Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Please Don’t Use the Holocaust (Judean Rose)

The Holocaust was an outsized event: comparable to no other, unparalleled in history. Perhaps that is why, more than any other catastrophe, the Holocaust gets exploited. The Holocaust is used to compare and draw parallels to whatever particular issue bugging people at any moment in time. And in one sense, exploiting the Holocaust in this manner proves the magnitude of this event: the Holocaust is the worst thing people can think of, so it is where they will always turn for inspiration and debate points.

Using the Holocaust for comparison’s sake, on the other hand, cannot help but weaken the power of this singular event in our minds. If something is as bad as the Holocaust, then the Holocaust is not the worst thing that ever was. It was just as bad as something else: whatever gets your goat at a given point in time.

A current example of how this works relates to the politicization of lockdown measures in the face of the global pandemic. Some of us see coronavirus measures as the government doing the best it can in an unprecedented situation. If lockdown measures and regulations seem contradictory at times, or even silly, we trust that the intent of these measures is to halt the spread of contagion and keep people safe.

Other people may, however, find lockdown measures arbitrary, unnecessary, counterproductive, dangerous, or a form of government oppression. They may even see some nefarious intent on the part of the government or be suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” in which they feel compelled to trash-talk every action taken by the president, good or bad. If you find yourself anywhere in this paragraph, you no doubt feel compelled to make your case, loudly and at length, to everyone in hearing/viewing distance.

And what better way to show the evil intent and oppressive nature of lockdown measures than to compare them to the Holocaust? And so it was that I butted heads with a libertarian on a Facebook group called “Corona Virus Insanity Memes.” I was there not to interact with the members of this group but to find memes to cheer up my friends during lockdown. I do this most days, sifting through lots of duds to find the best.

Sometimes the memes offend me, or fail to draw a chuckle, but rather than say anything, I simply skip past to the next one. Different strokes for different folks. No point arguing these things.

But the other day I bumped into a meme that stopped me cold. The meme, depicting Anne Frank, gazing into the distance, was captioned, “The law is not a moral compass. The people who hid Anne Frank were breaking the law. The people who killed her were following it.”

The thrust of this meme is that laws should not be equated with morality. Sometimes we have to break laws in order to do the right thing, and sometimes obeying the law is evil. In other words: just because something is lawful, doesn’t make it right.

Like I said, normally I skip past something that offends me. I don’t want to debate random people on the internet. To what purpose? But this meme pushed my buttons. I was incredulous. Is this guy really saying that being asked to wear a mask and stay indoors to avoid contagion is the same thing as being forced to hide in an attic to escape being murdered because one is a Jew?

So I told the guy: the comparison is appalling and offensive. The two situations are not at all analogous and the Holocaust should be off-limits as either a comparison point or comedy material. That such exploitation trivializes the Holocaust.

But Kiril was never going to hear me. He was hell bent on making me see that I was missing his point and on illustrating his supposed oppression. I knew it, and yet persisted in trying to get him see what he could not see. The enormity of the Holocaust. The numbers. The intent of lockdown measures versus Hitler’s Final Solution. The fact that law didn’t enter into what happened to Anne Frank. That Germany invaded Holland, where Anne Frank’s family went into hiding. That no one elected Hitler to rule over the Dutch or move the Franks to Bergen-Belsen, where Anne died of typhus at age 15.

I talked about the magnitude of the Holocaust, the over 6 million people gassed to death and burnt in crematoria and the difference between being hunted and targeted for being Jewish and being asked to stay home to contain contagion. None of this left any sort of impression on Kiril, who only doubled down, suggesting it was a good thing to use the Holocaust to shock the people and give them a rude awakening about government overreach, to learn from history whatever we can.

But this is a distortion of history. The two situations are not analogous. And to compare them weakens the impact of what the Holocaust was, and how it impacts on our lives still today and for generations to come.

It is true that in a democratic society, people vote for their leaders but don’t always like the results. But there are second chances. They can rectify the situation by voting differently in future or by resorting to the courts. Anne Frank, on the other hand, is dead, and stays dead. There are no more choices for Anne Frank or the other almost 7 million Jews murdered on behalf of Hitler’s Final Solution.

If we can compare anything to the Holocaust—anything at all—then what, exactly, is special about the Holocaust? How is it different from any other terrible situation, imagined or real?

To my mind, the main reason not to compare anything to the Holocaust is to preserve in our minds the uniqueness of this catastrophic event in all of history. The Holocaust, this concentrated effort at eliminating the Jewish people once and for all, stands at the very pinnacle of evil which, until now, and God willing forever, simply has no equal.

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Israel issued so-called “VIP” cards to PLO leaders and prominent businesspeople allowing them to go through checkpoints easily without inspection. Ordinary Palestinians have long been resentful that the “VIPs” could drive through checkpoints and go to Israel easily while everyone else has to wait in lines.

The VIP system was created during the Oslo process at the request of Palestinian leaders.

Now, Hamas - which never benefitted from this VIP system – is asking, in light of the PLO announcement of ending all cooperation with Israel, whether the PLO will dismantle the system. After all, the cards must be presented to Israeli security, so they are an example of security cooperation with Israel.

Hamas is trying to embarrass its PLO rivals, of course. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t a good question. If the PLO maintains the VIP system, it means that they re being very selective in which cooperation they are willing to stop with Israel – and the Palestinian leaders aren’t likely to give up one of their biggest perks.

05/27 Links Pt1: ICC asks PA if Oslo Accords still in force; Under the Radar: Arab States Agree to Israeli Sovereignty; UAE virus aid rejected by Palestinians still at Israel’s airport

From Ian:

Ahead of ruling on war crimes probe, ICC asks PA if Oslo Accords still in force

Abbas claimed Netanyahu’s remarks the day before about the planned extension of Israeli sovereignty over settlements and the Jordan Valley meant Israel had “annulled” the Oslo Accords, which established the PA and kicked off the decades-long peace process, “and all agreements signed with it.”

On April 30, ICC prosecutor Bensouda reiterated her position that Palestine is a state for the purposes of transferring criminal jurisdiction over its territory to The Hague.

It is now up to a pretrial chamber to rule on the matter. The three judges of that chamber — Péter Kovács of Hungary, Marc Perrin de Brichambaut of France and Reine Adélaïde Sophie Alapini-Gansou of Benin — have no set deadline to hand down their decision but are expected to do so within 90 days.

On Tuesday, the pretrial chamber surprisingly issued a document saying that Abbas’s comments about no longer being bound by agreements with Israel came to its attention, and it “requests Palestine to provide additional information on this statement, including on the question whether it pertains to any of the Oslo agreements between Palestine and Israel.”

The chamber also “invite[d] Israel to respond to any additional information” Ramallah may provide by June 24.

But Jerusalem, which has long argued that Palestine is not a sovereign state and therefore cannot transfer criminal jurisdiction over its territory to the Hague, is unlikely to accept the judges’ offer, lest any formal engagement with the court be seen as legitimizing it.

Netanyahu has repeatedly denounced the ICC and declared thwarting a possible war crimes probe one of the new government’s top priorities.

The Oslo Accords were signed in Washington in 1993. A follow-up agreement two years later, sometimes called Oslo II, set out the scope of Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza. The interim pact was only supposed to last five years while a permanent agreement was finalized but it has tacitly been rolled over for more than two decades.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

Daphne Anson: The Legal Status of the Territories Beyond the Green Line (video)

Avi Bell is an Israeli Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law and at Bar-Ilan University's Faculty of Law, as well as a Senior Fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum.

From that estimable organisation UK Lawyers for Israel comes this video, not quite one hour long, of the professor in conversation with Oxford-educated London barrister Natasha Hausdorf, who has a LLM from Tel Aviv University in the areas of international law and the law of armed conflict.

Using illustrative matter to explain his points, Professor Bell enlightens us on the topic "Israel, Territory and International Law".

UAE virus aid rejected by Palestinians still at Israel’s airport; UN rethinking

Fourteen tons of medical supplies earmarked for the Palestinians to help cope with the coronavirus pandemic were still sitting at Ben Gurion Airport on Tuesday evening, a week after they arrived from the UAE, as UN officials worked to find a way to distribute the aid after the Palestinian Authority announced it would not accept it.

The aid arrived on what was the first-ever direct flight from the United Arab Emirates to Israel last Tuesday. The landing was celebrated by the Foreign Ministry, which notified reporters in advance about the historic route by which the supplies would be arriving.

However, the PA has insisted the UAE did not coordinate the matter and that it therefore could not accept the aid, which was seen as a step normalizing ties between Israel and the Gulf states.

The supplies — which include ten ventilators, PPE (personal protective equipment), lithium batteries for charging relevant hospital equipment and cleaning materials — were clearing customs at Ben Gurion and are slated to be transferred to a holding facility in Ashdod, a UN official told The Times of Israel on Tuesday evening.

The official did not tie the week-long stall to the PA’s announced rejection of the supplies. He said the UAE cargo flight was not the only one to have arrived at Ben Gurion, and that clearing customs and security checks takes time.

Iran’s president will have to give up his Microsoft Surface tablet

From YNet/AP:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday approved the order banning the use of any Israeli products in the country.

The ban includes technology, such as computer hardware and software, and was passed unanimously by Iranian lawmakers last week, Fars News Agency reported.

The legislation's aim is to apparently "confront the hostile acts of the Zionist regime against peace and security."

According to the new law, any cooperation with Israel, including use of its products, will be considered an “act against god.”

Rouhani is a fan of the Microsoft Surface hybrid laptop/tablet, and it appears to be standard equipment in Iran’s parliament or cabinet.

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Both the Surface and the underlying Windows software is partially designed (and possibly built) in Israel:

Say goodbye to your tablet, Mr. Rouhani!

In Ammon News, a writer names Amin Mahmoud describes an episode in the late 18th century where a “Jew” named Paul Friedmann tried to build a Jewish colony in Midian, in what is now Saudi Arabia.

The author elaborates on Friedmann’s life and emphasizes that he wanted to have the Jews involved in building a railway from Egypt to India, which is judged as proof of Jewish colonialist designs for the entire region. Mahmoud goes on to say that the initiative received widespread support and only through the determination of the Ottoman empire was this scheme foiled.

He concludes, “This Jewish settlement attempt at Midian and its counterparts from other settlement attempts in the Arab regions did not take place in ancient times, but took place in the recent past. Everyone in this country is threatened unless all of us shake off the burden of weakness and indifference and face the challenge with determination and strength. It has become imperative that the people of this nation understand the plots against it, and they defend its existence and survival, and do not depend on complacency and surrender, or it will suffer more rupture and loss and become a gossip in the mouths of the greedy and haters. The Zionist threat will not only threaten the Arabism of Palestine alone, but its danger and threat extend to the entire Arab world from its surroundings to the Gulf !!!”

What really happened?

MIDIAN PROJECT, THE, was an abortive, ill-judged attempt at Jewish colonisation in the Midian region east of the Red Sea near the Gulf ofAqaba.lt was led from Southampton 18v by Paul Friedmann, German Protestant author and philanthropist of Jewish descent, who following consultation with Sir Evelyn Baring (later Lord Cromer), Britain's representative in Egypt, purchased land in the Midian region on which to establish a Jewish colony leading possibly to a Jewish state. More than 3o continental Jews, mainly refugees from Russia, and an accompanying party including Friedmann, sailed for Suez on board a steam yacht named Israel that he had purchased in Glasgow. They set up camp in the Sinai and prepared to cross into Midian. But owing to the intending settlers' dislike (especially after an expelled member had died in the desert) of the martinet-like Prussian officer who Friedmann put in charge of the group, as well as to the hostility of nearby Turkish troops and the Egyptian government's consequent insistence that the project be abandoned, the settlement lasted only two months. In new of Baring's involvement, the Egyptian press angrily denounced the project as a British attempt to occupy Midian, and a war of words erupted between Britain and Turkey. Friedmann was left demoralised and financially ruined.

So a Jewish convert got a ragtag band of people to commit themselves to a bizarre scheme of creating a community in the desert, and it lasted two months. Not exactly evidence of Jewish designs on the entire region!

But why let facts get in the way of a good narrative?

MEMRI translated this video from an Iranian production company illustrating the phrase, “If Every Muslim Were to Pour One Bucket of Water, Israel Would Be Washed Away.”

No media gets released from Iran without Iranian government approval.

The fedoras floating on the water show beyond a doubt that Iran is antisemitic, as they are yearning to see tens of thousands of haredi Jews - who are generally not avid Zionists - drowned.

Here's Iran's "chief Rabbi" denouncing Israel and Zionism.

He's wearing the hat of the people Iran wants to see dead.

But the scene also shows the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque along with it to be underwater. The video is essentially saying that the "third holiest site in Islam" is dispensable as long as a few million Jews are killed at the same time.

You cannot get more antisemitic than to want to sacrifice your own holy sites just to get rid of Jews.

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EoZTV: An introduction to Palestinian terror groups

Mrs. Elder asked me if I would create some videos with the basics of the conflict between Israel

and the Arab world, so this is the first result. I discuss with her the different major terror groups, their different philosophies, how they work together and compete, and their “specialties.”

05/26 Links Pt2: If You Want to Criticize Israel, First Support Its Right to Exist; Chinese Embassy In France Tweets and Deletes Anti-Semitic Imagery

From Ian:

If You Want to Criticize Israel, First Support Its Right to Exist

Members of these anti-Israel groups do not want to have a conversation, because they realize they do not have facts to support their arguments.

For example, they ignore that the Jewish people are indigenous to Israel by overlooking the reality that there has been a continual Jewish presence in Israel for the past 3,000 years. They also ignore that the name “Palestine” was actually given to the territory by Roman conquerors who overtook the land in 70 CE.

Anti-Israel campus groups attempt to economically strangle Israel through BDS campaigns by stating that Israel is a racist nation. Evidence, however, shows that half of Israel’s Jews are not white, and that one out of every five Israelis is not a Jew. This minority group consists mostly of Israeli Arabs, who are provided with the same rights as Jews and serve in its government at all levels.

Further adding to this list of factually incorrect arguments, anti-Zionists claim that Israel, a country the size of New Jersey, is standing in the way of peace in the Middle East. This misconception completely disregards the five times Israel has officially offered land in exchange for peace, which were all summarily rejected.

These facts are not presented as proof that Israel is a perfect nation. Like any country in the world, Israel faces its own difficulties and deserves to be criticized for its faults.

However, instead of being evaluated equally, Israel is constantly singled out by those who seek to harm its existence. As a result of this injustice, antisemitism continues to rise as Jews face increased attacks against both them and the Jewish state.

For those who seek to criticize Israel, all that I ask is for you to hold it to the same standard you choose to apply to all countries. I ask that you support its right to exist to allow it to make improvements, instead of advocating for the destruction that erases its ability to do so.

The myth of the Good Dutchman

Sometimes a remark of a person in a minor publication sheds major light on an important national characteristic. Twenty years ago, Dutch-Israeli author, Miriam Dubi Gazan, interviewed the Dutch Ambassador in Israel, Como van Hellenberg-Hubar for the Dutch-Jewish "Joods Journaal". The article focused on the behavior of the Dutch during the Second World War.

By the time that article was published, historians had already proven that in the occupied Netherlands those who resisted or opposed the Germans had been a small minority of the population. Most people were indifferent. Many had collaborated in one way or another. Those included high ranking government officials, the police, municipalities, the majority of the supreme court, railroad leaders, and a multitude of others.

Nevertheless, the myth of the ‘good Dutchman’ during the war spread internationally. The diary of Anne Frank played an important role in this misrepresentation. She had been hidden with her family and others by good Dutch people in Amsterdam. Much less emphasis was given to their betrayal, probably by another Dutchman which led to her death.

Van Hellenberg-Hubar stated in the interview: "I am of the opinion that the myth of the 'good Dutchman' can have a positive effect. A myth can serve as an ideal picture. A picture which one has to meet. The positive norm, which the myth contains, is part of the norms and values in the Netherlands. If one effects the myth, the danger that the norm in this case, tolerance, also is effected. Tolerance is in essence not self-understood but a consequence of a conscious choice to give space to another. On that one has to work. Starting to deconstruct the myth can in this context be problematic."

What he said can be summarized as: “I am in favor of lying to embellish the Dutch past. We should lie or at least remain silent about its ugly sides.” Once one applies this view as a prism on Dutch society many of the attitudes of the country’s leaders during the past decades become much clearer.

‘Call of Duty’: Modern warfare’s Middle Eastern politics of ignorance

WHEN IT COMES to the countries in the Middle East, however, “It becomes much more politically fraught, politically complex.... When you talk about spending a whole bunch of time in this Middle Eastern country, where we’re going to be tracking down the terrorist leader and working alongside freedom fighters in that country, we just didn’t want to get wrapped up in the politics of any specific real world country.

“That’s because, number one, we don’t know enough about the politics of any given country to be able to do it respectfully. And number two, it would tie our hands as developers where we have these ideas of emotionally impactful narrative moments, exciting game-play moments, and we want to be able to bring those to the screen without having to worry about, ‘Well, that’s not accurate to this conflict. That thing didn’t really happen.’” This answer amounts to nothing more than complete nonsense. Infinity Ward brought in consultants from the US military and others to get every aspect of the weaponry in the game just right, but they couldn’t bring in a single political scientist, historian or sociologist familiar with the Middle East? The company has other games set in real political contexts with fictional details, such as when Russia invades America in a prior Call of Duty game. That didn’t really happen in real life now, did it? Using Jacob Minkoff’s logic, why didn’t Infinity War ever have a fictional stand-in for America? Just like they fused elements of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Chechnya in the 1990s and Syria today to create “Uzrikstan,” the fictional America in earlier Call of Duty games could have looked like America, but with a population that speaks German and dresses like they do in France – “Gerfransica” perhaps.

But that sounds ridiculous, right? Does it sound more ridiculous than “Uzrikstan,” the mountainous Arab “Middle Eastern” state on the northeastern Black Sea coast that grows poppies and has no religion? It gets worse, unfortunately. The game developers told The Guardian newspaper last year that one of the protagonists for their single player campaign, “Farah Karim,” was inspired by the female Kurdish fighters in Syria today. Yet in the game, she’s suddenly Arab (because everyone in the Middle East is Arab and lives in a desert, apparently).

The Kurds in Syria have been badly oppressed by Arab nationalist regimes since the 1950s, and today most are proud that in contrast to Arab political groups across the region, women in many of their movements take on real leadership roles.

For Infinity Ward to take this example and flip it on its head seems plain wrong.

Israel vs. Iran GDP per capita

Iran’s GDP has never recovered to its pre-revolution levels.

Israel’s has now quintupled Iran’s GDP per capita. And this is before US sanctions kicked back in.

Israel is close to Iran’s total GDP even though Iran has nearly 10 times the population.

When Iran says Israel won’t exist in 2040, perhaps it is talking about itself.

“Pro-Palestinian activists” should rejoice: Palestinian conflict deaths down 75% this year

The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces have plummeted this year compared to last year, from 76 to 18, a 75% reduction.

Compared to 2018, it is even more dramatic – an 87% drop.

It appears that when there are fewer violent riots, there are fewer people dying!

Who would have thought that?

05/26 Links Pt1: The Jews are not “settlers” in their own ancestral heartland; Is the two-state solution dead?; PA: Quran commands fighting and permits killing Israelis

From Ian:

The Jews are not “settlers” in their own ancestral heartland

Jewish communities, (villages and towns) in Judea and Samaria do not consist of “settlers.” The Jewish population consists of the descendants of the native and indigenous Jewish people in their own ancient land. A people have no need to “settle” what is already theirs by virtue of millennial physical and spiritual attachment. It is theirs and theirs alone.

Notice that as of this time of writing, Judea and Samaria have still not been annexed (I prefer the words, liberated or redeemed) at least not yet and the time to do so is well overdue – 2,000 years overdue. Will it happen this July, 2020 under Bibi Netanyahu’s watch or will there be another fabricated delay? These lands, after all, are the very warp and woof, the very fabric and fiber of Jewish history, both during and after Biblical times.

Simply put: The Jewish people do not “settle” land that already belongs to them. And the Jewish people cannot be called “settlers” in their very own ancestral, Biblical and native heartland.

Now if those facts are understood and hammered home again and again by every Israeli and every Jew in the Diaspora, think of the power and the glory that will illuminate the world as the veil of deception is finally torn from the same world’s eyes.

But it all will become meaningless if Israel’s leaders and politicians succumb yet again to a hostile world or to the Israeli Left, betray President Trump’s best chance for Jewish restoration in at least part of Judea and Samaria (its ancestral heartland), and instead delay for more endless years Israeli sovereignty throughout Eretz Yisrael.

Why do US Jewish leaders remain silent on Israeli sovereignty?

There is simply no excuse to stand on the sidelines during this existential debate merely because the issue is "controversial."

It is said that during this time of coronavirus, major Jewish organizations are suffering due to decreased donations. The virus may well be responsible for a considerable decline in support, but another virus may be at play here as well. The virus of fear is also rampant: fear of offending one's donors, one's neighbors, one's friends and relatives by taking a position that is unpopular but morally and historically correct.

Perhaps American Jews have grown weary of supporting organizations that lack the courage to distinguish themselves one from another. Perhaps they are hungry for an organization that trusts Israelis to act in their own national interest just as citizens of other countries do. Where is such a major Jewish organization among the American landscape today?

At some point, Israel will extend sovereignty over the Jewish portions of the West Bank. The status quo cannot continue indefinitely until the Palestinians miraculously decide to live in peace next to the Jewish State, a fantasy progressives continue to cling to despite all evidence to the contrary. It is at long last time to face reality and move on.

As Rabbi Hillel wisely said: "If not now, when?"

JPost Editorial: Netanyahu's circus of a trial delegitimizes democracy

The rowdy crowd took its cue from the beliefs of the person they had come to support – the prime minister. Netanyahu, who had attempted to avoid attending Sunday’s opening session, ended up grabbing the spotlight in every way possible, in an effort to dominate the headlines and coverage.

In a smart PR move, he had the Likud ministers bused to the courthouse to portray solidarity in a much-publicized photo taken without the court’s permission. As the Post’s Gil Hoffman wrote, media from around the world had gathered to report on the prime minister standing alone in a courtroom facing serious charges. The presence of the Likud ministers, as well as the cynical use of a group of Holocaust survivors who also pledged allegiance to the prime minister, helped to dull that sharp image.

Where things took a far more sinister turn was when Netanyahu gave a long statement to the media before the trial’s launch. First, he attempted to deflect the charges against him as an indictment against anyone in Israel with a right-wing political viewpoint.

“They are trying to topple me and the entire right wing,” he claimed, adding a who’s who of Israeli “leftists” who are out to get him. “The police, prosecution, press and the Left and the legal establishment joined together to bring me down....”

That doesn’t leave many people or institutions on the other side, as Netanyahu made sure to cover all the bases with his base statements. But as Hoffman astutely pointed out, the verdict in this trial, which is a watershed moment in Israeli history, is not going to be decided by partisan Likud voters or Israelis who distrust the legal establishment and the police. Rather, it is going to be ruled upon by the three judges, who will absorb all the evidence presented by both sides and make judgments based on the facts, not emotional appeals or demagogic tirades.

Netanyahu managed to shift the focus on this first day of his trial away from the image of a prime minister on trial to the image of a prime minister being lynched by a crooked system out to get him.

That attack on the democratic institutions of the country might have been effective in the short term, but when the court reconvenes in July and witnesses start taking the stand in the coming months (or even years), the focus will again shift to where it should be – on the charges, the defense and whether the prime minister is guilty or innocent.

The PLO in Lebanon decided to seal off all the Palestinian “refugee” camps in that country after the discovery of four suspected cases of COVID-19 in the Burj al-Barajneh camp.

That camp is only one of a dozen camps in Lebanon that have been virtual prisons for Palestinians for decades.

Even though it is now been over two days since this closure, there is absolute silence from the “pro-Palestinian” crowd on social media about this. In fact, these activists are still politicizing the almost nonexistent problem of COVID-19 in Gaza, even though every single case there was quarantined and no one in the general population of Gaza has caught it.

By any measure, Palestinians in Lebanon are in worse shape than in Gaza. Their population density is far higher, they cannot build, they are not allowed to have many jobs, they are treated as enemies, and the Palestinians fleeing from Syria were forced into the already highly overcrowded camps because their grandparents happened to live in Palestine in 1948.

Yet these people who style themselves as caring about Palestinians largely ignore Lebanon. They claim to speak “truth to power” but will never criticize Lebanese abuse of their Palestinian “guests.”

Just like they won’t criticize Hamas for its role in the misery of Gazans.

The only Arabs they criticize are those that they can claim are aligned with Israel.

Anyone who desires that Palestinians remain stateless and miserable in Lebanon and elsewhere rather than accept Israel’s existence is not pro-Palestinian.

The entire point of “return” is, and always has been, to destroy Israel (quotes)

I saw this at +972 Magazine today:

While the idea of “return” is presented as a humanitarian issue by Palestinians and NGOs, the Arab world has long recognized that it was a pretext for destroying Israel – and this remains true today.
Here are some historic quotes on the topic from research I did a number of years ago:
As early as October, 1949, Egypt’s foreign minister Muhammad Salah al-Din said, “…in demanding the return of the Palestinian refugees, the Arabs mean their return as masters, not slaves; or to put it quite clearly – the intention is the extermination of Israel.” [i]
Similarly, in 1960 Egypt’s Nasser said, “If the refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist.” [ii]
In 1950, Lebanese weekly As Sayyad suggested that Arab states should recognize Israel in order to ensure the return of the refugees. That way, it added, “we should create a large Arab majority that would serve as the most effective means of reviving the Arab character of Palestine while forming a fifth column for the day of revenge and reckoning.” [iii]
In 1952, Sir Alexander Galloway, former head of UNRWA in Jordan, was quoted by Reverend Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, in front of a US Senate committee, as saying, “It is perfectly clear than the Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront against the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel....Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die."[iv]
Prime Minister of Lebanon Abdullah el-Yafi, stated in 1966, “The day on which the Arabs’ hope for the return of the refugees to Palestine is realized will be the day of Israel’s extermination.”[v]
The people who claim they care about “return” have an agenda which is the opposite of humanitarian. It is an agenda to destroy.
_____________________________

[i] Egyptian Foreign Minister, Salah-el-Din, The Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Misri, Cairo (11 October 1949), quoted from N. Feinberg, Studies in International Law, with a Special Reference to the Arab-Israel Conflict (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Magnes Press, 1979) 506
[ii] Neue Zuercher Zeitung, September 1, 1960, quoted by Terence Prittie in “Curtis, M. Neyer, C. Waxman and A. Pollack (ed.),"The Palestinians: People, History, Politics," 1975.
[iii] “Israel Gives Plan on Arab Refugees,” New York Times, November 12, 1953, quoting an Israeli white paper.
[iv] Committee on Foreign Relations, Palestine Refugee Program, Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Near East and Africa of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Eighty-Third Congress, First Session on the Palestine Refugee Program, May 20, 21, and 25, 1953 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1953), p. 103. Quoted in "A Tale of Two Galloways: Notes on the Early History of UNRWA and Zionist Historiography," Alexander H. Joffe & Asaf Romirowsky, Middle Eastern Studies, Volume 46, Issue 5, 2010
[v] Abdullah el-Yafi, Prime Minister of Lebanon, the Lebanese daily newspaper El-Hayat, Beirut (29 April 1966), quoted from N. Feinberg, op. cit.

Just in case you weren’t already thoroughly convinced that Hezbollah is a completely immoral and contemptible terror group, their English-language Al Manar has an article extolling the acts of 12 suicide bombers who attacked Israeli targets in Lebanon before 2000.

Hezbollah, who has been mistakenly viewed by the Israeli enemy and the West as a mere armed group, is an Islamic Jihadi party that refers to Islam teachings and values in devising its strategies and plans.

Sacrificing one’s soul for the sake of God, nation and oppressed people is praised in Islam as martyrdom. Hezbollah sacrificed 1281 martyrs in its fight to liberate the Lebanese South and Western Bekaa from the Israeli occupation.

The military confrontation with the Zionist enemy imposed on Hezbollah Resistance certain military strategies that prevent the Israelis from frustrating them. In this context, Hezbollah carried out 12 martyrdom bombing operations against the Israeli occupation posts, inflicting game-changing losses upon.

After describing these attacks, the article concludes:

The above-detailed martyrdom bombing operations, which reflect the sublime values of sacrifice and altruism, have dug deeply in the Israeli collective unconsciousness, changing all the Zionist false claims of possessing an invincible military power.

The EU still does not designate Hezbollah as a terror group, only its “military wing.” This would be considered unbelievable if we hadn’t already seen how easily Arab terrorists can bend Europeans to their will. by making various threats of how Europe acting morally would hurt Lebanon or other such nonsense.

A group that glorifies suicide bombers as “altrusitic” does not deserve any respect, and all the respect given to Hezbollah by the EU makes the EU that much more irrelevant.

05/25 Links Pt2: The Torah Heard Round the World; Dear Europe – the Israelis are not your Jews; Roger Waters – getting a taste of his own medicine

From Ian:

The Torah Heard Round the World

My synagogue is using the scrolls my grandfather once used as a military chaplain in WWII. Now, once again, his Torah brings comfort during a time of danger and uncertainty.

When our family moved to New York, we brought the Torah with us and loaned it to our new shul, the Park Avenue Synagogue, as our Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove instantly understood the significance of this family treasure.

And now the Torah is back in action during a crisis. When I saw Cantor Azi Schwartz holding my grandfather’s Torah snug to his chest, I was overwhelmed by emotions about how our tradition has the capacity to travel over time and space in a troubled world. He has incorporated this scroll into some of the online services that we watch in our virtual world, part of how he brings relief to all of us who are trying to stay healthy and be patient until this viral storm passes so we can return to normalcy. As he held that Torah, the cantor offered a small taste of what so many observant Jews dearly miss, the spiritual wonder of attending services on Friday night and Saturday morning as we connect with our congregational friends and take time away from the demands of the secular world to pray and learn.

And yet, I couldn’t also help feeling that my grandfather’s Torah needs to be returned to a physical home as soon as possible. While the Jewish community is rightly focused on making sure that public health guidelines are followed, we must be prepared, when this pandemic is over, to do everything possible to repair our social fabric, which includes the synagogue, church, and mosque. Jews and other places of social bonds—educational, cultural, and other nonprofit groups—will struggle to survive when this ends.

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on the institutions that are so vital to the emotional health of our world—the places where people come together for common interests and experiences, the organizations that offer cultural education and celebration, and the physical religious rooms that help us achieve spiritual vitality. A new normal cannot exist without them. We can’t be virtual forever.

In the years ahead, we must do everything that is necessary to fix the broken spaces where Torahs like my grandfather’s are housed and where we come together as a people to worship. Just as my grandfather did almost 75 years ago, we will need to bring the Torahs back home, as soon as this war is over.

What a Difference a ‘J’ Makes

Not everyone welcomed the visibly distinctive insignia of the Jewish chaplain. Some Protestants, reported the American Israelite in November 1918, bristled at the notion that the Jews had an “emblem peculiar to themselves,” anxious lest they use the war “as a time for their own denominational propaganda work.” A number of American Jews, in turn, bristled at the use of Roman numerals rather than the letters of the Hebrew alphabet to designate the commandments. If, as representatives of the Jewish community claimed, the Ten Commandments was to the Jews (aka the “Hebrews”), what the cross was to Christians, why stop short of heralding it as a Jewish symbol, through and through?

Fear of desecration, of exposing the sacred Hebrew letters to the most frightful of wartime conditions, was one response; the difficulty of procuring Hebrew letters another. Left unsaid but implicit all the same: By WWI, American visual culture, which prized the Ten Commandments, commonly depicted them with Roman numerals, not Hebrew letters. (By then, the “Tablets of the Law” had become as much an American phenomenon as a Jewish one, but that’s another story.)

Though quelled at the time and for several decades thereafter, concern over the nomenclature by which the Ten Commandments was identified repeatedly surfaced. Writing more than 50 years later, in 1972, Rabbi Judah Nadich, General Eisenhower’s adviser on Jewish affairs, called the concern a “perennial” one, while Rabbi Aryeh Lev, director of the National Jewish Welfare Board’s Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy, across whose desk passed any number of suggestions—among them, replacing both the Hebrew letters and the Roman numerals with “short straight horizontal lines”—described it as “really an interesting matter.”

It would take another decade—a total of 65 years—before Hebrew lettering finally made its way onto the Jewish chaplain’s Ten Commandments insignia. In 1983, it became official.

The substitution of a “J” for an “H” and of the Hebrew alphabet for Roman numerals may not appear on anyone’s list of triumphant historical moments or victories. Perhaps they should. Gestures of inclusion and public recognition, these two visual declarations not only stabilized American Jewry’s footing, but also bolstered its confidence, its self-assertion, as a minority culture. By my reckoning, that qualifies as a victory.

📽 VIDEO: President Truman meets with Chaim Weizmann, President of the newly proclaimed State of Israel, at the White House #OnThisDay in 1948. https://t.co/PpC76dXDDL
— AIPAC (@AIPAC) May 25, 2020

Dear Europe – the Israelis are not your Jews

At some point, the people who run the European Union will have to get used to the idea that Israel is here to stay.

So far, it’s been a tough sell, mostly because old habits die hard.

Amid the flurry of denunciations against Israel, for even thinking about going ahead with sovereignty for parts of Judea and Samaria, most telling is this remark from Josep Borrell, EU’s High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, as follows: “We strongly urge Israel to refrain from any unilateral decision that would lead to the annexation of any occupied Palestinian territory, and would be, as such, contrary to international law.”

Regarding international law, the high commissioner is highly mistaken, as we read here from the Gatestone Institute.

From time immemorial, or precisely the Revelation at Sinai, which the Sage Judah Halevi referred to as the defining moment of all world history, the land, all of it, belongs to the Jews, verified over and over again from Balfour, to the League of Nations, to the San Remo Conference, back to The Kuzari and ultimately to the Hebrew Bible.

It is written in parchment. It is written in stone. It is written in the DNA of every Jewish person, man, woman, and child.

So what’s troubling those European commissioners, high and low, particularly from France, and now even the Vatican?

Yes, France, still famous for the Roundup of Paris, which even amazed the Gestapo at how smartly the gendarmes rushed to the task.

Suddenly, the French were more efficient even than the Germans…and today, incidentally, Germany has also voiced “concern” about Israel’s possible move toward partial annexation.