The media has been abuzz with the news that Israel "demolished a Palestinian village" in the Jordan Valley this week.
Just finding the village is a challenge.
It is being variously named as "Khirbet Humsa" (which is what B'Tselem calls it) and "Humsa al Bqai’a."
B'Tselem's map points to an area that has absolutely nothing there, at least in the satellite maps I could find.
But Google Maps does find Humsa al Bqai’a, and its satellite map is from November 2013. (The area highlighted is roughly a 100 meter square.)
According to reports, Israel demolished 73 structures in the village. This satellite image shows at most 20 structures, which means that the bulk of this "village" was built since 2013.
Here is that same area in 2010 and 2004:
The images are lower resolution, but it is obvious that the area was completely empty as recently as 2010.
The media doesn't report this, but Palestinians - with full EU support - have been building dangerous, haphazard collections of structures in as many parts of Area C as they can in order to claim as much land as possible. Lots of NGOs obsess over Jews building but these Palestinian land grabs are ignored. There is no reason that these residents couldn't move to Areas A or B, under Palestinian administrative control where they can easily get building permits, but they choose - or are encouraged by the PA and EU - to build in areas Israel needs for security reasons.
In this case, Humsa al-Bqai'a was deliberately built in an area that had been used as an army firing range for many years. Whenever the IDF does training exercises, it has to evacuate these makeshift areas to avoid accidentally hurting or killing the residents - and NGOs report on each incident as if it was deliberate harassment rather than trying to save lives.
The most bizarre claim comes from B'Tselem, which accuses Israel of choosing the date of the American elections to "raze" the tents in order to somehow hide what it was doing. Given the hundreds of articles in major media on this action, it doesn't seem like that nefarious Jewish plan worked.
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For most of the answers, it tries to pretend that there is no difference between UNRWA's "Palestine refugees" and how the UNHCR defines refugees:
Is The Transfer Of Refugee Status To Descendants Unique To UNRWA?
No. Under international law and the principle of family unity, the children of refugees and their descendants are also considered refugees until a durable solution is found. As stated by the United Nations, this principle applies to all refugees and both UNRWA and UNHCR have recognized descendants as refugees on this basis.
This isn't true - UNRWA automatically regards all descendants as refugees, while UNHCR defines them as derivative refugees. Unlike UNRWA, UNHRC refugees have to prove their eligibility for every generation.
But it turns out that there is one FAQ that even UNRWA cannot spin:
Why Does UNRWA Provide Services To Palestinians With Another Nationality?
UNRWA’s mandate is to provide protection and assistance to Palestine refugees pending a just and lasting solution to their plight. It is for the UN General Assembly to determine who the Agency serves. Eligibility for the receipt of UNRWA services has never been made contingent on the lack of nationality. Eligibility for UNRWA services is a matter separate to conferral of refugee status or nationality under international law – issues that go beyond the scope of the Agency’s mandate.
UNRWA is forced to admit that being a "Palestine refugee" only means one is eligible for UNRWA services but it does not mean they are refugees under international law.
In fact, the phrase "Palestine refugees" is a huge scam. Because UNRWA is a UN body, people think that the word "refugee" has a consistent meaning, but in fact - as UNRWA admits - "Palestine refugees" do not have refugee status under international law.
Careful observers knew this already. After all, real refugees can apply for asylum in other countries and "Palestine refugees" cannot, unless they are also refugees from Syria or other oppressive regimes.
The reason that UNRWA insists on using the knowingly false terminology of "refugee" is to confuse people, to try to gain more contributions, to garner sympathy for a population who are in much better conditions than virtually all real refugees worldwide.
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The Guardian just ran an article that could have been penned by activists at the propaganda rag Electronic Intifada. The piece heartbreakingly describes 41 children who have been left homeless by the Israeli army after their ‘village’ was razed.
The article tells us that 73 villagers lost their homes and that this is the ‘largest demolition in the past decade’. There are post demolition pictures of a bed (and a cot for good measure) lying homeless in the desert along with footage of villagers ‘rifling through their wrecked belongings’ as the ‘first rains’ fall. The Guardian piece quickly went viral, receiving 1000s of shares in just a few hours. And with every propaganda piece that only tells part of the story and dehumanises Israel, comes the vile responses. There is a clear correlation. Lies about Israel – a demonisation of the Jewish state – logically creates hate against Zionists.
This is not about whether you agree with Israeli policy vis-a-vis the Beduin in the Jordan Valley or not. It is about newspapers having a duty to tell the truth. The Guardian knowingly pushed out an anti-Israel propaganda piece.
The Guardian and Khirbet Humsa
The village name is given as ‘Khirbet Humsa’. There is even a link to a B’tselem video inside the article that shows vehicles on a road approaching with menace – before the footage swiftly cuts to an after image of a bed and some other objects lying around after the destruction. What there isn’t – is an image of the village itself being destroyed. Why doesn’t the B’tselem video show it?
Exercise 1 – Google “Khirbet Humsa” and click on images. You soon realise why nobody is showing images of the village prior to the demolition. There aren’t any. You’ll be lucky to see pictures of a tent. And publishing images of a couple of tents would greatly reduce the impact of the propaganda story. Which raises a question. In researching this story, the journalist Oliver Holmes MUST have looked for images of the village. Yet sorely lacking from the article is ANY suggestion, this village is no more than a few make-shift tents.
If you do a quick historic search of ‘Khirbet Humsa’, you soon realise this small gathering of tents has been a politicised battleground for decades. There is nothing on this ‘village’ at all – outside of the context of this conflict. It is a fairly basic conclusion that the Guardian reporter MUST have done this ABC research. Yet his article holds back all this information from the reader.
Should Biden enter the Oval Office, US ties with Israel will undoubtedly shift in a heartbeat. Biden will, of course, first be required to deal with domestic issues, first and foremost the coronavirus. On the international front, too, there are other more pressing issues to contend with, chief among them, tensions with China. Yet sooner or later, the Middle East will be on the table. Biden may have a soft spot for us, but he will aspire to reach a new agreement with Iran on the nuclear issue. He won't, however, necessarily succeed given that the ayatollahs in Tehran are not exactly thrilled with the changes he hopes to make to the original agreement.
But with or without these amendments, Israel will likely find itself once again in a contrarian positions, and then, simple as that, our first confrontation with Washington is upon us. The next unavoidable disputes will concern the Palestinian issue. In order to please the anti-Israel wing of his party, Biden will walk rescind many of the steps Trump carried out as president. The PLO office in Washington will reopen, the funds for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees will be reinstated, and perhaps a US consulate will be opened in east Jerusalem. There will also likely be a demand to halt construction in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem. After all, it was Biden who caused an uproar over a negligible statutory approval of a construction project in the capital's east Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo. The bottom line is that should the Democrats take control of both the White House and the Senate, Israel will once again be walking on eggshells with the US.
The long-established principle of not arguing in public with Israel will likely change under Biden. Too many on the Democratic side are too blind to see how the sanctification of the alliance between Washington and Jerusalem has done only good for one of the most volatile regions in the world. On the grounds of working toward peace, the radical wing of the party, as in the days of former President Barack Obama, will push Israel into a corner. But we've been there before, and this will most definitely not bring peace; if anything, it will likely bring war. Of course, we will be spared these conflicts should Trump somehow succeed in ensuring himself a second term in office. In this case, we should expect to see the continuation of the intimate alliance between the two countries. It is highly likely that there will be more peace accords to come and that the United States, together with Israel, will continue to exert heavy pressure on Iran. Of one thing we can be certain, Trump has raised the bar on US-Israel ties so high, it would be difficult for any successor to outdo him.
During the US election campaign, President Donald Trump boasted the fact that he moved the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights, the peace agreements he brokered between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Bahrain – and at least five other deals that are in the works, according to the US administration.
Trump was also planning to endorse sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, but to realize that he had to have been elected for another term in office.
This is why, as an Israeli, one can be concerned about the results at this point, or at least contemplate what could have been achieved by the US and Israel during a second Trump term. This does not mean to imply that former Vice President Joe Biden is anti-Israel – not at all. But a pro-Israel president like Trump, one who has made his support for the Jewish state such an essential and prominent component of his legacy, has never before walked the halls of the White House.
Even if Trump is defeated, the legacy he carved out in his four years in office is guaranteed. The Republicans will make sure to preserve his achievements and the United States will make sure to hold on to the assets he procured for it, some of which are very important to Israel, too.
I came across this tweet that is a video of Iran-aligned Houthi soldiers in Yemen.
Looks like a colorized World War II film from Germany
זו אינה הפעם הראשונה שהחות'ים בתימן מתועדים מצדיעים במועל יד אולם בסרטון הזה הם הלכו עד הקצה לכיוון הנאציזם. pic.twitter.com/bQcBDzK0iZ
— אינטלי טיימס - מודיעין חדשותי (@IntelliTimes) November 5, 2020
(h/t Yoel)
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Ramallah, November 5 - The President of the Palestinian Authority believes public opinion surveys showing the deep unpopularity of him personally and of his governing faction among Palestinians, even though the field demonstrated serious shortcomings in the last two US presidential contests, failing to paint an accurate picture of the situation. As such, aides disclosed, he will not announce a vote anytime soon, if at all, as his administration approaches the seventeenth year of its four-year term.
Nabil Sha'ath, adviser to Mahmoud Abbas, informed journalists Thursday that while the polling industry has it problems, the president nevertheless gives surveys of Palestinians enough credence to refrain from allowing his constituency any say in who gets to lead them, for the foreseeable future.
"Nate Silver, Qunnipiac, and all the others certainly need to get their houses in order," acknowledged Sha'ath in a series of telephone interviews. "It's unacceptable that both this year and four years ago, the so-called experts got so much wrong. Relying on them going forward will prove a shaky proposition. The thing is, while the accuracy of the art and science of polling might fall into question, they haven't been off by such an order of magnitude that we can disregard their findings altogether. Bottom line, no elections for the time being. In that respect the will of the people is dangerous to our careers, so we can't afford to let the will of the people be expressed at the moment. Or ever again."
Abbas won election as President of the Palestinian Authority in January 2005, following the death of the previous officeholder, his mentor the iconic Yasser Arafat. Parliamentary elections occurred the following year; neither type of contest has been held since. Abbas's popularity has never approached that of his predecessor, and his Fatah faction also faces a surging Islamist rival in the Hamas movement, which favors armed conflict, not compromise, with Israel. Presidential confidant and former peace negotiator Saeb Erekat cautioned that expert analysis has often proved wide of the mark, but that does not mean ignoring the experts is a wise move.
"The experts also predicted the Arab street would explode in response to every move Trump made in the Middle East," he observed. "They explained that no progress in this region could occur, no normalization with Israel, without resolution of the Palestinian issue. The events of the last several years - the Jerusalem embassy move, the pronouncement on the legality of Israeli settlements, the recognition of Israeli Golan annexation, the hard line on Iran, the Abraham Accords, you name it - the collective Arab shrug, even endorsement, in response to all those things gave the lie to the experts' learned opinions. But we're still not going to tempt fate on this one.
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In the aftermath of the new peace treaties between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan, important Arab public figures - from political officials to clerics to intellectuals - are now openly proclaiming that the Arab world has been the primary author of its own pain. These admissions may signal the beginnings of a new sensibility among Arabs and Sunni Muslims about their political and social situation.
Their error was the notion that Israel was the most crucial enemy of Arabs, Muslims, and their states, an enemy that had to be not only defeated but utterly eradicated because it disrupted the harmony and progress of the Arab and Muslim world. Until recently, this view was central to Arab and Muslim sensibility.
As Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh has observed: "For most Arabs the terms peace and normalization with Israel were associated with extremely negative connotations: humiliation, submission, defeat, and shame." To the question of what ailed Arab and Muslim politics and society, there was always this widely-accepted answer: the state of Israel. If only it could be eliminated, all would be well.
The new deals have now shattered that discourse, declaring that Israel is not the enemy it was alleged to be, and promising a "warm peace" with broad economic and cultural exchanges. They acknowledge that Israel is not the problem, but rather a partner on the path toward solving Middle Eastern woes.
Most crucially, the changes in Arab discourse regarding Israel have not unleashed the vehement and widespread explosions of opposition throughout the Sunni world which would have been expected in decades past. Rather, they seem to bespeak views that were developing over some time, waiting for the opportunity to be let out.
Last week, Sudan agreed to the normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for its removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, joining Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and a growing chorus of nations that have seemingly put an end to decades of Arab-Israeli conflict. The Trump and Netanyahu administrations have heralded these achievements as byproducts of their diplomatic efforts, and President Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Despite these claims, such an assessment would be a poor interpretation of events. Although the Abraham Accords are encouraging and historically significant developments, they are more a byproduct of tectonic changes that have transformed the region over decades than the result of diplomatic work of the parties involved. Most responsible for the accords is the restructuring of the Middle East regional balance of power as well as massive domestic transformations across the Arab world.
For three decades, the two Iraq wars and their aftershocks have restructured the power dynamic of the Middle East, producing what scholars term the phenomenon of balancing, when countries shift alliances to collectively meet the challenges of a rising power. States that have little in common and few incentives to form partnerships band together against what they perceive to be a common and larger foe. Here, the decline of Iraq and the rise of Iran have led countries across the region to reassess their regional and international partnerships.
Such a change in circumstance did not occur overnight. America’s two wars with Iraq, Desert Storm in 1991 and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, militarily emasculated Iraq, which had long been considered Iran’s regional counterbalance. Iraq’s armed forces, which in 1990 were the fifth largest in the world, now cannot even provide domestic security.
While the middle eastern winds of change have brought about peace agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, the Palestinian leadership is still as intransigent as ever. For the Palestinian leadership it appears that peace with Israel can only be achieved in a “judenfrei” Palestinian state – a state free of Jews, ethnically cleansed of the over 800,000 Jews who now live in West Bank and Jerusalem.
This point was recently reiterated by PA Deputy Prime Minister and PA Presidential Spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina, who said:
“The [Israeli] settlement[s] will disappear in the end. There will be no peace as long as there is one settlement on the Palestinian lands. Just as the settlements were removed from Gaza, they will be removed from the West Bank. Either a peace that is based on an independent, fully sovereign [Palestinian] state with East Jerusalem as its capital and without settlers or settlements, or else there will be no security, no stability, and no peace.”
[Official PA TV News, Oct. 14, 2020]
In order to understand the PA approach, it is important to point out two critical points.
The pillar of the PA demand is based on the Palestinian narrative which defines the “West Bank” and “East Jerusalem” as “Palestinian lands”.
While Abu Rudeina’s definition of the “Palestinian lands” is reflective of the often-repeated PA narrative, it lacks any historical veracity.
At no period in time were the “West Bank” and “East Jerusalem” under “Palestinian” control or part of an independent “Palestinian” State.
The Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly (ARLEM) is an EU-affiliated group of local and regional representatives from the European Union and its Mediterranean partners to maintain political dialogue and promote interregional cooperation on a local level, between municipalities.
Both Israel and "Palestine" are represented.
Earlier this year the mayor of Ramallah, Hadid Musa, was promoted to be a member of ARLEM's Bureau. Members of Ramallah's city council promptly resigned - because one of the other members of ARLEM is the mayor of Modi'in, Haim Bibas, and the Palestinians Modi'in call a settlement.
Because of this, the city of Ramallah and the Al Haq NGO filed a complaint against ARLEM demanding that the EU exclude Modi'in (and presumably its mayor) from being a part of the organization.
According to Palestinian media, they succeeded. This is considered a major achievement.
As usual, when Palestinians join any international organization, the first and only thing they concern themselves with is how to use that position to attack Israel. And every other member of these organizations have to tolerate their intolerance.
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One way that international bodies and the media show their anti-Israel bias, and indeed at least latent antisemitism, is by adopting Muslim and Arab terminology for historically Jewish places.
UN Watch noted that there was a slew of UN General Assembly resolutions yesterday, one of which referred to the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site, solely by its Muslim name.
This has been going on for a while. Previous resolutions this year also referred solely to "Haram al-Sharif" without saying the Temple Mount.
Not only that, but even discussions and debates at the UN do not find the term "Temple Mount" used any more.
A year ago, the Israeli representative complained: (A/C.4/74/SR.25)
Mr. Bourgel (Israel), speaking in explanation of vote before the voting, said that the confusing and redundant text of the draft resolutions was intended solely to entrench a Manichean outlook in which the Palestinians were always in the right and Israel was always in the wrong. There were two sides to the story; the aspirations and concerns of Israel also deserved to be heard. For instance, the draft resolutions referred to the Haram al-Sharif complex, but the very idea that the term “Temple Mount” might be included appeared virtually inconceivable.
On December 3, 2019 the representative from Brazil seemed to take note of Israel's concerns when he remarked immediately before the near-unanimous adoption of another bunch of anti-Israel resolutions (A/74/PV.38):
Brazil also wishes to reiterate the importance of the city of Jerusalem to the three main monotheistic religions. With regard to terminology, we especially want to recall the need to duly reflect that significance when referring to the Temple Mount or Haram Al-Sharif.
That was the last time the term "Temple Mount" was used at the UN, according to the UN Documents Database.
In 2020, it has been referred to exclusively as "Haram al Sharif" in both resolutions and in discussions. (Sometimes the discussions are not published for several months, so it is possible the Israeli delegation mentioned the Temple Mount when responding to this month's anti-Israel resolutions.)
This is the deliberate erasure of Jewish history and Jewish claims, which pre-date Arab and Muslim claims by millennia. Such decisions cannot be considered anything but antisemitism.
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Even though UNRWA claims to be a non-political organization, it always has been nothing but political, teaching generations of Palestinians that they will "return" to the long-gone homes of their ancestors in Israel. For example, in 2015 UNRWA launched a "#JustSolution" campaign centered around the "right to return" without even mentioning the possibility of Palestinians moving to a Palestinian state or becoming citizens of their host countries as potential "just solutions."
But in a lengthy interview with UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini at Executive Magazine, he seemed to actively avoid mentioning "return" as the solution to the "refugees" - and he contradicted the PLO by saying that they should ultimately move to a Palestinian state, not Israel:
It is not a goal in itself of UNRWA to celebrate the 80th or 100th anniversary. The ultimate goal is to have a fair and lasting peace whereby Palestinian refugees can have a state that they can live in and do not rely on UNRWA anymore. That is the ultimate goal.
This seems like a change at UNRWA, at least at the top.
Notable also was that Lazzarini didn't blame Israel or even mention Israel at all in the interview. He did properly note how Palestinians in Lebanon cannot access many jobs, a problem made much worse during Lebanon's own crises and COVID-19.
Lazzarini discussed UNRWA's budget problems at length. Yet roughly a quarter of the people it provides services to live in "Palestine" already. There is no legal reason they would be considered refugees, and no real reason why they cannot be treated exactly as other Palestinians under PA and Hamas control. Any UNRWA funds earmarked to the dozens of camps and scores of schools in the territories could be redirected to the PA and the international community would be happy to help build permanent homes for the minority that still live in camps.
Actually doing this would cause an uproar among Palestinians who freely admit they use "return" as a means to destroy Israel. But UNRWA cannot survive forever with its ever-growing population of fake refugees. Continuing to provide services that should be the responsibility of the PA is diverting funds that are needed for the Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon.
Maybe, just maybe, Lazzarini - who succeeded the corrupt Pierre Krähenbühl - is trying to set the stage for changing the focus of UNRWA away from "return" towards something more realistic.
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It’s a rainy Wednesday morning in Rehovot, and the US election is undecided.
I have made my preference for Donald Trump clear. I understand the reasons that many Americans oppose him, but they are focusing on the media-amplified and distorted trees and ignoring the forest that is the worldwide struggle between competing hegemonies: the West (which mostly means the US today, when much of Europe is in decline), Islam, and China.
Yes, despite his sometimes ignorant pronouncements about scientific issues that he doesn’t understand, despite everything they don’t like about his personality, and even despite his undeniable dishonesty (not that his opponents are better in this respect), Trump is on the right side in the game that will determine how history will look for the next century or so.
What will be important in the very near future will be to stand against the Iranian attempt to establish a Shiite caliphate across the Middle East, against the further expansion of Chinese influence in East Asia and its extension into the rest of the world, against the Islamization of the US, and against the creation of a new Ottoman Empire. Trump has made his positions clear on the first three, although the jury is still out with respect to the last.
The pronouncements made by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, as well as their choice of advisors, have indicated that they would return to the Mideast policy of the Obama Administration, including its tilt toward Iran, away from Israel and the Sunni Arab states. This would weaken the developing Israel-Sunni alliance, which represents the best hope for stability in the region.
Trump would be more likely to oppose immigration of unassimilable Muslims to the US, the phenomenon that has brought Western Europe to its knees. His determination to control America’s borders is laudable.
I devoutly hope the decision will be quick and unambiguous, but ultimately someone will win this election. So here is my advice to Americans about the aftermath:
Understand that there is a Constitution and there was an election. There will be a winner and a loser. Understand that your political opponents aren’t monsters. Mostly they are human beings who see things differently.
If Trump wins, deal with it. Don’t style yourselves “the resistance” and don’t try to remove him with extra-democratic measures. I would hope, but can’t imagine, that the mainstream media would stop the exaggerated attacks on him, the false accusations of racism, fascism, even antisemitism, and the repetition of outright lies like the “fine people” hoax. Unfortunately there is a real possibility of civil disturbances if Trump wins and widespread “Trump Derangement Syndrome” prevails.
If Biden wins – well, if Biden wins, I and others will continue our efforts to politely explain why the Obama-style foreign policy that he will doubtless adopt is dangerous to peace and liberty throughout the world. We will argue that America has real enemies that should be confronted and not appeased. Please listen.
There are those who think that red or blue states and regions should consider secession from the US if the wrong side wins. This is a terrible idea, which could only increase extremism on both sides, and weaken the nation in the face of its external enemies. In the worst case it could lead to civil war.
American Jews will be facing a difficult situation in the future, especially if Biden wins. Expressions of Jew-hatred have recently been increasing, from “traditional” antisemites like neo-Nazis, from Farrakhanists and Black Hebrews, from Muslim antisemites, and from the misozionists of the intersectional Left, whose hatred of Israel seamlessly flows into hatred of individual Jews. Biden and the Democrats seem to recognize only the traditional types, rendering invisible the black, Muslim, and extreme leftist Jew-haters (who vote Democratic). Moving closer to the Left is not a good survival strategy for Jews, who will find little sympathy there, no matter how loudly they curse Israel.
It’s interesting that while most British Jews dropped Labour like a hot potato thanks to Jeremy Corbyn, American Jews have stuck with the Democratic party despite the antisemitism of some of its members, and the decision by the leadership to pretend it doesn’t exist. The so-called squad of four BDS-supporting members of Congress have all been re-elected, and another BDS proponent, Cori Bush of Missouri, has joined them.
Trump – contrary to a determined misinformation campaign by his opponents – is not sympathetic to “right-wing” antisemitism, even if he doesn’t denounce it loudly and often enough to satisfy Democrats. And he has certainly demonstrated his pro-Israel credentials. A Trump win would be better for American Jews, despite what they think.
Just one more observation, this one for Israelis, including our General Staff:
With a Biden administration, Israel can expect that any military campaign – be it against Hezbollah, Hamas, or Iranian nuclear installations – will be much more difficult. The US, under the Obama administration, was quick to intervene diplomatically to pressure Israel to accept disadvantageous cease-fires, or even to prevent Israel from taking action at all. It is a reasonable assumption that Biden’s policy would be similar, especially in the case of Iran, with whom he wants to deal.
If Biden wins, the rational thing for Israel to do would be to take out the Iranian nuclear capability before it’s too late.
Capiche?
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In the Soviet Union of the 1970s, it wasn’t hard to meet Russians who knew the Communist system was incorrigibly corrupt, dysfunctional and oppressive. But it was one thing to whisper such truths to trusted friends, quite another to speak openly, to make oneself a target of the police state.
A member of the intelligentsia who kept his head down asked me this question: “What do you call a man of integrity in the Soviet Union?” When I shook my head, he dolefully provided the answer: “An inmate.”
Natan Sharansky was born Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky in 1948 in Stalino, a grimy Ukrainian coal town renamed Donetsk following the death of the second Soviet dictator in 1953. He showed enormous aptitude for mathematics and chess—useful pursuits for those who did not want to risk being “cancelled” (to borrow a contemporary expression) by the KGB. But he was not such a person.
In his 20s, he became a vocal Zionist (i.e. a believer in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in part of their ancient homeland), refusenik (a Soviet citizen denied the right to emigrate) and human rights activist (not just for Soviet Jews but also for dispossessed Tartars, oppressed Pentecostalists, Armenian nationalists and others).
Before long, he was arrested, tried by a kangaroo court and, in 1978, sentenced to the Gulag. Released nine years later, he went to Israel where he spent nine years in politics, followed by nine years as head of the Jewish Agency, an organization that links Israelis with the remaining (or surviving) Jewish communities abroad.
He tells the stories of his life—along with large sprinklings of history, philosophy and polemics—in “Never Alone: Prison, Politics and My People,” written in tandem with Gil Troy, the eminent historian.
I had the opportunity to speak with Sharansky last week. I mentioned that I had attempted to report on his trial but, because it was closed to the press and public, the best I could do was hang around outside the courthouse with his supporters.
One day, a van arrived and backed up to the building’s exit. The van’s rear doors opened and then closed. The van drove away. We knew he was in it and where he was being taken.
Plaintively, his supporters called out what was then his nickname: “Tolya! Tolya! Tolya!” For more than 40 years, I’ve wondered: Had he heard them?
A year before the coronavirus hit, the Times was blaming Jews for the spread of measles. But it goes back even further than that.
A 1921 Times editorial headlined “Typhus Still a Menace” declared, “the immigration danger has been obvious for decades,” complaining about “the problems of infectious disease brought here by immigrants.” What was that a reference to? A Times editorial from 1892, headlined “Typhus and Immigration,” holds an answer: “Two weeks ago the steamship Massilia brought to this city 248 Russian Hebrews, and within the last two days it has been discovered that about one-third of these immigrants are suffering from typhus fever, one of the most virulent and menacing of the diseases which test the powers of sanitary officers. …Typhus fever is a disease caused by filth, overcrowding, destitution, and neglect of the fundamental laws of sanitation… This outbreak of dreaded disease must bring forcibly to the attention of all intelligent citizens the evils of unrestricted immigration. The Times has made the sufferings of the persecuted Hebrews in Russia the subject of a notable investigation, the results of which our readers are familiar. No one will accuse this journal of having failed to appreciate the hardships of these unfortunate persons… But it is the duty of the people of this country to protect themselves against the importation of such persons as these whom the Massilia brought to this port. Especially it is the duty of the people of New-York to protest against the admission of those whose habits and condition invite deadly infectious diseases and who carry with them the seeds of a plague that can be stamped out only by the most energetic measures of a large body of sanitary officers. Such immigrants are not wanted either in this city or in any other part of the United States. They should excluded. The doors should be shut against them.”
The 1892 editorial is still available on the Times website with no correction, apology, or retraction appended, not even a trigger warning.
What’s remarkable here is the continuity. The New York Times has been blaming Jews for the spread of deadly diseases in New York City for 128 years. The newspaper did not want us here in America to begin with. It would have preferred that we perished in Europe. Shmuel Rosner writing on the Times op-ed page in 2020 with the absurd claim that “Ultra-Orthodox Jews tend to be poor by design” and the assertion that they “live in densely populated areas” sounds like an echo of the 1892 Times editorial about “destitution” and “overcrowding.”
If the New York Times had been publishing in Europe between 1348 and 1350, it would be blaming the Jews for the Black Death.
But enough looking backward. What about the future?
With any luck, the Jews will be around in another 100 years. As to whether the Times will be around then to blame us for the latest pandemic—well, that’s a different question. One hopes that the market for this sort of scapegoating is diminishing over time.
He’s exactly the sort of person conservatives and some of Israel’s most ardent supporters despised. Yet today he’s being lionized by supporters of the most pro-Israel president in history and attacked by left-wingers who once idolized him. Perhaps more than anyone else, Glenn Greenwald embodies the contradictions and the ironies that abound in politics and the press in 2020. As such, the sympathy or scorn that he is now generating for his refusal to play by the contemporary rules of a tribal media culture has broad implications not just for the future of journalism but for democracy.
Greenwald led the team at The Guardian that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for writing about the massive leak of US intelligence information by Edward Snowden, a former US National Security Agency contractor. Snowden had provided the material directly to Greenwald, who had already made a name for himself writing scathing critiques of the tactics used by the Bush administration’s war on Islamist terror, as well as for vitriolic attacks on Israel in its efforts to defend itself against Palestinian terrorists.
Born to Jewish parents in New York, Greenwald is the sort of polemicist that defended the use of antisemitic slurs like “Israel-firster” to denigrate Jews who support Israel as disloyal to the United States. That demonstrated his antipathy for the right of the one Jewish state on the planet to exist or to defend itself against Hamas terrorists whose actions he justified. But it was also rich since, as his aiding and abetting of Snowden indicated, he didn’t seem to have much loyalty to the United States in its struggles against foreign enemies like Al-Qaeda and Iran.
Nevertheless, Greenwald’s undeniably intrepid reporting on US security issues, including his documenting the way Americans were being spied on by the agencies that were tasked with defending their freedoms, earned him a lot of respect among journalists as well as political liberals who shared his distrust of the intelligence establishment.
It happens every election: celebrities—and just generally
spoiled people (cough cough)—swear that if their candidate doesn’t win, they’re
leaving. But author Lauren Ariel Hoffman decided to write about leaving America
from a Jewish perspective. Hoffman describes her own Orange Man trauma and exit
plan, comparing it all to an escape from the Nazis. She then quotes a few Jewish
friends on their own plans for fleeing the country. The odd thing is, not
one of them considers Israel as a viable option for relocation, and in fact, Israel is not mentioned in this article at all.
Hoffman’s article was featured in Alma,
which—no surprise—also includes articles on such subjects as, “Why Does My
Interfaith Relationship Disqualify Me From Rabbinical School?” and “Now’s the
Perfect Time to Teach Your Non-Jewish Partner All About Judaism." So perhaps it's not quite the right place to discover love and loyalty for the one Jewish State. You'd think, nonetheless, that in an article about fleeing the country, a Yid might consider Israel.
Never heard of Lauren Ariel Hoffman and her epigenetic intergenerational trauma? Neither had I, but her byline was linked to this handy dandy author’s blurb:
Lauren Ariel Hoffman (she/her) is a photojournalist from
Royersford, Pennsylvania. Her coverage includes stories relating to chronic
illness, medical injustice, and human interest.
Well there you have it. Perhaps Israel, as a subject for liberal Jews, is somewhat beyond human interest.
But back to the article: Hoffman, it is clear, wants to celebrate her distress in a
Jewish way. But the closest thing she can get to kosher-style anguish is by
referencing the Holocaust and her family roots in the Ukraine:
It is not 1939, and yet the police are still slaughtering unarmed Black men and
women in the name of “justice,” still separating refugee families at the border
and putting their children in cages, still performing medical experiments on
female-bodied prisoners.
Sound familiar?
My recurring nightmare of Nazis breaking into my house and
capturing me is becoming more tangible, but now it’s informed and comprehensive
and absolutely terrifying. And while I’m a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, I don’t think
I’ll be knocking Nazi skulls anytime soon. I’m more prepared to find myself in
a police-state wherein me and my loved one’s basic liberties will be stripped
and some of our lives taken, along with members of every other oppressed group
in America.
I am not going to back down from this fight, mainly because
I have nowhere else to go — as a descendant of Ukrainian Jews, my ancestor’s
recent homeland does not exist anymore.
Which is odd, because last I looked, the Ukraine still exists.
Or so Google says:
Ukraine is a large country in Eastern Europe known for its
Orthodox churches, Black Sea coastline and forested mountains. Its capital,
Kiev, features the gold-domed St. Sophia's Cathedral, with 11th-century mosaics
and frescoes. Overlooking the Dnieper River is the Kiev Pechersk Lavra
monastery complex, a Christian pilgrimage site housing Scythian tomb relics and
catacombs containing mummified Orthodox monks.
But I don’t blame Lauren for not wanting to go back to the
Ukraine. I wouldn’t want to go back there, either. It was bad enough the first time.
Still, to say she has nowhere else to go—why not go back to the place her family came from in the first place—before they were expelled and forced to wander? Why not go back to Israel,
where today there is a flourishing Jewish State? But no, it’s not on Hoffman's radar.
Nor was it apparently on the radar of her Sephardic friend Rebecca Brier:
Rebecca Brier, 37, who asked to use an alias, feels
differently. She and her husband are in the process of getting Portuguese
citizenship for themselves and their two young children.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my family, it’s that
it’s okay to be the first one to go,” she said. “It’s harder with kids. We
speak Spanish, but Spanish is not Portuguese.”
Brier said she is mainly torn between leaving her family
behind in the Bronx or figuring out how to get them all to Portugal.
“We’ve set up our lives around our support system, our
family. If we left, would we be that anchor again? At some point, flight
becomes easier, because if I fly, at least I still have my family.”
On the other hand, if she would only make Aliyah to Israel, the Briers would have
new family everywhere they turned. As new immigrants they would be embraced and surrounded by fellow Jews, living proud and free in their indigenous
territory. But no, Brier instead prefers to return to the land of the Inquisition, where
Jews were tortured for their beliefs, forced to go underground with their
observance, and slaughtered if they refused to convert. Somehow this is, to Brier, infinitely preferable to moving to the Jewish State.
“But not everyone has the luxury of leaving,” continues Hoffman:
Aviva Davis, 21, is a biracial Jew whose ancestry
is more closely linked to slavery than the Holocaust. They feel it is a luxury
that white Jews are able to consider leaving at all.
“I would love to have an escape plan, but it’s not a viable
option for me,” they said. “Where would I go? My ancestors were carted over
here as slaves — white Jews can trace citizenship back to their ancestors. It’s
very frustrating for me to feel like I have nowhere to go.”
Leaving aside the odd use of the pronoun "they," um. Where would "they" go? To ISRAEL. Where Jews of every color of
the rainbow live full, satisfying, Jewish lives.
But no. These people are stuck in a time warp of pogroms, auto-da-fé,
and slavery:
As Brier said, “Do we become Jews lighting candles in
the closet in Spain? Or do we flee to the Ottoman Empire? I’m not sure who did
it right. But the trauma is still there.”
As I write this piece, no one knows who will win the 2020
presidential election. But one thing I know for sure: Israeli Jews did it right.
They left the trauma and the ghettos behind to build a beautiful, shining new
world, where anything is possible, and dreams can come true.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Friday, November 06, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
