Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 03, 2021

Israel isn't only leading the world in per-capita COVID vaccinations, but it is accelerating its lead

By now, you have probably seen a chart like this showing how far ahead Israel is in vaccinating its citizens for COVID-19 per capita compared to the rest of the world:

This is due to a strong infrastructure where the security apparatus of the state has pivoted to provide virus protection. But part of it is also by having a centralized decision making process where, for example, leftover vaccines at the end of the day that would have been otherwise discarded (because of Pfizer's requirements that the vaccine is kept in ultra-cold temperatures and they cannot be re-frozen) are being used for people who would otherwise not qualify for the first round that is meant for front line workers and the elderly.

It is also due to Israel's willingness to reportedly pay a huge premium per vaccine in order to ensure that it would have an adequate supply, as well as a huge publicity campaign to ensure that people who might otherwise be skeptical - such as the Arab and haredi communities - get vaccinated.

Yet as well as Israel is doing, there is an even more remarkable chart from the same source that shows that Israel's efforts are getting even better every day in the percentage of the population being inoculated:

These charts are not going to remain looking like this, because some countries will hold off on giving first vaccinations and prioritize giving second vaccinations to the people who already had it. However, Israel seems to have realized that it can reach herd immunity in relatively little time compared to other countries and reaching that goal - which will allow things to return to near-normal - is worth investing huge amounts of time and money in, and ultimately will be a bargain where the economy can rebound.

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Recently, David Collier published a must-read article about the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias in Wikipedia.

It is a significant problem. As he documented, there is practically an army of editors that waters down references to massacres of Jews while exaggerating fictional massacres by Jews.

Another example - pointed out to me by ShabbatX in 2019- is for the pretty terrible Wikipedia entry on "Persecution."

It starts off with reference to the Rome Statute on what falls under the definition of persecution:

Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender...or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph [e.g. murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, apartheid, and other inhumane acts] or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court

Most of the examples given fall under one of those categories, even if they give most of them short shrift. The section on Jews, for example, is only 103 words long.

But then there is a section on persecution "based on military service" that was written for one reason, Israel. It has no sources and no examples of anything that anyone could credibly call persecution. Yet it is 218 words long:

Persecution on the basis of army service (or the lack of it) operates in Israeli society. In the State of Israel, Jewish citizens who receive an exemption from service in the Israel Defense Forces cannot take up many prestigious career options, especially in the field of security. The root of discrimination on the basis of army service lies in the practice that at age 17, non-Arab citizens (including Druze) are called up to be examined for eligibility to compulsory military service. A record for each potential conscript is made. Those who actually serve in the military are distinguished from those rejected from service by a Discharge Card, which has additional information on it, including the soldier's rank, military profession, and behavior during army service. Potential employers show a particular interest in Discharge Cards, since they constitute a universally available source of information about a potential employee. Employers frequently look down upon citizens rejected from the army, typically believing that "those who are unfit for army service are also unfit for the work environment",[citation needed] and that those who succeeded in the army are also likely to become good employees. Job advertisements in Israel very frequently specify a requirement of "Full Army Service", thus the decisions taken by the draft board regarding a 17-year-old minor may affect entire careers.

The page doesn't mention slavery of Africans as an example of persecution, but Israeli employers preferring people with experience in the army are given one of the larger examples of persecution!

This is only one example of how anti-Israel editors pollute Wikipedia, but it is pretty egregious.

(h/t Ernesto)

UPDATE: Because of this post, another Wikipedia editor removed this section of the article. We will see how long the edit remains or if it will be reverted by the person who added it.

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01/02 Links: How Israel became a world leader in vaccination; I Won The ‘American Muslims for Palestine’ Raffle, But Still Haven’t Received My Kuffiya Socks

From Ian:

Seth J. Frantzman: How Israel became a world leader in vaccination

Israel’s unique approach has been to use a national security apparatus that is usually used to confront terrorists to fight against the virus. This was only possible because of a solidarity among Israelis. This wasn’t always the case – some communities continued to hold weddings and funerals in breach of the guidelines and some officials violated the rules by inviting family members for holidays – but in general Israel was able to mobilise nationally against Covid because it has a citizen’s army and national security ethos that is used to fighting wars. Israel’s ‘home front command’ for instance often carries out drills to deal with earthquakes and national disasters, and has been tasked with distributing gas masks in past wars.

But the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, now in his tenth year in power and heading for his fourth election campaign in two years, had to balance lockdown with the destruction it wrought on the economy. After restricting travellers from entering the country, Israel’s tourism industry was crushed and hundreds of thousands have lost work this year. Unemployment reached 26 per cent in May but by September the relaxed restrictions led to the highest infection rate in the world for Covid.

Israel’s government gambled on acquiring masses of vaccines to try to right the ship in the fall of 2020. It acquired 8 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine in November, with some 4 million doses arriving in early December. Israel also scrambled to acquire Moderna’s vaccine, purchasing 6 million doses in December. Israel’s population is just under 9 million. After the Pfizer vaccine was approved in line with the US in mid-December, the rollout of the vaccine began on December 20, two weeks after the UK kicked off its own vaccine programme. The Israeli health authorities set a goal of 150,000 vaccinations a day, beginning with those over 60 years old, as well as soldiers, police and medical staff.

Small wonder: How Israel rolled up its sleeves and became vaccination nation

Caveats aside, there seems little doubt that Israel is in a stronger position than most people imagined.

It’s due to a mixture of factors: good supplies, excellent logistics and strong community medicine. The campaign is also benefitting from traits in the population: it’s tech-savvy, haunted by fears of missing out (also known as being a sucker), and the few anti-vaccination people are keeping mostly quiet.

Supplying Israel early was an attractive proposition for vaccine companies, firstly because Israel has shown a willingness to pay top dollar, and then some, to get the vaccine earlier than elsewhere. Some reports have put the cost at more than double what the US or European Union is paying for the Pfizer vaccine.

But Israeli officials have also said the pharma firms saw Israel as an excellent marketing tool for their vaccine, providing a mix of conditions that can showcase the power of their products.

Israel’s small size, densely concentrated population and highly developed infrastructure mean that with a relatively small number of shipments, it could swiftly immunize a wide swath of the country. This would hopefully give the world an early glimpse of what widespread vaccination, and a COVID-safe nation, can look like. The theory, proposed by Israeli officials, has not been confirmed by any of the vaccine manufacturers as a motivating factor.

So far, Israel’s drive has been boosted by its leveraging the military, and those with military experience, to deal with tough logistical challenges, like distributing Pfizer vaccines that need super-cold storage.

But the real key to making Israel Vaccination Nation has been the way its healthcare system is set up.

Unlike the US, where healthcare is privatized and payment is made through a web of employer-provided insurance schemes, Israeli healthcare is simple, overwhelmingly public and practically free. Unlike the UK, where the nation is served directly by the National Health Service, Israel’s four health maintenance organizations (HMOs) compete for prominence and patients, which pushes them to perform well.

I Won The ‘American Muslims for Palestine’ Raffle, But Still Haven’t Received My Kuffiya Socks

Back in November 2020, I registered for and attended American Muslims for Palestine‘s (AMP) annual Palestine Convention, presented via Zoom. American Muslims for Palestine randomly selected me as one of their raffle winners. But now, they won’t send me my prize! I wonder why…

You can read my coverage of the event in ‘American Muslims for Palestine’ 2020 Annual Conf Exploited Racial Tensions to Use Against Israel.

This was the second AMP annual conference I’ve attended; you can read all about how AMP staffers kicked me out of their 2019 conference in Chicago and then assigned several of their large, male ‘security guards’ to follow me around the hotel for the remainder of the weekend—all because they were afraid of negative coverage—in Fearing Negative Coverage, ‘American Muslims for Palestine’ Conference Ejects Legal Insurrection Reporter. You can also read about the historical revisionism and blatant bigotry AMP fostered at the convention in Rep. Rashida Tlaib Keynotes ‘American Muslims for Palestine’ Conference Devoted to Destroying Israel.

This year, AMP was forced to try lots of new things to boost attendance and participation at their conference, given the continuing pandemic.

One of those was to guarantee that anyone who registered would be automatically entered into AMP’s raffle for a wide variety of wonderful “Palestine”-related prizes donated by the conference’s commercial co-sponsors, such as the company Halal Socks.

Interestingly, though I registered (as I usually do) with my LIF email address and real name, AMP did not seem to be vetting the registrants. I received lots of reminder emails and donation solicitations throughout the conference; on December 10th, AMP Development Coordinator Mohamad Habehh sent me an automated note letting me know that I had been randomly selected as an AMP Palestine Convention prize winner!

Iran's Foreign Minster Javad Zarif is suddenly very concerned about American soldiers:

New intelligence from Iraq indicate that Israeli agent-provocateurs are plotting attacks against Americans—putting an outgoing Trump in a bind with a fake casus belli.

Be careful of a trap, @realDonaldTrump. Any fireworks will backfire badly, particularly against your same BFFs.
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) January 2, 2021

Does it make any sense for Israel to attack its biggest ally to possibly force a war-averse lame duck President to retaliate against Iran?

The downside of a failure would be an immeasurable rupture in Israeli/American relations. The upside would be - a war that most Americans wouldn't support.

This is a transparent attempt by Iran to make America think twice about retaliating against any attack by Iran that might be planned for around the first anniversary of the Soleimani assassination, a revenge attack that Iran has promised to do multiple times.

The secondary effect of Zarif's tweet is to prompt US antisemites to jump on the bandwagon calling any Iranian attack an Israeli false flag operation.

It's great propaganda - but, ironically, it points to the thought that Iran is planning an attack against Americans sooner rather than later.

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01/01 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Pollard and the great Jewish divide; Israel zooms past 1 million vaccinations in sprint to vanquish pandemic

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Pollard and the great Jewish divide

The rift between Israeli and American Jews is palpable almost everywhere you turn today. The most glaring disparity surrounds how they view President Donald Trump. The vast majority of Israelis adore Trump. The vast majority of American Jews despise him.

But Trump isn't the only thing or even the main thing that separates them. The main issue that separates Israelis from American Jews is the issue of exile. Israelis by and large hold to the traditional Jewish view that all Jewish communities outside of Israel are exile – or diaspora – communities. American Jews, by and large, believe that the exile exists in all Jewish communities outside Israel except in America. This disagreement is existential. It goes to the heart of what it means to be a Jew.

The divide between Israeli and American Jews is more apparent today than it was in the past but it has been around since the dawn of modern Zionism. But if one date marks the point it became an irreversible rift it was November 20, 1985, the day Jonathan Pollard was arrested outside Israel's embassy in Washington, DC.

From the day of his arrest, Pollard became both the symbol and to a degree, the cause of the divide. That divide was unmistakable on Wednesday morning when the news broke that in the middle of the previous night, Pollard and his wife Esther had landed in Israel.

Israelis celebrated the Pollards' arrival. Many wept watching the footage of Pollard kiss the ground on the tarmac.

In contrast, American Jews bristled both at the news and the happiness with which Israelis greeted Pollard's arrival.

Melanie Philips: Lessons from Britain’s Brexit breakthrough

From Iran to North Korea, from China to the Palestinians, rogue states, terrorist regimes and other aggressors have been able to continue their murderous, expansionist activities because they think that, however much the West may threaten them, it won’t follow through.

So the Palestinians never believed the West meant it when it told them they had to accept the right of Israel to exist. Why should they have believed this, when until 2016 at least the West never stopped excusing, funding and incentivizing their aggression?

The one exception to this has been U.S. President Donald Trump, who called the Palestinians’ manipulative bluff. Told by the rest of the West that moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would provoke the Arab world to violence, he ignored this and moved it anyway.

Not only was there no such uprising, but now the Palestinians have been marginalized by an Arab world that’s increasingly making its peace with Israel in a way that was previously unthinkable.

That’s largely due in turn to Trump taking the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal and reimposing sanctions on the regime. He thus showed that, unlike former President Barack Obama or the British and the Europeans, when he said he intended to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, he really did mean it.

Now there are fears that President-elect Joe Biden may reactivate the Iran deal and start pumping money again into the regime’s nefarious activities; or he may once again incentivize the Palestinians’ agenda of destroying Israel; or he may allow China to walk all over him in its drive to dominate the West.

This is based on the fear that Biden may behave as the left always behave. They have no red lines of principle over stopping aggressors and protecting their victims. Instead, their doctrine of moral equivalence means that they make no such value judgments between aggressor and victim. Their red line is instead merely to keep negotiations and peace processes going. The result is that they excuse and empower aggressors just to keep them from walking out of the talks.

So when they claim to be against tyranny, racism and oppression, the world’s tyrants, racists and oppressors know they don’t mean what they say.

Britain now faces more battles with the E.U. The free world faces more battles with Iran, China, Russia, Islamic jihadists and other lethal foes. The Jews face their interminable battle against those who wish to destroy them.

What the Brexit deal reminds us is that hypocrites are dismissed with contempt as paper tigers; and that for freedom, justice and democracy to win against aggression, injustice and tyranny, the leaders of the free world must not pay mere lip-service to defending the former but actually mean what they say.

16 African country lawmakers discuss strengthening ties with Israel

Lawmakers from 16 African countries participated in a two-day Zoom conference this week hosted by Israel Allies Caucus to discuss strengthening ties with Israel. Those who participated in the conference are chairmen or members of the Israel Allies Caucus in their respective countries.

Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin and Deputy Speaker of the Zambian National Assembly Mwimba Malama opened the conference with remarks. Levin thanked participants saying, "Your consistent daily efforts standing for Israel and for our common values is what ensures the strength of our ties and allows us to continue having a positive impact together.”

Malama touched on the changes in Israel and Africa's relationship over time saying that the relationship has not always been strong which means that "it is therefore gratifying to note that in recent years, a number of sub-Saharan countries have re-established diplomatic relations with Israel."

Malama went on to say that "the State of Israel has made remarkable contributions to world development in general and Africa in particular. I have no doubt in my mind that as the Israel - Africa alliance continues to strengthen, the continent of Africa, and Zambia in particular, will greatly benefit in sectors such as agriculture, security, science and technology.”

Israel's ambassador to Zambia, Gershon Kedar emphasized the number of African countries who vote against Israel in the UN despite the countries' support of Israel. “Israel has many good relations with individual African countries, but it is time to turn these bilateral relationships into a multilateral one by strengthening Israel’s ties with Africa as a whole in international forums," said Kedar.

Cartoon of the Day: Maybe this year

Continuing my series of re-captioned cartoons....

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01/01 Links Pt1: 2021: What will the Middle East look like in the new year?; US, Israel Vote Against 2021 United Nations Budget, Citing ‘Hate, Antisemitism, and Anti-Israel Bias’

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: 2021: What will the Middle East look like in the new year?

THE SECOND side of the triangle in the Middle East is Turkey and its allies. Ankara’s ruling party is rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood. It backs Hamas in Gaza and twice hosted senior Hamas terrorists this year. Reports indicate that Hamas plans attacks from Turkey, receives passports and support and uses Turkey as a cyber base for threats to Israel. While Turkey ended 2020 claiming it wants reconciliation with Israel after years of comparing the Jewish state to Nazi Germany, Ankara has consistently supported extremists and terrorists.

Turkey has other Islamist friends it recruited in Syria and in Libya. Turkey co-opted the Syrian rebellion and channeled it into a series of extremist groups it has sought to mobilize to fight Kurds and Armenians. In 2018 Turkey ethnically cleansed Afrin, a historically Kurdish area of Syria, then attacked Kurds in Serekaniye in October 2019. US officials worked with Turkey, hoping to undermine their own Pentagon’s policies in Syria.

We know from recent interviews that US envoys admired Turkey’s thuggish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and sought to outsource US policy to him. This caused Turkey to think it had a blank check to attack everyone in the region. It threatened Greece with a “flood” of refugees in February and March. It clashed with Syria and Russia in the Syrian city of Idlib. It sent extremist militias recruited from poor Syrian refugees to attack Kurds and Christians in the northeast Syrian towns of Ain Issa and Tel Tamr near the Turkish border. It sent Syrians to fight in Libya. It also threatened Greece using the excuse that it was seeking natural gas in the Mediterranean. Turkey wanted to thwart a planned Israel-Cyprus-Greece pipeline deal. In July and then in September Turkey prodded Azerbaijan to attack Armenians in Nagorna-Karabakh.

THE THIRD side of the Middle East alliance systems is the emerging Israel-UAE-Egypt-Jordan-Bahrain-Greece-Cyprus system of friendships. Israel made peace with Bahrain and the UAE in August and September in the momentous new Abraham Accords. With Saudi Arabia’s approval, Morocco followed. Sudan also agreed to normalize ties with Israel.

In each case the US was key in supporting the new agreements: weapons deals for the UAE, an end of sanctions for Sudan, as well as recognition of Morocco’s claims in Western Sahara came from Washington. The Trump administration poured efforts in its last year in office into this brave new world in the Middle East.

The burgeoning relationships offer massive economic potential for Israel and the Gulf. Seventy-thousand Israelis went to Dubai toward the end of the year. They were able to escape the COVID restrictions briefly, although by the end of December the lockdowns were back and Israelis were back home. A few stayed on in Dubai, awaiting the New Year’s parties. They might have been able to look back to February when Turkey first found COVID among flights coming from Iran and recall just how much has changed since then.

Much has also stayed the same, in terms of Iran’s and Turkey’s policies seeking to exploit the lack of US leadership and drawdown of US forces – to fight over the scraps of what was once US hegemony in the Middle East.

The Abraham Accords domino effect will lead to more peace deals

With 2020 behind us and 2021 beginning, there is discussion of even more dominoes falling, and even more countries joining the Abraham Accords. Trump administration officials have said they’re working to even make it happen in the next three weeks, before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

Mauritania, Oman and Indonesia are the names on Israeli and American officials’ tongues these days, which makes sense, because Israel has or has had some level of ties with all of them.

Mauritania declared war on Israel in 1967, but the countries established diplomatic relations in 1999, which were suspended in the wake of Operation Cast Lead in 2009.

Former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin visited Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country, and thousands of Israeli and Indonesian tourists visit each other’s countries each year.

Netanyahu visited Oman in 2018, and Israel and Oman are part of the anti-Iran axis in the Middle East.

But the big hope is for Saudi Arabia. This is where Biden comes into play. Biden and his foreign policy advisers have spoken positively about the Abraham Accords, without commenting on the strings attached. At the same time, they have been very critical of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. If the Trump administration doesn’t find a way to quickly make it worth Riyadh’s while in the next few weeks, which seems unlikely, MBS and King Salman will probably wait to see what benefit they can exact from the Biden administration to go with peace with Israel. After all, the thought is, why shouldn’t they get something out of the deal, as the UAE, Sudan and Morocco did?

At the same time, a very senior official told The Jerusalem Post that Riyadh is expected to get on board in 2021. Netanyahu and MBS met in the Saudi city of Neom weeks ago. Salman is still reticent on the matter, holding on to the Arab Peace Initiative, also known as the Saudi Initiative, which requires peace with the Palestinians before normalization with the Arab League.

Looking ahead at the unfolding new year, it seems likely that the Abraham Accords domino rally will continue, and it seems almost inevitable that it will feature the biggest coup of all, Saudi-Israel peace.

But if there’s anything we learned from 2020, it is that January can be drastically different from December in ways we never expected.

Boycott israel (with a big asterisk)

A poster I made this week....

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PrimeTimeZone reports on a new interview that Suha Arafat, Yasir Arafat's widow, gave to Yediot Aharonot:

In surprising and shocking statements, the widow of the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Suha, acquitted Israel of responsibility for poisoning her husband and causing his death.

And she considered in a lengthy interview with the Hebrew newspaper “Yediot Aharonot” that her husband went on the path of terrorism and committed a big mistake by igniting the Al-Aqsa Intifada that broke out in 2000 after former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Suha told the newspaper that Yasser Arafat was definitely poisoned, but not by Israel but by a Palestinian.

She added: "Everyone believed that Israel was guilty, but I am not accusing it. I’ve always said that it’s too easy to say Israel, but I don’t think the Israelis killed Arafat. ...What evidence do you have that Israel is responsible?"

Suha believes that Arafat should not have returned to the path of terror, adding: “There are others who were more murderers than Arafat, and Yasser really mourned and deeply grieved for the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Except that he was obsessed with hatred for Sharon ”.

According to the Hebrew newspaper, “Suha Arafat is trying to convince the Israelis that even though her husband Yasser’s hands are stained with the blood of thousands of Israelis, he really wanted peace.”

It sounds like she wants to rewrite Arafat's murderous legacy and at the same time to distance him from other Palestinian leaders who she has criticized in the past.

Esmail Ghaani is the brigadier general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who succeeded Qassem Soleimani as commander of Iran's Quds Force.

Today he threatened terror attacks within the US as revenge for Soleimani's assassination a year ago.

At a ceremony marking the first anniversary of Soleimani's death, Ghaani said that someone already in the US might take revenge on the perpetrators. "Our path is still the same, rest assured, there may even be people inside your house who will respond to your crime," he warned the US.

Yesterday, in a closed door session of the Iranian parliament, Ghaani explcitly threatened to assassinate US officials in revenge. He reportedly specified Donald Trump, the head of the CIA Gina Haspel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Secretary of Defense, presumably Mark Esper who held that position a year ago.

Referring to the writer that the Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa death sentence against in 1989, Ghaani said that these targets should learn from Salman Rushdie how to survive in hiding if they want to live.

Will these explicit threats of terror attacks be condemned in the UN or by "human rights" organizations? I expect there will be little reaction.

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Al Khaleej Online reported this week about a social media campaign to boycott tourism to Dubai - because Jews were visiting there.

The site didn't even pretend it was talking about Israelis.

In light of the influx of Jews to the Emirates and their establishment of religious rituals and provocative rituals in front of Arabs and Muslims in the most prominent tourist places in this Gulf country, voices appeared from within the GCC countries calling for a boycott of tourism in Dubai, which was a reception station for Jews during the recent period.

The most provocative scenes for the Gulf and Arab peoples were the circulation of a video clip (Wednesday, December 9), showing Israeli tourists performing a Jewish prayer at the top of Burj Khalifa in the Emirate of Dubai.

This tweet showed a video of a concert of a religious Jewish singer in front of the Burj Khalif skyscraper, with the text "After watching and repeating these shameful scenes, it must become a duty to boycott Dubai tourism. We are not even used to watching these pigs."

This one showed Jews praying in the skyscraper and says, "By God, after the Zionists desecrated it, Dubai will not return to its previous glory, and nothing will come from Zionism but ruin."

The article cites an "expert" about how Arab boycotts of Dubai could hurt the UAE economy.

The thing is, the hashtag started in December 13 and ran out of steam a couple of days later, with another flurry about a week ago.

No one is boycotting Dubai tourism. It is just a hashtag to make some people feel like they are "activists" and to tell others what to do.

There is a lot in common between the far Left in the West who want to boycott the Jewish state and the antisemitic bigots who want to boycott Dubai because Jews are visiting.

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12/31 Links Pt2: A Jewish prisoner's longing for Zion; 5 reasons why mainstream Jews should drop the Palestinian cause in 2021; How Wikipedia is breeding armies of antisemites

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: A Jewish prisoner's longing for Zion

Pollard paid for that fateful decision with 30 years in prison and another five years of conditional release during which he was barred from moving to Israel.

I asked him back then to describe his life in prison.

"I don't want to go into detail," he responded with a brief, sad sigh. "I will give you an impressionistic description of my life. Life here involves constant noise, endless noise that is impossible to imagine, all the time; constant violence; profanity every conceivable type of profanity. There is no place to be quiet or to find quiet to read. You really have to be disciplined not to be provoked. You need to be disciplined to see when a situation is getting out of hand and to get away as quickly as possible. I have to be ready if my door opens at 2 in the morning."

I asked Pollard what he thought about when he was sitting in his room.

"My dream is to be with my wife, at home in Israel. I am worried about my wife. She is a cancer survivor. But she refused to have chemotherapy because it would have destroyed any chance of having children. Do you have any idea of what it feels like for a husband to have to hear over the phone that his wife has cancer?" he asked in an expression of unending distress and barely disguised desperation.

"I want to come home so that I can be with my wife, my people and my land. That is all I want. I love my nation."

Thirty-five years after his initial arrest, 15 years after I met with him, early on Wednesday morning, Jonathan Pollard finally realized his dream, the dream of a Jewish prisoner longing for Zion.

5 reasons why mainstream Jews should drop the Palestinian cause in 2021

As we close the chapter of an unprecedented year filled with enormous loss and begin a new year with unparalleled opportunity, I believe now is the time to ask bold questions with answers that may be uncomfortable for the mainstream Jewish community in North America. As we made, and now pursue, resolutions for our personal and professional selves, our families and our communities, let us also have the courage to ask the more uncomfortable, more durable – and frankly, more honest questions that we only have the courage to ask in the light of this most challenging year.

How do we engage with Israel? What core policy objectives do we as a community and our organizations seek to achieve? Which organizational policy objectives, written long ago in boardrooms far far away, are still relevant? Which objectives are not relevant? What is achievable? What is not? What is the “needle” – and in what direction do we push it? Which causes embrace all of our identities? And which causes force us as Jews, as Americans, and as Zionists to leave our identities at the door?

I have a resolution.

In 2021, and in the years and decades beyond, the organized Jewish community should abandon its paralyzing, archaic, immoral and dangerous objective of establishing a Palestinian state.

Our world has changed. The Middle East has changed. Israel has changed. The American Jewish community, and its objectives, must too. Suppress your anger, lay down your talking points and hear me out.

1. The Abraham Accords

2. John Kerry’s Middle East is gone – if it ever existed after all

3. No Jewish Organization was actively involved in the Abraham Accords – and likely won’t even be involved in any other breakthrough

4. The Palestinians, and any future potential Palestinian state, would be an organized society and nation whose values and lack of rule of law would be completely antithetical to the Western world

5. The PLO, our alleged partners in peace, incentivize and pay terrorists to kill Jews

Cartoon of the Day: BDS Silver Lining

Continuing my series of re-captioning cartoons....

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There was a kerfuffle recently when the International Committee of the Red Cross decided to make a Twitter thread about the violations of international law depicted in the fictional, excellent Israeli TV series Fauda.

Of course, people made fun of the ICRC for pretending that a fictional story is real.

But even more idiotic was Mondoweiss' take. The site outdid itself in its article about the incident in its sheer ignorance about, really, everything.

The writer, Jonathan Ofir, freely admits that he never saw the show. He then goes on to create a conspiracy theory that the people who responded to the ICRC tweet are a group of professional Israeli hasbarists who are part of a shadowy group:

The Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministry under Gilad Erdan (who is now Israel’s UN Ambassador)– which has been the headquarters for the anti-BDS campaign, which included secret ‘black ops’ operations– has established an army of social media propagandists.

He's talking about Digitell, which is a very loose group of already-existing bloggers and pro-Israel activists who have met in person twice. I should know - I'm in the group. And while the ministry would love for us to have a unified strategy and messaging, we all still do whatever we want to, while sometimes consulting with others. (Ofir even proves that there was an inconsistency in messaging between the Zionist responses to the ICRC tweet, which undermines his entire argument.)

But Ofir really shows how little he knows when he adds his own non-expertise in international law to the discussion of why Fauda is so evil:

The central theme of Fauda is what is know in international law as Perfidy. ICRC provides the definition of Perfidy from standard International Humanitarian Law:

Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with the intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy.

In other words, it is about conducting a military operation under the guise of being a civilian, or impersonating an individual who is supposed to be offered special humanitarian protection. This act is dangerous also because it puts civilians and humanitarian workers at risk, as it creates a suspicion that they may be involved in the hostilities.

Such perfidy is standard operating procedure for Israel.

For some reason, the ICRC didn't mention perfidy in its list of Fauda's violations of international law, but Ofir thinks he knows better.

Ofir has no clue.

When characters in Fauda go undercover, they are not acting as soldiers. They are acting as spies. And espionage is not against international law.

As the ICRC quotes US practice in its documentation on perfidy:

Customary international law does not … prohibit belligerents from using saboteurs, secret agents or other irregular forces feigning civilian status to attack legitimate military targets. Wear of civilian clothing during an attack, or during a spying or sabotage mission behind enemy lines, may subject combatants to punishment if captured by the enemy.

Spies do not have the protection of international law given to soldiers. Their risk is much greater, and if they are caught they can be executed if that is the law of the capturers.

How much ignorance can Mondoweiss fit in one article?

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Progressives Torn As Bus Under Which To Throw Jews Fails Emissions Test (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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hippie van Sacramento, December 31 - Stalwarts of forward-leaning politics voiced consternation today at a new dilemma that may force them to choose as never before between the values of ecological sensitivity and steamrolling Jewish concerns in pursuit of those values.

Progressive figures across California expressed dismay Thursday after the 48-seater vehicle, under which they had intended to throw Jews while pursuing the progressive agenda, could not meet the state's air pollution limitations, the toughest such thresholds in the nation. As never before activists observed, they must decide whether to proceed in their endeavors to implement a progressive agenda if in that pursuit they do not end up harming Jewish interests.

"It's not a problem we gave much thought to," admitted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (D-NY). "All of us just kind of assumed that throwing Jews under the bus was an automatic consequence of pursuing our vision for the twenty-first century in ecology, economics, race relations, everything. But it turns out sometimes you have to go out of your way to make harming Jewish interests, or at the very least disregarding the expressed concerns of the vast majority of the American Jewish community, an outcome. We need to have some serious conversations about how far out of our way to go to ensure that outcome, and what the other costs might be to such a direction."

Previous conflicts between Jewish concerns and the progressive agenda have tended to make Jewish concerns secondary or irrelevant to the desired outcome, as when prominent progressives have declared support for Jewish sovereignty and security in the ancestral Jewish homeland to be at odds with progressive values. "It's not Israel-Palestine per se that's the issue," explained activist and Women's March founder Linda Sarsour. "My buddies in the Nation of Islam probably couldn't care less whether Israel exists, or who rules the Palestinians, just as the Arabs in Palestine couldn't care less when they were under foreign rule for many centuries. It's the Jews of America that bother Brother Farrakhan, not the Jews of Tel Aviv, although licking the latter in the teeth might also be good. No, it's about maintaining the Jew as an enemy, and as time passes, our sensibilities have increasingly painted the Jew as the source of our community's problems, because it's more convenient to blame someone else than to fix your own problems, and hey, look, the Jews are right here, always available as scapegoats."

"But this time it's a little different," she acknowledged, "because now we have to determine whether harming Jews is simply a positive side-effect of our efforts, or a goal in itself, and if the latter, then does it outweigh other progressive goals? I think we all know what the decision will be in the end, but it looks good to have a 'conversation' about it that really only involves people who want Jews to just go away with their irritating insistence that people treat them with the same humanity and respect we demand for everyone else."