailed - but the PLO supports human rights groups! Because they only rarely issue a token report about Palestinian violations of human rights and they spend nearly all of their time condemning Israel, something that the PLO can fully support!

Yet Ashrawi's pretense of support for human rights defenders is not the most hypocritical one from the PLO.

The PLO's Department of Human Rights and Civil Society issued a statement saying "a political decision with distinction that reflects the occupation government's settlement based on racism and defying international laws and norms as a government. It is an outlaw entity that practices crimes and violations against humanity."

Yes, the PLO has a Department of Human Rights and Civil Society. Based on its webpage, it has almost never looked at a single violation of human rights in Palestinian territory. The entire purpose of the department is to find ways of attacking Israel under the guise of "human rights." Members meet with counterparts from other countries and attend international meetings on topics like "Islamophobia" but do little else.

A real governmental human rights organization would look at internal civil rights issues and investigate any violations, The PLO's "human rights" department never does.

This is obvious when you look at who runs the department. The head, Ahmed Al-Tamimi - who is probably related to the Tamimi clan that includes terrorists like Ahlam Tamimi - is a member of the PLO's Executive Committee. The PLO is not known to be very self-critical.

Tamimi has made statements that clearly violate human rights norms, such as declaring that "the Tomb of the Patriarchs is a purely Islamic mosque, which is a Waqf property for Muslims alone" - meaning Jews should be banned from their second-holiest site.

The undersecretary of the department is Hossam Arafat, Arafat was (as of at least 2014) a member of the Political Bureau of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) and the representative of PFLP-GC inside the territories.

The PFLP-GC is designated as a terror group by the US, UK, Canada and Japan.

His Facebook page includes "heroes of the PFLP=GC" carrying weapons:

Interestingly, his CV at the department's site erases all mention of his involvement with the PFLP-GC.

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This week, the FBI arrested Richard Holzer, a neo-Nazi who planned to bomb a synagogue in Pueblo, Colorado.

For the past decade the FBI has been doing a great job catching jihadists before they could kill people in the US. Before the Pittsburgh massacre, the FBI foiled several potential synagogue attacks by Muslims.

It seems that, after the Tree of Life shootings, the FBI has beefed up its searching for white supremacists who are looking to do something similar.

The FBI affadavit for neo-Nazi Richard Holzer and the one for jihadist Damon Joseph, who wanted to bomb a synagogue in Toledo, shows some striking similarities.

Holzer claimed that he hired a Mexican, someone he would normally hate, to poison the water supply of the same synagogue a year ago:

HOLZER explained that the man he paid was nicknamed “Mexican Hitler,” and that he agreed to poison the synagogue “for cheap” because he and HOLZER both do not like Jews. HOLZER stated to the OCE that he had gotten backlash from the “white movement” because he hired a Mexican to do the job, but said “What do they expect? You guys really want the Jews gone then sometimes you gotta improvise.”

Joseph said that he was inspired by the Tree of Life shooting, even though it was done by a "kufr":

On October 30, 2018, UC-1 and JOSEPH had communications online regardingbthe mass shooting of a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. JOSEPH told UC-1,“The kufr doing our work for us haha.”

Both of them looked forward to dying while performing a terror attack. Holzer:

“. . . I’m just going to get dead by suicide by cop, so literally if I’m going to cause a shootout just die in it.”

Joseph:

“For srarters [sic], we would pick a synagogue or place jews gather, scope it out, find all exits and entrances, times people will be there, police presence of the area, i have a police scanner so i would be able to hear when they would be responding, we would coordinate it by splitting up to ensure the most casualties possible. Then escape in a vehicle before police arrive. And if they got there fast, then fight it out and whatever happens may Allah swt grant us victory and Jannah if it comes to that. I am no coward. I wouldnt want to die any other way except a martyr inshallah. Alhamdulilah. Thats just my thoughts as of now.”

They both, obviously, hate Jews and want them all dead.

Holzer:

On September 3, 2019, HOLZER told another Facebook user, “I wish the Holocaust really did happen...they need to die."

Joseph:

" My opinion is the Jews are evil and they get what's coming to them. I don't feel bad at all considering what they're doing in Palestine. They're the same as the shia in my eyes. All dogs.”

Interestingly, usually the white supremacists prefer shootings and the jihadists prefer bombings. There seems to have been enough cross-pollination so that in these two cases, the jihadist wanted to massacre Jews with guns and Holzer wanted to bomb the synagogue.

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11/05 Links Pt2: Three Reasons why a Corbyn Government would Threaten Jewish life in Britain; ADL's negation of Muslim Jew-hatred pandemic - sorry, it won't wash; New Israel Fund’s war on Jewish life

From Ian:

Three Reasons why a Corbyn Government would Threaten Jewish life in Britain

2. Security of Jewish Community Buildings

It is a horrifying reality that in 2019, Jewish communities across the world live in fear of violent terror attacks. The traumatic scenes outside of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, or the recent attack on the Halle synagogue in Germany, are ones we fear being repeated in the UK. When a kosher shop became a target in France’s wave of terror attacks in 2015, it struck a raw chord with many in Britain’s Jewish community. I recall the Friday night sabbath dinner conversation — what if I had been one of those hostages? How worrying that it is only the small English Channel separating us from the wave of terror against Jewish communities in Europe? This fear only increased with the stabbings of Jews outside a synagogue in Marseille later that year and the subsequent murders in Paris of Sarah Halimi and Mireille Knoll in further antisemitic incidents.

I recently enrolled my daughter at a nursery school based at a synagogue. Upon visiting the nursery — as much as I wanted to meet the staff, see the space and learn about the daily schedule — the thing I spent the most time checking-out was the security set-up for the building. From the age of one, my daughter will be attending daycare with a guard at the front door and constant security presence. That is not the desires of an over-protective parent — it is a necessary precaution of 21st century Jewish life. In this environment, the Jewish community relies on a supportive government who understand and sympathise with these very real security threats — a government that will help overcome any administrative or regulatory hurdles to protecting Jewish community centres, schools and places of worship.

I can recall hearing this support loud and clear from successive political party leaders over the past decades, whether Labour, Conservative or Lib Dems. I have never once heard Jeremy Corbyn utter his commitment. In fact, when I searched out looking to find and consolation that Jeremy Corbyn might understand the nature of anti-Jewish terrorism, I only found the opposite. Down the road from my home is a Jewish community building named Balfour House. I recall visiting it as a teenager when taking part in a youth volunteering programme. In 1994, the building was bombed in an antisemitic incident, and one backbench MP spent the subsequent years campaigning for the release of two of the terrorist attackers. His name was Jeremy Corbyn.

CAMERA: Jeremy Corbyn’s Antisemitism Crisis A Timeline

An antisemitism crisis has engulfed the Labour Party in the UK, and party leader Jeremy Corbyn is at its center. Corbyn and his supporters insist he is entirely innocent. “He does not have an antisemitic bone in his body,” one of his Labour allies has said.

Others aren’t so convinced. “What is racist bone and how do you know whether another person has one?” asked renowned British author Howard Jacobson at an Intelligence Squared debate on the Labour leader’s fitness to be prime minister. To left-wing author James Bloodworth, meanwhile, the problem isn’t in the bones. “While I genuinely believe that Corbyn does not have an antisemitic bone in his body,” Bloodworth wrote, “he does have a proclivity for sharing platforms with individuals who do; and his excuses for doing so do not stand up.”

A poll in the summer of 2018 found that an overwhelming majority of British Jews, and a plurality of the general British public, believe Corbyn is antisemitic. Even Labour members who feel there is a deliberate campaign to exaggerate antisemitism charges against Corbyn and his party acknowledge that the party has a “genuine problem” with antisemitism.

While there has been some coverage in the U.S. press of the antisemitism scandal across the Atlantic, it has rarely been detailed and comprehensive — perhaps owing to the frequency of revelations about Corbyn’s past associations and statements. This timeline seeks to fill in the gaps left by coverage of Corbyn’s antisemitism scandal (it does not focus on antisemitic comments by other Labour members and activists, although those play a significant role in the Labour crisis).

Revealed: UK Labour Party Candidate Said She Would Celebrate Deaths of Blair, Bush and Netanyahu; Slandered Pro-Israel Students

A UK Labour party candidate in the upcoming December parliamentary elections has been found to have said she would celebrate the deaths of former British Brime Minister Tony Blair, ex-US President George W. Bush and current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and also to have slandered pro-Israel student activists.

The Jewish Chronicle reported that Zarah Sultana, who was nominated last week to contest the parliamentary seat for Coventry South, had once posted on social media that she did not agree it was wrong to “celebrate the death of any person regardless of what they did.”

“Try and stop me when the likes of Blair, Netanyahu and Bush die,” she wrote.

“The sooner they meet their creator the better,” she added. “The concepts of justice and accountability don’t truly exist in this life. Only in the next.”

She also appeared to endorse terrorism, saying, “I wrote ‘right to non violent resistance.’ Best believe that was an error and I meant to write ‘violent resistance.’”

Furthermore, Sultana libeled supporters of Israel, posting, “There will come a time in the near future where those (who) lobby for Israel feel the same shame and regret as South African apartheid supporters.”

“It is not progressive to champion a state created through ethnic cleansing, sustained through occupation, apartheid and war crimes,” she added.

While she was at university, Sultana attacked pro-Israel students, writing, “Those within the student movement who go to Zionist conferences and trips should be ashamed of themselves. You’re advocating racist ideology.”

Last time, I pointed out the various excuses the boycott-Israel crowd uses when forced to confront their clear double-standard on human rights stances (i.e., Israel deserves to be boycotted for building a fence to keep suicide bombers from its cities, but Syria and China should not be boycotted since they merely killed 3-500,000 or 70,000,000 of their own people).

As noted, most of these excuses have the distinction of being both transparently self-serving and unbelievably lame. But one “reason,” the one claiming that the call to boycott Israel wells up from Palestinian civil society and is thus unique, begs for a more careful review.

The claim that BDS is a response to boycott calls originating from people in the region is based on the 2004 Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (or PACBI). Whenever Naomi Klein or some other boycott advocate talk about a boycott call endorsed by over 200 Palestinian civic organizations, the groups on the list of original PACBI signatories is what they’re talking about.

Within that original list of participating organizations (which I can no longer find now that PACBI has been folded under a general BDS Web umbrella), 10-15% of the signatories were identified as originating outside Israel, the West Bank or Gaza, including over 20 organizations from surrounding countries (13 from Syria, 6 from Lebanon and 2 from Jordan) and another 9 from Europe or North America. Now it may be that some of these (as well as some of the organizations not identified by location) are refugee or Diaspora groups. But given the large Syrian contingent on PACBI’s original roster, the notion that we’re talking entirely about un-coerced volunteers becomes shaky.

Second, as the name implies PACBI stands for an academic and cultural boycott (the least popular form of BDS, by the way), meaning those who signed up in 2004 were not necessarily joining a movement for wholesale economic isolation of the Jewish state. So those claiming that PACBI is the origin for broad-based BDS activities may be putting words into the mouths of Palestinian agricultural, medical and industrial unions/organizations, many of whom may not be that excited about economic boycotts that punish them as well as Israel.

On more meatier matters, the first group that topped the list of “Unions, Associations, Campaigns” supporting the PACBI boycott call is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, a coalition that includes Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and some of the more violent sub-sets of Fatah. Call me crazy, but I suspect that it’s much easier for this Council to get the Palestinian Dentist’s Association (also a PACBI signatory) to agree to its requests that vice versa.

The potential that the PACBI boycott call arises from coercion within Palestinian society (vs. being a consensus welling up from the grass roots) also points out an interesting paradox. The claim that Israel uniquely deserves the BDS treatment is, to a certain extent, based on Israel supposedly being exceptional with regard to its level of human rights abuses (vs. Iran, China, North Korea, etc.). And yet the members making up PACBI can only be seen as legitimately representing Palestinian civic society if Israel’s “repression” does not extend to eliminating such civic space in both Israel and the West Bank.

Like the claim that Israel is inflicting a “Holocaust” on a Palestinian population that is simultaneously experiencing a population explosion, the very existence of PACBI demonstrates that the level of repression found in countries ignored by BDS activists (Sudan, Saudi Arabia, etc.) does not exist in Israel. And thus we are led back to the conclusion that the best way to avoid being a target of alleged “human rights” activists pushing boycott, divestment and sanction is to actually be a repressive dictatorship that crushes civic society rather than letting it exist to sign boycott petitions.

Finally, a note on dates. PACBI, as stated on their own Web site, made its “plea” for academic BDS in 2004, years after divestment programs originating at the 2001 Durban conference were well underway in North American and European universities, unions, churches and municipalities. In other words, the PACBI call was the result of the success BDS was seeing between 2001-2004, and being the result it could not have simultaneously been the cause.

Time travel underlies much of the BDS project, as is underlies much of what passes for analysis of the Middle East. My favorite example of this is the projection of today’s US support for Israel (which didn’t really kick into high gear until the 1970s) back to 1948 and beyond in hope of finding a US-Zionist conspiracy going back to before the founding of the Jewish state.

If ignorance is bliss, then the folks behind the PACBI excuse for BDS are either the happiest people on earth, or at least the most manipulative.

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This week, Americans for Peace and Tolerance issued an alert:

Boston University to hire radical anti-Israel lecturer
Sarah Ihmoud says Jews are rapists and Jewish women orgasm to fantasies of the IDF bombing Palestinian civilians.

Here is an excerpt:

“Rape and killing of Palestinian women was a central aspect of Israeli troops’ systematic massacres and evictions during the destruction of Palestinian villages in 1948. During the Deir Yassin massacre, for instance:

All the inhabitants were ordered into the village square. Here, they were lined up against a wall and shot. One eyewitness said her sister, who was nine months pregnant, was shot in the back of the neck. Her assailants then cut open her stomach with a butcher’s knife and extracted the unborn baby. When an Arab woman tried to take the baby, she was shot… Women were raped before the eyes of their children before being murdered and dumped down the well.”

(This is fiction.)

There are claims of criminal actions and pronouncements attributed to Jewish leaders and community similar to the blood libel, accusations of poisoning of the wells, etc. NONE of them is supported by any references to evidence because the supporting evidence does not exist — the claims made are false. The paper, like all of Ihmoud’s writings, is not simply anti-Israeli, it is blatantly anti-Semitic and unsupported by any facts and does not merit “academic scholarship” status.

Boston University should not hire a person who portrays Jews as rapists, Jewish leaders and academics as promoting rape, Jewish women as having orgasms while thinking about bombs being dropped on Gaza, and more. This hateful propaganda, posing as scholarship, is no different from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the crudest German junk science proving that Jews are genetically inferior to Aryans.

This paper was not published in any scholarly journal. It was published instead by the Arab Studies Institute website Jadaliyya. There does not appear to be any peer review.

But despite that, Ihmoud's lies and sick theories in this article have been accepted by academia. I found 10 academic papers and books that used this paper as a source.

Meaning that absolute lies posted on a website can become seemingly trusted source materials for academic papers.

In the social sciences, any crackpot theory - or even lie - can become mainstream as long as it is quoted by others. No evidence or proof is required. Here we see that the libels and antisemitism of Ihmoud and her co-authors can be converted into respectability, as long as academics who share the same hate launder the source though their own papers.

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