Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 28, 2020

Aaron David Miller gets closer to getting it, but not quite there

Aaron David Miller was involved in the Oslo peace process and often seems wedded to the assumptions of Oslo that have been proven wrong time and time again. As recently as last year he was denigrating the Trump plan without admitting that every single Oslo-style two state plan has been even more doomed and resulted in the exact opposite of peace because of their entirely wrong assumptions.

Occasionally, he says things that make it appear he is starting to get it. But then he feels he must go back to showing that he really doesn’t.

In Politico, he gets closer to the truth:

Contrary to the warnings from diplomats, analysts and peaceniks who predicted Israel would become a pariah if it didn’t settle up with the Palestinians, Israel seems to be making more progress toward normalization with Arab regimes without a credible peace process than with one.

Clearly the Gulf states aren’t on the verge of full normalization with Israel; nor is the Arab world willing to untether itself from the emotional pull of Palestinian issue or its hostile and all too often anti-Semitic views of Israel. But even the most skeptical observers would have to admit something has changed.

So what explains this shift?

Three significant factors. The rise of Iran and Sunni jihadists spewing terror across the region has created a narrow but important coincidence of interests between Israel and the Arab world. Increasing exhaustion and frustration with the never-ending Palestinian cause has opened up more space for Arab states to follow their own interests. But behind it all, lay a White House enamored of Arab money for arms sales and investment in the U.S. and eager to marshal the Arabs in the service of its anti-Iranian and pro-Israeli agenda. Indeed, in an effort to court the Gulf Arabs, Trump and his Middle East envoy son-in-law Jared Kushner have given the Saudis carte blanche to pursue disastrous policies while holding their coats. And Arab nations, sensing opportunities with an autocrat-friendly U.S. president, have been only too happy to follow.

It is refreshing to see someone who has been involved in Oslo admit that Netanyahu, doing everything people like Miller have warned would be disastrous, has actually brought Israel closer to peace than all the world’s diplomats combined.

All three reasons for this that Miller brings are valid, although I don’t agree that the third is the major reason. Israel was cultivating these relationships before anyone dreamed Trump would become president.

There is a fourth reason, though, that is hugely important and unreported: Israel’s strength.

As noted in Lee Smith’s 2010 book with that name, Arabs respect “The Strong Horse.” In the years since that was written, Israel’s strength in the Middle East has become overwhelming – not only militarily but also economically, technologically, politically and even in entertainment and on social media.

Arab antisemitism is still endemic but there are millions of Arabs who admire Israel. They admire its military strength above all, as this ties into a deep Arab respect for warriors. But Arab leaders aren’t stupid – they know that Israeli scientific expertise can help them survive past the oil era. They see that Israeli TV shows are on Netflix, and they know their people are watching them. They look at Israeli newspapers and follow Israeli government accounts online. (Even when they insult Israel’s government on the “Israel in Arabic” social media sites, they admire the fact that their insults don’t get removed.)

Israel’s seeming disregard for international law (from their perspective) and willingness to “annex” parts of Judea and Samaria is not a reason for hating Israel – it is a reason to further admire Israel, because only a strong nation can stand up to the international community.

They certainly are eager to ally with the US, but that is not the main reason they are interested in Israel now. That interest won’t go away if Trump loses in November.

Israel’s Supreme Court Does it Again (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

In August of last year, Dvir Sorek, an 18-year old yeshiva student walking near Migdal Oz in the Gush Etzion region was set upon by two terrorists acting on behalf of Hamas. He was brutally stabbed to death (do I need to add “brutally” to “stabbed to death?”)
The murderers, and three others who helped plan and prepare the attack, were quickly located and arrested. Four of them immediately confessed. After they were indicted, the IDF informed the families of the four that their homes would be demolished. The families petitioned the Supreme Court to prevent the demolition, but the petitions were denied, and in November, the homes were demolished.
Home demolitions are controversial. But most observers believe that the policy is effective in restraining potential terrorists, even suicide terrorists. And some 90% of Jewish Israelis support the policy.
There were five terrorists involved in Sorek’s murder. Unlike the others, Mahmoud Atawna did not confess immediately, so the IDF did not order his home demolished at the same time as the others. Finally an order was issued to do so in January, 2020. This one, too, was appealed to the Supreme Court, with the assistance of “Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual,” one of many left-wing Israeli NGOs funded by the hostile-to-Israel European Union, various European governments, and the US-based New Israel Fund. But this time, a three-judge panel ruled 2-1 in favor of the petitioners, and ordered that the IDF could not demolish the home.
The Court, which had never overthrown an IDF order to demolish the home of a convicted terrorist before, gave two reasons for it: Atawna’s wife and children lived in the house, and were not involved in the murder and didn’t support him (how they established the latter, I do not know – maybe they asked her). And second, too much time had passed after the murder for it to be a deterrent to terrorism:

Justices Anat Baron and Uzi Vogelman granted the petition against the planned demolition in Beit Kahil, near Hebron, leaving Justice David Mintz in the minority. …

Baron wrote that the army didn’t issue the demolition order until five months after the attack, after the homes of other members of the terror cell had been destroyed. “The longer the gap between the attack and the demolition of the home of the attacker, the less the deterrent effect inherent in the home demolition,” she wrote. “Lacking a deterrent effect, the inevitable impression is that the home demolition is being sought as a solely punitive measure.”

The decision also noted that Atawna’s family was not accused of involvement or having knowledge of his intent to harm a soldier and did not express support for the attack after the fact.

Baron also explained why she thought the deterrent effect was reduced by the delay:

The passage of time results in disconnecting the ‘consciousness connection’ between the murder and the sanction against it, so that already at the time the demolition order was issued its deterrent power was in doubt …

The decision noted that due to the delay in issuing the order “the petitioners were left in a cloud of uncertainty about the fate of their home.” It’s hard to resist commenting that the Sorek family also will find themselves in a cloud, only it will not be five months, it will be for the rest of their lives, whenever they remember the son that was so cruelly and pointlessly taken from them.
What is interesting is that the dissenting judge, David Mintz, noted that the reason for the delay in issuing the demolition order was that since there was no confession, the IDF waited for Atawna to be convicted before issuing it! In other words, they wanted to be as fair as possible.
Until now the Supreme Court has usually avoided interfering with the IDF. But with this decision, the justices, who apparently believe that they are experts in the psychology of terrorists (“disconnecting the consciousness connection” – it sounds better in Hebrew but makes no more sense), and who base legal decisions on what feels right to them, have decided to second-guess the IDF as well.
Incidentally, I’m not an expert in psychology of terrorists either, but it seems to me that the certainty that it will occur is more important to the deterrent power of a home demolition than how long it takes to execute. And with this order, the Court has just demolished that certainty – and eviscerated yet another sanction against terrorism.

05/27 Links Pt2: Anti-Semitism examined as a social virus in new PBS documentary; Discrimination Can Be Rewarding; US Jewish Leaders Praise Oklahoma’s Adoption of Anti-BDS Law

From Ian:

Anti-Semitism examined as a social virus in new PBS documentary

Meanwhile, on our shores, Goldberg, who lost extended family members in the Holocaust, takes note of how anti-Semitism in the US has been getting worse over the past dozen years. By the time 11 Jews were gunned down in October 2018 in a synagogue in Pittsburgh — “the most anti-Semitic act I’d seen in this country in my two decades as a journalist,” he said — this film project was already underway. In his view, anti-Jewish sentiment in the non-Jewish world is always “only a couple of centimeters below the surface” at any given time, though social forces may push it down.

In ‘Viral: Antisemitism in Four Mutations,’ Rabbi Elisar Admon shows the hole where a bullet pierced his prayer book during the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. “It went right through the word for God,” he said. (PBS via JTA)

“The biggest mute button on anti-Semitism was the Holocaust itself,” he said, adding that it led to “better behavior” toward Jews in most of the Western world for more than 50 years. “And the precursor [to those prejudices surfacing] is societies becoming more polarized.” Another factor, he said, is that fewer Holocaust survivors are around to give firsthand testimony about how unchecked anti-Semitism branches off into utter horror.

In the France portion of “Viral,” Goldberg interviews a brother of the shooter in the 2015 assault on the Hyper Cacher kosher grocery in Paris. Asked to describe the motivations of his jihadist brother, Abdel Ghani Merah describes the North African immigrant milieu of their parents, who brought to France a post-colonial belief that Western nations, Israel and global Jewry were allied against the Arab world.

“Hatred of Jews was legitimate in my parents’ eyes,” he says, while distancing himself from that view (in fact, he has committed his life to countering anti-Semitism). “If they failed at something or were rejected, right away it was somehow a Jew’s fault. They owned the world.”

A final word is given to the widow of Philippe Braham, one of four French Jews killed in the attack on Hyper Cacher, a kosher supermarket in Paris.

“We don’t walk in the streets easily like we used to,” she says. “I won’t let my sons wear the kippah. I won’t say their names out loud.”

Valerie Braham then adds: “For me it’s just pointless hatred of the Jews. There are no real reasons.”

For those who see it, will this film provide some kind of vaccine, so to speak, against anti-Semitism?

That is the perennial hope — the panacea we are all waiting for.

Discrimination Can Be Rewarding

This year, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), gave Abdulhadi its Georgina M. Smith Award. The award is for a “person or persons who provided exceptional leadership in a given year in improving the status of academic women or in academic collective bargaining and through that work improved the profession in general.” The AAUP’s statement makes it clear that Abdulhadi received the award not despite but because of her approach to advancing “social change in Palestine” and elsewhere.

Perversely, she who would exclude Zionists from campus and who, as far as I can tell, has never encountered a specific charge of anti-Semitism on the left that she has not dismissed as an invention of the “Israel lobby,” is now honored by the AAUP as a builder of coalitions and a champion of human rights. She for whom the boycott of Israel is the very center of her “pro-Palestinian” activism is honored for that very activism by an organization that explicitly opposes academic boycotts.

The AAUP has been at many times in its history a vital voice in the defense of academic freedom and a thoughtful contributor to discussions of the professional standards academics can be expected to honor. As colleges and universities, facing greater and lesser financial problems as a result of the pandemic, move to eliminate faculty positions, the AAUP will be an important resource for faculty members looking to safeguard their rights. The AAUP has also struggled with, from early on, a tendency to let its commitment to academic freedom, the free exchange of ideas, and the distinctive vocation of the scholar be overshadowed by the attachment of members to the progressive cause of the day. This tendency reaches its zenith in the AAUP’s praise of Abdulhadi, who “transcends the division between scholarship and activism that encumbers traditional university life.”

In fact, as the AAUP’s own 1915 Declaration of Principles avers, the defense of academic freedom greatly depends on the perception and reality of the university as a “nonpartisan institution of learning” and on the willingness of professors themselves to police the boundaries between the spirit of scholarship and the spirit of “uncritical and intemperate partisanship.”

In offering an award to professor Abdulhadi, the AAUP has damaged its credibility at a moment when it can use every shred. Somehow, in the course of spitting in the face of those who, with good reason, consider Abdulhabi deserving of censure, not awards, the AAUP has spit in its own face.

David Collier: L’Chaim – Israel – To Haim – a story of so many lives lost

Listing Jews named Haim who were innocent victims of terrorism and the conflict. Not soldiers, but family men and children going about their day. How many can there be? Like all my research, the tragic truth is always heartbreakingly worse than the imagination.

To Haim. To all of them.

On October 13 2015 Haim Haviv was sitting on a bus in Jerusalem. He was out shopping with his wife Shoshana. He was 78 years old. Chaim had arrived in Israel from Iraq with his parents and ten siblings at the age of 11. Two Palestinian terrorists got onto the bus and started shooting and stabbing passengers. Haim was murdered by the terrorists. The attack took four lives. Haim’s wife was left seriously injured.

Chaim Yechiel Rothman was an orthodox Jew. On the morning of November 17 2014 he was praying in the Kehilat Yaakov Synagogue in Jerusalem. Two Palestinian terrorists entered the synagogue, shouted ‘allahu akbar’ and began slaughtering the Jewish congregation. One of the terrorists was shooting at point blank range, the other was hacking at people with a meat cleaver. Rabbi Chaim Rothman battled hard but never recovered. He died whilst still in a coma from his injuries in late October 2015 – almost a whole year after the attack. The attack also claimed five other victims.

On Aug 31, 2010 thirty-seven year old Kochava Even Chaim from Beit Hagai caught a lift home with her friends Yitzhak and Talya Ames. Their vehicle was attacked by Palestinian terrorists in a drive by shooting. All four passengers of the vehicle were hit by numerous shots from close range and pronounced dead at the scene. Kochava’s husband was in the initial response medical team that arrived to help the victims, only to discover his wife was amongst them.

On January 9 2007, Emi Haim Elmaliah went to work in his bakery in Eilat, the city he was born and raised in. He had opened the bakery just six months before. A Palestinian terrorist chose the bakery as a soft target for a suicide attack. The Islamic Jihad and the Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. At the time these factions were fighting each other, and they reasoned that by joining together to kill Jews, they would help heal their own wounds. Emi was one of three civilians who died at the scene.

December 5 2005 Haim Amram, 26, went to the shopping mall in Netanya where he worked as a security guard. Haim would never return home again. A Palestinian suicide bomber attempted to enter the mall to inflict maximum carnage but alert security guards became suspicious and approached the terrorist. Haim paid with his life for his bravery. Five people died in that attack – but for Haim’s actions, it could have been many more.

On February 2 2004, Yehuda Haim, 48, got onto a 14A bus in Jerusalem. Haim was a disabled veteran. Nobody noticed the Palestinian terrorist who got on the bus. The suicide attack took place at about 8:30 a.m. as the crowded, rush-hour bus was making its way downtown. The terrorist murdered eight people, including Haim. Haim is survived by his wife and three children.

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.