Sunday, September 06, 2020

  • Sunday, September 06, 2020
  • Elder of Ziyon
Palestinian Media Watch recorded this Hamas TV cartoon showing Jews - religious and non-religious - "defiling" the Temple Mount. They are then literally cleansed.




The video is also inaccurate - Jews do not visit the Dome of the Rock, Jews cannot wear tefillin on the Mount, Jews cannot loiter when they do visit and they must keep moving around the periphery of the Mount, and the video implies that Israeli soldiers drink alcohol while there which is certainly absurd.

This is pure incitement to terror and it is pure antisemitism.

But don't hold your breath waiting for the left-wing self appointed arbiters of what antisemitism is to denounce or condemn this video. 

(h/t Yoel)




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  • Sunday, September 06, 2020
  • Elder of Ziyon



The New York Times usually refers to Hamas as an "Islamic militant group" that Israel "regards as a terrorist organisation."

It had rarely referred to Hamas as a terrorist organization without caveats as far as I can tell. 


The Justice Department on Friday charged two American citizens with ties to a far-right extremist group with trying to support the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas — a case that shows that extremists have sought to turn protests against racism into opportunities to commit violence, but that also runs counter to President Trump’s assertions that those extremists are predominantly on the far left.

Michael R. Solomon, 30, and Benjamin R. Teeter, 22, who were taken into custody on Thursday evening in Minneapolis, say they are members of a group called the Boogaloo Bois and of a subgroup called the Boojahideen. The groups are part of a loosely connected movement that seeks to bring about a second civil war to overthrow the United States government.

John C. Demers, the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in a statement that Mr. Solomon and Mr. Teeter met with people they believed to be members of Hamas in order to “join forces and provide support, including in the form of weapons accessories,” to the terrorist organization.
When the NYT wants to associate Hamas with a right wing American group, Hamas magically transforms into a terrorist organization!

This is a remarkable example of media bias. The mainstream media goes through lots of apologetics when writing about Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah, careful not to describe those groups as terror organizations because "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." ISIS is described as terrorist on multiple occasions in the NYT but not groups that only target Israeli civilians. 

However, a tenuous connection between a fringe right-wing group and people they thought were Hamas is enough for the New York Times to change their style book from a progressive-friendly Hamas militant group that shares the same goals as BDS to a right-wing linked terror group.

The real story, ignored by the NYT, is that antisemitism is the glue that holds extremist groups together, whether Right, Left, Black, Arab or otherwise. White supremacist groups will happily quote left-wing anti-Zionists. In this case, the Boogaloo Bois were attracted to Hamas' antisemitism in wanting to partner with them. 

In fact, the Boogaloo groups started off sounding as much like today's progressive extremists as they sound like white supremacists. According to the ADL, the groups associated with that name are anti-government and even anti-police. "Boogaloo" refers to a coming civil war, which is not far off what we are seeing in far-Left protests. A song lyric from the group quotes by the ADL says "Plug a pig, and then a Yid" - which makes them sound as much like Black Lives Matter as they sound like the KKK. Hate does not fit in neatly in Right/Left categories, and journalists who insist on categorizing them that way are doing a disservice to their readers. 





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Saturday, September 05, 2020

From Ian:

CAMERA Op-Ed: Black September Remembered
It is a common, albeit false, assumption that the United States and Israel closely cooperated since the Jewish state’s recreation in 1948. Washington had supported the U.N. Partition Plan that would have created both an Arab and a Jewish state out of British-ruled Mandate Palestine, but then-President Harry Truman did so over the objections of top advisers. Indeed, the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon had argued that U.S. support for Israel would be a strategic liability.

America, in turn, often kept Israel at arm’s length, both forcing the Jewish state to give up territory won in the 1956 Suez War against Nasser and prohibiting weapon sales until 1962. While relations were cordial, and even friendly, the United States tended to view Israel less as a strategic partner and more as a burden.

With Syrian forces moving into Jordan, King Hussein asked for U.S. aerial reconnaissance. Washington turned to the Israelis.

On September 20, Kissinger told Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, the future Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, that King Hussein had asked to have Israel’s air force attack the Syrian invaders. A stunned Rabin asked, “Are you recommending that we respond to the Jordanian request?” Kissinger declined to give an answer, telling Rabin that he would get a response from Nixon within half an hour.

After speaking with Nixon, Kissinger told Israeli Premier Golda Meir, that the United States “would look favorably upon an Israeli air attack.”

Meir ordered the reconnaissance flights and Israel sent troops to its border with Syria. Israeli jets, meanwhile, flew low over Syrian tanks in Jordan—sending an unmistakable signal that Israel would intervene. “With that support,” Meir biographer Francine Klagsbrun wrote, “the king used his own air and ground forces to drive the Syrians back to their own country.” By July 1971 the PLO was crushed in Jordan, and Arafat fled to Lebanon.

Subsequently, Kissinger told Rabin that America was “fortunate in having an ally like Israel in the Middle East.”

Security cooperation would continue to improve between the two countries with Israel having demonstrated that it was more of an asset than a liability. Today, the nations enjoy unprecedented cooperation and Israel is considered a major non-NATO ally.

The event had other fateful consequences as well. The failed Syrian intervention led to the rise of Hafez al-Assad who, as defense minister, had opposed it. The PLO, meanwhile, would memorialize it as “Black September” and would go on to create another “state within a state” in Lebanon—igniting years more of warfare. Today another anti-Israel terror group, Hezbollah, has taken the PLO’s place in Lebanon. Elsewhere, Hezbollah has intervened in Syria to prop up Bashar Assad, Hafez’s genocidal son.

“History is not was,” the American novelist William Faulkner famously wrote, “it is.”
Munich on my mind
The Aftermath
Following a September 6 memorial that was criticized for sparse reference to the Israeli victims, the remaining Israeli athletes left Germany. Jewish athletes from other counties also left, or were provided extra security.

For decades, families of some victims appealed to the IOC to establish a permanent memorial. For decades, the IOC declined, worried that a memorial to the victims could “alienate other members of the Olympic community,” according to the BBC.

The IOC rejected an international campaign in support of a minute of silence at the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics in memory of the Israeli victims on the massacre’s 40th anniversary. Finally, the IOC conceded, honoring the Israeli victims before the 2016 Rio games.

Israel was well accustomed to war and terror. Its response was particularly resolute. Citing justice, and that Israelis would not be safe anywhere, Golda Meir authorized Operation Grapes of Wrath, and the Mossad began to track down and kill those responsible for the Munich massacre.

Munich Today
Years later, one of the masterminds who escaped justice, Abu Daoud, wrote that funding for the Munich attack was provided by Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority president since 2005. Had Israel known about that then, it’s possible that Abbas would also have been eliminated along with the other masterminds. Now, he’s President of an entity next to Israel that still supports terror.

The ghosts of Munich have also haunt US politics. Today, a candidate for Congress, Ammar Campa-Najjar, is the grandson of Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar, a mastermind of the Munich terrorist attack. While repudiating his grandfather’s actions, other Campa-Najjar statements have raised questions over how true that is.

Remembering the Victims

It’s inappropriate to write of the victims and not mention their names. Each led a full life, and left behind families and legacies that should not be forgotten, even five decades later: David Berger, Zeev Friedman, Yosef Gutfreund, Eliezer Halfin, Yosef Romano, Amitzur Shapira, Kehat Shorr, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer, Yakov Springer, and Moshe Weinberger.

In their memory, the Genesis 123 Foundation will be holding a webinar on September 9 with two current Israeli Olympians and the widow of Andre Spitzer.


Black September - The story of the other 9/11
The date 9/11 is seared into our collective memory. That sunny Tuesday morning in 2001, Arab terrorists hijacked four airplanes and wreaked massive death and destruction on the United States.

A full 31 years before, Arab terrorists hijacked four airplanes in Europe and took hundreds of hostages. And although the incident faded in the world’s collective memory, the date 9/11 was seared into David Raab’s memory.

At 2:30 a.m. on September 11, 1970, David, his mother and four younger siblings were sleeping fitfully on a TWA plane. It was the beginning of their fifth day on board, with hijackers from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) demanding freedom for terrorists jailed in Israel and Europe.

The plane was no longer full. On September 7, non-Jewish women and children had been released and six male passengers were taken to an unknown location. About 80 passengers and 10 crew members – including the Raabs – remained trapped in the jet on Dawson’s Field, a dirt strip in Jordan.

The copilot came down the aisle and gently woke the 17-year-old rabbi’s son from Trenton, New Jersey. The hijackers, he said, wanted David at the front of the plane for questioning.

The terrorists often searched the Jewish passengers’ luggage for Israeli goods and badgered them to “admit” to Israeli citizenship or loyalty. But this summons seemed more ominous.


Friday, September 04, 2020

From Ian:

Netanyahu: Kosovo to be first Muslim-majority nation to open Jerusalem embassy
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that not only would Kosovo recognize Israel but it would open an embassy in Jerusalem, becoming the first Muslim-majority nation to do so.

Earlier Friday, Serbia announced that it would move its embassy to Jerusalem. The moves come as part of US-brokered discussions to normalize economic ties between Belgrade and Pristina.

After two days of meetings with Trump administration officials, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti agreed to cooperate on a range of economic fronts to attract investment and create jobs. The White House announcement provided US President Donald Trump with a diplomatic win ahead of the November presidential election and furthers his administration’s push to improve Israel’s international standing.

Netanyahu hailed the moves and said Israel would establish diplomatic relations with Kosovo.

A statement from Netanyahu’s office said that during a meeting between Trump and Hoti, the president called Netanyahu and congratulated the two leaders on the decision to establish full diplomatic relations.

According to the statement, Hoti also announced that he would open an embassy in Jerusalem.

“Kosovo will be the first Muslim-majority nation to open an embassy in Jerusalem. As I said in recent days the circle of peace is expanding and more nations are expected to join,” Netanyahu said.

Kosovo President Hashim Thaci confirmed Prisitna’s intention, saying he welcomed Netanyahu’s announcement “about the genuine intention to recognize Kosovo and establish diplomatic relations.”

” Kosovo will keep its promise to place its diplomatic mission in Jerusalem,” he tweeted.

Palestinians slam Trump for pushing Serbia, Kosovo to set up Jerusalem embassies
The Palestinian Authority on Friday slammed US President Donald Trump, accusing him of orchestrating the decision by Serbia and Kosovo to establish embassies in Jerusalem to satisfy his “electoral ambitions.”

During a summit at the White House between Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti to normalize economic ties between the Balkan nations, Trump announced that Serbia would move its embassy to Jerusalem and Muslim-majority Kosovo would recognize Israel and establish full diplomatic relations.

The White House announcement provided Trump with a diplomatic win ahead of the November presidential election and furthers his administration’s push to improve Israel’s international standing.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later revealed that Kosovo would also establish its embassy in Jerusalem, while Israel would recognize Kosovo.

Top PLO official and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat reacted angrily to the news.

“The Trump Administration once again shows their full commitment with the violation of international law, UN resolutions and denial of Palestinian rights by encouraging nations to illegally recognize annexed Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” Erakat tweeted.

“Palestine has become a victim of the electoral ambitions of President Trump, whose team would take any action, no matter how destructive for peace and a rules-based world order, to achieve his re-election,” Erakat charged.

Erakat appeared to call on the Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to sanction Kosovo and Serbia, calling for “concrete measures against those who encourage crimes and violations against the land and people of Palestine.”

  • Friday, September 04, 2020
  • Elder of Ziyon

This tweet received thousands retweets and "Likes."






Of course, it is a lie.

I found the original photo and it is of Manar Shweiki, a 16 year old girl who hid a knife in her schoolbag to stab Israelis. She was sentenced to six years in prison under a plea agreement and was released last December.

People automatically believe captions made up by anti-Israel propagandists. Students should really be taught critical thinking starting in first grade, because very few people seem to have that skillset.



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From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The West's blind eye to Palestinian incitement
Why do so many well-meaning people committed to ending abuses of power ignore the evidence of who is actually committing these abuses and blame their victims instead?

An official investigation funded by Britain and the European Union into textbooks used in Palestinian schools has descended into farce.

In April 2018, finally responding to concerns about anti-Israel incitement in Palestinian-Arab schools, the United Kingdom pushed the EU to commission a report on Palestinian textbooks from the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Germany.

In April last year, the Institute published as a preliminary what it called its "Inception Report." This, it said, developed a framework for "an academically rigorous review" of "how peace, tolerance and an understanding of the other are incorporated into Palestinian textbooks."

This report, however, was itself riddled with so many mistakes that the European Union ditched it. Bafflingly, however, the EU has continued to use the Georg Eckert Institute to finish the project.

Its final report is due out next month. But it has now produced an interim report, which the EU is choosing to keep secret.

Marcus Sheff, chief executive of the Jerusalem-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, managed to obtain a presentation of this interim report. This has shown the project lurching from bad to worse.

Calling the review "a comedy of errors from start to finish," Sheff says the researchers have looked at the wrong textbooks. They have actually used as examples textbooks that are used in Israel's Arab schools in Jerusalem, praising them and presenting them falsely as part of the Palestinian Authority's curriculum.

On the basis of this egregious mistake, the researchers have claimed that the Palestinians' educational materials have been "transformed" for the better.

They make no mention of the vile language and images used in many of the Palestinian textbooks, such as describing the burning of Jewish bus passengers with Molotov cocktails as a "barbecue party," or teaching Arabic through a story promoting suicide bombings and illustrated by a Palestinian gunman shooting Israeli soldiers in a tank.

GOP Congressman Calls Biden’s Pledge to Restore US Funding to Palestinians ‘Mental Incoherence’
A Republican member of Congress has slammed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for pledging to restore US funding to the Palestinians in accordance with the Taylor Force Act, calling Biden’s pledge a display of “mental incoherence.”

“You can’t restore funding to the Palestinians and comply with the Taylor Force Act except for some very, very limited humanitarian types of funding,” Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) told JNS in a recent interview. “Basically, if you agree with the sentiment behind the Taylor Force Act, you don’t restore funding to the Palestinians.”

“I think Joe Biden is showing some mental incoherence when he says something like that,” he said.

Lamborn introduced a version of the Taylor Force Act in 2017 and a version of it passed Congress and became law in March 2018, cutting off virtually all US funding to the Palestinian Authority due to it financially rewarding terrorists and their families. It requires the secretary of state to verify that the PA has taken certain steps to stop such activity in addition to other requirements.

Lamborn warned that a Biden administration could try to certify that the PA is taking those concrete steps against rewarding terrorism, even if Ramallah isn’t actually doing so.

“There might be people out there in a Biden administration who would try to do that,” he said. “We would have to be diligent to watch over them and get oversight in trying to permit them from doing something that would be dishonest like that.”
Taylor Force’s Father Urges Joe Biden Not to Resume Funding for Palestinian Terrorists
Stuart Force, whose son Taylor was killed by Palestinian terrorists during a visit to Israel, is urging former Vice President Joe Biden not to resume assistance to the Palestinian Authority (PA) if elected in November.

In a campaign launched by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) on Monday, Force defended the Taylor Force Act, named after his son. The law, passed by Republicans in 2018, prevents the PA from receiving economic assistance from the United States until it dismantles the Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund. Known as the “Pay to Slay” policy, the fund gives monthly-payments to the family of individuals killed committing terrorist acts against Israeli or American citizens.

“Our son, Taylor, was stabbed to death, while visiting Israel by a Palestinian terrorist. The terrorist’s family became eligible immediately for a monthly payment, for life, for killing an Israeli or American,” Force says in a new ad. “U.S. taxpayers sent hundreds of millions of dollars to the PA, which they use to fund those payments.”

“There is talk that some politicians want to resume sending U.S. tax dollars to the PA, even though they have refused to end their ‘Pay to Slay’ policy,” Force says, as a photo flashes across the screen of Biden shaking hand with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.


  • Friday, September 04, 2020
  • Elder of Ziyon
Here is a very interesting spin on the upcoming Israel/UAE accords from Hamas' English mouthpiece Quds News:



If it is such a failure, then why aren't Hamas and their pals in Iran celebrating?

The logic in the article is even funnier.
On a grassroots level, the Palestinian cause is being received and adopted by a global, diverse, and growing citizen movement, where the Occupying Power can no longer hide its true face. By resorting to autocratic states, far-right populist leaders, and desperate self-negotiated deals, and peace treaties with no enemies, Israel’s colonial project reveals how much, underneath all its military might, it is weaker than thought.

This even after admitting that the Arab world has all but abandoned the Palestinian issue:

 Perhaps the only awkward fact in this story is the Arab silence, and the lack of an Arab response to the UAE’s normalization, unlike the Arab reaction to Egypt’s Camp David Accords, forty-four years ago. At that time, Egypt was expelled from the Arab League, and its headquarters were moved to Tunis. However, the Israeli-UAE agreement was met with no response on the official level by Arab states, apart from declarations by Kuwait and Tunisia that they will not follow the UAE’s steps. This Arab silence would never have been possible without the division of the Arab world and its drowning in endless destructive conflicts. 

But even that must be spun, and Palestinian honor restored: 

This speaks to the dystopian reality in which Israel can only achieve any normalization or acceptance of its colonial apartheid regime in the region, especially when all over the world, it is becoming increasingly discredited.

Hamas apparently chooses to believe BDS claims of victory, which may be the funniest part of all.




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San Francisco State University will be hosting a Zoom event called “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled,” on September 23.

Leila Khaled, of course, is the PFLP terrorist who hijacked planes in 1969 and 1970. Her image with a machine gun is ubiquitous at lots of leftist rallies.


The PFLP, which she is still involved with, was behind the murder of 17-year old Rina Shnerb last year. 

But no progressive groups march with photos of Rina Shnerb. They fetishize female terrorists, not female Jewish victims of terror.

Khaled is not the only heroine of the progressive crowd. They love Rasmea Odeh, responsible for the murder of two people. Also a PFLP member, Odeh has admitted that she was involved in bombing attacks against civilians.  and fought to have photo-ops with her before she was deported from the US.

Odeh, a violent terrorist, was treated like a rock star by the supposedly anti-violent BDSers.




Palestinian "moderates" have been the originators of this mindset where female terrorists are role models. The Miftah NGO, which is headed by Hanan Ashrawi and is in the forefront of Palestinian feminism, has multiple articles in Arabic that praise female suicide bombers as role models - and they had English articles praising female suicide bombers as well before I exposed them.

Palestinian women have also participated in the resistance. As the conflict grew more intense and young men were recruited to carry out military operations against Israeli targets, several young women also decided to join the ranks of the resistance movement. In January 2002, 28-year-old nurse Wafa Idrees, detonated a bomb in Jerusalem’s Jaffa Street, killing one Israeli and injuring 150 others. She was also killed in the blast.

This marked the beginning of a string of Palestinian women dedicated to sacrificing their lives for the cause. Over the next two years, seven other women carried out similar operations, the most deadly of which was carried out by Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old attorney from Jenin. Hanadi detonated explosives strapped to her body in a busy Haifa restaurant, killing 19 Israelis and injuring 50 others.
The "moderate" PLO has become a cult of sorts for Dalal Mughrabi, responsible for murdering 38 civilians. Numerous institutions are named after her and her likeness can be seen all over Palestinian towns. 

And "moderate" Jordan has been sheltering another celebrity female terrorist, Ahlam Tamimi, who murdered 15 civilians including seven children

It appears that the "progressive" Left in the West has embraced the idea of female terrorists as role models. It is this immoral and disgusting thinking that is behind a university effectively honoring a terrorist as if she can teach students something about life, and behind prominent American and European progressives literally embracing a murderer.




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  • Friday, September 04, 2020
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Hezbollah mouthpiece Al Manar writes about a meeting of the terror group's political bloc in Lebanon:
The “Loyalty to the Resistance” parliamentary bloc held its periodic meeting Thursday in its Haret Hreik-based office, under the chairmanship of MP Mohammad Raad. stressing that it deals positively with the initiatives aimed at helping Lebanon carry out the needed reforms.

In a statement issued after the meeting, the bloc said that it was keenly following up on all efforts aimed at assisting the Lebanese authorities , on top of which the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron.

“In light of our commitment to and keenness on national sovereignty, we are dealing positively with the initiatives of brothers and friends, with the purpose of helping Lebanon make reforms and achieve developmental projects, in a way that preserves our independence and protects our people’s dignity,” the statement read.
...

Hezbollah bloc also blasted the UAE-Israel agreement aimed at normalizing their mutual ties and sponsored by the US, denouncing the Zionist settler policy in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Talk about being tone-deaf! The Lebanese people want leaders who will ensure that the country is run responsibly, and Hezbollah can't help but to condemn Israel on topics that have zero relevance to the Lebanese.

It is too early to say that Hezbollah's position in Lebanon has been permanently weakened, but since the Beirut blast the group has been attacked in rallies and on social media. Any claims Hezbollah ever had to be working for the Lebanese nation and people are regarded as lies. 

Condemning Israel and the UAE in a press statement is not a very savvy move, but it is who they are.



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Thursday, September 03, 2020

From Ian:

Wake Up America, and Smell the Anti-Semitism
What do all these incidents have in common? Not that they are the unique province of “the right” or “the left”—but that they are happening in America on a daily basis and both the mainstream press and the organized Jewish community seem determined to ignore them. Last summer, Armin Rosen documented the “routine” attacks upon the city’s visible Jews. “The increase in the number of physical assaults against Orthodox Jews in New York City is a matter of empirical fact,” he stated, while detailing the steep rise in numbers from the NYPD hate crime unit. The question Rosen raised then was why the country’s biggest wave of hate crimes was apparently not worthy of notice by any of the city’s major newspapers, the mayor’s office, the Justice Department, or civil rights groups; six months after his article was published, it was still the only long piece on the subject.

What became clear to me from the I-405 incident is that America’s Jews don’t see anti-Semitism, even when it’s dangling over a freeway in one of its most liberal cities in broad daylight. But perhaps it isn’t odd that mainstream media haven’t reported on it when American Jews won’t admit that anti-Semitism is a real problem in this country, and when so few of our high-profile Jews speak out against such attacks. Why would the media consider it of public interest if the Jews don’t?

It seems that American Jews don’t see anti-Semitism in America because they don’t want to, not because it isn’t real. They choose not to see it because it makes them uncomfortable. Or they only see it when it comes from the other “side.”

Yet for an outsider, the normalizing of open anti-Semitism in this country on all “sides” is shocking. This past week, in addition to the Delaware Chabad, Nazi symbols were painted on a bus stop in Colorado Springs and Philadelphia’s NAACP President Rodney Muhammad was removed after posting an anti-Semitic meme to Facebook. In the past three months we’ve seen the California Board of Education go ahead with an ethnic studies curriculum that is openly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel as part of its efforts to promote diversity and understanding among cultures. Synagogues have been defaced in Pennsylvania, Boston, Florida, and Cleveland, among other places. And that’s a good week, because nobody was put in a hospital or killed.

While “anti-Zionism” provides a fig leaf for anti-Semitic bullying campaigns, especially on college campuses, the idea that there is some clear line between the new and the old types of blood libel is increasingly hard to credit in an age of hypersensitivity to every other kind of real or imagined slight. At USC, Jewish student Rose Ritch resigned from her position as vice president of the student government after being bullied for her “Zionism”—meaning her refusal to stridently condemn and disavow Israel, a subject that has zero to do with student government at the college.

At least a half dozen synagogues have been vandalized during BLM protests, including one in LA (“Fuck Israel” was sprayed on the side of the building). A BLM protest in Washington, D.C., featured the chant: “Israel, we know you, you murder children too.” There’s been a resurgence of the ugly rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam via figures such as DeSean Jackson, P Diddy, and Jay Electronica, along with articles explaining why Louis Farrakhan is in fact a very important figure in the African American community whose minions provide young minority men with positive role models. Yikes.
Zooming with Terror
Leila Khaled owes her international fame to two things: she used to hijack planes, and female hijackers remain an object of fascination. You can find her face on T-shirts, in part because some advocates of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel love her.

As I’ve written before, that’s strange because, as Khaled has indicated any number of times, she is in favor of violence against Israel, whereas BDS sells itself as a nonviolent movement. It’s almost as if BDS isn’t dedicated to nonviolence, except as an adjunct to violence.

Khaled remains in the leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and other nations, and still very much in the terror business. A PFLP cell is suspected in a bombing that killed seventeen-year-old Israeli, Rina Shnerb, as recently as last year.

Nowadays, Khaled tours the world (when she is not denied entry) and dispenses the occasional anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

In 2020, thanks to the magic of Zoom, San Francisco State University, whose track record on these matters is not great, can hear from Khaled without worrying about her getting stopped at the border. The event at which she will be virtually appearing is being promoted by an academic program, the cumbersomely-named Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies, which sits in SFSU’s College of Ethnic Studies. Rabab Abdulhadi, from that program, and Tomomi Kinukawa, from Women’s Studies, are co-moderators.

This event, I think, is protected by academic freedom and, at a public university like SFSU, the First Amendment. But it seems safe to assume that the co-moderators, who examined in April the “direct connections between Israeli Zionism and [a] Japanese far-right government that denies its own history of colonial violence and war-time crimes,” are not there to ask Khaled tough questions. Ethnic studies is a self-consciously politicized field that has no qualms about using the academy to promote radical politics. That’s one reason the adoption of a new ethnic studies requirement at state universities in California should be bigger news than it is.

The real story here is less the event itself—Abdulhadi and Kinukawa’s April event doesn’t seem to have generated much interest, even at San Francisco State—than the mainstreaming of this kind of thing in the academy. Abdulhadi just this year received an award from the American Association of University Professors, even though her career has been dedicated to undermining the distinction between teaching and propagandizing on which the AAUP’s defense of academic freedom relies.
The Pinnacle of Looting Apologia
I am also from recent-immigrant stock. Osterweil euphemizes looting as “proletarian shopping,” and no one from a place that has recently experienced this phenomenon can take seriously her assurance that it can happen justly and bloodlessly. When I think of riots and smashed storefronts, I think of Kristallnacht. I think of American businesses built by penniless immigrants who preferred to forfeit their vacations and weekends for 30 years rather than see their children suffer as they did; I think of these businesses ransacked in 30 minutes and left in ruins. Osterweil at least has the psychology right when she says that looting can be “joyous and liberatory.” I have never seen a sullen looter, but I have seen plenty of shop owners crying next to the smoking remains of their children’s future.

Absent from this book is even fleeting recognition that anyone (or nearly everyone) might prefer the current nonrevolutionary arrangement. Osterweil does not say what property-less system of government or anti-government she prefers, but I suspect it is not democracy, a term she uses only sneeringly. Nor is it clear how she intends to move from the past disgraces and present unrest to her goal, whatever it is, other than by rioting and stealing things until morale improves. What do you do when the free stuff runs out, the businesses and ordinary people who invested in your city decide not to make that mistake again, and—oops!—a few shopkeepers get beaten to death? This messy process is the “new world opening up, however briefly, in all its chaotic frenzy,” she writes. To me it sounds like a prequel to The Road.

Osterweil is unable or unwilling to relate to anyone at all with anything resembling a sense of humanity. Comrades and enemies alike are described without compassion, emotional detail, or distinction as people endowed with feelings or moral complexity. Once cast as a villain, a villain one remains, with no intricacies of the human condition explored under any circumstances. In the NPR interview, Osterweil describes the Los Angeles convenience store where Latasha Harlins was shot to death in 1991 as the location of “white-supremacist violence.” That shooting, which came two weeks after the beating of Rodney King and contributed to riots that killed 63 people, was perpetrated by the store owner, a female Korean immigrant—an irony that surely deserves probing. But Osterweil’s great class war has only two sides, so a working-class Korean woman is effortlessly enlisted on the side of the white-supremacist cisheteropatriarchs. Osterweil quotes a communist magazine: “Just as Jews were in 1965, Koreans in 1992 were ‘on the front-line of the confrontation between capital and the residents of central LA—they are the face of capital for these communities.’” As explanations of communal violence go, this is contemptibly inane.



  • Thursday, September 03, 2020
  • Elder of Ziyon
At Rai al-Youm, Ibrahim Abdullah Sarsour - former head of the Islamic movement in Israel - whines about how awful it is that the UAE and probably Bahrain will accept Israel.

The beginning of his harangue includes an interesting list of the changing Arab attitudes over the years, from hate to acceptance. It is worthwhile to see how the Palestinians are viewing their brethren who have given them billions over the years.

“The complete liberation of Palestine and the occupied Arab land” and 
“What was taken by force can only be recovered by force.” 
"Eliminating the effects of aggression"
"Save what can be saved"
"Land for Peace"
“Take, then negotiate.” 
“Negotiations are the strategic choice.” 
“Peace for peace” 
“We are tired of the Palestinian cause” 
“The Jews have all the right to Palestine, and the Palestinians have no right to it” 
"The Palestinians should accept any Israeli offer before there is nothing left.” 
“Israel is a natural part in the region”
“We urgently need Israel to develop our Arab countries, as it is superior to the Arabs in all fields” 
“Israel is our only entrance to the heart of the inhabitant of the White House, and his satisfaction is important.”

This is written with great bitterness and things aren't nearly as good as described here - but it might actually happen.

(I do not know how closely related the author is with Linda Sarsour.)




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double standardsJerusalem, September 3 - Scientific research has confirmed a long-held assumption prevalent among the civically engaged, a new study claims, to the effect that constructive, beneficial acts, policies, or decisions that a government adopts become wrong when that government is run by your ideological opponents.

An article in next week's issue of the journal Hypocrisy Today lays out the details of the research, which examined numerous instances of the wrong people supporting the right things, thereby making the right things the wrong things even though they would remain the right things were the right people to do those things. The study arrived at what the authors call a workable model to explain the phenomenon, which observers are calling an important milestone in the age-old endeavor to comprehend what makes people such schmucks.

"Many of us had sensed the truth of this hypothesis intuitively," explained lead author Dr. Sel Fintrizt of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "We knew it was unremarkable when the Obama administration kept illegal immigrant children in cages, but when the Trump administration revived the policy, it became evil. In a similar vein, Obama administration attempts to influence elections in Israel through a series of NGOs caused little stir in Washington, but the charge of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 elections in the US sent the Democratic Party and mainstream media into a frenzy. We discovered it's less about the what and almost all about the who."

The phenomenon occurred with the greatest frequency, the article notes, in international treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arrangements from the 1990s that granted Palestinians limited self-rule in certain disputed areas also barred either side from a number of unilateral actions that might prejudice the outcome of a still-elusive final status agreement; nevertheless, European and other foreign governments either turn a blind eye to, or directly fund, Palestinian efforts to establish such facts on the ground even as those governments and NGOs rail against Israel for pursuing the same type of behavior.

Similarly, making the desert bloom generally registers as a positive among humans, but for opponents of Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland, when Jews do it there it becomes rape of the landscape and the upsetting of important ecological balance.

Scientists agree the mechanism of the phenomenon remains in large part a mystery, but some tantalizing hints have emerged, revealed Dr. Fintrizt. "We know as soon as Jews appear in the picture somewhere, the probability of this phenomenon occurring quadruples," he noted. "That's likely a huge clue, one we do not yet understand. But it's probably the Jews' fault."




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From Ian:

BESA: The Israel-UAE Agreement’s Greatest Achievement: Little Arab Protest
To the surprise of Iranian and Palestinian leaders, the Arab public did not protest the Israel-UAE peace agreement—but they continue to protest Iranian meddling in Iraqi and Lebanese affairs. The lack of protest against the Israel-UAE breakthrough is a sign of political maturity as Arab and Muslim populations clamor for reform at home rather than destructive ideological visions.

Lively analysis has taken place over the possible ramifications of the Israel-UAE peace agreement. Some have rightly noted that while this is the third peace treaty Israel has signed with an Arab state, it is the first to contain the promise of a warm peace. This is in sharp contrast to Israel’s relations with prior accord partners Egypt and Jordan, which are limited to very narrow personal, diplomatic, and security relations. With Egypt, the peace treaty has rarely reached even that threshold.

Hosni Mubarak, throughout his 30 years of ruling Egypt, never made an official visit to Israel, which is less than an hour’s flight away. Nor has King Abdullah of Jordan. In over a decade of rule, Abdullah has abstained from visiting Israel despite meeting several times with PA head Mahmoud Abbas in nearby Ramallah.

Israel has been at peace with Egypt for nearly a half a century, but not one Egyptian soccer team has ever played against an Israeli team either in Israel or anywhere else. Not one delegation from an Egyptian university has ever visited an Israeli counterpart, let alone engaged in a joint program. Not one Egyptian cultural ensemble or group has ever visited Israel. On the rare occasions when individual Egyptian artists have come to Israel, they did so primarily to appear before Israel’s Arab citizens. For that gesture they were met with opprobrium and threats. Such was the power of the Arab world’s boycott against “normalization.”
Dore Gold interviewed by Jenni Frazer: Israeli and Arab Interests "Have Begun to Coalesce"
In 2015, Dr. Dore Gold, a former director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, opened a small Israeli economic office in the UAE and is better placed than most to judge the pace of Israel's outreach to the Arab world. He told the Jewish Chronicle this week that other Arab countries are quietly falling into line behind the UAE, driven not only by fear of Iran, but also by concern at the machinations of Turkey, where President Erdogan is trying to revive the status of the Ottoman Empire.

As far back as 1996, when he first came into government as foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu, "I visited a number of countries, including Qatar and Oman," Gold said. He also went to Paris that year for a meeting with a senior Saudi diplomat.

When he served as Israel's ambassador to the UN between 1997 and 1999, "there was an African country with a Muslim majority, whose ambassador was head of the committee for the inalienable rights of the Palestinians." After a fire-and-brimstone speech to the General Assembly, "he came up to me and asked, 'Dore, maybe you could take me for lunch at one of your kosher restaurants?'" Today, Israel and the country have full diplomatic relations.

"The point here is that countries are driven by a keen understanding of their interests. If their interests lead them to closer ties with Israel, they will pursue them. First perhaps in a hidden way, but later in an overt way....Our vital interests and those of the Arab world have begun to really coalesce. And that makes great opportunity for dramatic breakthroughs. I am optimistic with respect to what can be done."
Col. Richard Kemp: A Great Step Forward for World Peace - and Who Seems Determined to Ignore It
Some months ago, in talks with leaders in Saudi Arabia as part of a delegation from former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Friends of Israel Initiative, together with their Executive Director and former Spanish National Security Adviser Rafael Bardaji, I heard first-hand how open the Saudis were to the prospect of embracing Israel in the future.

Of far greater significance, however, is the looming threat to the region from Iran and, to a lesser extent, Turkey. Most Arab countries see common interests with Israel in the face of the mullahs in Tehran with their imperial aggression in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and beyond, coupled with insatiable nuclear ambition.

Notwithstanding the economic, technological and security imperatives that lie behind the evolving Middle East relationships, great credit must go to the men behind the Abraham Accord.... Mohammed bin Zayed... [and] Benjamin Netanyahu... know only too well that such actions carry with them serious risks to themselves personally and to their nations.

  • Thursday, September 03, 2020
  • Elder of Ziyon



Palestinian Media Watch translated an interview with Saeb Erakat where the accomplished liar tries mightily to come up with reasons why Arab nations shouldn't make peace with Israel - something that he and Hanan Ashrawi have been trying to do without much success. 

They try different tacks to see if anything will resonate with the Arab world, but they aren't doing too well.

Erakat said:
There are [Arab] groups that say: ‘Palestine is not my cause.’ Groups say that ‘the Palestinians are ungrateful and we are employing them [the refugees]. We’ve helped them, but Israel is a beautiful, successful state.’ [Some] speak in Hebrew at universities to speak with Israel… This is a public birth for the Arab Zionists. There is no Arab Zionism, there are Arab Zionists… I have contacted Bahrain and sent official letters. I sent official letters and asked for two things: Not to follow the UAE [but] stick to the Arab Peace Initiative. And to convince the UAE to recant [the agreement with Israel]… I did the same with all the Arab states… It is not insignificant when an Arab photographs his son who puts the Israeli flag on his chest… This is Zionist thinking. Forbidden. This is forbidden.“
What exactly is his argument? He really doesn't have one. In the end, the best Erakat can do is to use the word "Zionist" as a general expletive and insult and say how unacceptable it is for an Arab to engage in "Zionist thinking."

What is Zionist thinking? That to build a nation you have to do the hard work yourself and not rely on outsiders to do all the work for you?

No wonder the Palestinians are allergic to it. 




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Al-Omah, an Egypt-based pan-Muslim news site, has a most revealing op-ed about the Israel/UAE accord that shows how systemic Arab antisemitism is.

The article, by Dr. Abdul Latif, is so dripping with anger at the UAE for partnering with Jews that it doesn't even mention the UAE by name. 

It is entitled, "Loyalty to the Jews is the epitome of hypocrisy." In this case, the word "hypocrisy" is not a mere value judgment but a specific Quranic term describing someone who appears on the outside to be a Muslim but who is actively working to destroy the Muslim world from the inside. 

Latif employs two well-known Quranic verses:
Quran 5:51:

O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you - then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people.

Quran 4:145:

Indeed, the hypocrites will be in the lowest depths of the Fire - and never will you find for them a helper.
Dr. Latif is saying that UAE leaders who cooperate with Jews will go to the worst depths of Hell, beyond the spaces reserved for mere unbelievers.

Remarkably, Latif doesn't even pretend to care about Palestinians in his criticism of the Emiratis, which is the usual fig-leaf used by Arab critics of the deal. His enmity is based purely on old fashioned Muslim Jew-hatred. Cooperating with Jews on any level is a major sin and those who do it are condemned to hellfire. 

(h/t Ibn Boutros)





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