Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, June 05, 2021

06/05 Links: Six Day War: When Israel reclaimed Jerusalem, its eternal capital; State Department Shuns Term ‘Abraham Accords’; Apartheid libel is a cover to target Jews; Does Google really understand racism?

From Ian:

Six Day War: When Israel reclaimed Jerusalem, its eternal capital

It was Begin who set in motion the final act. He had been overruled in the cabinet the night before when he called for an immediate attack on the Old City. Waking from a troubled sleep, he tuned into the BBC. The lead news item was about a Middle East ceasefire that the Security Council was planning to call this day. Begin telephoned Dayan and said “we can’t wait anymore.”

Dayan agreed. At 5:30 a.m. Narkiss was contacted by Dayan’s deputy, Gen. Haim Bar-Lev. The paratroopers were to attack the Old City as soon as possible. The cabinet had not yet approved, he said, but there was no doubt that it would in a telephone poll. Any lingering ambiguity had been cast aside by the fast-moving developments.

The departure of Haza’a’s force spared the paratroopers who broke through Lion’s Gate at 10 a.m. a bloody fight. (Two Israelis would be killed inside the walls in skirmishes with a scattering of Jordanian soldiers who had remained behind.)

When Dayan arrived on the Temple Mount he ordered that an Israeli flag raised by soldiers on the Dome of the Rock be taken down. He would shortly order de facto control of the Temple Mount returned to the Muslim religious authorities.

At the Western Wall, Dayan read a statement to the press: “We have returned to the holiest of our sites and will never again be separated from it. To our Arab neighbors, Israel extends the hand of peace; and to the peoples of all faiths we guarantee full freedom of worship and of religious rights. We have come not to conquer the holy places of others, nor to diminish their religious rights, but to ensure the unity of the city and to live in it with others in harmony.”

Though generous and statesmanlike, Dayan’s words meant that the Old City would not be relinquished.

A committee consisting of senior civil servants and a general was appointed to draw up Jerusalem’s new eastern boundary. Three weeks after the war, the Knesset adopted their recommendations, annexing 28 square miles that included land belonging to two dozen Arab villages.

Overnight, Israeli Jerusalem tripled in size and Jordanian Jerusalem ceased to exist. The annexed area was carved out primarily on the basis of security, not sanctity. Choosing high ground, the planners created a buffer to serve – militarily and demographically – should war threaten again from the east.

What had been Jordanian Jerusalem, including the half-mile square Old City and the Mount of Olives, constituted only 6% of the land taken. But the walled entity, with its ramparts and holy places, would remain the heart of Jerusalem, harboring narratives capable of inspiring both sublime contemplation and rocket wars. Jerusalem’s Arabs and Jews would begin praying in proximity while jostling for position at the gateway to heaven.

Israel’s raid on Osirak, 40 years on

The pilots, along with Israel Air Force Maj.-Gen. David Ivri and IDF chief of staff Rafael “Raful” Eitan, clustered at Etzion Air Base prior to the strike, dubbed Operation Babylon (also known as Operation Opera). It was the eve of Shavuot. The pilots were briefed. The six F-15s and eight F-16s flew the complex mission over Saudi Arabia, entering Iraq from the miles of open desert that form the boundary between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. They had to fly low, some 100-150 feet from the desert landscape. While the F-15s used radar and electronic counter-measures, the F-16s continued their bomb run to the reactor southwest of Baghdad.

There were other obstacles as well. Jordan’s King Hussein, according to reports, saw the F-16s pass over and a warning was sent to Iraq according to a 2012 Air Force Magazine report. It was just after 4 p.m. and the reactor was to be struck at sunset. Radio silence had to be maintained and the pilots had to avoid Saudi early warning systems operating to the south. There was a larger context here. At the time, controversy had grown in the US over sales of F-15 enhancements to Saudi Arabia and AWACS radar planes. Such advanced aircraft were not in the hands of Riyadh yet.

The mission’s success not only gave Israeli additional military respect around the world, it also aided deterrence. It once again proved its capabilities for using the latest aircraft. Ford notes that “the IAF used the F-15, designed for long-range detection and air superiority, in its optimal role: protecting strikers as they dropped their munitions. Similarly, the IAF used the F-16 in its optimal role as a strike fighter against heavily defended targets. Israel was the only nation in the region that possessed these aircraft and tactical knowledge about their optimal use.”

Today Israel is pioneering uses for the F-35, having received two dozen of the aircraft in two squadrons, with the plan to acquire up to 75 of the planes.

The raid on Osirak was a watershed moment. It changed the region and ushered in a new era of Israeli dominance. Where once Israel’s military abilities were contested by conventional militaries like Egypt and Syria, by the 1980s and 1990s Israel would possess the strongest most capable military in the region.

But that hasn’t changed the equation when it comes to non-conventional weapons, such as nuclear weapons or Iran’s missiles and drones, the kind Hamas has used recently. Israel’s use of advanced warplanes, such as the F-15 and F-16 and now F-35, isn’t a magic wand to win wars.

Dangerous facilities, such as Syria’s nuclear reactor that was destroyed in 2007, can be stopped – but more threats will emerge.

Apartheid libel is a cover to target Jews

WHAT DOES it mean when someone libels Israel by comparing it to the abject evil of South African apartheid? It does a few things simultaneously: it legitimizes opinions hostile toward Israel’s existence that would otherwise be unacceptable in popular discourse regarding other liberal democracies, appropriates actual oppression under apartheid in South Africa, whitewashes and justifies violence against Israelis in the name of “self-defense,” and contributes to the widespread sense of perpetual victimhood found throughout Palestinian communities.

This claim to violence as a defensive measure is particularly dubious. The legitimacy of violence as a form of protest has long been disputed as it undermines democracy at the altar of the mob. In some contexts, it’s been used to justify attacks on police in the US, in others, to weaponize children against Israel. Of course, the immorality of indiscriminate violence poses a big problem for proponents of this kind of political expression, but in the context of Palestinian “armed resistance,” something else is at play. If a group justifies its use of violence as an act of defense, but lies about what prompted said defense, all that’s left is the violence.

One example of such a false claim belongs to Khulood Badawi, one of the researchers who contributed to the currently circulating HRW document. In 2012, Badawi, a staff member of the Jerusalem branch of the UN Office of Coordinated Humanitarian Affairs at the time, posted a picture on social media of a deceased and bloodied Palestinian six-year-old girl being held by her father accompanied by a caption: “Palestine is bleeding. Another child killed by Israel.” As it turned out, the picture was taken six years earlier than claimed, and the cause of the heart-wrenching tragedy was an accident entirely unrelated to any Israeli military action.

However, this type of dishonesty did not stop Mohammed Merah from murdering three Jewish children under the age of 10, and their father at Ozar Hatorah school in France a week later. He claimed to have been partially motivated by the fact that “the Jews have killed our brothers and sisters in Palestine.” While there’s no exact causal link between Badawi’s lie and Merah’s actions, Merah’s chilling words underscore that incitement can be a motivating factor for violence in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict. This tragedy epitomizes most, if not all, lies told about Israel. It’s no surprise that Badawi has found a home at HRW and had a hand in crafting their piece about Israel’s non-existent apartheid.

THIS KIND of dishonesty was not lost on me as I attended a Students for Justice in Palestine rally at Colorado College. It was May 15, the same day Hamas was raining down its many murder-attempt rockets at dense population centers on and around Tel Aviv. For 40 minutes, I listened to SJP members parrot the apartheid libel and others like Badawi’s to a small, enthusiastically empathetic crowd of students and professors. I was given a QR code to a resource page filled not only with links to organizations that have been unmasked as dishonest instigators of violence against Jewish people inside Israel and out, and a handful of organizations that have a history of working with US-designated terrorist groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), but also encourages activists to proclaim that “There is only one solution: Intifada, Revolution.”

All this while the frequency of attacks on Jewish people from self-proclaimed “pro-Palestine” activists worldwide in places like NYC, Toronto, and basically all of Europe have risen dramatically in the past few weeks. I’m reminded of the push to have a plane hijacker speak directly to students at SFSU last year and the effect that such an environment has on its Jewish students. I wonder how long it will be until Jewish Coloradoans are targeted, considering SJP promulgates violent ideologies on their campuses unabated. Colorado College, is this what you want for your Jewish students?

Thank you @RepRitchie for standing with Israel!

“Israel is held to a double standard. I ask people, ‘ask yourself a simple question, if you and your neighbors were the target of 4,000 rockets, what would you expect your government to do?’”https://t.co/QjUa8OQSgB
— AIPAC (@AIPAC) June 5, 2021

06/04 Links Pt2: Bobby Kennedy’s Admiration for Israel; Melanie Phillips: Facing a tsunami of antisemitism, diaspora Jews cling to their bubble

From Ian:

Bobby Kennedy’s Admiration for Israel

In the months between his graduation from Harvard in the spring of 1948 and his enrollment in the University of Virginia Law School in the fall of that year, Bobby Kennedy embarked on an overseas trip at the urging of his father. Through the elder Kennedy’s Boston connections, the 22-year-old aspiring attorney landed a reporting job with the Boston Post. There, Kennedy convinced his editors to let him report from the Middle East on the Arab-Israeli war.

Kennedy arrived in early April and spent a few weeks in war-torn Palestine. From there, he wrote four very vivid and wide-ranging articles. He left Palestine before Ben-Gurion’s May 14th declaration of Israeli statehood and returned through Europe to the United States.

In early June, after Israel was established and diplomatically recognized by the major powers, the articles were published in a series under the byline “Robert Kennedy, Special Writer for the Post.” In the first article, under the headline “British Hatred by Both Sides,” RFK labored mightily to present the arguments of both Arabs and Jews. “There are such well-founded arguments on either side,” Kennedy wrote, “that each side grows more and more bitter toward the other. Confidence in their right increases in proportion to the hatred and mistrust for the other side not acknowledging it.”

In the subsequent three articles, however, RFK and his Boston Post editors no longer attempted to convey an objective view of the competing claims of Jews and Arabs. As the headline on his June 4th article indicates, RFK chose a side: “Jews Have a Fine Fighting Force—Make Up for Lack of Arms With Undying Spirit, Unparalleled Courage—Impress the World.” The article gets directly to the point: “The Jewish people in Palestine who believe in and have been working toward this national state have become an immensely proud and determined people. It is already a truly great modern example of the birth of a nation with the primary ingredients of dignity and self-respect.” Many similar articles appeared in the American press of the day. The surprising thing about these Boston Post articles was not their pro-Zionist sentiments, but the fact that they had been written by Joseph P. Kennedy’s son.

Melanie Phillips: Facing a tsunami of antisemitism, diaspora Jews cling to their bubble

The problem isn’t just the appalling number of Jews who believe the lies about Israel. The deeper issue is the desperate desire of Diaspora Jews to “fit in” with the surrounding society.

In Britain, missing the point that the country’s entire establishment is running scared from Islamist extremism, they are now shocked to find the police standing by when Muslims publicly scream for the murder of Jews.

In America, terror of being thought Islamophobic, anti-Black Lives Matter or anti-Palestinian—thus alienating the Democratic Party and the all-powerful liberal cultural elite—has similarly paralyzed most of the Jewish community in their response to the attacks. They, too, are behaving like rabbits caught in the headlights.

The correct response by Jewish community leaders to the anti-Semitism onslaught would be to call out the factors driving it. Jewish leaders should be pointing out the lie that Israeli residence in Judea and Samaria is illegal. They should be producing the copious evidence that exists of Palestinian Nazi-style anti-Semitism. They should be accusing anyone who supports the Palestinian Arab cause of supporting genocidal, racist fanaticism.

Yet from Diaspora Jewish community leaders, there has been on these crucial matters only silence.

The problem isn’t just the appalling number of Jews who believe the lies about Israel. The deeper issue is the desperate desire of Diaspora Jews to “fit in” with the surrounding society.

They refuse to acknowledge the full enormity of what’s happening because it would force them to confront what they have constructed an entire social framework to deny—that they will always be regarded as “the Jew” in society, as the ultimate outsider. And the toleration of them will always be conditional.

This was recently spelled out with brutal clarity when Aaron Keyak, the Biden administration’s “Jewish engagement director,” told American Jews: “It pains me to say this, but if you fear for your life or physical safety, take off your kippah and hide your Star of David.”

The majority of American Jews have bought into liberal universalism and rejected Jewish nationhood. For British Jews, minhag anglia (“English custom”) means never rocking the cultural boat. These trembling Diaspora Israelites don’t even realize that they are feeding the beast that intends to devour them. Their Jewish identity will not survive the experience.

British Actor Stephen Fry Praises ‘Brilliant’ Essay Calling Israel an Embarrassment to Jews

Jewish British actor and comedian Stephen Fry shared on Thursday what he described as a “brilliant” essay that bashed Israel and described the country as an embarrassment to Jews.

“It’s hard for me to think of the State of Israel as anything but a shanda fir di goyim … a Jew that embarrassed the Jews, and thus justified Gentile persecution and hate,” wrote 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning author Benjamin Moser in an essay published on his Substack newsletter on Tuesday, titled “A trip to Hebron.”

Fry posted on Twitter on Thursday a link to the essay and wrote, “This is quite brilliant, as Benjamin Moser so often is. Aside from being a wonderful piece of writing in itself, it has clarified so much for me.”

Moser, who is Jewish, started his essay by recalling a trip to Israel five years ago for the Palestine Festival of Literature and his visit to Hebron. The Houston-born author said that when his parents were growing up, “Jim Crow was the law of the land in our state,” referring to the laws that enforced racial segregation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the US.

“Yet Hebron felt worse to me than anything I’d read about Jim Crow. Worse than apartheid — a word that is now, finally, being applied to Palestine,” he added. “The restrictions on Palestinian life — starting with the simple ability to walk down the street — are so suffocating that you can’t quite believe you’re not in some grotesque movie. The Palestinians have no citizenship, and nowhere to go: if they leave the Occupied Territories, they become stateless refugees. And if they stay — well, their lives are restricted in ways that are very hard to imagine. Imagine the COVID lockdowns, but for your entire life, generation after generation, and with no vaccine on its way.”

Jewish Palestine's competing political parties, 1921

One hundred years ago The Hebrew Standard of June 3, 1921 published in its weekly British Jewish news column the details of the various Jewish political parties in Palestine.

They were as diverse as the ones in Israel today.

I just saw a 58 page paper published by Oxfam last year about what the PA and Hamas (barely mentioned) could do to reduce poverty,

Buried deep within this document is a very mild criticism of Hamas quoting an unnamed development expert in Gaza:

The policies of the de facto authorities in Gaza are not conducive to economic growth and development. Their export and import policies, as well as discriminatory policies in terms of distribution of land, subsidies, external funding and investment opportunities, are all leading to the demise of small businesses, small farmers and fishers. In contrast, there is no room for advocacy with the government given the limitations placed on civil society or to influence positive change on behalf of those who are victims of these policies.

This is an exceedingly polite way to say that Hamas gives out favors to its members and friends and doesn't give a damn about actual people under its control, who have no recourse - they cannot vote Hamas out, they cannot protest without being arrested.

Elsewhere in this report, Oxfam mentions that Hamas employees are incompetent, possibly because the jobs are given out as favors: "[N]ew staff of the de facto authorities in Gaza have very limited

experience and capacities. "

Occasionally, an NGO will throw in a "we condemn indiscriminate Hamas rockets" in order to justify their obsessive focus on finding faults with Israel. Here, however, we see a rare counterexample where the unnamed Hamas is being called out for corruption, in a report that hardly anyone will ever read.

People say that their fanatical insults of Israel is "legitimate criticism." Where is the legitimate criticism of a terror group that controls all aspects of the lives of two million people? How come the news media that has reporters all over Gaza never bothers to report on Hamas corruption, its giving land and jobs to friends?

Media bias is obvious when you look for what's missing.

(h/t Irene)

06/04 Links Pt1: Judea Pearl: How Did Hamas Become the Darling of the West?; Tackling the myth of Israel’s ‘disproportionate response’; Israel’s Potential Post-Netanyahu Government, Explained

From Ian:

Judea Pearl: How Did Hamas Become the Darling of the West?

And this brings me to 2021 and to the latest war in Gaza. To the New York Times front page depicting the victims of Israel’s defense operation, as if they had never heard the word “Hamas” or read Hamas’s charter. To CNN’s anchor Fareed Zakaria asserting that Israel is a military superpower, hence Hamas does not pose an existential threat to it. To NYT analyst Nicholas Kristof asserting (in an interview with Bill Maher) that Israel, too, positions its military headquarters among civilians. To UCLA Department of Asian American Studies stating (on its official University website) its “Solidarity with Palestine” and its authoritative understanding that such “violence and intimidation are but the latest manifestation of seventy-three years of settler colonialism, racial apartheid, and occupation.”

To the Statement of scholars of Jewish Studies and Israel Studies from various universities who, in the Forward,condemned “the state violence that the Israeli government and its security forces have been carrying out in Gaza.” To members of If Not Now, saying Kaddish for fallen Hamas fighters (among other victims). And, finally, to the mob roaming the streets of Los Angeles and shouting, “Honk, Honk, From the River to the Sea.”

Looking back on the past 12 years, there is no question that Hamas has gained a major uplift in status and respectability. It has become, in fact, the darling of the West. True, seasoned commentators remember to add the obligatory, “We are not condoning Hamas, of course, but…”

“But what?” I ask.

Doesn’t Fareed Zakaria imply that it is not the end of the world if 300,000 Israeli children continue to bleed sleeplessly for another 20 years under Hamas rockets? Didn’t Nicholas Kristof imply that if those children suffer post-traumatic scars for the rest of their lives that it is Israel’s problem because Israel, too, positions its headquarters in civilian areas? Western analysts will go to any absurd lengths to fabricate symmetry between Israel and Hamas, because symmetry is our new goddess of right and wrong.

But let’s not forget that it all started in academia, with a herd of passionate intellectuals who managed to hijack the name of their academic institution, which hardly cared. Do not blame them. After all, intellectuals are trained to cheer their peers when the marching band starts playing, and academic institutions are too slow to understand what is being done in their names. Sadly, as Ionesco understood so well, we are all herd-honking organisms. Please take another look at the rhinos roaming the streets of Los Angeles, here, and see for yourself how hard it is to hold back and not join them with: Honk, Honk!

Tackling the myth of Israel’s ‘disproportionate response’

Turning from theory to practice, how is the principle of proportionality affected when instead of protecting its civilians, Hamas intentionally conducts its military activity from within densely populated areas? How is Israel expected to protect its major cities from Hamas rockets, when these rockets are developed, built and launched from within the Gazan civilian population? What does international law require Israel, a law-abiding state, to do, when facing Hamas’ unlawful tactics that endanger the people of Gaza and Israeli civilians?

The Law of Armed Conflict clearly states that when a civilian presence is used to shield military objectives from attacks, that presence does not grant the target immunity. So when Hamas commits the double war crime of attacking Israeli children, schools and airports from within its own civilian population, any objective analysis of the situation would be distorted if Hamas’s criminal behaviour is not taken into account.

Despite Hamas’s blatant disregard for the law or its citizens’ wellbeing, Israel takes every feasible precaution to prevent or at least minimise harm to the Palestinian civilian population, often at the cost of operational advantage. In doing so, Israel employs precautions that exceed the requirements of international law and surpasses practices commonly employed by advanced militaries of western states. Fighting a reckless enemy that deliberately abuses the Law of Armed Conflict in the most cynical way raises grave challenges for Israeli soldiers. Nevertheless, Israeli commanders strictly apply international law and maintain the utmost moral high ground in every military action.

Hamas will continue to use its own population as human shields so long as it continues to benefit from a narrative that misrepresents and reduces the concept of proportionality to a crude calculation – and so long as they benefit from knee-jerk reactions that blame Israel for the war crimes perpetrated by Hamas, ignoring the question of who put Gazan civilians in danger in the first place.

Israel conducted a moral and just operation against Hamas’ indiscriminate aggression. Any Israeli government would have acted in the same manner of self-defence. By the same token, any future Israeli government will continue to strive for a long and sustainable peace and quiet with Gaza.

This commitment to peace means Israel will offer, as it always does, humanitarian and any other assistance needed in the reconstruction effort in Gaza, so long as Hamas is prevented from rearming and rebuilding its terrorist capabilities.

Israel’s Potential Post-Netanyahu Government, Explained

5. Can it last? As noted above, this proposed coalition sits on a knife’s edge, with just 61 out of 120 seats. Even if it actually gets sworn in, between its numbers and its incoherent mix of internal ideologies, it’s easy to see how this government could fall apart under the weight of its own contradictions. At the same time, the coalition’s members have many political incentives to stick together. Bennett and his party know that they will be punished by right-wing voters if they do not deliver while in government. The same is true for Abbas, who must make good on his promises to his Arab constituents. Lapid and his allies want the government to last two years so that he will get his turn at the helm. And all the while, Benjamin Netanyahu will loom over it all as leader of the opposition, providing a constant reminder to the coalition as to why they banded together in the first place. Netanyahu himself managed to hold power for years with a 61-seat coalition, which means it’s entirely possible for his opponents to do the same, and more likely than many skeptics assume. But it won’t be easy.

6. Biden’s big opportunity: Netanyahu, with his American upbringing and unaccented English, long believed that he could run circles around American politics and politicians—and often did. This mindset led Bibi to take unprecedented partisan stances in American politics, ratchet up public tensions with President Barack Obama, openly campaign against the Iran deal in the U.S. Congress, and regularly rebuff entreaties on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But historically, most Israeli leaders—including avowedly right-wing ones like Ariel Sharon—have not had the appetite for such confrontation, and responded to pressure from the senior partner in the U.S.-Israel relationship. Bennett, especially in this government, may find it hard to shrug off Biden’s interventions on everything from Iran to Palestinian policy in the way Netanyahu has with successive American presidents. And Lapid, the other half of this government, wants nothing more than to work closely with Biden and the Democrats to reset the U.S.-Israel relationship on a bipartisan footing. This means that a pathway for a sophisticated and serious diplomatic approach on Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Iran deal just opened up where there wasn’t one yesterday. The question is whether the administration is ready to seize it.

Donald Trump, contrary to some of his critics, was quite successful in remaking much of the Middle East in his image. From his empowering of like-minded right-wing elements in Israel to his brokering of the Abraham Accords, Trump showed that American presidents have far more diplomatic ability to affect the trajectory in Israel and the region than is often assumed. That’s one lesson that Biden might learn for his own purposes.

What does #Israel’s new “#Apartheid” government look like?

- 8 Arab MKs in the coalition
- An Arab minister
- An Arab party in the coalition
-1/3 Mizrahi
- 8 Female ministers

I’ll just wait here for the apology from @RashidaTlaib @bellahadid @aoc and @IlhanMN pic.twitter.com/uMd9TTqRee
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) June 4, 2021

The headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer says, "A teacher at a Main Line Jewish school criticized Zionism on Twitter. Then he got fired."

That is an inaccurate and irresponsible headline, which is being abused by anti-Zionists who are having a field day claiming this is Zionist cancel culture.

The school, the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy, is unapologetically Zionist. The tweets by teacher Jesse Schwartz were bragging that he was going to violate school policy by secretly teaching students to hate Israel.

The three tweets at issue are:

“young jews are worth saving from the morally and intellectually corroding clutches of zionism! idk how to do this but i’m gonna try to do it lol”

“i sort of do the opposite of what the CIA does in the sense that i am infiltrating a right wing institution instead of a left wing institution and also instead of successfully sabotaging and disappearing activists i am just going to like, get fired after maybe changing 1 kid’s mind”

“i’m also gonna try to make [the students] socialists and ******** the faculty”

These tweets aren't anti-Zionist - they are a threat that a teacher plans to clandestinely undermine school standards. The fact that he doesn't use his real name or the name of the school is irrelevant - any employer would fire any employee who threatens to secretly sow discord in the workplace.

If Schwartz, an English teacher, had merely tweeted "Israel is an apartheid state" then of course he shouldn't be fired. It has nothing to do with his job.

But this is closer to a pharmacist saying that she will purposefully fill dosages incorrectly to people she doesn't like. No pharmacy would take the chance that she is only joking. Yet the author of this Inquirer article excuses Schwartz's tweets, writing that "His tweets are a particular brand of dry, leftist humor found on corners of the internet among young people who would identify as 'extremely online.'"

This is biased reporting and the lies are spreading online.

On May 20 - after Israel endured thousands of rockets - the Schenectady High School sent out an email to all teachers instructing them to be anti-Zionist.

The entire letter has not been published, but local media quoted enough of it to show how insanely biased it was.

“As we continue in our anti-racism journey, it is important to bring attention to the injustices that have escalated against Palestinians in recent weeks,” wrote the school's “culturally-responsive committee,” which is supposed to advance the school’s anti-racism and equity goals.

The letter gave a list of words for teachers to use, and not to use, when referring to the Israel/Palestinian conflict - one of the words not to use.

The “words to use” list included: apartheid, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, boycott Israel, and anti-Zionism. “Words not to use” included: ‘clash, war, both sides and conflict.”

When the backlash started, the committee that sent out the letter didn't apologize for its anti-Israel viewpoint. Instead, it said it wasn't antisemitic.

“The CRC’s critique of state-sanctioned violence is never intended to give either implicit or explicit condemnation of a religion,” the committee wrote in its follow-up message. “Any antisemitic ideologies should be given no quarter in our community or in our committee. We are deeply sorry for the harm that we caused by not making that more clear.”

But calling to boycott Israel and to be explicitly anti-Zionist and implicitly support Hamas is perfectly okay!

It took the school district two full weeks after the letter to finally acknowledge that they screwed up.

Schenectady Interim Superintendent Aaron Bochniak apologized on Wednesday for the “hurt, anger, disappointment and fear” caused by the email.

Bochniak, said "it did not include the necessary context and framework to help move the dialogue in the right direction.”

But his defense of the committee that sent out the email is unbelievable:

“Ultimately, the work is intended to make teaching and learning relevant and supportive of all students,” Bochniak said of the culturally relevant committee. “The work of these teachers does not mean that they are the experts; they are learning the work by doing the work and encouraging difficult conversations. Sometimes they need help and support, too.”

Excuse me? The teachers that send out an email telling other teachers how to teach aren't experts, and this fiasco is just a learning experience for them? We should feel sorry for these bigots because they are just muddling by, trying to do the best they can?

Imagine if a teacher said a racist statement in the classroom, or said that Native Americans really didn't suffer when America was colonized. Would that be chalked up as a mere mistake that the teacher can learn from, or would the teacher be immediately fired?

The fact is that this “culturally-responsive committee” is filled with ignoramuses who look at the world through the lens of "privileged whites" and "oppressed people of color", they know literally nothing beyond that. This letter proves it. It shows that the current members are supremely unqualified not only to be members of such a committee but unqualified to be teachers in the first place.

The UN makes up another international law against Israel

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs published an infographic at the end of the May fighting in Gaza describing how many of the dead in Gaza were civilians. Here is a detail from the May 25 graphic:

The footnote to this graphic says:

Disclaimer: Those reported as civilians are individuals that are not members of armed forces and were not directly participating in hostilities at the time that they were killed. Whether an individual is qualified as civilian or not, has no bearing on the legality of the killing.

That last sentence is, to put it mildly, bizarre. The entire Fourth Geneva Conventions were written for the "Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War," Distinction between civilians and military objects, including members of armed groups, is a fundamental principle of international law.

Now the UN is saying that international law is the same for both civilians and members of armed terror groups? Or even full soldiers?

To be sure, there have been questions about exactly what is allowed under international law during conflict with terror groups. In a 2006 court case before Israel's High Court of Justice, Israel tried to argue that there is a third category between civilians and combatants, namely "unlawful combatants" who do not fit the legal definition of combatants since they do not carry arms openly and do not wear military emblems but who nevertheless engage in hostilities. The HCJ rejected that argument, and said that existing international law does deal with such people, as described in the 1977 First Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions:

"3. Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this Section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities."

The HCJ said, that "terrorists participating in hostilities do not cease to be civilians, but by their acts they deny themselves the aspect of their civilian status which grants them protection from military attack. Nor do they enjoy the rights of combatants, e.g. the status of prisoners of war."

The remaining question is to define "for such time" and "hostilities" and "direct." The HCJ says that commanders who send out militants are taking direct part in hostilities, and that members of a terror organization who are taking a rest between fighting are only preparing for the next attack and are therefore subject to attack themselves. Meaning, that Israel can attack them in their homes, assuming that the military advantage gained by killing them is proportionate to the expected damage to civilians.

Israel’s Manual on the Rules of Warfare (2006) states:

The fundamental rule is that war should be conducted between armies and each army should only attack the army of the enemy. A military target is any target that, if attacked, would damage the military competence/fitness of the other side. ...Every soldier (including women soldiers!) in the enemy’s army is a legitimate military target to be attacked on and away from the battlefield.

So while the question of exactly what is allowed in a war against terror groups who do not adhere to the laws of war themselves is complex, the UN's assertion that there is no difference in the legality of attacking civilians and members of armed groups is clearly wrong - whether one considers them to be combatants or whether one considers them to be civilians engaging in hostilities.

06/03 Links Pt2: 'If you don't think antisemitism is real, wear a yarmulke for a week'; Jews Always Speak Up for Everyone Else. Now's the Time to Stand Up for Ourselves

From Ian:

'If you don't think antisemitism is real, wear a yarmulke for a week'

With antisemitism on the rise in US and worldwide, and given the overwhelming amount of hate and misinformation, particularly on social media, JewBelong has inaugurated a campaign titled "JewBelong or Jew BeGone."

The group has taken out 750 somewhat tongue-in-cheek digital ads running across Manhattan that read, "Here's an idea: Let's ask everyone who's wondering if antisemitism is real to wear a yarmulke for a week and then report back."

The campaign is slated to run through at least July, beginning with LINK digital ads, and then adding billboards and print posters in high traffic locations such as PATH Trains and Times Square. The campaign will also run in Chicago, Philadelphia, LA and other cities with other messages. The objective of JewBelong or JewBeGone is to elevate awareness about the rampant recent antisemitism and to encourage dialogue, support, and community awareness.

As part of the battle against antisemitism, JewBelong also announced the Jewish Partisan Prize to recognize influencers who are standing up against antisemitism on Instagram and other social media platforms.

Julie Burchill: The problem with Palestine’s showbiz supporters

Recent events in the Middle East – basically Hamas wanting to kill most of the Jews in Israel, and most of the Jews in Israel stubbornly refusing to hold still and be killed – have got the chorus line hopping over here too, causing Dame Maureen Lipman to resign from the actors union Equity after it backed a pro-Palestine demo at which anti-Semitic banners were displayed. Tracy-Ann Oberman revealed that she had received messages from young actors telling her that they didn’t want people to know they were Jewish, such is the current climate of hostility in the profession. It’s like being back in the 1930s, with anti-Semitism on the rise all through Europe and Hollywood having to christen (literally) the actress Betty Weinstein Perske as Lauren Bacall.

Show-business types are notorious for their desire to get drunk, sleep around and be homosexual. I’m not knocking it – it’s what makes them so much fun to hang out with. But why then are they throwing their weight behind a movement wherein music is haram and ‘break a leg’ isn’t a blessing but something Hamas might do to gays? No matter what contortions a performer might have learned at circus school, you cannot support both gay rights and a Palestinian state; the only place in the entire region where people are free to be gay is Israel. As for women’s rights, the Morality Police in the Palestinian Territories have arrested women for laughing. Admittedly that’s not going to be a problem for the terminally po-faced Hadid chicks. But as we’ve seen from the fate of Iranian women and Afghan schoolgirls, your average Islamic state is so lacking in diversity and inclusivity that it makes Rhodesia look like Narnia.

I daresay that Gigi, Bella and Dua want only the best for the residents of the strife-torn region. But if Palestine ever is free ‘from the river to the sea’ it won’t be ringing with the sound of Dua Lipa songs and adorned by ad campaigns featuring the Hadid sisters. It will be a place where gay men must live a lie or face execution and where women are treated like a cross between children and chattel. But that won’t bother the showbiz supporters of Palestine – they’ll already be looking around for the next conflict where they can step in and screw things up even more with their #BeKind hashtags – and their hearts full of illogical loathing for a people, the Israelis, to whom bravery consists of a bit more than doing two performances on a Saturday.

Matti Friedman: Theodor Herzl Is Alive and Well and Living in New York (Los Angeles, Paris, and London, too)

Unlike most of his learned Jewish contemporaries, Herzl understood that antisemitism can’t be pled or reasoned away

The prosperous Jews of Vienna, who assumed that this problem was on its way to being solved, are surprised to find themselves the focus for the anxieties of the age. They’re caught off guard in their colleges, law firms, and factories, midstep on their journeys toward assimilation. “Jews were baffled and shocked by this obsession,” Elon writes. “Should they react to the attacks or ignore them? Was it something they had done? Many sensitive young Jews were tormented by these questions. Rich Jews tended to blame poor Jews, and vice versa.”

The correct attitude among Jewish intellectuals, Herzl’s social circles, was to cringe at both rich and poor, affecting a very Viennese attitude of wry fatigue with the foibles of humanity. The writer works for the Neue Freie Press, the New York Times of the empire, a newspaper of careful Jews who are celebrated for their brilliance, hampered by their social aspirations, and wrong, in retrospect, about everything. We don’t know that yet. Herzl’s plays are produced in Berlin and at the best theater in the city. Progress might not be smooth, but it is inevitable.

And yet society becomes increasingly preoccupied with the “bad manners” of the Jews. There are many people with bad manners, but the Jews stand out, “because of the obsessive interest in their lives and the general belief in the existence of a ‘problem,’ which even Jews paranoically began to share themselves.”

Books appear seeking to analyze the Jews’ warped character and physiognomy. This isn’t primitive hatred of Jews like in the days of the Church and the ghetto. This is science. As a young man Herzl reads one such book—Eugene Duhring’s The Jewish Question as a Racial, Ethical, and Cultural Question—and allows it briefly to penetrate his consciousness, mentioning his troubled emotions in his diary before relegating it to the back of his mind. One of the most toxic tracts would eventually be written by a Jew by the name of Otto Weininger. Like all Jews willing to attack other Jews, Weininger was borne upward on a strange, grateful tide of popularity, before taking his critique to its logical conclusion and killing himself. “When a number of frightened Jewish scholars publicly endorsed the new ‘scientific’ antisemitism and admitted the ‘biological’ inferiority of their race,” Elon writes, “other Jewish wits replied that ‘antisemitism did not really succeed until the Jews began to sponsor it.’”

Viennese politicians begin understanding how effective this hatred can be as a mobilizing tool. The dark word “they” comes into use—everyone knows who “they” are.

The most adept of this breed is Karl Lueger, who rides Jew-hatred into power but has Jewish friends. “I decide,” he famously declares, “who is a Jew.” It’s a type becoming familiar in our own time. Jews like Herzl believe that the genteel people in the palaces and grand townhouses of Vienna are in control of events, and that culture will thus prevail. But power is shifting to the gutter.

My 'As A Jew' Beats Your 'My Rabbi Said' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

My 'As A Jew' Beats Your 'My Rabbi Said'

by Ariel Elyse Gold, National Co-Director, Code Pink

Ariel Gold New York, June 3 - In the rhetorical contest surrounding who gets to represent "authentic" Judaism to the world, and to invoke "what Judaism says" about any issue, we must remember the comparative strengths of different sources of authority. I seek to draw the reader's attention in particular to an important point in this regard: the lived experience and insight that one implies merely by asserting one's status as a member of the tribe holds more weight than the statements of some Rabbinical scholar who spends all his time examining "sources" and whatever.

This observation holds true regardless of, and I might even argue, because of, any paltry level of Jewish education on the part of the person invoking the "As a Jew" rhetorical device. For example, it's one thing to cite ancient, medieval, or even modern sources demonstrating that in the Torah's view, abortion equals murder; but I win the debate if I declare, "As a Jew, I firmly support a woman's right to choose, and not to let the repressive patriarchal structures of society dictate what I do with my body." Those are the rules.

I have exercised this philosophical principal in discussions about Israel-Palestine, as well. I'll see your "The Bible and overwhelming archaeological evidence prove Israel is the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people," and raise it "As a Jew, I feel that the genocidal Apartheid regime of far-right nationalist Benjamin Netanyahu is the chief source of antisemitism in the world today."

The latter example shows that the "As a Jew" device doesn't even have to cite anything factual to back it up - that's how powerful it is. Your so-called "evidence" effectively melts away when I pronounce my authoritative position on anything regardless of its - or my - relationship to Jewish tradition and lore. When I engage the "As a Jew" protocol, I am Jewish tradition and lore. You cannot argue with me. If you do, you're a misogynist and and antisemite. Further attempts to adduce evidence, or even logic, will constitute mansplaining, and only further cement my position's superiority over yours.

Employing this device can get fuzzy when the person invoking "As a Jew" is already a Rabbi, especially the correct kind of Rabbi, namely a progressive activist whose de facto religion is twenty-first-century American progressive ideology but who shoehorns what token traditional Jewish knowledge she has into the progressive framework and pronounces it canonical. But as a Jew, that doesn't bother me.

06/03 Links Pt1: Amb Alan Baker: Hamas' War Crimes and Israel's Right to Self-Defense; The UN Human Rights Council isn’t human or right; A Personal History of Sheikh Jarrah and Arab Violence Against Jews

From Ian:

Amb Alan Baker: Hamas' War Crimes and Israel's Right to Self-Defense

The success of Israel's "Iron Dome" anti-missile defense system in reducing the threat of over 4,000 rockets fired by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in May 2021 cannot in any way reduce the extent of the Palestinians' criminal liability for severe war crimes in willfully and deliberately directing massive barrages of missiles toward civilian centers in Israel.

The deliberate and cynical use by Hamas and Islamic Jihad of their own civilians as human shields, as well as their use of mosques, hospitals, schools, and private houses as weapons storage facilities and firing platforms, are no less severe war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law. The construction of tactical tunnels beneath urban civilian areas, hospitals, public facilities, and urban roads are also war crimes and grave violations of international humanitarian law.

The indiscriminate targeting of Israeli cities and civilians practiced by Hamas violates the rule of distinction in international law, which requires combatants to limit attacks to legitimate military targets. Moreover, advocating a religious holy war aimed at creating a regional Islamic entity encompassing the whole of the territory of Israel appears to contravene the provisions of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of Genocide. For all such crimes, Hamas and PIJ leaders and commanders are accountable and prosecutable under international law.

?? Were Israel's actions 'proportionate'?
?? What is a 'military target'?
?? Which war crimes did Hamas commit?

Proud to launch this @The_ILF Report, covering the most common FAQs about Int’l Law & #Israel's operation against Hamas in #Gaza.

Full report: https://t.co/5iyVioov97 pic.twitter.com/VRHYmNLle5
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) June 2, 2021

Israel Has Set a New Standard for the Ethics of War

In the recent fighting in Gaza, Israel delivered the greatest moral miracle in the history of warfare. The conduct of the Israel Defense Forces vis-a-vis the protection of civilians on both sides has no equal or precedent. Indeed, Israel has set a new standard for the ethics of war.

Urban warfare is hell. Since the 1990s, civilian deaths have accounted for 90% of all casualties of urban warfare. Coalition airstrikes against ISIS in Mosul inadvertently killed 3,200 civilians. American bombing of ISIS' last stronghold in Raqqa killed 1,200 ISIS fighters and 1,600 civilians.

In 11 days of fighting, Israel eliminated most of Hamas' significant military infrastructure. But the high number of civilian deaths Hamas counted on did not happen. Many Gazans were killed by the 600 Hamas rockets that fell short and landed inside Gaza. Whatever the precise civilian casualty count turns out to be, it is by far the smallest in the history of modern warfare.

Israel saved thousands of Israeli lives, as well as those of many thousands of Gazan "human shields." Those who are rallying to have the U.S. Congress cut military funding to Israel are missing the point. It's because of military aid, technology and shared moral values that thousands of Palestinians and Israelis are alive today.

Israel Military Says U.S. Should Copy Gaza Strategy, Not Criticize

IDF officials who spoke with Newsweek defended Israel's extensive recent airstrikes on Gaza, with one official saying Western countries should learn from what he called a "phenomenal" military success. "Not only should the IDF not be criticized for its choice of targets, and procedures and techniques, the IDF should actually be commended by these people."

"Tell me another conflict where a Western military achieved a 1:1 ratio [of combatant to civilian deaths] in a populated urban area using an air force; it hasn't been achieved." While they were "not belittling even one single civilian non-combatant casualty...to achieve a ratio of almost one to one, I think is unprecedented....They should be sending their militaries to us to see and learn and adapt what we did and how we managed to strike so many militants."

Regarding the destruction of the al-Jala Tower in Gaza City - home to the Gaza offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera - the IDF said the building was also home to multiple significant Hamas targets, including teams responsible for electronic warfare. IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi told Israel's Channel 12 that "the building was destroyed justly" and he did not have a "gram of regret."

The IDF official said the strikes on high-rises were also designed to be a deterrent against other hostile Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, and Iranian groups in the region. "They all need to understand very clearly two things: Yes, we are committed to the law of [armed] conflict and we do our best not to strike non-combatants. But two, there is no safe place to hide for any terrorist."

The Joshua and Caleb Network: Who’s to Blame for the Children Killed in Gaza: Israel or Hamas?

The New York Times released a heart wrenching article about the children that were killed in the recent war with Gaza. When you look behind the headlines however, you might just find that the NYT doesn’t actually care about these children who were killed, and they don’t care who is responsible. Find out on today’s episode.

We go behind the scenes of the war with Gaza, and find out just who is responsible for all of the violence and killing.

Palestinian terrorists naturally want to learn from the best.

That's why they have spoken to military leaders from Latin America, Vietnam and Algeria in search of advice on the kinds of tactics that will accomplish their goal of destroying the State of Israel and sending the Jews packing.

Last month, Hamas deputy political chief Musa Abu Marzouk gave an interview to Russia Today comparing the Hamas war against Israel with the Vietnamese War with the US:

“It’s not like it was in Vietnam and elsewhere, where things ended up with negotiations. This is just one of a [series] of wars, and a war will come when we negotiate with them [i.e., the Jews] about the end of their occupation and their leaving of Palestine.”

But despite the contrast with the results in Vietnam, Palestinian leaders apparently see similarities.

So much so that Palestinian terrorist leaders made a point of traveling there for pointers from General Vo Nguyen Giap:

Giap was one of the great strategic minds of the twentieth century, a former schoolteacher who played a central role in developing the strategic thinking and organizational capabilities that transformed ragtag rural provincials into a military force that would rout the most powerful nations in the world, from the Japanese occupation to the French and the Americans over three long decades of conflict culminating in the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

In the mid-1990s, two IDF major generals were coming to the end of their military careers. Meir Dagan had led commando squads, armored brigades and the Mossad. Yossi Ben Hanan served as one of Israel’s most successful tank commanders during the 1973 war and later led the armored corps and was in charge of the IDF’s R&D. Both of them were students of military history in general and that included the Vietnam War.

The two men applied for visas and specifically requested to meet with Giap.
The request was unexpectedly approved and the 2 Israelis had a long meeting with him.

When the Israelis rose to leave, Giap suddenly turned to the Palestinian issue. “Listen,” he said, “the Palestinians are always coming here and saying to me, ‘You expelled the French and the Americans. How do we expel the Jews?’”

The generals were intrigued. “And what do you tell them?”

“I tell them,” Giap replied, “that the French went back to France and the Americans to America. But the Jews have nowhere to go. You will not expel them.” [emphasis added]

This, of course, is reminiscent of the famous quote of Golda Meir about Israel's secret weapon:

"We have a secret weapon in our conflict with the Arabs: You see, we have no place else to go.”

Same idea.
But with a difference.

Golda was right. In 1973, there were about 3.3 million Jews in Israel.
Where would they go?

But there is an implication in the way Giap phrases it.

For France and America, regardless of their reason for being in Vietnam, they had their own countries to return to -- and even under the best of circumstances they had no intent to set up Vietnam as an extension of their own country for their own people to live.

France can always go back to France and America can always go back to America

Where do Jews have to go back to?

Europe?

Even if Giap was not trying to imply that Jews have ties to Israel, he clearly saw that Jews were not about to leave as France and the US did -- not only because they can't, but because they won't.

They won't because Israel is home.
Our indigenous home.

The French went home to France.
The Americans went home to the US.
And Jews who are home in Israel are there to stay.

It is a predictable pattern: any time anything happens in the news, a group of anti-Israel Jews issue a "letter" from "Jewish leaders" that try to gaslight the world and pretend to represent Jews as a whole.

The Israel-hating Left is very frightened by the wave of antisemitic attacks that have gotten publicity worldwide - attacks that clearly aren't initiated by the far Right that they blame for all antisemitism. So, they wrote a letter to fool people into thinking that the attacks are an anomaly, and roundly condemned by pro-Palestinian activists.

As usual, they are lying.

This one has the absurd title "Jewish Leaders Say: We Won't Be Distracted, We Won't Be Divided." The gaslighting begins in the title: they represent only a tiny fringe of Jews (only some 3% of Jews are actively anti-Zionist.) The writers of this letter are the ones who are actively trying to divide the Jewish community, not the mainstream Zionists.

We are Jewish leaders who have a range of opinions, perspectives, and approaches to Israel-Palestine.

Yes, some of them (IfNotNow, JVP) want the Jewish state destroyed today, and some (J-Street) are willing to wait until tomorrow.

We are deeply concerned by recent reports and outcries from certain corners of our community which suggest a direct confluence between the growing movement for Palestinian freedom and violent incidents against Jews in our cities.

Their "concern" is that the attacks delegitimize their movement as being based on liberal principles. The letter is an attempt to deflect from that.

We unequivocally condemn attacks on members of our Jewish community. Jewish people deserve to walk safely in the streets of our cities without fear of attack or harassment — just like anyone else. Blaming all Jewish people for the actions of the Israeli government is antisemitic. We are shocked and disgusted by individuals who would use this moment of heightened support for Palestinian rights to advance antisemitic hatred and violence.

It does not take political courage to condemn random attacks on Jews. But after they do, then they go on to minimize and justify them.

We reject efforts to stoke fear and division. Supporters of the Israeli government — including some in the American Jewish establishment — are misrepresenting fringe and widely-condemned acts of individual antisemitism as characteristic of the broader Palestinian human rights movement.

The only people stoking division are these fringe Jews. The entire purpose of this letter is to give the impression that a significant number of Jews consider Israel to be beneath contempt.

Palestinian liberation and dismantling antisemitism are intertwined. For decades, the organizations and activists leading the Palestinian freedom movement have been resoundingly clear that antisemitism has no place in the movement, which is guided by principles of human rights and antiracism. When fringe antisemitic events occur, they are swiftly and roundly condemned by movement leadership.

Ooooh, look at all those hyperlinks! Most of them point to tweets, in English, from people no one heard of, that deny Palestinian antisemitism.

But if you spend time looking at Palestinian Arabic media, the story is very different.

MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch expose blatant antisemitism in Arabic media all the time, as do I, but that's not the entire story. I have not once seen Palestinian backlash against explicit antisemitism in their media. If one is going to represent antisemitism as a fringe opinion in Palestinian circles, then one would expect that Palestinians would condemn other Palestinians who spout Jew-hatred - and that never happens.

I have never seen a single Palestinian media outlet criticize their first political leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem who collaborated with the Nazis in the Final Solution, as antisemitic. I have never seen a Palestinian respond to the mainstream Palestinian belief, popularized by Yasir Arafat, that Jerusalem is not really holy to Jews and there was never a Temple there. The antisemitic theory that most Israeli Jews are really Khazars and not Jews at all is never even debated. When Hanan Ashrawi's Miftah organization published the blood libel in Arabic, after defending it, it issued an apology, but only in English. Mahmoud Abbas claimed that rabbis want to poison the water of Palestinians. He has blamed Jews for the Holocaust which he claims was vastly exaggerated. The official PLO position is that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.

This is not "fringe antisemitism." This is as mainstream as it gets.

I think that these examples outweigh a few tweets from nobodies. But that's how one does propaganda - highlight the few counterexamples and ignore the overwhelming evidence disproving the thesis. But the "leaders" deny the reality:

Linking the movement at large to antisemitism is baseless and harmful. Especially in this moment, we must condemn this thinly veiled attempt to delegitimize Palestinian leadership and distract from Palestinians experiencing state violence by Israel.

The Leftist Jews don't only deny the undeniable antisemitism that is at the very core of Palestinianism. They then say that it is the Jews who are really the racists!

We commit to standing up against anti-Palestinian racism, so often unreported and unacknowledged in our communities.

First they bend over backwards to deny the existence of Palestinian antisemitism, no matter how explicit and blatant. But you know who the real bigots are? Jews!

....We support our Palestinian siblings’ right to describe their lived experiences without being accused of antisemitism. {W]e refuse to be more outraged by the words Palestinians use than the actual violence they endure.

4300 rockets, decades of terror attacks, Palestinian leaders inciting violence against Jews - they all go unmentioned. No, these As-A-Jews pretend that the only problem with Palestinians is that they sometimes say some bad stuff - which are all completely justified, by the way, because of Israel - and Jews are racists for calling those out. And when Palestinians say that Jews are Nazis, well, that is their "lived experience" and cannot be considered antisemitic.

Similarly, we refuse to allow progressive leaders of color who speak out in support of Palestinian rights to be smeared for their principled stand.

Claiming that Jews are racist is antisemitic itself. Mainstream Jews refute the antisemitism and terror-support from Roger Waters and Betty McCollum as energetically as they refute the lies from Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. To claim that somehow Marc Lamont Hill should not be called out for his antisemitic conspiracy theories because he is Black is the actual racism.

Beyond that, was Kareem Abdul Jabbar being racist when he called out the antisemitism from among Black Lives Matter supporters last year? There is a serious problem with Black antisemitism, whether it is from celebrities or from people attacking random religious Jews in Brooklyn. These "Jewish leaders" deny it, meaning that they condone it.

We know safety comes through solidarity. Antisemitism — like anti-Asian, anti-Black, anti-Palestinian, and Islamophobic attacks and rhetoric — exists in every community, but it is fostered and exploited by rightwing movements in the US and around the world, which gain power by keeping us divided.

Yes, a letter that is supposedly against antisemitism ends up blaming only the Right, and dismisses all other Jew-hatred as "fringe." Which means that this letter ends up tacitly defending all antisemitism that is not rightwing - antisemitism from Arabs, from the Left, from people of color, from Louis Farrakhan - as justified or anomalous, and not something that needs to be specifically called out or fought.