Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Today’s Peter Beinart lie: “Palestinians have been excluded from mainstream US media”

Peter Beinart continues with his push to destroy Israel with another whopper of a lie.

“For decades, Palestinians have been largely excluded from the mainstream US media conversation about Israel-Palestine. That exclusion continues today, and represents one more form of Palestinian dispossession,” he tweeted.

Really?

Judging from the New York Times op-ed page since Arafat rejected Oslo, I see articles by

Marwan Barghouti
Saeb Erekat
Diana Buttu
Ahmed Abu Artema
Mahmoud Abbas
Hanan Ashrawi
Ali Abunimah
Ayman Odeh
Raja Shehadeh
Zena Agha
Daoud Kuttab
Yasir Arafat
Ali Jarbawi
Yousef Munayyer
Rashid Khalidi
Khalil Shikaki
Linda Sarsour
Zahi Khoury

I’m probably missing some. Most of these were in the past decade. Many of these have written articles more than once. (If you include the years before 2000, there are even more, like Edward Said and Mamdouh Aker. )

Not to mention that Rashida Tlaib has been all over the media since her election. Hanan Ashrawi and Saeb Erekat have been staples on TV news shows for decades.

Now, how many countries can claim to have had more citizens writing in US media? Israel, probably the UK, maybe Canada. Are there more articles by Germans or the French or Mexicans or Japanese than Palestinians? I doubt it highly.

Even this doesn’t tell the whole story. For while the US newspapers are eager to publish Israelis who oppose Israel’s policies, one would be hard pressed to find Palestinians who are against the Palestinian leadership or who are pro-Israel in the media. Voices like Khaled Abu Tomaeh or Bassem Eid are rarely found in the New York Times nowadays (Bassem Eid was published in 2001 and 1996, not since.) Throughout the 2010s, the ratio of anti-Israel to pro-Israel op-eds in the NYT was about 4-1, meaning that the Palestinian perspectives were well represented even if not from Palestinians - which is not unusual, as there were more Americans who wrote op-eds and columns about the conflict than Israelis and Palestinians combined.

In short, Peter couldn’t name more than a handful of actual countries that have had more representation in US media than Palestinians. The truth is the exact opposite of his claim.

But when someone is seeking attention for his immoral ideas, making things up is not unexpected.

07/25 Links: Twitter faces 48-hour boycott over ‘failure to tackle antisemitism’; Jewish group asks head of Philadelphia NAACP to resign after anti-Semitic Facebook post

From Ian:

Twitter faces 48-hour boycott over ‘failure to tackle antisemitism’

Anti-racism campaigners and public figures have joined calls for a mass walkout from Twitter in protest at the site’s failure to sufficiently tackle antisemitism.

Users of the platform are being urged not to post on the platform for 48 hours from Monday at 9am. The action comes after Twitter failed to remove the account of British grime artist Wiley following a string of hate-filled posts to his half-a-million followers between Friday and Saturday morning.
Grime artist Wiley has been dropped by his management company over accusations of anti-Semitism.( Photo credit : Matt Crossick/PA Wire)

“Wiley’s is just one of a recent number of high profile and influential Twitter accounts that has incited racial hatred against Jews, receiving an insufficient response from the platform provider,” said organisers of the campaign that includes actress Tracy-Ann Oberman. “This incident reflects the need for clear legislation, such as the Online Harm Reduction Bill.”

Activist Saul Freeman, who tweets under @nuddering, approached Oberman with the idea of a mass walkout after she tweeted on Friday night that she might stop using the platform.

Twitter faced sustained criticism from the Jewish community and high-profile figures beyond including Piers Morgan after only removing a few of Wiley’s tweets and slapping him with a week-long ban, rather than taking down his account.

Among dozens who have already pledged to join the walkout before it was even publicly announced are anti-racism campaigner Sir Trevor Phillips, singer Beverley Knight, comedian Shappi Khorsandi, former MP Luciana Berger, broadcaster Maajid Nawaz and writers Nick Cohen and Sathnam Sanghera. The call for action also has the backing of the CST, Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council.

CAA calls for prosecution, revocation of MBE and closure of social media accounts of musician Wiley over unhinged incitement against Jews

Campaign Against Antisemitism is calling for the prosecution of the musician known as Wiley over his unhinged incitement against Jews. We have also called for the revocation of his MBE and asked Twitter and Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, to close his social media accounts.

The rapper, whose name is Richard Kylea Cowie but who is known as Wiley, has spent today engaged in an escalating rant which has culminated in calls for Jews to be shot and for black people to go to “war” against them.

After a day spent likening Jews to the Ku Klax Klan and claiming that Jews had cheated him and were “snakes”, Wiley tweeted that Jews should “hold some corn”, which is a slang expression meaning that they should be shot. He added “Jewish community you deserve it”.

He also called on “black people” to go to “war” with Jews.

Wiley repeatedly evoked conspiracy theories that Jews were responsible for the slave trade and that modern-day Jews are in fact imposters who usurped black people — a conspiracy theory that has incited acts of terrorism against Jews, such as a stabbing attack in Monsey in New York in December.

As Wiley spewed his antisemitic venom, Campaign Against Antisemitism responded with the facts, for example that the conspiracy theory that Jews were responsible for the slave trade has been described by the Legacies of British Slave Ownership project at University College, London, as based on “no evidence whatsoever”.

Wiley’s racist ramblings, which he apparently referred to as “Black History Lesson For Today”, come after the musician known as Ice Cube tweeted a picture of an antisemitic mural and several other celebrities have promoted the antisemitic hate preacher Louis Farrakhan. During his rant, Wiley praised Ice Cube.

Police probes British rapper Wiley after an antisemitic tirade on Twitter

British rap artist Richard Kylea Cowie Jr., most commonly known as Wiley, is facing a police investigation after a string of antisemitic comments appeared on his social media accounts, prompting his management to drop him.

“If you work for a company owned by 2 Jewish men and you challenge the Jewish community in anyway of course you will get fired,” Wiley wrote and then added, “Infact [sic] there are 2 sets of people who nobody has really wanted to challenge #Jewish & #KKK but being in business for 20 years you start to undestand [sic] why.”

In several other tweets, Wiley claimed that Jews control "the Law," and made several claims about Israel not being a Jewish country, "Listen to me Jewish community Israel is not your country I'm sorry."

When confronted about his tweets, Wiley wrote "Anti Semetic? What's it called the way you rip us off in business then? What's that called when you tell us there is 1 rule for us and another rule for you lot? What's that called?" He added "Anti Semetic? Are u stupid? Do you know what these people do to the world?"

Police confirmed they had received complaints about Wiley.

We released some records by Wiley between 2007 and 2014. We fully condemn Wiley's comments and royalties from those records will be donated to campaigns that fight anti-Semitism.
— Big Dada (@bigdadarecords) July 25, 2020

.@jeremycorbyn is deleting his interactions with the antisemite @WileyCEO

That’s cos Jeremy is the most honest man in the world

Like that time he said he never laid a wreath for Jew-killing terrorists

And then we saw a photo of him laying a wreath for Jew-killing terrorists pic.twitter.com/YV06EdtC0o
— leekern (@leekern13) July 25, 2020

07/24 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Betraying Jewish history by watering down the Holocaust; Arsen Ostrovsky: Xinjiang Shows We Haven't Learnt a Thing from Auschwitz

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Betraying Jewish history by watering down the Holocaust

The British baroness Ruth Deech, whose family were Jewish refugees from Nazism, recently delivered an impassioned address to the Oxford Jewish community about the way the Holocaust is being evacuated of meaning by memorials and museums in its name.

Her concern was prompted by the controversial plan to build a Holocaust memorial and learning center in London's Victoria Tower Gardens, a small park near the Houses of Parliament.

Westminster council, the local planning authority, has turned down this proposal on environmental grounds. The space is a small, green oasis that would not only be marred by a jarring brutalist structure, but risks becoming submerged by tourist traffic and anti-Jewish vandals alike.

The British government is making extraordinary and arguably irregular efforts to overturn this decision and get this center built. Its insistence is all the more strange given that there are already five major Holocaust memorials in Britain.

Deech's concerns, however, go far deeper than inappropriate positioning. Her sharpest point is that these memorials tend to shy away from the real causes of Jew-hatred. Instead, they are increasingly being used to promote a self-congratulatory and sometimes self-exculpatory image of the country that erects them.

Britain's memorials, for example, do not note how in the 1930s and 1940s, the U.K. government blocked the entry into Palestine of desperate European Jews in flagrant repudiation of the British Mandate to settle Jews there, thus facilitating their extermination in the Nazi slaughter.

"The Holocaust didn't involve "injustices" against the Jews. It involved the attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish people."

Hungary, Ukraine and other Eastern European countries have used Holocaust memorializing to erase their own complicity in the slaughter of the Jews, presenting themselves instead as historic victims of the Nazis or even equating the Nazi killing of Jews with the Soviet killing of other minorities.

As Deech observed, the Holocaust tends to be lumped together with other genocides and examples of racism or persecution, thus watering down its significance. The message becomes a generalized one of avoiding hatred and intolerance.

But that doesn't address or explain the roots of the Holocaust: "Namely, centuries of Jewish persecution; first, on the grounds of religion, and then on the grounds of race, and now on the grounds of a distorted left-wing view of the State of Israel."

Arsen Ostrovsky: Xinjiang Shows We Haven't Learnt a Thing from Auschwitz

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called Chinese government actions in Xianjiang the "stain of the century," and asserted that China is "in a league of its own" on human rights violations.

The Treasury Department has also imposed Magnitsky sanctions on some of the Chinese officials responsible for these crimes, while President Trump has signed into law the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, giving the U.S. an even greater array of tools to target Chinese abuses—which the administration has signaled its preparedness to use.

Meantime, there is currently a bipartisan bill before Congress to ensure that goods made with forced labor by the Uyghurs in Xinjiang do not enter the U.S. market.

The next, and perhaps most powerful step, must be to invoke the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide against China, which is a signatory.

However, one cannot help but ask, where is the rest of the international community?

The Muslim world has completely turned its back to the cries of their own people being slaughtered. As Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council suggests, they have been entirely outmaneuvered by China, their silence bought with billions of dollars in supposed aid and investment.

Enlightened Europe, which recently managed to secure over 1,000 parliamentarians to sign a letter condemning Israel's proposed application of sovereignty over the West Bank, has not been able to muster more than a whimper when it comes to China.

Meantime, the United Nations, which was created in the wake of the Holocaust to serve a bulwark against genocide and crimes against humanity, has likewise been deafeningly silent, with China's Security Council veto guaranteeing virtual impunity. At the same time, in an abominable act of injustice, China is now set to be elected to the U.N. Human Rights Council, according to U.N. Watch.

In his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel warned us "there may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."

Here, too, we cannot remain silent, thereby giving China impunity for its crimes. We must speak up for the Uyghur people.

(Another) Cartoon of the Day: Little David’s trip

This cartoon caption came out better than I expected.

07/24 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Stability for our enemies; Oslo revisited; Head of PA’s Mission to UK Lies and Distorts 1948 History; Europe’s NGO cold war to ‘mitigate pro-Israel voices’

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Stability for our enemies

Since the 1990s, the dominant view in Israel's national security community has been that Israel's top priority in relation to the Palestinians is to maintain the stability of their leadership. This is the case in relation to both the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria and the Hamas regime in Gaza.

The rationale behind this view is that despite their hostility, if the regimes lose control, things will be worse, not better for Israel. Israel will have to take over, at great cost in lives and international stature. In other words, it's either Fatah and Hamas or the Israel Defense Forces. And Israel's security establishment prefers the former.

To achieve the goal of preserving the Fatah regime, Israel's generals and their think tank colleagues have long insisted the government ensure its financial viability. In practice, this has required Israel to collect customs and other indirect taxes for the PA and transfer the funds, with no strings attached to the PA every month. The fact that the PA has always used large portions of its budget to finance terrorism was of little consequence to the generals and their colleagues.

In the case of Hamas-controlled Gaza, preserving the terrorist regime has required Israel to permit the PA to transfer funds to its employees in Gaza, even though by paying their salaries the PA effectively enabled Hamas to devote its resources solely to waging its war against Israel. Preserving Hamas has also involved Israel allowing Qatar to send truckloads of cash to Gaza to keep Hamas's terror state afloat.

Safe in power – thanks to Israel – Fatah has been free to devote its energies waging its multidimensional war against Israel. It funds terrorists – with the tax arrears Israel collects for it. It incites terror on its media organs – again paid for by the taxes Israel transfers. It pays its security forces and indoctrinates its members to seek Israel's destruction. It engages in large-scale theft of government lands and illegal construction in Judea and Samaria to choke off Jewish communities. And the Fatah-PA wages diplomatic war against Israel at the UN, in the world capitals, and increasingly at the International Criminal Court.

Safe in power in Gaza, Hamas builds up its forces. It develops collaborative ties with Hezbollah and the Houthis and strengthens its client relationship with both Iran and Turkey. And every so often, it opens another missile offensive against aimed at killing and terrorizing Israeli civilians.

Whether they like it or not, the denizens of Hamastan and Fatahland alike have no choice other than to live under the jackboot of their regimes. Thanks to Israel – and its stability minded security experts – they have no chance of competing for power or rebelling.

Oslo revisited

The days of the Oslo Accords were dark days for Israel. Fortunately, the public put a stop to the Oslo trend before it endangered the very fabric of the State of Israel.

As Tisha B'Av rolls closer, it behooves us to ponder how Israel managed to extricate itself from the trap laid for her in the 1990’s by the infamous Yasser Arafat and by the “liberation” terror organization that he led.

The Oslo Accords cost us over one thousand casualties, but the dangerous veering toward the sea, eventually slowed. Nowadays we are discussing sovereignty – not “victims of peace”. There is plenty of room for improvement in our diplomatic discourse even today. But everything is relative.

In contrast, remember what happened in the darkest days the Jewish people ever experienced, ever – in Nazi Europe. You remember the famous poem, by a German Lutheran leader called Martin Niemöller, about being passive and keeping silent:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

The Oslo Accords, horrific as they were and still are, never reached anywhere near the point Europe reached during Nazi days. Why? Not because Palestinian Arab leaders are lacking in antisemitism. They are not. The central reason was that during Hitler’s day, there was no State of Israel. But there was also another reason. The second reason was that prominent people in Nazi Germany simply did not do very much about it, when ugly things began to happen in their country.

In Israel however, way before things slid into a complete abyss, people did things. People stood up and said, this is not cool. Not just the downtrodden, not just the persecuted, stood up and banged on the national table. Prominent people stood up and said this – not many of them, but enough of them.

Head of PA’s Mission to UK Lies and Distorts 1948 History

However, the op-ed in The Times (paywall) by Sammy Stein, co-chair of Glasgow Friends of Israel, he’s referring to doesn’t even allude to the Zomlot family’s dislocation during the Arab-Israeli war, and doesn’t accuse Palestinians of lying about their flight during that time.

In other words, Zomlot’s accusation — that Stein accused Zomlot of lying, is itself a lie.

Rather, Stein’s piece largely focuses on what he refers to as the “politicised hijacking of a term Nakba,” and characterizes “The Nakba” as self-inflicted by the Arab leaders who launched a war of annihilation against Israel instead of accepting partition.

Zomlot continues to mislead in a subsequent paragraph:
Palestinian refugees, scholars everywhere, as well as a growing number of Israeli historians, have all attested to the reality of al-Nakba (the “Catastrophe”), when hundreds of towns were depopulated, looted and destroyed. Overall, more than half the population of Palestine was expelled. This is what Mr Stein refers to as “Israel’s success”

First, it’s not true that all of the refugees were expelled. Most fled due to orders from Arab military and political leaders, or of their own accord — to escape the war. More deceiving, however, is Zomlot’s claim that Stein referred to the Palestinian exodus as an Israeli “success.”

Here are the relevant paragraphs from Stein’s op-ed, where he refers to Israeli success:
The politicised hijacking of a term Nakba which bemoaned the absence of pan-Arab unity and castigated Arabs for their failings, into a term of abuse against Israel is a calculated and continuous act of deception, designed to absolve Arab states of blame and condemn Israel for successfully defending itself against attack.
…
Today Palestinians and their apologists worldwide might stop to consider these realities and face up to the fact that Nakba describes their failure, not Israel’s success.

It’s clear that Stein is referring to Israel’s survival in the Arab war as an Israeli “success” — not the flight of Palestinian refugees.

To see more deceit from Zomlont, read this post on his recent appearance on BBC’s “Hardtalk.”

Cartoon of the Day: The problem with Jews

Continuing with my recaptioning of single panel cartoons….

I think that this is a bit deeper than it looks.

The children’s TV series VeggieTales once adopted the Book of Esther for children.

The video, “Esther: The Girl Who Became Queen,” never mentions Jews.

This show is available on an Iranian streaming service, and this upset the Iranian Revolutionary Guard :

On July 15^th, Iran’s Fars News Agency, which is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), published an article stating that “a Zionist hero has infiltrated our streaming services.” The author was referring to the VeggieTales movie “Esther: The Girl Who Became Queen.”

The animated film is broadcast both on Iranian streaming service Filimo and through the streaming outlets of an organization directly linked to Supreme Leader Khamenei. Despite it’s connections to Khamenei and his government, the journalist calls out VeggieTales’ representation of Esther for painting Persians as the antagonists. The journalist interprets the film’s presentation of Haman as a statement about Iran.

“This is a historical fabrication that can easily mold the mind of a child,” writes the journalist. “Such a mind would be more amenable toward accepting Zionist conceptions, Judaism, and occupation of the land of Palestine.”

As an aside, I was going to make a joke about how VeggieTales chose to represent Esther as the famous Talmudic interpretation (Megillah 13a) that says that Esther was green (“yerakroket.”) But Wikipedia, of all places, has a really interesting explanation of that Gemara:

To the Rabbis, Esther was one of the most beautiful women ever created.^[2] Another source says Esther was yerakroket, often translated as "greenish";^[3] but as classical Greek used the word chloros ("green") to refer to honey-like yellow and to human skin as well as what we call green,^[4] the rabbis who lived in a Greek-influenced context may have intended that Esther's skin was a normal shade of yellow.

This site goes through the various types of “green” mentioned in the Talmud and refers to a commentary by the 11th century Rabbeinu Chananel who says that “yarok” could refer to the color of an egg-yolk or to reddish-gold, and concludes that that Esther, described as “yerakoroket,” was a blonde. But gold colored skin could easily be considered beautiful as well.

Elder gets results! CNN changes offensive paragraph

Yesterday I tweeted and posted about an offensive paragraph in this CNN article:

Since then, CNN changed the paragraph and added links:

An estimated 6 million Jewish people were killed in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Also killed were hundreds of thousands of Roma people and people with mental or physical disabilities.

“Murdered” would be a better and more accurate term than “killed,” although this is much better than the passive “died.”

It is still inaccurate – CNN does not know the difference between concentration camps and extermination camps, and does not account for the huge number of Jews that were killed outside those camps.

But, hey, baby steps. Why assume one of the most influential news sources should get it right the second time?

(h/t Mark B)

Head of largest Muslim UK charity quits after antisemitic, pro-terror posts uncovered

The Times of London revealed that a leader of Britain’s largest Muslim charity had posted a string of antisemitic and pro-Hamas posts on Facebook.

The revelation forced Heshmat Khalifa, a trustee and director of Islamic Relief Worldwide, to step down.

In Facebook posts he referred to Jews as the “grandchildren of monkeys and pigs” and called Egypt’s president a “Zionist pimp.”

Islamic Relief's £570 million income over the past five years included contributions from the United Nations, the European Commission and the British taxpayer.

Khalifa wrote on social media that Hamas is “the purest resistance movement in modern history”. He added that declaring its armed wing a terrorist organisation was a “shameful disgrace to all Muslims.”

Many of his antisemitic insults were aimed at Egypt's president Al Sisi. Khalifa called the Muslim president a “pimp son of the Jews”, a “Zionist pig”, a “Zionist traitor” and a “Zionist criminal”.

Khalifa deleted the posts after the Times informed him that they would be writing about them.

Like most antisemites nowadays, he denied he was a Jew-hater. He told The Times that his comments were “my expressions of frustration with the political regime, rather than beliefs that I hold”. He said: “I did not intend to insult the Jewish community and neither do I hold views which are antisemitic. I have dedicated much of my life’s work to promoting tolerance and freedom of religion and beliefs.”

How that translates to calling Jews the descendants of apes and pigs is unclear.

The British-based Muslims Against Antisemitism denounced the posts, calling them "appalling antisemitism" and saying "These precise comments are more widespread than thought, and we will continue to work to reduce antisemitism, inspire Muslims to stand up against it, and support those who do."

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

07/23 Links Pt2: Jewish Actor Josh Malina Shames Pop Star Madonna for Promoting Antisemite Louis Farrakhan; The Corbynites have lied with impunity - now they face the legal consequences

From Ian:

Jewish Actor Josh Malina Shames Pop Star Madonna for Promoting Antisemite Louis Farrakhan

Actor Josh Malina criticized on Thursday pop legend Madonna for promoting notorious antisemite and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

“The little red string you wear doesn’t count for shit when you amplify the voice of an antisemite, @Madonna,” tweeted Malina, who is Jewish and is best known for his roles on “The West Wing” and “Scandal.”

The little red string you wear doesn’t count for shit when you amplify the voice of an antisemite, @Madonna. https://t.co/Hh6OotF58P
— (((Josh Malina))) (@JoshMalina) July 23, 2020

The “little red string” Malina referred to is something worn on the wrist by followers of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, for protection from the “evil eye.” Madonna has been a proponent of studying Kabbalah in the past.

Earlier this month, the “Queen of Pop” posted on Instagram a trailer for a Fourth of July address given by Farrakhan, in which he called Jews “Satan” and promoted an anti-Israel conspiracy theory.

Despite receiving backlash for sharing the trailer and requests for it to be removed, Madonna has yet to delete the clip from her Instagram page.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center said the “Material Girl” singer “owes Jewish people an apology and explanation why she chose to lend her platform” to Farrakhan.

More recently on Instagram, Madonna voiced solidarity with “Palestine.”

Caroline Glick: The Predicament of Liberal American Jews

In under a week, two events happened at The New York Times—the arbiter of liberal news and opinion—which highlight the growing precariousness of the American Jewish community's position in the Democratic Party.

On July 8, the Times published an op-ed by Peter Beinart, a far-left American Jewish writer and self-anointed spokesperson for liberal Jewish opinion on Israel.

Beinart's article, entitled, "I no longer believe in a Jewish state," argued that Israel no longer has a right to exist. It should be destroyed and replaced by a non-Jewish state. Beinart ended his article by urging American Jews to get over their Holocaust-induced fear of genocide and join him in his rejection of Jewish national rights.

To be clear, Beinart's position is anti-Semitic.

The Obama administration adopted the definition of anti-Semitism published in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). IHRA's definition includes a list of common manifestations of anti-Jewish bigotry. Among those manifestations are, "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor."

Beinart's declaration that he has joined the jackals came as no surprise to those who had been paying attention. For the past decade, Beinart has been arguing that Israel's right to exist is contingent on its willingness to satisfy his American Jewish preferences. In his Times article, Beinart proclaimed that Israel is not delivering the goods. So as far as he is concerned, Israel needs to stop existing.

Beinart's advocacy of Israel's demise is significant not so much for what it says about American Jewish views of Israel (80 percent of American Jews support Israel and two-thirds feel an emotional attachment to the Jewish state), but for what it says about the political Left's view of Israel—and of Jews.

This is the case because for the better part of the past decade, Beinart has served as a weathervane of leftist opinion on Israel and Jews, and as a fig leaf for leftist anti-Semitism.

From today's @nypost. Good for the @ZOA_National. pic.twitter.com/Pffna6WqMm
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) July 23, 2020

American Jewry in Transition? How Attitudes toward Israel May Be Shifting

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has been researching the attitudes of Jewish-Americans for the past two years. We may now be seeing a trend in Jewish-American attitudes that represents a narrower definition of "support" for Israel.

Our latest series of data shows moderately strong but less than enthusiastic overall support for Israel. We found mild-moderate but clear expressions of "sympathy" for the Palestinians.

There is deep concern over anti-Semitism, dissociated from concern over anti-Israel attitudes. At the same time, there is a lack of serious concern for anti-Semitism from the left-progressive elements of society.

Despite some concerns, there is a willingness to associate with possibly anti-Israel movements. Overall, there is a general endorsement of issues associated with liberal or progressive thinking.

Israel-related issues are not a deciding or "make or break" factor in the voting behavior of a significant portion of our Jewish-American sample.

There is considerable support for Black Lives Matter protests, despite awareness and concern that the BLM movement may lead to an increase in anti-Israel attitudes.

However, we found a marked reduction for being personally willing to support "affirmative action"-type initiatives. We also found a less marked reduction in support for defunding police and paying reparations to Black-American institutions.

At the end of an article about a concentration camp guard being convicted in Germany of of thousands of counts of being an accessory to murder, CNN gives an awful summary of historical background of the Holocaust:

It is believed that approximately 6 million Jewish people died in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Also killed were hundreds of thousands of Roma people and people with mental or physical disabilities.

"It is believed" that 6 million Jews were murdered?

Six million were not killed in concentration or death camps; many thousands were shot, or gassed to death in vans, or otherwise murdered. But "it is believed" that they "died?" And CNN isn't sure about the number 6 million?

And the Jews are "believed" to have died - they might be playing pinochle somewhere - but the Roma and disabled were "killed."

If CNN can't get a basic sentence about the Holocaust right, what can you trust them for?

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Successful Syrian Interceptions Of IAF Listed With UFO, Bigfoot Sightings (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

F-15E Damascus, July 23 - Cryptozoologists and other enthusiasts of paranormal phenomena have begun including Assad regime claims of thwarted Israeli airborne operations in their logs of unconfirmed-but-definitely-real incidents, opening a new realm in which the credulous can enjoy the sense of superiority and insider status born of knowing something most other people are too closed-minded to accept.

Conspiracy-theory-minded groups devoted to documenting sightings of phenomena and entities for which scientists and mainstream society find insufficient or uncompelling evidence have decided to add to their record-keeping the cases in which Syrian air defense officials say they have shot down or driven away Israeli aircraft or missiles, amid ongoing Israeli efforts to interdict the movement of strategic weapons from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Syrian territory.

"I'm excited about this addition," gushed Gimlin Patterson, a cryptozoology documentary filmmaker. "It's been ages since our community has had something really, genuinely new to discuss. Most of our research involves stories or sightings that are decades, sometimes centuries old: the Loch Ness Monster, Yeti, Sasquatch, Area 51 aliens, chupacabras, ghosts, you know. Sometimes we get the novelty of an old map that purports to show Chinese knowledge of the Americans before the Europeans got there. But the Syria interception accounts are a breath of fresh air. And as a bonus, so many of us are already primed to believe in conspiracy theories and secret cabals that suppress the truth, so this new collection of claims fits nicely into the antisemitic sensibilities so many of us already bring to the table."

"I'm more of an aliens-built-the-pyramids kind of gal," added Roz Well, hostess of the podcast What They Won't Tell You. "But the discovery that Syria has actually been shooting down Israeli aircraft and missiles, and that mainstream media, when they even cover the incidents, only parrot Israeli propaganda, really resonates. Outfits that shill for governments, and governments that try to suppress the truth, will lie about anything, not just ignore all the evidence that aliens built all the ancient pyramids around the world - Mayan, Egyptian, or wherever."

"The key is to look for any shred of fact that supports the conclusion you've already reached - and the antisemites among us have lots of practice at that - and then," she continued, "either take anything that contradicts the conclusion and ignore, downplay, or dismiss it as fake, or as evidence of the cover-up. It's such a good thing that Bashar Assad, contrary to what the lamestream press will tell you, is really the reincarnation of Sennacherib, because that's a real humanitarian."