Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, March 03, 2021

Thomas Friedman almost gets it right about the Abraham Accords

You know things are weird when Thomas Friedman is practically the only voice of relative sanity at the New York Times.

The left-leaning media has been trying very hard to ignore the Abraham Accords as a meaningless event from the Trump era. This is to placate the Israel hating contingent who have been positioning it as yet another manifestation of Zionist evil.

Thomas Friedman, for all his faults, sees how big a deal the new peace deals are.

[S]omething big seems to be stirring. Unlike the peace breakthroughs between Israel and Egypt, Israel and Lebanon’s Christians and Israel and Jordan, which were driven from the top and largely confined there, the openings between Israel and the Gulf States — while initiated from the top to build an alliance against Iran — are now being driven even more from the bottom, by tourists, students and businesses....

If the Abraham Accords do thrive and broaden to include normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, we are talking about one of the most significant realignments in modern Middle East history, which for many decades was largely shaped by Great Power interventions and Arab-Israeli dynamics. Not anymore.

Today, “there are three powerful non-Arab actors in the region — Iran, Turkey and Israel — and they have each constructed their own regional axis,” argues Itamar Rabinovich, the Israeli Middle East historian, who just co-wrote “Syrian Requiem,” a smart history of the Syrian civil war. Those three axes, Rabinovich explains, are Turkey with Qatar and their proxy Hamas; Iran with Syria and Iran’s proxies running Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen; and Israel with the U.A.E., Bahrain and tacitly Saudi Arabia and Oman.

It’s the interactions of these three axes, says Rabinovich, that are really driving Middle East politics today. And because the U.A.E.-Israel axis brings together the most successful Arab state with the most successful non-Arab state, it’s radiating a lot of energy.

With Israel and the U.A.E., “what you are seeing are two ecosystems fusing together,” says Gidi Grinstein, head of Reut, the Israeli strategy institute. Israel is a society that for many years faced hostility from its neighbors and had no oil. “So, over the years, Israel learned to go from isolation and scarcity to abundance and global influence by developing its own explosive innovation economy in areas such as water, solar, cyber, military, medical, finance and agriculture.”

The U.A.E., by contrast, is transitioning from decades of oil abundance to an era of oil scarcity by building its own ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship in the same fields as Israel.

The U.A.E.’s population consists of one million citizens and nine million foreigners, most of them low-wage, non-unionized laborers from India and other parts of South Asia and the rest professionals largely from America, Europe, India and the Arab world. The U.A.E.’s growth strategy for the 21st century — of which the opening to Israel is a key part — is to become THE Arab model for modernity, a diversified economy, globalization and intra-religious tolerance.

To that end, in November the country announced a major liberalization of its Islamic personal laws — allowing unmarried couples to cohabitate, which, among other things, makes the U.A.E. more accepting of gay and lesbian people; criminalizing so-called honor killings of women who “shame” their male relatives — as well as made divorce laws much more equitable for women and loosened restrictions on alcohol.

The U.A.E. is still an absolute monarchy, and a multiparty democracy is not on the menu. But greater gender equality, a more open education system and religious pluralism are. It still has work to do in all those areas, though — witness the embarrassing saga around the leader of Dubai, whose daughter is reportedly being held hostage in her father’s palace. But the U.A.E.’s new social laws constitute a big leap forward in its quest to attract the talent needed for a non-oil economy.

All the neighbors are watching, and they are particularly watching how Iran and Saudi Arabia react.

If you are a Lebanese Shiite living in the poor southern suburbs of Beirut having to scramble every day to barter eggs for meat — as the economy teeters on collapse — you’re asking, Why are we stuck with Iran and its axis of failing proxies like Hezbollah, which just keep letting the past bury our future?

That is a dangerous question for Iran and Hezbollah. And more Lebanese are asking every day.

The importance of the accords has been obvious to anyone who isn't saddled with a reflexive anti-Israel ideology. Which is exactly why articles like this have been few and far between in mainstream media.

Friedman, being Friedman, still has his own baggage, still trying to resurrect vestiges of the Saudi peace plan that he relentlessly pushed in 2002.

The U.A.E., Bahrain, Morocco and Saudi Arabia need to understand that they have more leverage now to influence Israeli-Palestinian relations than they realize. Israel does not want to lose them. Imagine if Saudi Arabia agreed to join the Abraham Accords, but only on the condition that it could open the Saudi Embassy to Israel in Israeli West Jerusalem while, at the same time, opening an embassy to the Palestinians in an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

Just that one move would help preserve the possibility of a two-state deal, would revitalize the 2002 Saudi peace initiative and would further isolate Iran’s axis of failure. And Israel would find it very hard to reject.

Friedman still doesn't get that the Palestinians themselves have made the Palestinians irrelevant, and the Arab states no longer want to coddle them when they can't get their own act together, split between the old guard that wants to destroy Israel politically and the terrorists who still dream of destroying Israel militarily. The Gulf states realized that Israel is not only a permanent part of the Middle East but it is an ally that they can have a mutually beneficial relationship with, and they are disgusted that Palestinians who could have taken advantage of that dynamic instead rejected it time after time - while demanding more money.

Nevertheless, Friedman does a good job here in laying out how earth shattering the new alliances are, and the Israel haters really cannot argue.

03/02 Links Pt2: Why the Left struggles on the Israel question; Jewish Voice for Peace fights to preserve anti-Zionist hatred online; ActBlue Facilitating Donations to Terror-Tied Charity

From Ian:

Why the Left struggles on the Israel question - opinion

These debates on the role of the Jewish people and Israel in the global scheme does not take into consideration a second factor: internal tensions within the Left. The initial development of Israel as a social-democratic state with some revolutionary implementations of socialist practice via the kibbutz movement made the country a beacon for the labor-movement oriented Old Left in the West, but the sudden creation of the New Left in the 1960s, which emphasized Third Worldism, reshaped that perception. Israel’s miraculous victory in 1967 cemented the changed perception and split between the Old and New Left.

While the initial perception of Israel among the Old Left was that beleaguered social-democratic state surrounded by reactionary Arab regimes, the Six Day War, leading to the capture of Jerusalem and West Bank, paved the view in the New Left of a Western state with irredentist goals. Where one stands in the current makeup of left-wing political parties, whether Old or New Left, inherently shapes your perception of Israel.

The left-wing debate over the 1967 war, as a justified war of defense or conquest, is another fundamental point of contention the Left currently struggles with. The change could be seen in the UK Labour party, initially dominated by the Old Left and strongly supportive of Israel up until the 1980s, then following the Blair era, becoming increasingly supportive of radical anti-Zionism, hitting its peak with Jeremy Corbyn. The same struggle today can be seen within the two camps of Antifa in Germany, the fiercely Zionist anti-Germans and the dominant anti-imperialist camp that is also anti-Zionist. It remains unclear if the US Democratic Party will follow the same path as Labour, but the split does exist, between the weaker democratic-socialists and liberal/moderate factions of the party.

Jewish Voice for Peace fights to preserve anti-Zionist hatred online

The group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) claims to oppose bigotry and to support security and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians. But a new campaign JVP has joined aims to block rumored plans by Facebook to add the term "Zionism" to its hate speech policies. Zionism is the belief in Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland: In other words, supporting Israel's right to exist.

"@Facebook is considering whether to treat 'Zionist' as proxy for 'Jew' in its hate speech policy," JVP tweeted last week during a Twitter town hall. "This would make 'Zionist' a de facto protected category, letting FB shut down critical conversations about Zionists under the guise of fighting antisemitism."

"If @Facebook restricts use of the word 'Zionist' on its platforms, already severe censorship will grow," the anti-Semitic BDS Movement also wrote during the Twitter town hall. "Palestinians will be blocked from describing our daily lives under Israeli apartheid, and our family histories of dispossession and military occupation."

An anonymous Facebook employee sent out an email detailing how the social media company should moderate anti-Semitism on its platform, technology news website The Verge reported in November. A Facebook spokesperson told The Verge that the term Zionist is removed from its platform if and when it is used as a proxy for anti-Semitism.

"We are looking at the question of how we should interpret attacks on 'Zionists' to determine whether the term is used as a proxy for attacking Jewish or Israeli people," the Facebook employee wrote. "The term brings with it much history and various meanings, and we are looking to increase our understanding of how it is used by people on our platform."

JVP joined the campaign opposing the policy, "Facebook, We Need to Talk." It has received support from nearly 52,000 people. It claims that the social media giant may decide on a policy this month. JVP will be on board to virtually deliver the petition to Facebook during a webinar this week.

Alexander Joffe: IHRA Definition of Antisemitism Becomes a BDS Battleground

Pushback against the IHRA definition of antisemitism also intensified in February. A discussion hosted by the leading BDS organization IfNotNow laid out the stakes, stating, “the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism has been destroying the progressive movement.”

Angrily claiming that BDS and hatred of Israel are not antisemitism despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, various “human rights” groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and Jewish groups such as J Street, the New Israel Fund, and American Friends of Peace Now, use opposition to IHRA as a means to consolidate institutional power, split Jews and liberals, and legitimize opposition to the definition.

Misrepresenting the IHRA definition is critical to this approach — especially in higher education. At Syracuse University, a motion in the student government to adopt the IHRA definition was tabled due to allegations that it conflated antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

At University College London (UCL) the student union rejected calls for the university to rescind its adoption of the IHRA definition. Jewish students also complained that the debate had been scheduled for Holocaust Remembrance Day. In contrast, a faculty board at UCL rejected the definition, demanding the administration “retract and replace [IHRA] with a more precise definition” that presumably does not include mention of Israel. The faculty decision prompted the angry resignation of a faculty member specializing in antisemitism, who accused some of his colleagues in Jewish Studies of spearheading the assault on the IHRA definition.

Other examples in the UK include Bristol University professor David Miller, who has a long history of antisemitic abuse of students and overt anti-Israel hatred. Most recently, Miller was condemned by students, the university, and others for demanding “the end of Zionism as a functioning ideology” and for alleging that “Jewish students on British campuses [are] being used as political pawns by a violent, racist foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing,” and that Jewish student “lobbying for Israel is a threat to the safety of Arab and Muslim students as well as of Jewish students and indeed of all critics of Israel.”

An American counterpart to Miller is Marc Lamont Hill of Temple University, who claimed that the Black Lives Matter movement supports the “dismantling of the Zionist project.” Hill also stated that Israel was a “settler-colonial movement in Palestine” which was responsible for police violence in the US.

Yvonne Ridley wrote an op-ed:

Anti-Semitism is very real, of that there is no doubt, but the greatest threat to Jewish people today comes not from those on the political left who criticise the Zionist state of Israel. It comes from those on the far right whose pernicious influence is spreading across North America and Europe.

This is obvious to reasonable political observers. However, the facts are being masked by the pro-Israel lobby which insists on conflating anti-Semitism with criticism of Zionism, the ideology which underpins colonial Israel. It is enough simply to mention Israel's brutal military occupation of Palestine to incur the lobby's wrath. Ironically, though, this Zionist witch-hunt fails to protect Jews.

We should all be deeply concerned by this sinister development. Not only is this an attack on free speech and one step away from book burning, but it is also diverting attention from the real threat to Jews from right-wing anti-Semites who feel so emboldened that they have brazenly turned their guns on synagogues and carried out other atrocities against Jews.

See? She cares about Jews!

The person who has written for Iranian media that has denied the Holocaust!

The person who once called Jewish politician David Miliband "a gutless little weasel who lost more than his foreskin when he was circumcised"!

The person who said, “The Zionists have tentacles everywhere"!

The person who mourned Osama Bin Laden and expressed support for Al Qaeda leader Zarqawi!

The person who once told children on stage a blood libel:

I want you to imagine, well what I was going to say that I want you to imagine they are my children but they are our children, they are our children. And this is what Barbara Lubin wrote in her email to me today. She got through the Rafah border after queuing for 10 hours and she said ‘out of all the devastation that I have seen so far, there is one story in particular that I think the world needs to hear. I met a mother who was at home with her ten children when Israeli soldiers entered the house. The soldiers told her she had to choose five of her children to give as a gift to Israel. As she screamed in horror they repeated the demand, and told her she could chose or they would choose for her. Then these soldiers murdered five of her children in front of her.’ The concept of Jewish morality is truly dead. We can be fascist, terrorist, the Nazis, just like anyone else. Can you imagine the mother’s dilemma being told choose! Can you imagine the horror of being told choose! Which child should live and which child to die.

But perhaps the most impressive part of her pretending to care about Jews is the venue for her op-ed. It is Al Resalah, a Hamas newspaper. And (despite press reports to the contrary) Hamas has never renounced its antisemitic founding charter.

(Of course, this op-ed is not in Al Resalah's Arabic edition. It is purely meant for idiotic Westerners who might actually believe that she cares about Jews and only means "Zionists" when she says that they should be hunted down.

03/02 Links Pt1: Pompeo: US officials tried to undermine Abraham Accords to help Palestinians; Melanie Phillips: The return of American anti-anti-Islamism

From Ian:

Pompeo: US officials tried to undermine Abraham Accords to help Palestinians

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is accusing certain US and European officials of attempting to block the historic Abraham Accords in order to keep the Palestinian issue at the top of the international agenda.

In a speech at the annual conference of the Combat Anti-Semitism movement, at which the organization awarded him a prize, Pompeo discussed opposition to the accords and said that the Russians, as well as certain policy-makers in the United States and Europe, would have preferred to see them fail to materialize.

According to Pompeo, the unnamed officials wanted to maintain the "delusion" that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the keystone to regional peace. The former secretary of state said that when the opponents of the accords, realized that no Intifada would erupt as a result of the agreements being signed, and Israel could establish "warm ties" with its regional neighbors, they saw that the Trump administration's approach had been correct.

Pompeo said he believed that many other countries would sign on to the accords, adding that he hoped Saudi Arabia would be one, as well as Muslim countries outside the Middle East.

Pompeo also discussed the processes that led up to the accords, saying that the Palestinians had clung to their line of "no, no, no," prompting the administration to decide to move ahead with other countries in the Middle East, whose leaders said they did not want the Palestinians to bar them from establishing relations with Israel. Those countries said they wanted ties "not founded on hatred," Pompeo said.

The Abraham Accords will last, he said, adding that people in Sudan, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates would not go backward.

Melanie Phillips: The return of American anti-anti-Islamism

As Pompeo observed about the DNI note:
The release of this report was reckless. It was political. It was aimed at harming a relationship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia through the use of intelligence in a way that, as a former CIA director, I would have never stood for. I regret that because this administration wants to develop a relationship with Iran and destroy one with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, they chose to use intelligence to do that.

According to US officials, by implicating MBS in Khashoggi’s killing but opting not to punish him personally the Biden administration wants to recalibrate the relationship with Saudi Arabia without destroying it. The Wall Street Journal reports that, according to President Biden’s press secretary:
as part of the recalibration of ties Mr. Biden sees the King as his counterpart, not the Crown Prince.

This is all astonishingly stupid. The King is old and barely functioning. MBS is the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. Moreover, MBS is a reformer trying to drag his country out of the dark ages. Saudi women now work, drive and travel abroad without permission of a male guardian. Previously banned cinemas have sprung up along with public entertainments such as rock concerts.

Sure, this is all small change by western standards; and the Saudi regime is still guilty of barbaric abuses of human rights. But at least MBS is pushing his country a little in the right direction. By damaging him in this way, the Biden administration has empowered his Muslim Brotherhood enemies who want to bring him down and return Saudi Arabia to an even more repressive ethos — as well as enmity against the west. What perversity is this?

The risks are that, with such cold winds once again blowing from the White House, Saudi Arabia will cosy up to Russia and China, thus destabilising the region and damaging western defences. And America will again shockingly become what it became under President Obama — anti-anti-Islamist. Which, whether the Biden administration wants this to happen or not, will put it on the side of the Islamic fanatics, whether the Sunni Muslim Brothers or the Shia “Twelvers” who are all at war with the west — and also intent upon repressing freedom-seeking Muslims everywhere.

Internationally, America is now a wasting asset. Its enemies can scarcely believe their luck — or conceal their contempt. Its allies are looking on aghast. And the Biden administration is still only six weeks old.

JCPA: Africa Is a Jihadist Playground for the Resurgent Islamic State and al-Qaeda

The presence of the extremist groups in the “jihadist belt” has destabilized the area and has had a crucial impact on the willingness of outside investors to risk huge sums in those regions at risk. The United States and France’s military presence, together with its local allies of the G5 (Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Chad), has succeeded in limiting the damage perpetrated by the Jihadist organizations but has failed to eradicate the phenomenon.

“We also see a serious regional threat from violent extremist organizations emanating from the Sahel,” warned General Townsend, head of the U.S. Army’s AFRICOM. “Security is deteriorating rapidly, with a 250% increase in VEO violence since 2018 in Burkina Faso, Mali, and western Niger. Having quickly spread from northern Mali, al-Qaida’s JNIM, ISIS-aligned groups, and other VEOs are now operating throughout the Sahel region.”9 Nevertheless, France’s President Emmanuel Macron is considering a reduction of the French military force of 5,100 in the Sahel states.10

The involvement of Western powers in the fight against jihadism is meant primarily to fight the terrorists in their own territory in the hope that it will also thwart terrorism outside Africa. However, it is unclear if this method actually protects Europe, in particular, as many attacks have been carried out by home-grown jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State.

On the other hand, it is also clear that ending the West’s war carried out in Africa against jihadism would prove fatal to shaky regimes and open the doors to terrorist activities in Europe. The example of thousands of brain-washed Europeans who volunteered to join the ranks of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria proves that there is fertile ground in Europe to sow jihadist activity exported from Africa.

Today, it is obvious that the declaration of victory against the Islamic State was erroneous. “The international community is not making durable progress in containing priority VEOs in Africa,” warned the American Army commander in Africa.11

Even though beaten and left without its territorial base following its defeat by the coalition forces in 2017, the Islamic State is still very much alive and, from time to time, reminds all concerned that it has not been vanquished.

Iran denies attacking Israeli cargo ship. Their "proof" is priceless.

As I reported on Sunday, Iranian media close to the Ayatollah Khamenei pretty much admitted that the attack on the Israeli-owned ship was done by a member of the "axis of resistance" which is led by Iran itself.

But when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu directly accused Iran of being behind the attack, Iran's Foreign Ministry denied it:

Speaking at a weekly press conference on Monday, Saeed Khatibzadeh categorically rejected the accusations made by the Zionist regime that Iran has been connected to explosions on board MV Helios Ray cargo ship.

The fact that the source of such an allegation is the Zionist regime reveals how baseless the accusation is, he stated.

There you have it, If Israel says something, it is by definition false, so therefore Iran must be innocent!

A glance at a map of the area in the Gulf of Oman where the ship was bombed shows that the only possible attacker is Iran itself. There are no Houthi frogmen laying mines or Hezbollah torpedoes in the Gulf of Oman.

Young Pharaoh is the firebrand conservative Black entertainer who was disinvited from speaking at CPAC when old antisemitic posts of his were discovered.

Last night he livestreamed a hugely antisemitic video - already seen by tens of thousands.

The centerpiece of his video is showing another video, by Rabbi Yaron Reuven of Florida. The rapper bases his hate for Jews on the stupidity that Reuven says.

First, a little about Rabbi Reuven. I do not like to denigrate my fellow Jews, but Reuven is a scam artist.

His biography on his organization's website says:

Born in Netanya, Israel, Rabbi Yaron Reuven began his American Dream as a little boy, when his family immigrated to the United States. He went from a newspaper boy at the age of 10, to a well known self made Wall Street multimillionaire by the age of 23. During his time in Wall Street he owned his own private brokerage firm, as well as a hedge fund and international insurance agency.

At age 26 he faced a 7-year battle for his life when a simple surgery went wrong. From that moment his life would never be the same. This moment marked the start of a series of miraculous events and an exciting pursuit of truth, ultimately resulting in Rabbi Reuven renouncing his lofty position and success in Wall Street, after 16 years, to become a full time kiruv rabbi. His Teshuva story is sure to catch the heart of every listener.

Reuven, who claims to be dedicated to telling the truth, is certainly stretching the truth here. His Wall Street firm had assets of only $250,000 in 2008 and $132,000 in 2011. It (and he) was expelled from FINRA in 2014. Apparently he has a relatively small dispute with two employees, who demanded that he pay them about $5000 they felt he owed them. This esteemed, moral man tried to intimidate them by countersuing them for $11 million. In the end, the court ruled in their favor for him to pay $155,000, he refused, and therefore FINRA expelled his firm.

So he went on to his next scam - being a rabbi. And as a rabbi, he likes to call other far more learned Orthodox rabbis "heretics," deserving of the death penalty.

When he is shown that his libels about these other rabbis (like the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks or Rabbi Natan Slifkin, both of whom I hold in great esteem) are false, Reuven berates the people pointing out the facts and says they need to learn more Torah. Truth is obviously not one of his strengths.

Outside of videos, I cannot find any evidence of Rabbi Reuven's scholarship. His main written record is from his days as a money manager, not as a rabbi. His other accomplishment was to harass a Boca Raton Orthodox rabbi and his wife.

Reuven made a bizarre video a couple of years ago that claims that Hitler was essentially correct in blaming Jews for Communism, pornography, homosexuality and high interest rates that hurt Germany's economy during the Great Depression. Reuven says that when Hitler finally privatized small businesses and restrained interest rates, that kickstarted Germany's economy to grow incredibly fast. This is of course absurd - Germany's economy grew by investing heavily in military spending that Hitler intended to pay for by invading and taking resources from other countries.

Young Pharaoh claims that Reuven is a major figure in Judaism today. He then uses Reuven's patently offensive and false video to say that Jews really are responsible for the evils of the world, controlling the banks, being behind Communism, and at one point he even says that Communist China learned terrorism from Israel (proving yet again that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are peas in a pod.)

YP is thrilled - he has a Jew, a "top rabbi," who agrees with his hatred of Jews! And the rapper goes even beyond Reuven's rants, blaming the Jews for keeping Blacks in poverty. He emphasizes that Reuven's idiocy justifies his own Jew-hatred, since here is a "top Jew" agreeing with him.

The rapper also said he is working on a video about the relationship between Jews and satanism.

Here is a ten minute clip where Young Pharaoh goes on his profane support of Rabbi Reuven's own defense of Hitler.

At the end, Pharaoh says "rest in peace to Adolf" - and then says he won't say which Adolf he is referring to.

Both Young Pharaoh and Rabbi Reuven are more interested in self-promotion than in doing anything moral. They gain fans by spouting out bigoted nonsense and pretending that they are straight-talking truthtellers.

It is disgusting.

Young Pharaoh's vile ravings are mainstream antisemitism in America today, eagerly consumed by hundreds of thousands of people, and excused or downplayed because the person spouting the filth is Black. Pharaoh's opinions of Jews is not much different than that of Professor Griff or the other Black entertainers who briefly enjoyed their notoriety last summer, even though YP comes from a purportedly conservative viewpoint and they came from a different place entirely. It doesn't seem to matter - Black people attacking Jews gives them credibility in their communities as being brave, and the actual content is secondary.

(h/t Ethan)

State Department spokesperson Ned Price, looking as stiff as a board, said something a little strange:

We seek to accomplish a great deal with the Saudis: to end the war in Yemen and ease Yemen’s humanitarian crisis, to use our leadership to forge ties across the region’s most bitter divide[s], whether that’s finding the way back from the brink of war with Iran, and to a meaningful regional dialogue, or forging a historic peace with Israel....But we can only address these many important challenges in a partnership with Saudi Arabia that respects America’s values.

The US has every right to condition its relationships with other countries on their human rights records. Admittedly, the fact that it is practically begging to build a relationship with Iran without any similar conditions makes this look a bit hypocritical.

But to say that the US won't try to broker peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia unless the Saudis meet certain arbitrary conditions? That is punishing Israel for Saudi Arabia's human rights posture!

All this will do is make the US irrelevant in the region, as the Israelis and Saudis will not wait for US approval to do what is in their own best interests. In fact, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain are discussing a common defense alliance.

Note that the US is not part of those discussions. This alliance would be in spite of the United States, not because of it, as the Gulf nations and Israel are wary of Biden doing what Obama did and discarding US allies in favor of coddling Iran.

03/01 Links Pt2: Anti-Semitism in Britain: Tuvia Tenenbom’s ‘The Taming of the Jew’; How You Can Respond to the Vaccine Diplomacy Libel; What will the Middle East look like in 2030?

From Ian:

David Collier: Weekend at David’s. Relentless attacks – on Jews, Zionism and Israel

The current attacks on Jewish people, Zionism and Israel are relentless. Zoom provides a cheap and easy option to hold an endless stream of events and anti-Israel activists are making the most of it. This is the story of my weekend:

Weekend – Friday night starter
On Friday night, just before I sat down to eat dinner and welcome the Shabbat with my family, I sat through a David Miller support event. There is no rational reason for supporting Miller – the professor clearly overstepped the mark in his comments on Bristol’s Jewish students. If instead of Jews, he had attacked members of the black community or British Muslim students in a similar fashion – he’d have been fired the same day. We all know this is true, but because Miller attacked Jews – he didn’t just avoid sanction – he has a support network.

The organising group for Friday’s event was ‘Labour Campaign for Free Speech‘, which like ‘Labour Against the Witchhunt’ appears to be just groups of people who want to freely attack Jews with impunity and are annoyed that currently there seems to be a price to pay for doing so.

The event was mainly attended by ‘suspended’ or expelled Labour Party members and their friends. People who in many cases were caught sharing antisemitic posts or commentary – and want to blame the ‘bad Jews’ for the situation they find themselves in. Attendees included well-known Labour antisemitism figures such as Tina Werkmann, Moshe Machover and Jonathan Rosenhead. Approximately 150 people attended in total.

The list is long. Other familiar faces included antisemitic conspiracy theorist Tony Gratrex of Palestine Live fame – and long time anti-Israel activist Tony Greenstein. It was Tony Greenstein who made the message stream the most colourful with his talk about CST and their ‘strong connections’ to the Mossad:

The speakers told the usual lies about the IHRA, spread disinformation about Labour’s antisemitism – and some made the most outrageous of remarks. The truly frightening thought is that some of these people used to be Councillors or hold posts in their local constituency party. One of them stood to be Treasurer of the Labour Party in the 2020 NEC Elections.

Anti-Semitism in Britain: Tuvia Tenenbom’s ‘The Taming of the Jew’

Tuvia Tenenbom, now in his mid-60s, is a phenomenon. Born in Israel, he lives in Germany and the United States. He is a theatre director, playwright, author, journalist and the founding artistic director of the Jewish Theater of New York. But he is best known for his irreverent, topical and hugely opinionated books including, recently, Catch the Jew! (2014), The Lies they Tell (2016), Hello, Refugees! (2017) and now, The Taming of the Jew: A Journey Through the United Kingdom (Gefen Publishing House, available on Amazon at £15.59). He deserves to be better known here and The Taming of the Jew is a perfect place to start.

Tenenbom is perhaps best described as an Israeli version of Michael Moore or Borat, someone who goes around, meets people, takes on hugely controversial subjects and gets them to open up in the way more conventional journalists don’t manage to. All those exclamation marks in the titles gives you a good sense of Tenenbom’s style.

He begins his seven-month tour of Britain and Ireland in Dublin. The first person he interviews is an Irishman, called Mike, who he has just met at lunch. “Is there one issue that unites all the Irish people? I want to know. ‘Ireland,’ Mike tells me, ‘is the most anti-Israel, anti-Jewish country in Europe…’” And we’re off. Then he meets the Lord Mayor of Dublin and in no time the Mayor is telling Tenenbom, “Irish people would have a lot of sympathy with the Palestinian people.”

The pace and the bonhomie are unrelenting. But so is the anti-Semitism. Tenenbom manages to catch people off guard with his disarming honesty and in no time they are coming out with these astonishing views about Israel, Jews and anti-Semitism. Everyone he meets in Ireland, North or South, seems to hate Israel and love the Palestinians and yet Tenenbom likes them all and enjoys everything he sees about the Irish. He puts some of these encounters online and “Irish people respond in writing”. What do they say? “Truly the Jews are a disgusting species.” “Reminds me I need to get some new lampshades, some soap too.” He’s not remotely bothered. It’s as if, unlike every mainstream journalist, he knows this is what people are like, that you don’t have to probe far under the surface to find the most appalling views about Jews and Israel. And yet the cheery bonhomie is never rattled by these encounters.

What will the Middle East look like in 2030? An Israeli Perspective

The following article addresses the question of how the Middle East might develop in the coming decade. Long-term and detailed strategic predictions are a thankless task and are often doomed to failure. One need look no further than the World Economic Forum’s report on global risks published in January 2020.1 It assessed the likelihood of an infectious disease outbreak or instability in the global energy market as relatively unlikely, even though both ended up happening less than two months after the report’s publication.

Therefore, this article refrains from attempts at prophecy but deals instead with “thinking about the future.” It opens with an analytical framework for scenario development, supplemented by “trends impact” and “horizon scanning.” The second section studies “the futures of the past,” in terms of what we might learn about the pitfalls of future projection and scenario-building from those outlining possible futures for 2020 from years past. Then, on the basis of the first two sections, four scenarios elaborate some distinctly different pathways that the Middle East might take to 2030. Finally, the article concludes with several key takeaways for Israeli decision makers. Read the report (PDF)

This isn't even parody.

Al-Arab op-ed: Iraq should normalize relations with Israel

The normalization train keeps going. This is a particularly strong piece in Al Arab (UK) by University of Brussels professor Saif Sham that notes that Arab anti-normalization positions are often just antisemitism.

What Sabah Al-Saadi proposed with a law criminalizing normalization with the Zionist entity is surprising. For those who do not know him, he is a deputy in the Iraqi parliament, and yet he does not distinguish between the Zionist entity, the state of Israel and its people, and the Jews, as he spoke in the text of his proposed law about “the criminalization of normalization with the Zionist entity that usurped the Palestinian lands in any way”.

The Saadi Law, in its form and clauses, is an oppressive and arbitrary law, which calls for the death penalty, and encourages the spread of individual dictatorship among judges, each of them practicing it according to their liking. For example, what does Al-Saadi mean by the State of Israel? This country contains many nationalities, ethnicities and religions. Nevertheless, it overlooks the existence of Israeli Muslim Arabs who live in this country and hold its nationality and passport. Is this group also included in the normalization law, and it is forbidden for us to deal with them?

Iraq needs normal relations with Israel for the clear reason that large numbers of Israeli Jews are of Iraqi origin.

Establishing relations with Israel is a natural matter for Iraq and the Iraqis, while Al-Saadi calls by his law to ostracize the Iraqi Jews, not recognize them, and strip more of their rights, as stated in Article 17.

This is a law that violates the freedom of a large segment of Iraqis, breaks ties of kinship, friendship and love between members of the Iraqi people, and ignores the size of the relations between the Iraqi people inside Iraq and the Jews of Iraq.

According to this law, the death penalty applies to everyone who prints, publishes, sells, and even whoever buys or reads any of the books of the Iraqi Jews who have made a major contribution to building Iraq from the dawn of time to modern Iraq that was established after the First World War.

Al-Saadi wants to fight and cut ties with institutions that promote normalization, so does he mean by that to close embassies, such as the US embassy and others, for example, under the pretext that their countries encourage normalization, so that we end a situation in which Iraq becomes isolated from the world?

Article 17 states that “the Tourism and Antiquities Authority prohibits any foreign tourist activities aimed at promoting or normalizing with the Zionist entity through the exploitation of Jewish antiquities in Iraq.”

Looting the property and rights of others is the language of the mob, who understand nothing in the language of dialogue except bloodshed, displacement, and the looting of property. Al-Saadi calls for a second “Farhood” that recalls the acts of violence and looting that broke out in Baghdad and targeted the city's Jewish residents on June 1, 1941, and overthrows the remaining hope for the return of the Iraqis to their land to which they belonged for more than 2,500 years.

The properties of the Iraqi Jews were plundered and their features were distorted, as happened in the Shamash School, which was established in 1929, which was a secondary school for the Jewish elite due to its high level of education. It was founded by Yaakov Shlomo Shamash in Baghdad, and in 1930 it attracted more than 900 students. Literature and the English language were studied in depth. This great cultural edifice was confiscated to be converted into a regular school under the name “The Message”, and then it became a car park.

This also happened in Basra, the house of Yosef Karah, which was demolished in 1999 to turn into a dump, and the house of Moshe Tuwaiq, an architectural masterpiece, which today has become a mere medical clinic.

It seems that Al-Saadi wants to continue the acts of vandalism committed against the heritage and history of Iraqi Jews. He also wants to return the execution scenes that Iraqis used to see being carried out in public squares. With his proposed law, Al-Saadi wants to return these gallows to be use for all who dared praise the Jews of Iraq.

03/01 Links Pt1: Obama offered Syria an Israeli withdrawal from Golan Heights; The UN Should Protect Human Rights, Not Human Rights Abusers; When an Emirati and an Israeli diplomat meet

From Ian:

Report: Obama offered Syria an Israeli withdrawal from Golan Heights

Just a few months before the Syrian civil war erupted in March of 2011, the Barack Obama administration offered the Assad regime an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights in return for severing ties with Iran and Hezbollah, the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Sunday.

According to the report, which was relayed to the newspaper by senior American and Syrian officials who were involved in the negotiations at the time, the talks reached an advanced stage and the sides had even prepared a document for signing.

The talks involved then-American envoy Frederic Hof, the paper said, along with ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

As stated, the proposals in the draft agreement included Damascus' abandoning of "military relations" with Tehran and Hezbollah in exchange for the Israeli withdrawal from the Golan towards the June 4 border.

Asharq Al-Awsat is a Saudi-owned newspaper and often reflects the official government position. It's possible the timing of the report is not coincidental and was intended to pressure Washington on the Iranian nuclear program.

The report was not confirmed by any official source in the US or Syria, but does somewhat coincide with claims made by another former US secretary of state, John Kerry, in his book "Every Day Is Extra."

The final meeting between Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hof took place on February 28, 2011, the report said, at the height of the Arab Spring uprising that had already toppled regimes in Libya and Egypt and had just begun spreading to Damascus.

Amb. Dore Gold: Insufficient Diplomatic Strength to Stop Iran

A new Iranian law mandated by the parliament has cut back the monitoring of the Iranian nuclear program. There would be no more "snap inspections" by the West on Iranian facilities.

With Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declaring that Iran's uranium enrichment levels would no longer be limited to 20%, and adding, "We may even increase enrichment to 60%," Tehran is now on a path to get closer to an atomic bomb than ever before.

When the West created an arrangement with Saddam Hussein at the end of the First Gulf War that sought to address his weapons of mass destruction, they included all ballistic missiles above a range of 150 km. But the JCPOA did not touch Iran's missile capabilities. There is no indication that this is now going to be remedied.

The JCPOA was built around the assumption that Iranian behavior would become more moderate as a consequence of the easing of economic sanctions. But the relaxing of sanctions on Iran did not moderate its regional behavior. The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change reported in February 2021: "The number of militias created by the IRGC surged."

Iranian expansionism spread in this period to areas which are not thought to be within its sphere of influence. Its support for the Houthi guerrillas in Yemen gave it a strategic presence along the Bab al-Mandeb Strait that connected the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Iran began working with the Polisario in the Western Sahara, basing themselves in Algeria. Iran was operating far away from the Persian Gulf.

What was needed was a robust response by the West to these Iranian actions. In the past month alone, Iranian proxies rocketed an American facility in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as a civilian airport in Saudi Arabia. True, the U.S. hit back at an Iraqi militia stationed just over the border in Syria. But without a consistent American policy of striking back, the Iranians will not internalize the U.S. message. There was no indication that the U.S. and Europe understand what they are facing.

The UN Should Protect Human Rights, Not Human Rights Abusers

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Wednesday that the United States will seek membership at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in January 2022 as part of the Biden administration's commitment to "putting human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy."

To be sure, the United States is at its best when it strives to model human rights at home and stand up for those principles abroad. And when Washington leads and assembles like-minded countries to advance international human rights together, we are more likely to succeed.

Accordingly, it would seem to be an easy decision for the United States to join the UNHRC. But that is not necessarily the case. To understand why, it is worth considering what the UNHRC has become.

The UNHRC certainly includes countries and individuals of good faith who are dedicated, sincere advocates for human rights. Unfortunately, they have allowed it to be increasingly coopted by countries that do not share a genuine commitment to human rights.

To escape unwanted attention or consequences for their illicit activities, criminal syndicates may attempt to control the local police department. That is not unlike what happens today at the UNHRC. The world's worst human rights abusers, such as China, have sought membership on the UNHRC to shield and enable their own egregious human rights abuses, seeking to shift attention elsewhere.

Take a moment to let that sink in. China has detained upwards of a million Uighur Muslims in what Blinken himself has described as a "genocide." China has violently suppressed pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and continues to occupy Tibet. Yet China sits on the United Nations Human Rights Council.

If the Biden administration is successful in gaining membership at the UNHRC in 2022, China is not the only authoritarian human rights abuser the U.S. delegation will find around the UNHRC table.

Recent Jew-hatred in schools worldwide

This was a particularly bad past couple of weeks. Antisemitism is getting more and more mainstream from every direction on campus and schools.

Here's a list of recent events:

A student at Tufts University, Max Price, suffered months of harassment for his opposition to a Students for Justice in Palestine initiative to create a referendum to pledge not to have Tufts employees go on any Israeli security programs.

Price’s lawyers, who are from the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, claim that Price endured a months-long campaign of intimidation, harassment and discrimination for speaking against SJP’s attempt to include the referendum on the ballot.

The harassment included Price having to sit through meetings by Tufts student-government leadership questioning his personal beliefs and identity as a pro-Israel Jew, according to the lawyers. Even after the TCUJ determined that there was no evidence of bias and no need for Price to recuse himself, he was placed on “mute” for the entire final Zoom meeting when TCUJ members considered the referendum.

“They wanted me to back down and to silence me, and when I didn’t, SJP expanded their campaign to slander me in the student newspaper, had me interrogated numerous times as to whether I was fit to hold office, attacked me with age-old anti-Semitic tropes about money and power, threatened me with impeachment, and now, I’m being denied a fair trial,” he said.

SJP tried to have Price removed from office, but dropped the attempt after Price's lawyers got involved. Yet the school not once defended Price from months of harassment.

From Germany:

Students at an elite German university fraternity regularly greeted each other with the words “Heil Hitler” and used the word “Jew” as a pejorative, according to one of its former members in explosive revelations published this week by the German newsmagazine Spiegel
The fraternity in question — Normannia — has been under German police investigation following an outrage at a party held by its Heidelberg University members at their mansion on Aug. 29, 2020. A 25-year-old student in attendance who spoke about his Jewish ancestry was berated with antisemitic abuse, whipped with belts and pelted with metal coins by several assailants.

Massachusetts:

School Committee member Robert Hoey Jr., who referred to a former administrator at the Lowell Public Schools as a “kike” on live cable access TV on Wednesday, announced his resignation on Friday in a video posted on Facebook.

Hoey, who hosts the morning show “City Life” on Lowell Telecommunications Corporation cable access Channel 8, made the statement on the live program at around 6:35 a.m. while discussing school personnel. “We lost the kike, I mean the Jewish guy. I hate to say it but that’s what people used to say behind his back – Gary Frisch … He was the guy in charge of our budget,” said Hoey.

From the UK:

About 200 academics from the United Kingdom and the United States have signed a petition defending a British university lecturer who had called Jewish students on his campus “pawns” of Israel, “a violent, racist, foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing.”
Jewish groups and organizations have protested the remarks by David Miller, a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, made during an online videoconference Feb. 13. Some have called for his ouster.
“Prof Miller is an eminent scholar. He is known internationally for exposing the role that powerful actors and well-resourced, co-ordinated networks play in manipulating and stage-managing public debates, including on racism,” the petition read.

At Columbia University, the Young Democratic Socialists of America have tied a popular tuition strike with BDS:

The tuition strikers are now prioritizing that the school reject what they call an “ongoing system of settler colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid” and comply with “the results of future referendums relating to investment decisions.”

This attempt to strong-arm the university into accepting the results of a controversial referendum by tying it to a far more popular cause—a tuition strike in the midst of a global emergency—is shameful. It has also alienated many students who would otherwise be supportive of the Young Democratic Socialists’ tuition strike.

As Adi Mayer, a sophomore at Barnard College, explained: “Students for Justice in Palestine’s intricate involvement in the tuition strike, and their efforts to use it to disguise the promotion of BDS, exclude me as an Israeli and Jewish student from participating in a cause I would otherwise believe in.”

Danielle Serota, a junior at Columbia, expressed a similar view: “I feel alienated by the tuition strike because it argues for some issues that so many of my friends and myself relate to and support but then strategically ties them together with a clause that directly harms me and others in my community.”

Miles Rubin, an Israeli citizen and sophomore at Columbia, went further, saying that he “supported the tuition strike at first.”

“I felt the cause was just and still do. We have legitimate grievances with the university [and] the strike was an opportunity to unite all the students.”

Because of this, Rubin was taken aback by an email from the tuition-strike coalition, sent on December 22, which stated that instead of “investing in fossil fuels and companies enabling apartheid in Palestine, Columbia should invest in its students and workers.”

As Rubin said, “I was pretty alarmed, and completely put off by what was said, as a Jew and as a citizen of Israel.”

Sweden:

The small number of Jewish children attending public schools in the Swedish city of Malmo experience “widespread antisemitism,” according to a new study published by the municipal authorities this week.

Fourteen Jewish children and 26 teachers were interviewed for the report, titled “Schoolyard racism, exclusion and conspiracy theories.” Speaking about the study’s conclusions to Swedish national television, Sarah Wettergren — chair of the Malmo Council’s primary school committee — stated that “we now have it in black and white that antisemitism is widespread in our schools.”

Netherlands:

A swastika is carved into the doorframe of a Jewish student’s house in the Dutch city of Maastricht and the mezuzah is torn off.

The Maastricht University student discovers the damage to his mezuzah, an object containing scripture on parchment that Jews affix to their doorframes, and makes a police complaint, the Netherlands chapter of the StandWithUs pro-Israel group writes in a statement.

The antisemitism on campus today becomes the mainstream Jew-hatred by the leaders of tomorrow.

(h/t Andrew Pessin)

Lebanese politicians and media are saying that the massive oil spill that is now polluting beaches along the Israeli and Lebanese coasts is a result of "Israeli environmental aggression."

A deputy in the Lebanese Parliament, Inaya Ezz El-Din, said that "the large amount of tar that spread on the shores of southern Lebanon as a result of the Israeli environmental aggression on them is estimated at about two tons."

Hezbollah's Al Manar said that the the spill came from an "oil spill from a tanker belonging to the Israeli enemy near the shores of occupied Palestine."

Jordan's Roya News similarly said the leak came from an "Israeli Occupation ship's leak." It credited AFP with the story but AFP didn't write that.

If anything bad happens, many people assume it must be the Jews' fault.

Meanwhile, Israel is trying to find the source for the spill, and it has investigated a number of oil ships that were in the Mediterranean without finding a culprit yet out of dozens of suspected sources.

Greenpeace says that there are as many as twelve oil spills in the Mediterranean visible from satellite images in the days before the slick hit Israel's shores. They could be from tankers or from exploratory wells.

Politico reported on Friday:

A State Department official for several years has been publicly calling for the establishment of Christian nation-states, warning that white people face “elimination” and railing against Jews as well as Black Lives Matter and other social movements.

Fritz Berggren, a mid-ranking Foreign Service officer, openly uses his name and image as he espouses these and other controversial views, according to a review of his online postings. Current and former State Department officials noted the connection to POLITICO in recent days.

“Jesus Christ came to save the whole world from the Jews — the founders of the original Anti-Christ religion, they who are the seed of the Serpent, that brood of vipers,” states an Oct. 4 blog post signed “Fritz Berggren, PhD” and titled “Jews are Not God’s Chosen People. Judeo-Christian is Anti-Christ.”

“They murdered Jesus Christ,” the 5,300-word post continues, “How then can they be God’s chosen?”

The site is truly twisted.

Here's an excerpt of one post from mid-February where he rails about the evil of Jews and Israel, to prove yet again that there is no difference between Jew-haters and Israel-haters.

There are Jews out there who may want to take the above say “Fritz inspires violence against the Jews!” Such hypocrites they are. They who stoned the prophets and killed the messengers and crucified Jesus Christ. How well they play the victim. They will say “people like you inspired the Holocaust!” Hypocrites that they are — the Jews would gladly holocaust entire nations (as long as they are not Jewish) with their nuclear weapons — and they have said as much. Again they will say, “Fritz’s ideas justify violence against the Jews!” Hypocrites — Jews have an easy time justifying violence against anyone not their own people — go ask the Arabs in their neighborhood.

Again, the Jews are hypocrites — they reserve unto themselves the rights to do and say what they condemn in others for doing. It is an institutional hypocrisy far deeper than a personal hypocrisy, which is common among all men. They encourage open borders in Europe and America and build walls for themselves. Non-Jews are only permitted to come and spend their shekels in Israel and leave again. They know very well that mixing peoples and languages and religions leads only to weakness – that is why they promote it in countries but forbid it in their state of Israel. Jewish organizations promote contempt toward anyone who dares point this out. They have been so effective that even the Christian church has been seduced by their traditions of men.

The Jews (in the religious sense, which extends far beyond those attending a synagogue) will come to a very bad end. They are the tree that will be burned with fire that John warned about. They are the tares that shall be burned at the end of the age. They are those who shall not escape the sentence of hell according to Jesus.

How lovely.

He claims he doesn't want anyone to physically attack Jews, yet he is saying the exact same stuff that the Pittsburgh Tree of Life murderer said.

Or how about this post from Sunday:

Jewish Fragility refers to feelings of discomfort a Jewish person experiences when they witness discussions around race and theology. This may trigger anger, fear, guilt, and violence. Some Jews may become insecure when other people groups claim privileges that Jew people enjoy.

Manifestations of Jewish fragility commonly include accusing others of what they do themselves. These include, but are not limited to:
Inventing a social sin that only applies to non-Jews (anti-semitism).
The privilege of their own racial homeland while accusing others of a social sin (racism) for seeking the same privilege.
Establishing organizations promoting the interests of their own race while denying that privilege to others, specifically Whites.
Violence toward those who do not submit to religious, historical, and cultural narratives promoted by the Jews.

Isn't that rich? A proud Jew-hater who says Jews made up antisemitism. Someone whose philosophy has been used to justify murdering millions of Jews saying Jews are the ones who are responsible for violence. And he claims that Jews are the ones doing the projection!

And this is in post after post, along with videos.

And he recently wrote this post that may or may not be referring to Jews, but it sure doesn't sound non-violent to me.

You don’t have to live under THEIR rules.
Break them.
Break them hard.
Anger them.
Defile their sanctuaries.
Tread on their unholy saints.

Politico goes on:

The State Department’s options for addressing Berggren’s online postings may be limited.

There are rules that govern diplomats’ on- and off-duty behavior that could be grounds for punishment or dismissal in similar instances — rules that can differ based on whether a person is serving overseas or in the United States. But the federal government, for First Amendment reasons, is not supposed to dictate its employees’ religious views.

So right-wing antisemitism is a protected religious viewpoint. Left wing antisemitism is protected political speech.

But if someone tried to use those same arguments protecting racist speech, I suspect that it wouldn't be nearly as well accepted.