Friday, July 23, 2021

  • Friday, July 23, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
From the New York Times, July 24, 1948:


The Palestine National Olympic Committee had been a member in good standing since 1933, and it represented the Jewish National Home even though it had athletes of all religions. Obviously the only thing that changed was the name. Just as obviously, the IOC used a technical excuse to avoid a walkout by the Arabs - so, then as now, Israel pays the price.








  • Friday, July 23, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
The thoroughly anti-Israel Washington Report on Middle East Affairs goes towards the antisemitism route by claiming that Palestinians are continuous victims of the Holocaust:


It is a thoroughly disgusting piece of Holocaust trivialization and inversion, filled with quotes from as-a-Jews.

WHEN WE DISCUSS THE HOLOCAUST and Hitler’s slaughter of six million European Jews, we often forget the fact that the Holocaust had other victims as well, namely the Palestinians, whose country was taken from them. They were innocent victims as the world sought to make a place for Jews who had been displaced by the Nazi tyranny, and wished to do so in a way that did not involve inviting Jewish refugees into their own countries.

 The reason that the Palestinians may properly be seen as the final victims of the Holocaust is that growing anti-Semitism in Europe caused many Jews, who had previously opposed Zionism to begin to look positively upon the idea of creating a Jewish state in Palestine as a refuge for those being persecuted. Jewish organizations in the U.S. that had always opposed Zionism, slowly began to view it more favorably. Without Hitler, there would have been little support from Jews in the U.S. or Western Europe for the creation of a Jewish state. Without the Holocaust, the United Nations would have had little reason to establish the State of Israel.

What a grotesque argument. The Zionists argued that only a Jewish state could keep Jews safe, many Jews disagreed. After the Holocaust, it was clear that the Zionists were right, and countless Jews would have been saved if Israel existed ten years earlier.  Events proved that Jews cannot rely on the world to protect them.

Antisemitic jerks like author Allan Brownfeld want to bring things back to the good old days where Jews could be persecuted without recourse - and, worse, he says that Jews who have the nerve to want to exist in their own homeland are as bad as the Nazis are.

This newsletter is considered one of the must-reads for antisemitic, anti-Israel Americans for having articles like this that use pseudo-analysis to delegitimize the only Jewish state. 







From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The flavour of malice
It should be constantly hammering home to the world the fact that the indigenous people of the land of Israel are the Jews while the Palestinians are the would-be colonisers; that the notion of Palestinian rights to any of that land is a legal and historical fiction; and that Israel liberated the disputed territories from the truly illegal occupation of those lands by Jordan between 1948 and 1967.

It should be constantly hammering home to the world that the Palestinians reveal by their words, actions and insignia that their aim remains the obliteration of Israel; that the “two-state solution” is a convenient untruth by which they dupe the useful idiots of the west; and that it is only Israel that stands for peace, justice and the rule of law.

Alas, though, the Jewish community itself won’t stand up and tell the truth about the Jews’ unique rights to all the land (whether or not Israel actually wants it all), the legality of all Israel’s actions or the hysterical Jew-hatred spewed out by the Palestinians without remission.

Indeed, given the Palestinian Authority’s repression of its own dissenters, its incitement to murder Israelis and steal their land and its Nazi-themed demonisation of the Jewish people, the question that might properly be raised is whether there’s a moral duty to boycott the Palestinians.

But instead of saying any of this, the Jews are mostly divided between those who believe these lies themselves and those who know they are lies but are too terrified to say so.

Until and unless the Jewish world starts properly exposing the falsehoods and demented antisemitism that are driving the vilification of Israel, boycotting the boycotters will always leave the defenders of truth, justice and sanity behind this particular murderous curve.


Damage Control: Unilever’s ‘Inclusive’ CEO Struggles To Renounce Ben & Jerry’s Anti-Semitism
The Unilever boss has also helmed the company's operations in Russia, Africa, and the Middle East, regions that do not exactly comply with the "inclusive" standards Unilever projects to Western audiences.

Last month, for example, the company launched an initiative called "Act 2 Unstereotype" and vowed to "provoke inclusive thinking across the end-to-end marketing process." Its goal is nothing less than to "help influence the next generation of people to be free of prejudice." Except, apparently, when it comes to prejudice against Israeli Jews.

Jope, who once served as a guest judge on The Apprentice with Donald Trump, has written extensively on his business philosophy, which espouses a "multi-stakeholder approach," a "collaborative mindset," "collective reinvention," and other iterations of corporate nonsense.

"Stakeholder capitalism is about radically changing the values of the company, and the way it operates, to reflect the interests of multiple stakeholders all the time," Jope wrote last year in the Telegraph. "It means taking action to address the climate crisis, and also looking at the favelas of Brazil, the townships of Africa and the slums of India to see what business can do to help tackle social and economic inequality."

Ben & Jerry's decision appears at odds with this philosophy, to say the least. As the Washington Free Beacon editors wrote on Tuesday: "We're not clear how exactly removing Ben & Jerry's ice cream from grocery stores in the West Bank will benefit the Palestinians. The move appears to be primarily an act of guerrilla theater and a demonstration of base prejudice."

Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett had a similar reaction and promised to hold the Unilever CEO accountable for the "clearly anti-Israel step." According to Bennett's office, the prime minister spoke directly with Jope and told him the decision would have "serious consequences, legal and otherwise," as Israel would "act aggressively against all boycott actions directed against its citizens."


The Caroline Glick Show: Episode 14 – Ben and Jerry’s join the Jew haters
0:00 Ben and Jerry's joins the war against the Jewish state
31:35 Iran revolts and Biden sides with the ayatollahs
42:26 Netanyahu's trial unravels and the left attacks Gadi
In Episode 14 of the Caroline Glick Mideast News Hour, Caroline and Gadi discussed Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream announcement that it is joining the Jew haters in the BDS campaign. They talked about its consequences for the Israeli franchise, and about what Americans can do to fight the hate, (spoiler alert: there’s a lot that can be done fairly easily).
Caroline and Gadi moved on to discuss the nationwide uprising of the Iranian people against the regime and what the regime’s overthrow would mean for the world. The Biden administration’s refusal to say a word of support for the Iranian people also received the proper treatment.
Finally they closed this week’s show with a discussion of how Gadi is rocking the world of Israeli leftists by publishing a report in Haaretz of Netanyahu’s trial revealing to the left that the state prosecution indicted Netanyahu without a shred of evidence of wrongdoing, (oops).
Join our dynamic duo for this lively discussion, and get the bonus of meeting Caroline’s mom!
Subscribe to the show and subscribe your friends and family as well.
  • Friday, July 23, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon



Richie's Pizza was an iconic pizza shop in Jerusalem throughout the 1970s and 80s that was the place for Americans in Israel to meet, hang out and eat familiar pizza in a country that at the time had no such pizza shops.

The Jerusalem Post has a great interview with Richie Fox himself, as he describes his journey and many adventures. One of them stuck out to me.

[I]n 1966, [Richie] took a boat from New York to England, bought a Triumph motorcycle and traveled through Western Europe, ending in Gibraltar, crossing into Morocco and driving across northern Africa, visiting Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. From Alexandria, he and his motorcycle took a boat to Beirut, then crossed into Syria. Because of the atmosphere of fanaticism there, he kept his Jewish identity hidden, as well as the fact that he was heading to Israel. Richie then went on to Jordan, seeing Petra – that famed red sandstone historical site that Israelis had longed to go to – and eventually making his way into Israel, settling in Jerusalem.
On his first visit to the Old City, still in Jordanian hands in 1966, he received Jordanian permission to go through the Mandelbaum Gate by declaring he was an Anabaptist. When he went to the Kotel (referred to then as the ‘Wailing Wall’), he realized that he had a privilege not granted to many Jews at all. From somewhere “deep inside,” he recited Shema Yisrael, Arab kids throwing stones at him all the while. On his way back to the Israeli side of Jerusalem, he said to himself, “I’ll probably never be there again.”
Before 1967, Jordan did not allow Jews into Jerusalem at all - as indicated from this story where Fox had to claim to be an Anabaptist. I can only find one time that Jews were allowed to pray at the Kotel under Jordanian rule, in 1957.

Even a Jewish member of the Canadian parliament was barred from visiting the Old City by Jordan in 1959. 

Outside of that 1957 incident, Richie Fox may have been the only Jew to have successfully visited and prayed at the Kotel between 1949 and 1967.





  • Friday, July 23, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon



Navi Pillay will lead the UNHRC’s  Commission of Inquiry which is designed from the outset to declare Israel an "apartheid" state.

Pillay's three-person commission will supposedly look at the “root causes” of the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.

Pillay is a confirmed hater of Israel and apologist for both terror and antisemitism. She was one of the main organizers of the infamous 2001 Durban conference which devolved into an antisemitic hatefest, yet she defended it and later organized its anniversary celebrations that confirmed its anti-Israel agenda in 2009 and 2011 that were boycotted by many Western nations.

During Durban II, she listened respectfully to  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denying speech even as many representatives left the room and she had an advanced copy of his speech.

In her report on the 2009 Gaza war, she wrote, "Hamas has made public statements that it is committed to respect international human rights and humanitarian law" without skepticism.

She wasn't chosen to head this commission in spite of her hate of Israel, but because of it.

The commission will not find any systemic antisemitism from the Arab side, but it will almost definitely eagerly join the bandwagon of accusing Israel of systemic racism and apartheid against Palestinians.

It is not meant to issue only a single report, like any other Commission of Inquiry. No, when it comes to Israel, the UN makes up new rules. This is a permanent Commission that will report to the UN every year, forever, its only purpose to say how horrible Israel is.

The mandate of the commission makes it obvious that its mission is one-sided. It starts off with:

Investigate in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law leading up to and since 13 April 2021
What is so special about April 13, and why does it have to be mentioned if the investigation is including all incidents before and since? 

That is the date that Palestinians say Israel started all the events that led to war. It was the first day of Ramadan and also Israel's Memorial Day, and President Rivlin was giving his annual speech at the Western Wall. Israeli police cut off power to the minaret loudspeakers on the Temple Mount because their call to prayer was drowning out his speech. Palestinians were incensed and Mahmoud Abbas called it  “a racist hate crime.”

The UN is using the Palestinian narrative as its own in creating the mandate for this commission. If it wasn't obvious from the first paragraph, the following ones are specifically designed to find Israel guilty of apartheid, and to collect evidence for that to present to the International Criminal Court, before the members even begin:

Investigate all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity.

 Investigate all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity;

Establish the facts and circumstances that may amount to such violations and abuses and of crimes perpetrated;

Collect, consolidate and analyse evidence of such violations and abuses and of crimes perpetrated, and systematically record and preserve all information, documentation and evidence, including interviews, witness testimony and forensic material, in accordance with international law standards, in order to maximize the possibility of its admissibility in legal proceedings;

Document and verify relevant information and evidence, including through field engagement and by cooperating with judicial and other entities, as appropriate;

Identify, where possible, those responsible, with a view to ensuring that perpetrators of violations are held accountable;

All this language is designed to condemn Israel and bring it to trial before the commission even meets the first time. It is not meant to determine if Israel is guilty of apartheid - it is created to find how Israel is guilty and to ignore any counter evidence. 

To be sure, there will be a perfunctory paragraph in their first report that mentions that Hamas rockets violate international law buried in the middle of 200 pages of accusing Israel of every crime in the book, and adding a few new crimes to the book for good measure. We've seen this before.

While B'Tselem accused Israel of apartheid earlier this year, it is really Human Rights Watch that has opened the floodgates to allow the accusation to become mainstream and accepted. The narrative is overcoming the evidence, even though nothing fundamental has changed in Israel for decades. The UN is now following this train of thought.

The modern antisemites are setting the stage for a legal attack on Israel's very existence. 





  • Friday, July 23, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
From the NYT:

BEIT YEHOSHUA, Israel — Uriya Rosenman grew up on Israeli military bases and served as an officer in an elite unit of the army. His father was a combat pilot. His grandfather led the paratroopers who captured the Western Wall from Jordan in 1967.

Sameh Zakout, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, grew up in the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Ramla. His family was driven out of its home in the 1948 war of Israeli independence, known to Palestinians as the “Nakba,” or catastrophe. Many of his relatives fled to Gaza.

Facing each other in a garage over a small plastic table, the two hurl ethnic insults and clichés at each other, tearing away the veneer of civility overlaying the seething resentments between the Jewish state and its Palestinian minority in a rap video that has gone viral in Israel.

The video, “Let’s Talk Straight,” which has garnered more than four million views on social media since May, couldn’t have landed at a more apt time, after the eruption two months ago of Jewish-Arab violence that turned many mixed Israeli cities like Lod and Ramla into Jewish-Arab battlegrounds.

By shouting each side’s prejudices at each other, at times seemingly on the verge of violence, Mr. Rosenman and Mr. Zakout have produced a work that dares listeners to move past stereotypes and discover their shared humanity.

It is a very powerful video.


Each monologue is filled with  simplistic, racist opinions of the other - sprinkled with protests that "I'm not racist."  

Some 20% of Israelis are Arabs. They are full citizens. They deserve equal rights. And at the same time, Israel is a Jewish state and must remain that way, or else it loses its entire character and its raison d'être. The government and the people need to balance the two imperatives.

Many people say that the two are completely incompatible. Most of them are anti-Israel, and paint a false picture of a state where if racism or inequalities exist, it loses its own right to exist - an expectation that applies to no other country. Those people are in reality antisemites, who don't accept the concept of a Jewish state and hide their hate behind human rights principles - not regarding Jewish self determination or the Jewish right to life as human rights at all.

This is the attitude of people from so-called human rights groups and from BDS, which are increasingly interchangeable.

On the other side, there are Jews in Israel who don't want to admit that there is racism against Arabs - people who sound like the Jew in the video, just as there are racist Arabs represented by the Israeli Arab rapper. 

A large number of Israelis think that the least bad alternative is separation - let people live in Arab only or Jewish only cities, or choose to live in mixed cities if they choose. This minimizes the friction but doesn't reduce the racism. 

The BDS crowd takes the separation idea and turns it into pure antisemitism - they don't want any Arab to even talk with any Israeli Jew (unless that Jew denounces Israel beforehand.) They aren't seeking a balance to help reduce friction - they want to ensure that there is no opportunity for any Arab to learn that Jews aren't monsters.

Keeping Israel democratic and Jewish while accepting the Arab minority and treating them as full citizens with full rights is not an easy problem to solve. Neither is overcoming centuries of Arab antisemitism and decades of anti-Israel propaganda. The solution requires education and a desire to learn. 

What is great about this video is that it opens the conversation on both Arab antisemitism and Israeli Jewish racism by confronting the issue head-on. The final statement, "We both have no other country - and this is where change begins" is a challenge to everyone. Listening to the other side doesn't mean accepting their narrative but it does help understand their perspective, and people do not spend enough time trying to understand the other. 

The video is two monologues, followed by both people eating hummus together. But it offers a path towards real dialogue. 






Thursday, July 22, 2021

From Ian:

Nitsana Darshan Leitner: The world reacts to Israel with arrogance and hypocrisy - opinion
How outrageous is the audacity of US President Joe Biden’s administration that its response equates cold-blooded murder with punitive measures that have been used successfully for years, since the British Mandate, to punish those who perpetrate acts of terror murder and to deter those who might follow in their footsteps. In a landscape where terrorists care little about their own lives and blow up buses, take hostages and murder Jews, the demolition of a terrorist’s house makes those who want to strap an explosive vest on their bodies or shoot up teenagers at a bus stop think twice before carrying out their homicidal actions. There are countless examples of Palestinian fathers bringing their sons to the attention of the Palestinian Authority security services because they feared that their boys were about to perpetrate an attack that would ultimately result in the family home being destroyed. The deterrence power is irrefutable and that deterrence saves lives. The State Department was angry about the loss of a building. Why were they not angry about the loss of life? A building can be repaired and rebuilt. Yehuda Guetta is dead, and Benaya Peretz will be paralyzed for the rest of his life. Their homes are destroyed for good. It needs to be pointed out that the homes of terror suspects are not being demolished on a whim. They are the result of a lengthy legal process that must satisfy the criteria of the court; the decision to blow up a home must pass numerous military and judicial thresholds before the orders are issued. There are appeal processes that make their way through the judiciary. There’s nothing unilateral about it. In the Shalabi case, a petition was filed with a High Court of Justice to stop the combat engineers from wiring the structure with explosives. But it failed and the orders to blow up the house were issued.

The US Embassy went so far as to send representatives to observe the courtroom arguments and to make sure that they were carried out to the letter of the law. The legal effort to stop the demolition was not successful. And this was the doubling down of hypocrisy. The US Embassy in Jerusalem didn’t send representatives to pay their condolences to the Guetta family nor did it send an emissary to the hospital to sit at Benaya’s bedside. There were no public statements of American anger over the shooting attack, and the US State Department never bothered to condemn the senseless murder of an innocent teenager waiting at a bus stop. Why would it? Israeli victims have become too commonplace to warrant any interest from American or other governments who continuously look at Jewish victims as acceptable losses in a larger game of appeasement.

The US should know better. After 9/11, when it declared a global war on terror to prevent further acts of catastrophic destruction, all bets were off. American and allied forces arrested and tortured countless Afghans and Pakistanis and held them at Guantanamo Bay without trial – even to this day – in a clear violation of their human rights. Perhaps the US should preach what it practices.

The only unilateral action taken in this tragic affair was the cold-blooded murder of a teenager and the crippling of another by a Palestinian terrorist. Israel’s actions were responsive and measured, designed to limit the collateral damage and heartache of more innocent men, women, and children, being murdered.


The “Apartheid” Poll and the Disinformation Discourse
The July 2021 Jewish Electorate Institute poll of American Jewish opinion on Israel has triggered sharp debate both in the United States and Israel. The poll shows that 25 percent of respondents believe that Israel is an apartheid state, while 22 percent consider Israel guilty of genocide against Palestinians. In the under-40 age group, 20 percent agreed that Israel has no right to exist.

A disinformation campaign leveled at Israel’s legitimacy has been percolating through the West since the 1975 UN “Zionism is racism” Resolution and has overtaken American public discourse on Israel since 2000. This campaign has come to normalize the application of delegitimizing terms to Israel such as “genocide,” “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” “settler colonialism,” and “racism.”

Disinformation as a political warfare phenomenon has deep historical roots in the former Soviet Union. According to KGB defectors to the U.S., its objective was to release “deliberately distorted information, secretly leaked in the communication process,” in order to “deceive and manipulate” public opinion.

Palestinian leadership has used Soviet-style disinformation to discredit, delegitimize, and demonize Israel beginning in the late 1960s, when PLO officials underwent military and political warfare training in Moscow and other Soviet satellite countries.

Disinformation by BDS-affiliated and Jewish anti-Zionist organizations spread through American college campuses and social media have negatively affected Jewish public opinion on Israel.

American Jewish and Israeli leaders must stand against the disinformation campaign that has become the progressive discourse.
The Joshua and Caleb Network: ACTUAL FOOTAGE of the Jewish Settlers Who “Stormed” the Aqsa Mosque
International media headlines this week screamed out that Jewish settlers had stormed the Al Aqsa Mosque this past Sunday. It just so happened that Luke happened to be with the very same group of “settlers” when they “stormed the Al Aqsa Mosque. He also captured the event with photos and videos, which we will share on today’s program.

World headlines don’t always present a clear picture of the truth.

Who controls the Temple Mount? Is it the “heart of hearts” for 2 billion Muslims or is it the farthest place from Mecca and the third holiest site in Islam?

Today’s program is full of myth busting truth.








Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Roberta, Where's The Anti-Jewish Angle In This Art Show Review?
by Dean Baquet, Executive Editor, The New York Times

Dean BaquetNew York, July 25 - Roberta, this is a fine recap of the Met's upcoming exhibit - good job getting them to grant you an exclusive preview of the Pollock retrospective. It's a real coup. But I wanted to tell you in person, because I think it's important, that I'm putting the story on hold until you can find a convincing way to work in some subtle antisemitism. Otherwise I might have to kill it entirely.

You know our policy, Roberta. I can only assume the pressures of the impending deadline forced the anti-Jewish requirement from your consciousness. That's fine; it happens to everyone from time to time. And we only formalized it a few months ago, after years - decades, really, long before my time as EE - of it being a kind of 'oral law' that the staff passed from generation to generation. Perhaps that one meeting with the official announcement wasn't enough. You have to see the Slack channel, Roberta. What do you think will happen among our younger set if I green-light a piece that contains no Judaeophobia?

Remember what happened with Bari Weiss. We don't need another storm of that sort. And Bret Stephens had to leave Twitter - our token conservative voice! I can take him or leave him, as you know, but appearances are important.

So is consistency. I'm not going to tell you how to do your job - I know about as much about art as I do about the Middle East. I will, however, suggest a few ways to include anti-Jewish animus in your review, in case you're pressed for time and can't come up with ideas right away.

First, there's the standby of invoking "Israeli Apartheid." You can compare anything modern to Banksy, and from there it's easy to slide in references to his activism on behalf of making it easier for Palestinian terrorists to kill Jews, and that opposition to that position is racist segregation.

Then you've got the option of taking abstract imagery and having it call to mind "violence" or "barbarism," which you can then parley into a screed against circumcision or ritual slaughter. If you prefer a little more discretion, the Holocaust or Nazism are always powerful reference points, from which you can slide into calling Israel or just Jews in general the New Nazis. I might have some Eli Valley material you can explore - you know what? I'll e-mail to you.

Do try to mix things up a little, though - I don't want to be beating the same anti-Orthodox drum again and again, as we do with TV and film coverage.

Glad we had this talk. Are you free for lunch?






From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich (WSJ, link via tweet): Ben & Jerry’s Israel Boycott Could Cost Unilever
Ben & Jerry’s knew this was an offer the licensee had to refuse. Parts of what the company calls “occupied Palestinian territory” Israel (as well as the U.S.) considers sovereign Israeli territory. Israeli law bars boycotts of Israeli citizens, Jewish or Arab, based on their location. So Unilever cancelled the Israeli Ben & Jerry’s entirely because it wouldn’t engage in a secondary boycott.

Because Ben & Jerry’s is a wholly owned subsidiary of Unilever, the latter is responsible for its boycott. In the past eight years, 33 American states have passed laws that restrict government contracting or investing in companies that boycott Israeli people or businesses. These laws are modeled on similar restrictions on companies that discriminate on other grounds, such as sexual orientation.

This means that, in about a dozen states, state employees’ pension funds will be barred from investment in Unilever. In many other states, government entities will be barred from buying goods or services from Unilever. Moreover, since the 1970s, federal law has banned U.S. companies from participating in foreign boycotts of any country. If it turns out that the Palestinian Authority contacted Ben & Jerry’s or its officers and asked them to boycott, criminal penalties would be available against Unilever.

Ben & Jerry’s suggests that its action is motivated by the Israeli “occupation.” But the company seems to have decided to end its Israel business in May, when Hamas unleashed a 10-day rocket barrage on Israeli civilians. Ben & Jerry’s has not boycotted anyone but the Jewish state. And that is what the state and federal boycott laws recognize—that refusals to deal with Israelis are most often a form of bigotry.






Legal Fallout: Is Ben & Jerry’s Israel Boycott Only a Free Speech Issue?

'Insider' links Ben & Jerry's to activist kicked out of Israel
Ben & Jerry’s announcement on Monday that it would stop selling its ice cream in Judea and Samaria, caving in to pressure from BDS, had many people wondering who was advising the Vermont-based company.

Constitutional & international law professor Eugene Kontorovich, who is an expert on legal issues in the Israeli-Arab conflict, said on Twitter that he had a “scoop” on the company’s decision.

“SCOOP (on Ben & Jerry’s): I’ve been told by (a Ben & Jerry’s) insider that company's board invited Omar Shakir, a professional BDS activist, to advise them, rejected calls to hear experts on other side. This ain't about the settlements,” he tweeted.

In a response to Kontorovich’s tweet, NGO Monitor said, “Not surprising since Omar Shakir was kicked out of Israel for being a BDS activist. First he pressured FIFA, then airbnb, and now Ben & Jerry’s. His entire ‘human rights’ career has been devoted to pressuring companies to boycott Israel.”

In 2019, Shakir, who was the regional director of Human Rights Watch in Israel, was deported from Israel after a court ruled he had promoted the BDS movement’s agenda.


Richard Goldberg: Double Scoops and Double Standards Courtesy of Ben & Jerry's
In addition to its classic double scoops, Vermont-based ice cream producer Ben & Jerry's is now offering a calorie-rich serving of double standards, too. The Ben & Jerry's brand, owned and operated by Unilever, announced on July 19 that it would terminate its license agreement with an Israeli-based manufacturer to ensure its products "will no longer be sold" in the "Occupied Palestinian Territory." Unilever cut off the longstanding licensee after it refused to halt sales in the disputed territories, which reportedly would violate Israeli law. In short, Unilever engaged in a boycott of Israel as defined by state and federal law, which means the company may soon be facing penalties that eat into its profits.

Unilever is a British multinational consumer goods company headquartered in London, U.K. It has annual revenues of $61 billion (£45 billion) and its products are available in over 190 countries. It also maintains corporate offices in numerous human rights-abusing countries, including China, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Venezuela, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. Unilever is reportedly a major purchaser of tomato paste from state-owned factories in China's Xinjiang region, where the U.S. State Department says China is engaged in "horrific abuses." In January 2021, the U.S. government halted the import of all such tomato paste into the U.S., citing the use of forced labor that amounted to "exploiting modern slavery." Yet neither Unilever nor Ben & Jerry's appears to have ever taken action against China's massive human rights violations in Xinjiang.

It is difficult to say why Unilever shows greater concern for the sale of ice cream in West Bank settlements than it does for the exploitation of forced labor in Xinjiang, yet the company's board members and senior executives have a lengthy record of criticizing the Jewish state. Jeff Furman, the president of the Ben & Jerry's Foundation's board and former chair of the corporate board, visited the West Bank in 2012 on a tour organized by an activist group that advocated for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Furman also signed a letter that condemned Israeli military operations in Gaza, but conspicuously never mentioned Hamas—the terrorist outfit that runs Gaza. Furthermore, he has called for the end of U.S. aid to Israel and has falsely claimed that Palestinians endure "apartheid living conditions."

Anuradha Mittal, Furman's replacement as corporate board chair, has similarly demonstrated her selective emphasis on the Israeli government's actions. The Oakland Institute, which she directs, produced a series of nine reports condemning Israel in 2017. Mittal announced that she deleted her Airbnb account in May 2019 after Airbnb reversed its own short-lived boycott of Israel. Moreover, she publicly opposed a congressional resolution condemning anti-Semitism and signed a petition in June 2021 calling to end U.S. arms sales to Israel.

The Ben & Jerry's independent board distanced itself from the brand's July 19 announcement—objecting to a clause stating that Ben & Jerry's would continue operating in "pre-1967" Israel and reasserting its autonomy to make "social justice" decisions under its 2000 merger agreement. This underscores that Unilever does indeed share responsibility for the boycott decision. Unilever's release of the boycott announcement under the Ben & Jerry's brand—and its admission that Unilever, not Ben & Jerry's, will be the corporate entity that cuts off the Israeli licensee—demonstrates that the parent company has ultimate control over Ben & Jerry's operations.
  • Thursday, July 22, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon



The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights issued a press release:

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights condemns Israel’s decision to withhold 597 million shekels (ca. US$182 million) in tax revenue collected last year and owed to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The decision, approved by the Israeli cabinet on 11 July 2021, allows the Israeli government to withhold up to 50 million shekels (ca. US$15 million) per month as of August.

(from the Arabic version) Al Mezan Center for Human Rights condemns the Israeli decision. At the same time, it affirms that the Palestinian Authority’s financial allocations for the families of martyrs, wounded and detainees, which are provided in the form of monthly salaries to these families, are considered a form of social security for families who have lost their main breadwinner, and that the deduction’s decision constitutes Piracy in broad daylight, harming the livelihood of these families, and collective punishment against the civilian population, which in turn contributes to the deterioration of the already deteriorated humanitarian and economic conditions in the occupied Palestinian territories in general, especially in light of the continuation of Israeli violations, especially the comprehensive siege imposed on the Gaza Strip.
This "social security" argument is specious. If that is true, then why is this program only for people classified as fighters? Why are the payments higher for those who killed more Jews? Why do the payments increase the more time the prisoner is behind bars? Why are their salaries higher than those of regular Palestinian workers, both while in prison and even after they are released and could work again?

If it was really a social security issue, it should be equally available to every family where the breadwinner dies or is incapacitated - Fatah or Hamas, male or female, "militant" or someone with a shoe store in Nablus. No one would object, and all the tax revenues would be restored. 

Every Palestinian knows that these payments are meant to reward terrorists. They say this openly and they defend this proudly . Al Mezan, a supposed "human rights' organization, knows this as well and is trying to gaslight the West with this nonsense of social security payments.

Their defense of the "pay for slay" program proves that they are not interested in human rights at all.

Either that, or they do not consider the Jews who were attacked by these terrorists to be humans deserving of rights.

The entire "human rights" industry is a sham where outrages like this are accepted and supported. There is a huge cleavage between "human rights organizations" and actual human rights. And international human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty are complicit because they condone these immoral payments with their silence.






  • Thursday, July 22, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon



From The Hill:
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and other Democratic lawmakers have signed onto a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging him to appoint a special envoy tasked with monitoring and combatting Islamophobia.

In the letter sent Tuesday, Omar and two dozen other lawmakers cited the spike in Islamophobia seen in recent years as well as the “persecution of Muslims manifesting itself around the world.”

The lawmakers also pointed to a recent annual report released by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), in which the office identified multiple countries with “patterns of mistreatment and human rights violations against either their entire Muslim populations or particular sects of Muslims.” 

“In addition to state-sponsored policies of Islamophobia, we have seen a disturbing rise in incidents of Islamophobic violence committed by individuals connected to larger transnational white supremacist networks, including but by no means limited to the mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019 and the recent murder of a Muslim Canadian family in London, Ontario,” the lawmakers wrote.

The lawmakers went on to strongly urge Blinken to establish the new role dedicated to combatting Islamophobia, calling it “a genuinely global problem that the United States should tackle globally.”
This would make worldwide bigotry worse, not better.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom report that these members of Congress reference describes various issues of religious intolerance, including antisemitism and intolerance towards Muslims. It also describes bigotry against Sikhs, Hindus, Yazidis, Christians and specific Christian sects like Copts and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Crucially, however, it also describes discrimination against Muslims in Muslim countries - Shiite countries persecuting Sufi Muslims and Baha'i, Sunni countries persecuting Shiites and Ahmadiyya Muslims. There is arguably more religious persecution of Muslims by other Muslims than by non-Muslims. 

If the State Department would appoint an Islamophobia envoy with the parameters suggested by Omar and others, these cases of Muslim discrimination against other Muslims would be swept under the rug. Indeed, the only persecutors mentioned in the press conference about this initiative were white supremacists as the major threat to Muslims worldwide, which is clearly not true. 

An Islamophobia envoy (especially one whose remit is to concentrate on white supremacism) would downplay Muslim intolerance towards Muslima, and redirect attention and resources away from such persecution.

In addition, many Muslim countries persecute non-Muslims besides the "other" Muslims. This envoy would also take away from existing, vital efforts to fight these other examples of discrimination. 

There are other problems with Omar's initiative. If you read her statement announcing the call for an envoy, she speaks about her own experiences with Islamophobia as she was growing up in the US and in Congress. A State Department envoy would do nothing to fight that.

Moreover, if Islamophobia deserves its own envoy, then why not one to fight anti-Hindu or anti-Christian discrimination and bigotry? Why not one to protect Sikhs and Kurds?  And why limit it to religion - why not an envoy against anti-Asian hate? 

The best way to fight anti-Muslim discrimination is to fight discrimination altogether. Countries that hate their Muslim minorities generally hate all their religious or racial minorities, and the efforts to fight that bigotry should address all of them. Dedicating an envoy to Islamophobia would dilute and hurt efforts to fight all the other cases of discrimination.

The other problem with this initiative is more fundamental.

It is clearly modeled on the existing (and unfilled) position of an ambassador-level position to monitor and combat antisemitism. Omar, who has already proven multiple times her antipathy towards Jews, wants to water down the antisemitism envoy's power by equating Islamophobia with antisemitism. 

They are vastly different. 

Islamophobia is just like other bigotries - people hate the "other" and discriminate against them. That is why the best way to fight Islamophobia is to fight racism and bigotry as a whole. China hates Uyghur Muslims because they are there. Burma hates Rohingya Muslims because they are there. Neither of them hate Muslims in Europe or in the Middle East. 

Antisemites hate the Jews no matter where they are. The most antisemitic countries are the ones with the fewest Jews. 

Antisemitism is fundamentally different from Islamophobia and other discrimination because it is the manifestation of pure hate, not just bigotry. Leftists call Jews "white supremacists" and "racists," neo-Nazis accuse Jews of being anti-racist and supporting immigration. Both of them attribute to Jews that which they hate. Both of them passionately hate the Jewish state. 

Antisemitism occurs within all political contexts, and it is justified by people of every belief system where Jews represent everything people loathe. It is the only bigotry where the hated group is said to have almost supernatural power over the haters. 

People like Omar who claim that they fight antisemitism along with all other hatreds are knowingly diminishing antisemitism and encouraging it by pretending that it is just a specific form of white supremacism. They want to dissociate themselves from their own part in modern antisemitism. 

Because antisemitism is so different from other bigotries it cannot be fought using the same methods that one fights other types of discrimination. 

That is why it makes sense to have an antisemitism envoy - and why it makes no sense to have a special envoy for other kinds of bigotries.










  • Thursday, July 22, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
Palestinians expelled from Jordan in 1971


Here is a forgotten detail from the Jordanian war against Palestinians in 1970-71.

From JTA, July 19, 1971:

Heavily armed Palestinian terrorists, fleeing the troops of Jordan’s King Hussein, are surrendering en-masse to Israeli forces, it was disclosed today. At least 55 terrorists have laid down their arms during the past 24 hours, apparently preferring to become prisoners of the Israelis than to face death or capture at the hands of the Jordan Arab Legion. Hussein, though he vowed in Zerqa, Jordan, yesterday to support Arab commando activities against Israel, has mounted a new drive aimed at ousting the fedayeen from north Jordan. Jordanian infantry was rooting terrorists out of hiding places in fields and orange groves, according to Israeli sources.

The mass surrenders–yesterday, last night and this morning–were on the agenda of today’s Cabinet meeting, an extra long session that heard reports from Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Army Chief of Staff Haim Bar Lev.  It is clear to observers here nevertheless that this latest development along the Jordanian frontier has created a headache and potential embarrassment for Israeli authorities. The surrendering terrorists pose problems. They must be quartered, fed and heavily guarded since most are highly trained in terrorist and sabotage techniques. Yet denying them entry to Israel would mean delivering them to almost certain death at the hands of Hussein’s troops. Reports from Amman reaching here today told of mass executions of guerrillas, many of whom were reportedly flushed out of hiding places with gas bombs. The Israeli Government wants to avoid any act that might be interpreted as interfering in Jordan’s internecine fighting. 

Yesterday, an Israeli patrol encircled a band of 16 terrorists crossing the Jordan River and ordered them to surrender. The terrorists laid down their arms which included automatic rifles, hand grenades and a machine gun and became willing captives. The fact that they carried no food or explosives satisfied the Israeli commander that they were not on a sabotage mission but were fleeing Hussein’s troops. Two more groups of similar size surrendered to Israeli forces during the night and eight more laid down their arms this morning.

On July 20, 1971, JTA added:

Seventeen more armed Arab terrorists fleeing Jordan surrendered to Israeli forces today bringing to 72 the number that have laid down their arms and begged asylum in Israel since Saturday. 

Israeli sources said today that most of the surrendered terrorists were members of El Fatah. the largest of the Palestinian guerrilla groups and that some belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a more extreme group headed by Dr. George Habash. The sources said all were being interrogated to determine their background. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan asked several of the captives yesterday why they fled to Israel and not to Syria. The reply was that the Syrian border was blocked and, anyway it was “safer in Israel.” The commandos reportedly pleaded with Dayan to let them stay, promising to “do everything we are told, even join the Israel Army.”
Somehow, I don't think this is being taught in Palestinian schools. 






Wednesday, July 21, 2021

From Ian:

Biden Passes Up Chance To Press Jordan’s King for Terrorist’s Extradition
In the face of emotional pleas from a young terror victim's family, President Joe Biden on Monday passed up an opportunity to press Jordan's King Abdullah II on the Palestinian terrorist who remains a free woman in the Middle Eastern kingdom.

Although the White House maintains it is working to extradite Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi from Jordan, Biden neglected the issue entirely during his Monday afternoon meeting with King Abdullah. Neither the public meeting nor the White House readout of what the leaders discussed privately included any mention of Tamimi.

Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter was killed in the 2001 bombing of an Israeli restaurant carried out by Tamimi, said the United States is "betraying its own values" by not raising the issue.

"The United States is betraying its own values, its own commitment to justice, and this I find to be inexplicable," Roth told the Washington Free Beacon following Biden’s meeting with Jordan’s king. "There’s always a price when you trash core values."

Ahead of Biden's meeting with the Jordanian king, Roth and his wife Frimet took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal, urging Biden to press for Tamimi's extradition. "The president, a grieving parent himself, pledged during his inauguration speech to write ‘an American story of decency and dignity,'" the parents wrote last week. "Is anything more dignified than doing justice?"
After Jordan's king visited the State Department yesterday
At the end of yesterday's well-publicized meeting between the Jordanian delegation and the State Department people, there was a press briefing, presided over by State's spokesperson, Ned Price.

As important as the Tamimi case is, and as much as we have tried to create media and pubic awareness of the open deception by two governments over what is and is not being done to bring Tamimi to her long overdue appointment with a federal court, here is the only official public comment made by the American side. It comes from the official transcript of the State Department Press Briefing (July 20, 2021)

NED PRICE, DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON JULY 20, 2021

QUESTION: Can I ask you very quickly about Jordan, the meeting with the king this morning and the Secretary? I just want to know if the Tamimi extradition issue came up. As you’re aware, last year the then-ambassador nominee but now the ambassador told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that withholding aid or aid could be used as leverage to secure her extradition to the States to face murder charges.

MR PRICE: Well, I expect we’ll have a readout of the Secretary’s meeting with His Majesty the King later today. When it comes to Ms. al-Tamimi, she is on the FBI’s most wanted list for her role in the 2001 Hamas attack in Jerusalem. We continue to seek her extradition. We’ll continue to work to ensure that she faces justice.

QUESTION: Yeah. Well, did it come up?

MR PRICE: I’m not in a position to speak to the meeting, but we’ll have a readout —

QUESTION: Well, are you – I mean, are you – has this administration yet raised it with – raised the matter with Jordanian authorities, the King or not? Or is this something that would have just come up for the first time today?

MR PRICE: This issue has been raised with our Jordanian partners.

What did the Jordanians say when it was raised? How did the US respond to King Abdullah's response? Does he know about the Tamimi case? Does he know about the 1995 Extradition Treaty proudly signed by his father?

Imagine getting answers like this from your doctor, your lawyer, your spouse, your child, your work colleague. We all have some sense of when we're being treated like idiots. This was one of those moments for us.
Let us hope Lapid-Bennett consensus buries Biden’s renewed two-state solution bid
The likelihood of President Biden being the American President finally overseeing an end to the 100 years old conflict between Arabs and Jews - promisingly advanced by President Trump’s Abraham Accords - was dashed this week when Israel’s Foreign Minister – and its next Prime Minister in 26 months’ time - Yair Lapid - told the EU Foreign Affairs Council:

"A future Palestinian state must be a democracy that seeks peace with Israel"

Israel’s current Prime Minister – Naftali Bennett – shares Lapid’s opinion:
“Self-determination also depends on democracy so that the people are able to determine what they want. Almost none of our neighbours enjoy democracy and if they did they would cease to be.”

Bennett and Lapid’s consensus democracy-demand is also supported by two former American Presidents:

President Bush on 30 April 2003:
“A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved through an end to violence and terrorism, when the Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against terror and willing and able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty, and through Israel's readiness to do what is necessary for a democratic Palestinian state to be established”

President Trump in his 2020 Peace Plan:
“The following criteria are a predicate to the formation of a Palestinian State and must be determined to have occurred by the State of Israel and the United States, jointly, acting in good faith, after consultation with the Palestinian Authority:

-The Palestinians shall have implemented a governing system with a constitution or another system for establishing the rule of law that provides for freedom of the press, free and fair elections, respect for human rights for its citizens, protection for religious freedom and for religious minorities to observe their faith, uniform and fair enforcement of law and contractual rights, due process under law, and an independent judiciary with appropriate legal consequences and punishment established for violations of the law.

-The Palestinians shall have ended all programs, including curricula and textbooks, that serve to incite or promote hatred or antagonism against its neighbours, or which compensate or incentivize criminal or violent activity.


(Judean Rose will be taking off for several weeks.)

 abuyehuda

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal


Israel’s Second Struggle for Independence

The USA has been Israel’s greatest friend and supporter in recent years.

It is also Israel’s biggest problem.

Our dependence on American military aid has sharply limited our freedom of action, distorted our decisions about procurement of weapons, crippled the development of our own military industries, corrupted our decision-makers, and damaged our standing as a sovereign state.

It is true that on some occasions Israel has acted against America’s wishes, such as the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. It is also true that far more frequently, Israel has been forced to bow to US demands, even when they are not in her best interests. In several wars and smaller operations, cease-fires have been dictated by American pressure, although Israel would have preferred to continue fighting longer in order to achieve a decisive victory. During the Gulf War, the US prevented Israel from retaliating for Iraqi Scud attacks. In peacetime, US pressure has prevented Israel from building in Judea and Samaria, and forced Israel to accept Palestinian demands for the release of prisoners. American opposition was a major factor in the decision not to attack Iranian nuclear facilities in the 2010-2012 period.

Israel’s relationship with the US has been better or worse depending on the direction of political winds there, but pressure to reverse the outcome of the 1967 war has been a constant ever since – with the notable exception of the Trump administration, which for the first time recognized Israeli rights to Jerusalem and the Golan heights. But now it seems that the US is taking a turn in the other direction; and this time – thanks to Israel’s conclusive loss of the cognitive war for the consciousness of American elites, the partisan division of attitudes toward Israel, and the new strength of the radical Left in American politics – our time in the wilderness may turn out to be much longer than before.

The inroads being made by elements hostile to Israel into the American educational system, previously limited to higher education, but now reaching into high school and even grade school levels, are troubling. The “intersectional” connections being made between every progressive cause, and the politicization of almost every field of endeavor, have injected the issue of Israel vs. the Palestinians into places where it was not found before.

This is a problem, because our enemies – particularly Iran – are taking advantage of the less pro-Israel climate in the US. The Biden Administration, which has already significantly released the pressure on Iran, appears to be galloping toward a full removal of sanctions, whether or not it will gain significant leverage over their nuclear weapons program. Trump’s sanctions had sent the Iranian economy into a tailspin, which helped energize the Iranian opposition to the repressive and backward regime of the Ayatollahs. Even today, Iranians are in the streets protesting against the regime. But the removal of sanctions will not help them; the regime will funnel cash into its nuclear program, into the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria, and to build up Israel’s most dangerous enemy, Hezbollah.

At the same time, the Biden Administration, which has staffed its echelons dealing with the Middle East with people less than friendly to Israel – including some with a history of anti-Israel activism (see herehere, and here) – has already restored funding to the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA, plans to re-open the Jerusalem consulate, the unofficial “US Embassy to the State of Palestine” in Jerusalem, and to allow the PLO to restore its embassy in Washington.

A recent poll shows that the Democratic Party, which now controls the House, Senate and the Presidency, has moved significantly away from its formerly solid support for Israel in recent years, with sympathy for Israel among Democrats maintaining a slight edge of only 3 percentage points over sympathy for the Palestinians. The “liberal” wing of the party is far worse, with the Palestinians holding a 15% margin over Israel. Younger respondents also were more likely to favor the Palestinians, which argues for a continuation of the trend. And there is a very vocal contingent in the US Congress that is strongly anti-Israel, and not at all constrained from giving voice to the most extreme anti-Israel propaganda.

The Israeli leadership must come to understand that the continued expectation that Israel will receive military and diplomatic support from the US is unrealistic and dangerous. Israel needs to take action now, to reduce its dependence on the US, to increase its freedom of action, and to build up its own resources in important areas.

There is only one way for a small country in a strategic area to obtain independence from the various empires that wish to make it a satellite, and it is difficult and precarious. That is to play the empires off against one another, and to make alliances with other unaligned nations. I believe that Binyamin Netanyahu understood this, and made small but steady progress in this direction. It remains to be seen if the present government, whose foreign policy appears to be in the hands of the obsequious Yair Lapid, can pull this off.

From the military standpoint, Israel needs to be its own main source of supply. That has implications for the kind of military forces it can field. For example, it may be unrealistic to try to maintain a large fleet of the most sophisticated manned combat aircraft. Drones and precision-guided missiles are far less expensive than F-35s, and while they can’t entirely replace conventional aircraft, a small country will find it more practical to produce and maintain them.

There are also economic considerations. Iron Dome is a wonderful thing, but if it costs $100,000 to intercept a $500 rocket, then massive-scale use of it will bankrupt us. It is much less expensive to deter rocket attacks with the threat of forceful reprisals than to depend on antimissile systems to ward them off. The former strategy is more appropriate for a smaller country whose defense budget is not bottomless. I don’t suggest doing away with antimissile systems entirely, just changing our strategy so that we will not need so many of them.

I recommend that we start moving in this direction now, by agreeing with the US to a gradual phase-out of military aid. At the same time, we will have to revitalize our domestic military industries. Barack Obama very cleverly did not decrease the level of military aid we received, to maintain the maximum leverage over our actions. But the percentage of that aid that could be spent outside of the US was set to gradually drop to zero over the next  few years. This had the effect of increasing the subsidy that aid to Israel provided to US defense contractors, and weakening Israel’s home-grown industry. This made us more dependent and at the same time reduced the competition to American weapons suppliers in the world market. A win-win-win for the US, but a loss for us.

America is changing in ways that are not good for America, and not good for us. I hope that the political/cultural pendulum in the US will swing the other way. Probably it will, if the nation survives the present storm intact. But here on the other side of the world, Israel’s enemies are not waiting with their hands folded. She will either adapt to the new situation or find herself in deep trouble







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