Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Three early 20th century recordings of Kol Nidre from the Library of Congress

From 1912, an instrumental version done by famed American violinist and conductor Maximilian Pilzer, with the piano portions by "Miss D. Pilzer," presumably his sister.

From 1913, by the legendary chazan Yossele Rosenblatt, accompanied by organ.

Also from Rosenblatt, a "new" version in 1923, accompanied by an ensemble. His voice changed a lot in those ten years! He shows a greater vocal range and also sings with the instruments providing a counterpoint.

Right on the heels of Rabbi Eric Yoffie's dire warning about Jews worshipping in groups on the Temple Mount, Haaretz published another.

Anshel Pfeffer's article is accurate when he sticks to the facts, perhaps the best one yet in secular media.

There has been a gradual change over the past two years, under the auspices of the police. Jewish communal prayer, with a minyan of at least 10 men, has become a regular, twice-daily occurrence, during the four hours in the morning and one in the early afternoon, five times a week, when Jews are allowed onto the Mount. [It's been more than two years - EoZ.]

I joined the pilgrims six times in the two weeks before Rosh Hashanah. Each time the groups entered on the same route, which takes about 45 minutes, without any noticeable friction with the Muslims there.

In my visits with the pilgrims last month, I failed to meet many of the bitter fanatics I expected to find. Instead, I met a variety of Israelis with diverse reasons for making the pilgrimage. Some harbored political and nationalistic motives. Others dream of building a Third Temple in our lifetime. But many see Temple Mount in much more abstract terms and just want to be there, without a clear objective.

One said he felt he was standing “at the window of yearning.” Another described “trying to touch a distant point of sanctity.” And others didn’t have any high words, but gave the impression of not being activists or dreamers, but simply wanting to break the shackles of what for many Israelis has become the limited and sterile experience of established routine worship within synagogues.

For them, Temple Mount has simply become the place to “visit God.”

After a few minutes walk to the easternmost point on the Mount, the group stops, with the sealed twin entrances of Mercy Gate behind them, and begin praying for about 15 minutes. It’s the standard Orthodox version, beginning with the blessings before kriyat shema, then amida (silent prayer) and the Chazan’s recitation following it, in rather unorthodox conditions.

Unusually, the Chazan reads the blessings in a muted tone, and everyone – men and women, Haredim, religious Zionists and the secular – bunch around him to hear and answer “amen.” Most make sure not to sway in prayer and if one of them does so, a police officer may gently advise them not to. But make no mistake: this is Jewish communal prayer on Temple Mount.

There is no agreed version on when the police began allowing the prayers: shaharith in the morning and minhah in the afternoon. .... In recent months, there have even been some reports about it in the news that didn’t create any waves.

The police began allowing the group to stop at that point for longer periods of time – enough not only to pray, but also for a short dvar Torah (sermon) – before asking them to walk on. Also, the Waqf custodians from the Muslim religious trust, who know everything that takes place in the Al-Aqsa compound, seem to be silently acquiescing.

On some days, they were nowhere to be seen around the group; on a couple of mornings, a Waqf monitor in an official white shirt and with a walkie-talkie could be seen watching from afar. It’s unclear why they haven’t vocally protested this ongoing erosion of the status quo. There’s now a fact on the ground. Jews are praying together on Temple Mount.

It’s hard to get reliable figures on the number of pilgrims, though they’re clearly increasing. One of the pilgrim groups released a statement recently claiming that in 5781 (the Jewish year that just ended), 25,581 Jews prayed on Temple Mount – a 13 percent rise over the previous year. They also claim that there’s been a dramatic jump in recent months, after the coronavirus lockdown ended.

What’s more interesting than their numbers is the sheer variety of the pilgrims. The pilgrimage used to be mainly a religious-Zionist phenomena, but today you can see Haredim (who say they have privately received the blessing of their rabbis), secular Jews and Jewish tourists from overseas too. It’s a more popular movement.

In recent weeks, I’ve met people who told me they go up on their birthdays and their parents’ Yahrzeit (memorial day). Like pilgrimages to the graves of ancient sages, Temple Mount is becoming part of a more traditional and less political act of worship.

You can also see it in the attitude of the police, who used to be much rougher with the pilgrims. Now, at the blessing for the ill at the end of the prayer, officers will join and ask for their relatives to be mentioned as well, or even for a blessing for themselves.

What has helped popularize the pilgrimage is the lack of normal Orthodox boundaries. There’s no segregation between male and female pilgrims, and there’s no religious judgmentalism. Despite the injunctions at the entrance to enter only “in purity” and “out of fear of the temple,” no one tells men or women that they need to cover their heads or checks your footwear.

Surprised at the lack of censoriousness, I asked one of the activists if he wasn’t bothered by bare heads and leather boots. “Who cares?” he shrugs. “The important thing is that you’re here.”

But then he goes off into the same idiotic territory as Yoffie, with faux concern about how the new status quo has the potential of blowing up.

Temple Mount hasn’t just been the source of strife and bloodshed between Jews and Palestinians over the past century. Going back, deep into Jewish history, it was also the cause of schism and murderous violence among Jews themselves. And as it regains its status as a place for Jewish pilgrimage, it could become one again. Temple Mount will not remain silent.

I have some news for Haaretz: The Muslim fanatics who oppose any Jewish presence on the Temple Mount are just as adamant that the Kotel be Jew-free as well.

In May, the Egypt-based Al-Azhar Al-Sharif media center started a campaign that the "Al-Buraq Wall" - the Kotel - "is a pure Islamic endowment" and "an integral part of Al-Aqsa Mosque."

This has been the basic Islamic position for over a hundred years.

There are angry articles in Arabic media not only about "settlers storming Al Aqsa" but also about large gatherings of Jews at the Kotel, about archaeological digs anywhere within a mile of the Temple Mount, even about a blue sofa that some Jews brought outside the eastern wall of the Temple Mount.

Anything Jews do can be a "provocation." That doesn't mean that Jews should follow the dictates of the fanatics who are looking for excuses to start a holy war.

I get the impression that the mainstream media, with hundreds of reporters around Jerusalem, are embarrassed to have missed this story for years, a story in the change of the status quo that they were blind to. Now that it is out, they want to hang onto their old assumptions that any Jew who openly prays on the Temple Mount is a powder keg.

These enlightened, non-racist reporters assume that if Palestinian Arabs manage to start an uprising using Jews as an excuse, it is the Jews' fault. Muslims are expected to be irrational and fanatic, and they aren't responsible for their violence that these liberal reporters are expecting.

Here we see that most Muslims don't care about groups of Jews praying on the Temple Mount in an area that Muslims rarely visit. They aren't acting in the way the Jewish liberals expect and are literally encouraging.

The story does not fit the narrative on either the Jewish or Muslim sides, and the media hates when their narrative is shown to be false.

Roy Sharon, military correspondent at Kann News, tweeted this video of an attempted double Molotov cocktail attack near Migdal Oz:

There were actually two attempts. The more spectacular one was the Arab with the light shirt lighting and hurling the firebomb towards an unseen target - possibly to start a forest fire. His own clothes ignite as he rushes back into the getaway car, seemingly unaware that he is on fire.

His red-jacketed friend was driving with a tire as his companion. He rolls out the tire and pours gasoline on it, and tries to light it up as well, but without success.

The entire operation is amateurish but the brave Palestinians are clearly afraid of getting caught.

I particularly like how the getaway driver really wants to peel out and return to the village they came from before the arsonists can run back in and close their doors, and almost leaves the tire guy behind, but has to wait for traffic to allow the U-turn.

Leftist members of Congress try to block selling bombs to Israel that SAVE civilian lives

Jewish Currents reports:

REPRESENTATIVES ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, RASHIDA TLAIB, AND MARK POCAN are leading a renewed effort to prohibit the delivery of US-made bombs to Israel.

The three progressive legislators submitted an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require the Biden administration to halt the export of Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions and Small Diameter Bombs to Israel for a year. The bombs were used by the Israeli Air Force to strike targets in Gaza during May’s escalation in violence.

JDAM "is a guidance tail kit that converts existing unguided free-fall bombs into accurate, adverse weather "smart" munitions. With the addition of a new tail section that contains an inertial navigational system and a global positioning system guidance control unit, JDAM improves the accuracy of unguided, general purpose bombs in any weather condition.

The Small Diameter Bomb is a "250 lb precision-guided glide bomb that is intended to provide aircraft with the ability to carry a higher number of more accurate bombs. "

If Israel does not have smart, accurate bombs, it would need to use less accurate and possibly more lethal bombs when defending itself from Hamas (and Iranian proxies in Syria.) If these members of Congress are successful, more Palestinians would die.

But they would welcome that. Dead Palestinians are the best advertisement for the Israel haters. That's why Israel goes to extreme lengths to avoid civilian casualties, and liars like AOC, Tlaib and Pocan scream that the unfortunate civilian death toll resulting from Hamas using people as human shields are really the result of "indiscriminate" Israeli attacks.

The only people that gain from dead innocent Palestinians are the Israel-haters. This bill is designed to ensure that result.

Even the drafters of the amendment admit it is just a publicity stunt to get anti-Israel headlines. The amendment implies that Israel targets civilians with precision weapons. That is a libelous lie.

A decent reporter would ask the three representatives whether Israel has the right to defend itself with the best weapons possible to avoid civilian casualties. Too bad there are so few good reporters around.

09/14 Links Pt2: Time for both parties to repent for Nazi analogies; Burlington BDS resolution to be pulled; Arizona's strong stand against BDS puts Biden to shame

From Ian:

Time for both parties to repent for Nazi analogies

Yet even worse was to come. The Jewish Democratic Council of America released an Internet video ad in which the Trump-Nazi analogy was directly made. It's hard to imagine a more inflammatory and deeply wrong-headed example of a group trying to exploit the Holocaust for political purposes. That's especially true because, whatever his other failings, Trump deserved credit both for changing policies to take action against anti-Semitism on college campuses as well as his historic support of Israel.

This monstrous accusation was given a pass by leading liberal Jewish figures, including those who ought to have known better and who had in the past denounced those who did the same thing. Former ADL director Abe Foxman and Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, who were likely thinking ahead to the competition to be the State Department Special Envoy to Combat and Monitor Anti-Semitism in a Biden administration, both betrayed their principles and gave this outrageous slur their approval. In the end, Lipstadt was the one who was rewarded for doing so when she was nominated for the job by Biden.

In a political culture where demonization of political foes is now universal, calling opponents horrible names is how both parties react to every controversy. The brazen hypocrisy of those who are all over Mandel but saw no problem when Democrats did the same thing is a function of partisanship and nothing else.

Still, that doesn't excuse Mandel, Taylor Greene or anyone else who is guilty of dragging the Holocaust into discussions where it doesn't belong.

Is there any way to reverse this trend in which both liberals and conservatives now regard comparisons to the Nazis and the Holocaust as merely a way to say something is really bad, rather than a reference to the greatest crime in human history?

Right now, the answer is "no."

In a world where Democrats would have been furious with Biden for crossing this line rather than applauding or winking at his offense and Republicans were prepared to do the same for similarly outrageous things said by Trump, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

But we don't live in such a world. Instead, Americans in both parties find themselves not merely deeply divided by political differences but actually believing that their opponents are thinly disguised authoritarians who, if given the opportunity, would re-enact Nazi tyranny against them. The way back from this dangerous precipice is unclear, though it will have to start with Jews – those with most at stake in the effort not to degrade the memory of the Holocaust – and their leading groups taking a consistent stand against these outrages. Until that happens, expect even more of these controversies. Sadly, the consequences of that failure in the battle against anti-Semitism are incalculable.

Dexter Van Zile: Pointing Out the Roots of Muslim Antisemitism Does Not Make You a Bigot

In his book, “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History” (2020), researcher Andrew Bostom reveals that in 2011, Gunther Jikeli reported the results of his interviews with 117 young Muslim men in Berlin, Paris, and London — and found that “the majority [of them] voice some or strong antisemitic feelings. They openly express their negative viewpoints toward Jews. This is often done with aggression and sometimes includes intentions to carry out antisemitic attacks.”

Jikeli also reports that his interviewees looked “for justification of antisemitic views within what they perceive as Islam or part of their religious or ethnic identity and they often find confirmation in Islamic sources and social circles, which serve as strong, authoritative references.”

In his assessment of Jikeli’s findings, Bostom takes the scholar to task for his “excruciating reluctance to come to terms with his own findings, harping on supposed ‘perceptions of Islam’ by the interviewees, as opposed to voluminous Jew-hatred within Islam’s canon.” “Nevertheless,” Bostom reports, “Jikeli provided these critical, if understated observations, which, despite his obvious reticence, affirm the centrality of Islam in shaping the Antisemitic views of young Muslim adults in Western Europe.”

Fortunately, numerous Muslim scholars have addressed the problem of antisemitism on the part of their fellow Muslims. For example, Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist himself, has regularly condemned antisemitism expressed by jihadists. So has Tarek Fatah and many other Muslim scholars. But just like their counterparts in Christianity dealing with the issue of antisemitism, they have a lot of work to do.

Addressing the horror of attacks like those perpetrated in London on August 18 — and their roots in the Islamic tradition — is not an act of bigotry. Quite the opposite. These attacks are anathema to any religion of peace, and give bigots license to falsely stereotype all Arabs and Muslims as anti-Jewish thugs.

But as a growing number of Muslim-majority countries are starting to come to terms with Israel’s existence in the Middle East under the rubric of the Abraham Accords, it is time for people of good faith to come to grips with the roots of Muslim hostility towards Jews, so that in the future, we will have fewer days like August 18, 2021.

How did Iraq’s Jewish community disappear?

The children and grandchildren of Jews from Arab countries are taking a keen interest in their roots: Take Sandy Rashty, whose parents and grandparents fled Iraq, where only three Jews remain. She traces her family’s story as part of gal-dem‘s Forgotten Diasporas series:

The flowers in Iraq were special. I remember their smell. Each one was brighter than the next, each with a different scent. The roses were so big. I remember swimming in the Tigris River in Baghdad. It was cold, but clean and fresh. The water almost tasted sweet. We lived in a house overlooking the river. I grew up there with my parents, siblings and a dog named Lassie. I used to call down to the sellers from the balcony, asking what fresh fish had been caught that day.

“It was a different life. It was a time when we could all play, laugh and sing together.”

These are the memories of my grandma, who was born in Baghdad to an Iraqi Jewish family in 1927. She shares her story with me over a pot of Arabic tea at her home in north-west London.

She has a proud identity, having grown up in a small but established community in Iraq that dated back more than 2,500 years. Prominent members of the community included Sir Sassoon Eskell, Iraq’s first Finance Minister who served under King Faisal I in the early 20th century; Reneé Dangoor, crowned Miss Iraq in 1947; and multiple poets and musicians including Saleh and Daud Al-Kuwaity.

Many Iraqi Jews were named after Hollywood stars like Grace Kelly and Rita Hayworth, wore Western clothes and were taught both English and French in Baghdad’s Jewish schools, including its main secondary school, Frank Iny, where my parents first met as students.

My grandma remembers the country before the modern wars, rise of extremism and the purge of its once vibrant Jewish community after the establishment of Israel in 1948.

A Jewish school in Baghdad, 1959

From Iraq's NRT TV:

The National Security Adviser, Qassem Al-Araji, revealed Monday the number of Jews present in Baghdad, indicating that they are afraid to declare their Jewishness and claim that they are Christians.

Al-Araji said, in a televised interview on NRT today (9/13), that "there are Jews in Iraq, but they fear for themselves and claim that they are Christians. They have pride in the country, although they can leave it (if they want)."

He added that "there are 4 Jewish people in Baghdad, as well as in other provinces and also in the Kurdistan Region, but they feel fear in declaring their Jewishness, so they say they are Christians."

He continued, "We must deal with the Iraqi citizen in terms of rights and duties, regardless of his or her nationality or religion."

There were 150,000 Jews in Iraq in 1948. 90% of them emigrated after merciless persecution in the late 1940s. Nearly all the remaining Jews were forced out after 1967 as their property was confiscated and prominent members of the community were hanged as Iraqis celebrated.

The Swedish government issued a statement on antisemitism that surprisingly doesn't completely adhere to the woke definition of the term.

Mostly, but not completely.

The government website issued a statement "It is everyone's duty to stand up against anti-Semitism." It is signed by Stefan Löfven, who is the lame duck Prime Minister, as well as three other government ministers.

Excerpts:

Hatred of Jews is a poison in our society. Anti-Semitic hate crimes and incidents are becoming more common, both in Sweden and in the rest of the world. It's scary and requires us to act. Every form of racism must be fought.

The Holocaust is the ultimate consequence of hatred of the Jews. We have a duty to ensure that the testimonies of the genocides committed by the Nazis and their allies are never lost.

Concrete commitments are now needed. The government has set aside SEK 95 million in the 2022 budget bill for [fighting antisemitism.]

Sweden will make the following commitments:

-Preserve and carry on the memory of the Holocaust.

-Promote education and research on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism and other forms of racism.

-Fight racism - online and offline.

-Promote Jewish life, strengthen the work for Roma inclusion and strengthen the security of civil society.

This section, and others, really concentrate on the Holocaust and don't seem to look at Jews as being real people nowadays. To Sweden, the lesson of the Holocaust is not to hate anyone, and that Jew-hatred is not unique among other bigotries. (It is.) The statement doesn't say a word about how crazed hate of Israel is a cover for modern antisemitism. It has very little about teaching people today what Judaism is, how Jews live, and nothing about how central Israel is to the Jewish experience today.

But one section is refreshing to read within the wokeness:

Hatred of Jews exists in our history, in right-wing extremist groups, in parts of the left and in Islamist circles. We see anti-Semitism among adults and children who have fled to Sweden from countries where anti-Semitism characterizes schooling and state propaganda. We see conspiracy theories on social media and how the memory of the Holocaust is distorted and exploited for political purposes.

Perhaps the antisemitism of Muslims in Sweden is too obvious to ignore when dealing with the topic. Perhaps the glancing mention of the Left is a sop to the IHRA working definition. Still, it is nice to see a little bit of reality in the midst of a statement that mostly looks at Holocaust education as a vaccine against antisemitism, without truly looking at what makes Jew-hatred unique among all bigotries.

This announcement seems to be linked to Sweden becoming the president of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance next year, and its English language announcement does not mention the antisemitism of the Left or Islamists.

09/14 Links Pt1: Afghanistan and the Left’s Moral Inconsistency; Palestinians make anti-US statement on Durban as Greece, Slovenia, Slovakia boycott; How murderers become ‘political prisoners’

From Ian:

Palestinians make anti-US statement on Durban as Greece, Slovenia, Slovakia boycott

The Palestinian Authority slammed countries boycotting the upcoming Durban Conference anniversary event, with an emphasis on the US.

Meanwhile, Greece, Slovakia and Slovenia confirmed they also would not be attending the event in New York on September 22, bringing the number of countries boycotting to 19.

The 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, was marked with antisemitism and anti-Israel events. Israel was singled out for opprobrium as racist in the declaration released by UN member states participating, a declaration that accuses no other specific countries and that next week’s conference is meant to reaffirm. The parallel NGO forum accused Israel of apartheid, and organizations taking part gave out copies of the antisemitic canard The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and materials saying Hitler was right.

The Palestinian Authority Foreign Ministry tweeted in a statement on Tuesday that it “strongly objects to inimical statements and tendentious attacks against the upcoming Durban Conference... Such iniquitous calls to boycott the conference display an alarming level of deficit in morality and expose a hypocritical approach. The State of Palestine calls on all states and international organizations to attend the conference and adopt a political declaration for the full and effective implementation of its principles and values,” referring to the statement in which Israel is the only country designated a perpetrator of racism. “Palestine rejects morally corrupt and politically sinister attempts to disconnect the Palestinian struggle to freedom from this global cause” against racism.

In a thinly veiled reference to the United States, the statement adds: “It is not a coincidence that the same States that have long opposed the inclusion of acts of slavery in its current and past manifestations as a crime against humanity are now boycotting this past year’s conference on reparations, racial justice and equality for people of African descent.”

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ILF's new publication - '#????????????: ???? ?????????? ???? ????????, ???????? & ????????????????????????', with lessons & analysis from leading experts around the world. #SayNoToDurbanIV

Full report ?? https://t.co/vSpE59HxfS pic.twitter.com/0crUgXsXsV
— The International Legal Forum - ILF (@The_ILF) September 14, 2021

In 2001, 2 countries pulled out of Durban I.
In 2009, 10 countries pulled out of Durban II.
In 2011, 14 countries pulled out of Durban III.
In 2021, 19 countries—so far—pulled out of Durban IV.

Urge more countries to take a stand against antisemitism: https://t.co/5f21p40q6n
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 14, 2021

Emily Schrader: How murderers become ‘political prisoners’

Israel was shaken last week with the news of six Palestinian terrorists escaping from the high-security Gilboa prison. But potentially even more disturbing was the concerted effort by activists – and even the press in some cases – to whitewash their crimes and present the terrorists as heroes against oppression. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. The inability of some to differentiate between actual political prisoners, the likes of whom suffer every day in places like Evin prison in Iran, and convicted Palestinian terrorists serving a sentence for actions they took, is inexcusable.

Immediately after news broke of the Palestinian terrorists’ miraculous escape, by digging a tunnel under the prison, Palestinian social media began celebrating. In addition, there were widespread celebrations in the streets of Gaza and the West Bank over the Israeli security failure. In one case, the Palestinian village of Beita celebrated by burning an effigy of a Jew and uploading the video to social media. Of course as expected, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas celebrated the escape of the prisoners as well. But even more disturbing were the activists, organizations and public figures, in some cases even journalists, who defended the terrorists and their activities.

Jewish Voice for Peace, known for their extremist viewpoints, had previously raised eyebrows for endorsing the intifada in their promotional materials. But in this instance they raised (or should I say lowered) the bar by comparing the Palestinian terrorists who escaped to Holocaust victims who attempted to dig their way out of concentration camps. In a similarly repulsive statement, Director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, Ghada Majadli, explicitly endorsed the violence of the six terrorists, calling it “freedom fighting” and calling them “political prisoners.”

In the academic realm, there was no shortage of whitewashing terror: political analyst Yousef Munayyer tweeted in praise of the escape repeatedly, and even retweeted Harvard PhD candidate Randa Wahbe, who praised the terrorists as “heroes” and “political prisoners.” Noura Erekat, a professor at Rutgers University, also praised the terrorists and called for all Palestinian prisoners to be released.

Why Didn’t Palestinians or Israeli Arabs Rally in Support of Fugitive Terrorists?

When 6 terrorists escaped from an Israeli prison Islamic Jihad called for Israeli and Palestinians Arabs to take to the streets to interfere with efforts to recapture them.

The grand total number of Palestinians across all of Judea and Samaria who answered the call of Islamic Jihad numbered well less than a thousand with the largest incident accounting for half the total. Only around ten Arabs were seen chanting their support at Al Aqsa Mosque after Friday prayers.

Ten!

As for Israeli Arabs, when four of the terrorists we recaptured thanks to Israeli Arabs who tipped off the police, we learned that the terrorists couldn't find any Israeli Arab who was willing to help drive them across the Green Line.

Security officials remained concerned that the Palestinians would lash out in support of the terrorists and recommended that Jewish New Years movement restrictions from Judea and Samaria be extended until after Yom Kippur. Prime Minister Bennett overruled them and those Palestinians employed inside Israel returned to work on Sunday, So far nothing has happened.

Why did the security experts get it so wrong?

I suspect that they took the terrifying riots earlier this year as their model.

But, apparently, there is a key difference between the two situations.

The rioting took place because the street bought the line that "al Aqsa is in danger".

The escape of 6 terrorist had NOTHING to do with al Aqsa.

How do we use this insight?

From "Jewish Voice for Peace - Philadelphia":

PLEASE JOIN JVP PHILLY FOR A WORKSHOP WITH ROSZA DANIEL LANG/LEVITSKY EXPLORING CULTURAL WORK AS ORGANIZING, AND THE USES OF JEWISH CULTURAL TOOLS AND STRATEGIES IN OUR MOVEMENT.

About the workshop

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) - Philly often works with Jewish culture and ritual elements. Why do we use cultural tools and resources in our organizing? How can we widen and deepen the ways we use the power and resonance of cultural organizing? What is “demo-dressing” and what are other ways of using cultural work in our movements? What kinds of diasporic Jewish cultural materials are available and how can we find them? What kinds of Jewish methods and approaches can we use to find and engage these materials? What is “ethnographic surrealism”? How can we apply this all to our work together?

This makes it pretty clear - they freely admit that they don't care about Judaism. They exploit Judaism.

Palestinians think Jewish holidays are just an excuse for Jews to make their lives difficult for no reason

There is a phrase that is seen often in Palestinian Arabic media, especially around this time of year: "Under the pretext of Jewish holidays."

Ma'an wrote on Monday, "The Israeli occupation forces, on Monday evening, restricted Jerusalemites, especially those residing in and around the Old City, under the pretext of the Jewish holidays and to facilitate the settlers' storming of the Old City and the Al-Buraq Wall [Kotel]."

Al Wafd, Wafa and many others headlined, "On the pretext of Jewish holidays, Israel closes the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron to [Muslim] worshipers."

Al Quds, last week: "Gaza: Israel's closure of commercial crossings under the pretext of Jewish holidays worsens economic conditions."

El Balad: "On the pretext of days of repentance, settlers storm Al-Aqsa Mosque, instigated by 'temple groups.'"

They don't mention that Egypt and Jordan close crossings on holidays. They don't mention that for every day the Cave of the Patriarchs is closed to Muslims, there is one day it is closed to Jews for Muslim holidays.

The wording makes it appear that they think that Israel uses the holidays as an excuse to make Palestinians suffer.

Indeed, that is exactly what they think.

An Al Jazeera reporter interviewed Palestinians and "experts" about the fact that there are so many Jewish holidays during the week this month.

The specialist in Israeli affairs, Ismat Mansour, describes the closures, which are carried out under the pretext of Jewish holidays, as a ritual of restricting the Palestinians and disturbing their lives on security grounds, although the situation today is closer to calm. There are no commando operations and no security tension, according to what the occupation describes. Despite this, the closure has become a reality, according to Mansour.

The problem with the Jewish holidays - according to Mansour - is that they are many, and the closures may extend for long days, as happens on the Passover holiday, in which the closure extends for a week, as well as the way the celebrations become against the Palestinians and their sanctities.

In addition to this, the national holidays, especially the Independence Day, are considered a history of the catastrophe for the Palestinian people.

Mansour believes that the Jewish holidays for the Palestinians are occasions of restrictions, closures, sieges and incursions by settlers, which are often reinforced by the occupation police and army, and these incursions may be a spark for confrontations and arrest.

The New York Times denies basic Jewish history

In an article about an Israeli animated drama about the destruction of the Second Temple, Isabel Kershner writes in the New York Times:

Israeli leaders have increasingly drawn on the lessons from Jewish history, noting that the Jews enjoyed two previous periods of sovereignty in the land in ancient times, but both lasted only about 70 or 80 years — a poignant reminder for the modern state that, founded in 1948, has passed the 70-year mark.

This quote was considered so important that it was tweeted by the New York Times as well.

Israel's leaders have increasingly drawn on the lessons from Jewish history, noting that the Jews enjoyed two previous periods of sovereignty in the land in ancient times — but both lasted only about 70 or 80 years. https://t.co/BXAGMVbNxJ
— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) September 12, 2021

What?

Jews had partial sovereignty over the land from the time of Joshua through the timeframe of the Judges which lasted about 410 years. The era of the kings (Saul, David and Solomon) ruling the united Jewish monarchy lasted about 117 years, and the Kingdom of Judah succeeded that for another 340 years. After the first exile, Jews returned with various levels of autonomous rule - for example the Persian province of Yehud lasted 200 years during which the Second Temple was built.

Israel was mentioned as an independent political entity in the Merneptah Stele (1208 BCE) which clearly existed before then, and the Mesha Stele (830 BCE) celebrates another supposed victory over a Jewish king.

Only the Hashmonean rule of unqualified Jewish control of the area lasted about 80 years, but Jews maintained autonomy until the Revolt in 68 CE.

The only place I have seen such an attempt to minimize Jewish historical rule over the Land of Israel was by Arab pseudo-scholars - and even many of them admit longer Jewish rule than the NYT does. The New York Times seems to have gone way beyond even the most radical archaeologists who minimize Jewish rule over the land, claiming that the Biblical kings were really only nomads with few followers.

CAMERA says that they contacted the New York Times and the newspaper refused to correct the article.

The only reason one can imagine that the NYT wants to lie about Jewish history is to say that the Jewish claim on the land has no real historical basis. Yet the most important work of literature ever created, the Hebrew Bible, describes the connection of the Jewish people to the land since the days of Abraham. Even if one accepts the most extreme arguments against complete Jewish sovereignty, the historic, emotional and religious ties of Jews to the Land have lasted millennia.

The people who ignore that fact are generally antisemites.

09/13 Links Pt2: Saul Friedländer: A Fundamental Crime; Norwegian Pension Fund Boycotts Israel While Investing in Companies Linked to Chinese Slave Labor

From Ian:

Saul Friedländer : A Fundamental Crime

While anti-Semitism is rampant throughout the world, the Holocaust memory is increasingly interrogated in the name of post-colonial ideas. The latest attack is signed by the Australian historian Dirk Moses. He argues that distinguishing the Holocaust from other violent crimes in human history is nothing more than a matter of faith. And that it is time to abandon this faith in the singularity of the Holocaust and the obligations that derive from it and replace it with a new truth: the Holocaust is only one crime among others. The great historian of the Holocaust Saul Friedländer, in an article originally published in Die Zeit, counters: “‘Auschwitz’ was something completely different from the colonial atrocities of the West. And postcolonial thought is currently taking on the risk of disassociating itself from the struggle against anti-Semitism that can sometimes simmer in its ranks.”

There is one more element that Moses fails to mention, which is part of a long tradition: in 1985, forty years after the end of the war, President Richard von Weizsaecker declared German historical responsibility for the extermination. In fact, German responsibility to Jews and to Israel had already been accepted by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer when he signed the Reparations treaty with Israel and the Jewish Claims Conference in 1951. For Dirk Moses, it seems that these things only matter to the professional historian; in his eyes, in reality, this all is the past. For him, the German culture of memory, which developed over several decades after 1945, has done its job. Now it is urgent to make room for something new, for a comprehensive view of the history of violence in past centuries. And then, in his presentation of things, so-called postcolonial studies is a marginalized discipline that must be promoted in order to do historical justice to all victims of violence.

I cannot assess the importance or insignificance of postcolonial theory in Germany. In the US, post-colonial thinking, the kind represented by Dirk Moses and many others, has conquered university campuses and is well represented in Congress. Pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel movements have surged, BDS (boycott, divestments, sanctions) has become the common cause of an increasingly militant – and often violently so – coalition of “subaltern” communities, the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) and sundry academics and politicians.

Sure, not everyone who gathers under the banner of postcolonial critique is an enemy of Israel, and those who are openly anti-Semitic may be only a minority. But anti-Semitism in the U.S. has taken on disturbing proportions in the wake of recent protests, particularly in Los Angeles, where I live: Jewish neighborhoods were the primary targets of Black Lives Matter protests against police violence after the murder of George Floyd last May. In Fairfax, home of one of the oldest Jewish communities in Los Angeles, the march was led by professor Melina Abdullah, one of the main organizers of Black Lives Matter; at the protest, rioters also vandalized synagogues and Jewish businesses. “It is no coincidence,” wrote a local rabbi, “that the riots escalated here in Fairfax, the symbol of the Jewish community. I witnessed the Watts riots and the riots following the acquittal of Rodney King’s murderer, in which no synagogue or house of worship was harmed. Today’s graffitis, even before the attacks, were a sign of open anti-Semitism.”

These massive violent outbursts of Jew-hatred are relatively new to the United States. Unfortunately, they now seem to accompany Black Lives Matter protests quite often. Those who criticize the memory of the Holocaust from a postcolonial perspective and murmur about “American and Israeli elites” should take note of this fact. Antisemitism was a destructive force then, and it is still a destructive force today, no matter which direction it comes from. Does Dirk Moses wish to see this new militancy and its unavoidable and unrestrainable sequels unleashed in Germany? I can hardly imagine that.

Holocaust historian Saul Friedlander wins $815,000 Balzan Prize

An Israeli-French-American Holocaust survivor and historian and a US scientist specializing in gut bacteria were among the recipients of this year’s Balzan Prizes, recognizing scholarly and scientific achievements, announced on Monday.

Saul Friedlander, who has taught at both the University of California, Los Angeles and Tel Aviv University, was awarded the prize for Holocaust and Genocide Studies for his work broadening the perspective on the history of the Holocaust.

Friedlander, 88, was born in Prague in 1932 in a non-religious Jewish family, which fled to France after the German occupation in March 1939. His parents hid him in a Catholic boarding school near Vichy, where they were later captured and sent to Auschwitz.

With his parents’ agreement, Friedlander was baptized as a Catholic and later, out of his own conviction, considered becoming a priest. After he learned in 1946 that his parents had been killed at Auschwitz, Friedlander reclaimed his Jewish identity. He later said, “for the first time, I felt Jewish.”

Friedlander received the Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction in 2008 for “The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945,” the second volume in his history of Jews in Hitler’s Germany. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1999, after the publication of the first volume covering the period from 1933-39 and has also been awarded the Dan David Prize recognizing outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary research.

Friedlander was recognized for examining the persecution of all Jews in Europe, going beyond country-focused studies that had preceded him, and for making personal documents accepted in scholarly practice.

A Writer Reckons With the Fact That ‘People Love Dead Jews’

PEOPLE LOVE DEAD JEWS Reports From a Haunted Present By Dara Horn

In three other essays, Horn deals with the upswell of anti-Semitism in the United States. Here it becomes clear that her concern about the ways we remember is inextricable from the way we relate to what is happening today. Horn claims that setting the Holocaust as the bar for anti-Semitism means that “anything short of the Holocaust is, well, not the Holocaust. The bar is rather high.” According to Horn, this might explain the limited shelf life, so to speak, of current events like the gunning down of Jews in Pittsburgh, in San Diego, in New Jersey.

And then there’s the moment of relief that Jews feel when we arrive at the famous questions in Act III of “The Merchant of Venice”: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? … If you poison us, do we not die?” So Shakespeare was not really an antisemite, but rather, more benignly, a satirist when he limned Shylock’s stereotypical Jewish character. After all, he is Shakespeare, and we want him on our side.

Or how we recognize the Chinese government’s investment of $30 million to restore “Jewish heritage sites” in Harbin, a city that was built by Russian Jewish entrepreneurs, who flourished there until they were no longer required.

“People Love Dead Jews” is an outstanding book with a bold mission. It criticizes people, artworks and public institutions that few others dare to challenge. Reading this book, I started to find the words I should have said to that woman in Motal. I should have responded that maybe Eastern Europe has been left with a void, but I have been left with hardly any family.

But there is a rare moment in Horn’s book in which she admits the austerity of her own perspective. It’s in “Legends of Dead Jews.” The common family story that so many American Jews have heard about their surnames being changed at Ellis Island is a myth, she writes. The names weren’t changed by mistake. American Jews preferred to change their names to be able to fit in, to blend in, to assimilate.

I expected Horn to criticize the purveyors of this legend. After all, they distorted the past to avoid the discomfort of its truth. But she writes: “Our ancestors could have dwelled on the sordid facts, and passed down that psychological damage. Instead, they created a story that ennobled us, and made us confident in our role in this great country.” Perhaps revision of this sort does not always have to be about self-blinding. Perhaps, as Horn suggests, it is “an act of bravery and love.” Some things are just too painful to say.

Reading Horn’s beautiful words, I thought that maybe, after all, what this woman in Motal wanted, and needed, was a simple thank you, a handshake and a humble nod.

The Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism has been a means for construction materials to be allowed to enter Gaza after the 2014 war, with Israeli approval, to ensure that the materials would not go to terror groups. It is administered by the UN and the Palestinian Authority together with Israel.

Today, Palestinian news site Safa seems to claim that the GRM has been abolished. It quotes Vice President of the Palestinian Federation of Industries, Ali Al-Hayek, that this is a major achievement for Gaza, because Israeli oversight over building materials were too intrusive.

I cannot find any corroboration for this.

The GRM website still exists, and it includes projects as recent as last week. Israel approved construction materials to enter Gaza earlier this month using the GRM.

Of course, it seems unlikely that Israel would agree for mass imports of construction material without the GRM, and Egypt is not likely to want to bypass GRM and send materials straight to the Hamas-run Gaza government.

For now, I will assume that this article is wishful thinking for pro-Hamas contractors in Gaza, itching to rebuild miles of tunnels bombed, But this is worth watching.

I was struck by the first two paragraphs of this Haaretz article by Odeh Bisharat:

Israel, an overly emotional, easily rattled military power
Odeh Bisharat | Sep. 13, 2021 | 12:23 AM

I’m very disappointed with Israeli Jewish society. How is it possible to run a country that is said to be the world’s eighth-ranked military power if last week’s escape of six Palestinian prisoners from Gilboa Prison rattles it so? For days now, from the time they get up until they go to sleep, the country’s citizens have been living and breathing on whether the prisoners were still on the lam or have been caught.

How can a military power that threatens every neighborhood with its lethal army be maintained when the killing of a single soldier drives people out of their minds? Where is the sense of self-confidence, and where are the nerves of steel?

The answers to his two questions are the same and they do not require an advanced degree in sociology.

Jewish Israelis consider each other to be family, and when any family member is in danger or dies, everyone is affected.

What family would shrug off danger to their members because they have "nerves of steel" or supreme self-confidence?

Israel's strength comes precisely from treating fellow Jews like family, and anguishing over the safety of each and every one.

Bisharat's wonder at this shows far more about his own psyche than anything wrong with Israeli Jews.

Some people mistake Israeli Jewish concerns for the safety and health of fellow Jews as racism against Arabs. It isn't. Prioritizing your own family is not bigotry, but it doesn't mean that people outside your family should be treated with anything but respect.

Perhaps the only Jews Bisharat associates with are fellow Haaretz columnists like Gideon Levy, Amira Hass or Rogel Alpher, who hate their fellow Jews with a passion and who cheer their deaths at the hands of Arabs as cosmic justice.

I suppose if those are the only Jews one knows, those questions make sense.

09/13 Links Pt1: Can the UN Finally Cease Its Relentless Anti-Israel Bias?; The withdrawal from Gaza: a failed concession for peace; Dutch Government to Call on PA to End Support for Antisemitic Riots

From Ian:

Can the UN Finally Cease Its Relentless Anti-Israel Bias?

few years ago, after the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) had just passed its usual litany of anti-Israel resolutions, an exasperated UN translator accidentally told the world the truth. Thinking only her colleagues could hear her speaking into the microphone, she caused laughter but no embarrassment among the diplomats as she exposed their farce: "When you have...like a total of 10 resolutions on Israel and Palestine, that's a bit much, no?"

Hundreds of parliamentarians from both sides of the Atlantic agree that this is way too much. In an unprecedented initiative, spearheaded by the Transatlantic Friends of Israel, 312 cross-party lawmakers from the European Parliament and national legislatures from EU member states, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, the U.S., Canada and Israel have urged EU member states and fellow democracies to end the systematic discrimination against Israel at the UN.

"Within the context of rising global antisemitism, the relentless, disproportionate and ritualistic condemnation of the world's only Jewish state at the UN is particularly dangerous and must finally end. Israel deserves attention and scrutiny, as does every other nation. But it also merits equal treatment—nothing more, nothing less," the declaration reads in part.

Last year, for example, the UN General Assembly adopted 17 one-sided resolutions against Israel and only six against any of the other 192 member states for human rights violations. As the 76th session of the UN General Assembly opens tomorrow, it is set to establish a similarly shameful record.

A particularly outrageous spectacle—the 20th anniversary summit of the UN's so-called 2001 World Conference Against Racism—will take place on September 22. We write "so-called" because the original conference held in Durban, South Africa perverted its agenda from fighting hatred to advocating hatred against Jews. Israel was singled out and libeled as an illegitimate racist apartheid state, setting the agenda for the next two decades of anti-Israel bigotry. Jewish conference participants were physically threatened and had to hide their kippahs. "Anti-racist" activists screamed, "you don't belong to the human race" and held placards that read, "Hitler Should Have Finished the Job."

Showing moral clarity, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. announced they would stay away from this odious affair. But as of the time of this writing, 17 EU member states are still on track to attend the celebration of what was an antisemitic hate fest, with speeches scheduled from the UNGA president, the UN secretary general, and the UN high commissioner for human rights.

Every country that withdrew from #DurbanIII, has now pulled out of the #antisemitic #DurbanIV event at UN - with the exception of #Poland.

Hardly surprising given the rampant Holocaust distortion & Jew hatred at the moment in Poland, that they refuse to #SayNoToDurbanIV. pic.twitter.com/5tIqmxqVUc
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 13, 2021

Wow, talk about chutzpah! Durban Conference became synonymous with unhinged Jew hatred and antisemitism, the very kind that led to the Tree of Life massacre. How dare the @UN now abuse the memory of these victims in such shameful manner! https://t.co/8Gx1EAeIEP
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 13, 2021

Americans and Jews are Fighting World War III

America too has a mission in the world – to defend the good and fight evil. Our victory over Nazism was part of that. In the second half of the 20th century, we fought communism in Korea, Vietnam and throughout Europe and Central America. Under Reagan, Bush (occasionally) and Trump, we fought Islamism. (Biden is determined to sign articles of surrender.) Like Nazism, fundamentalist Islam has marked the Jews for extermination. After the defeat of the Third Reich, the conflict shifted from Europe to the Middle East, and then went global after the Cold War. The World Trade Center should have been a wake-up call for America. For most in the West, the phone is still ringing. Tragically, very few Americans and Jews even grasp the idea of a mission. Americans are too caught up in the concept of a world ruled by international trade and international relations,and doing perpetual penance for imaginary sins of the past. Jews want the world to forgive them for being different, while complaining about the dramatic rise of anti-Semitism, which they refuse to relate to the rise of Islam. In that encounter at Kaufering Lager IV came a moment of clarity. The prisoners understood why they were being murdered -- “Juden, Juden.” (The world has always hated the messenger.) The Americans of Easy Company understood why they fought. Then amnesia set in. Now, 20 years after 9/11, we’ve saddled ourselves with a president who staged the most disastrous retreat imaginable from Afghanistan and thinks our enemies are a virus and a natural phenomenon (climate change). And many Jews can’t figure out why the percentage of Americans who have negative feelings about them is declining while anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise. Islam, anyone?