Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, February 26, 2021

Cartoon of the day: The drunk prophets of last Purim

Biden administration and even Israeli media are fooled by Palestinian doubletalk: No, Hamas didn't commit to a two state solution

Here are two headlines published last Sunday, from Times of Israel and i24News:

These reports say that, according to a letter written by the PA to the Biden administration, Hamas has committed to a two-state solution and to peaceful resistance.

I've already mentioned that Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh has said quite clearly last Saturday that it still supports terror and absolutely does not accept Israel in any way.

The US is insisting that all parties for any Palestinian election adhere to the principles of the Quartet (US, UN, EU and Russia) established in 2006. The position of the Quartet has been "all members of a future Palestinian Government must be committed to non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations."

The first page of the letter that the PA is said to have sent the US is on the Amad.ps website, and it shows that the Palestinians are still the masters at making credulous Westerners believe that they are saying things they are not saying at all.

There is no contradiction between the letter sent to the Biden administration and Hamas' intransigent statements from last Saturday. There is no compatibility between this letter and the US position of what the Palestinians must commit to. And yet, Israeli media and apparently the Biden administration is willing to be fooled by the doubletalk in the letter and pretend that it says what it most definitely does not.

The letter, filled with misspellings, says:

The following consensus (attachment 1) were reached by all political factions including Hamas at the meeting of all general secretaries of Palestinians political factions in 3 September 2020.

1. Commitment to international law standards.
2. Commitment to a Palestinian State based on the boarders of 1967 and East Jerusalem as its capital.
3. Commitment to the PLO as the political umbrella and the legitimate sole representative of the Palestinian people.
4. Commitment to the Principal of peaceful transfer of power through elections
5. Commitment to Popular Resistance (peaceful)

Not one of the Quartet conditions are met by this letter!

Non-violence: Hamas said that it supports comprehensive resistance "in all its forms," and one of its manifestations is popular resistance. It is still committed to terrorism.

Recognition of Israel: The PA says that Hamas accepts a Palestinian state - but nowhere does it say or even imply that Hamas recognizes Israel or a two state solution. Hamas said it holds firmly to the principle of "non-recognition of the legitimacy of the occupier." Meaning, if the Palestinians manage to gain a state in any part of Palestine, Hamas will accept it, but it is still committed to destroying Israel.

Acceptance of previous agreements and obligations: It says nothing about that in this letter, only a vague "commitment to international law standards," which is meaningless. Since there is no consensus of what international law actually is, they can claim to be committed to it with their own interpretations - for example, that Israel is obligated to allow "return" of millions of Palestinians. This is in no way an affirmation of committing to the Oslo accords, and in fact Hamas' leader has explicitly rejected them as well in that same speech.

This is a test of the Biden administration, to see if it is truly committed to the principles the US has insisted upon for any potential Palestinian government. So far, based on reporting about this letter, the Biden administration is flunking the test.

Not surprisingly, the PA has played this exact game during the Obama administration, with no pushback then either.

Then again, when one party wants to gaslight and the other wants to be gaslit, there isn't much you can do.

Nora Barrows-Friedman is an associate editor at Electronic Intifada. She just exposed another nefarious Jewish plot:

Lmao my college student kid, a member of student gov, was contacted by Hillel who wanted to give her $ to “learn about the Israel-Palestine conflict” via their program for student leaders. This is one way they coerce young ppl into crushing Palestine rights activism on campuses..... This specific offer was for some course or something taught by Hillel staff.

Apparently, to Israel haters, a Jewish college organization offering free money to attend a course is "coercion," forcing people to do their evil Zionist desires against their will.

She's of course proud that her child didn't take the bait. "Needless to say my kid rejected their insipid offer."

God forbid the kid should actually hear about both sides of a conflict. That would violate her human rights!

Especially if she is forced to listen by being paid with dirty Jew money.

Barrows-Friedman herself is clearly very liberal and open-minded herself. I have never written or tweeted about her before now, and yet she has pre-emptively blocked me.

Good to know that she is proud to be teaching her kid to be as intolerant, bigoted and closeminded as she is.

Palestinian health minister says 2 million vaccine doses are arriving very soon

Palestinians should begin receiving two million vaccine doses by the end of the first week of March.

Palestinian health minister Mai Al-Kailah spoke to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa and said, "We have completed an agreement to purchase two million doses of vaccine from AstraZeneca , and we have done all the necessary procedures, from registering the vaccine and providing the company with all the documents necessary for the purchase agreement, negotiating its price, and logistical requirements such as refrigeration supplies .

"We are awaiting the supply of vaccines, and the company informed us that the vaccines will start arriving at the end of February and early March," she added.

This means that the Palestinians are getting mass quantities of vaccines ahead of many nations and not too long after some major Western-oriented nations.

And they did it without asking Israel for help. Which is what they said they wanted to do all along.

Too bad the media keeps skipping that small fact.

02/25 Links Pt2: BDS Is Anti-Semitic; Na’amod – toxic anti-Zionism with no students to be seen; It's Time for Black People to Reclaim the Term "Apartheid"

From Ian:

BDS Is Anti-Semitic

I rarely ever feel comfortable talking about Israel in a university setting, despite the fact that the land of Israel is such a dearly held part of my Jewish identity. I have always found it interesting that sweeping dismissals of this part of my Jewish identity, the part that is tied to Israel, are so very welcomed in certain academic and progressive circles. In these groups, it feels like everyone else has the right to defend their cultural, ethnic and religious identities except for the Jew.

On Feb. 9, 2021, the student government at the University of California, Irvine voted 19-3 to pass a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolution. BDS stands for the boycott of, divestment from and sanctions on the current Jewish state of Israel. The BDS movement will not be satisfied until there is no Jewish state existing within the land of Israel.

From a principled perspective, the notion of divesting from one nation in the name of helping an entirely separate nation strikes me as odd. Why divest from Israel to help under-resourced Palestinians? Why not invest directly in Palestinian aid or grassroots movements?

It is a lack of satisfactory answers to these questions that leaves me and many other Jewish people feeling like these movements are more about opposing Jewish self-determination than they are about supporting Palestinian liberation.

Calling for the mass boycott of Israel is a way to publicly stand against the existence of a Jewish nation in a land that Jews are indigenous to. In doing so, the movement is denying a huge part of the Jewish identity from having an acceptable place in social life. If that is not anti-Semitism, what is?

David Collier: Na’amod – toxic anti-Zionism with no students to be seen

Nobody should be in any doubt that the group called Na’amod are at the core – an anti-Zionist organisation that was set up to undermine Jewish community support for Israel. They are targeting our children and their focus on the ‘occupation’ and ‘Gaza’ is little more than a strategic deflection.

If you mistakenly think Na’amod is some innocent student ‘anti-occupation group’ – you will be shocked to find out what they are really about – and who is helping to fund their attacks on the Jewish institutions (such as on the JNF, Zionist Federation or the Board of Deputies). Want to know more – Read on.

Talking about Na’amod
I rarely acknowledge Na’amod – it is a Jewish-led organisation that sits to the left of the left on the political spectrum. Like most astroturf groups they need external attention to survive. It is why for Na’amod, provocation is a primary strategy.

This is what they do. They provoke – Zionists respond – they play the victim – they get attention. When you respond to them – when you speak their name – you give them oxygen.

It is why I never rise to their bait – never allow them to dictate the narrative. This article on Na’amod is different. It had to be written as a vital part of our community conversation.

The journey begins last Tuesday. I tuned in to an Oxford University Zoom talk by Jamie Stern-Weiner. It was about the history of the IHRA definition of Antisemitism and his entire argument was to suggest the examples included in the IHRA definition were never properly adopted by the IHRA as part of the definition itself. A pointless exercise that included cherry-picking comments from those involved when it suited him – and ignoring them when it did not.

Unlike the Jewish, academic, anti-Zionist old guard, such as Jonathan Rosenhead, Stern-Weiner is a fresh face. Yet the talk was incredibly boring. His delivery is poor and he fails to spark any interest or emotion in what he has to say. Unlike fanatics such as Tony Greenstein, he remains coherent but after a while I just found myself zoning out. He has the air of a man who thinks he is intellectually superior. Weiner’s problem is that he isn’t as clever as he thinks he is.

It's Time for Black People to Reclaim the Term "Apartheid"

As a young black South African, I am reminded that our parents and grandparents were compelled to live under the viciously discriminatory system of apartheid. Precisely because we South Africans know intimately what apartheid involved, we have a duty to question whether it is an appropriate term to be used in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Apartheid was about race, not religion or nationality, the domination by one race over another. By contrast, Arab citizens of Israel enjoy the same rights and freedoms as Jewish Israelis. Comparisons between the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the bantustans in apartheid South Africa are absurd. As foreign governments refused to recognize them, economic aid was withheld, while the PA has received billions of dollars in aid from international governments. It already looks after a range of functions in Palestinian society, including policing functions and healthcare.

Unlike black people in apartheid South Africa, Arabs in Israel are entitled to vote in national elections and elect their own representatives. They currently have the third-largest party in the Israeli Knesset. In Israel, Arabs are found in the highest ranks of political, civil and even military life. Arabs in Israel enjoy more freedom than those living in the rest of the Middle East.

Those who apply the term "apartheid" to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse are guilty of cultural appropriation by denying the uniqueness of the racism and hatred that we faced and overcame with much blood and tears.

10 Things You Never Knew About Israeli Arabs

Suicide Bomber Hoping Work-From-Home Rules End Soon (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

work from home Hebron, February 25 - Citing what he calls the lockdown's "devastating effect" on his family, a local resident who aspires to kill Israelis by detonating an explosive belt he wears voiced his wish today that Palestinian public health officials lift movement restrictions to allow him to perform his duties outside the family residence.

Muhammad Qawasmeh, 24, told reporters this afternoon that he feels constrained by the regime of COVID-mitigation restrictions in place in this town less than an hour's drive south of Jerusalem, and that he cannot engage effectively in his work as a suicide bomber for the Islamic Resistance Movement known as Hamas.

"I simply can't do my job stuck here at home," lamented the now-unemployed holder of a degree in agricultural engineering. "If I were allowed to move more than a kilometer from my apartment, I could find some Jews to kill along with myself, but all the Jews are on the other side of town from here." Qawasmeh gestured toward the center of Hebron where an enclave of several hundred Jews lives, the fruits of an Israeli effort to restore a Jewish community to King David's first ancient capital following the massacre of the town's Jews by local Arabs in 1929. A larger community called Kiryat Araba lies on the next hilltop, even more inaccessible to Qawasmeh under present conditions.

"It's not good for me or my family," he observed. "I practiced a small detonation a couple of months ago, just to keep myself sharp, you know? I can't let those professional skills erode. I'm going to need them someday soon - at least I hope it's soon. But I ended up giving my little brother Osama third-degree burns and he almost lost an eye. This whole situation is having a devastating effect on my family."

Qawasmeh remarked that ironically, his very dedication to the greater good at the expense of his own physical welfare, or life, demands that he refrain from engaging in the very sacrificial activity for which he was recruited and trained. "Stay at home in the interest of public health, I get it," he acknowledged. "But why is it so important all of a sudden that it overrides the supreme value we've all nurtured until now, that of killing Jews as a way to liberate the land of our ancestors? Nobody used to care very much if it also meant killing Allah knows how many fellow Arabs. Suddenly this pandemic is different? I think the martyrs would understand either way."

02/25 Links Pt1: Israel in Talks to Establish Four-Nation Defense Alliance With Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain; A decade on, Iron Dome has intercepted 2,500 rockets, and counting

From Ian:

Israel in Talks to Establish Four-Nation Defense Alliance With Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain

Jerusalem is currently in talks with the kingdoms of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates on establishing a four-nation defense alliance, according to an exclusive i24 News report.

While Jerusalem does not have official diplomatic relations with Riyadh, foreign media report that the two countries have long-standing clandestine ties.

However, the UAE and Bahrain signed a historic normalization deal with Israel in September 2020 known as the Abraham Accords.

The reported defense alliance talks likely come in response to the “growing Iranian threat” in the region, specifically regarding its budding nuclear program along with its expanding influence in the Middle East with countries like Syria and Iraq.

News of the reported talks comes as the Biden administration sends signals to Tehran and world powers that it is ready to rejoin the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, brokered by former President Barack Obama, which Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vehemently opposed at the time.

A decade on, Iron Dome has intercepted 2,500 rockets, and counting

Ten years have passed since the Iron Dome air-defense system, produced by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, made its first revolutionary interception of a Gazan rocket in Israeli skies in 2011. Since then the system has conducted more than 2,500 successful real-world interceptions, preventing large-scale carnage in Israeli cities.

It has achieved an interception rate of more than 90% and is considered an essential element of Israeli security, on standby against enemy arsenals threatening the Israeli home front from north to south.

While Iron Dome is indispensable today, it had to overcome some preconceived notions about the role of air defense in security before first making its appearance.

"A soccer team that goes to the field without a goalkeeper loses," Brig. Gen. (ret.) Shachar Shohat, Rafael vice president and marketing and business development manager of the company's Air and Missile Defense Division, said.

Shohat, who previously served as commander of the Israel Air Force's Air Defense Array, described Rafael as the national combat laboratory that has become a "symbol of innovation" in the world of Israeli security, winning 50-plus Israeli defense prizes for significant contribution to state security.

"Employees at Rafael, who go to work in jeans and sandals, are creating true added value to Israel's national security," he said. "They do it with a spark in their eyes from the founding of the state until this day."

Caroline Glick: Interview with CBN on the Biden administration, Iran and Israel

The Tikvah Podcast: Richard Goldberg on How Iran is Already Testing the Biden Administration

President Biden has been in office for just over one month, but when it comes to his administration’s relationship with Iran, the honeymoon is already long over. Just in the past few weeks, Iran has launched rockets at American assets in Iraq, refused to allow in-person inspections by International Atomic Energy Agency officials of its nuclear facilities, and extorted sanctions relief from South Korea by taking an oil tanker hostage. Through all these actions, Tehran is trying to determine the Biden administration’s objectives, probe its limits, and assess its political will.

Now it’s up to the new American team to lead a response, and to declare—in its words and actions—to the world, and especially to the Iranians, what the United States wants to do, what it can aide, and what it will not accept. On this week’s podcast, the national-security expert Richard Goldberg joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to explain the Biden administration’s early moments of decision on Iran and to project what the short and long term consequences of those decisions might be.

SNL crosses the line. Merrick Garland gets emotional. ?@jarrodbernstein? and I go deep on the NYC mayor’s race with ?@SallyGold? and ?@howiewolf?. Episode 7 of ?@JIPodcast? is ready for download. Listen, subscribe and Happy Purim! https://t.co/Lud4Sssdvm
— Richard Goldberg (@rich_goldberg) February 25, 2021

I still remember when our family went to Disney World, years ago, and we went to the exhibit for "It's A Small World After All." To illustrate the point, the exhibit contained caricatures of every nationality.

The typical Israeli was depicted as -- a Chassid.

Maybe the people at Disney had trouble figuring out what an Israeli is.

Or perhaps they thought their visitors did.

Times haven't changed.

Depictions of Jews in the media are often inaccurate.

As an extreme example, take the new show on NBC called Nurses:

Set in Toronto, "Nurses" follows five young nurses working on the frontlines of a busy downtown hospital, dedicating their lives to helping others, while struggling to help themselves.

In a recent episode -- which NBC has now pulled off its digital platforms -- one of the subplots is that a Chassidic boy requires a bone transplant in order to be able to walk again.

The boy, with his father at his side, refuses the transplant because the bone might be from an Arab or a woman, or -- as the nurse helpfully chimes in -- an Arab woman.

First @nbcsnl now @nbc 'Nurses' airs a viciously antisemitic episode filled with lies about Orthodox Jews.

"A dead goyim leg ... from an arab, a woman, G-d forbid an Arab women ... Israel ... without this next step you won't walk again".

Lies and libels lead to VIOLENCE! pic.twitter.com/BvRA4Xiq9e
— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) February 23, 2021

Elder of Ziyon outlines the extent to which the show Nurses mischaracterized Orthodox Jews as:

o Being against any modern medical procedures
o  Being against grafting bone or tissue from non-Jews
o  Being against having women's organs or bones placed in men
o  Jewish men not directly addressing female nurses
o  Saying that prayer and medicine are incompatible

Against that background, we can understand The Wiesenthal Center's reaction:

The writers of this scene check all the boxes of ignorance and pernicious negative stereotypes, right down to the name of the patient, Israel – paiyous and all.

In one scene, NBC has insulted and demonized religious Jews and Judaism.

Overreaction? Orthodox Jews are targeted for violent hate crimes – in the city of New York, Jews are number one target of hate crimes in US; this is no slip of the tongue. It was a vile, cheap attack masquerading as TV drama. What’s NBC going to do about it?

(Note: Apparently the name of the patient is Ezriel, not Israel.)

It is insulting not only for the deliberately negative slant the show casts on Orthodox Jews, but the show's writers couldn't even be bothered to do the minimal research necessary to realize that under the circumstances, no Orthodox Jew and no Orthodox rabbi would object to such an operation.

The website TV Fanatic does offer a possible context for this sub-plot and what it was intended to do -- draw a comparison with the nurse, who is a religious Christian:

I understand what they were going for. Ashley [the nurse] comes from a religious background. She has issues with her conservative Christian home and with her conservative Christian mother.

They were trying to draw a parallel and stir up some feeling for her with this push-button topic.

Stir up some feeling?

Mission accomplished!

But even so, the thinking behind the plot of this episode is not even new.

In 2005, Grey's Anatomy ran an episode with a similar sub-plot: a 17-year-old girl who has recently become more religious finds out that she has a potentially threatening heart condition that could kill her. The good news is that her life can be saved with an operation that will provide her with a new heart valve.

But the valve is from a pig.

The subplot revolves around her refusal to accept the operation because of the source of the valve.

As Rabbi Avi Shafran wrote in response to the show at the time:

That Jewish law in no way forbids such use of pig parts (only their consumption – and not even that when life is endangered) is not noted; quite the contrary, the viewer is led to believe that the girl’s refusal would be the natural stance of any observant Jew. The silliness of the scenario is only compounded by the casting of a woman as the Orthodox girl’s rabbi (and the episode’s “good guy,” of course).

...But the most egregious element of the fantasy is the character’s, well, character. The Orthodox youth is portrayed as, in the words of one viewer, “a crazy fundamentalist fanatical Jew [who] was rude and behaved horrendously to the doctors who were only trying to help her.” The character belittles her less-observant parents, cursing like a sailor in the process. Just your standard-fare nice, newly religious Jewish girl. [emphasis added]

Realism and accuracy clearly were not considerations. The writer admitted to The Forward, "Whenever there is a story that has a rabbi I never see a woman, I just see old men. I wanted to clash with the stereotype a bit."

But there is more going on in this episode on Grey's Anatomy than just a clash in stereotypes of what a rabbi looks like. As in the episode in Nurses, in this episode of Grey's Anatomy, the writer deliberately created a character who was obnoxious because of her religiosity.

As Rabbi Shafran points out:

...If the character is a positive one, or even a neutral one, no one, save perhaps an anti-Semite, would complain. But if he or she is consciously crafted to be obnoxious – and not merely obnoxious, but obnoxious in her dedication to her ostensible religious beliefs – does that not border on provocation? [emphasis added]

So what is going on here?

In 2005, Wendy Shalit examined the books written about the ultra-Orthodox world, many of which painted a negative picture, and wondered aloud about the audience for such books:

What is the market for this fiction? Does it simply satisfy our desire, as one of Mirvis's reviewers put it, to indulge in "eavesdropping on a closed world"? Or is there a deeper urge: do some readers want to believe the ultra-Orthodox are crooked and hypocritical, and thus lacking any competing claim to the truth? Perhaps, on the other hand, readers are genuinely interested in traditional Judaism but don't know where to look for more nuanced portraits of this world.

Does the same desire to undermine the Orthodox Jews motivate the writers of these kinds of episodes on Grey's Anatomy and Nurses?

In response to criticism of her article, Shalit writes:

For whatever reason, many writers today like to create immoral haredi and newly-religious characters. The truth is, I don't know why. Perhaps because they are not from these worlds, they fail to appreciate the idealism that's there. Or perhaps it's because, as Ms. Mirvis has admitted, nowadays "there is a great deal of discomfort with religiosity, and I have to admit, I feel it myself as well."

...But when all your Orthodox characters are cold and dysfunctional, and unlike anything this group understands itself to be, then I think one must ask what else might be going on. [emphasis added]

Shalit ends this article with a challenge:

Let's turn the tables. Suppose there is a new genre in American Jewish literature, in which Reform Jews are vilified regularly. There is the temple's secretary who kills one of her Hadassah sisters in order to get the latest Judith Lieber bag, and a gay Reform rabbi who seduces younger male congregants. There are idealistic college coeds who want to escape Reform life, but are daunted by the prospect of learning Hebrew, so they abuse drugs instead. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is such a genre. And suppose further that these novels are a bit short on character development, that they are primarily driven by page after page of weirdo Reform characters, and mouth agape, one must turn the pages in order to satisfy one's curiosity: what will this bad Reform bunch do next? The authors, who are not Reform themselves, are celebrated in the non-Jewish world and their Reform-bashing literature is translated into multiple languages.

How would we feel about such novels? My guess is that they would not be so popular, and the fact that we have toasted such literature about Orthodox Jews for so long might -- just might -- tell us something about our prejudices. [emphasis added]

There was a time that simple curiosity was the driving force in the depiction of Orthodox Jews. In his review of the book This Ain't Kosher, Elliot Gertel reveals that "the (Jewish) producers of [the TV show] Kung Fu originally thought of making the martial arts master a Hasidic rebbe."

But those were simpler days that are long behind us.

Iran's "Supreme Leader" Khamanei tweeted, "Iran is not after nuclear weapons, but its nuclear enrichment will not be limited to 20% either. It will enrich uranium to any extent that is necessary for the country. Iran's enrichment level may reach 60% to meet the country's needs."

There is no valid non-military reason to enrich uranium beyond the 20% that is the threshold to be considered highly enriched.

Highly enriched uranium (HEU has been historically used for several non-weapons applications: nuclear submarines, some types of civilian nuclear reactors, some types of isotopes for medical applications, and even satellites. However, the entire world has essentially agreed to eliminate the need for HEU in those applications.

For example, outside of a German FRM-II research reactor that has received massive criticism for continuing to use HEU, no new HEU-fueled civilian research reactors with a power level of more than 1 MW have been built in Western countries since the early 1980s. There is no reason to build such a reactor today.

The US Navy has been researching how to phase out the use of HEU for its nuclear submarines. France and China's nuclear submarines use low-enriched uranium. Yet Iran has floated the idea of building a nuclear submarine using HEU.

There is no technical reason why medical applications that still use HEU could not use LEU, meaning that HEU is not a "need" for any country's medical applications.

If Iran is insisting on enriching uranium to 60%, it is not for any legitimate purpose.

The problem is not only Iran building a nuclear weapon.

A simple nuclear weapon in the kiloton range—likely to be delivered by ship or van or assembled on site— is well within the capabilities of technically unsophisticated states, subnational groups, and international terrorist organizations such as al Qaida. The IAEA defines a "significant quantity" of fissile material as the amount required to make a first-generation Nagasaki-type implosion bomb: 8 kg for plutonium or 25 kg of U-235 contained in HEU. Modern nuclear weapons may require as little as 1 to 3 kg of plutonium or 5 to 10 kg of HEU.

HEU may be the preferred nuclear weapon material for terrorists for other reasons as well. Uranium metal can be handled relatively safely by hand and the low radiation it emits is easily hidden by even modest shielding, making smuggling extremely difficult to detect. Sixty kilograms of weapons-grade HEU could easily fit into a five-liter container.

In 2002, the US National Research Council warned that the inavailability of HEU was the "primary impediment" to the development of a terrorist bomb, and there is abundant evidence that terrorist groups have been trying aggressively to obtain nuclear materials.

Iran could smuggle the HEU to Hezbollah, which could attempt to bring a simple bomb to Israel by tunnel or boat.

In short, while the entire world is trying to reduce the use of HEU and finding ways to dispose of it safely, Iran is openly threatening to manufacture more HEU which has no legitimate purpose nowadays.

Scholar Manfred Gerstenfeld passed away this morning.

Anshel Pfeffer of Haaretz wrote in 2013 that Gerstenfeld "is without doubt the greatest authority on anti-Semitism today." Yet as far as I can tell, he only started researching and writing about antisemitism in earnest when he was already in his mid-60s. He had written a number of books about Judaism and environmentalism beforehand. (He received his PhD. in environmental studies in 1999, when he was 62. )

Some of Gerstenfeld's books are available for download at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which he was the chairman from 2000-2012. I loved his book The War of a Million Cuts, which was in some ways a summation of his scholarship on modern antisemitism.

I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Gerstenfeld in his Jerusalem home in 2016. Here are two excerpts of that interview.

The first is about the history of antisemitism over the centuries, where he also discusses the IHRA definition.