The Palestinian Authority’s refusal to cooperate with Israel, ostensibly because of “annexation” plans that have not happened, is only hurting Palestinians.
Which means the media is not reporting on the repercussions for fear of upsetting the narrative that Palestinian suffering comes from Israel alone.
A close reading of the UN’s OCHA-OPT reports for the last two months give a small glimpse of the issue, even though they try to downplay it as well.
Two infants died after their exit arrangements for treatment in Israel and East Jerusalem have been delayed due to the halt of coordination between the Palestinian and Israeli authorities since 21 May.
Global shortages of medical equipment and the disruption of coordination between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel, in response to Israel’s plan to annex parts of the West Bank, have significantly delayed the procurement of key medical equipment. According to the MoH, up to 150,000 tests per month will be required until the end of 2020, along with at least two million gloves and up to 750,000 surgical masks every month, until the end of the year.
The United Nations Development Programme writes in an article on the OCHA website:
The public health hazard for both waste collectors and the people living in the vicinity of these informal sites is exacerbated due to the practice of dumping hazardous medical infectious waste, along with ordinary domestic waste…leaching from solid waste that is unsafely disposed across the oPt has also contributed to the degradation of groundwater.
After considering various alternatives, UNDP has opted for the introduction of a specialized microwave device as the main method for treating infectious waste. Following consultations with the Ministry of Health, the Environment Quality Authority and WHO, and with the financial support of the oPt Humanitarian Fund, UNDP procured such a treatment unit with a 1.5-ton capacity, to be installed at the Johr Ad Dik landfill. However, due to the halt in coordination between the PA and Israel, the processing of the required importation documents has been delayed, impeding the delivery of the device from Belgium to Israel.
Mahmoud Abbas, out of a sense of “pride,” chose to hurt his own people by stopping coordination with Israel on critical life-saving projects. He also knowingly painted himself into a corner by doing so, because even though Israel hasn’t extended sovereignty over any part of the territories, Abbas cannot change his mind without looking even weaker than he is.
The only things that can force him to act like a responsible leader would be media attention to how his policies are hurting and even killing his own people. But, as usual, international media won’t touch the story.
The Supreme Leader of Iran tweeted his support for Black Lives Matter:
Yes, Khamanei pretends that Iran has no police brutality. Yet only last year, Iranian police killed as many as 1500 protesters. But, who’s counting?
As far as Iran’s supposed dedication to equal right goes, this week it yet again published an article in the government news site Mehr News that the Saudi royal family was Jewish, just like they did last year.
I found an English version of the bizarre conspiracy theory that says that the House of Saud was founded by a devious, murderous Jew:
In Hijra in 851, a group of people from the al-Masalih tribe, a tribe of the Anza tribe, equip a caravan to purchase cereals (wheat) and other food products from Iraq and transport them to Najd. The leader of the caravan was a man named Sahmi bin Haslul. The caravan arrived in Basra, where the caravan went to a grain merchant, a Jew named Mordahai bin Ibrahim bin Moshe. During the negotiations, the Jew asked them: "Where are you from?" They replied: "From the Anza tribe of the al-Masaleh clan." Hearing this, the Jew began to fiercely fool each of those who came, saying that he was also from the al-Masaleh clan, but that he lived in Basra because of a quarrel between his father and some members of the Anza tribe. After he told the story he had invented, he ordered his servants to load camel goods with food in a much larger volume; this act seemed so generous that representatives of the al-Masaleh clan were very surprised and primed for their relative, who managed to become a successful merchant in Iraq… When the caravan was ready for departure, the Jew asked to take it with him, because he really wants to visit his homeland Nedzh. Upon hearing his request, the caravans gladly agreed to take him with them. Thus, the Jew secretly reached Nejd. In Nejd, through his supporters, whom he passed off as his relatives, he began to diligently propagate himself. … To achieve such ambitious plans, he began to become very close to the Bedouins and in the end he declared himself their ruler! At the same time, the Ajaman tribe, in alliance with the Banu Khalid tribe, realizing its essence and that the insidious plan drawn up by this Jew begins to produce results, decided to destroy him. They attacked his city and captured it, but could not capture a Jew who was hiding from enemies .. This Jewish ancestor of the Saudi dynasty, Mordahai, hid on a farm that at that time was called al-Malibed-Usaibabliz al-Arid, the current name for this area is ar-Riyad
He sought refuge from the owner of this land. The owner was a very hospitable man and allowed the Jew to stay. In less than a month, a Jew killed all the members of the farm’s owner’s family, hiding the traces of his crimes and showing as if the thieves who had entered here destroyed the family. He then announced that he had bought the land before the death of the former owner and remained living there. He renamed the area, giving it a name - ad-Diriya, as well as the area that he lost. This Jewish ancestor (Mordakhai) of the Ibn Saud dynasty built a guest yard on the lands of his victims under the name “Madafa” and gathered around him a group of his minions, hypocritical people, who began to stubbornly say that he is a prominent Arab leader. … He had a lot of wives who gave him a huge number of children. He gave Arabic names to all his children.
Since that time, the number of his descendants has increased, which allowed the creation of a large Saudi clan, following his path, controlling the Arab tribes and clans. They ruthlessly selected agricultural land, and physically eliminated the rebellious. They used all kinds of deceit, deceit to achieve their goals, they offered their women money to attract as many people as possible. They were especially zealous with historians and writers in order to forever obscure their Jewish origin and connect it with the original Arab tribes of Rabia, Anza and al-Masaleh.
If Iran wasn’t antisemitic, why is it obsessed with saying that the Saudis are Jews?
The organizations conducting their unauthorized battles against anti-Semitism have conflated prejudice with violence. They have no clue how to fight the former and no interest in fighting the latter.
Prejudice isn’t fought with Holocaust museum tours, but with dignity. The first line of defense against it is having enough self-respect not to offer atonement to bigots who have nothing but contempt for you. Unfortunately, too many Jews on the left and the right can be counted on to launch into militant defenses, asked or unasked, of bigots on their side and to do so by leveraging their own status as Jews.
And too many organizations are happy to whitewash trendy bigots while ignoring uncool supporters.
What the fight against anti-Semitism really needs is the ability to separate class anxieties about acceptance from real threats. And that won’t be done by organizations like the ADL, whose class anxieties have transformed it into a generic leftist advocacy group with little interest in Jewish issues, or the rest of its organizational cohort whose priority is winning the acceptance of the urban upper class.
And that acceptance is premised on embracing the left-wing politics and anti-Semitism of that class. That’s how fighting anti-Semitism to mute class anxieties perversely turns into embracing antisemitism.
Distinguishing between class anxieties and real threats doesn’t require futile efforts to educate celebrities who like Farrakhan with Holocaust museum tours, but to educate Jews about dignity and self-respect. People who are less worried about acceptance by those it’s not worth being accepted by are better able to deal with real threats to their physical existence instead of threats to their feelings.
Cancel culture is the product of people who don’t have actual problems and spend all their time worrying about their feelings. Jews do have actual problems, including synagogue attacks by black nationalists and alt-right gunmen, Iranian nukes and the harassment of Jewish students on campus.
When we focus on real-world attacks, then the real problems of anti-Semitism also come into focus.
A people possessing its own dignity is able to stop chasing the affections of its enemies, whether in the Middle East or closer to home, and accept the affection of its friends even if they aren’t trendy enough.
The Voice newspaper must apologise for its disastrous interview with Wiley that failed to distinguish between reporting on antisemitism and enabling it.
In his interview, Wiley doubled down on his previous social media comments, describing Jews as rich exploiters and slavers, using classic antisemitic tropes and generalising about an entire ethnic group following an apparent dispute with his management team.
But rather than challenge Wiley’s views, the interviewer, Joel Campbell, suggested that there might be ‘salient’ points in Wiley’s racist ranting and seemed to affirm the idea that the Jewish community has a ‘stranglehold’ on the black community. The article also failed convincingly to dispute Wiley’s unfounded and antisemitic claims that Jews are rich exploiters and slavers.
The article’s commentary was also unacceptable. “There is no way to put this all in one nutshell but the hypothesis that you need to get a Jewish lawyer in order to progress in the music business may be a complete fallacy (I haven’t done the numbers, looking into the correlation in respect of who is and isn’t successful with or without one), but yet it remains,” Campbell wrote, adding: “I’ve never seen anyone Jewish refute or confirm this (maybe there was never a need felt to do so), but maybe, it’s a discussion that needs to be had?”
The notion that artists from the black community require a Jewish lawyer to advance is not “a discussion that needs to be had”. If anything, a discussion needs to be had about how The Voice could possibly have published such a disastrous article about such a sensitive topic. There is a difference between reporting on Wiley’s antisemitism and enabling and amplifying it. The Voice’s article was very much on the wrong side of that line.
Wiley had spent the last several days spewing antisemitic bile on social media before being locked out of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram following a global #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate campaign and mass 48-hour social media boycott. Wiley’s comments were condemned by the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, politicians from across parties, celebrities and many others.
The antisemitic grime artist Wiley has given incendiary interviews to Sky News and The Voice Online.
Wiley has spent the last several days spewing antisemitic bile on social media before being locked out of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram following a global #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate campaign and mass 48-hour social media boycott, in which Campaign Against Antisemitism participated.
Wiley’s comments were condemned by the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, politicians from across parties, celebrities and many others.
In his interviews, Wiley doubled down on his previous comments, describing Jews as rich exploiters and slavers, using classic antisemitic tropes and generalising about an entire ethnic group following an apparent dispute with his management team. Nevertheless, the intensity of Wiley’s vitriol and some of the conspiracy theories he espoused indicate that these are longstanding beliefs that have incubated over time, rather than comments arising from the moment.
In a depressing passage in The Voice Online article, the interviewer explained that he had set out “to find out what had triggered [Wiley’s] outburst and why he would make such sweeping generalisations against a community of people in such a scathing manner. These questions were not being posed from an ignorant perspective, some of the views espoused by Wiley are the great unsaid outside of the black community.”
The notion that Wiley’s views may be widespread in some communities is deeply concerning.
The writer went on to say: “Putting anything remotely near considered antisemitic to one side of course, in fact out the window in the bin, not too many seem prepared to vocalise their consternation for some of the recurring themes Wiley believes is the stranglehold one community seems to have over another in particular relation but not confined to, the music business.”
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Online Monitoring and Investigations Unit is aware that Wiley, who has was finally banned from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram following worldwide outrage, is now uploading disturbing videos to a small Instagram account that appears to be new, and a YouTube channel with almost 250,000 followers.
The videos continue in the same vein as his previous videos and his recent interviews with Sky News and The Voice, a newspaper for the black community, in which he reaffirmed his belief in antisemitic conspiracy theories and bigoted stereotypes about Jews.
For example, in one of the new videos, Wiley demands that an unspecified “you”, which appears from the context to refer to Jews in general, try taking his passport away so that Wiley can see quite how much power Jews have.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “Facebook and Google, which own Instagram and YouTube, have been made aware of Wiley’s latest attempts to use their platforms to broadcast his appalling views. We have discussed this with them and asked that they urgently close down his remaining accounts. Wiley seems to be on a quest to discredit himself even further and to persuade his audience to hate Jews and even to go to ‘war’ with Jews. His musical career is undoubtedly over, but we are concerned that his fans could be inspired to act on his hateful broadcasts. That is why we have asked social networks to take him off air, and reported Wiley to the police and intend to privately prosecute him should the authorities refuse to act.”
Liran Levi reports for Walla News. He tweeted a video from Ofer Prison, presumably from an illegal mobile phone, that ended up on TikTok:
The person with the grapes is Akram Hamed, the Fatah spokesman for the prison.
Now, which looks worse - this prison or your college dorm?
(h/t Yoel)
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Asa Winstanley calls himself an "investigative journalist" for Electronic Intifada. But of course he is nothing of the kind - he is an anti-Israel propagandist.
Einat Wilf's tweet referred to a Haaretz article from 2018 about how the Zionist population of Israel before 1948 closely mirrored the areas where Jews had drained the swamps and killed the mosquitoes that caused malaria. Wilf's point is that Jews did not displace Arabs, only mosquitoes.
There is no way that Winstanley could have misinterpreted the tweet to mean that Wilf was calling Arabs mosquitoes.
And after he made his ridiculous accusation, even people who are sympathetic to his anti-Israel viewpoint pointed out that he was wrong this time.
But hours later, this erstwhile "journalist" didn't acknowledge his mistake.
Because it wasn't a mistake. It was Goebbels-type propaganda, adding to the ever growing list of fake Zionist quotes we've seen over the years.
The anti-Israel crowd does not give a damn about little things like the truth. They have a crusade to wage to destroy Israel. Winstanley knows that his antisemitic fans will believe anything he says, so he'll say anything.
The real question is why anyone ever takes his "reporting" seriously when he is a proven liar?
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It used to be said that Israel required a strategic edge to survive in the Middle East, and that is why it invested in the greatest armory and technology. Nevertheless, none of this is the slightest bit relevant if there is never any will to use it.
To change the current paradigm, Israel must regain a semblance of deterrence.
To do this, it must start remembering how to win again. Of course, some will say, defeating terrorist organizations is not the same as defeating regular armies or other nations.
However, Hamas and Hezbollah are both essentially if not actually in charge of the territories they reside in. They have pressure points like all rulers and those who govern territory.
Moreover, the idea that terrorist organizations cannot be defeated is also outdated. Just ask the Islamic State in Iraq and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, both of whom were defeated and destroyed.
Israel cannot afford constant small-scale attacks from Lebanon like those we have witnessed with alarming regularity from Gaza all of these years. If the situation deteriorates, and more citizens have to live under the daily threat of attacks, with everything that means economically, socially and nationally, it could become the dreaded death of a thousand cuts.
Israel needs to change its mindset, or better still, return to its former approach, which saw it defeat its enemies so they could not raise their head again against it. We must be allowed to use our obvious military, economic and diplomatic strengths to secure a victory against those whose raison d'être is to destroy the State of Israel.
This of course might seem far-fetched to the average Israeli citizen, but the fact that it remains the goal of our enemies means that they are not being dissuaded or deterred from this dream, making them perpetually dangerous.
The situation will exponentially deteriorate the longer their dream lives on and Israel continues to display weakness. The only way to stop it is by returning to a victory mentality, because as Senator McCain said, if we are not winning, we are in fact, losing.
A Twitter spokeswoman has defended the company’s decision to block and restrict tweets from President Trump but not those of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei which call for genocide of the Israeli people.
The reason? Because the Iranian dictator’s tweets pass as “commentary on political issues of the day” while Trump’s could “inspire harm,” Twitter claims.
During a hearing on antisemitism in front of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament in Jerusalem, lawmakers grilled a Twitter representative over why the platform was policing missives from Trump, but not other world leaders such as Khamenei calling Israel “a cancerous growth.”
“You have recently started flagging the tweets of President Trump,” noted Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Israeli-Jewish Congress.
“Why have you not flagged the tweets of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has literally called for the genocide of Israel and the Jewish people?” he asked.
In an astonishing response, the Twitter spokeswoman claimed that tweets from the Iranian leader — where he has publicly called for the “elimination” of Israel — amounted to little more than “foreign policy saber-rattling.”
“We have an approach to world leaders that presently say that direct interactions with fellow public figures, comments on political issues of the day, or foreign policy saber-rattling on military and economic issues are generally not in violation of our Twitter rules,” the spokeswoman responded.
Stunned lawmaker Michal Cotler-Wunsh interrupted: “So calling for genocide is OK?”
“Calling for genocide on Twitter is OK, but commenting on political situations in certain countries is not OK?” she continued.
A clip of the exchange was shared on Twitter on Wednesday by former acting director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell who wrote: “This should be something the US media reports. Wow.”
Iran’s leader has repeatedly shared tweets calling Israel a “deadly, cancerous growth” to be “uprooted and destroyed” — all going unchecked by Twitter.
“The long-lasting virus of Zionism will be uprooted thanks to the determination and faith of the youth,” Khamenei wrote as recently as May.
What does this say when @Twitter censors @realDonaldTrump more than the Ayatollah? Social media needs to give conservatives the same rights as they give terrorist leaders. https://t.co/HrIp2IX22r
Twitter's violating sanctions on Iran by providing the Ayatollah Khamenei w/ account services & I've urged AG Barr to open a criminal investigation into those violations. Now we learn Twitter is allowing him spread #Antisemitic vitriol & hatred against America on its platform. https://t.co/0UZQFglUB0
There has already been a lot written about Seth Rogen's interview on Marc Maron’s podcast, but I want to focus on a section that isn't getting as much attention:
I don’t understand. To me it just seems very, like an antiquated thought process. Like, if it is for religious reasons, I don’t agree with it because I think religion is silly. If it is truly for the preservation of Jewish people, it makes no sense, because again, you don’t keep something you’re trying to preserve all in one place especially when that place has proven to be… pretty volatile.
Rogen's atheism is not a surprise to those following his career - after all, his movie Sausage Party was a raunchy, funny discourse on how God doesn't exist. He is now saying that without the existence of God, then Israel has no reason to exist either, and in fact is counterproductive for the preservation of the Jewish people.
He goes on:
I don’t understand it at all. I think for Jewish people especially who view themselves as progressive and who view themselves as analytical and who view themselves as people who ask a lot of questions and really challenge the status quo — Like, What are we doing?
Rogen thinks that he is progressive and analytical and challenging the status quo.
But it is not at all challenging the status quo for an atheist to deride the idea of a Jewish state. It is far more extraordinary for an atheist to wholeheartedly support it.
Which brings me to Sophie Leib-Neri, a rising junior at Washington University in St. Louis, who wrote an excellent essay on Tisha B'Av while interning at the Israel Forever Foundation. These excerpts are the best answer I can imagine to Seth Rogen.
As an atheist Jew I have been challenged to question each of my Jewish practices. Why would I fast on Yom Kippur? Why do I keep Passover? And in regards to the upcoming holiday (which is more a holy day than a holiday), why do I care about Tisha B’Av?
Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the month of Av (Jewish calendar) is the day when both the first and second Temples were destroyed, the first by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.; the second by the Romans in 70 C.E.
The destruction of the Jewish Temple meant the destruction of the most holy, pivotal location to the Jewish religion, culture and people. Destruction of the Temple was an attempt to destroy the Jewish nation – take out the cultural linchpin, the one element that holds everyone together.
Over time, Tisha B’Av has been expanded to encompass mourning for all horrible events in Jewish history. Therefore Tish’a B’av includes the Spanish inquisition, the Holocaust, and the repeated expulsion of Jews from European countries among other horrible Jewish events. Tisha B’av is “marked” by a fast and a day of learning.
I find this to be the most inspiring aspect of the day. Not only do Jews take a day to remember these events, but they also engage in learning to further their understanding. For some Jews, this is a day to grapple with God allowing such vehement evil in the world. For others, it’s the opportunity to expand our knowledge of the seemingly constant Jewish struggle.
The destruction of the Second Temple, represents the most poignant instance in which the Jewish people faced violent adversity. The cultural epicenter of Jewish life was destroyed and the Nation of Israel was sent to a 2000 year long exile. How do a people retain their nationhood exiled from their land, scattered from their community and disconnected from the spiritual leadership that dictated the pattern and rhythms of Jewish life?
While I don’t find myself mourning the Temple as a place to pray, Tisha B’Av is an opportunity for me to contemplate the loss of culture, the shattering of the community and exile from the homeland to become strangers in a strange land, ever at the mercy of others.
In this light, the continued existence of the Jewish People as a Nation defies all understanding. And then there is Israel.
Tisha B’av is about remembering the Destruction of the Temple, the almost-destruction of the Jewish Nation, but every other day in the land of Israel is about celebrating our continued Jewish existence.
Mourning the Holocaust is difficult, but crucial in understanding the traumatic events which the Jewish people continually overcome. Tisha B’Av is similar, reaching back much further into our history - a lesson that the Holocaust is not the singular tragedy of the Jewish People but rather one of many attempts to eliminate our existence.
It is the rebirth of the Jewish State that serves as tangible proof of resilience of the Jewish nation - Tisha B’Av is a annual reminder of the difficulty in retaining Jewish Nationhood without a cultural, societal linchpin that holds us together. The Temple was the heart of the religion but it was also the place where Jews made pilgrimage three times a year, a place of ingathering, a place of unity.
While many Jews do not find themselves in practice of the religion, 2000 years have not changed the need to retain Nationhood through Jewish identity, shared values, purpose and unity. While we may not look to the Temple, we can look to Israel.
While some believe that miracles from God enabled the Jewish people to overcome, against all odds, I believe that it is the singular strength, the unique unity and spirit of the Jewish Nation, our ancestors, that has made this possible. Whether or not your Jewish identity includes the belief in God, there is always room for greater Jewish learning and understanding. If you believe in God, then Tisha B’av is a way to deepen your relationship with God by acknowledging the challenges He has given to the Jewish people and the miracles that have enabled them to be overcome.
If you identity as culturally Jewish, then Tisha B’av offers greater understanding of Jewish culture, the history from which it stems and the centrality of Zion in uniting the Jewish people over the centuries. If you identify with the tribal aspect of Judaism, Tisha B’av is a timeline of your family’s history and the obstacles they have overcome for you to be reading this today. If you identity with the land of Israel and the Jewish nation, Tisha B’av encapsulates the rarity of Jewish people having freedom to practice their religion and the miraculous achievement of the rebirth of the Jewish State and reunification of Jerusalem.
To Seth Rogen, Judaism is the Lower East Side, Yiddish and bagels. That is not "progressive and analytical" - it is puerile, yet it is the status quo among the "progressive" crowd that is now dominating American culture and media.
Contrast that with Sophie Leib-Neri - a truly progressive, thoughtful and proud Jew whose opinions are not close to the status quo. She looks at the Jewish people as a thriving, living and exciting nation and a family, and Israel is the Jewish people's only home - and the people with the most compelling claim to that home.
If Seth Rogen really cares about questioning, he should read Sophie's entire essay and try to argue against that.
Sophie has thought far more about the relevance of Judaism and Israel than Seth Rogen ever did. He can learn a lot from her.
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The 16th Kina of Tisha B'Av refers to the tragic story of the Romans, after destroying the Temple, filled up a ship with 400 Jewish boys and girls who would be forced to become prostitutes in Rome. The children all chose to throw themselves overboard to drown rather than be subjected to that.
The commentary I am reading now by Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik said that there was a similar story about a group of Jewish schoolgirls in Warsaw who were also being readied to be raped by Nazi soldiers and who likewise chose suicide.
I found the story reported on page 8(!) of the New York Times, January 8, 1943:
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I will not be blogging or tweeting Wednesday night and Thursday until after 1 PM EDT in observance of Tisha B'Av.
May this be the last year that Tisha B'Av is a fast day.
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Western ideologies generally include a parable about villainous Jews. Because this is a set of ideas that sees itself as a political critique, the parable doesn’t come, as past versions have, from Scripture (in the case of Christianity), or from economic theory (as it did in Marxism), or pseudo-scientific racial doctrines (National Socialism). It comes from the news—specifically, from the mythology that I saw being constructed as a reporter a decade ago. A strange antagonism to something called “Israel” came up if you went to a Women’s March against Donald Trump in New York, or protested violence against African Americans in Ferguson, Missouri, or joined the Dyke March in Chicago, or presented an academic paper at the American Studies Association. It appears in the platform of Black Lives Matter from 2016, in left-wing politics in Britain and France, and in gender studies courses at California colleges.
These diverse applications are unique, if not entirely unprecedented, for a news story. But they make sense if we understand the Israel story as a kind of sacred template that can be used to explain many different situations. A good example became visible this spring in the wake of the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis: the myth that Israel trains American police officers in the same methods of brutality that killed Floyd, and which are deployed more generally against people of color. This conspiracy theory has been promoted as factual by (among many others) senior journalists, members of the British Labour Party, and, in early July, by the biggest Lutheran denomination in America.
That last detail supports the idea that new religions are never completely removed from the old ones. Indeed, the unique power of the Israel story is the way it takes the central preoccupation of the new thought system—the inequality of white Western power versus nonwhite Third World innocence—and projects it onto a setting already loaded with religious resonance. If you’re looking for a parable about human inequality, places called Jerusalem or Bethlehem are potent in ways that can’t be rivaled by Xinjiang or Laayoune, or Minneapolis.
A good illustration of this merger came in the form of a speech given to a convention of the Episcopal church in 2018 by a Massachusetts bishop who described atrocities she claimed to have personally witnessed in Israel. She described the murder of an innocent 15-year-old Palestinian by Jewish soldiers—“they shot him in the back four times, he fell on the ground and they shot him another six”—and the aggressive handcuffing by soldiers of a 3-year-old Palestinian boy whose ball rolled off the Temple Mount.
It later turned out that the bishop hadn’t seen any such thing, and she apologized profusely. But in a religious mindset, the question isn’t whether a story happened. The question is whether a story can mobilize believers to achieve good. If the answer is yes, the story is “true.”
This kind of thinking has now bled into newsrooms and university departments, precisely the bodies that are supposed to be engaged in observation and reasoned debate. If important parts of the press and the academy are beginning to sound like ministries, it’s happening at a time when religion and quasi-religion are on the rise everywhere—not just on the progressive left but also on the right, and not only in the West. Some of these trends are evident in Israel, too. As we speak, as if to symbolize the moment, the Hagia Sophia is being changed from a public museum back into a mosque—though in Istanbul, at least, the conversion is being done in the open.
Americans are experiencing a summer of discontent in a way that exceeds any in living memory. The nation is divided not just along political lines but seems increasingly immersed in something much more dangerous – a culture war in which both sides truly believe that not only will a triumph by their opponents bring ruin, but that the very existence of the republic and American democracy is at stake.
That's why both Jews and non-Jews need to pause this week and consider the lessons that the observance of Tisha B'Av: the day on the Hebrew calendar that marks the destruction of both ancient holy temples in Jerusalem, as well as many other catastrophes of Jewish history. The day of fasting and reflection, which begins this year on the evening of July 29, is not observed by most non-Orthodox Jews and generally considered too depressing to have become part of secular American Jewish culture, which prefers holidays that follow a model that runs along the lines of "they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat."
But if there was ever a year when its lessons were needed by Americans of all faiths, it is 2020.
Tradition teaches us that the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE occurred because of "sinat hinam" – senseless or baseless hatred—that undermined Jewish resistance during the siege of Jerusalem and great revolt against the forces of the Roman Empire.
A war that pitted the forces of a small nation against the world's only superpower wasn't going to have a happy ending, no matter how united the defenders of Jerusalem had been. But the rabbis who subsequently reconstituted Jewish faith emphasized the way that the Jewish rebels were divided into competing factions within Jerusalem's walls. In the civil war that raged inside the doomed city, a Zealot faction destroyed food supplies that could have prolonged resistance. Their self-destructive behavior made the task of Roman conquest that much easier and provided Jewish history with a lesson of what not to do to survive in a hostile world.
It's an important lesson, but not one that most Jews – or non-Jews for that matter – find easy to follow.
The political lines dividing Americans are starker than at any moment in living memory. It's not just that Republicans and Democrats disagree about the issues. Most of the supporters of President Donald Trump and most of those who support his opponents seem unprepared to credit each other with good intentions, period.
For those of us that are children of Holocaust survivors, we know well the hell our parents went through to survive.
They hid, had no food, no clothes, no medical attention, and no help.
They were cramped in hiding places with no fresh air and couldn' t make a sound or Nazis would kill them.
It lasted a lot longer than this will last, some for up to 4 or 5 years.
They lost their education, their souls, their youth.
There were no supermarkets,no cell phones, no radios and no outside interference.
What we can compare with deadly accuracy is 1933 Nazi Germany and the inaction of our Jewish leadership and the Stockholm Syndrome response of many liberal Jews in the face of rising, hateful antisemitism.
Just as then when the voices of the leadership might have made a difference, but was barely heard, today most liberal leaders and clergy prefer to be politically correct and support our enemies.
Had Hitler conquered America or the area that is now Israel but was then the British Mandate, no Jews would have been left alive. That means many of those reading this article would never have been born.
What is it that left liberal and progressive Jews do not understand? When I hear the rabid antisemitic lies on videos and social media, I sense that another Hitler is coming - while you are sleeping, not 'woke,' dreaming about meeting the demands of the antisemitic Black Lives Matter.
Cogwar 8 Years on: BLM BDS & the Wokeocracy
In 2012 Prof Richard Landes said "Its not every generation that gets to defend a civilisation" and he advised that silence is not an option. In view of the extraordinary events since January 2020 when he was last in London, Campaign4Truth asked him how we have done in these 8 years: Have we been silent?
On Monday there was a “security incident” on our northern border. I am not going to try to explain it, because I have no idea of what actually happened. First reports were that Hezbollah fighters had crossed the border in the Shebaa Farms area at the foot of Har Dov, and fired an antitank missile at a Merkava tank. The missile was said to have missed, and IDF soldiers returned fire, killing four of the enemy. Lebanese sources, on the other hand, said that that several Israelis were killed.
Then it was reported that none of the Hezbollah fighters had been hit, and that no missile was fired. The story was that they had infiltrated into Israel (apparently the border fence is not continuous in the area), were detected, and driven back by IDF fire. Artillery fire and Israeli aircraft, as well as explosions, were seen in the area.
Hezbollah claimed that they had not crossed the border and had not fired any missile. The background is that a couple of weeks ago a Hezbollah operative was killed when Israel bombed an ammunition dump some 15 km. south of Damascus. Several Iranian and Syrian personnel were killed as well. Israel sent a message to Hassan Nasrallah saying that the Hezbollah operative’s killing was unintentional. But Nasrallah has promised that every Hezbollah casualty, wherever it occurs, will be avenged. So the IDF has been expecting and preparing for Hezbollah to retaliate.
Monday’s incident was supposed to be that retaliation. But Nasrallah has said no, the debt is still unpaid (though the mother of the man killed in Syria gave out sweets in honor of the operation). Another similar incident happened on the border last August. Again Hezbollah owed the IDF a debt of violence after its personnel had been killed by an Israeli strike in Syria. Several antitank missiles were fired at an IDF APC, and troops were seen evacuating apparently wounded soldiers from it. But it turned out that the vehicle had been empty. Apparently the idea was to convince Hezbollah that they had succeeded in getting their revenge.
All this makes me uneasy. It seems as though we are trying to prevent escalation by exhibiting weakness, rather than strength. Think about the statement that the death of the Hezbollah fighter in Syria was “unintentional.” That ammunition dump was most likely bombed because it contained equipment being sent from Iran to Lebanon to enable Hezbollah to convert its tens of thousands of rockets to precision-guided munitions, able to strike within a few meters of a selected target. Everyone understands that such weapons are game-changers. The goal of Hezbollah’s buildup, financed and supplied from Iran, is to kill Jews and destroy our state. Does it make sense that we should in effect apologize for killing someone involved in that project? The same strategy seems to be applied in Gaza. Hamas is allowed to fire barrages of hundreds of rockets at towns and cities in Israel; we try to knock them away (so far, pretty successfully) with our anti-missile systems. Then we punish Hamas by carefully targeting empty Hamas facilities in the Strip. If we killed anyone, then they would need to retaliate, and this way we prevent escalation while at the same time make them pay a price.
There is a problem on several levels here, which should be evident to anyone:
On the level of deterrence, the message we are sending is, “go ahead, try to hurt us, nothing much will happen if you fail.” And the natural result of this is that they are encouraged to keep trying.
On the psychological level, we are telling them – and ourselves – that we are targets. Shooting at Jews is acceptable. We have come to believe this ourselves. If we didn’t, we would respond more strongly.
Finally, on the level of honor, our failure to respond harshly to attempted murder is a sign that we are too weak to defend our own lives and property. In a Mideastern culture in which personal, family, clan, and national honor are almost tangible, someone who can’t defend what he has doesn’t deserve to keep it.
The appropriate response to maximize deterrence, self-respect, and honor is to always respond to attempts to hurt you with greater, even disproportionately greater, force. This is an elementary schoolyard lesson for dealing with bullies that kids of my generation learned quickly. The youthful Ariel Sharon understood this when he commanded Unit 101. Today, our leaders seem to have forgotten.
The strategy our leaders have chosen is to avoid escalation at all costs, even when it damages deterrence. They continue to kick the can down the road, perhaps in the hopes that war can be avoided until Iran self-destructs and Hezbollah withers away. In any case, they hope that whatever bad things might happen, it will be after their term as PM or Chief of Staff is finished.
Unfortunately, the long term application of this strategy has left us in a situation in which we are deterred by Hezbollah, rather than the opposite. They have the initiative, and can turn the pressure on and off at will. We are demoralized, despite the fact that we are objectively stronger than our enemies. And as a nation without national honor, we are held in contempt by allies and enemies alike.
This is not an easy thing to turn around. Our enemies have been conditioned to expect certain behavior. We need to teach them otherwise, which won’t happen overnight. But we have to try. Miscalculations on either side might lead us into war; but continued weakness will almost certainly do so.
Joe Biden is ahead of President Trump in key battleground
states, according to a new
Fox News poll, and the lead is
significant. Biden passed Trump by 11 percentage points in Pennsylvania, 13
points in Minnesota, and 9 points in Michigan. The question is why, considering
a Rasmussen poll released June 29, found that 38% of voters believe that Joe
Biden has dementia. That’s almost four out of ten voters.
It’s no secret the mainstream media is pulling for Joe
Biden. They want Donald Trump dethroned and a Democrat—any Democrat—installed
in the White House. In spite of this fact, they too, cannot help but notice Joe
Biden’s little (and not so little) brain farts.
#BarelyThereBiden spent the last year forgetting Obama’s name, who the last President was, and when he was Obama’s VP.
Will Joe even remember he has a fundraiser with Obama tonight?
— Trump War Room - Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) June 23, 2020
The media has tried hard to recast Biden’s strange utterings
as “gaffes.” See, for instance, here,
here,
here,
and here.
But it’s not a “gaffe” when he falls asleep during Hillary’s endorsement.
Joe Biden has fallen asleep listening to Hillary Clinton during his own town hall pic.twitter.com/tCfbXwezys
It's not a gaffe when he has his wife do the talking so he won’t have to speak.
Jill Biden: "This moment reminds us that the presidency is about true leadership -- having the forethought to prepare for the worst, the backbone to lead through chaos, the character to move beyond politics." pic.twitter.com/lhwvRiaXHT
— Trump War Room - Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) June 23, 2020
Joe Biden’s brain issues, of course, may not actually be dementia. The
fact is, the presidential candidate has had surgery for not one but two
aneurysms. Remember the bloody eye incident when Biden’s eye literally filled
with blood on live television?
The hubbub surrounding this event prompted Biden to talk
about his experiences with brain surgery in 1988. From the Washington
Examiner:
“I ended up with what they call a cranial aneurysm,” Biden
said at a campaign event on Friday. “I had to be rushed to a hospital in the
middle of a snowstorm, and the fact is, the president was nice enough to offer
a helicopter to get me there. I couldn’t go up because of the altitude. My fire
company got me down in time for [a] 13-hour operation and saved my life.”
Biden suffered the burst aneurysm in 1988, when he was a
Delaware senator. Believing that he was close to death, a Catholic priest was
preparing to administer Biden's last rites. Surgeons clipped a second aneurysm
before it bust a few months later.
At the time of Biden’s brush with death in 1988, his wife,
Jill Biden, feared that he would never be the same. In a forthcoming
autobiography, “Where the Light Enters," Jill recounts Joe's doctor
telling the family that there was a significant chance he’d have permanent
neurological damage, particularly after he suffered a second aneurysm, a
condition in which an artery becomes weak and bulges out.
"Our doctor told us there was a 50-50 chance Joe
wouldn't survive surgery," she wrote. "He also said that it was even
more likely that Joe would have permanent brain damage if he survived. And if
any part of his brain would be adversely affected, it would be the area that
governed speech."
This is a candid account of what happened back in 1988. But does
this past history have implications for the present? And are Biden and his wife
still being upfront with the public today? From the same piece:
The last time Biden disclosed information about his health
was in 2008 when Dr. Matthew Parker, a physician the Obama campaign selected
when Biden was the running mate, spoke to the press. Biden’s actual doctor,
John Eisold, the physician who attended to Biden and the rest of Congress, was
not the one to present the medical records...Parker said he didn’t know whether
Biden had more aneurysms, and said “everything that could be done is being done.”
From the information revealed, it was not clear how often Biden
has been screened for aneurysms, and there wasn't any other information
provided when he was vice president. In contrast, records show that Barack
Obama had at least four medical checkups during his presidency.
No law requires presidents, vice presidents, or candidates to
have a medical checkup or to disclose what comes of it.
The article also makes the point that if Joe Biden had two
aneurysms, he could well have another:
Dr. Babu Welch, a neurological surgeon with University of
Texas-Southwestern’s O’Donnell Brain Institute, said that people who have had
one aneurysm can always have another. People are supposed to undergo regular
screenings shortly after they have an aneurysm, but then can space them out further
as time goes on, he said.
Dr. Gavin Britz, director of the Houston Methodist
Neurological Institute, said his research has revealed that people have a
decrease in life expectancy after an aneurysm. The key, he said, is to make
sure to catch them before they rupture.
The New York
Times asks whether Joe Biden might have developed another aneurysm going
so far as to suggest that having had two aneurysms, Biden is actually “more
likely” to have a third:
A question arises: Has Mr. Biden developed a new
aneurysm over the last two decades that could burst?
Doctors, who long thought that berry aneurysms were a
once-in-a-lifetime event, now generally believe that they can recur. About 5
percent or less of patients who have had a berry aneurysm develop new ones at
the original site or elsewhere in the brain.
“Over the last two decades,” said Dr. Robert F. Spetzler of
the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, “we have learned much more about
aneurysms, and the fact is that when you have had one aneurysm, you are more
likely to develop another one. Although the likelihood is very low, it does exist.”
Are Joe’s “gaffes” a result of his aneurysm, or from his
brain surgeries? And what would happen if another aneurysm were to burst while
Joe was in office? That last may be a bit difficult to predict, but Wikipedia
offers a history of what happened at that time, pointing out that
Biden had a serious complication. We also learn that back then, Biden was
sidelined from work for a full seven months, and that he was told his chances
for a full recovery were somewhat slim (emphasis added):
In 1988, Biden suffered two brain aneurysms, one on the right
side and one on the left. Each required surgery with high risk of long-term
impact on brain functionality. In February 1988, after suffering from several
episodes of increasingly severe neck pain, Biden was taken by long-distance
ambulance to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and given lifesaving surgery to
correct an intracranial berry aneurysm that had begun leaking. While recuperating, he suffered a pulmonary
embolism, a major complication.
Another operation to repair a second aneurysm, which had
caused no symptoms but was at risk of bursting, was performed in May 1988. The hospitalization and recovery kept Biden
from his duties in the Senate for seven months.
In retrospect, Biden's family came to believe the early end
to his presidential campaign had been a blessing in disguise, for had he still
been campaigning in 1988, he might well not have stopped to seek medical
attention and the condition might have become unsurvivable. In 2013, Biden
said, "they take a saw and they cut your head off" and "they
literally had to take the top of my head off." He also said he was told he would have less than a 50% chance of full
recovery.
Biden has, until now, failed to share any appraisal of his
cognitive state. And some voters may be getting nervous about that with November
not so far away. The
Hill had a piece in early July entitled, “Joe Biden must release the
results of his cognitive tests — voters need to know.” The piece references more voter polls:
A recent Zogby poll found that 55 percent of likely voters
surveyed thought it was “much more” and “somewhat more likely” that Biden is in
the early stages of dementia, while 45 percent thought it was less likely. That
number included 56 percent of independents and 32 percent of Democrats.
More worrisome for Biden, perhaps, is that about 60 percent
of young voters between the ages of 18 and 29 thought it likely that Biden is
suffering early-onset dementia, along with 61 percent of Hispanics. The good
news is that only 43 percent of blacks doubted Biden’s mental capacity.
Another piece, from Chicago
Sun Times(July 26), asks, “Can Joe Biden keep it together?” and speaks
of “whispered doubt” suggesting the public may be concerned about Biden’s
fitness for office:
There is a dreadful possibility, a whispered doubt that lurks
at every Biden appearance.
“I watched, and sometimes cringed, at his performances in
debates and other public appearances,” Laura Washington writes. “Biden stumbled
over and mangled names, facts and concepts. At times, he seemed confused.”
It is only natural that Trump supporters would attempt to
capitalize on Joe’s oopsies. Hence we have this ad from the Committee to Defend
the President which speaks not about “gaffes” but asks if Joe Biden “has the
mental capacity to keep America safe,” and then comes right out with it: “Does
Joe Biden have dementia?”
Politico
(July 3) emphasized the meanness of the dementia accusations referring to this
election cycle as “The Dementia Campaign.” An excerpt:
Just listen to Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night, the day
after Joe Biden’s big Super Tuesday victory and the victory speech in which he
was momentarily confused over which side of the podium his wife and sister were
standing. “As a smart friend said last night, Joe Biden has spent his entire
life trying to succeed in presidential politics,” the Fox News host chortled,
“and now he has: Too bad he’s not there to enjoy it. Pretty funny.”
Politico wants to
de-emphasize the dementia/brain damage and shift the focus to the mild
impairment of age, stressing that we have a geriatric political culture:
The issue is
especially acute now that so much power in American government is held by
people older than 65. While rates of dementia are going down gradually in the
United States, 65 is the age at which 20 to 25 percent of people have mild
cognitive impairment and 10 percent have dementia, according geriatric
researcher Kenneth Langa at the University of Michigan. Six members of the
Supreme Court are over 65, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will turn 80 on March 26,
and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last month turned 78.
Joe’s brain issues, however much the liberal left wants to
distract us, make it really difficult to resist watching and laughing at his latest “gaffes” such as the one about nurses
blowing into his nostrils to get him moving.
.@JoeBiden: "I had nurses at Walter Reed hospital who would bend down and whisper in my ear, go home and get me pillows. They would … actually breathe in my nostrils to make me move, to get me moving.” pic.twitter.com/hxW1UYs7Ba
That “go home and get me pillows,” sends me into giggle
fits, each and every time. But then I feel a little bit mean and even
voyeuristic. And I can’t help but think: It’s not nice they’re putting this
brain damaged guy out there like this. Why are they doing this: running this
guy with brain damage?
I know what the conspiracy theorists think: if Biden wins
the presidency, which he might win in spite of dementia, because he’s the Not
Trump, he won’t be the one making the decisions. Instead, he will be a puppet. The Manchurian Candidate come to life.
So who is really running the show? Deep State? Soros? Obama?
Someone/something else? And what does this mean for Israel, and for the world at large?
Will Biden hang in there, or will the pressure and stress become too much, say during a debate with President Trump? And if it does become too much for the man who has twice undergone the neurosurgeon's knife, what happens next? Who will step in and take over the show?
Your guess is as good as mine. Which means that about all we can do is sit back and watch this public circus with guilty pleasure and not a little incredulity at the fact that, should nothing and no one intervene, the Democrats will vote for Joe Biden, despite his cognitive issues, come November.
Because they definitely choose brain
damage over Trump.
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Elder of Ziyon
