Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 26, 2020

10/26 Links Pt2: NYC ‘Jews for Trump’ Caravan Attacked With Rocks and Pepper Spray, Flags Ripped Up; UNHRC official: UN Security Council must enforce settlement blacklist

From Ian:

At Brooklyn Trump rally, Orthodox anger at mayor and governor take center stage

Over a thousand mostly Orthodox Jews gathered for a rally in support of Donald Trump in Brooklyn on Sunday, using the opportunity to loudly air their grievances against Democratic leadership in New York while calling for four more years of the Republican US president.

The demonstration in Brooklyn’s Marine Park came after weeks of tensions in many of the borough’s Orthodox neighborhoods over new restrictions imposed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in response to rising COVID-19 cases in those areas.

Some ultra-Orthodox communities in Brooklyn have found themselves in national headlines due to accusations that their refusal to adhere to coronavirus guidelines led to a spike of new cases in September. Orthodox leaders accuse Cuomo and de Blasio of unfairly singling out their communities and adopting punitive measures rather than engaging with them.

While the infection rate has since waned and restrictions have begun to be lifted in some places, they still mostly remain in Brooklyn, along with tensions between the Jewish community and the city and state leadership.

“Hey Cuomo, you probably wouldn’t have allowed this [gathering]… Come get me!” said the rally’s emcee Nachman Mostofsky, the executive director of the right-wing, pro-Israel policy group Chovevei Zion.

The rally was the final destination of a parade convoy that chugged through the streets of Rockland County’s Monsey, Long Island’s Five Towns, Manhattan, and a number of pre-dominantly Orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

Hundreds of New York Ultra-Orthodox Jews Hold Pro-Trump Rally

Thank you Rabbis! https://t.co/Lwo07ggfuc
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2020

Fights break out, 7 arrested, as ‘Jews for Trump’ convoy rolls through New York

Skirmishes broke out between supporters and opponents of US President Donald Trump as a Jews For Trump convoy of hundreds of cars draped with American flags and Trump 2020 banners rolled slowly through Manhattan and Brooklyn on Sunday afternoon.

The demonstration was planned as part pre-election rally for the Republican president and part protest against coronavirus restrictions in some heavily Jewish areas of New York where spiking infection rates have been recorded.

The caravan traveled from Coney Island to the Trump Tower in Manhattan before heading to a rally in a Brooklyn park. Cars in the procession blasted remix versions of the president’s speeches, festive Jewish music and soundtracked campaign slogans.

Videos shared on Twitter showed several protesters pelting the vehicles with eggs or stones, snatching flags and shouting insults.

In one video showing physical fights between several people, police officers detain an unidentified man and protesters chant “let him go.” Another video showed a small group of people throwing objects from a Brooklyn highway overpass at vehicles bedecked with Trump flags.

Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani briefly greeted supporters from the passenger seat of a car driving near Trump Tower during the parade, videos showed.

Family describes horror as violent maskless rioters throw rocks, attack 'Jews for Trump' convoy

A family of seven ‒ including four kids ‒ were pepper-sprayed by violent rioters on Sunday while participating in a “Jews For Trump” rally in New York City. placeholder

A spokesperson for the New York Police Department said 11 people were taken into custody after the rally descended into chaos and violence Sunday afternoon. Six people were charged with disorderly conduct, obstruction of government administration and harassment, while a seventh person was charged with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest, the NYPD said Monday.

A convoy of hundreds of cars draped with American flags and "Trump 2020" banners rolled slowly through Manhattan and Brooklyn on Sunday afternoon. The caravan traveled from Coney Island to the Trump Tower in Manhattan before heading to a rally in a Brooklyn park.

At some point, skirmishes broke out between supporters and opponents of the president.

A member of the family that was pepper-sprayed told Fox News that the unprovoked attack happened while the family was driving down Fifth Avenue with the car windows down and Trump flags displayed.

The man, who wished to remain anonymous fearing his family could be targeted, said a car pulled up next to them and unleashed pepper spray into their vehicle.

"Immediately the kids started crying and screaming and I jumped out of the car after I was peppered [sic] sprayed as well," the man said.

The man said the attacker chased him down the avenue trying to pepper-spray him again. His mother flagged down an officer and the suspect was arrested.

Woman arrested for spraying pepper spray at the #JewsForTrump vehicle convoy on 5 Avenue in Manhattan. pic.twitter.com/kfrwaLTJgT
— NYC Scanner (@NYScanner) October 25, 2020

"Moderate critics of Israel" at York and U of Toronto aren't moderate at all

From the Toronto Star:

At the heart of a University of Toronto hiring scandal is an academic whose critique of Israeli settlements in Palestine is not what most people would call radical.

At York University, a professor is facing death threats and a campaign to stop him from teaching human rights courses — a campaign that accuses him of anti-Semitism after he debated the definition of anti-Semitism.

While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been a flashpoint on campuses across Canada, legal experts and advocacy groups are raising concerns that these recent incidents suggest an escalation of silencing even moderate critiques of Israel, and not just in the halls of academia, but in the media, the political sphere and social interactions.

Are the two academics pictured here "moderate critics" of Israel?

The professor on the left, York University Law Professor Faisal Bhabha, said during a June 10 webcast that Zionism is just “Jewish supremacy.” He later said “I am equating Zionism with white supremacy” and then added for good measure that it was possible that Israel is “exaggerating the Holocaust.”

This isn't moderate criticism. This is demonizing Israel and Jewish Zionists as being bigots, and his suggestion that Israel exaggerates the Holocaust is pure antisemitism.

The professor on the right, Dr. Valentina Azarova, is also not merely a "critic" of Israel. She is emphatically against the existence of a Jewish state.

These "one staters" never call for India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to become one state to ensure equal rights. They never propose nations in the Balkans of different ethnicities to merge together. Only the Jewish State is expected to be destroyed in the name of equal rights - with no regard to the human rights of Jews who would, in their world, inevitably become a minority in a majority hostile Palestinian Arab nation.

It is possible to criticize Israel without calling it an apartheid state, or a Nazi state, or calling for its destruction. No one demands Syria's destruction, or China's.

No one is calling actual legitimate criticism antisemitism. But invariably, the people who complain that they are being "silenced" by accusations of antisemitism are proven to have a crazed obsession with insisting that Israel follow rules that they do not demand of any other nation.

That's double standards, and that is antisemitism.

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Peter Beinart writes in the socialist Jewish Currents site:

ON OCTOBER 23RD, Donald Trump announced that Sudan would begin the process of normalizing relations with Israel. The declaration, which was part of a deal to remove Sudan from the US list of state sponsors of terror, follows last month’s pledges by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to recognize the Jewish state. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have claimed that those peace deals—dubbed “The Abraham Accords”—will promote “human dignity and freedom” in the Middle East.

Twelve days after the Abraham Accords were signed, a poet named Dhabiya Khamis tried to exercise her freedom to leave the UAE. Her government barred her from boarding the plane. “The ban is probably because of my announced opinion against Zionism and normalization,” Khamis declared. “I fear for my freedom and life from being threatened and arrested.” Those fears were well-founded. According to a report in Middle East Monitor, “scores of Emiratis, Palestinians and Jordanians living in the UAE” had already been jailed “for opposing Abu-Dhabi’s peace deal with Israel.”

I'm not going to defend the human rights record of any Muslim country, but there is absolutely no evidence that Khamis was blocked from leaving because of her political positions. She made that claim; it was eagerly repeated by Iranian media and skeptically quoted by BBC Arabic.

What is the proof that the UAE arrested opponents of the deal? Tracing back the source, it came from a very sketchy NGO called the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, which mentioned that some people from the UAE, Bahrain and Mauritania were arrested during protests against the Abraham Accords. Not one person arrested was named - the NGO stated that it received "complaints."

Based on these tenuous reports, Beinart reaches some conclusions:

Khamis’s experience illustrates a harsh truth: Although Israel’s diplomatic breakthroughs in the Persian Gulf have elicited bipartisan praise in Washington, they rely on—and contribute to—brutal repression. In Sudan, which is undergoing a fragile transition after three decades of dictatorial rule, normalization imperils democracy too. The reason is simple. In a region where sympathy for the Palestinian cause still runs deep, recognizing Israel elicits fierce popular opposition. To implement normalization agreements, therefore, Netanyahu and Trump need their Arab partners to quash domestic dissent. For years, Israel’s boosters have bemoaned the lack of democracy in the Middle East. Ironically, it is that lack of democracy on which Israel’s peace diplomacy largely depends.

And he uses curious logic. He says that since the UAE has used software from Israel's private NSO Group to spy on citizens, that means Israel is culpable for that use. He says that since Bahrain has previously banned Shiite parties from its parliament, Israel is benefitting from the king's repression. As always, to the Left, Arabs aren't responsible for their own actions - Israel is pulling the strings.

As far as Sudan goes, Beinart goes further out on a limb:

In a country where—according to an Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies poll—almost 80% of people oppose normalization, rapidly establishing diplomatic ties to Israel could destabilize the fragile transitional government. The announcement has already sparked public protests. And the leader of Sudan’s largest political party, which has close ties to the protest movement that overthrew Bashir, claims that the normalization agreement “contradicts the Sudanese national law” and could mean “the ignition of a new war.” Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), told me she fears Sudan’s generals may use the resulting instability as the pretext for a “full military takeover and end to the democratic transition.” In which case Sudan would be on its way to resembling the UAE and Bahrain.

So many bad things could happen - and people who are against normalization are saying it - so, to Beinart, we can assume they will, which makes normalization awful!

Unlike Beinart, I spend time reading primary sources. Bahrain, the UAE and Sudan are all different nations with different priorities and aspirations. But none of them - government or opposition - are going to risk a civil war over the Palestinian issue. Nobody cares that deeply about it. The doomsday scenarios on Sudan are ridiculous.

Not to say there isn't opposition to the deal. There is. But Sudan's main desire is to get off the terror list and to help its economy. The Palestinian issue is barely line noise. If the price to get what they so desperately need is peace with Israel, that is a relatively small price to pay. The opposition will complain, like oppositions everywhere. But no one is going to start a war or a coup because of their love of Palestinians.

No matter how much the Beinarts of the world hope that will happen.

Another major point that Beinart chooses to ignore: the entire reason for wall-to-wall historic opposition to Israel is a combination of antisemitism - which the socialist Left pretends does not exist in the Arab world - and decades of non-stop anti-Israel propaganda. In the UAE and in Bahrain this propaganda has ended. In Sudan, there are articles in the media that are pro-normalization, some antisemitic articles against it, and many that are pragmatic about the idea.

This is why the idea of normalization is gaining currency in so many Arab countries - for the first time, ordinary people are reading both sides of the story in their own local media.

To the Peter Beinarts of the world, this is a catastrophe. They need Arabs to be anti-Israel and antisemitic to justify their arguments that the Middle East will explode if Israel bypasses the intransigent Palestinians. But support for Palestinians was always ankle-deep at best, and the Western Left never understood that basic fact - mostly because every Arab diplomat, for honor reasons, would parrot the anti-Israel line whenever they spoke to their Western counterparts.

In the end, every Arab nation will act in their self-interest.

The UAE aspires to be a modern, high tech state whose economy is no longer dependent on vanishing oil supply and demand. Israel is a natural partner for this enterprise.

Bahrain wants to be known as the most tolerant Muslim country. Embracing Jews is the most visible and public means to reach that goal.

Sudan wants to end its long nightmare of the last decade and become a respectable nation. Peace with Israel helps them in that direction far more than continued slogans for Palestinians.

And one more thing Beinart chooses to ignore. As much as he wants to paint Israel as a brutal dictatorship, he knows that Israel has the most concern for human rights and free speech of any nation in the region, and is among the best in the world. Israel will influence Arab nations to be more open, not less. It is Israel's concern for equal rights, for education, for scientific research and development, for innovation and for the free market that gives it a competitive advantage - and these are all things that will bring Arab nations out of the backwardness they have been in for so long.

In literally every argument Beinart gives for his thesis, he shows not only that he is wrong, but that he has turned into a hater. Because in the end, his thesis rests on the assumption that Israel is evil, and therefore whatever it does will be evil. It is bigotry.

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10/26 Links Pt1: Sudan deal encourages other Arab states to follow suit; Saudi politician: Palestinians need to 'think outside the box' on peace; Islamic Jihad’s Maher Akhras, Haaretz’s New Martyr

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Sudan deal encourages other Arab states to follow suit - analysis

Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen added that a peace accord with Sudan strikes a blow to Iran’s aspirations of regional hegemony. “Sudan is an important country in the region, having previously served as a way station for weapons between Iran and Gaza,” Cohen said. “Taking it off the US list of state sponsors of terrorism enables us to sign another agreement and to develop several important tracks of cooperation that will greatly contribute to Israel.”

From Israel’s point of view, this is also an opportunity to discuss the repatriation of thousands of Sudanese migrants who have sought refuge here in recent years. But the two countries are also expected to negotiate several mutually beneficial cooperation agreements, including in agriculture and technology.

The US and Israel have pledged to help bring both investment and debt relief to Sudan. Washington is offering a billion-dollar aid package, while Israel will provide agritech to help boost its dire economic situation. For its part, Sudan – Africa’s third-largest country – has huge swaths of arable land.

But on the flip side, there is concern that such a major foreign policy move at a time of deep economic crisis in Sudan could upset the delicate balance between the military and civilian authority, which is why Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok is expected to push for his country’s transitional parliament to approve the deal first. The chairman of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is scheduled to hand over control of the council to Hamdok in 2022.

We should not ignore recent protests that have taken place in Khartoum against the normalization agreement with Israel, that have included the burning of Israeli flags. According to the Sudanese newspaper, Al-Intibaha, demonstrators chanted slogans against establishing relations and demanded that political parties who supported the step revise their position. At least two political factions in Sudan – the Popular Congress Party and the Sudanese Baath Party – issued statements condemning the decision to forge ties with Israel.

As the US heads to a critical election next week, we urge the new administration – whether under Trump or Biden – to continue pursuing the path of peace between Israel and Arab states. Perhaps the UAE, Bahrain and now Sudan can help to get the Palestinian leadership back to the negotiating table with Israel.

U.S. Assistance to the Palestinians Was "a Bridge to Nowhere"

"For some odd reason, prior administrations decided to indulge Palestinian fantasies about what could happen that were totally out of touch with reality."

"I spent most of yesterday in closed door meetings, with [U.S. Treasury] Secretary Mnuchin, Prime Minister Netanyahu, [and] the finance minister of the United Arab Emirates....I'm in the room and I'm seeing people that really, really want to advance the ball as far as it will go.....They were almost...tripping over each other to come up with more and more ideas about what could be done. The sky is truly the limit, and it's fun to watch, because...we don't need to police this or oversee it; they're doing that on their own."

"I think the Palestinians are sort of in one of those final stages of denial. It's hard to watch. It's completely self-defeating. There was a leadership problem. There was significant corruption at the top....I've traveled with Prime Minister Netanyahu to the United States. I've been on his plane a few times....He flies like a regular commercial passenger. And Mahmoud Abbas, where the Palestinian GDP per capita is maybe 1/15th that of Israel, he flies around in a $75 million Boeing business jet....You've got a lot of concentration of wealth among the upper elite and a lot of people are really unhappy about it."

"America has provided the Palestinians with more financial, humanitarian assistance per capita than any other place in the world by far. And we have given more money to the Palestinians compared to any other nation by a power of at least five compared to every other country. So, we've got nothing to apologize for in terms of our assistance to the Palestinians....It is a bridge to nowhere. The Palestinians want to take, but they're not willing to really engage in a serious way."

"We want to help the Palestinian people. By the way, the State of Israel wants to help the Palestinian people. It is in Israel's interest for the Palestinian people to be healthy, to be prosperous, to have hope and optimism about their lives....Enough of the histrionics. Enough of the tantrums. Just sit down and have civilized discussions on serious issues and there'll be progress."

Saudi politician: Palestinians need to 'think outside the box' on peace

Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Yousef Al-Othaimeen told Sky News on Monday that Palestinians need to "think outside the box" in their search for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"One is required to think outside the box in search for peace. I do not think a reasonable person - whether Palestinian, Arab or Muslim - would refuse any initiative to resolve the [Palestinian] cause in any way," he said.

"The [Palestinian] cause has been going on for 70 years. We have tried wars, we have tried to throw Israel into the sea and we have tried many other things," the former Saudi Arabian minister said.

Othaimeen said that the goal of the Palestinian cause is a two-state solution, with east Jerusalem as its capital, and that a younger generation should not be afraid to try new approaches to get there.

Sec.-Gen. of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Yousef Al-Othaimeen: The Palestinians Need to Think Outside the Box, Try Different Ways to Achieve Peace with Israel, Two-State Solution pic.twitter.com/8GLK0GvFAX
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) October 26, 2020

NYPD bias crimes word cloud shows JEWISH as by far the largest victims of hate crimes

The New York Police Department has a new (not very good) Hate Crimes Dashboard.

One interesting feature is a "word cloud" showing the relative frequency of bias crimes by type, sizing each type by how frequent they are.

As we have seen in the past, anti-Jewish crimes are by far the most prevalent in New York, although for the first half of the year they were not more than half of all the bias crimes. Still, the word cloud is startling:

If the United States is structurally racist, then perhaps it is endemically antisemitic. (I don't believe that.)

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Almost lost among the flurry of announcements around Israel's peace with Bahrain was this Memorandum of Understanding between the US State Department Office of the Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism and Bahrain's King Hamad Global Centre for Peaceful Coexistence.

Here it is:

MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE KING HAMAD GLOBAL CENTRE FOR PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE AND THE OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES SPECIAL ENVOY TO MONITOR AND COMBAT ANTI-SEMITISM

WHEREAS Arabs and Jews are both Semitic peoples that are threatened by hatred or intolerance toward Semitic peoples;
WHEREAS all peoples of the Middle East should aspire to coexist in tolerance and mutual respect;
WHEREAS the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) has adopted a widely accepted definition of anti-Semitism that incorporates examples of its various manifestations;
WHEREAS anti-Semitism is a vile poison that must be eradicated from the world;
WHEREAS purveyors of anti-Semitism in the Middle East seek to spread this evil as a political tool to manipulate the Arab and Muslim world;
WHEREAS His Majesty King Hamad bin Issa Al-Khalifa has made it a top priority for Bahrain to lead the Middle East toward a future of tolerance, mutual respect, and cooperation between Muslims and Jews; and
WHEREAS President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo have made it a top priority for the United States to combat all forms of anti-Semitism in all parts of the world;
THEREFORE, the King Hamad Global Centre for Peaceful Coexistence (the King Hamad Centre) and the Office of the United States Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism (SEAS), hereinafter the Participants, hereby set forth the following understandings:
(1) The King Hamad Centre and SEAS intend to work together to develop and implement programs to promote mutual respect, appreciation, and peaceful coexistence between the Arab and Jewish peoples and their respective nation-states, and between all faiths in the Middle East; The spirit of this cooperation is intended to be guided by the principles of The Kingdom of Bahrain Declaration of July 3, 2017;
(2) The King Hamad Centre and SEAS intend to work together to develop and implement programs to recognize and celebrate the periods of good will and harmony that existed between Jews and Arabs living side-by-side throughout the Middle East;
(3) The King Hamad Centre and SEAS intend to cooperate in developing educational programs aimed at teaching all children of the Middle East the values of mutual respect, appreciation, and peaceful coexistence; such programs are intended to build upon the King Hamad Faith in Leadership Fellows Programme, The King Hamad Cyber Peace Academy, and other related programs;
(4) The King Hamad Centre and SEAS intend to work together to share and promote best practices for combating all forms of anti-Semitism, including anti-Zionism and the delegitimization of the State of Israel;
(5) The King Hamad Centre and SEAS intend to work together to share and promote best practices for combating other kinds of intolerance and hatred;
(6) The King Hamad Centre and SEAS each intends to bear its own costs for any cooperation and activities taken in furtherance of this Memorandum of Understanding (MoU);
(7) The King Hamad Centre and SEAS intend to develop the activities and areas of cooperation under this MoU through a periodic work plan and intend to develop the first work plan within six months of signature of this MoU;
(8) As used herein, the term "anti-Semitism" is defined by reference to and in accordance with the Working Definition of Antisemitism as adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in its Bucharest plenary on May 26, 2016, including the examples set forth as part of the definition;
(9) Cooperation under this MoU is intended to commence upon signature and is intended to be operative for three years, subject to written renewal for a similar period. Either the King Hamad Centre or SEAS may unilaterally discontinue this MoU at any time, with written notice given to the other Participant.

SIGNED at Washington, DC, this 22nd day of October, 2020, in duplicate in the English language.

For the first time, an Arab nation has accepted that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism. Arabs of course know this well - while they have been arguing since the 1940s that the two are separate, they know quite well that antisemitism has been used to fuel anti-Zionism in the Arab world and that opposition to Israel has always been based on antisemitic theories, theories which we have documented here many times from Arab media.

That is not even the most astonishing part!

This MOU calls for "peaceful coexistence between the Arab and Jewish peoples and their respective nation-states," meaning that Bahrain accepts Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Note that the text says "Arabs and Jews are both Semitic peoples." This shows that Bahrain accepts Jews as a people, not merely members of a religion as the Palestinians insist. (Yes, the agreement is with the King Hamas Center and not the government, but the King Hamad Center represents the King.)

Not only that, but it accepts Jews as a Semitic people, meaning that that are an indigenous people of the region that belong there every bit as much as Arabs.

Even beyond that, this MOU says that Bahrain will work to establish peace between Israel and all Arab states to establish peace in the entire region. Peace between Israel and Bahrain is not looked upon as a narrow bilateral agreement but as a springboard to establishing Israel as a permanent part of the Middle East.

Elan S. Carr, the US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, has been working on this for quite a while. First news of an MOU came in February and it is unclear if they waited for Israel/Bahrain peace for issue the text (I could find no stories of an actual signing of the MOU as planned in March), since it would have been awkward for Bahrain to accept Israel as the Jewish state before the normalization agreement.

In some ways, this is even more amazing and groundbreaking than the Israel/UAE agreements announced so far.

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Israel's law against "Injury to religious sentiment" has only been used to protect Muslims

The Library of Congress has a most interesting article listing each country that has laws against blasphemy, defaming religion, harming religious feelings, and similar conduct.

Israel has such a law in its 1977 Penal Code.

173. If a person does any of the following, then he is liable to one year imprisonment:
(1) he publishes a publication that is liable crudely to offend the religious faith or sentiment of others;
(2) he voices in a public place and in the hearing of another person any word or sound that is liable crudely to offend the religious faith or sentiment of others.

There is obviously tension between this law and freedom of expression, and the LOC lists various examples where freedom of expression won out - allowing the showing of the film The Last Temptation of Christ, or allowing the distribution of the Charlie Hebdo cover that showed Mohammed saying "I am Charlie."

The document lists only a single case where this law was invoked:

In a 1998 decision the Supreme Court rejected an appeal from a conviction of attempting to injure religious sentiments by trying to post flyers in Hebron, a city with a majority of Muslims that had experienced a high level of tension between Jews and Arabs in recent years. The flyers depicted a pig wearing an Arab head cover and labeled “Muhammad” stepping on an open book titled “Quran.” The Court noted that, considering that freedom of speech constitutes a basic principle of a democratic state, indictments under section 173 of the Penal Law were rare. In the circumstances of the case, however, there was no need for expert opinions to prove that the flyers could cause injury to the feelings of Muslims in Hebron and crossed the line of what was permitted as free speech.

This means that, as far as I can tell, the only time this law meant to protect members of a religion from being offended in Israel was invoked was when the offended people were Muslims.

This is also a case where the situation where Israeli residents of the territories have different laws than the Palestinian citizens is to the Palestinians' advantage. The Jews of Hebron have to adhere to Israeli law not to crudely offend their Muslim neighbors, but the Israeli courts cannot force the Muslims there to act the same way towards Jews.

(h/t Irene)

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Miss Khartoum, 1958, was Jewish

This is Aziza Adam Mandil, Miss Khartoum 1958, who came from one of the most famous and richest Jewish families in the Sudan.

The Mandil family settled in the city of Al-Nahud. where they were known for jewelry and publishing.

A famous Arabic song was written about Aziza, Girl of the Nile.

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10/25 Links: The growing isolation of anti-Israel forces in the Middle East; If Anything Sustains the Arab-Israeli Conflict, It Will Be Progressives’ Antisemitism

From Ian:

The growing isolation of anti-Israel forces in the Middle East

The word "Sudan" means "black" in Arabic (bilad as-sudan means "Land of the Blacks"). Over hundreds of years, Sudan was infiltrated by Islam. Essentially, all of East Africa used to be called "Cush," which is traditionally considered the eponymous ancestor of the people of the "land of Cush," an ancient territory that is believed to have been located on either side or both sides of the Red Sea. As the centuries passed, three main population groups formed. Islam, in its flexibility, joined two of these groups together.

One group was the Arab Muslims in the fertile, wealthy northern part of Sudan, and the other was the Africans who were converted to Islam but to this day pass on the harsh memories of the days they were hunted by slave traders. Another group, in the southern part of Sudan, consists of black Christians who essentially formed the bridgehead for relations with Israel during the premiership of Golda Meir.

The relations that developed at that time formed complexities that are difficult to comprehend. On one hand, Israel sent Mossad agents led by David Ben Uziel ("Tarzan") to help the Christians in South Sudan defend themselves against genocidal campaigns. Jaafar Nimeiri, who recognized the autonomy of South Sudan in the early 1970s, permitted Ethiopian Jews to immigrate to Israel more than a decade later. He was also the only one in the Arab world who supported former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat when he made peace with Israel. Under Nimeiri's leadership of Sudan, however, an Islamist leader named Hassan al-Turabi rose to prominence. Al-Turabi pushed Sudan toward Islamism and an alliance with Iran immediately after the Khomenei-led Islamic Revolution in 1979.

"Turabi was among those who celebrated Sadat's murder, and his people later tried assassinating [former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak," Koren said, noting that a "process of Islamist radicalism had begun." This was the world of al-Bashir and al-Turabi up until 2011. They had a hand – beyond acts of genocide inside Sudan – in efforts to topple moderate Arab regimes. This period of time was disastrous for Sudan. "Bashir's successors, [Abdel Fattah] al-Burhan and [Abdalla] Hamdok, who seized power following the protests that ousted [al-Bashir], essentially followed a path he had set," according to Koren. "Bashir understood his situation was increasingly precarious, and the matter of establishing relations with Israel was part of the answer to this decline."

As early as three or four years ago, voices began emerging and articles began being written in favor of relations with Israel. The important point is that Arab nationalism, followed by the period of Islamism, didn't inculcate the Sudanese population with a hatred of Israel, contrary to countries in the Arab world. Egyptian society, to this day, is imbued with a deep, venomous anti-Semitism.

Swinging a gigantic, vast country (population of 42 million) such as Sudan, which sits on the Red Sea, is an extremely significant geopolitical move. The new Middle East is bustling with realignment in the face of Turkey's Ottoman ambitions and Iranian imperialism. For the first time, it appears the forces predicated on militaristic anti-Israel ideology are becoming isolated.

US amb. to Israel: Change of administration can damage Abraham Accords

Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has represented the United States through a period that belies the Middle East’s reputation for stagnation and intransigence. Not without controversy, the region emerged as what is arguably the Trump Administration’s strong suit as a series of “impossibilities” fell by the wayside. The Media Line’s Felice Friedson sat with the ambassador at his residence in Herzliya where they discussed the issues and events that define the Trump term to the Middle East.

TML: American polling raises the specter of a change in US administrations. There’s concern that these achievements we’ve discussed could be walked back. And in particular, pressure on Iran might be lifted. Can the achievements in the Middle East survive a change of a US administration?

Ambassador Friedman: Well, look, I think an administration with a different approach could do huge damage. No question about it. The most obvious area would be with regard to Iran. Iran is on the ropes. They are weakened. They’re far weaker now than they were before we let them off the hook with the JCPO, right? If you let them off the hook again, we will all have to answer to our children and grandchildren as to how we created a terrorist nuclear power, which is what we will do if we let Iran off the ropes right now. So, I don’t want to predict what will happen in the future with regards to a new administration. I frankly don’t think there’ll be a new administration, but look, it’s a big risk. I think it’s important because I think people do tend to politicize this too much, whatever we’ve done with regard to the Middle East has been done because we thought it was in the best interest of the United States.

That’s always been the lens that we’ve looked at everything, what’s in the best interest of the United States? Not what’s on anyone’s political wish list. I would hope that because of that, all the things that we’ve done would be enduring, would stand the test of time. I’ve heard already that there’s no desire to move the embassy back from Jerusalem. Well, of course there shouldn’t be, that’s the national wellness, the Jerusalem Embassy Act. Why would anybody want to do that? Why would anybody want to talk about giving the Golan Heights to a butcher, like Bashar Assad and threaten Israel’s security? I mean, why would anybody want to undo that? By the same token, why would anybody want to take the most threatening malign sponsor of terrorism in the world and fund them? To me, these are easy things that should be perpetuated because they’re great for America, but I do worry.

If Anything Sustains the Arab-Israeli Conflict, It Will Be Progressives’ Antisemitism

While progressives are the ideological grandchildren (to the extent that they possess an ideology) of Marxists, they are members of a cult, the ideological fault lines of which pass not through class but through race and ethnicity. Progressivism borrows a bit from Marxism, but its main weapons are passion and faith, not logic and reason. At its core it is closer to the early Church than to Marx or Lenin.

The belief system of the progressives contains a number of “original sins,” one of which is the establishment of the State of Israel. The Palestinians are viewed as analagous to Jesus: innocents who were sacrificed by the Zionists (or the Jews, if the speaker is not careful enough) on the altar of global white imperialism. Thus every Jew must condemn Israel and Zionism to rid himself of the association.

Given that there will always be Jews who are unwilling to abandon the main tenet of Jewish national identity, the Progressive movement is guaranteed a perpetual enemy. As the movement “matures,” Israel/Zionists/Jews take on more and more diabolical roles unrelated to the Middle East. The Zionists are accused of running the world, its finances in particular, and are presented as the vanguard of white imperialism.

If there is anything the Progressives have thoroughly borrowed from the Soviets, it is intense antisemitism presenting itself as anti-Zionism. The Progressive platform on Jews and Zionism sounds familiar to anyone who read Pravda in the 1970s and 1980s. Intersectionality, the pillar of the Progressive worldview, mandates that enemies be found everywhere, in the most bizarre incarnations.

If the Arab-Israeli conflict is to continue to exist, it will be thanks to the antisemitism of the Progressive movement. Members of that cult will never let the conflict disappear, as to do so would undermine one of their articles of faith.

Palestinians make a big deal whenever a prisoner dies in Israeli prison, routinely accusing Israel of torture and neglect, and lots of NGOs pile on about the supposedly horrible conditions in Israeli prisons.

No one talks about deaths in Palestinian prisons, though.

An inmate at the Preventive Security detention center in Tulkarm died at dawn today. His name or age isn't released, the cause of death is merely referred to as "spontaneous."

This happens quite a bit. Throughout the 2010s, an average of five prisoners died in Palestinian custody each year, according to the PCHR annual reports.

This doesn't count those killed during arrests.

Yes, there is torture in Palestinian prisons. Every five or ten years an NGO will write up a report about it, and it gets buried among the hundreds of anti-Israel reports being published.

If Palestinian lives matter, then there would be as big a stink over deaths in Palestinian prison as in Israeli prison. But even to Palestinians, their lives don't matter - unless they can blame the Jews.

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Arabs abuzz over "photograph of Netanyahu and Nasrallah"

Arabic social media has been sharing this photo, which they say is a secret photo of Netanyahu and Nasrallah over a meal, with people calling Nasrallah a "traitor."

Obviously, this is not true.

The photo first surfaced in 2018 and at the time no one thought it was Netanyahu - it is apparent that the person on the left has a moustache and does not resemble Netanyahu.

The person on the right does not appear to be Nasrallah, either. When the photo first popped up people thought it was him but then the consensus in Lebanon was that it was another Hezbollah figure who resembles him, possibly Ibrahim al Sayed.

(Nasrallah's beard seems to have been greyer in 2018.)

The restaurant is in Beirut, called Parilla Snack, part of a chain of Parilla restaurants.

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Sudanese ministers argue whether recognizing Israel is legal yet

There seems to be a disagreement between Sudan's Foreign Ministry and its Justice Ministry over the legality of the government recognizing Israel.

The Sudanese Foreign Minister-designate Omar Qamar al-Din said that ratification of the decision to normalize relations with Israel requires the approval of the Legislative Council. Not that he is against the idea; he said that peace would provide many opportunities for Sudan.

At the same time, Sudanese Minister of Justice, Nasreddin Abdel-Bari said that the transitional government has a mandate to establish relations with Israel in order to achieve Sudan's interests, saying "the transitional government is authorized by the constitutional document to administer foreign policy in balance and independently, and according to the interests of the Sudanese, which change with changing times and circumstances."

Both Ministries cited the interim constitution in support of their positions.

Meanwhile, opposition parties including the Communist party, a Nasserite party, the Islamist "Reform Now" party and a Baathist party announced their opposition to the peace plan.

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10/24 Links: Ballots come and go, Abraham Accords are here to stay; Trump solved world’s most intractable foreign policy problems; Israel expects Oman to normalize next, Mossad chief says Saudi deal soon

From Ian:

Ballots come and go, Abraham Accords are here to stay

I've read multiple pieces accusing President Trump of using the Abraham Accords as an election success story. Any candidate trying to get elected or re-elected as president of the United States of America will use whatever gains they possess to gain votes. If you have something better than the first peace deal in 25 years by all means use that to your advantage- any politician would.

Similar claims are made against Netanyahu who is standing trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Neither Trump nor Netanyahu have been given a grace period following the Abraham Accords. In Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's case, it is not because Israelis don't have foreign policy high on their list, but because there are more pressing domestic issues to deal with.

Israelis refer to Netanyahu as "the magician" – a term used both positively and negatively. Recent polls however indicate the opposition right-wing Yamina party is closing the gap with Netanyahu's Likud, calling the entire magic theory into question yet again.

The peace agreement between the United Arab Emirates, Israel and Bahrain is widely favored among Israelis, but it contrasts with serious dissatisfaction at home. While Israelis are eager to travel to the Gulf, let's not forget that they have been stuck at home for several weeks until recently due to a second nationwide lockdown. Ask any one of the tens of thousands of Israelis protesting across Israel and they will blame Netanyahu for miserable handling of the Pandemic. At this point Israelis are feeling so helpless, a trip to the local grocery store will suffice.

All this is to say that the Abraham Accords, amazing as they truly are, cannot erase – or even ease – domestic strife.

The biggest mockers of the new Israeli-Gulf relationship are unquestionably the Palestinians. They rejected the deal immediately and left no room to recognize their longtime Emirati ally's achievement in blocking Israel's plan to extend sovereignty to large parts of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley.

Palestinians see the deal as a betrayal as it calls for normalization with Israel through the good ol' formula they grew up on "if we don't get a piece of peace, no one does." The Abraham accords aren't killig the prospects of an independent state of Palestine, the Palestinian reaction to it is.

Those who believe that Jerusalem's holy sites are in danger due to the agreement can rest assured the Hashemite custodianship of Muslim and Christian holy sites hasn't changed. The only ones threatening the city right now are extremists targeting and harassing Emirati worshippers who have come to visit the Temple Mount, Islam's third holiest site.

The US: An Inspirational Leader in the Middle East

By taking a robust approach to some of the region's more intractable issues... such as relocating the American embassy to Jerusalem, the US has produced a number of profound changes to the regional landscape, the consequences of which are likely to be felt for many years to come.

The breakthrough in the peace process, moreover, has resulted in the region being clearly divided between moderate, peace-loving countries that are prepared to engage in the peace process, and rejectionist regimes, such as Turkey and Iran, that are only interested in causing further bloodshed.

It is these countries, as well as China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela that have most to fear in next month's presidential election if a strong and successful America returns again.

Yisrael Medad: A Letter to the NY Review of Books Not Published

Commenting on Israel's presumed 'vulnerability' regarding the legality or illegality of civilian Jewish residency communities ("settlements") in the "West Bank", a new geopolitical term created in 1950, territory the United Nations termed Judea and Samaria in its 1947 Partition Plan, David Luban, Georgetown Professor in Law, writes in "America the Unaccountable" that "[t]ransferring your own people into occupied territory violates the Geneva Conventions". He pursues this by adding that "Israel has devised an arcane legal theory that it never occupied the West Bank, but it is fair to say that nobody outside Israel and the US takes that position seriously" [NYR Aug 20].

The international legal experts who do not agree with that thinking, among them Stephen M. Schwebel, Eugene Rostow, Abraham Bell and Eugene Kontorovich and many others, point out that the actual language in the 1949 Geneva Convention is "forcible transfers", that "Palestine" never existed, nor does it at present exist, as a "state", that indeed Israel is a "belligerent occupier", quite a proper legal status and that the non-arcane legal doctrine of Uti Possidetis Juris applies - in which the territorial sovereignty of emerging states covers their pre-independence administrative boundaries - as does United Nations Article 80 as well. Moreover, the IJC's 2004 advisory opinion does not hold "that the [Israel–Palestine] boundary is 'subject to such rectification as might be agreed upon by the parties'" as Luban writes. Quite to the contrary, a "Demarcation Line" was to be subject to rectification (see para. 71), a line that the 1949 Armistice Agreement specifically stated in Article IV, 9 that "Lines...of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto".

As someone who lives in such a community, I think that Luban could have noted that the Arabs of Mandate Palestine refused the offer of a state in 1947, consistently rejected diplomacy (the Khartoum 3 Noes), that they had been engaged in an anti-Jewish terror campaign since 1920 which has never stopped until this day and that they ethnically cleansed all Jews from this area intended to be reconstituted as the Jewish "national home" due to the Jews' "historic connection" to it, as the League of Nations decided in 1922. Some of those families had been living in that territory for centuries. Luban could, even in passing, had referred to the 1967 war when Israel, threatened with aggression, came into administrative possession of Judea and Samaria (and until 2005, Gaza as well) as a defensive war. Had he done so he would have provided a better, indeed, a more philosophical framework to judge the matter.

10/23 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Fighting the new commissars; Melanie Phillips: What sanitising Louis Farrakhan tells us about the west

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Fighting the new commissars

When word got out this week that Facebook had squelched Shibbolet – again – Likud MKs Amit Halevy and Ariel Kelner published posts on Twitter threatening to take legislative action against Facebook. The threats worked. Shibbolet's account was reinstated. In fact, the account Facebook "permanently" froze in April quickly thawed.

While this is a positive development, it isn't a business model. Conservative businesses – and business owners – cannot build their commercial model around faith that lawmakers will defend them on Twitter or that the trillion-dollar conglomerates will long care what lawmakers say or do.

Recognizing the dimension of the threat, Wednesday Halevy initiated Knesset action on the issue. He submitted a bill titled, "Social Media Responsibility for Content Published on its Platforms."

If passed into law, Halevy's bill will divide social media companies into two categories: those that interfere in content posted on their platforms and those that do not. Currently, both types of companies enjoy immunity from lawsuits related to content posted or blocked on their platforms.

Halevy's bill would maintain the exemption for social media companies that do not interfere with content on their platforms without a court order or a clear legal obligation to do so. On the other hand, social media companies that interfere with the content on their platforms would no longer enjoy immunity from legal actions by users harmed by the content on their platforms.

Halevy's bill also requires companies that interfere with the content of its platforms to operate in a transparent way. They would be required to explain precisely what sort of content they censor. And they would be required to publish annual reports delineating precisely which posts they censored and why. Users would be notified before the companies take action against their content and be given an opportunity to defend themselves.

President Donald Trump and prominent Republican lawmakers have pledged to take similar action against Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants after the election. The Department of Justice filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Google earlier this week.

These initiatives are critical. And they shouldn't stand on their own. They should rather be the first shots of concerted campaign to limit the power of these gargantuan companies that control nearly all global information.

Freedom of expression and the free flow of information are the foundations of free societies. Rather than use their unprecedented power to secure both, social media giants are manipulating information and censoring speech with a power that no one could have fathomed just 20 years ago. Optimism and hope for their positive potential blinded many of us to their actual dangers. The time has come to take on this new and pernicious threat to the future of free nations and free people.

BBC apologizes for broadcasting appeal of convicted Hamas terrorist

The BBC apologized on Thursday for broadcasting an appeal by convicted Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, mastermind of the Sbarro Pizza parlor bombing in Jerusalem in 2001, to be reunited with her husband, after the families of Tamimi's victims and the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) spoke out against the broadcast.

On October 1, 2020, Tamimi's husband Nizar, who is also a convicted terrorist, was deported by the Jordanian authorities to Qatar.

Seven days later the BBC's Arabic TV service broadcast a report in its program Trending on how Tamimi had called into a popular Amman-based radio station in a bid to appeal directly to King Abdullah II to intervene and have her husband returned to Jordan.

The BBC's report glossed over key elements of Jordanian-born Tamimi's story, reporting that she had been "accused" of the Sbarro terror attack but not that she had boastfully pled guilty to the charges in an Israeli court – or that she had said she would be happy to carry out such an attack again.

Tamimi was sentenced to 16 life sentences following the attack, but only served ten years as she was released in the deal that secured the release of captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas's hold.

The BBC's Arabic service, which is funded by Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, further failed to mention any of her victims by name.

Melanie Phillips: What sanitising Louis Farrakhan tells us about the west

Moreover, such self-styled progressives believe this constitutes their whole moral and political identity. It bestows virtue upon them because it is based on the ideal of the perfect society where war is no more, lions lie down with lambs and prejudice is obliterated from the human heart.

Anyone who challenges it, therefore, isn’t just wrong, but right-wing and evil. So anything they say — however truthful or evidence-based — is right-wing and evil. And so truth has become a right-wing concept and is to be exiled, along with the truth-tellers, from acceptable society.

But Farrakhan is immune from criticism as a result of the core doctrine of identity politics that says members of an “oppressed” minority are victims and can therefore do no wrong.

Liberal Jews in America go one stage further. They have convinced themselves that “social justice,” which is in fact anti-social and unjust and stands utterly against the particularism which is the essence of Judaism, actually embodies Jewish ethical precepts.

So when they look at the Democratic Party, they make excuses and continue to vote for it. When presented with the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bigotry of The New York Times, they make excuses and continue to buy it. When confronted by the violence of Black Lives Matter, they make excuses and continue to call anyone who opposes it “racist.” And when they cannot make excuses, as over Farrakhan, they look away.

Because they have made a religious faith out of this illiberal liberalism, which classifies all who challenge it as evil by definition, most of their minds have become hermetically sealed thought systems. They will never be prised open.

In her essay, Weiss is rightly aghast at what this signifies for the Jews who have adopted this mindset. “That leaders and philanthropists charged to protect and nurture our community are entertaining, and at times embracing, such nihilistic and anti-American ideas is a scandal.”

More than that, it’s a tragedy in the making—not just for American Jews, but the west.

President Trump announced peace between Israel and Sudan. Get ready for the hypocritical "peace" activists to object to...peace.

The objections by Palestinians and their friends to Israel's peace accords with the UAE and Bahrain announced in August were bizarre. But perhaps the most insane objections were floated by people who pretend to be peace activists. I looked at their specious arguments by the cofounder of the Hamushim NGO and by the executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace.

One of their nonsensical arguments doesn't apply to Sudan:

Israel’s normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which its Parliament is scheduled to approve on Thursday, was termed “peacemaking” by the Trump administration that mediated it, and all involved seek credit for being peacemakers. In reality, these deals could lead to increased arms sales, more violence in the Middle East, and the perpetuation of the ongoing military occupation of the Palestinian people.

Neither the UAE nor Bahrain, which only gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1971, have ever been at war with Israel.

Sudan was at war with Israel, declaring war in 1967.

Of course, the argument that normalization deals aren't peace deals is silly. Normalization is several steps better than peace, unless you are a fanatic hater of Israel. Israel has peace with Egypt and Jordan but there was never normalization, and (either as a cause or effect) both of those states are among the most antisemitic nations on Earth.

It is too soon to say whether the peace deal with Sudan will include full normalization of relations, but early indications from Sudanese media are promising, saying that there is interest in cooperation with Israel on agriculture, technology, aviation and immigration.

Of course, "Jewish Voice for Peace" already condemned the deal, saying that it has nothing to do with peace with Palestinians. They still think the world considers peace with Palestinians to be a prerequisite for peace with anyone else, an assumption that has already been proven false - but the religion of "linkage" is strong.

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