Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Fatah, which supports violence in its platform, threatens Israel again, as Palestinians celebrate terrorists

Mahmoud Abbas held a meeting of his Fatah Central Committee yesterday.

Its main accomplishment, if you can call it that, was a pledge to hold the Eighth Fatah Conference in March of 2022.

Abbas railed against Israel, as usual. And he issued threats, which the Western media will ignore.

He said, "We will not remain silent forever in the face of the intransigence of the Israeli occupation and its refusal to abide by signed agreements. All options will remain open to the Palestinian people and their leadership to preserve the Palestinian rights and principles that we will never accept to be compromised."

What options might he be talking about? For that, we just have to look at the Fatah Platform from the Sixth Fatah Conference of 2009, confirmed in the Seventh Conference in 2016.

In that platform, it says, "The Palestinian people’s right to practice armed resistance against the military occupation of their land remains a constant right confirmed by international law and international legality."

It is worth mentioning that Palestinians even admit that Palestinian culture is one of admiring violence and terror. Only last week, there was the opening of the "Bethlehem: Capital of Arab Culture 2020-2021 week." Here is one of the examples of Palestinian culture:

Palestinian Media Watch tracked down the pictures of the people portrayed on the walls, and calculated that they were responsible for the murder of 184 Israelis. The heroes included the organizers of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre as well as numerous suicide bombings.

Terrorism is Palestinian culture.

At the end of Abbas' address, he thanked the head of the PA Civil Affairs Authority, which led to obtaining approvals for 4000 Palestinians to receive identification papers and passports. Those approvals were given by Israel, not by any Palestinian institution.

If Abbas would thank Israel for the things it has been doing to make life easier for Palestinians (like approving 4G Internet), perhaps that would be more effective than the threats and embracing terror that have led nowhere for decades.

Radio Sweden reports that Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde warned the Palestinians that their endemic corruption ensures that they do not get Swedish funds.

"If we are to fully support economic development, then we can not have corruption at such a level as exists in Palestine," she said.

Linde met with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh and foreign minister Riyad Al-Maliki.

She also allayed the Palestinian fears that her thawing of relations with Israel - this was the first such delegation to visit Israel in ten years - will not affect the Swedish attitude of support for Palestinians. She reiterated Sweden's support for a two state solution and for Palestinians to be able to hold elections in east Jerusalem.

Which means that even the staunchest Palestinian allies in Europe are starting to realize that the money they send Palestinians is being wasted.

The name "Palestine" may be a literal Greek translation of Israel - and not so much derived from Philistines

I saw this theory in Twitter and I traced it back to an article in Biblical Archaeology Review from 2001 by David Jacobson. He makes a convincing case that the Greek word "Palestine" does not come from the Philistines, as has been largely assumed, but from Palaistís, the Greek translation of "wrestler," a translation of Israel - which means "wrestles with God."

Excerpts:

Most people assume that the name Palestine derives from “Land of the Philistines” (Peleshetin the Hebrew Bible; see Psalms 60-10; Isaiah 14-29, 31), via the Greek Palaistinê and the Latin Palaestina. But there is evidence, both philological and geographical, that questions this traditional attribution. The name Palestine, surprisingly, may have originated as a Greek pun on the translations of “Israel” and the “Land of the Philistines.”

Let us first consider the geographical problem. The Greek Palaistinê and the Latin Palaestina appear frequently in ancient literature, but for the most part, they appear to refer not to the Land of the Philistines, but to the Land of Israel!

As early as the Histories of Herodotus, written in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E., the term Palaistinê is used to describe not just the geographical area where the Philistines lived, but the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt—in other words, the Land of Israel. Herodotus, who had traveled through the area, would have had firsthand knowledge of the land and its people. Yet he used Palaistinê to refer not to the Land of the Philistines, but to the Land of Israel. His understanding of the geographical extent of Palestine is reflected in his reference to the population of Palaistinê as being circumcised.2 However, the Philistines, as we know from the Bible, were uncircumcised. The Israelites, of course, were circumcised.

...Now let us turn to the philological problem. The earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible, into Greek, is known as the Septuagint. The work was done in Alexandria beginning in the third century B.C.E. If the Greek Palaistinoi were derived from the Hebrew Peleshet (Land of the Philistines), we would have expected that Peleshet would appear in the Septuagint as Palaistinoi. The Septuagint translators clearly had this Greek word available- As we have seen, it was used as early as Herodotus. But the Septuagint translators did not make use of this word. Instead, they referred to the Pelishtim, the people we call Philistines, as the Philistieim, while the Hebrew Peleshet is rendered as Gê ton Philistieim (literally, the “Land of the Philistines”), rather than a word like Palaistinê.11

Another interesting point- The Septuagint translators tended to translate place-names rather than transliterate them, especially where familiar Greek names existed. (In the transliteration, Grecisms would be substituted where appropriate, as Paris becomes Parigi in Italian or Beijing once became Peking in English). Thus, for example, the Septuagint translates Yam Suf (the Red Sea) as Erythra Thalassa, Greek words meaning “Red Sea.” Likewise, Mitzraim (Egypt) is rendered not with a transliteration of the Hebrew but with the Greek Aigyptos. That the Septuagint school of translators did not do the same in the case of the Hebrew Peleshet (the land) and Pelishtim (the people) is indicated by the fact that the term they used, Philistieim, has a Semitic, rather than a Greek, ending. In other words, Philistieim is a transliterated term from the Hebrew for the Philistine people. Palaistinê and Palaistinoi must therefore signify something else.

Startling as it may sound, I would argue that “Palestine” is the Greek equivalent of “Israel.”
The word Palaistinê is remarkably similar to the Greek palaistês, meaning “wrestler,” “rival” or “adversary.”12 This similarity in spelling was noticed over 60 years ago by the German Bible scholar Martin Noth.13 He saw this as a reflection of a practice of transliterating oriental words into Greek words that were easy to pronounce, like referring to Beijing as Peking in English. Noth failed to develop his argument any further. But the similarity between Palaistinê and palaistês would seem to have a significance deeper than a mere transliteration.

The name Israel arose from the incident in which Jacob wrestled with an angel (Genesis 32-25–27). Jacob received the name Israel (Yisra’el in Hebrew) because he “wrestled (sarita’) with the Lord (El).” In the Septuagint, the Greek verb epalaien (he wrestled) is used to describe Jacob’s struggle with the stranger.14 The etymological similarity between epalaien and Palaistinê raises the possibility that Palaistinê may somehow be linked to the name Israel through this Biblical episode.

Jacob’s wrestling with the angel, which explained the origin of the name of the people and of the Land of Israel, would have struck a chord among Greeks who came into direct contact with Jews in the Near East at least as early as the sixth century B.C.E.15 Greeks, well versed in the epics of their heroes, would have been intrigued by the Biblical explanation of the name Israel, as transmitted to them by Jews, probably in anecdotal form and almost certainly in Aramaic, the most widely spoken tongue in the Near East during the early classical period.16 The central event of a wrestling contest by the ancestor of this Semitic people against a divine adversary is likely to have made a deep impression on them.

...The striking similarity between the Greek word for “wrestler” (palaistês) and the name Palaistinê—which share seven letters in a row, including a diphthong—is strong evidence of a connection between them. Adding to this the resemblance of Palaistinê to Peleshet, it would appear that the name Palestine was coined as a pun on Israel and the Land of the Philistines. In Greek eyes, the people of Israel were descendants of an eponymous hero who was a god wrestler (a palaistês); the name wrestler also puns on the name of a similar-sounding people of the area known locally as Peleshet.

Apparently, the Greeks made a habit of translating place names rather than transliterating them. So this is a very compelling theory.

And if true, it proves again that the only indigenous Palestinians are Jews.

10/19 Links Pt2: Cary Nelson: Israel on Campus, Post-Truth; Bari Weiss: NYT Passed on Column About 2019 Antisemitic Killings Because Attackers ‘Weren’t White Supremacists’

From Ian:

Cary Nelson: Israel on Campus, Post-Truth

In the post-truth world, Hamas apparently no longer exists. Thousands of rockets and incendiary balloons no longer fall on Israeli towns and cities, killing people in their apartments, obliterating vehicles, and setting fields ablaze.

According to numerous academic departments here and abroad, Israel is no longer under assault. In the post-truth world, Israel and its military have instead become irrational opponents of all that is just and good, carrying out raids on Hamas strongholds in Gaza without cause or justification.

No wonder those academic departments have substituted self-congratulatory virtue signaling for academic freedom and open debate.

In May of this year, immediately after the most recent war between Hamas and Israel ended, over 100 academic departments representing their colleges and universities, for the first time in history broke with the established academic principle of departmental and university political neutrality, issued statements condemning Israel, and, in effect, joined the BDS movement.

Many women’s studies programs started the campaign, but some ethnic studies, history, and other departments joined it. Even during the Vietnam War, when by the 1970s most professors opposed the war, their departments stayed out of politics. By the mid-1970s, some voluntary professional associations took an anti-war stand — but not, as far as I can determine, university departments. Most departmental and academic statements this spring did not even mention Hamas.

The most influential guiding principle is clear: individual faculty, students, and staff are free to express and promote their political views. They can create voluntary groups to do so collectively. But official university units must not do so. Otherwise, all those affiliated with a department would suffer the coercive effect of anti-Zionist or other political groupthink.

Bari Weiss: NYT Passed on Column About 2019 Antisemitic Killings Because Attackers ‘Weren’t White Supremacists Carrying Tiki Torches’

In an interview Sunday, journalist and former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss charged the paper with having once turned down a column about a series of antisemitic attacks because the perpetrators “weren’t white supremacists.”

Weiss, who resigned from the Times in July 2020, told conservative commentator Ben Shapiro that she had drafted a column in the wake of two deadly attacks on Jews in late 2019, including a mass shooting at a Jersey City, NJ kosher grocery store and a stabbing at the home of a Monsey, NY rabbi during Hanukkah.

“I wrote a piece at the time … called ‘America’s Bloody Hanukkah,’ or ‘America’s Bloody Pogrom,'” she told Shapiro. “I thought it was really good column, it was really my subject. I’d written a book called “How to Fight Antisemitism;” I was Bat Mitzvah’d at the synagogue in Pittsburgh, Tree of Life, where the most lethal attack against American Jews in all of American history was carried out. I have some skin in the game, and I know a lot about this subject.”

“And I was basically called into my editor’s office and was told, ‘we can’t really run this.’ And the reason, at the end of the day why we couldn’t really run it, is that the people that were carrying out the attacks weren’t white supremacists carrying tiki torches,” Weiss continued, referring to the notorious 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

The former opinion section editor, who now runs a newsletter on the Substack platform, resigned from the Times in July 2020, publishing an open letter critical of the paper.

The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special: Bari Weiss

After working years in the legacy media, Bari Weiss is now stepping away from the biggest news outlets in the country, and is in the midst of crafting her own media property. She is producing with the freedom to investigate and pursue stories she simply didn’t have before and features unique conversations and stories that reflect the most fundamental issues in the country.

Bari wrote about and popularized the Intellectual Dark Web at the New York Times back in 2018 and finally joins us in this episode to discuss why she’s been avoiding joining my show these past 3 years. Plus, we will talk about her experience being attacked across the internet and media, as well as some ideas that may help preserve the country’s political middle.

1) NHJ fell for a completely fake quote. @bariweiss said no such thing. Not that NHJ is known for caring about facts or the truth.

2) Incredible projection. pic.twitter.com/StEwr2gbHJ
— AG (@AGHamilton29) October 19, 2021

Israel Advocacy Movement: The truth about 'No Tech For Apartheid' - #NoTechForApartheid

How Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change tried to convince Amazon and Google to boycott Israel with the #NoTechForApartheid campaign

Here’s the timeline of events for the pre-meditated “No Tech For Apartheid” campaign against Project Nimbus organized by BDS groups Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower, who tried to portray it as “concerned employees” of Google and Amazon. pic.twitter.com/NxSJcFzofV
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) October 18, 2021

This one paragraph from Naharnet sums up Hezbollah beautifully:

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Monday reassured Lebanon’s Christians that his group is not a “threat” to them, as he accused the rival Lebanese Forces party of seeking civil war and warned it that Hizbullah has “100,000 trained and armed fighters.”

He is saying that no one should fear Hezbollah - and then offhandedly mentions that Hezbollah's illegal army is huge and willing to do whatever it wants without fear.

More detail of Nasrallah's threats:

Reassuring that “Hizbullah, Amal Movement and Shiite Muslims in Lebanon are not enemies of the Christians” and that their “decision” is “coexistence,” Hizbullah’s leader charged that “the biggest threat to Christian presence in Lebanon is the Lebanese Forces party.”

“I advise the LF and its leader to abandon the idea of civil war and internal strife forever,” Nasrallah added, telling Geagea that he is “making wrong calculations” as he “has always done.”

“You are mistaken about Hizbullah's status in the region… You are very mistaken by saying that Hizbullah is weaker than the Palestine Liberation Organization,” Nasrallah went on to say, claiming that Geagea had said that in a meeting with former allies in which he encouraged them to fight Hizbullah alongside the LF.

Noting that Hizbullah has supporters, various departments and allies, Nasrallah warned Geagea that the Iran-backed group also has “100,000 trained and armed fighters.”

“Do not make wrong calculations. Sit still, be polite and draw lessons from your wars and our wars,” he added, addressing Geagea and the LF.

The other contradiction here is between saying that Hezbollah supports "coexistence" and then demands that the Christian group "sit still and be polite." Meaning, for them to act as proper second-class dhimmis in a Muslim Shiite nation, and not to demand equal rights.

That is the Islamist view of "coexistence" - it is only acceptable when Muslims are in charge.

The BDS Movement doesn't only boycott Israel. It also boycotts the Dubai Expo!

Yesterday, it issued a statement condemning the Palestinian Authority for opening up a pavilion at the Dubai Expo.

The movement looks even more ridiculous given that there are pavilions from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Pakistan, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia - and even Iran and Syria!

The reasons that BDS gives for boycotting the expo include this beauty:

There you have it. The reason the expo must be boycotted is because otherwise, Arabs might actually have the opportunity to meet and speak with Israelis - and that is something that BDS cannot condone. After all, they might find out that Jews are human beings and not evil apes and pigs!

The BDSers are also ludicrously claiming that Israel will be marketing military technology used to kill Palestinians at the expo. (They made this claim before Israel even opened their booth.)

The insistence that not only Israel be boycotted but also an exposition where Israel participates - along with its enemies - makes BDS look more and more absurd. The more they foam at the mouth at their own impotence, the more entire world - including the Muslim and Arab world - looks at them as clowns.

10/19 Links Pt1: The most important lesson Yitzhak Rabin taught us; PA: Palestinians murdering Israelis is Palestinian culture; Raisi: 'Muslim world must prioritize Palestinian issue'

From Ian:

The most important lesson Yitzhak Rabin taught us

For me personally, the most profound and enlightening statement former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin ever made about Israel is that it "must fight terror as if there is no peace, and make peace as if there is no terror."

In his characteristically laconic way, the war hero and tragic victim of radical politics gave our nation a guiding principle by which to follow.

Israel, however, finds itself sandwiched between a corrupt Palestinian Authority administration in Ramallah — masquerading as representatives of the Palestinian people — and the theocratic extremist regime of Hamas, sitting on endless stockpiles of guns, rockets, explosives and bodies to throw into the fray.

The aftershock of Rabin's assassination and the subsequent collapse of peace talks between the Jewish state and the Palestinians have put Israeli leaders on the defensive, unwilling to accept even the smallest overture or possibility that one day, God forbid, both parties might sit together in the same room and talk about anything other than security issues.

So now that peace is no longer an option, fighting terror is the only thing that matters.

But Rabin understood something very fundamental about the two sides of this conflict — without peace, there is only terror. If both sides do not show any willingness to talk, the radicals would rise up and take control.

Both Israel and the Palestinians have decided that the dangerous and bloody status quo is good enough for them.

Israel continues to occupy the West Bank and blockade the Gaza Strip because there presently seems to be no other way to maintain security, while Fatah enjoys international recognition for perpetuating the suffering of its people and Hamas draws the sword of Jihad and death.

A Symbolic Consulate in Jerusalem-What will the dilettantes think of next?

As improbable as it may seem, the US State Department proposes to open a Consulate in the heart of Jerusalem dedicated to serving the PA and its exclusively non-Jewish, so-called Palestinian residents, of the areas in Judea and Samaria, governed by the PA.

Why not open the Consulate in Ramallah, where the PA maintains its government offices? It makes no rational sense to open a Consulate to the PA in what amounts to a foreign country. Moreover, apparently, the approximately 60,000 US citizens who live in Judea and Samaria (including parts of Jerusalem beyond the so-called Green Line) who are Jewish would effectively be excluded.

Besides being invidious discrimination of the most sordid variety, it is hard to imagine why the US would actually reward the PA for being Judenrein, including their jailing those convicted of violating their noxious laws prohibiting the sale land to a Jew. Is this ‘Jim Crow’-like paradigm the new policy of choice of the State Department?

The whole notion of opening a separate official Consulate office outside of the regular US Embassy in a country is for the purpose of serving as a convenience to US citizens and other legitimate US business purposes in a foreign country. Why then open a Consulate in a location that is not convenient for the intended constituency to be served?

Palestinian official: "We don't want a US consulate in Ramallah or Abu Dis. The consulate has to be in the occupied city of Jerusalem, the capital of the State of Palestine."
— Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) October 19, 2021

Noah Rothman: The Rising Terror Threat Is Another Consequence of the Afghanistan Debacle

Perhaps. But why now? Domestic and international law enforcement have identified a conspicuous uptick in chatter among aspiring terrorist actors linked to the Taliban’s successful reconquest of Afghanistan. “That’s where they see this rallying cry and their opportunity. Now it’s ‘time to buy a gun, run people over with a car,’ do whatever they’re going to do,” one FBI official told Defense One reporter Jaqueline Feldscher.

Among those who might be enthralled by terroristic violence but find the Taliban uninspiring, the revivified Islamic State presents an attractive alternative. “ISIL has unmistakably positioned itself as the uncompromising rejectionist force in Afghanistan and has the potential to recruit quite a lot of people on that basis,” the FBI official continued. “You may see ISIS grow significantly in Afghanistan.”

Indeed, you’re likely to see every manner of radical Islamist organization enjoy a recruiting boom, particularly inside Afghanistan. That became apparent to foreign intelligence agencies mere hours after the collapse of the Afghan government. “Foreign intelligence officials said they are detecting signs that the Taliban’s victory has energized global jihadists,” the Washington Post reported one day after the fall of Kabul.

Although the ideological distinctions between groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State matter a great deal to Westerners, they don’t seem to preoccupy those inclined toward violence as long as violence is the result. “God willing,” on al-Qaeda militant quoted by the Post said, “the success of the Taliban will be also a chance to unify mujahideen movements like al-Qaeda and Daesh.” Just as the Islamic State’s short-lived caliphate in Syria and Iraq inspired acts of self-radicalized terrorism all across the globe, the reestablishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is likely to have the same effect.

As former National Counterterrorism Director Michael Leiter wrote recently, the U.S. and its allies “have made incredible strides” in the struggle against Islamic radicalism since 9/11. We are “vastly safer” now “than we were the last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.” But that didn’t happen by accident. It was an unfinished labor involving the development of local informants, friendly governments, actionable intelligence, and, of course, well-placed military assets capable of executing kinetic operations in a timely manner.

Bassem Eid, the former B'Tselem researcher who has been working tirelessly for Palestinian human rights without the antisemitism, has filed a complaint against Unilever in New York State for its Ben and Jerry's subsidiary illegally boycotting Israel.

Interestingly, he is saying that the boycott affect Palestinians such as himself who like to shop in "settlement" supermarkets and will not be able to get the ice cream!

Attorney David Abrams has provided me with a copy of the complaint.

Excerpts:

I. Background
1. This charge arises from an announcement dated July 19th, 2021, by Ben and
Jerry's of a boycott directed at the area claimed as the "Occupied Palestinian Territory"
("OPT") and subsequent announcement of the Ben and Jerry’s Board of Directors of an
intention to boycott the entire State of Israel. As set forth in more detail below, this
charge alleges that the Respondent Conopco, Inc., ("Respondent"), owner of Ben and
Jerry’s, has aided and abetted an unlawful discriminatory boycott in violation of the Lisa
Law which is now part of the New York State Human Rights Law.

II. The Charging Party

2. I am a Palestinian Arab human rights activist. I was born in Jerusalem and reside
in Jericho.3. I have dedicated my life advocating for peace and reconciliation between Israelis
and Palestinians. In doing so, I firmly reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
movement, otherwise known as ‘BDS’. I believe BDS is counterproductive to peace and
creates only more hatred, enmity and polarization, as evidenced by the Respondent’s
actions in this matter. Moreover, whereas the BDS movement’s spokespeople and
supporters live in comfortable circumstances abroad, such boycotts as this will only result
in increased economic hardships for actual Palestinians, such as myself.

If so-called pro-Palestinian activists truly want to help the Palestinians’ cause,
then they should demand Palestinian leadership respect basic freedom, human rights and
democracy for the Palestinian people, while assisting Israel in creating more jobs
employing Palestinian people and initiating programs that bring the sides together, not
create barriers, walls and only more hate.

IV. Respondent's BDS Activity
9. On 19 July 2021, Ben & Jerry’s announced their intention to end sales of their
ice-cream in the ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’ and inform their Israeli licensee, who
distributes in the region, that they will not renew the license agreement when it expires at
the end of next year. On the same day, in a separate announcement, the Respondent
announced its support of Ben & Jerry’s decision, effectively endorsing the company’s
boycott.

10. Although the Respondent insisted in its announcement that it remained fully
committed to its “presence in Israel”, upon information and belief its Israeli distributor
has refused to participate in its boycott activity, which would, inter alia, also be in
violation of Israel’s ‘Law Prohibiting Discrimination’ in the provision of goods and
services based on place of residence.

As it is highly unlikely that the Respondent will find an Israeli distributor to be a
willing accomplice to such illegal and discriminatory BDS activity, the practical effect of
the announcement is a decision to boycott the entire State of Israel. Therefore, regardless
of where one draws the lines of Israel's borders, the boycott will also to apply to me, as a
resident of Jericho, in the purported ‘OPT’.

11. Moreover, although Ben & Jerry's nominally announced that it intended to
continue to do business in Israel, upon information and belief a senior official at Ben &
Jerry's, Anuradha Mittal, vehemently objected to this qualification. Upon information
and belief, the same individual, in her capacity as Chairperson of the Ben & Jerry’s
Board of Directors, has publicly expressed support for a boycott of all of Israel and was
the primary proponent and initial decision-maker behind the boycott activity described
herein.

12. In other words, the circumstances of the Ben & Jerry’s announcement indicate
that the company’s boycott is intended to engage in an unlawful discriminatory boycott,
and the rhetoric about "illegal occupation" is simply a fig leaf for the discriminatory
activity.

V. Effect on Palestinians

13. Regardless of the intent of the law, the effect is discrimination and boycott on
Palestinian Arabs such as myself, who reside in the so-called ‘OPT’ and would therefore
be denied ability to purchase Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream.

For example, I, as a Palestinian, as well as many of my friends, family and other
Palestinians, are regular shoppers at the Gush Etzion commercial center, which is located
in Area C, and where we also frequent to eat ice-cream. This shopping area is the true
realization of coexistence, as both Jews and Muslims from both Israel and the Palestinian
controlled territories, including areas A and B, work and shop there. Israeli Jews and
Arabs also travel from Jerusalem to enjoy what this center has to offer. Gush Etzion is
not the only mixed-commercial area in which such a positive dynamic occurs, and they
are all targeted by the BDS movement, trying to push us apart instead of fostering and

promoting such people-to-people togetherness, friendship, cooperation and peace. The
BDS's movement has had tremendous negative affect on me and other Palestinians, some
of whom have lost their place of employment and access to goods and services.

14. In any event, I have been invited to an event in the claimed ‘OPT’, scheduled to
take place in January 2023 at which ice cream is expected to be served. Accordingly, I
am an aggrieved party in respect of the Respondent's activities since my host (and
therefore me) will not have access to Respondent's ice cream.

This should be interesting!

Israel has a severe shortage of doctors, and prospects to improve that are not good. Israel is near the bottom of all developed countries in the number of medical school graduates per 100,000 people.

There is fear that things will get much worse as the many doctors who immigrated in the 1990s from the former Soviet Union retire.

Recently, Israel decided to attract Jewish doctors, nurses and other medical professionals worldwide by streamlining the process by which they can move to Israel and get certified:

On Sunday, the government approved a plan to aggressively fast-track training and employment opportunities for Jewish doctors, nurses, lab technicians and other paraprofessionals who immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return.

The initiative comes as the country’s health care system is mired in crisis, with medical interns and residents threatening mass resignations unless their shifts are shortened. The government has said that without the long shifts, hospitals will be understaffed due to lack of personnel.

Medical staff shortages in Israel are only expected to intensify in the coming years.

“This decision will help bring thousands of doctors, nurses and paramedical professionals who live abroad and want to immigrate to Israel, while also helping to alleviate the workload of the interns in hospitals,” said Aliyah and Integration Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata, who spearheaded the plan in partnership with the health and finance ministries.

One bright spot in the story is the huge increase in the number of Arab doctors, nurses and pharmacists.

The rise of Arab health professionals has been meteorotic, as Haaretz recently reported:

New data issued by the Health Ministry in a 2020 report on health care personnel show that the Arabs and Druze in Israel, who make up about 20 percent of the country’s population, constitute almost half (46 percent) of recipients of medical licenses; half of the new nurses, male and female (50 percent, as compared with just 9 percent in 2000); and more than half the dentists (53 percent) and pharmacists (57 percent).

In addition to the fact that Arabs comprise a vastly larger proportion of the medical field than their share in the population, this meteoric surge within just two decades has transformed the face of medicine in Israel. Besides the leap of more than fivefold in the number of Arab nurses since the start of the century, there has been a fourfold increase in the number of Arab physicians, the number of Arab dentists has more than doubled and the overall proportion of Arab pharmacists has almost tripled, from 21 percent in 2000 to 57 percent in 2020.

There are plenty of articles about the huge increase of Arab doctors in Israel, with no negative comments. On the contrary, the Arab doctors have been celebrated. As The Atlantic reported last year:

Israeli media regularly feature stories of Arab-Jewish intimacy in the quarantine wards. The newspaper Yediot Aharonot published a four-page photo essay of Arab and Jewish nurses—the first time in memory it featured Arabs as Israeli heroes. A video from the coexistence group Have You Seen the Horizon Lately? showing nurses removing their masks to reveal hijabs drew more than 2 million viewers. Images of Arab-Jewish coexistence have gone viral—like the photograph of an Arab doctor bringing a Torah scroll into an isolation ward, or of two medics pausing before their parked ambulance to pray, one man in a prayer shawl, the other on a prayer rug.

Rabidly antisemitic Arab media, however, see nothing but an anti-Arab conspiracy in Israel trying to attract more doctors during a serious doctor shortage.

Palestinian and Israeli Arab media immediately reported the story by claiming that the entire purpose of the plan was not to address a doctor shortage, but "to curb the continuous rise in the percentage of Arab doctors in the health system."

An Arab Israeli newspaper made an unsubstantiated claim - repeated by many other Arab news outlets - that hundreds of Arab medical professionals who pass their certification cannot get jobs. Yet they bring no statistics, not one anecdote of frustrated unemployed Arab doctors. On the contrary, the very reason so many Arab Israelis are becoming doctors is because it is much easier for them to get jobs in the medical field than in high-tech, where one often gets jobs based on connections forged in the army.

It is pure Jew-hatred to claim that that a country suffering from a severe shortage of medical personnel is so racist that it prefers its own citizens die rather than be treated by Arab doctors.

Now the antisemitic claims are becoming more crazed. A Jordanian writer claims in Al Rai that Israel plans to "expedite the expulsion of hundreds of Palestinian doctors" from their jobs.

The writer even betrays his own racism, saying, "The racist decision-maker is the Jewish/Ethiopian immigrant, the Minister of Immigration and Absorption.. Tamano-Shata." What exactly is the relevance of her being an immigrant from Ethiopia?

The only bigotry here is from Arab media. As usual.

Saudi cartoon shows Quranic story of how Jews were transformed into monkeys

From MEMRI, a Saudi cartoon that shows the Quranic story of Jews turning into apes and pigs (without the pig part):

On October 9, 2021, an animated video for children depicting a Quranic story about Jews being transformed into apes was uploaded to the Ibtikar Media channel on YouTube. The narrator told the story about a group of Jews in a seaside village who violated Allah's commandment to keep the Sabbath by casting fishing nets on Friday and gathering fish on Sunday. The narrator said that the group of Jews who did this were punished by being transformed into apes. Ibtikar Media is a Saudi YouTube channel.

Narrator: "There used to be a Jewish village on the seashore. One of Allah's laws that He laid down for them was that He forbade them from fishing on the Sabbath, in order to devote themselves to worship. Allah tested them by sending a lot of fish only on the Sabbath. So they employed a trick. They would cast their nets on Friday, the fish would get trapped in the nets on Saturday, and they would collect them on Sunday.

"The [Jewish villagers] were divided into three groups. One group defied Allah's commandment. They would fish [on the Sabbath] by employing trickery and deception. Another group abided by Allah's commandment, and never defied Him. They would warn the people about Allah's wrath and His punishment, and would forbid them from doing what they were doing. The third group would oppose the people who forbade these acts.

"When the sinners did not heed the words of advice, Allah's punishment came upon them at night. The group that commanded good were spared the punishment. The fate of the third group was not mentioned. The punishment of the sinners was that they were transformed into apes. It is said that the people who forbade evil wondered why the sinners did not appear, as was their habit. So they went to [the sinners, and saw that they had been transformed into apes. Each ape recognized his own family, but people did not recognize their relatives who had been transformed into apes. The people [from the first group] asked: 'Did we not warn you about Allah's wrath?' A while later, the sinners who had been transformed into apes died, leaving no descendants."

There's a punchline to this famous story that the Muslims don't know:

According to Jewish law, the Jews who set the nets did nothing wrong.

Jewish law says that one may not set a trap on the Sabbath but one may set up a trap beforehand.

Mohammed knew a lot of Jewish stories and legends that he put into the Quran. but he wasn't very well versed in Jewish law.

10/18 Links Pt2: Islamist Who Defended Murderers of Jews to Speak at Tree of Life Anti-Hate Summit; Economist frames antisemitic tweets as merely 'anti-Israel'

From Ian: Islamist Who Defended Murderers of Jews to Speak at Tree of Life Anti-Hate Summit

In October, former President George W. Bush, Biden's DHS Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, ADL boss Jonathan Greenblatt, and other notables will descend on the massive Lawrence Convention Center in downtown Pittsburgh. The occasion isn’t a party convention, but the inaugural Eradicate Hate global summit inspired by the Tree of Life massacre in the area.

During the Tree of Life massacre, a white supremacist gunman opened fire on worshipers at the suburban synagogue in Squirrel Hill and killed 11 people. The shooter had told police, “All these Jews need to die”. The Eradicate Hate summit will commemorate that occasion by inviting a hater, Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), to speak.

Salam Al-Marayati has defended Hamas and Hezbollah. MPAC had called for removing them from the list of terrorist organizations. He responded to 9/11 by suggesting that Israel was behind the attacks. Just last year he came out with an op-ed accusing Jews of having “weaponized antisemitism to marginalize critics of Israel, especially American Muslims.”

In the 90s, Jewish groups protested the decision by Democrats to appoint him to a counterterrorism commission after his organization argued that the murder of Jews had been adopted by terrorists as one of the "violent reactions to express their despair and suffering".

The Tree of Life gunman would have said the same thing.

Salam Al-Marayati is one of the summit’s “global advisers” and will be appearing on three different panels, including one on deradicalization. Even if MPAC is better at radicalization.

Flora Yehiel, a 24-year-old Jewish woman, was waiting at a Jerusalem bus stop when a Muslim terrorist rammed his car into the crowd killing her and wounding 23 others. After crashing the car, the terrorist shouted “Allahu Akbar”, got out and kept coming. A survivor at the scene shot him, but he still kept coming, until he finally died. Hamas claimed credit for the attack.

2. Who has presented himself since 2013 as to the right of Likud, this is the reason. Naftali Bennett (and Gideon Sa'ar) are right wing fig leaves for the most radical government Israel has ever seen. Shai's reported participation in a conference hosted by Beinart is.../3
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) October 18, 2021

Left-Wing Activist Slammed by Jewish Org for Claiming Attention Is Only Paid to the Holocaust Because Victims Were European

A prominent left-wing activist was criticized by a top American Jewish organization on Sunday for claiming on social media that the Holocaust is only considered important because its victims were Europeans.

Shaun King, an outspoken supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Black Lives Matter movement, posted on Instagram, “The only reason why people celebrate ‘Christopher Columbus Day’ and never ‘Adolf Hitler Day’ is because Columbus massacred non-europeans [sic].”

In response, the American Jewish Committee tweeted, “Shaun King’s comment is both deeply offensive and blatantly false, fueled by the age-old antisemitic trope of ‘Jewish privilege.’”

“Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis specifically because they were NOT considered white European,” said the AJC.

The group asserted, “King should apologize.”
.@ShaunKing‘s comment is both deeply offensive and blatantly false, fueled by the age-old antisemitic trope of “Jewish privilege.“

Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis specifically because they were NOT considered white European.

King should apologize. pic.twitter.com/Phgc1xZoKh
— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) October 17, 2021
In 2019, King drew criticism for telling a group of Sanders supporters that the senator had always spoken out for unpopular causes, and then saying, “Even today, he speaks out against apartheid-like conditions in Palestine even though it’s not popular.”

So freaking moral (meme)

Something I came up with today.

I could have listed about 130 countries that have worse scores than Israel in Freedom House's list of free and not free countries.

But then the haters would scream "whataboutism!"

My Intersectionality Victimhood Calculator is coming up to its third anniversary, and I have been amazed at how accurate it is.

To recap, the calculator is meant to determine who is the "winner" in any conflict in this new woke world.

The actual facts in any conflict are utterly irrelevant - only the victimhood score, which is the sum of all attributes a person has.

One with a negative victimhood score is perceived as an oppressor, a positive score means that one is oppressed.

My scoring system, which holds up amazingly well, was:

Attribute	Victimhood score
Trans	8
Black	8
Native American or other First People	7
Woman	6
Gay	6
Muslim	5
Arab, other Middle Eastern	5
Hispanic	4
Disabled, pregnant	4
Anti-Zionist Jew	4
Wears hijab	2
Palestinian	2
Asian American	1
White	-1
Republican or conservative	-3
Christian (white only)	-3
Jew	-3
Visibly religious Jew	-3
Jewish settler	-6
Identifies proudly as Zionist	-8
Trump supporter	-8
White nationalist/neo Nazi	-18

The only change I made since 2018 was that would be that if the person identifies as a proud Zionist, any of his or her positive victimhood scores should be inverted to negative. That is the Jason Hill/Hen Mazzig rule - a person who is supposedly in a victimhood group of being, say, gay or a person of color or an immigrant who is still a Zionist is a traitor to the woke and the lowest of the low, according to the calculator.

Let's look at some recent examples.

I wondered on Twitter about the difference in reactions to Dave Chappelle's transphobic and antisemitic jokes, where the anti-LGBT jokes were criticized much more harshly. The answer is that Chappelle, as a black man, has a higher victimhood score than Jews but a roughly equivalent score to transsexuals.

The May Gaza war is obvious - Israel is always wrong - but the people who hate Israel and who subscribe to this victimhood ideology went out of their way to emphasize the women and children who were killed and de-emphasize the roughly half who were terrorists, to increase the differential score.

Hamas, being a +10 of Muslim and Arab, can literally do anything it wants to Israeli Jews and still be the victim. Supporting terror does not lower your score at all.

Ben and Jerry might be white-passing Jews (-3-1=-4) but they are positioning themselves as being anti-Jewish Zionist settler (-3+-6+-8=-17) so they win.

David Miller, as a white non-Jewish male, has a score of -1, but he claims that he was attacked by Zionist Jews, who are at least a -11. When one has claims, the side with the higher victimhood score is the only one whose claims may be taken seriously. (I suppose being a member of Israel's government or the Mossad would subtract a few more points.)

Bahrain allows Israel to open up an embassy - its Arab score gets inverted to -5, and its perceived as being Zionist so Bahrain (and the UAE) are now firmly oppressors with a solid -13. As such, since they started warming up to Israel, Human Rights Watch has become far more critical of them.

Iraq puts out arrest warrants to citizens who want peace with Israel. Iraq's score is +10, those traitor Arab Zionists are at least a -5. So that's why human rights groups aren't interested in a pure human rights story.

Padding the score is very important to the players. A person who becomes an As-a-Jew immediately adds four points. Revealing that one is gay, or an immigrant, or a person of color can swing more sympathy one's way. Successfully framing your opponent as a Nazi is the equivalent of capturing the Golden Snitch in Quidditch - if you do that, the game is over. (This seems to be Eli Valley's full time job.)

The only possible counterexample to these rules I can think of is the May antisemitic attack against Los Angeles diners, which is mostly being ignored by the woke and has been covered in the media. The lawyer for the attackers is trying to make them into victims, and given that one of them is Hispanic, he might yet succeed.

It is almost scary how accurate this calculator is. And most of the mainstream media slavishly follows this formula.

10/18 Links Pt1: 89% of Palestinian films showcased by Netflix directed by BDS supporters; In Private, Iraqis Support Peace With Israel; Hamas sentences 2 to death for collaborating with Israel

From Ian:

89% of Palestinian films showcased by Netflix directed by BDS supporters

Nearly 90% of films in Netflix's recently launched "Palestinian Stories" collection of films are directed by supporters of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, according to findings from right-wing watchdog group Im Tirzu.

On Friday, Israel Hayom reported the online streaming service had announced the launch of the collection of 32 films, which it said would be expanded in the future. Sixteen of the 19 directors whose films are currently available for streaming in the Palestinian category are BDS supporters, while 12 had called for a boycott of the Jewish state when they signed a letter blasting Israel as recently as May.

In the letter titled "A Letter Against Apartheid," the directors alleged "Palestinians are being attacked and killed with impunity by Israeli soldiers and armed Israeli civilians who have been roaming the streets of Jerusalem, Lydda, Haifa, Jaffa, and other cities chanting, 'Death to Arabs.'" The letter further accused Israel's government of carrying out a "massacre" in the Gaza Strip and fomenting "murder, intimidation, and violent dispossession."

"We call for an end to the support provided by global powers to Israel and its military … Israeli apartheid is sustained by international complicity, it is our collective responsibility to redress this harm," the letter's signatories said.

The films offer a one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and include scenes depicting interrogation by Israeli security officials and life in a refugee camp.

Critics of the new Netflix collection argue that the films portray a biased depiction of the conflict while glorifying terrorism and omitting the thousands of terror attacks perpetrated against Israeli civilians.

"It is unforgivable that Netflix has become an outlet for the spread of material written by propagandists who seek to boycott Israel and remove it from the map. This at a time of rising global antisemitism, much of it disguised as anti-Israel activity," investigative journalist David Collier said.

How Media Reviews Enable Cinema to be Used as Vehicle for Palestinian Propaganda

When Linda Sarsour recently tweeted about Palestinian films and documentaries arriving on Netflix, her choice of words was telling: “Educate yourself,” she told her followers. “Learn about the Palestinian experience.”

Not a word about Palestinian culture, cuisine, architecture, music or family drama. Sarsour summarised the function of Palestinian cinema as showing viewers about “the Palestinian experience,” a codeword for the story of what Sarsour and others term “life under occupation.”

In truth, the burgeoning Palestinian cinema scene has been developing for some years now, and is a key tool in Palestinian ‘soft power’ through which to influence the hearts and minds of people around the world. The relentless drab scenery and stories of alleged injustice meted out by an uncaring, unforgiving Israeli military machine are staples of Palestinian films and serve to influence the way people perceive the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians specifically, as well as the Arab-Israeli conflict in general.

Compare this to Israeli television. Many of the films and television series made in Israel have very little to do with the Palestinians or indeed the Arab world at all. Shtisel, aired by Netflix and subject of positive reviews around the world, focuses on an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family in Jerusalem and barely mentions any non-Jewish characters.

While Israeli films and television series often do relate to the conflicts Israel deals with, their scope is far more extensive than the simple victimhood narrative that is the hallmark of Palestinian film. Instead, Israeli television wrestles with the ethical dilemmas facing Israeli soldiers and the Israeli public, and attempts to humanize the people on both sides, most notably in Our Boys (2019), based on the kidnapping and murders of young Israeli teenagers in the summer of 2014 that led to a serious escalation between Israel and Hamas.

To a lesser extent, this is also true of Netflix’s global hit show Fauda, which shows numerous Palestinian characters at home engaged in day-to-day life, as well as a romance between a Palestinian woman and an Israeli man. In some cases, Israeli television and film productions are highly critical of the Israeli government and military, and sympathetic to the Palestinians.

For example, the recent Israeli film Let There Be Morning (2021), featuring a Palestinian cast, depicts a Palestinian accountant whose path home is blocked by an Israeli checkpoint.

Overwhelmingly, Palestinian film and television, however, simply do not display anywhere near such compassion for the people on the ‘other side’ of the conflict.

Taken in comparison with the type of jingoistic fare often seen on Palestinian television, which depicts Palestinians as crushing scared Jews, and often features military parades and Islamic preaching, a stark contradistinction emerges. These themes are entirely absent from the films made for Western consumption.

UKLFI warns Amazon and Google that “workers'” BDS campaign orchestrated by anti-Israel NGOs

Anonymous Amazon and Google workers’ supposedly wrote a letter to the Guardian claiming 300 Amazon workers and 90 from Google had signed a letter calling on Amazon and Google to drop the cloud contract, which is known as Nimbus.

UKLFI has now written to Amazon and Google with information that undermines the claim that this campaign that was started by workers at Amazon and Google.

The time line indicates that the campaign was co-ordinated by anti-Israel NGOs.

On 12 October at 11.45 BST NBC News published an op-ed by two Amazon and Google workers, which attacked the Nimbus contract. One of the co-authors was Bathool Syed, a content strategist at Amazon, whose Instagram page links directly to a website called notechforapartheid.com.

A letter in the Guardian was published on Tuesday 12 October at 17.15 BST, by “anonymous Google and Amazon workers”, which stated that “So far, more than 90 workers at Google and more than 300 at Amazon have signed this letter internally “. Since the signatories were anonymous there was of course no proof of who or how many people actually signed the letter.

The “No Tech for Apartheid” website was launched on 13 October at https://www.notechforapartheid.com/, and it appeared to be in response to the Guardian article. The website urges people to add their names to an automatically generated email to these Amazon and Google executives, demanding that they should pull out of the Nimbus contract.

The Wayback Machine web archive shows that the activity on the website began on Wednesday 13 October 2021 at 14.43 BST. (screenshot at A4). The “No Tech for Apartheid” website is professionally designed and contains a great deal of content, including long articles from five different Palestinians describing “life under apartheid”. On 13 October it contained endorsements from 40 anti-Israel organisations.

Pro-Israel Advocacy Groups Send Letter to Unilever Asserting It Can Overturn Ben & Jerry’s Israel Boycott

Two major pro-Israel advocacy groups have sent a letter to Unilever, the parent company of the ice cream giant Ben & Jerry’s, arguing that, contrary to its claims otherwise, Unilever could overturn the latter’s decision to boycott the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.

Ben & Jerry’s stated in July that it will not sell its products in what it called the “the Occupied Palestinian Territory” because it was “inconsistent with our [company] values.” The ensuing backlash has seen a number of US states seek to divest from the company and its multinational parent company Unilever, on the basis of anti-BDS legislation.

In July, Unilever released a statement saying that “as part of the acquisition agreement, we have always recognized the right of the brand and its independent Board to take decisions about its social mission.”

In a letter dated Oct. 15, 2021 addressed to Unilever CEO Alan Jope and the company’s Board of Directors, StandWithUs and the Israeli-American Coalition for Action argued that the “right” referred to by Unilever is not absolute, and the company has the power to overturn Ben & Jerry’s decision.

Unilever’s contract with Ben and Jerry’s, the letter stated, “gives Unilever the power to make ‘financial and operational’ decisions for Ben & Jerry’s; the Board can make ‘social’ decisions only insofar as they are ‘commercially reasonable.’”

“Boycotting an entire country is, in fact, commercially unreasonable,” asserted the letter, “especially when it triggers counter-boycotts by states and consumer groups and divestment of state pension funds” — referring to legal and financial actions taken by various entities in reaction to boycotts of Israel in general and Ben & Jerry’s in particular.

“Ben and Jerry’s must explain — to you and to the investing public — how its social mission requires such a boycott when it signed a contract showing that doing business in Israel was consistent with its social mission,” the letter said. “Clearly, it is Ben and Jerry’s that is in breach, and it is within Unilever’s rights to reverse the Board.”

This headline prompted me to look up about any other time that Irish people "defied Israel."

This is the best contemporaneous article I can find about the boycott of Jews in Limerick, Ireland, in 1904.

See? They don't hate Jews because of their religion, but because they are simply all collectively guilty!

The Catholic priest's words were not quite so clear-cut, though.

Antisemites always claim that their actions come from the highest moral obligations, that they don't have any hate in their hearts but are only doing what is necessary and right to protect innocent people.

Ireland's support for boycotting Israel today is coming from the exact same place that Father Creagh claimed to have come from 117 year ago.

And today's boycotters reject any suggestion of their own bigotry as their Irish predecessors did in 1904.