Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

06/22 Links Pt2: The EU Report on Palestinian Textbooks: The Dehumanization of the Jewish People; David Collier: Palestinians and the Covid vaccine – the return of the anti-Israel libels

From Ian:

The EU Report on Palestinian Textbooks: The Dehumanization of the Jewish People

The report further acknowledges the obsessive use of certain descriptions meant to lessen the humanity of Israelis and Jews in the eyes of Palestinian students. Some of the titles given discard any attempt at subtlety, such as referring simply to “the enemy.” Elsewhere, instead of mentioning the “State of Israel” or describing their neighbors as “Israelis”: “Most often, the texts refer to the ‘Zionist occupation’ … or simply ‘the occupation.’ … Israel’s institutions, army and organs of state are generally described using the adjective ‘Zionist.’ … When ‘Israel’ and ‘Israeli’ … are used … [they] are usually paired with conflict-related terms such as ‘occupation,’ ‘forces,’ or ‘soldiers.’”

The authors, to their credit, recognize the game being played here. They write, “While the term [Zionist] by itself is not defamatory, it conveys negative connotations. Given this reading, using the term ‘Zionist occupation’ in place of the name of the state could be interpreted as questioning the legitimacy of the State of Israel.”

However, when the students are also taught in history class that the “Zionist ideology” is a “racist philosophy,” that’s more than just delegitimizing Israel. That’s a deliberate attempt to characterize Israelis, and indeed almost all Jews worldwide, as uniquely undeserving and racist, merely for believing in their right to self-determination in their ancient homeland.

What better way is there in modern society to depict a group as evil than to label them all as racists, except perhaps only the ancient but reliable blood libel that the Jews systematically grab non-Jewish children to torture and murder them?

Of course, that too is found in the textbooks.

The examples are many, which is why the concluding statement about UNESCO standards is so alarming. If we allow the EU to depict such blatant hatred and incitement as acceptably within global standards, then the last two months of antisemitism will surely become even more disturbingly normalized.

Don’t let our political leadership get away with the usual noncommittal language bemoaning antisemitism without taking concrete action against it. If we won’t stand up for ourselves and demand consequential action against those who dehumanize us and incite violence, then who will?

Mainstreaming of Jew-hatred in Canada

We know only too well from our history where this can lead. It’s essential that our leaders — in government and in the community — come together to focus on this issue urgently so we don’t see another tragedy like the one we just saw in London.

It’s now incumbent on those in positions of power and influence, many of whom have been, sadly, all too silent, to show leadership and take responsibility.

So intense has been the recent explosion of Jew-hatred that earlier this month, at the request of several Jewish community organizations, including the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an emergency summit on antisemitism.

It will be convened later this summer under the leadership of Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism Irwin Cotler. A summit on Islamophobia was also recently announced in Parliament.

To be effective, the antisemitism summit requires more than earnest, quickly forgotten rhetoric. Words aren’t enough. Concrete steps are required.

We need real and meaningful action to take place in policing, the justice system, education and well beyond. All our institutions need new tools to fight this disturbing spike in racism, to the benefit of all minorities in Canada.

The summit must address the role of stakeholders at all levels of government — municipal, provincial and federal — to bring about serious strategies to address this scourge. It’s paramount the discussion not be siloed and that proper funding is ensured to implement recommendations. The status quo must not be an option.

A Response to ‘Rolling Stone’: Many Young Jews Like Me Support Israel

Marisa Kabas frames her May 21 “Cultural Commentary” for Rolling Stone by telling readers how torn she is about Israel as an American Jew. ( “Young American Jews Have Reached a Tipping Point with Israel”)

In her mind, being raised Jewish, with “Tikkun Olam — the Jewish principle of improving the world through action,” makes it impossible to voice her support for Israel, the sole Jewish state. She writes that she had “never questioned Israel’s existence,” implying that, suddenly, she feels otherwise.

Unfortunately, Kabas, along with many students, media personalities, and celebrities, has internalized the false narrative that Israel represents a unique evil in the world.

Kabas reveals her bias when she refers to the holiest site in Judaism, the Temple Mount, exclusively by its Arabic name, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and calls it only “a Muslim holy site in East Jerusalem.”

And she betrays her lack of knowledge about the events in question when she says simply that “Israeli police invaded” the mosque. In fact, an Israeli news outlet reported that “The Israel Police said rioters had been hurling rocks and other objects from the holy site and launching fireworks at officers, leading them to enter the compound, a relatively uncommon move by Israeli security forces.”

Kabas delegitimizes Israel by claiming that it is an “apartheid” state that commits acts of “ethnic cleansing,” yet she is unable to support her statements with any facts or history of the region.

A country that affords equal rights to all citizens is, by definition, not an “apartheid state” — and Israeli Arabs not only have full rights, but serve in every facet of society, including the Knesset and Supreme Court. Kabas’ absurd comparison not only delegitimizes Israel, but also minimizes the suffering of people who lived through actual apartheid in South Africa.

North Korea foreign ministry says Israel is a "wrecker of peace"

When the most repressive regimes on Earth are against you, is it a compliment?

The website of the North Korea Foreign Ministry has an article written by Yang Myong Song, Secretary General of Korea-Arab Association, condemning Israel for defending itself.

The situation in the Middle East is again spiralling into an aggravation [sic].

On June 4 and 11, the Israeli troops committed a barbarous act of using tear gas and rubber bullets and even firing live bullets at the Palestinians in the West Bank who were protesting against the construction of Jewish settlements. ...

And they launched indiscriminate air raids on the central and southern regions of Syria on June 8 and again on the Gaza Strip at dawn of June 16, causing heavy casualties.

This slaughter by Israel is an open challenge to the United Nations resolutions calling for peaceful settlement of the Middle East problem and to the relevant international laws. This is also a flagrant violation of the ceasefire agreement signed on May 21, and an inhumane crime that poses serious threat to the right to existence of the people of Palestine and other peoples in the Middle East.

It is thus quite natural that the world is denouncing and rejecting the planned and continued atrocities of slaughtering civilians and the dispossession of territories by Israel, as these acts constitute the biggest threat to achieving peace.

It is a stereotyped trick of aggressors to seek their way out from an overseas invasion whenever they are faced with crisis.

Israel – which intentionally escalates tensions in the region, unhesitatingly committing the slaughter of innocent civilians – cannot be portrayed otherwise than the wrecker of peace and the root of all the ills in the Middle East.

We vehemently condemn the illegal expansion of Jewish settlements and the brutal air raids by Israel against the sovereign states, and extend our strong support and solidarity to the peoples of Arab countries fighting for peaceful settlement of the Middle East problem and for defence of their national sovereignty.

This post makes it clear that Israel's existence is the problem and the peaceful settlement of the problem is to get rid of Israel.

If Israel doesn't dismantle itself peacefully and resists this desire for its dissolution, then that is evidence that it is a warmonger.

EU delaying funding of the Palestinian Authority until October

It seems that the EU has not given any money to the Palestinian Authority this year.

The European Union spokesman in Palestine Shadi Othman confirmed on Tuesday that the European Union will not transfer funds to the Palestinian Authority until October.

Othman said that no funds were transferred to the Palestinian Authority in 2021 so far.

the only reason given for the delay were "technical and administrative reasons."

The information came up during an event in which the European Union ambassador was asked about the money being transferred to the PA.

The European Union’s financial contribution to the Palestinian Authority is estimated at 300 million euros annually. That is a significant part of the budget.

There may be more to this story - it seems very odd that "technical and administrative" reasons would be enough to stop a regular transfer of funds.

06/22 Links Pt1: Ruthie Blum: Washington Doublethink and the Iran Deal; 48% of Gaza fatalities were terrorists; 6 Arabs Arrested for Sheikh Jarrah Real Estate Forgery Scam

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Washington Doublethink and the Iran Deal

The administration in Washington outdid itself in doublethink this week. Faced with the election of mass executioner Ebrahim Raisi to the Iranian presidency, top White House aides and media champions put such a spin on the situation that they ought to take home the gold in the George Orwell Olympics.

To counter the problem presented by Raisi’s record as a sadist who commanded the torture and murder of masses of innocent Iranians, members of and apologists for Team Biden told The New York Times over the weekend that the “ascension of a hardline government” might actually constitute a window of opportunity to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran from which former President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018.

The logic behind the delusion is that Raisi, who announced on Saturday that neither Iran’s ballistic-missile program nor its support for regional militias would be up for negotiation, won’t be replacing incumbent Hassan Rouhani for six weeks, supposedly just enough time for all parties to the JCPOA to iron out any remaining differences and sign on the dotted line.

Furthermore, according to the Times, if a final deal is reached before Raisi takes the reins, “Iran’s moderates would be set up to take the blame for capitulating to the West and bear the brunt of popular anger inside Iran if sanctions relief does not rescue the nation’s stricken economy. But if the deal comes together, the new conservative government under Mr. Raisi can take the credit for an economic upswing, bolstering his case that it took a hardline, nationalist government to stand up to Washington and bring the country back.”

This is an astonishing view for three reasons.

Meet ‘The Butcher,’ Iran’s New President Ebrahim Raisi

Khamenei knows the fury of people in Iran and the region has been fueled in great part by the crippling sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, which President Biden may soon undo—but also by the administration’s truth-telling about the brutality and corruption of regime officials. The highest humiliation for the world’s most anti-American regime, however, was the assassination of Khamenei’s favorite and most powerful loyalist, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Qassem Soleimani. Overwhelming financial pressure, scrutiny of human rights abuses and corruption, assassinations of top officials, relentless acts of espionage and sabotage (much enabled by the Israeli state’s moles at the highest ranks of the nuclear program and the IRGC), mounting dissent, and the regime’s own profound structural crises of mismanagement and incompetence have made the Islamic Republic more brittle and more vulnerable than ever.

But Biden’s Appeasement 2.0 policy has already given the regime a new lifeline, and with the selection of Raisi, Khamenei is puffing out his chest, showing that he knows that the United States has abdicated its own strong hand in favor of a losing one. The regime has studied—and sought to shape—the ideological underpinnings of the Obama/Biden outlook on the Middle East, a “realignment” toward accommodation of the regime at any cost. Emboldened by the recognition that Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Malley will stop at nothing to re-enter the nuclear deal, Khamenei feels unconstrained in choosing his potential successor and untroubled at making the American capitulation look even more desperate and devoid of morality.

The regime uses its nuclear program as a means to extort the United States so it can survive. But as much as the Obama/Biden playbook may want to keep the regime in power as a “counterbalance” in the region—a nonsensical phrase, since the “other side” being “balanced” in this formulation would be the United States and its regional allies—the regime itself knows it is in an irreparable legitimacy crisis, no matter how much the United States accommodates it. The regime knows it is structurally incapable of being accountable to the Iranian people. It knows that with its monstrous network of patronage and corruption, it is incapable of addressing the compounding existential crises that have galvanized the mostazefeen, the downtrodden in whose name the revolution was originally waged. It knows that any measure of freedom and openness it may grant to the Iranian people will only be used to press for wholesale regime change.

Khamenei is a student of the Soviet Union and the KGB. He knows how glasnost and perestroika backfired. His regime’s decay is undeniable, and the Iranian people’s determination to fight him will only grow. But he has decided the only recourse is further brutality, to which he hopes to make the United States a de facto partner.

Khamenei wants to put the United States in the debased position of not only lifting sanctions but lifting them on a president who has committed crimes against humanity. He wants to terrorize the people of Iran further and show them that they have nowhere to appeal to—and that the standard-bearers of freedom and human rights prefer to send pallets of cash to mass murderers than to support the legitimate and peaceful aspirations of ordinary Iranians. By doing so, he intends to fortify the culture of impunity he has created for his yes-men and himself. He wants to make the Iranian people lose their deep and abiding faith in the United States and give up on their dream of becoming a democracy. President Biden would be profoundly wrong to give Khamenei what he wants.

PMW: PA and Abbas spit Biden and Blinken in the eyes – vow to continue rewarding terrorists with generous salaries

As US President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken are doing all they can to renew US funding to the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority and its Chairman Mahmoud Abbas are simply spitting Biden and Blinken in the eyes. One of the major obstacles impeding US aid to the Palestinians is the PA’s terror rewarding “Pay-for-Slay” policy. While the PA seems to be trying to convince the Biden administration that it has reformed, or even abandoned its pugnacious terror reward program, at home, in Arabic, PA TV is clarifying the message of Abbas to the Palestinian people: “Pay-for-Slay” will continue!

Since the beginning of June, PA TV has repeatedly - no less than 18 times! - broadcast Abbas’ speech in which he promises that even if the PA is left with only “one penny” in its coffers, he will pay that penny to the families of the dead terrorists, the terrorist prisoners, and the wounded terrorists.

Introducing the speech, the PA narrator presents Abbas as the one who “preserves the right of the Martyrs, the wounded, and the prisoners”:
PA TV Narrator: “Despite the blackmail, he defends the right of the Martyrs, the wounded, and the prisoners.”

Abbas: “A blessing is sent to our loyal Martyrs, our prisoners, and their families who are standing firm and bearing their suffering with patience. We say to them, to the families of the Martyrs, that we will defend their rights regardless of the price we’ll have to pay. I won’t submit to what Israel has requested. I won’t submit. Even if I’m left with one penny, I’ll pay it to the families of the Martyrs, to the prisoners, and to the wounded, and I won’t withhold this from them.”

[Official PA TV, June 4 (twice), 5 (twice), 6 (four times), 9 (twice), 11 (twice), 12, 15, 16 (twice), 18, 19, 2021]

June 22 is the birthday of Raqia Ibrahim, also known as Rachel Abraham Levi, a Jewish Egyptian actress in the 1940s.

The Egypt Independent wrote about her in 2014, quoting Emirati website Al Bayan as saying that she was a Mossad spy who helped them assassinate a female Egyptian nuclear scientist:

Ibrahim’s birth in Egypt did not prevent her being loyal to Israel, the report said, as she encouraged the Jews in Egypt to immigrate to Israel after 1948 war when the Israeli state was first established.

Ibrahim left Egypt in 1954 to the United States after separating from her husband. Accusations were levelled against her over involvement in assassination of Egyptian Scientist Samira Moussa in 1952.

Despite rumors over cooperation with the Israeli Mossad to assassinate Mousa, who rejected an offer to receive US citizenship in return for working at US scientific centers, reporters first spoke to Ibrahim's granddaughters in 2012, who supplied further evidence to support the accusation.

According to Al-Bayan, Rita David Thomas, the granddaughter of Ibrahim’s Jewish-American husband who she married upon immigration to the United States, said her grandmother had good relations with Moussa and attributed this to her diaries, which was found two years ago among old books kept in her house in California.

Thomas said her grandmother contributed to killing of Moussa through their friendship, which provided her access to her house and allowed her to distract Moussa.

“One time, Raqia was able to steal Moussa’s house key. She printed it on a bar of soap and gave it to an official from the Mossad in Egypt. One week later, Raqia went to have dinner with Moussa, allowing the Mossad to enter Moussa’s house and take copies of her research.”

Israel was concerned about Moussa’s aspirations as she sought to allow Egypt to obtain the nuclear bomb, manufacturing it at low costs. Ibrahim offered Moussa a deal to receive US citizenship, live in the states and work there. However, the Egyptian scientist refused and expelled her from her house. Ibrahim reacted by threatening her that rejecting the offer would have dire consequences. Moussa did not pay attention to her threats and resumed her research, which made the Mossad unsatisfied and kill her.

The website reported that Ibrahim knew about one of Moussa’s visits to a nuclear reactor in the US. She notified the Mossad, which killed her on 15 August 1952.

Moussa died when her car fell 40 feet on her US visit.

While it seems credible that Levi gave information to the Mossad, an article in Egypt's El Balad today by Khaled Sawaf says that this episode proves that Jews can never be trusted:

[Levi] is an affirmation that some of the Jews of Egypt are like others. All the Jews of the world are in a permanent ideological, religious and political war with Egypt.. They do not hesitate to do anything and everything in order to serve the interests of Israel and to undermine Egypt using all methods: sex, money, extortion - whether they carry out the tasks dirty themselves, or use weak souls of different nationalities.
Although the goodness of the Egyptian people reaches the point of praising some of the Jews of Egypt who have a history that appears to be good, hidden inside of it is evil, the reality proves to us day after day with evidence revealing spying and betrayal operations from Jews who were born and lived on the soil of Egypt.

The writer is saying that Egypt was fully justified in ethnically cleansing 80,000 Jews because they were all potential spies.

By the way, Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah explicitly says it wants to destroy Israel

I missed this article in the official Wafa news agency from March, but on "Land Day" Fatah pledged to take control over all of Israel.

The Palestinian National Liberation Movement "Fatah" affirmed that the land is the core of the conflict, and that our people will continue their steadfastness on the land of their historic homeland Palestine, and make all sacrifices for its liberation from the Israeli occupation.

Fatah said in a statement issued by the Information and Culture Commission today, Monday, on the 45th anniversary of the Eternal Land Day, that the struggle of our Palestinian people has been continuing with a solid will for more than 100 years, and that it will not stop until its freedom is achieved as a master on its land .</blockquote>The article is crystal clear that it is referring to all the land of "historic Palestine," referring to the Negev, Galilee and the Triangle.

...This day is one of the defining moments in the history of the Palestinian cause, and a fully conscious act of struggle, just like Fatah's response to the Nakba of Palestine in 1948 and its launch of the revolution to emphasize the goal of liberating the land and return.

Anyone who believes that the main Palestinian political party in the PA would stop their claims if given a state in the West Bank and Gaza is willfully blind.

The vaccine debacle shows again a fundamental difference between the Israeli and Palestinian mentality - and why peace with Palestinians is impossible.

Israelis want to find solutions to problems. Ideally, the solutions are win-win – both sides get what they want and everyone is ahead of where they were previously.

Israel had vaccines that were coming close to expiration. Palestinians were way behind in vaccinating their population, and their vaccines – which they ordered many months ago – were delayed.

I don't know who came up with the solution – Israel or Pfizer – but Israel had a chance to not waste the vaccines while allowing the Palestinians to get a head start on over half a million jabs.

However, Palestinians do not have a win/win mindset. They have a zero-sum mentality.

The two cannot mix.

From the Palestinian perspective, “if my enemy wins, I lose.” Israel cannot be allowed to win – whether it is in PR, or in not losing millions of dollars of vaccines. If Israel wins, then Palestinians lose, in this bizarre mindset.

Even if Israel's win can also save the lives of hundreds of Palestinians

A lose/lose is preferable to a win/win, when you hate your enemy enough.

And Palestinians are taught to hate Israelis from birth.

The zero-sum mindset is tied with the honor/shame mentality. If your enemy wins, it is shameful for you.

How can anyone make peace with people whose top priority is for their opponents to lose and be humiliated – more than they care about their own people?

The answer is – you cannot. Until the Palestinians grow up and think like adults, they will never get anywhere.

There is a glimmer of hope. The vaccine agreement was hammered out over months, and as late as Friday morning it was being praised from both sides.

But then other Palestinians - probably political opponents to the PA - started making a stink about how dare the Palestinians make an agreement with the hated Israelis.

Since the PA cannot allow itself to look like a collaborator with Israel, it made up a story about the expiration date of the vaccines, even though that had been spelled out in the agreement.

For a brief moment, the Palestinians acted like adults, like people who actually care about their own. But that way of thinking is fragile and easily smashed when a political opponent accuses the other of being weak or being too conciliatory towards the enemy.

That's what happened. And unless a Palestinian leadership can emerge that cares about its own people more than ridiculous notions of "honor," we cannot expect any fundamental change.

06/21 Link Pt2: The New Refuseniks; Emily Schrader: The Price of Being a Zionist Woman on Twitter; What’s Disproportional Is the Criticism of Israel

From Ian:

The New Refuseniks

At a recent United Against Terrorism rally in Beverly Hills, Jennifer Karlan, 17, spoke passionately about why American Jews should stand for Israel. With remarkable confidence, she talked about a new form of antisemitism facing American Jews: “Today, they no longer say they hate the Jew; today they say they hate Zionists. Today they no longer say they hate the Jewish people; they say they hate the Zionist entity. But the hate is the same.” Some 2,000 people had gathered for the rally. Karlan drew cheers as she insisted that Jewish identity and Israel are deeply interconnected: “Israel is not just the name of the land; it is the name of our people. We are the people of Israel, each and every one of us: Am Yisrael Chai.”

Karlan is a graduate of Club Z, a Zionist club for teens and quite possibly the most important American Jewish organization you’ve never heard of. Club Z was founded four years ago by Masha Merkulova, a Soviet Jewish immigrant from Minsk. Along with a handful of other organizations that Russian-speaking American Jews have started over the past few years, it is changing the conversation about Jewish identity, Jewish peoplehood, Zionism, and Israel. Disappointed with the way the United States’ organized Jewish community has treated these issues, and alarmed by the growing embrace of politically weaponized Zionophobia—the form of antisemitism that they know so well from their lives in the Soviet Union—these immigrants are taking matters into their own hands.

The recent Hamas-Israel confrontation unleashed an antisemitic onslaught on social media and in the streets of U.S. cities of a kind that American Jews had never seen before. It wasn’t just the intensity of the hate that was shocking—it was also its source and nature. Suddenly, violent antisemitism was coming at American Jews from the left. Suddenly, it was progressive politicians who were fanning the flames of antisemitism, while the Democratic Party—the political home of most American Jews—looked the other way. Nothing in American Jews’ background or system of beliefs had prepared them for this moment, and many did not seem to know how to respond.

In that moment of crisis, only a few individuals and groups stood out as they fearlessly fought hate and propaganda. They did not log off their social media accounts. They showed no signs of confusion, and they most certainly were not demoralized. They simply stood up and joined the battle against what they perceived as an assault not only Israel but on who they were as Jews.

That ex-Soviet Jews projected a more confident and resilient Jewish identity in the midst of this crisis than many native-born American Jews is a fact that is both fascinating and significant. In the three decades since Soviet Jews arrived in the United States, they proved largely impervious to American Jewry’s attempts to inculcate their sense of what it meant to be Jewish. Having never bought into the idea that religion was central to Jewish identity, they stayed away from synagogues. The American tikkun olam perspective, which demanded that Jews put the world’s priorities ahead of their own, struck them as the height of folly. And they certainly did not buy into the notion that the far right had a monopoly on antisemitism.

Zionism has EVERYTHING to do with Judaism

The great American civil rights warrior, Martin Luther King, said way back in 1968 in response to a question from a student attacking Zionism, “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking Antisemitism.”

Today there are many people who say they are only anti-Zionistic and not anti-Semitic.

They try to defend it by saying they have nothing against Jews, only Israel.

Often this is done under the banner of so-called liberal and progressive movements that supposedly fight for freedoms and human rights. Groups such as Black Lives Matter or Jewish Voice for Peace or the United Nations Humans Right Council. The great irony of this is that true liberals who share progressive values should be at the forefront of supporting Israel with its freedoms for all its citizens, rather than leading the charge against it. But their minds are so clouded with hatred and antisemitism that they have lost all sense of what liberal values even mean. These are not groups of freedom but groups of hate.

And anti-Zionism is a movement of hatred, fuelled by the darkness of humanity, not the light. It brings out the worst in people, not the best. Its supporters are not driven by a sense of the lack of justice in the world, but rather by a sense of a reinforcement of long-standing injustice directed against only one particular group of people. They wave the banner of morality, while conveniently ignoring the absolute lack of morality of their own cause.

They try to ‘educate’ us by saying Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism – that somehow Zionism isn’t a Jewish movement at all, so you can therefore be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic. Of course Israel can be criticised and there are no bigger critics than Israelis themselves, but these people are not against any policy at all – they are against the very existence of the country.

They want to confuse you into thinking it’s some kind of evil movement by throwing in emotive and inflammatory terms such as colonialism, white supremacism, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

So let me unconfuse you by setting the record straight:

Zionism has EVERYTHING to do with Judaism.

Too Jewish For Hollywood: As Antisemitism Soars, Hollywood Should Address Its Enduring Hypocrisy In Hyperbolic Caricatures of Jews

If Jews controlled Hollywood, it’s fair to say this would not be happening.

There are anomalies, and those, too, deserve mention. Israeli actor Shira Haas, who earned an Emmy nom for her role in “Unorthodox,” will play Golda Meir in the upcoming small-screen drama “Lioness,” which Streisand is set to executive produce. And then, there is “Shtisel,” the Israeli TV series so meticulous in its nuanced, understated, realistic portrayal of Jewish life — that it revolves around a Haredi family living in an ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood detracts none from its universality; it’s a commercial hit in places ranging from Stockholm to Paris — it’s of near-miraculous proportions. Why? Because “Shtisel” never panders to Jewish stereotypes. Its characters are Jewish, they are played by Jews (albeit secular ones, which goes even further to prove my point) and its plotlines unfold in ways that, while adhering to the laws and traditions of ultra-Orthodox Jewry, never once undercut the impenetrable humanity of its protagonists. They are Jews, but they are people.

The Jews just are.

Hollywood has a social responsibility to reflect with unflinching accuracy the experience of being an ethnic minority in America, whether Asian or Black or Muslim or Indigenous, and that same social imperative holds true for the Jewish community. Because being Jewish is not about a wig or an accent or talking really loud. It’s not about bagels. Being Jewish is about a shared history, a soul, a spirit — in Hebrew we call it a neshama. Amidst the terrifying rise of antisemitism, Jews in America do not feel safe. And in truth, we never have. The ways in which we are portrayed on screen yields significant real-life consequences—some positive, but far too many dangerous. The last thing the Jewish community needs right now is hyperbolic misrepresentation of who we actually are.

The simple, boring truth:

Jews are human.

The European Union finally released its report on Palestinian textbooks, which was delayed for four months after completion. It is summarized in the Jerusalem Post:

The report includes dozens of examples of encouragement of violence and demonization of Israel and of Jews.
The textbooks present “ambivalent – sometimes hostile – attitudes toward Jews and the characteristics they attribute to the Jewish people... Frequent use of negative attributions in relation to the Jewish people... suggest a conscious perpetuation of anti-Jewish prejudice, especially when embedded in the current political context.”
The report identifies “the creation of a connection between the stated deception of the ‘Jews’ in the early days of Islam and the insinuated behavior of Jews today,” calling it “extremely escalatory.”
One textbook ties Muhammad’s aunt, who clubbed a Jew to death, to a question about Palestinian women’s steadfastness in the face of “Jewish Zionistic occupation.”
One textbook promotes a conspiracy theory that Israel removed the original stones of ancient sites in Jerusalem and replaced them with ones bearing “Zionist drawings and shapes.”
The concept of “resistance” is a recurring theme in the textbooks studied, along with calls for the Palestinians to be liberated via a revolution. To clarify the concept, one textbook has a photo with the caption, “Palestinian revolutionaries,” featuring five masked men toting machine guns.
Glorification and praise of terrorists who attacked Israelis can be found not only in history or social-studies books, but also in science and math books, such as one that mentions a school named after the “shahid” (martyr) Abu Jihad, a leader of the First Intifada.
A demonstration of Newton’s Second Law, which says force is equal to mass times acceleration, is illustrated by Palestinians using slingshots against Israeli soldiers.
Dalal al-Mughrabi, a much-admired figure in Palestinian society, was a Palestinian woman involved in the 1978 bus hijacking in which she and her accomplices murdered 38 Israelis, including 13 children. Textbooks repeatedly refer to her in the context of female empowerment.
There are “no further portraits of significant female figures in Palestinian history,” the report said, implying that “the path of violence [is] the only option for women to demonstrate an outstanding commitment to their people and country.”
In addition, most textbooks have maps that erase the State of Israel, portray the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as Palestine and refer to Israel with the term “Zionist occupation.”

Any modern leader, if such a report was written about their country's textbooks, would respond with "Thank you for this information. We will study the report and if any of the criticisms are accurate, we will make the appropriate changes."

But Palestinian leaders aren't normal leaders.

Palestinian prime minister Mohamed Shtayyeh defended the textbooks and curricula in his weekly ministers meeting:

The Prime Minister reiterated that "Palestinian school curricula is a reflection of our lives and dreams of our children 's freedom and the suffering of our people from the occupation and its violations, and all that is contained in the textbooks is accurate...."
He stressed that our curricula, while responding to the cultural, historical, psychological, scientific, technological, economic and development needs of our children, also respond to international charters and resolutions that consider the Palestinian territories to be occupied lands, and they also respond to the standards set by the UNESCO Education, Culture and Science Organization of the values of truth, justice and equality, which are values that he struggles with our people in order to gain the end of the occupation of our land .

He stressed that the Palestinian curricula cannot be tried by criteria far removed from the history and culture of our people, their suffering and sacrifices in order to obtain their right to freedom and independence from occupation, injustice and colonialism, calling on Europe to conduct a study of Israeli books and curricula, similar to the study that was prepared on our curricula by a German institution, with funding from the European Union.

He doesn't even address the issues mentioned. According to Shtayyeh - who is as moderate a Palestinian as any - Palestinian textbooks must not be judged according to the standards of any other, because Palestinians are so uniquely victimized. Any antisemitism and support for terrorism is justified by their lived experience.

He is really saying that the world revolves around Palestinians and no one can dare criticize them.

It amazes me every day that Westerners act as if Palestinian leaders are like any other world leaders. This small episode shows yet again that they are closer to spoiled children, insisting that the world owes them everything and they have no responsibility or agency.

06/21 Link Pt1: Is Bennett set to shake-up global consensus on a two-state solution?; UK to boycott ‘festival of Jew-hate’ Durban IV; PA to renegotiate COVID-19 vaccine deal with Israel

From Ian:

David Singer: Is Bennett set to shake-up global consensus on a two-state solution?

Bennett – anointed as “Prime Minister and Minister for Settlement Affairs” – is now uniquely placed to promote his “Israel Stability Initiative – February 2012” (Stability Plan) – summarised by him in 2017:

“The main idea of The Stability Plan is to provide full civilian self-governance to the Palestinians so they can elect themselves, pay their taxes, and control those areas that are theirs. We should apply sovereignty in Israeli-controlled areas – known as Area C – and Palestinians living there will become part and parcel of the State of Israel. And since within the State of Israel you cannot have two levels of people, those Palestinians living in Area C – approximately 80,000 people – will be offered full Israeli citizenship, including voting rights. I think most will opt for residency rather than citizenship (like in East Jerusalem) but it’s up to them. They can be Israeli citizens, Israeli residents or Palestinian citizens.

"Those living in the Palestinian-controlled areas (Areas A and B) will govern themselves in all aspects barring two elements: overall security responsibility and not being able to allow the return of decedents [sic] of Palestinians refugees. We can’t have an inflow of millions of great grandchildren of 1948 refugees coming across the Jordan River because in one swoop that would distort the demography of the area, and within a few weeks of their arrival, the local Palestinians in Judea and Samaria would tell them to ‘go back to Jaffa’ which would subsequently create pressure on Israel that could lead to a third intifada inside ‘Smaller Israel’.

"My option is that Palestinians have an ‘autonomy on steroids,’ and I’m open to ideas about how this materialises; it could be a confederation with Jordan, or local municipalities, or a central government. It would encompass full freedom of movement, massive infrastructure investment, the creation of a tourism zone so Christians can enter Haifa, Nazareth, Nablus, Ramallah, Jerusalem and Hebron without going through road blocks. We would have joint industrial centres, and we’d be able to create a land port governed by the Palestinians in Jenin that would be connected to Haifa.”

Bennett continued:
“I understand there is global consensus around the two-state solution, but what the world thinks is no proof for the correctness of a plan. The world gets it wrong a lot.

"I’d say to those in the international community who are so entrenched in the idea of a Palestinian state that (a) the Palestinians have a state in Gaza and they blew it, and (b) after 50 years, at what time do we need to rethink? In the high tech world where I come from, if my employees tried the same solution and failed again and again I’d fire them as I’d expect them to have tried to tackle the challenge from a different angle by now! There is an industry around this topic – think-tanks, journals, professionals and academics who keep on chewing on the same old failed solution. We’re not in Europe, we live in a region with very few democracies, and when we tried this idea out it blew up in our faces and no one showed us any sympathy.”

Is Bennett going to stand behind his earlier plan? Global consensus needs to positively respond to Bennett’s challenge.

UK to boycott ‘festival of Jew-hate’ Durban IV

The British government has confirmed it will boycott Durban IV, an international conference that has been dubbed “the festival of Jew-hate.”

The UK will join Australia, Canada, Israel and the US in not attending the United Nations conference, which purports to focus on tackling racism across the globe.

When the event first took place in 2001 the US, Israel and Canada walked out, citing a series of antisemitic remarks that had been made at the gathering.

Several of those present also tried to claim that Zionism equated to racism.

The Board of Deputies, Jewish Leadership Council and Conservative Friends of Israel all wrote to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab this year, insisting the UK did not attend.

Last night a government spokesperson confirmed: "Following historic concerns regarding antisemitism, the UK has decided not to attend the UN’s Durban Conference anniversary event later this year."

CFI Parliamentary Chairmen, Stephen Crabb MP and Lord Eric Pickles, said: “Confirmation that the UK will not attend Durban IV is extremely welcome. It is absolutely right that the UK is joining our close allies Australia, Canada and the US in condemning the infamous gathering.

“We applaud this latest decisive action from the UK government in opposing antisemitism in all its forms and wherever it occurs.”

Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Vice President of the JLC and an attendee at the 2001 conference, said: “This is welcome news. Tainted with Jew hatred, poisonous rhetoric about Israel and Holocaust denial and minimisation, the Durban process is no place to tackle racism. It is time for the Durban conferences to be consigned to history.

"The British Government has done the right thing once again by taking a principled stance and refusing to attend.”

?? #BREAKING: The #UK just confirmed they will withdraw from #DurbanIV anti-Israel anti-Jewish hatefest at the UN, legitimately citing concerns over #antisemitism.https://t.co/8V8PHIA35r

Might have to update my presentation though now ... https://t.co/4LBllY4zpg
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) June 21, 2021

UN Watch commends the UK for pulling out of the UN's anti-Israel Durban IV event to be held in September. We urge other nations to follow.

?? Pulled out of Durban IV so far: ????????????????????
?? Pulled out of Durban III in 2011: ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????https://t.co/faq7UQVtb4
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 21, 2021

Outcry over UK funding for Palestinian school books that ‘incite terrorism’

Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) called on the UK to “act decisively to end its facilitation” of the PA’s “extreme curriculum”.

The UK and the EU directly pay the salaries of teachers who are involved in the production and implementation of the educational materials.

CFI’s Parliamentary chairmen Stephen Crabb MP and Lord Pickles, and CFI Honorary President Lord Polak, said British taxpayers would be “understandably appalled” to discover they had been funding the use of “hate-filled material” and criticised a “decade of prevarication and denial” by the UK government.

The review, undertaken by the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, was completed in February 2021 but has just been published following growing pressure for its public release.

It details extensive examples of radical material from 156 textbooks and 16 teachers’ guides used between 2017 and 2019.

The report includes dozens of examples of encouragement of violence and demonisation of Israel and of Jews, including the repeated glorification of “heroine” Dalal al-Mughrabi, who killed 38 Israelis, including 13 children, in a terror attack. The report found glorification and praise of terrorists who killed Israeli civilians in history, social studies, science and maths books.

An exercise in one religious studies textbook asks students to discuss the “repeated attempts by the Jews to kill the prophet” Muhammad and asks who are “other enemies of Islam".

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been touting their "night confusion units" for years.

These are different methods to harass IDF soldiers and residents near Gaza. They include incendiary kites and balloons, cutting the Gaza border fence, fireworks and firecrackers, amplified music, setting tires on fire, Molotov cocktails, and shining laser lights towards the soldiers and residents.

Now, Arabs in the West Bank are importing these methods to harass Jews in the Evyatar settlement outpost.

They are setting scores of fires to tires as well as to plastic to pollute the air and upset the residents.

Other "units" are the catapult unit, the reconnaissance unit, the Molotov cocktail unit, the horn unit that uses air horns, and the firework unit.

Some commercially available lasers are powerful enough to blind people at a distance or even to set fires.

Palestinian faction (Dahlan) claims that "expired" vaccines would have killed half a million Palestinians

To Palestinians, if the truth is inconvenient, you might as well lie.

Before the Palestinian elections that never happened this year, the Fatah party was split into three components. One of them is the Democratic Reform Movement, which is headed by Mohammed Dahlan, who was placed in exile in the UAE by his rival Mahmoud Abbas.

The Dahlan party is attacking the Palestinian Authority - not for spurning perfectly good vaccines for hundreds of thousands of people, but for initially reaching a deal with Israel to bring in "expired vaccines."

But it is not enough to lie about the vaccines being expired, as many "pro-Palestinian activists" are claiming. That isn't dramatic enough. The Dahlan party is claiming that the vaccines are actually dangerous.

Ghassan Jadallah, the local leader of the Democratic Reform Movement, wrote on his Facebook page that the mainstream Fatah movement is hiding the person "who almost killed thousands of our citizens in an expired vaccine deal"

An article in the party's mouthpiece said that "if a healthy person is vaccinated, the health consequences will be catastrophic and dire, because the vaccination is not valid and the vaccine is expired, .... entering into a journey of suffering and misery that will end in death."

Another article in that organization's news mouthpiece said that the deal "endangered the lives of half a million Palestinian citizens at risk of death, in the largest attempted murder in Palestinian history."

A cartoon illustrating this last article shows a bullet inside the syringe.

The Fatah offshoot is saying that, obviously, Israel intended to kill a half million Palestinians with these expired vaccines, because that's what Jews do. Their anger is against Abbas, though, for making a deal with genocidal Jews.

The Palestinian Minister of Health, Mai Al-Kaila, gave a statement to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa with her spin on the vaccine debacle this weekend.

She accidentally revealed that even if it is true that the expiration date on the first batch was the end of June, the Palestinian Authority had the ability to use all of the vaccines well before their expiration.

In fact, they could all have been used by today.

Al Kaila said that the Ministry of Health has the ability to vaccinate 60,000 citizens daily.

Since the first batch of 90,000 vaccines that so upset the Palestinians were, according to them, expiring by the end of the month, then the Ministry of Health could have used all of them between Friday, Saturday and Sunday easily.

By today, 90,000 people could have had their first shots, with over a week to spare for the expiration date. And no one says that the vaccine is less effective on the last days before expiration than when they are brand new from the factory.

Because of hatred of Jews and a counterproductive idea of "honor," even according to their own statements, the Palestinian Authority chose not to protect its citizens from COVID-19.

What kind of a sick government does that?

Al Jazeera (and former BBC) anchor says that Jews control the UAE, quoting Henry Ford

Jamal Rayyan has been an anchor at Al Jazeera for a long time, and in the 90s he was a BBC Arabic anchor as well.

A couple of weeks ago he posted a thread on Twitter about the UAE that is a crazy patchwork of antisemitic conspiracy theories.

The secret of the Emirates that no one knows .. No one knows how a country like the small UAE in its area does not exceed (75,000) km2 and its original population, which has not yet exceeded 800 thousand people, witnessed such a rapid renaissance ?!!

The UAE does not have a political history, liberation movements, or cultural or intellectual institutions. Did Sheikh Zayed become, overnight, prosperous with construction and reconstruction, and one of the most growing economies in West Asia..?!!

The truth is that the Jews are behind the establishment of the "Emirates Project", where the "rich Jews" in the West thought of establishing a Jewish settlement in the Middle East that would sponsor financial interests and the movement of trade without having to deal with the "mother" state for political and other reasons.

...
What is astonishing in the UAE is that when you enter as if you are in a European country or one of the developed Asian countries, where the meticulous system, professional dealings, high discipline in order, street elegance and cleanliness, but it is difficult to find a “original” citizen, as all transactions that start from the airport to housing, are in the hands of " foreigners"

There are Arabs from different countries, while you can hardly count the number of flights through airports competing with the largest airports in the world, in terms of capacity and services, nor the number of ships and ships in the ports, so that you are almost stunned.

Is it reasonable that this simple (Emirati) in his thinking and the extent of his aspirations to run this complex machine ..?!!

The Emirates in general, and Abu Dhabi in particular, have the highest percentage of wealthy people in the world, with an estimated number of 75,000 millionaires, while wealthy Jews constitute the highest percentage of them. This means providing a safe environment for this large financial buffer.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the one who led Mohammed bin Zayed from his hand towards Israel was the Jewish millionaire Haim Saban.

The Emirates are not just high-rise buildings, elegant streets, commerce and (now factories and workshops), but rather a settlement of conspiracy against the [Arab] nation.

The important question:

Why does the UAE need to be the fifth country in spending on weapons? Where is its army, and what borders is it defending?
Answer:
All of these weapons, whether their deals are announced or not, go to conspiracy against the countries of the region, as there are no Arab or Islamic countries in the region that do not find that the UAE is involved in its economic, political or security project and creates chaos in it.

The question is:
Does the Al Zayed family have the intelligence to manage all these complex issues?

The question:
Why do the owners of capital do not rule the UAE directly?

This question is answered by the book "The International Jew" written by Henry Ford, the owner of the Ford company in 1921, where he says that "the Jews prefer to lead the world from behind."

Another question:
Why did they not choose Israel instead of the Emirates and move capital, especially since the land of Palestine is abundant in its land and in the beauty of its nature and has an important geographical location and a view of the sea?

Answer:
Israel is not suitable for investment because it is a military state and is threatened at every moment and it is undesirable to deal with it commercially in the region, that is, it is too unstable to be the front of work for the Jews!!.

Conclusion: The UAE has been an Israeli settlement since 1971.

Rayyan has over 2 million followers on Twitter.

(h/t Exposing Antisemitism, which has other examples from Rayyan)

06/20 Links: Palestinian Arab leaders sacrifice health for pr -will their fellow travelers react?; Concessions to Hamas Lead to Violence. Holding Firm Leads to Calm

From Ian:

Why Didn’t Media Challenge Palestinian Authority’s Reasons for Rejecting Over 1 Million COVID-19 Inoculations?

This, even though Israel has asserted that the expiration dates were known when the deal was struck. “The COVID vaccines we gave the Palestinian Authority were perfectly valid,” a statement from the Israeli Health Ministry added. “The Palestinians received the same vaccines that are currently given to Israelis.” Indeed, if stored correctly, there is no reason to believe that the quality of the COVID shots will deteriorate before the expiration date.

So why did the PA refuse over a million vaccines, enough to fully inoculate some 24 percent of all Palestinians in the West Bank, or over 35 percent of the Gaza Strip? The reason can perhaps be gleaned from Palestinian public opinion. As political analyst Saleh al-Nuami commented: “The PA would not have backtracked on its shameful step were it not for the outrage expressed on social media.”

Many Palestinians criticized the vaccine exchange online, saying it was a form of “normalization with the Israeli occupation.” Moreover, rumors circulated that the Jewish state, in collusion with the PA, was trying to “poison” Palestinians with expired doses.

The agreement was also lambasted by Palestinian NGOs, which called for an investigation into the “scandal.” Within hours after the public backlash, Health Minister al-Kaila and PA spokesperson Ibrahim Melhem announced the cancellation of the deal. PA officials afterwards claimed that the agreement would have led to a “health disaster.” The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a US-designated terror group, falsely asserted that the vaccines “could have harmed human life.”

While many Middle Eastern nations like Egypt (0.7 percent fully inoculated), Iran (1%), and Iraq (0.5%) are still struggling to obtain coronavirus vaccines, the Palestinian Authority refused what appeared to be perfectly good doses that could potentially save lives.

Yet, media failed to question the Palestinian leadership on the reasons it gave for not using the batch of vaccines, leaving Ramallah’s claim about the expiry date largely unchallenged. In doing so, news organizations are seemingly attempting to revive the thoroughly debunked libel that Israel is somehow preventing Palestinians from accessing COVID-19 inoculations.

Palestinian Arab leaders sacrifice health for pr -will their fellow travelers react?

Propaganda against the Jewish State is more important to the leadership of the PA than the lives of their people.

This does not surprise me. It is consistent with the behavior of the PA.

The question is how their fellow travelers react to this development.

Someone from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel took to the airwaves to slam Israel while admitting that he was clueless about the details of the expiration dates of the doses.

Will B'Tselem join the chorus?

How about J Street?

Are these groups really on the side of the Palestinian Arabs themselves?

NO.

They are on the side of the Palestinian Authority rulers, not the Palestinian Arabs.

Because if they were truly on the side of the Palestinians they would be slamming the Palestinian rulers for sacrificing the health of Palestinian Arabs for the sake of their ongoing propaganda campaign against the Jewish State.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why the PA scrapped the vaccine deal with Israel - analysis

One reason many Palestinians have been outraged the past 48 hours is because they first learned about the Pfizer exchange deal from the Israeli media. Israeli media outlets have long been serving as a main source of information for the Palestinians about what’s happening in the PA.

The PA has long been facing criticism from many Palestinians not only because of corruption, but also over its continued security coordination with Israel in the West Bank. During last month’s Israel-Hamas war, the PA also came under attack by many Palestinians for failing to make a serious effort to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

And more recently, PA President Mahmoud Abbas faced widespread criticism for his decision to call off the Palestinian parliamentary and presidential elections, which were supposed to take place on May 22 and July 31.

The vaccine agreement with Israel was supposed to boost the PA’s already tarnished reputation and show that it is doing its utmost to provide the doses to the Palestinians.

The PA was hoping that the vaccines would reduce the number of coronavirus infections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, help the Palestinians return to normal life and improve the Palestinian economy, thus bolstering the standing of Abbas and the PA leadership in the eyes of the public.

But the botched deal has turned out to be one of the worst PR disasters for the PA, whose leaders are currently working to limit the damage and prevent their critics and political rivals from cashing in on the “scandal.”

Palestinian anti-Israel politics prevent COVID-19 vaccinations

The Palestinian Authority shot itself in the foot with its decision to reject up to 1.4 million Israeli vaccines that could have enabled it to inoculate its citizens months earlier than planned.

On Friday, less than a week since Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s new broad-based coalition was sworn in, Israel announced that the country had reached a deal to immediately transfer Pfizer vaccines that were nearing their expiration date to the Palestinians in exchange for the same number later on.

The PA had ordered vaccines from Pfizer back in April, but the company said they were not expected to be delivered for at least several more months.

The shipment, on top of the one million vaccines promised to the Palestinians under the United Nations-related COVAX program, could have allowed for up to 40% of the Palestinians to be vaccinated by the end of the year.

The Palestinian health minister initially praised the deal, but after coming under intense internal pressure, she used the fact that the first 100,000 vaccines, which were already delivered, were set to expire in the next 12 days to foil the entire deal.

“The decision to return the vaccines we received from Israel was made after our professional teams discovered that the vaccines did not meet our standards,” Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said during a press conference.

BBC News resurrects redundant Covid vaccinations talking points

It also resurrects redundant themes seen in previous BBC reporting.

“UN experts had been critical of Israel’s failure to fully extend its vaccination programme to Palestinians under its control.”

As we noted back in January, those “UN experts” are in fact two UN special rapporteurs (who are not UN staff members) for the notoriously anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council – Tlaleng Mofokeng and Michael Lynk. In common with numerous previous BBC reports, this one too makes no effort to inform audiences of the obviously relevant anti-Israel record of one of the authors of the cited document.

The BBC’s report goes on:
“The Israelis said the Palestinians were responsible for managing health matters in the territories.”

Back in early February the BBC acknowledged that the Oslo Accords “give the Palestinian Authority oversight of public health” following a complaint.

One must therefore ask why the corporation insists on continuing to misrepresent the part of the 1995 Oslo II agreement relating to health (Article 17) which states that “Powers and responsibilities in the sphere of Health in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will be transferred to the Palestinian side, including the health insurance system” as merely something that ‘Israel says’ is the case.