Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, November 21, 2020

11/21 Links: Anti-Israel UN Resolutions are literally dumbfounding; Netanyahu, Rivlin welcome end of Pollard’s parole, await his arrival in Israel

From Ian:

Anti-Israel UN Resolutions are literally dumbfounding

Do United Nations diplomats ever read the numerous anti-Israel resolutions put in front of them? Or do they automatically raise their hand in a five-decade automatic knee-jerk reaction?

I ask because I read some of the conditions of a recently approved stab at Israel on 18 November 2020.

This draft resolution had to do with treating Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria and our capital, Jerusalem, as if they belong to a non-existing country and that Israel has no right to our ancient land and our homes.

This draft resolution passed with a 156-6 majority. The minority countries were Israel, the United States, Canada, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Nauru.

Why do tiny Pacific islands seem to possess more common sense than all the European countries, or even Australia and New Zealand?

Again I ask, did the diplomats that approved the motion read the wording before they raised their hands? Or were they following official guidance from their capitals?

This was a resolution that has been approved annually for decades, so perhaps they can be forgiven for overlooking the wording. Wording that talks about recognizing Palestinian “sovereign rights” to the “natural resources” of the 'West Bank' and east Jerusalem.

What sovereign rights does a non-existing country possess?

As they refer to the so-called 'West Bank', could they be indicating that this territory belongs to Jordan, a country that once claimed this land as theirs? After all, the term “West Bank” refers to the other side of the River Jordan.

Trump’s core righteousness shines through Pompeo's anti-BDS and pro-Jews in Yesha speech

Beyond that, Secretary Pompeo stated that any entity that continues supporting “BDS” — calls to boycott, divest from, or to sanction Israel — will be deemed outright anti-Semitic and will suffer the full ramifications of American financial and other pressure for that hatred banned by our laws.

The thing about “BDS” — a movement founded and created by Arab terrorists and their supporters in Europe and America, and fostered throughout American campuses by Jew-hating Leftist professors and their ignorantly moronic student minions who do not know the difference between the Mideast and the Midwest — is that the same haters and criminals who would boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel never advocate BDS against a China that religiously persecutes and imprisons its Uighyur Muslim minority, suppresses and crushes freedom in Hong Kong and throughout its Communist mainland, and that knowingly criminally exported to the world the worst pandemic of the past hundred years. Imagine that: no BDS against China, but BDS against Israel.

There can be no clearer example of outright virulent Jew-hatred than that: applying one standard — tolerance and gleeful acceptance — for Communist murderers, international criminals, tyrants and dictators who persecute religion and speech . . . and simultaneously applying a completely different standard — zealous hatred and brutal economic warfare — against Jews.

BDS is the anti-Semitism and Jew-hatred of today. Obama and His Fraudulency went along with it and never stood up to it. By contrast, Trump and Pompeo — with no conceivable political benefit to be accrued, only the motivation of common decency — now have placed the force of American law to crush it

Trump’s and Pompeo’s decency and friendship never will be forgotten. That 83 percent favorability among Orthodox Jews will stand in good measure for the next Trump presidential term, whether it commences by court orders in January 2021 or by popular and electoral vote four years from now. His Fraudulency will be gone before we know it. The Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria — now 800,000 strong and growing by leaps and bounds every day — is eternal.

And this was written before Jonathan Pollards' parole restrictions were not renewed.

In another crushing blow to those who were hoping that Israel would use the coronavirus to finally perform the genocide of Palestinians that they have been predicting for 72 years, Israel is preparing to provide millions of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to those who want to see Israel disappear.

Israel Hayom (Hebrew) quotes a senior Palestinian Authority official saying that "between 3 and 4 million vaccines will be transferred from Israel to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and some of the vaccines will also go to Gaza. Israel is committed to helping us curb the virus."

Senior sources in the Palestinian Ministry of Health told Israel Today that the Palestinian Authority is included in any negotiations to purchase vaccines or order doses from Pfizer, Moderna or any other pharmaceutical company that Israel has or will have a supply agreement.

Unlike Israel, though, the Palestinians will also get millions of doses from the UN and other international organizations.

It is unclear whether Israel will be delaying vaccinating some of its own citizens to help the Palestinians.

Israel is filled with the world's worst genocidists, to be sure. But one can expect that Palestinians will start a rumor that the vaccines provided by Israel will be actually poison.

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11/20 Links Pt2: Pollard’s parole terminated, ex-spy free to travel to Israel; Matti Friedman on the Russian Aliyah—30 Years Later; J Street Buzzards Circling the White House

From Ian:

Jonathan Pollard’s parole terminated, ex-spy free to travel to Israel

The US Justice Department on Friday declined to extend the parole of Jonathan Pollard, who was convicted of spying on America for Israel, and the 66-year-old is now free to travel to the Jewish state.

Pollard’s attorneys Jacques Semmelman and Eliot Lauer issued a statement saying the US Parole Commission had notified their client of the termination, stating that he “is free to travel anywhere, including Israel, for temporary or permanent residence, as he wishes.”

Pollard responded to the news by telling reporters he was glad to be able to move to Israel where he will be able to care for his wife who is sick with cancer. He also expressed “appreciation and gratitude” to Israel’s Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer for his help in bringing about the end to his parole.

Pollard, who served 30 years in prison for providing sensitive intelligence to Israel, made a public appeal to Netanyahu last year and asked him to intervene on his behalf to urge Trump to commute his parole, so he could care for his sick wife.

He told Channel 12 news at the time that his wife Esther had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer for the third time.

Pollard, a former civilian US Navy analyst, was given a life sentence in 1987 for passing secrets to Israel. His imprisonment was a longtime point of tension in Israeli-US relations, with Israeli and Jewish leaders petitioning their US counterparts for years in order to secure his release.

JPost Editorial: It's time to free Jonathan Pollard

The time has come to end the suffering and injustice.

On November 15, 2015, Jonathan Pollard was released on parole after serving 30 years of a life sentence for spying on the US on Israel’s behalf. He is the only American in US history to receive a life sentence for spying for an ally, and the only one to serve more than 10 years in prison for the crime.

Pollard’s parole conditions since his release five years ago require him to wear an electronic GPS ankle bracelet at all times, to be subjected to unfettered monitoring and inspection of his computers, and prevent him from leaving his New York home before 7 am or return after 7 pm.

Pollard still has 10 years left of his life sentence. It was given before life sentences in America were reduced from 45 years, to the 30 that he served. Parole conditions lasting five years are considered standard.

Pollard’s sentence has been condemned as unjust and excessive by many American officials, including former CIA chief James Woolsey, who commented that “spies from friendly countries, like the Philippines and Greece, normally stay in prison in the US for just a few years.”

On Friday, unless the US Justice Department, in coordination with US intelligence bodies, extends Pollard’s severe parole restrictions, they will expire. The implications include the possibility that Pollard and his wife, Esther, will be allowed to leave New York, or even immigrate to Israel, which is their ultimate goal.

But as the Post’s Gil Hoffman reported this week, people close to Pollard are not hopeful that the restrictions will be relaxed.

“Under normal circumstances – that is, with any other prisoner, including spies for enemy nations, drug dealers, etc. – the five-year marker would have significance,” a source close to the Pollard said. “Provided that there were five years of good conduct, it would be honored immediately. But not for Israel’s agent. Nothing in this case has ever been handled according to normative legal practice.”

2011: Biden slammed for anti-Pollard comment

US Vice President Joe Biden faced criticism on Tuesday for his comments ruling out the release of Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard. Biden told a group of Florida rabbis last week that he had advised US President Barack Obama against commuting the life sentence of Pollard, who has served nearly 26 years in prison.

“Over my dead body are we going to let him out before his time,” Biden was quoted as saying by The New York Times. “If it were up to me, he would stay in jail for life.”

Melanie Phillips: How Nuremberg’s universalism undermined its noble aims

This weekend marks 75 years since the start of the Nuremberg tribunals, which tried leaders of Nazi Germany for their part in the Holocaust and other war crimes.

A clear line links these tribunals to the current possibility of an investigation into Israeli “war crimes” by the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court and to the continuing uproar in Britain’s Labour Party over Jeremy Corbyn.

The Nuremberg tribunal, drawn from the victorious allies after the Second World War, was the first international criminal court in history. It held these Nazis to account for the newly created crime against humanity, as well as for other atrocities.

The principle it enshrined — that all of humanity would be guarded by an international legal shield — laid the foundations for modern international criminal law. This noble principle was fundamentally flawed.

Its visionary architects, such as the eminent British lawyer Hersch Lauterpacht, thought the way to save Jews and others from persecution was to trump national sovereignty by holding oppressors to account through international tribunals.

Others, however, such as the Lithuanian-born lawyer Jacob Robinson, fruitlessly warned that this was a trap because only national sovereignty would safeguard the Jews. “The basic guarantee of Jewish freedom is the democracy of the country where the Jews live,” he maintained.

The flaw in international law is that it is based on supposedly universal values. But the values that stand against savagery, sadism or dehumanisation are not held universally. They are the specific product of western societies and are based on the Hebrew Bible.

By superseding national sovereignty, human-rights universalism was bound to be innately hostile to the Jewish people, whose singular culture is always in the way of universalising doctrines.

States gain power over others if they form like-minded blocs. And since the majority of the world’s states are despotic, corrupt or murderous, any institutions that bring them together will create a force not for justice and freedom but for injustice and persecution.

That’s why trans-national institutions such as the United Nations or the International Criminal Court fail to hold to account the worst human-rights violators in the world, such as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and scores of others, and instead train their sights on democratic, human rights-obsessed Israel.

An interesting 1944 description of antisemitism describes anti-Zionism perfectly

I just came across an article by John LaFarge in Religious Education, 1944, on antisemitism. LaFarge was a Jesuit priest and a leader in fighting antisemitism and racism.

LaFarge distinguishes between simple anti-Jewish bigotry and a more comprehensive antisemitism that goes beyond other bigotries.

It is my belief, offered for what it is worth, that anti-Semitism can much more effectively be dealt with, if it is understood as something distinct from anti-Jewish prejudice, even though closely related to the same.
...
The causes and manifestations of anti-Jewish prejudice, are, in general, the same as those which arouse prejudice against various unlike social groups, or which develop out of them. People will be antagonistic to the Jews as foreigners, or they will attribute to an entire group the weaknesses and anti-social characteristics of individuals, or they will be influenced by legends or legendary attributes, or economic rivalry will result in racial jealousy. People will generalize from unpleasant personal experiences. They will manifest towards the Jew the spirit of vindictiveness which, under other circumstances, they show to the Negro or the foreigner. Such conduct finds its unfortunate issue in immoral or illegal discriminations. The prevalence of anti-Jewish prejudice is the natural breeding ground for anti-Semitism, but it is not yet the full-fledged article.

By anti-Semitism I would understand a distinct phenomenon or movement which is marked by the following traits:

1. A positive body of ideas: an ideology, in the full sense of the term. This body of ideas or doctrine busies itself with ascribing to Jews or to Judaism the origin of all, or nearly all, the social ills of the entire world.

...
2. A consistent policy derived from these ideas. Such a policy denies to Jews the exercise of fundamental human rights, as citizens, and as human beings, because of the aforesaid belief in their essential harmfulness to society.

3. The third element, which seems to be inseparable from genuine anti-Semitism, is the active propagation of these ideas and furthering of these policies. Anti-Semitism is essentially a movement, not a mere philosophy.

This is a fascinating way to look at it, because it leads up to modern anti-Zionism as antisemitism. Anti-Zionism ascribes to Israel the responsibility of the social ills of the world - American police brutality, white supremacy, environmental pollution, sexism, and many more.

This leads to Israel not being treated like other countries, held to higher standards and higher scrutiny, blamed for crimes that have been created only for Israel.

And this further leads to anti-Israel propaganda to spread the poison - as mentioned, it is a movement with "activists" and "direct action" as a major component.

This definition of antisemitism fits anti-Zionism to a T. In fact, it fits anti-Zionism better than it fits today's traditional, far Right antisemitism. That is more what LaFarge would call "anti-Jewish."

Which means that anti-Zionism is not just a form of antisemitism, but the actual successor of 1940's Western antisemitism! And when the socialist Left talks about antisemitism, they are making up a new definition of the phenomenon that is meant to exclude their own antisemitism.

Lafarge's further analysis of antisemitism's appeal likewise is almost perfectly descriptive of anti-Zionism:

All attempts to deal with anti-Semitism, however, are bound to fall short if they underestimate the psychological appeal and attractiveness of this ideology. Anti-Semitism offers to the human mind and emotions three very engaging things.

First, it offers a tremendous emotional release. This is particularly dangerous in a time like ours, when normal, health)' emotions are frequently stunted by the demoralization of family life, the drabness of an industrialized existence and the tendency to seek ever greater and greater excitement. Social psychologists have observed that one of the main contributing causes to the terrible lynching evil is the quest of excitement in the emotionally starved communities of our Tobacco Road countrysides and villages. Anti-Semitism gives people such excitement, in a strong and heady dose.

Secondly, anti-Semitism offers a certain intellectual satisfaction. The modern mind is bewildered and confused by the terrible complexity of history and contemporary events. But the doctrine of the genuine anti-Semites offers to the inquirer a simple explanation of the structure of history. History is seen to be a conflict of the bulk of the human race with the Jews.

Finally, anti-Semitism provides in a distorted fashion, a substitute for religion itself. It has its own doctrines and codes of conduct, its own mysticism, in common with other revolutionary movements.

This applies today primarily to the anti-Zionist movement. Today's far-Right antisemitism is not nearly as widespread or as organized nor as philosophical as anti-Zionism is. The features of all previous types of antisemitism had seemingly social, scientific or historical justifications - just like anti-Zionism does.

The socialist Left wants us to think that anti-Jewish prejudice is identical to antisemitism, because they want to keep the focus off of their new, almost religious movement of hating Israel. However, today's anti-Zionism has far more in common with traditional antisemitism than today's crude, right-wing flavors.

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11/20 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: At a diplomatic crossroad, it's time for Israel to act; Pompeo to 'Post': All options still on the table to counter Iran

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: At a diplomatic crossroad, it's time for Israel to act

The leaders of the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are calling for the government to use the next two months to normalize the status of Israel's younger communities in the areas. It certainly makes sense to follow their advice with all due haste. It is similarly important for the government to restore the decision-making power for planning and construction schemes in Judea, Samaria and unified Jerusalem to local planning boards.

As part of the Obama administration's explicit efforts to demonize Jewish life in these areas, Obama coerced Netanyahu into agreeing that every new construction project in them would require the prime minister's signature to move forward. That move, made under duress, should be abrogated immediately.

More to the point, in the face of the open hostility Biden's team is now expressing towards those property rights and towards Israel's sovereign rights in Judea and Samaria more generally, it would be eminently reasonable, and indeed a matter of great urgency, for the Netanyahu government to secure Trump's permission to apply our sovereignty to Israel's communities in Judea and Samaria and to the Jordan Valley in the framework of the Trump peace plan.

A good target date for such a move would be Dec. 23 – the fourth anniversary of the Obama administration's facilitation of the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2234, which libelously defined Israeli communities and neighborhoods in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem as a "flagrant violation of international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace."

The Abraham Accords have ushered in an era of comprehensive peace. The two-state solution, such as it is, can only be viable if Israel has secure borders and if the Palestinians recognize the Jewish people's national rights to our ancestral homeland, which includes unified Jerusalem, the communities in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley. And, as the Pompeo Doctrine made clear, the Israeli communities are not inherently illegal. Israel has sovereign rights to Judea and Samaria under international law.

The events of the last several days demonstrate clearly where we are and where we are heading. It is critical that Israel take advantage of where we are to secure its interests as it enters a new diplomatic reality in January.

Pompeo to JNS: ‘Trump administration will continue to be a force for good’

JNS: Is there a unifying theme between your policies regarding the Abraham Accords, isolating Iran and laying out a new vision for peace between Israelis and Palestinians?

Pompeo: The common theme is that in the United States, we recognize the reality of what’s best for humanity, for the people. And so, whether it’s the Iranian people or the Palestinian people, we want them to live in harmony and peace and be prosperous, not engage in historical feuds that don’t comport with the reality that is 2020.

JNS: Yesterday, you pledged to treat anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and called BDS a “cancer.” You called on the U.S. government to identify and restrict funding to organizations working “to penalize or limit commercial relations with Israel.” And the United States will now require producers in “Area C” to mark their goods as “Made in Israel.”

The New York Times referred to your itinerary yesterday as “scarcely a mere victory lap,” and in a headline called your diplomatic announcements “parting gifts to the Israeli right.” Are these “parting gifts”? Why are these announcements coming now? And who are the beneficiaries?

Pompeo: Oh, these are the right things for the world. Again, our policy in the Middle East has been that we took our founders’ principles, a conservative worldview and a realism that comports with our central understanding and President Trump’s understanding about how American foreign policy should be effectively used.

This decision about how we ought to label products is simply an outcome of this understanding of the region. I’m sure the beneficiaries of this will be legion. I’m sure people will be more prosperous, more free and more capable of living autonomous lives as a result of the decision that we made yesterday. And we’re excited about that.

You know, as for timing, I’m the secretary of state. Every day, I’m the secretary of state. I get up just like I did the first day I was secretary of state and run at problem sets, and try to make President Trump’s foreign policy real and effective. That’s my mission. So long as I’m secretary of state, I’ll continue to do it.

JNS: Should we be expecting further announcements in the days and weeks ahead?

Pompeo: Oh yeah, we’re still working. Yeah. You seem to have a shocked look on your face, as if the secretary of state would stop working at some point in time. No, America’s still engaged and working throughout the world, and we will be.

Trump’s core righteousness shines through Pompeo's speech

While the Muslim Arab world and its sycophants who kowtow to them — throughout gutless, spineless, and penny-pinching skinflint Western Europe and elsewhere — continue to pursue the illusion that Jews ever will be uprooted from the so-called “West Bank,” Trump and Pompeo now have made clear that America recognizes the permanent legality and legitimacy of Jewish communities up and down the Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria. From now on, products made in Judea and Samaria for export to the United States no longer must be labeled, as Obama and His Fraudulency required, “Made in the West Bank” — but instead henceforth are to be labeled as “Made in Israel.” Because Trump and Pompeo now have certified that Judea and Samaria — the so-called “West Bank” — in fact are regions that are part of Israel.

Beyond that, Secretary Pompeo stated that any entity that continues supporting “BDS” — calls to boycott, divest from, or to sanction Israel — will be deemed outright anti-Semitic and will suffer the full ramifications of American financial and other pressure for that hatred banned by our laws.

The thing about “BDS” — a movement founded and created by Arab terrorists and their supporters in Europe and America, and fostered throughout American campuses by Jew-hating Leftist professors and their ignorantly moronic student minions who do not know the difference between the Mideast and the Midwest — is that the same haters and criminals who would boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel never advocate BDS against a China that religiously persecutes and imprisons its Uighyur Muslim minority, suppresses and crushes freedom in Hong Kong and throughout its Communist mainland, and that knowingly criminally exported to the world the worst pandemic of the past hundred years. Imagine that: no BDS against China, but BDS against Israel.

There can be no clearer example of outright virulent Jew-hatred than that: applying one standard — tolerance and gleeful acceptance — for Communist murderers, international criminals, tyrants and dictators who persecute religion and speech . . . and simultaneously applying a completely different standard — zealous hatred and brutal economic warfare — against Jews.

BDS is the anti-Semitism and Jew-hatred of today. Obama and His Fraudulency went along with it and never stood up to it. By contrast, Trump and Pompeo — with no conceivable political benefit to be accrued, only the motivation of common decency — now have placed the force of American law to crush it.

Trump’s and Pompeo’s decency and friendship never will be forgotten. That 83 percent favorability among Orthodox Jews will stand in good measure for the next Trump presidential term, whether it commences by court orders in January 2021 or by popular and electoral vote four years from now. His Fraudulency will be gone before we know it. The Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria — now 800,000 strong and growing by leaps and bounds every day — is eternal.

The Left continues to try to hijack the definition of antisemitism

This almost reads like parody:

But it isn't the first time that modern antisemites who incite hatred of Israel have tried to hijack the very definition of antisemitism to specifically exclude Leftist antisemitism, as this 2017 panel showed.

Besides that, there are two websites I'm aware of that purport to be against antisemitism but are in fact meant to defend modern Leftist antisemitism.

One is from Jewish Voice for Peace, called "OnAntisemitism.com," promoting a book where the only thing that all the contributors have in common is hating the Jewish state.

The other, more sophisticated effort of "HowToFightAntisemitism.com", a slick website that steals the name of Bari Weiss' excellent book - and uses the Tree of Life synagogue that inspired Weiss to write her book as its background image- to pretend that the only antisemitism that exists if from the Right.

This is a concerted, coordinated effort to redefine antisemitism in such a way as to hide half of it. Anti-Israel activists often share old-fashioned antisemitic memes amongst themselves while they pretend to only be anti-Zionist.

These panels and websites are meant to deflect the world from seeing the ugliness in the antisemitic Left.

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It won't be trivial for the Biden administration to walk back Pompeo's positions

On Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made two major statements.

One was that the US will support labeling any goods manufactured or grown by Israeli firms in Judea and Samaria as being "Made in Israel."

The other was to announce that the US will potentially "boycott the boycotters," it will compile a list of organizations that support BDS for the purpose of ensuring that no US funds go to these organizations.

Besides that, he became the first US official to visit Judea and Samaria as well as the Golan Heights in an official capacity.

The @realDonaldTrump Administration’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Golan Heights demonstrates our commitment to a strong Israel. My visit to the Golan Heights made clear that the threat to Israel’s security from Iran and its proxies persists and cannot be ignored. pic.twitter.com/iaBTKBnzoe
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) November 19, 2020

Wonderful to see the work being done to preserve the ancient @City_of_David and the new discoveries by archaeologists working in the area. Thank you to Ze’ev Orenstein for the fascinating tour of the site of three thousand years of ancient history. pic.twitter.com/oA0FFQ3maP
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) November 19, 2020

Some argue that these statements can be easily walked back in a Biden administration, as Lahav Harkov tweeted. She followed up with a more nuanced analysis of which pro-Israel policies can be canceled easily by the new administration and which would be more difficult.

Biden opposes BDS. He has said so, and that opposition was written into his campaign platform. However, stopping funding to entities supporting boycotts of Israel or “any territory controlled by Israel” – in other words, Judea and Samaria – would narrow Biden’s options on another matter of policy: his promise to restore aid to the Palestinians.
Persistent reports say the Palestinian Authority is trying to scale back its policy of paying jailed terrorists and families of terrorists in order to get around the Taylor Force Act that bans US aid to the PA as long as the “pay for slay” program is still in place.
However, the PA has taken an anti-normalization stance towards Israel, and many Palestinian civil society organizations have ties to the BDS movement. Furthermore, stopping funding to groups that call for boycotts of “any territory controlled by Israel” would include many international human rights organizations.

She makes a good point - Biden will prioritize re-establishing relationships with the Palestinian Authority and Pompeo's anti-BDS statement seems to preclude that. However, at the moment Pompeo only required the State Department to identify groups that support BDS, not to automatically cut them off. This is not inconsistent with contacts with the PLO - Pompeo is discouraging such contacts but not forbidding them.

Similarly, with the labeling goods issue, while Biden is very much against Jewish activities in Judea and Samaria, practically speaking there is no downside to labeling those goods to be "made in Israel." These goods are under Israeli regulations, policies and quality control, not Palestinian and not "occupied territories" which have no separate regulations. Consumers would care about those regulations, not the physical origin, unless they are anti-Israel in which case they wouldn't buy them anyway.

The major argument that the Biden administration won't be so keen on immediately canceling these and other Trump policies is that optics is a powerful force in government. Simply put, it looks bad for the US to switch policies back and forth depending on the political party in charge. It looks bad to Americans and it especially looks bad to non-Americans. If the US wants to be a world leader, it cannot be seen as whiplashing between positions every few years, or its allies will stop trusting any agreements made.

Obviously Trump was a disrupter in this regard but there is not likely to be another president any time soon who disregards optics as much as he does. Biden is very sensitive to how things look, and he will not run to negate US policies except for those that he has based his campaign on, like the Iran deal.

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Reviews of two online US government conferences - Foreign Funding and Online Antisemitism (@RealJerusalemStreets)

Here is a review of two US-sponsored video conferences, by RealJerusalemStreets.

__________________________

Oh what a media event it was, the trilateral summit meeting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Financial Affairs Obaid Humaid Al Tayer held in Ben Gurion Airport on October 20, 2020, However, two online conferences from Washington, D.C. got lost on newsfeeds and missed public attention in the lead up to the November 3rd election.

I. Report on Foreign Funding under the U.S. Department of Education
Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal gave money to Georgetown University to establish the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. The Center proclaimed to promote Islam’s image in the United States, publish findings through scholarship, and hold academic events. However, it brewed controversy from its inception. Congressman Frank R. Wolf wrote a letter to Georgetown’s President, Dr. John J. DeGioia, expressing concern that the Center could advance Islamic ideology in a fashion that belittles opposition, threatens academic integrity, and improperly influences future civil servants. It would exercise “soft power” in political science terms.
Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 requires American colleges and universities to publicly disclose, each year, foreign gifts and contracts valuing $250,000 or more. The United States Department of Education on October 20, 2020, reported findings concerning Section 117. During an online webinar conference from Washington, DC, open for public viewing, it was revealed that $6.5 billion of foreign money was previously unreported by leading American universities. Lack of transparency of foreign funding has dangerous consequences for academic integrity, national security, and human rights.
In 1986, Congress first required U.S. institutions of higher education to publicly report their foreign gifts and contracts to the U.S. Department of Education. At the time, donations from Arab countries were building a Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, a project which strongly motivated the drafting of the statute. Post 9/11 donations to Middle Eastern studies centers increased concerns, and a Senate committee directed the Department to ensure “the integrity of the reporting requirements” and confirm “donations are reported and categorized correctly.” Beginning in 2009, the increased flow of foreign money, especially from the governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and China was notable.
During the Department of Education broadcast in the conference, its Chief Investigative Counsel Paul Moore and Senior Counsel for Information and Technology Bucky Methfessel discussed the report and its findings. Dr. Charles Small, Executive Director of ISGAP, who has done extensive research on the link between foreign funding and rising antisemitism and has presented at the Department of Justice on the topic in the past, also participated.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Andrew Lelling, who chairs the Attorney General’s Subcommittee on Cybercrime and Intellectual Property and is on the steering committee for the Department of Justice’s China Initiative, discussed his efforts at the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the vulnerabilities of American universities to nefarious foreign influences. Since 2012, institutions reported anonymous donations from China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Russia totaling more than $1.14 billion. It was reported that less than 300 of the approximately 6,000 U.S. institutions self-report foreign money each year. Most foreign funds flow to a relatively small number of large institutions.
Included in the report in 2018, the Justice Department charged nine Iranians affiliated with a Tehran-based company called the Mabna Institute for hacking into 144 American universities to steal sensitive data and intellectual property on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. First, the Iranians conducted online reconnaissance of university professors. Second, the Iranians sent “spear phishing” emails. Third, the conspirators used stolen account credentials to obtain unauthorized access to victim professor accounts, through which they then exfiltrated intellectual property, research, and other academic data and documents from the systems of compromised universities, including, among other things, academic journals, theses, dissertations, and electronic books. The defendants targeted data across all fields of research and academic disciplines, including science and technology, engineering, social sciences, medical, and other professional fields. At least approximately 31.5 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property from compromised universities were stolen and exfiltrated to servers under Iranian control. (Indictment, United States v. Rafatnejad et al., No. 18-cr-00094 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 7, 2018).
Since June 28, 2019, the Department of Educaion has initiated 12 civil investigations to ensure institutional compliance with Section 117. The named institutions were Georgetown University, Texas A&M University, Rutgers University, Cornell University, University of Maryland, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and most recently, Harvard University, Yale University, University of Texas, Case Western Reserve University, Fordham University, and Stanford University.
The Department’s review shines a spotlight on previously unknown foreign gifts and contributions, their prevalence and magnitude, and the consequences of porous or nonexistent institutional oversight and lax federal enforcement. Stanford University, for example, has reported over $64 million in unidentified, anonymous Chinese donations since May 2010. Demonstrating foreign financial involvement with top U.S. research institutions, Harvard University alone has received over $1 billion of foreign funding since 2012.

2. Conference of Internet Antisemitism: Ancient Hatred, Modern Medium

The following day, the Conference of Internet Antisemitism: Ancient Hatred, Modern Medium, was hosted by Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo. He delivered opening remarks during the first-ever U.S. Government conference focused on combatting online anti-Semitism. Organized by the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, led by Elan S. Carr, the virtual pre-recorded conference aimed to explore the threats posed by anti-Semitism on the internet and social media and to consider practical responses for governments and civil society.
The following summarizes a number of sessions from the October 21 and 22, 2020 conference shown virtually and posted on the State Department website
"An essential part of solving any problem is defining it." stated Sen. James Lankford, Co-chair Senate Bipartisan Taskforce Combatting Antisemitism on the importance of IHRA. "We will examine the absolute sea change in understanding exactly what antisemitism is, and what antisemitism looks like, that has come as a result of the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of anti-Semitism by nations and institutions, known in short as IHRA. The U.S. Department of State has been using the IHRA definition since 2010, and President Donald Trump’s Executive Order Combatting Anti-Semitism of December 2019 adopted the IHRA Definition for all U.S. Executive Agencies as well:"
Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Dan Ariely were among the featured speakers. Notably, in the opening session British MP Michael Gove emphasized "antisemitism is a threat to us all" as he spoke for bringing nations together to call out the hatred of antisemitism.
While antisemitism is viewed as vile and hateful, for some, it can be life-changing.  Called to describe her personal experiences was former Member of Parliament from the British Labour Party Luciana Berger who was harassed and attacked on social media.
As the two-day conference was nearing conclusion Rabbi Abraham Cooper led an interfaith panel with Rev Sam Rodriquez noting social media is a source of information and hate, and Muslim Salim Mansur decrying the perversion of Islam and "closing of American minds."
"We are living in historic times. We recently witnessed the first Middle East peace deal in 26 years brokered by President Trump with Israel and the Kingdom of Bahrain, and between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. We felt that coming so soon after these historic events it is important for all of us to hear from a prominent Arab leader, and indeed we are so proud to be joined by His Excellency Dr.  Ali Al Nuaimi of the United Arab Emirates" and with that Elan Carr closed the conference on antisemitism.
Conclusion - Effective Section 117 enforcement is one part of a collaboration between the Department of Education and other federal agencies. The facts discovered drive home the need for an integrated Federal approach to the national problems posed by the theft of intellectual property, espionage, propaganda, and foreign influence operations on U.S. campuses. U.S. institutions are technological treasure troves of leading and internationally competitive fields, such as nanoscience. For too long, these institutions have provided an unprecedented level of access to foreign governments and their instrumentalities in an environment lacking transparency and oversight by the industry, the Department, and partner agencies.
Rising antisemitism on U.S. college campuses and streets, and on social media has been established as fact. The influence of foreign money and "soft power" is a theory at this time. Whoever heads U.S. Federal Departments would be well advised to follow the money and have major gifts to universities by foreign governments reported as is required by law.
Perhaps worth noting, at the end of the online summary of the conference on modern antisemitism was the statement: "The views expressed in the conference are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the State Department."

Interesting, neither the Department of Education or the Department of State conference received attention in mainstream or Jewish media.

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11/19 Links Pt2: Arnold Roth: Put justice back on the agenda: Sec. Pompeo, it's not too late; CNN’s shameless assault on the memory of the Holocaust; Douglas Murray: The Nobel Peace Prize has become an ignoble joke

From Ian:

Arnold Roth: Put justice back on the agenda: Sec. Pompeo, it's not too late

We did something yesterday that we have never done before.

We ordered a display advertisement to appear on the front-page of a major print newspaper - today's (Thursday’s) Jerusalem Post. Our message is on its front page.

The timing of our ad is intended to coincide with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Israel that began yesterday afternoon (Wednesday November 18).

Our hope is that he will see it at breakfast. And that perhaps he will think about the images we included, as well as the scriptural quote at the top of the text: “Justice, justice thou shalt pursue”.

The words from Deuteronomy (Devarim in Hebrew) will be recited in the annual cycle of Torah reading when we get to Parshat Shoftim, the weekly portion called “Judges”. That happens next in August 2021. By coincidence, the same week will include the twentieth anniversary of the Sbarro pizzeria massacre.

There are two images in our Pompeo advertisement. One shows Malki. The other is of the devastated Sbarro pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem, minutes after a bomb placed by Ahlam Tamimi exploded inside.

Brendan O'Neill: CNN’s shameless assault on the memory of the Holocaust

Such moral instability has been widespread among the anti-Trump elites these past four years. Trump is ‘literally Hitler’, in these people’s eyes. ‘Donald Trump is a fascist’, serious outlets have suggested, denuding that word of all meaning. A British MP spoke of Trump in the same breath as ‘fascist dictators Mussolini and Hitler’.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Trump was running ‘concentration camps’ on the America-Mexico border and, for good measure, she said the phrase ‘Never Again’ has to ‘mean something’. That’s a phrase used about the Holocaust. AOC was suggesting that something akin to the Holocaust happened in the US under the Trump administration. No doubt she and her fawning followers think such Holocaust-talk lands a blow against Trump, but the truth is it lands a far greater blow on the memory of the Holocaust, which once again is reduced to a mundane event, like temporarily placing illegal immigrants in a camp.

Even historians who ought to know better embraced the Trump-as-Hitler meme. Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler, says he was initially reluctant to talk to the media about Trump’s ‘fascistic tendencies’, because however bad Trump might be, ‘he did not seem bent on genocide’. Then he changed his mind and declared that Trump seems to be working from the ‘playbook of Mein Kampf’.

All these people – and this includes the many anti-Trump protesters who waved placards mentioning Hitler and the Holocaust – seem alarmingly unaware of how much damage they have done to historical memory. Holocaust Relativism is a close cousin of Holocaust Denial. As the Open University’s guide to the Holocaust rightly says: ‘Relativising the Holocaust has been one of the classic techniques of some of those engaged in Holocaust Denial.’ Much of the new anti-Semitism is drenched in Holocaust Relativism. From left-wing anti-Semites to radical Islamists, the cry often goes out: ‘Why do we talk about the Holocaust so much? It wasn’t that special. Bad things happen all the time.’ Amanpour and a host of other anti-Trump obsessives in the media and political elites are unwittingly stirring up this cynical and often racist minimisation of the Holocaust with their cheap, ahistorical shots at Trump.

We hear a lot about the political wreckage left by Trump after his four years in the White House. But one of the worst kinds of damage done over the past four years was to the memory of the Holocaust, and it was done by Trump-bashers. Their reduction of the Holocaust to a political plaything, an exclamation mark to emphasise just how much they hate Trump, has been devastating to the cause of truth. Restoring the reality of the Holocaust will be essential if we are to defend truth in the 21st century and challenge the racist minimisation of the new anti-Semites.

Douglas Murray: The Nobel Peace Prize has become an ignoble joke

For those of us who have long been suspicious of the Nobel Peace Prize, there is nothing quite like the sight of the prize committee struggling to rein in one of their former honourees. Last year, the committee gave its award to Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian Prime Minister. In the citation, it especially noted Mr Ahmed’s laudable efforts “to achieve peace and international cooperation”.

That citation might now need to be carefully edited, since Mr Ahmed has declared war on the leaders of the Tigray region and Ethiopia looks like it is sliding into a wider conflagration. Last year’s Peace Prize recipient has this year refused all requests for dialogue and attempts to de-escalate the conflict. Some critics are even making claims of ethnic cleansing.

Yet in some ways Mr Ahmed stands in a long and ignoble Nobel tradition. This is not the first time that the committee would appear to have backed a wrong-un. Aung San Suu Kyi was given the award in 1991. Now she is an international pariah accused of defending genocide in Burma. In 1994, the committee gave the Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat, then probably the most notorious terrorist in the world. True this was a few years after the first “Intifada”. But having collected his gong and his Nobel loot (not the only loot Arafat managed to acquire in his criminal career), he gave it a couple of years before declaring another Intifada. Just having the gong doesn’t appear to bring about peaceful instincts. Surprising that.

A friendly observer might put this down to bad luck on the part of the Nobel committee: an over-eagerness, perhaps even a blind desire to see the best in people. But any reasonable critic would have to admit that there has been something off with the prize for years. It has become a victim of John O’Sullivan’s law: that all institutions that aren’t statedly conservative drift Left-wards as the years go on.

In 2009, the committee famously gave the prize to Barack Obama, when he was not yet one year into office, and when he had still not achieved anything of note. But the Nobel committee seemed to want to congratulate Obama on just being Obama. In the same way that a few years ago almost every award in the world was given to Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner, simply for being stunning and brave. If you are a Left-wing politician like Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize has become just another of those gongs you collect on your endless victory laps of the world.

Scholar Posits Textual Anomalies In Bible The Result Of Autocorrect (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Cambridge, November 19 - An innovative approach to analysis of ancient documents has led at least one researcher to the hypothesis that numerous deviations in Scripture from the expected forms of words stem not from copyist errors, as commonly assumed, but from software similar in function to modern text media that automatically changes words or phrases to match its preconceived idea of the writer's intent, using an algorithm that on occasion results not in the intended words, but a distortion of them.

Oxford University Professor of Semitic Languages Edward Hargreaves suggests in a forthcoming article that various Biblical textual phenomena fit neatly into a framework that parallels the "Autocorrect" function of numerous text-based communication platforms, and that ages of scholarship and polemics on the subject of Biblical textual integrity have therefore largely been a waste of time.

"Our team looked at thousands of so-called textual anomalies in the Hebrew Scriptures," the professor explained in an interview. "The most common of these were the k'ri vs. k'tiv variety, in which the traditional enunciation of a word differs from its spelling in the text; others involve the 'hapax legomenon,' a word or root that appears only once in the entire corpus, and which, quite often, leaves the reader at a loss regarding its true meaning, because of a lack of comparative instances from which to understand it. Still others involve apparent discrepancies between manuscripts of the same text, or between different occurrences of the same phrases or verses in disparate parts of the Bible."

"We've found that upwards of 95% of these occurrences can be explained by Autocorrect," he continued. "The does not mean that many indeed occurred through that phenomenon, but that they are consistent with such a process. Among the exceptions, for example, are terms that various traditions have of specifically reading a word differently from its appearance, for purposes of euphemism, but with acknowledgement that the actual text is different. A good instance of this is the Jewish practice of refraining from the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, one of the most common names for the divinity, instead using a less-common one. That one alone accounts for the bulk of the exceptions to what I've taken to calling the 'Autocorrect Hypothesis.' But for the most part Autocorrect helps to explain anomalies that scholars have debated basically forever."

As for the few cases that do not fit into the hypothesis, Professor Hargreaves insisted he does not give a flying duck.

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A Chanukah menorah is a "war crime" according to Abbas advisor

This week, Jews in Hebron placed a Chanukah menorah on the roof of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, as they have done in recent years before the holiday.

The reaction was predictable.

The director of the Ibrahimi Mosque, Hafzi Abu Sneina, stated that settlers placed the candlestick on the roof of the Temple Mount to mark one of the Jewish holidays, stressing that this act is a blatant assault, a serious transgression, and a provocation to the feelings of Muslims, as the Ibrahimi Mosque is an Islamic mosque for Muslims.

Come on, we can do better than just calling a Chanukiya a "blatant assault."

For his part, the Chief Judge of Palestine, the President's Advisor for Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations, Mahmoud al-Habbash, condemned the fact that groups of Israeli settlers - with protection from the occupation forces - put the so-called Jewish religious "menorah" on the roof of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, describing this step as a new war crime committed by the occupation authority and a blatant attack on our holy sites and mosques.

There we go! If it isn't a "war crime" then it is hardly worth mentioning.

Here's a photo of what the menorah looked like last year:

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Here is the part of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's press release today that got all the attention:

Today, the Department of State is initiating new guidelines to ensure that country of origin markings for Israeli and Palestinian goods are consistent with our reality-based foreign policy approach.  In accordance with this announcement, all producers within areas where Israel exercises the relevant authorities – most notably Area C under the Oslo Accords - will be required to mark goods as “Israel”, “Product of Israel”, or “Made in Israel” when exporting to the United States.  This approach recognizes that Area C producers operate within the economic and administrative framework of Israel and their goods should be treated accordingly. This update will also eliminate confusion by recognizing that producers in other parts of the West Bank are for all practical purposes administratively separate and that their goods should be marked accordingly.

This all makes perfect sense. The purpose of marking country of origin is not the physical location but for consumers to know which national regulations and policies were enforced in the production of the goods.

The next part of Pompeo's press release didn't get noticed as much, but it is just as important:

Goods in areas of the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority maintains relevant authorities shall be marked as products of  “West Bank” and goods produced in Gaza will be marked as products of  “Gaza.”  Under the new approach, we will no longer accept “West Bank/Gaza” or similar markings, in recognition that Gaza and the West Bank are politically and administratively separate and should be treated accordingly.

This is a huge deal. The UN and Europe throw the West Bank and Gaza under the umbrella of "Occupied Palestinian Territories" (even though no one can credibly claim Gaza is occupied) and still pretend that they are one unit, even though they have different leaders, different policies, different geography, even different histories.

Treating them as separate units means that the US could, for example, loosen up rules for the West Bank while keeping stricter policies for Hamas-run Gaza. People could buy West Bank olive oil knowing that the profits probably don't go to Hamas.

This is a major change in policy, and it could lead to other countries doing the same. And if everyone would do that, it would benefit the West Bank Palestinians by not tying them to Hamas decisions and Hamas terror.

(h/t Irene)

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