Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 09, 2019

Today's Hebron strike shows that it is getting Fatah harder and harder to get Palestinians to attend protests

A week ago was a supposed "Day of Rage" against the US for declaring that Jews are not prohibited from living in Judea and Samaria according to international law.

Stores and schools were closed, but the mass protests didn't materialize. There were a few photo-op protests and some stone throwing but for the most part Palestinians were apathetic.

Fatah is trying the same thing today. At its request, the Hebron Governorate shut down all stores, schools and government offices today to protest Israel's plan to allow Jews to move into the area of old Hebron that has been owned by Jews since the early 19th century.

Fatah also called on all residents of Hebron governorate - 600,000 people - to go to the Jewish area of H1 in Hebron, protest and pray at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the second holiest site in Judaism.

Ma'an says "hundreds" came, although their photos seem to show far fewer people.

A few kids also threw stones https://www.facebook.com/groups/1054552847892364/wp/964331590605670/?entry_source=PERMALINK&ext=1576153375&hash=AeSZaAW6mqLXj16-at IDF soldiers.

Hebron Arabs resigned themselves to a day of lost revenuehttps://www.facebook.com/Hebroncity1 to make another useless political and religious point. Some went to Facebook to try to sell items they couldn't sell in stores, such as this bizarre combination watch/cigarette lighter.

The strikes aren't called as part of the protests. No Israeli is inconvenience by Hebron stores and municipal services on strike - it only hurts Palestinians. But Fatah wants to juice up crowds at the actual protests, and the only way to do that is to call a general strike, hoping that people will show up because they have nothing better to do.

But Hebron outside of H1 is a prosperous, very large city, where residents never see a single Jew unless they need to travel elsewhere. A few Jews moving into an empty area of Hebron that they never even visit is meaningless to them. That is why far less than 1% of the people affected by the general strike showed up to the actual planned protest, and all of them were probably Fatah operatives anyway - no women or children could be seen at these protests.

Today's protests proved yet again that Fatah is increasingly impotent and the "rage" they try to ignite simply doesn't exist among Palestinians.

It is a shame that the media never reports on this apathy.

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.

Palestinian archbishop slams Lebanese church leader for anti-Hezollah statements; "Church is not a place of incitement." But he's incited against Jews plenty.

Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elias Odeh of Beirut said this past weekend that he supported the demonstrations by Lebanese citizens, and that “Today, this country is ruled by a person you all know, and no one utters a word, and is ruled by a group that takes up arms,”a clear reference to Hezbollah.

The Palestinian archbishop Atallah Hanna of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Palestinian territories criticized Odeh and defended Hezbollah, saying, "Hezbollah had a role in defending the Christian presence in Syria and more than one location in the Levant," adding that "using the church’s pulpit to attack a prominent Lebanese party is an unacceptable position that does not represent us as Orthodox Christians."

Hanna added, "The church is not a place for incitement or offense for anyone, but a place of love and devotion to the noble moral, human and national value."

That's funny. Because only this past summer, Archbishop Hanna referred to Israeli Jews as "evil," saying, "Our resistance to the evil which targets our ancient Christian presence in this holy spot of the world must be through our clinging to our spiritual and faith development and also our adherence to our national identity, we belong to this country and Palestine is our homeland and it is our cause."

He's also said that "Zionist Christians do not belong to Christianity." And many other hateful statements over the years.

But I thought he was against politicizing the Church! I thought he was against incitement and offense for anyone?

Apparently, as with so many other rules, there is an exception for Jews and Zionists.

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.

The cynical Christmas trees of the West Bank

Yesterday, a small crowd gathered to light the Christmas Tree in Birzeit in the ceremoney I mentioned earlier where the Palestinian prime minister called Jesus a "Palestinian guerilla."

Birzeit used to have a majority Christian population. No longer. While I do not have statistics for Birzeit itself, the Ramallah and Al Bireh governorate that it belongs is about 3% Christian. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2017 the West Bank and Gaza were barely 1% Christian.

Yet major Palestinian political figures show up at the lighting of Christmas trees in Bethlehem, Ramallah and Birzeit claiming that Christianity is important to them. Not important enough to stem the huge exodus of Christians from Palestinian rule, but important enough to pretend that they are equal citizens.

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.

12/08 Links: Jeremy Corbyn is the biggest global threat to Jews, warns Simon Wiesenthal Centre; Biden says cutting Israel aid ‘bizarre,’ accuses PA of fomenting conflict; Why Israel will be blamed for the absence of PA elections

From Ian:

Jeremy Corbyn is the biggest global threat to Jews, warns Simon Wiesenthal Centre - the world's leading Nazi-hunting organisation - as Boris Johnson urges voters to save Britain from a 'nightmare'

Boris Johnson today urges voters not to inflict a Friday the 13th 'nightmare' on Britain by handing Jeremy Corbyn the keys to No 10.

The Prime Minister's late Election plea comes as The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the Labour leader has been named as the worst antisemite on the planet by the world's leading Nazi-hunting organisation.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre warns that Corbyn would turn Britain into a 'pariah state' if he wins Thursday's Election.

In an astonishing escalation of the row which has ripped Labour apart, the human rights body said: 'No one has done more to mainstream antisemitism into the political and social life of a democracy than the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party.

'Members and staff who have dared to speak out against the hate were purged, but not those who declared 'Heil Hitler' and 'F*** the Jews.'

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the head of the centre, told this newspaper: 'If it wasn't for Winston Churchill and Britain leading the fight against Nazism in the Second World War who knows if the Allies would have won?

'Britain was at the forefront of defeating Hitler and now, on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the person who wants to sit in Winston Churchill's chair at No 10 is fostering antisemitism. If Mr Corbyn wins he will make Britain a pariah on the world stage. It will be a disaster for democracy.'

Leaked files expose extent of anti-Semitism in British Labour Party

The full extent of anti-Semitism in the British Labour Party is exposed in documents leaked days before voters go to the polls to elect a new government.

Allegations against members include Holocaust denial and crude caricatures of “bent nose manipulative liars,” as well as calls for the “extermination of every Jew on the planet.”

The issue has long dogged Jeremy Corbyn, its hard-left leader, who has been accused repeatedly of failing to tackle the issue.

The leaked files from internal investigations show more than 130 cases remain outstanding, even though many were reported more than 18 months ago, according to the Sunday Times.

One member was suspended after claiming that only “thousands” of people had died in the Holocaust, according to the files. She also stereotyped Jewish people by claiming they were “rich, interested in finance and intent on controlling or exploiting others” in social media posts.

Another member was suspended last year after his comments were reported to party headquarters. “I call for the complete annihilation and extermination of every Jew on the planet,” the man is alleged to have written in a post about Israel.

Be under no illusions about @jeremycorbyn - listen to this short clip:

1. Wants to stop ALL TRADE between Europe & Israel
2. Has a problem with Israel's ability to defend itself from rockets.
3. Calls the only democracy in the ME - a 'rogue state'.

86 seconds. lots of hate pic.twitter.com/hQL1KpQxXr
— David Collier (@mishtal) December 7, 2019

Speaking at the Christmas tree lighting at Birzeit yesterday, Palestinian prime minister Mohamed Shtayyeh addressed the small crowd by talking about how proud they should be that the first Palestinian martyr who identified as part of the student movement came from that village.

He then said, "Christmas is a Palestinian national holiday, and Christ was a Palestinian guerrilla, who stood against injustice."

The Arabic word he used for guerilla is "fidai", singular for "fedayeen" which is what Palestinians call terrorists who murder Jews.

Palestinian leaders have for years referred to Jesus as "Palestinian," a term he himself would not have recognized. Official media has even compared terrorists to Jesus. But this is the first time I can recall that a Palestinian leader has literally called Jesus the same word used for murderers.

This portrayal of Christianity's Jesus as a Palestinian terrorist should disgust all Christians worldwide.

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.

Here is just one of many reactions to President Trump's speech at the IAC National Summit last night:

He so perfectly exposes how the pro-Israel industry is rooted in commodifiying, tokenizing and instrumentalizing Jews and how the JudeoChrsitian Zionist ethos is essentially antiSemitic https://t.co/LOP0YRbFfW
— Mairav Zonszein מרב זונשיין (@MairavZ) December 8, 2019

Let's be clear: the only people who are upset over a President, or anyone, saying that people should love Israel more are people who hate Israel. Not Israeli policies, not Israeli leaders, but Israel. And that includes too many Jews, who then fall over themselves saying that such statements - that some Jews need to love Israel more - are antisemitic!

Here's the entire speech.

The audience at the IAC did not think that Trump's speech was antisemitic. Even when he made jokes about how many of them are realtors:"You are brutal killers. Not nice people at all." The audience recognized it as a joke from someone who loves them; the pundits are screaming "antisemite!"

Trump, speaking to the Israeli American Council: "You're not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me. You have no choice. You're not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. You're not going to vote for the wealth tax!" pic.twitter.com/IXoaVUw6MU
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 8, 2019

Some commenters who are slightly more honest but still hate Trump are using a slightly newer trope - he's not an antisemite, he's a philosemite - and that is just as bad! Because as a philosemite, he mentions what he admires about Jews and those are used as proof that he is stereotyping them which is supposedly terrible. People who love Jews saying that Jews are good with money is somehow as bad as antisemites saying that Jews are money-grubbing misers.

In the end, Trump is a Rorschach test. If you have Trump derangement syndrome he is an antisemite or an evil philosemite. If you are honest you can see he loves Jews and Israel. (None of the critics are mentioning that Trump yet again unequivocally slammed antisemitism in this very same speech, nor that he movingly praised American Jews.)

It is possible to disagree with Trump's politics and still see that he loves Israel and Jews. But the number of honest critics of Trump is very small.

There is plenty to criticize about Trump. One can even criticize how he seems to tolerate those on the Right who are antisemitic. But to claim that this speech is proof of Trump's antisemitism shows much about the hate of the critic and nothing about Trump.

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.

It Must Be Heaven is the Palestinian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards in February.

Directed by and starring Elia Suleiman as himself, the plot is that Suleiman escapes the Palestinian territories only to find that he encounters similar problems wherever he goes.

Reviewers love the movie.

Describing himself at the Morocco film festival, Suleiman said "I wish to drown Israel, but I cannot. So I resort to ridicule the reality I live in, What I do is a way to resist .... When we laugh and enjoy a comic scene, time stops and gravity disappears, then we return to resistance, and when you put your feet on the ground and you return to bitter reality, you find strength for resistance."

(h/t WC)

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.

12/07 Links: Melanie Phillips: The sickening reality of Labour party Jew-hatred; Nikki Haley slams Canada’s U.N. “deal with the devil”; Linda Sarsour Thinks You Can’t Hear or Read

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The sickening reality of Labour party Jew-hatred

It is horrifying that this party might possibly find itself governing the country after next weeks general election. It is appalling that so many people are planning to vote for it, and that its opinion poll ratings have actually gone up since the Chief Rabbi issued his dramatic warning about the threat it poses to the Jewish community. It is shameful that, in this election campaign, so-called “moderate” Labour candidates are campaigning to put this disgusting party into power.

But above all, this evidence leads to the inescapable conclusion that a spiritual sickness has not just spread within the Labour party but British society. A culture that produces so much derangement and moral depravity as is being directed at Israel and the Jewish people – and has been for decades, long before Corbyn became the Labour leader – is a society that has lost its moral compass.

Of course, Britain has a history of profound and enduring antisemitism. Its literature is infused with it; in the Middle Ages it burned Jews alive in pogroms and eventually threw them out of the country; in the 1930s and 40s, it was an accomplice to the Holocaust by barring European Jews from entry to Palestine, in flagrant repudiation of its treaty obligation as the Mandatory power to settle Jews in their ancient homeland. Its two periods of active philosemitism, under Oliver Cromwell in the 17th century and the heyday of evangelical Christianity in the 19th century, were exceptions to the rule. And there was a period after the Holocaust when antisemitism went underground and was regarded as utterly beyond the pale.

Epidemic Jew-hatred always signals a society in crisis. Its current eruption – which is happening not just in Britain but in America and Europe too – is sounding the alarm not just for diaspora Jews but for a western culture in freefall.

Douglas Murray: You can’t compare Tory Islamophobia with Labour anti-Semitism

In 2017, Darren Osborne drove a truck into a crowd of worshippers leaving prayers at a mosque in Finsbury Park. And yet, to date, Boris Johnson has not campaigned that Osborne should not have been charged, found guilty or sentenced for this appalling crime. So far as I am aware, no elected member of the Conservative Party has pretended that Osborne is some poor, misguided innocent.

And yet this is the sort of act that would have to be found in the ranks of the Conservative Party in order to find an equivalence to Jeremy Corbyn’s support for Samar Alami and Jawad Botmeh — two men who were convicted for a car-bomb attack on a London Jewish charity’s headquarters in 1994. While Corbyn acted as a long-time defender and indeed character referee for the anti-Jewish bombers, no senior Conservative appears to have made Darren Osborne into some kind of sick campaigning cause.

I could go on and on. While the Shadow Chancellor has spent years defending the “bravery” of the IRA when they tortured and murdered hundreds of innocent people, there is no evidence that the present Chancellor, Sajid Javid, ever praised or gave supportive speeches for the Red Hand Defenders or Ulster Volunteer Force. Is such evidence likely to emerge? I suspect not.

So why this strange emphasis from members of the commentariat who like to pretend that they are independent-minded, that they cannot vote for either main party because they are in some way equally bad? Perhaps some of them think it. Perhaps some genuinely cannot tell any differences between the two parties.

But a far more likely explanation is that many of these ‘independent-minded’ columnists are simply far more tribal than they would like the rest of us to think. When the Labour Party is led by a man who has spent his life mainstreaming the vilest and most deadly prejudice of all, the lifelong members of the Labour tribe who recognise that fact still feel too much a part of that tribe to do the one thing that is more appalling than anything to them — which is to switch sides and vote Conservative.

That is the one thing they can never do. And so they come up with ways to reorient the political landscape; to present themselves as being the only people remaining stable while everyone else is disoriented. Whereas they — in their moment of pretended stability — may be the most lost and morally disoriented people of all.

Melanie Phillips: Islamists are not the same as other prisoners

The terrorist attack by Usman Khan on a prisoner rehabilitation conference in London was made possible by two catastrophic and tragic misjudgments.

The first was by the Court of Appeal, which changed Khan’s sentence. At the root of their mistake lay a failure to understand fanatical Islam.

This failure also characterised the second misjudgment, by both the group that had invited Khan to its conference and the probation service which enabled him to attend: believing that he was a reformed character. This was rooted in a deeper refusal to acknowledge the unique challenges of Islamic extremism, a mistake made by most of the justice establishment.

The liberal West wants to believe every criminal is redeemable. Some are. Others are not. Islamic radicalism challenges the liberal orthodoxy that there can be no difference in treatment between groups. The nature and scale of this challenge, however, requires a unique response.

With such observations being silenced as “Islamophobic”, rational concerns for public safety have been stigmatised instead as an obnoxious mental disorder. Unless the establishment gathers its courage and its wits to face that intimidation down, Friday’s atrocity is unlikely to be the last.

Douglas Murray: A picture of our criminal naivety: Ten years ago, DOUGLAS MURRAY was publicly confronted by Anjem Choudary. Standing adoringly next to the hate cleric was an accomplice of the London Bridge murderer. Why ARE we so lax about terror in our midst?

With a notorious reputation for whipping up anti-British Islamist hate, you could be forgiven for thinking that Anjem Choudary is like every other frothing-at-the-mouth Jihadi extremist.

But he's not, as I learnt in 2009 when an invitation to debate him turned into a tense stand-off on a central London street in broad daylight.

As you'll see in the photo on this page, Choudary didn't scream at me. He didn't get up close into my face. In fact, he hardly raised his voice.

Instead, mimicking the manner of a highly learned imam — which he is not — he tried to give out the impression of being a perfectly reasonable fellow. He knew that the thugs around him were doing the intimidating for him.

But as the twinkle in his eye that day revealed, he knew — and I knew — that he was playing a deadly but careful game.

A game intended to keep him just on the right side of the law and stay out of prison.

What both of us knew was that in private it was another matter.

Because behind closed doors he was already proving to be one of the most adept terrorist recruiters in this country.

This is Hamas Al Qassam Brigades spokesperson Abu Obeida threatening Israel for something or other.

I just love that these people call a press conference but cannot show their faces. Abu Obeida himself seems to favor a red keffiyeh, perhaps to distinguish himself from the other masked people he surrounds himself with.

Hamas even makes poster with quotes from him - still masked!

It is hard to take seriously a group that claims to be so brave when their own spokesman is too scared to reveal his face.

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.

12/06 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Anti-Semitism Is a Unique Obsession; Israel a Sanctuary for Gays: Ignored or Jeered at by West; Red Yellow Journalism

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Anti-Semitism Is a Unique Obsession

Anti-Semitism is not a prejudice like any other. It has unique characteristics applied to no other group, people or cause. It's an obsessional and unhinged narrative based entirely on lies; it accuses Jews of crimes of which they are not only innocent but the victims; it holds them to standards expected of no one else; it depicts them as a global conspiracy of unique malice and power. Anti-Zionism has exactly the same unique characteristics directed against the collective Jew in Israel.

Judaism is indivisibly composed of the people, the religion and the land. To attack the right of the people to the land is to attack Judaism itself. The onslaught on Zionism and Israel has therefore legitimized and encouraged anti-Semitism, with behavior of a malice and virulence directed at no other community.

In Britain there is a false equation of anti-Semitism with anti-Muslim abuse. But Jews suffer proportionately vastly more abuse and attacks than Muslims. Synagogues and Jewish schools have to be under guard and behind barbed wire, not mosques and madrassas.

People can't stand the uniqueness of anti-Semitism because they can't stand the uniqueness of the Jewish people. The refusal to acknowledge the uniqueness of Jew-hatred merely demonstrates precisely that Jew-hatred.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Sanctuary for Gays: Ignored or Jeered at by West

"Israel has always embraced this path [of liberty] in a Middle East that has long rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out. It is different." – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to the U.S. Senate, 2011.

Adam and Rami are among scores of Palestinian members of the LTBGQ community who, in the past few decades, have fled their homes to seek shelter in Israel. Yet, their plight is totally ignored not only by human rights organizations, but by but by people who purport to be advocates of gay rights. This is part of a far more malignant story: when Israel looks good, the international community looks away.

Hate for Israel has blinded people to the point where they align themselves with their own executioners.

alQaws pointed out that some Palestinian groups actually celebrated the police threat against the LTBGQ community, "raising (yet again) disturbing questions about the Palestinian Authority's commitment to human rights."

Palestinian gays have two choices: hide their sexual preferences and lead double lives in their villages, or flee to Israel and live as normal human beings. Groups such as Queers for Palestine, though, are too busy bashing Israel on college campuses and the streets of San Francisco to take much notice of the sanctuary to which their gay Palestinian friends have chosen to relocate.

MEMRI: Algerian Interior Minister Describes Political Opponents as Homosexuals and Traitors

Algerian Interior Minister Salah Eddine Damoune said ahead of the General elections set to take place on December 12, 2019 that "colonialist ideology" exploits "Algerian children – or rather, quasi-Algerians, who are traitors, mercenaries, queers, and homosexuals." His remarks were made on December 3, 2019 on Beladi TV (Algeria). On the same day, Algerian journalist Alsaid Bensedira said on Al-Hurra TV (U.S.) that the Algerian people demand that the elections be boycotted and the Interior Minister, whom he referred to as "queer effeminate" is fired immediately. He concluded that he doesn't know any homosexuals, if the Interior Minister knows homosexuals he must be one of them.

Billy Broncho, the first star of Hollywood Westerns - and a Jew

From Wikipedia:

Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson (March 21, 1880 – January 20, 1971) was an American actor, writer, film director, and film producer, who is best known as the first star of the Western film genre. He was a founder and star for Essanay studios. In 1958, he received a special Academy Award for being a pioneer of the movie industry.

Anderson was born Maxwell Henry Aronson[2] in Little Rock, Arkansas,[3] the sixth child of Henry and Esther (Ash) Aronson, both natives of New York.[4][5][6] His family was Jewish, his father's parents having emigrated to the United States from Prussia, and his mother's from the Russian Empire.[7]

Here is one of his films:

But perhaps more importantly, Anderson directed this film - about a man who harasses women and how they get him back - which features the first "pie in the face" gag in movie history.

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.

12/06 Links Pt1: If NATO is going to fight terrorism, it needs Israel; Norway Threatens Palestinian Aid Cut Over Racism, Violence in Textbooks; Iran's Multi-Front War Against America and Its Allies

From Ian:

Caroline B. Glick: Preserving the peace with Jordan

Tuesday Israel’s Channel 13 reported that President Donald Trump’s Deputy National Security Advisor Victoria Coates held a meeting at the White House last week with the ambassadors of Oman, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. She reportedly asked the emissaries to check whether their governments are willing to consider signing non-aggression pacts with Israel.

The story, which the White House did not deny indicates the Trump administration has embraced an Israeli initiative, raised publicly last month by Foreign Minister Israel Katz. The idea is that through the non-aggression pacts, which are less than peace treaties, Israel and its Arab neighbors will be able to sidestep the issue of formal relations, replete with embassy opening ceremonies, and simply engage in open relations, for the benefit of all sides.

This has been the central goal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s diplomatic strategy. For decades, foreign policy practitioners and activists in the US, Europe, and the Israeli left have insisted that peace between Israel and the larger Arab world is impossible so long as Israel has not concluded a peace treaty with the PLO. This view gives the PLO the power to dictate if, when and under what conditions Arab nations will be "allowed" to have normal relations with the Jewish state.

Netanyahu’s goal has long been to rescind the PLO’s veto. By working behind the scenes to build constructive, stable ties with the states of the region predicated on mutual interests, Netanyahu has made great strides in achieving this goal. The very fact that Coates reportedly held the meeting with the Arab ambassadors in the White House is a testament to the success of his efforts.

The dimensions of Netanyahu’s achievement are clear when you compare Israel’s constructive, mutually beneficial ties with states with which it lacks formal peace treaties to its ties with Jordan.

Jonathan S. Tobin: If NATO is going to fight terrorism, it needs Israel

Turkey joined NATO, alongside its historical antagonist Greece, in 1951 – two years after the alliance was founded. Admitting Turkey made sense at that time for two reasons. One was that its strategic position bordering the Soviet Union made it essential to any effort to contain Moscow’s expansionist drive to both undermine the stability of the postwar world and to spread communism. Post-war Turkey was also a thriving secular democracy whose governing parties were interested in becoming part of Europe, rather than focusing on the lost glories of the Ottoman Empire.

But contemporary Turkey is a very different country. In the last two decades, the rise of the AKP Party and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has transformed an avowedly secular democratic republic into an Islamist authoritarian state. As such, it has turned away from NATO’s mission of defending European democracy. It plays both ends against the middle with respect to Russia by buying a missile-defense system from Moscow and refuses to coordinate security policy with the United States and NATO.

Erdoğan also criticizes NATO for being insufficiently concerned with terrorism. But by that he is referring to the understandable reluctance of the alliance’s members to share his enthusiasm for Turkey’s war on the Kurds. The Turks have attempted to wipe out Kurdish identity inside of their borders and regard Kurdish nationalism elsewhere as a threat to its own sovereignty, despite the sufferings of this group of people. There are, in fact, Kurdish groups considered to be terrorists, but to regard all Kurdish nationalism in that way is deeply wrong. And for a country like Turkey, which has consistently backed the terror group Hamas, the notion that it represents a bulwark against terror is absurd.

At the same time, the United States and NATO rely heavily on Israel when it comes to counter-terrorism. It’s no secret that the intelligence information shared by Israel is vital to US security and that of the alliance. Israel coordinates closely with the Americans and Western Europeans when it comes to the battle against ISIS and the threat from Iran. The joint exercises that America and some other NATO allies conduct with Israel are also an indication that even though the Jewish state is not part of a formal alliance structure like NATO, it is an essential element in the defense of the West. And yet Erdoğan was feted, along with the rest of the NATO leaders, at the anniversary summit in London while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was pointedly excluded.

Talk about scrapping NATO – whether it comes from “America First” neo-isolationist Trump supporters or leftists who view the projection of US power as inherently evil – are equally wrong. But if NATO is to continue to play the role in defending democracy that its founders intended, then it will have to change. It can start by figuring out a way to sideline Erdoğan’s Turkey, while either formally or informally bringing Israel inside the alliance.

Britain’s Terrorism Superstitions

On November 29, Usman Khan went on a stabbing spree in central London, killing two and wounding three. The episode, as Theodore Dalrymple puts it, would have seemed too absurd had it appeared in a work of satire: Khan, a previously convicted terrorist who had been released after attending one of Britain’s rehabilitation programs for “extremists,” attacked a conference celebrating one of those programs. Dalrymple writes:
In 2012, Khan, along with eight others, was convicted for plotting to blow up the London Stock Exchange, kill Boris Johnson, then the mayor of London, and plant bombs in synagogues, among other places; he had also planned to set up a military training camp for terrorists on his ancestral lands in Kashmir. His 2019 attack was evidently no flash in the pan or rush of blood to the head. After all, he was a disciple and close friend of Anjem Choudary, the extremist preacher and founder of the now-proscribed Islamist terrorist group, al-Muhajiroun.

Despite the attack, Dalrymple continues, Britons remain in the grip of three “superstitions” propagated by criminologists, sociologists, and psychologists:
The first superstition is that terrorists are ill and are both in need of and susceptible of “rehabilitation,” as if there existed some kind of moral physiotherapy that would strengthen their moral fiber, or a psychological vaccine that would immunize them against terrorist inclinations. The second is that, once terrorists have undergone these technical processes or treatments, it can be known for certain that the treatments have worked, and that some means exist to assess whether the terrorists still harbor violent desires and intentions. The third is that there exists a way of monitoring terrorists after their release that will prevent them from carrying out attacks, should they somehow slip through the net.

All three superstitions are false, though they have provided much lucrative employment for the tertiary-educated and have contributed greatly to Britain’s deterioration from a comparatively well-ordered society to a society with one of the West’s highest rates of serious crime. . . . Meanwhile, the father of the slain young criminologist said that he would not want his son’s death to be “used as a pretext for more draconian sentences.”