Iran, and most Muslim nations, are very attuned to symbolism. Symbolism is often more important than reality.
The idea of a red flag over this mosque is brand new. It's never been done before. So the only way to know how serious this is is by believing the Iranians.
The red flag is no more (or less) serious than their rhetoric of revenge is.
But they know that naive Westerners are frightened by things like this, hence the Daily Express calling it "terrifying."
It isn't terrifying. It is a flag.
(There is a faint precedent for the idea of a red flag meaning revenge, as there is a red flag over Imam Hussain’s shrine in Karbala, Iraq, symbolizing that his death was never avenged. Some other Shiite graves have red flags for the same reason, it appears.)
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The shocking events in Monsey, together with those in Jersey City, Poway, and Pittsburgh, are proof that the darkness has returned. It has returned likewise to virtually every country in Europe. That this should have happened within living memory of the Holocaust, after the most systematic attempt ever made by a civilization to find a cure for the virus of the world's longest hate - more than half a century of Holocaust education and anti-racist legislation - is almost unbelievable.
Cyberspace has proved to be an effective incubator of resentment. The Internet is particularly dangerous for loners, people in whom the normal process of socialization - learning to live with others who are not like us - has broken down.
When bad things happen, bad people ask, "Who did this to me?" They cast themselves as victims and search for scapegoats to blame. The scapegoat of choice has long been the Jews. For a thousand years, they were the most prominent non-Christian minority in Europe. Today, the State of Israel is the most significant non-Muslim presence in the Middle East. It is easy to blame Jews because they are conspicuous, because they are a minority and because they are there.
Anti-Semitism has little to do with Jews - they are its object, not its cause - and everything to do with dysfunction in the communities that harbor it.
Victim culture originated from the West’s pathological reaction to the Holocaust. The realization of its magnitude did not eradicate Western Jew-hatred; it merely drove it underground.
This set up a terrible resentment that people could no longer blame the Jews for the crimes of which the anti-Semitic West believed they were guilty. The claim of anti-Semitism was perceived to give the Jews a free pass for their misdeeds.
A deep jealousy of anti-Semitism therefore set in. Identity politics sprang up to define groups as victims in order to gain similar impunity.
But there was an enormous difference. These “victim groups” wanted a free pass for actual misdeeds. But the Jews’ perceived threat to humanity existed only in the warped imagination of anti-Semites.
Not only has real Jew-hatred accordingly been denied, but the attention currently given to it has bred yet more by multiplying the resentment. So the anti-Semitism prevalent in black, Muslim or Palestinian discourse has been ignored and white people blamed instead.
In Britain’s Independent, Rivkah Brown wrote that Prime Minster Boris Johnson—a social liberal—was the “acceptable face of white supremacy,” and that the anti-Jewish monster “rising from the slime” was not Corbynism but “white nationalism.”
Similarly, New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio previously blamed the upsurge in anti-Semitism on “the forces of white supremacy” and “the right-wing movement.” And U.S. President Donald Trump, arguably history’s most pro-Jewish occupant of the White House, is himself accused of inspiring this explosion of Jew-hatred.
Such preposterous claims are the product of a culture that has abolished objective truth and thus reason itself.
The Jews always get it in the neck during periods of cultural turmoil. But more to the point, the Jews produced the moral compass the West has now lost.
So it’s no surprise that they find themselves the principal targets of this madness. This open season against them will only end if Western society abandons its decadent ideologies and recovers its center of moral gravity.
But liberals are descending ever deeper into the vortex of unreason and moral inversion. Anti-Semitism is the ultimate marker of cultural derangement. And so this threat to the Jews isn’t going to end anytime soon.
One of the most powerful caucuses in the House is the Congressional Black Caucus. Its leading members publicly support Farrakhan despite his role in propagating anti-Jewish bigotry in the black community.
In the 2016 presidential race, Trump faced near-daily demands – which he met – to reject the endorsement of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke and denounce him. The liberal Jewish establishment refused to accept Trump’s repeated renunciations of his support as genuine.
In the 2008 presidential race, then-Senator Barack Obama was asked once to reject Farrakhan’s endorsement. He refused. 88 percent of American Jews voted for him, and declared him "the first Jewish president."
New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio passed radical bail reform policies that give thugs get-out-of-jail-free cards. Accordingly, last Saturday a woman arrested after violently assaulting three Jewish women in Brooklyn was released from jail without bail. She was arrested again Sunday after attacking a fourth woman, and promptly released again.
DeBlasio blamed the Monsey attack on Trump.
As far as progressive Jewish activists are concerned, DeBlasio’s policies are anti-black. Last week they criticized DeBlasio’s announcement that he was augmenting police patrols in Jewish neighborhoods claiming, "This is what dividing vulnerable communities looks like."
This sort of crazy talk is not cost-free. It is dangerous. Inconvenient truths will not go away just because they are unpleasant.
It is a fact that leftist and black anti-Semites are just as great a threat, if not greater threats to the Jewish community than white nationalist anti-Semites.
It is a fact that the Republican Party rejects anti-Semitism in all its forms and expels anti-Semites found in its ranks, and the Democratic Party enables and advances leftist and black anti-Semites and anti-Semitism.
So long as the liberal Jewish establishment and its members refuse to accept these facts, the attacks against America’s Jews can be expected to increase in frequency and violence.
Qassem Soleimani, the powerful head of Iran’s Quds Force, was killed in an airstrike at Baghdad International Airport, Iraqi TV and three Iraqi officials officials said Friday.
The US Department of Defense confirmed it had carried out the airstrike.
“General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” it said. “General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.”
The Iraqi officials said the strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.
Iranian state television said the attack was carried out by US helicopters.
“Two vehicles were attacked with missiles by US forces” and all 10 passengers, including Soleimani, were “martyred,” Iran’s ambassador to Iraq, Iraj Masjedi, told state television.
The strike President Donald Trump authorized on Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Qasem Soleimani neutralized a bad actor with American blood on his hands. According to a Pentagon estimate, roughly one in six U.S. casualties sustained in the effort to subdue the insurgency during the Iraq war was attributable to Iranian actions. Soleimani took an active part in that campaign, establishing training camps and setting up factories to produce the explosive charges that penetrated American armored vehicles.
Soleimani remained outside America’s grip under George W. Bush, and, when the Obama administration began withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq in 2010, the Shiite militias he controlled proved a critical backstop for an Iraqi president who couldn’t rely solely on the hapless Iraqi Security Forces. When the Obama administration lifted travel restrictions on Soleimani amid its quest to secure a nuclear accord with Iran, one of his first stops was in Moscow, to coordinate Iranian and Russian efforts to crush the U.S.-backed anti-Assad rebellion in Syria.
In the months leading up to Soleimani’s death, Iran had begun prosecuting a region-wide campaign of provocations. In 2019, Iran was responsible for the piracy of foreign-flagged vessels in the critical Strait of Hormuz. It engaged in what the nations Iran targeted called a “sophisticated and coordinated” special forces strike on international oil tankers. Iran downed a multi-million-dollar American surveillance drone, and it executed a sophisticated strike on the world’s largest petroleum processing facility in Saudi Arabia. For all this, Tehran faced no proportionate response from the West.
In December alone, Iranian Shiite proxy forces began targeting joint US-Iraq military facilities in Iraq with increasingly sophisticated missile strikes. There had been ten such strikes by the time Secretary of Defense Mark Esper asked the Iraqi government to help prevent attacks targeting U.S. soldiers on December 16th, though to no avail. A rocket attack by an Iranian-backed militia killed an American contractor and wounded three U.S. troops on December 28. In response, the U.S. carried out retaliatory strikes on the militia’s positions in Iraq and Syria. Tehran did not relent.
Paper I wrote a while ago about Iran’s killing of US and British troops, directed by Qassim Soleimani. These represent only a fraction of the death & misery he inflicted. Killing him was the right thing for President @realDonaldTrump to do.https://t.co/CvPe9har1h
Suleimani is no longer simply a soldier; he is a calculating and practical strategist. Most ruthlessly and at the cost of all else, he has forged lasting relationships to bolster Iran’s position in the region. No other individual has had comparable success in aligning and empowering Shiite allies in the Levant. His staunch defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has effectively halted any progress by the Islamic State and other rebel groups, all but ensuring that Assad remains in power and stays solidly allied to Iran. Perhaps most notably, under Suleimani’s leadership, the Quds Force has vastly expanded its capabilities. His shrewd pragmatism has transformed the unit into a major influencer in intelligence, financial, and political spheres beyond Iran’s borders.
It would be unwise, however, to study Suleimani’s success without situating him in a broader geopolitical context. He is a uniquely Iranian leader, a clear product of the country’s outlook following the 1979 revolution. His expansive assessment of Iranian interests and rights matches those common among Iranian elites. Iran’s resistance toward the United States’ involvement in the Middle East is a direct result of U.S. involvement in the Iran-Iraq War, during which Suleimani’s worldview developed. Above all else, Suleimani is driven by the fervent nationalism that is the lifeblood of Iran’s citizens and leadership.
Suleimani’s accomplishments are, in large part, due to his country’s long-term approach toward foreign policy. While the United States tends to be spasmodic in its responses to international affairs, Iran is stunningly consistent in its objectives and actions.
The Quds Force commander’s extended tenure in his role—he assumed control of the unit in 1998—is another important factor. A byproduct of Iran’s complicated political environment, Suleimani enjoys freedom of action over an extended time horizon that is the envy of many U.S. military and intelligence professionals. Because a leader’s power ultimately lies in the eyes of others and is increased by the perceived likelihood of future power, Suleimani has been able to act with greater credibility than if he were viewed as a temporary player.
In that sense, then, Suleimani’s success is driven by both his talent and the continuity of his time in positions of power. Such a leader simply could not exist in the United States today. Americans do not allow commanders, military or otherwise, to remain in the highest-level positions for decades. There are reasons for this—both political and experiential. Not since J. Edgar Hoover has the federal government allowed a longtime public servant to amass such levels of shadowy influence.
Despite my initial jealousy of Suleimani’s freedom to get things done quickly, I believe such restraint is a strength of the U.S. political system. A zealous and action-oriented mindset, if unchecked, can be used as a force for good—but if harnessed to the wrong interests or values, the consequences can be dire. Suleimani is singularly dangerous. He is also singularly positioned to shape the future of the Middle East.
The main criticism of the assassination of Qassem Soleimani and his cronies is that the Trump administration has not thought through the consequences of such an action and it can bring unpredictable and dangerous results.
Yet in a way, that may have been the entire point.
Iran, and Soleimani in particular, have known for many years that they can execute their strategy of slowly taking over the Middle East by doing lots of actions that fall just below the red line of provoking a major reaction. Their actions in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, as well as Gaza and Lebanon, are all intended to build a strong, frightening, impenetrable and inevitable Shiite crescent from Iran to the Mediterranean that would strangle Western interests and force Sunni Arab states into submission.
We have all been watching this play out in slow motion, with Iran hiding behind thinly veiled proxies. Yet according to the accepted rules of international diplomacy, there was little the world could do to disrupt what Iran made appear unstoppable.
Enter the Madman Theory, attributed to Richard Nixon but that Donald Trump has embraced. Killing Soleimani definitely qualifies. All of the carefully calibrated calculations behind Iran's slow drip strategy of full hegemony over the Middle East are out the window. They never expected a response like this.
Suddenly, Iranian actions that seemed safe no longer are.
More importantly, the psychological impact on the Middle East is gigantic. In a few minutes, the perception that Iran is running the show and everyone else is playing defense has been shattered. No longer is Iran setting the agenda. Now it is on the defensive. It can no longer assume that its aggressive moves in Yemen or Iraq will go unanswered. It has no idea what the US might do.
Not only that, but the assassination increases the confidence of the Gulf states in countering Iranian moves. It increases the confidence of Iranian protesters. It increases the resolve of the Iraqi protesters against the pro-Iran government there. It is difficult to think of a more effective, less bloody way to achieve all of these gains.
Does Trump have an agenda for the Middle East? I doubt it. I don't think he wants the US to be heavily involved in the region, rather he wants to support US friends in their own goals.
Proving that America really has the back of its Middle Eastern friends - as opposed to the disastrous Obama desire for appeasement, a mindset that Iran took full advantage of - is the single most positive thing to happen in the region in a very long time. And it could only happen because the person who ordered it is perceived to be unpredictable.
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As if we need more reasons to celebrate the timely death of Qassem Soleimani, here is what Islamic Jihad says about him:
Abu Hamza - we think
The spokesman for Al-Quds Brigades, the military arm of the Islamic Jihad movement, Abu Hamza, confirmed Friday that the martyr Qassem Soleimani supervised direct support to Palestine and the transfer of military and security expertise to its jihadists for two decades.
Abu Hamza said on Twitter: "The Al-Quds Brigades bids farewell to a mujahideen leader who has always spread terror in the heart of America and the Zionist entity."
Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said in a statement: "As we mourn the leader Hajj Qassem Soleimani, we remember his progress and his great and wide role towards the cause of Palestine and support for the resistance, as he focused much of his effort towards working to eliminate the Zionist entity and sweeping it off the land of Palestine."
Did you ever notice that the people who say that the US and Europe must stop selling arms to Israel for supposedly "moral" reasons never say anything negative about Iran giving weapons and technology to terror groups to be used against Jewish civilians?
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The reactions to the killing of senior Iranian terror leader Qassem Soleimani are predictable - and they show how much the Western Left is now allied with terrorists.
In the Muslim world, the ones mourning Soleimani are the terrorists and their supporters.
Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah called on more terror in response: "Meting out the appropriate punishment to these criminal assassins... will be the responsibility and task of all resistance fighters worldwide."
A Syrian spokesperson said, "Syria is certain that this cowardly US aggression... will only strengthen determination to follow in the path of the resistance's martyred leaders."
Islamic Jihad said that "America, with its crimes and siding with the Israeli occupation, is the enemy of the nation and the people."
Hamas offered its "sincere condolences to the Iranian leadership and the Iranian people for the martyrdom of Major General Qassem Soleimani - may God have mercy on him - one of the most prominent Iranian military leaders, who had a prominent role in supporting the Palestinian resistance in various fields."
The PFLP "sent its sincere condolences to the Iranian people and their leadership for the martyrdom of Major General Qassem Soleimani, who will not be forgotten by our Palestinian people, his prominent role in embodying the position of the Islamic Republic of Iran by supporting its rights and struggle against the Israeli occupation and supporting the resistance forces and developing their capabilities."
The killing of Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and considered to be the second most powerful man in Iran, after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, marks a decisive victory against Iranian terror.
Arab states have long complained of Iranian interference in their internal affairs.
They also warned the international community that this was simply not a regional problem, but an international one.
This will greatly increase America's prestige in the Gulf and among Arab moderates, even as many weaker Sunni states like Jordan are calling for caution because they are afraid of being caught in the blowback.
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Now that it is confirmed that the US indeed did kill Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force and effectively the second most important person in Iran, responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of civilians and many US troops, here are some thoughts.
Most responses are that this will start a major new war or at least a major escalation with Iran's terrorist proxies targeting US leaders.
First of all, the so-called experts have been wrong every single time they predicted a major response from things Trump decided to do. The "experts" simply aren't.
My guess is that Iran will instruct Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad to shoot rockets into Israel, even though there is no evidence that Israel had anything to do with this (excellent intel, by the way.) This is a face-saving routine and Iran still clings to the idea that escalating things with Israel will get the Muslim world on their side. That isn't true anymore, but this might be Iran's thinking. (Israel closed the ski resort in Mount Hermon anticipating this very scenario.)
Not only Soleimani was killed - also Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias Popular Mobilization Forces, and reportedly Naeem Qasm, Hezbollah's #2 in Lebanon. You have to think that the remaining leaders of Iranian forces and proxy forces are very frightened of being killed themselves. If they escalate, that is a death sentence. I don't think they are that brave.
Furthermore, Soleimani was widely considered a genius in his military and terror activities. He was the one who would have decided on a calibrated response. Whoever is replacing him will probably err on the side of conservatism, because the US is now considered unpredictable - previous administrations would never have done anything like this.
In addition, Iran is hurting from economic sanctions that has already been weakening Iran's military. It seems likely that this attack will embolden Iran's protesters to redouble their efforts, which will strain Iran's military even more. The same thing seems to already be happening in Iraq with protesters against Iranian influence celebrating.
I cannot see the Revolutionary Guards' morale remaining high with the loss of their powerful leader and their countrymen, probably, celebrating.
I do expect a response - Iran is still an honor/shame society and some action, now that the US admitted its role, is deemed necessary. But I think it will be a limited response. Perhaps cyberattacks, perhaps rockets to Israel as I mentioned, perhaps some directed attacks at US troops in Iraq or a 1983 Beirut-style attack against US military installations in Europe.
Today, lots of very dangerous people are very scared. Hezbollah leader Nasrallah is going deeper underground than he already was. Maybe even Kim Jong-Un.
There may be - hell, there will probably be - some unintended consequences. But they happen all the time anyway. The precipitating event is by any measure a very good thing, because nothing could weaken Iran in one blow as much as this attack.
Today, Iran's military is significantly weaker in Iraq, in Lebanon and in Iran itself. Rarely can a single attack affect so much in such a positive way. There will probably be blowback, but it is hard to see how that will help Iran recoup its losses. Iranian leaders want to cling to power above all, and extended global adventures do not help that goal when the regime is already weakened.
It is not a symbolic loss for Iran. It is a major, major blow, and one that might be a permanent and serious wound for the regime itself.
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De Blasio should also reconsider the Democratic Party's flawed and specious addiction to identity politics, which pits groups against each other and, in its obsession with a difference and power dynamics rather than with universal ethics and spiritual transcendence, is in no way consistent with Dr. King's vision.
This brutal attack and those that preceded it are a reminder that prejudice, racism and anti-Semitic hate have no one face, no one race, no one religion and no one political ideology. Anyone can be either a victim or a perpetrator. While socioeconomic disparities and injustices are real – and some groups have suffered unique hardships – none of that gives anyone the right to abuse another person or group because they are different or perceived to be "privileged," as some imagine Jews to be. And being part of a historically disadvantaged group shouldn't provide immunity from the law.
Those quick to point to a "climate of hate" when it concerns the utterances of U.S. President Donald Trump, and who also embrace identity politics, should consider how they may unwittingly be contributing to this climate by dividing and apportioning values based on ethnic and racial identity without recognizing the deeper truths that we are all human, that no one has a monopoly on prejudice, and that we are all equal under the law. Are kids learning this at home and in school? They should be.
It's long past time to teach the simple truth that anyone, of any religion or race, is capable of dehumanizing others, which is the essence of racism. And anyone can be better than that.
Perhaps that's the first thing that Mayor de Blasio should insist be taught in Brooklyn's public schools as part of a new curriculum he has promised if he's serious about countering hate and the terrible ignorance we've seen spewing onto the streets of New York City in recent weeks.
Lesson One could be: There is only one race, the human race.
In October 2018, during Sabbath morning services, a white supremacist attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, murdering 11 people and wounding another six. In April 2019, in the middle of Passover, a white supremacist attacked the Chabad of Poway synagogue, murdering one person and seriously wounding another three. Both incidents started absolutely necessary conversations about the prevalence and nature of the white supremacist threat to Jews across the country.
Four people were murdered at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City by self-described Black Hebrew Israelites just weeks ago; five people were stabbed at a Hanukkah celebration in Monsey, New York; this week alone, New York police are investigating at least nine anti-Semitic attacks. The upsurge of violence against Jews in New York in particular has finally prompted commentary from Democratic politicians ranging from New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who just weeks ago expressed shock at anti-Semitism reaching “the doorstep of New York City”; to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who expressed puzzlement at the attacks, noting broadly: “This is an intolerant time in our country. We see anger; we see hatred exploding.”
This isn’t new. Back in 2018, The New York Times admitted there was a massive spike in anti-Semitic attacks in the city — and even acknowledged that the newspaper of record had failed to cover that surging anti-Semitism because “it refuses to conform to an easy narrative with a single ideological enemy.” But that has always been true of anti-Semitism. It’s possible, as the Times should recognize, to walk and chew gum at the same time in covering anti-Semitism.
But it’s not mere lack of focus and time preventing the media from taking anti-Semitism in New York seriously. It’s the identity of the attackers. Armin Rosen wrote for Tablet Magazine back in July 2019 about the Jew hatred in New York and correctly noted “that the victims are most often outwardly identifiable, i.e., religious rather than secularized Jews, and the perpetrators who have been recorded on CCTV cameras are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic.” This throws the media — and many left-leaning Jewish organizations — into spasms of confusion, since it cuts directly against the supposed alliance of intersectionality so beloved by the political Left. White supremacists attacking left-leaning Jews fits a desired narrative. Black teenagers beating up Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg doesn’t.
And so the Left ignores the wrong type of anti-Semitism.
New York Times editorial writer Bari Weiss talked about her book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism, in which she argued there is a rise in anti-Semitism in America.
The Jerusalem Municipal Council approved Tuesday night a plan to construct an educational campus for Education Ministry schools near the city's Arab Shuafat and Anata neighborhoods.
These schools will be an alternative to the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) schools which currently dominate the area.
The project will cost 7.1 million NIS ($2,055,617), and will be located in an area outside the pre-1967 borders but within Jerusalem's municipal borders.
Naturally, the response to giving Palestinian children a free education and new schools is being slammed as another proof of Israel's evil.
Hanan Ashrawi, member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), condemned on Thursday the announced plan of the Israeli municipality in occupied Jerusalem to replace UNRWA-run schools.
"The announced plan of the so-called Israeli municipality in occupied Jerusalem to replace UNRWA-run schools is an extension of the Israeli establishment's campaign of aggression against Palestinian rights and roots in the City,” Ashrawi said in a statement. “It is also an assault on multilateral institutions and international law.”
She continued, “This reprehensible plan also embodies the Israeli establishment's disdain for the United Nations, rejection of Palestinian rights, and illegal actions aimed at altering the historic, cultural, and demographic composition of occupied Jerusalem.”
Note that the original article says nothing about closing the UNRWA schools, but merely to provide an alternative. While I'm sure Israel wants to close the UNRWA schools that teach children to admire terrorists and to hate Jews, I am not sure that they can under existing agreements with the UN and UNRWA.
If this is true, then when Israel opens the schools, either some parents will want to take advantage of the Israeli curriculum - or they will be threatened to keep their kids in the underfunded and crowded UNRWA schools.
Of course, if UNRWA was truly an objective UN agency, given its budget woes it should welcome Israel offering to take over some of its functions - in fact, it should be pressuring Jordan and the Palestinian Authority to do the same for "refugees" who clearly aren't refugees under any definition. But UNRWA has long ago ceased to be useful and now it tries to stay self-perpetuating rather than the temporary agency it was meant to be.
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New York, January 2 - The Paper of Record followed up its delicate terminology in referring to violent attackers as "protesters" and "mourners" Thursday with a description of the Iran-backed mobs surrounding and invading the US embassy in Iraq's capital as demonstrating in solidarity with the embattled US Jewish ethnic minority.
The New York Times coverage of the embassy storming began Tuesday with pro-Tehran propaganda in the guise of impartial journalism, then proceeded Wednesday to invoke issues of questionable connection to the episode, but which allow the publication to paint Iranian machinations with a sympathetic brush. That tendency began in earnest in the lead-up to the 2015 nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, when the Times carried water for the Obama administration and helped marginalize opponents of the arrangement, most notably supporters of Israel who raised concerns that the deal enabled, rather than constrained, Iran in its hegemonic ambitions. Iranian leaders have repeatedly stated intentions to destroy Israel or have predicted the Jewish state's demise.
In describing the embassy storming as a "vigil against antisemitism," the Times drew parallels to an actual vigil taking place in the New York area, where increasing antisemitic attacks have turned deadly in the last several weeks. That vigil, which organizers touted as opposing "all bigotry," involved no one from the "ultra-orthodox" Jewish communities most affected by the current wave of assaults; it served as a vehicle for social justice activists to showcase their concern and pet causes, some of which bear a direct causal relationship to increased antisemitism in the American public sphere.
Sympathetic descriptors of malign people or entities emerged long before the Times selected the "mourners" and "vigil" terminology: the Washington Post obituary headline for arch-terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State, for example, called him an "austere religious scholar." The Post and Times have engaged in a years-long campaign to outdo each other in sympathy for groups and ideologies that may espouse genocidal, misogynistic, homophobic, racist agendas, but at least they oppose President Donald Trump, which redeems other offenses.
Editors at the times declined to disclose what other unconventional nomenclature they intend to employ, but experts predict with some confidence that its effect will swing in an anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-Jewish, anti-religious, or anti-West direction. "We've only ever seen these rhetorical devices go one way," observed media consultant Tenn Denschuss. "For some reason no headline writer there ever fails to live up to healthy journalistic standards in a way that actually makes Israel look good, for example. Quite remarkable."
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It is easy to criticize the artificiality of the countries established by the League of Nations. But in a world, and particularly a region, where ethnic and religious groups live intermixed and not separated into grid-like boxes, some arbitrariness of borders is inevitable.
Every League of Nations-mandated territory lumped an unhappy minority in with a majority: the Muslims in with Lebanon’s Christians, the Kurds with Iraq’s Arabs, everyone with everyone in Syria. The process was imperfect, but the known alternatives are what existed before – a vast pan-ethnic empire – or every group trying to carve out its own sliver of territory, which ends up looking like Syria over the past eight years.
THIS IS why the post-World War I borders are overwhelmingly accepted as the binding sovereign borders of the countries that arose in the British Mandatory territories. Both Kurdish secession and Syrian annexation of Lebanon get no international support because they would call into question Mandatory borders.
There is one place in the Middle East where the international community takes the entirely opposite position about Mandatory borders. And that, of course, is Israel.
While the Pompeo statement did not say anything about borders, it did reclaim the San Remo principle that Jewish settlement is not illegal. The legal basis for this deserves some discussion.
Pompeo repudiated the conclusions of a 1978 memorandum by the State Department legal advisor Herbert Hansell. The memo’s conclusions had already been rejected by then-president Ronald Reagan, but it had never been formally retracted.
The four-page memo jumped in broad strokes across major issues, and cited no precedent for its major conclusions. Indeed, in the decades since, its legal analysis of occupation and settlements has consistently not been applied by the US, or other nations, to any other comparable geopolitical facts. It was always what lawyers call a “one-ride ticket” applicable just for Israel.
Hansell’s memo had two analytic steps. First, he concluded that Israel was an “occupying power” in the West Bank. That triggers the application of the Geneva Conventions. He then invoked an obscure provision of the Fourth Geneva Convention that had never been applied to any other situation before (or since). It says the “occupying power shall not deport or transfer its civilian population” into the territory it occupies.
Hansell, without much discussion, concluded that Jews who move just over the Green Line have somehow been “deported or transferred” there by the State of Israel. In short, he read a prohibition on Turkish-style population transfer schemes as requirement that Israel permanently prevent its Jews from living in those areas that Jordan had ethnically cleansed during its administration.
Under international law, occupation occurs when a country takes over territory that is under the sovereignty of another country. This is why borders of countries arising in former Mandatory territories are those of the relevant Mandate. That, for example, is why Russia is considered an occupying power in Crimea, even though most of its population is Russian and it has historically been part of Russia. Yet due to internal Soviet reallocations, when Ukraine became independent, Crimea was incorporated into the borders of its predecessor, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. For international law, this establishes clear Ukrainian sovereignty, even over the self-determination objections of a local ethnic majority.
Middle East Forum Radio host Gregg Roman spoke on December 18 with Clifford D. May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), about the recent British election and the fight against antisemitism and radical Islamist actors in the Middle East.
According to May, the victory of Boris Johnson and the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn, was first and foremost a resounding public endorsement of Brexit – the UK's withdrawal from the European Union. Though approved in a popular referendum three and a half years ago, parliament has voted against ratification three times, causing seething resentment across the political spectrum.
However, the scale of the Conservative victory underscored the public's rejection of the Labour Party's increasingly socialist platform and the virulent antisemitism of its leader, Jeremy Corbyn. According to May, Corbyn's embrace of Hamas and Hezbollah alienated British Jews, long a mainstay of Labour's political base. Jews "had been leaving the Labour Party, some of them were packing their bags to go elsewhere – to Israel, the United States, Australia somewhere they feel safer," he said. "They can now unpack."
But the fight against antisemitism, an "ancient and shape-shifting pathology," is "not over in Britain by any means," May warned. Antisemitism, both in Britain and in the rest of the world, "is not going away, we're not going to cure this pathology. It can, however, be treated." He pointed to President Trump's recent executive order strengthening the protection of Jewish university students under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act as model of such treatment: What President Trump did is to say antisemitism is rampant on American college campuses. As the laws are now interpreted, Jews are not protected as other minorities are. This executive order says Jews also should be protected as are other minorities facing discrimination.
May expects Prime Minister Johnson to use his stronger parliamentary mandate to promote policies combating antisemitism: They're already talking about an anti-BDS resolution or law, understanding the extent to which BDS – a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions [against] Israel – is based on antisemitism and is fundamentally antisemitic in its intent. Boris Johnson seems to understand this. So this is good news. Both of these are battles won in this this endless war against this very specific brand of bigotry.
In both Israel and the United States, most politicians, foreign-policy experts, and citizens desire a strong and ever-closer relationship between the two nations. Israel and America share values, interests, and a deeply rooted biblical heritage that ties them inextricably together. But lately, U.S.-Israel relations have hit an impasse of sorts. As the Jewish state pursues greater economic ties with the People’s Republic of China, it has created new friction with America, which views China—rightly—as a geopolitical and economic rival.
In his December 2019 Mosaic essay, Hudson Institute scholar Arthur Herman delves into the sources of the U.S.-Israel tension caused by China and suggests a path forward. This new piece follows up on his 2018 essay, “Israel and China Take a Leap Forward-but to Where?” In this podcast, Herman joins host Jonathan Silver to discuss the evolving nature of Israel’s relationship with China, how that relationship has strained relations with Israel’s most reliable ally, and how Israel and the United States can best preserve their special relationship as they both seek to meet the challenge of China’s rise.
A Fatah member and writer, Sri al Kidwa, just wrote a column accusing Israel of stealing the organs of Palestinian "martyrs."
After it stole the land and Palestinian history, it today steals human organs in complicated operations carried out by the occupation gangs, in violation of all laws. This is a heinous crime and a bitter reality by all standards.
It uses as its only source the fully discredited 2009 article in Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that made the same claim and then admitted that it had no evidence but was just "raising questions." Even professional Israel hater Gideon Levy called the Aftonbladet report "cheap and harmful journalism" while his employer Haaretz wrote, "Donald Bostrom, a veteran Swedish journalist, wrote a despicable, utterly baseless article."
Al-Kidwa evidently feels that since it has been over a decade since the controversy, he can resurrect it without fear of anyone fact checking him and then add that this organ stealing is still happening today, again without even the pretense of evidence.
It is just another blood libel against Jews. And it is not only a single person, but the Palestinian Authority made that same claim in an official letter to the UN.
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Elder of Ziyon
