Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, November 03, 2021

The direct ancestor of Jewish Voice for Peace: The Jewish Alliance Against Zionism

In 1978, an anti-Zionist Jewish organization was founded, literally named The Jewish Alliance Against Zionism.

JAAZ's philosophy sounded a great deal like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow do today.

Its Statement of Principles sounds like it is out of the Soviet antisemitic handbook, saying things like "Zionism is very much part and parcel of the ideology of 19th century colonialism" and that "from the beginning [Zionists] had allied with powerful Western empires, first British and then US imperialism" and Zionism "was establishing an exclusivist Jewish state and sentenced those Palestinians who remained inside ever-expanding Israeli borders to economic,political and social domination, racial subjugation, religious discrimination, as.well as direct military occupation, arrests, and torture."

The group was against the Camp David Accords, just like today's successors are against the Abraham Accords.

One part of the Statement of Principles was excised, because even those self-hating Jews felt it went too far: "We also suggest that Israel, in its racist practice and reactionary role in the world, itself contributes to anti-Semitism, and that by opposing Zionism, Jews therefore contribute to the struggle against anti-Semitism."

In the days before intersectionality, the JAAZ principles said "We believe that the struggle of women against male supremacy is inextricably connected to the struggle against all forms of human oppression." Anti-racism wasn't so trendy in the 1970s, but feminism was, so they tried to hijack a different liberal cause to attract more members - again, just like JVP does.

JVP actually interviewed one of the first (and perhaps only) members of JAAZ on the front page of their newsletter in 2015.

JAAZ made a poster succinctly describing their ideas:

In 1978, it was unthinkable for Palestinians not to be violent. So the members of JAAZ embraced terrorism in their own artwork supposedly supporting Palestinians.

Similarly, in the midst of the second intifada, when Jews were being blown up nearly daily, that didn't stop Jewish "anti-Zionist" students from supporting the Palestinians and condoning their terror.

These groups now claim to be against violence. But they never were, and still aren't. They just follow whatever they think would attract people to their anti-Israel ideas; the actual philosophy behind them is elastic and can contradict itself from decade to decade.

Before "occupation" or after, before Camp David or after, before Oslo or after, during suicide bombings or after - any opposition to Israel is justifiable.

Because even when they are Jewish, it is always about hating Jews.

11/02 Links Pt2: David Colier: How the Palestinians stole the suffering, of well – just about everyone; Holocaust survivor publishes PhD dissertation on ‘serendipity’ of Balfour; Russian Lessons for American Jews

From Ian:

David Colier: How the Palestinians stole the suffering, of well – just about everyone

It might seem absurd to those that do not see what is going on, but the pro-Palestinian movement probably cannot believe its good fortune. They can steal any idea, make any accusation, and global antisemitism will do the rest of the work for them. Because their fight is against the Jews, their empty smears all go viral. What we see in the anti-Israel movement today is the result of decades of co-opting causes, historical revisionism and piggybacking on the very real suffering of others. Basically – if there is a bad thing happening in the world – the pro-Palestinian movement stole the idea to use it against the Jews.

Here are some of the key examples:
The theft of Apartheid
Apartheid was a system of legislation that upheld segregationist policies against non-white citizens of South Africa. White South Africans inflicted a brutal racist system upon over 80% of the population – tens of millions of people – just because of the colour of their skin:

The international boycott against the Apartheid policies was seen as successful and so for this reason, the pro-Palestinian camp simply co-opted it as their strategy. They reasoned that if people can be conned into believing that Israel is an Apartheid state – then the international community will realise that it must go the same way as Apartheid South Africa did.

Except of course there is no Apartheid in Israel. Arabs form 20% of the population of Israel and they are the only free voting Arabs in the MENA region. The entire Palestinian argument is flawed. South Africans lived under Apartheid rule – Israeli Arabs are free – Palestinian Arabs can negotiate a peace deal, to finally end a conflict their leaders chose – started – and lost. There is a lot of Apartheid in the MENA region – in places such as Lebanon, but none in democratic Israel.

When the pro-Palestinian camp smears Israel with the vile lie about Apartheid, they degrade and insult the suffering of non-white South Africans and ridicule the long battle which those trapped in that system had to endure. They have stolen the pain of others.

The theft of the Holocaust
This is one of the most insidious appropriations of suffering that has ever been undertaken. The pro-Palestinian movement has stolen the systematic destruction of the Jewish people. There are two strands to the way this was done.

The first was the rewriting of history. The ‘Nakba’ or ‘catastrophe’ that Arabs in the British mandate experienced was the result of the failure of their violent attempt to destroy Israel. The Arabs started a civil conflict against the Jews and then followed that with a regional war. They lost. People do not sympathise much with this type of aggression – so the pro-Palestinian movement simply rewrote history. They airbrushed out the civil conflict – removed the Arab irregular army from history – and turned a tiny Jewish enclave fighting for survival, into a powerful and brutal force intent on carrying out an evil plan. Because the Jews were so strong and mean – local Arab armies came in to try to stop them. The Jews had their Holocaust – but it could now be menitioned alongside the Palestinian ‘Nakba’:

The second strand is the ‘Zionists are the new Nazis’ trope. The poor Palestinians – in this new history – became Europe’s Jews – and Israel became the new Nazi empire. In this fairytale – the invading Arab Armies of Syria, Jordan and Egypt are transformed into Churchill’s Britain – bravely standing up against the evil force. It is why the perverse lie about a historical Zionist / Nazi ideological alliance runs so strongly in their camp, they want people to actually believe that Jews fighting to survive and Nazis intent on global domination are morally equivalent. So, anything that occurs today – is used to reinforce an image of Jews as the new Nazis and Palestinians as the new Jews.

Russian Lessons for American Jews

If any Jewish group has a right to apply the “my existence is resistance” motto to itself today, it is RSJs. Soviet Jews outlasted Lenin’s, Hitler’s, and Stalin’s “solutions” to “the Jewish problem.” They survived mass slaughter (over 100,000 in the postrevolutionary violence; 2.7 million in the Holocaust), a decimation of their religious and cultural institutions, the murder of their intelligentsia, and an erasure of their collective memory. They came out of those experiences with a Jewish identity that was deeply paradoxical: secular, devoid of any ethnic content — and yet, unshakable.

Some of the “credit” for the construction of this identity goes to the Soviet state, which separated Jewishness from Judaism and defined it as nationality or ethnicity. In theory, this meant that Jews were ethnically Jewish in the same way that, say, Ukrainians were Ukrainian: an ethnic group defining itself by language, history, dress, customs and cuisine. This worked in the first decade of Soviet power, but, as historian Zvi Gitelman describes in detail, by the time the anti-cosmopolitan campaign concluded in the 1950s, Soviet Jews had lost their Jewish particularity. Growing up in the 1970s Soviet Union, I learned songs, dances, national costumes, and traditions of Moldovans, Georgians, Armenians, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Roma, and, of course, Russians. But the idea that Jews might have equivalent ethnic attributes likely never even occurred to me. By then, nothing remained of Jewish culture in public consciousness but ugly stereotypes.

Soviet Jews themselves struggled with the many paradoxes of their identity. A highly-regarded samizdatjournal had a rubric titled “Who Am I?,” in which Jews mulled the question. Fully acculturated, raised on Pushkin and Tolstoy, they felt as Russian as their ethnically Russian friends and colleagues. And yet, the scarlet letter of the Jewish “nationality” line in their identity papers, as well as their recognizably “Jewish faces,” permanently marked them for hate and discrimination, preventing them from assimilating. Many Soviet Jews’ experience suggested that Jewishness was akin to race: a vague yet inescapable reality whose primary marker was one’s external physical characteristics.

Even so, Soviet Jews did develop a distinct culture. For one thing, they came to view themselves as part of the intelligentsia. They understood themselves as people who collected books, read voraciously, and strove for educational and professional excellence. They were people whose children played musical instruments and spent Sundays in theater matinees. They might not have had much knowledge of Jewish culture or tradition, as historian Yaakov Ro’i has noted, but they felt themselves to be Jewish. They had “an existential feeling of Jewish solidarity” and “common fate,” and Jewish pride emanating from their own and other Jews’ professional and cultural achievements. Being Jewish to them was more of a mentality and a shared interpretation of reality than a set of specific Jewish expressions.

The Jewish identity that this complicated mix of circumstances, policies, and adaptations created did not require any specifically Jewish actions to reinforce itself. It is no wonder, then, that it remained invisible to the American Jewish eye. Writing in 2016, sociologist Steven J. Gold observed that it had been only recently that Jewish scholars and community activists recognized that “while Russian-speaking Jews frequently express their Jewishness in ways at variance from the local Jewish population, they often have a stronger Jewish identity and more extensive Jewish social ties than do American Jews.”

EoZ social media updates

I just realized that between by 39,000 Twitter followers and 11,000 Facebook followers, that makes over 50,000 EoZ fans on social media.

Over the past 30 days my tweets have gained over 2.3 million impressions.

Since I've been spending a lot of time making memes for Twitter - many of which I don't post here - I decided to create an Instagram channel for my graphics.

Like this one:

Thanks for all your support!

Today is the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, where Great Britain announced its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.

As with every year, the Palestinians are marking the day with mourning. PA president Abbas instructed all flags to be flown at half-mast every November 2. Palestinians got the secretary general of the Arab League to issue his annual statement calling on Great Britain to "correct this historical mistake and assume its historical, legal and moral responsibility by offering an apology to the Palestinian people and recognizing the Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 lines with its capital East Jerusalem."

They like to pretend that the Balfour Declaration is the source of their problems.

But it was just a letter. It wasn't a legal obligation.

What happened afterwards is arguably more important.

It was endorsed by the French and Italian governments, as well as the United States. It was incorporated into the San Remo Resolution in 1920. Finally, it was then incorporated into the Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations.

That's when it became international law to support Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people.

Interestingly, the Arab opposition to the Mandate was not only against the concept of a Jewish homeland, but also against the concept that Palestine was a political entity of its own rather than part of Syria. (Of course, they also insisted that Jewish immigration be stopped totally.)

There were years of work by Zionists to turn Balfour from a vague statement of intent into international law. That is part of what gives Israel its legitimacy under international law today.

When the Palestinians say they want to reverse Balfour, they are saying they want to erase Israel.

The Mandate's incorporation of Balfour is also the source of Israel's legal claims to the entire area under the British mandate. Nothing that happened since then has superseded the Jewish national claim to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

11/02 Links Pt1: The Danger to the International Community of the Two-State Solution; Sheikh Jarrah residents in Jerusalem reject High Court compromise

From Ian:

The Danger to the International Community of the Two-State Solution

Because of the Palestinian Arabs’ radical stance, all of the very generous two-state proposals that have been submitted by Israel and supported by the international community were rejected by the Palestinian Arabs in the following years: 1967, 1993, 1997, 2000, 2005, 2008 and 2009-2014. In 2005, Israel even withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza strip hoping to move closer to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, but in return, Israel has since received from Hamas barrages of rocket attacks and floating firebombs into its civilian populated areas, including its capital city Jerusalem and the highly populated city Tel Aviv.

Unfortunately, the Palestinian Authority, which controls Judea and Samaria, and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, continue with malicious deceptive brain washing of their own populations and that of their oblivious international supporters. In addition to destroying the wellbeing of their own people, these self-serving corrupt leaders use a big part of the financial resources that are provided to them by the international community to support terrorists and their families and to build a strong terror infrastructure that will attack anybody who stands in their way – be they Muslims, Christians, or Jews – to gain even more power and personal wealth.

Some politicians and others around the world are known to be vicious anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish operatives for whatever irrational reasons, but it is very difficult to understand why any honorable and good politician would join them in bringing any anti-Israeli resolutions to the table. We must help the good people understand that forcing Israelis to give up their security, or accept any preconditions to future negotiations, will cause serious damage to the international community and the State of Israel. Israel is known to provide the international community with serious life-saving military intelligence and major benefits from advanced research and development in many essential fields. Undermining the stability and safety of the only reliable democracy in the Middle East will deprive the free world from the benefits of the Israeli experience, and it will empower the enemies of good to solidify their grip on their own people and on their oblivious international supporters, to limit the freedom of women under their domain, and to continue the abuse of their children. It will definitively not bring peace to the region.

It has been said in the past that for evil to prevail good people only need to do nothing, and appeasing evil will bring destruction to the oblivious who did not have the wisdom to correctly assess the situation. We can see classic examples of this dynamic in the early British support of Nazi Germany and in the unopposed and out of control ascent of Iran’s puppets (Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen). The free hand that was given to Iran, the biggest supporter of international terrorism, did not bring peace to the region, and the irresponsible disengagement from Afghanistan, which allowed the powerful re-emergence of the radical Muslim Taliban and ISIS, created a time bomb, the eventual consequences of which are still being studied by the intelligence agencies.

It is important to remind the wise that appeasing the bad operatives with financial or political support will not convert them into peace-loving altruistic angels, but on the contrary, will only embolden them to stay their evil course to the detriment of all honorable peace-loving individuals across the globe.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Biden's Palestinian Policies Will Not Bring Peace

The Biden administration is apparently hoping that engaging Mahmoud Abbas would undermine Hamas and other Palestinian extremists and embolden "moderate" Palestinians who are prepared to make peace with Israel and renounce violence.

The results of the polls, however, show that the Palestinian public is moving in precisely the opposite direction – towards more extremism and disillusionment with the PA leadership.

Referring to the peace process with Israel, 68% of the Palestinians said that they oppose a return to negotiations with Israel led by the US under the Biden administration.

The millions of dollars that the Biden administration is pouring on the Palestinians will not make them more moderate and encourage them to abandon violence and terrorism. There is only one way to deradicalize the Palestinians: halt the ongoing campaign to delegitimize Israel and demonize Jews.

It is the catastrophic failure to hold Abbas and the PA to account for their incitement against Israel and for their corruption that is emboldening Hamas and others who seek to destroy Israel.

Amb. Alan Baker: Israel’s Designation of Six Terrorism-Linked NGOs Was in Full Accordance with International Law

The Jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)
Lastly, the highest court for international law, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has ruled in its infamous Nicaragua Judgement5 that the United States bore responsibility as a result of its training, arming, equipping, financing, and supplying or otherwise encouraging, supporting and aiding the Contra rebel forces. Even though this decision relates to actions by states, it nevertheless shows the line that international law draws with respect to providing support to terrorist groups. The idea of an absolute prohibition to providing support to terrorist groups, whether financially or by training (as members of Al-Haq and UAWC did), indicates the strictness of international law and thereby provides states with the opportunity to protect themselves against terror threats. This clearly must include criminalizing NGOs that provide active and tangible support to such terrorist groups.

The Problem of Funding
As identified by NGO Monitor, the designated Palestinian NGOs are occasionally funded by European governmental institutions. This draws a two-sided problem: firstly, the European frameworks financially support organizations linked to terrorism and thereby indirectly fund the PFLP terrorist organization. Secondly, the six designated organizations accept funding which they misuse for their involvement in terrorist activities. The use of funds for terrorist activities is a blatant breach of international law.

According to Article 2 (1) (a) of the Terror Financing Convention, “any person commits an offense within the meaning of the Convention if that person … collects funds with the intention that they should be used, in full or in part, in order to carry out an act which constitutes an offense….” Consequently, the use of funds of the designated NGOs for their PFLP-linked purposes creates a further violation of international law.

Conclusion
Israel’s designation of the six Palestinian NGOs was in full accordance with international law norms and obligations. Moreover, by designating those organizations, Israel focused on their connection to the PFLP and the resulting active support of a terrorist group, which outweighs activities ostensibly carried out by such organizations as a cover for their terrorist activity.

The linkage between the organizations and the PFLP renders them eligible for criminalization in accordance with provisions of the relevant UN Conventions and Resolutions.

As a protection against the PFLP’s active and ongoing actions to undermine Israel’s security and the safety of its citizens, Israel, therefore, is justified in designating PFLP-linked NGOs as terror groups and, as such, in protecting itself against prevailing threats to peace and security.

PreOccupiedTerritory: Palestinian NGOs Struggle With Concept Of Not Inciting To Murder (satire)

Civil society groups working for Palestinian independence acknowledged difficulty today in comprehending the insistence of donors and diplomats that those organizations’ activities not include the active pursuit of violence in which Israeli Jews will die.

Spokespeople for several NGOs that Israel listed last week as fronts for the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in addition to blanket condemnation of Israel for “silencing” or “suppressing” activity aimed at upholding human rights, disclosed that the organizations in question, in addition to similar ones operating throughout Palestinian society, get confused when Europeans or other foreign funding sources express unease at the organizations’ equation of dead Israelis to a freer Palestine.

“I mean, what else could be the path to liberation?” wondered Sufa Shubaki, whose group aims to empower women to emulate a Palestinian mother whose six sons all serve lengthy prison terms for attempts to kill Jews. “When I ask them to explain the concept of ‘not killing Israelis,’ they look at me like I’m the one who’s talking gibberish. Gentlemen, you introduced the idea; it’s on you to explain it. I can’t be expected to grasp something alien without some handle on what it’s all about.”

Leaders from Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, the DFLP and the PLO wrote a letter to Queen Elizabeth II demanding that she "wash away the shame of the fateful Balfour Declaration."

Islamic Jihad leader Ahmed Al-Mudallal described the Balfour Declaration as a big sin that will continue to shame Britain as long as Israel exists.

The terror leader whose group is proud of murdering hundreds of Jews says that the whole world is experiencing "instability and insecurity" as a result of "the continuation of this occupation caused by the Balfour Declaration."

Member of the Central Committee of the murderous Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Iyad Awadallah, said that the declaration wa a "crime against humanity."

A leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group, Mahmoud Khalaf, said, "Britain, with this promise, has made a historical mistake, and it is time for it to atone for it, admit its guilt and apologize to the Palestinian people for giving the land of Palestine to the Jews to establish an alleged state on it." He added: "For 104 years we have been striving for the end of the occupation and the enjoyment of the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital."

His knowledge of history is a little lacking.

A member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Tayseer Khaled, said, "The British promise is fundamentally invalid" and called for launching the 'Palestinian Holocaust' museum project "in order to break the silence of the international community on the crimes committed by the British occupation on Palestine and its Zionist colonial tool."

I'm not sure if these terrorist leaders broke out in a chorus of "Kaybar, Khaybar al-Yahud" after expressing their concern for human rights and fairness.

The Media Line has the most devastating description of the Palestinian Authority's budget woes yet. Excerpts:

The Palestinian Authority is experiencing the worst fiscal difficulties it has ever had since its establishment more than a quarter century ago. The treasury is facing a severe cash crunch, and this could soon reflect on its ability to pay government salaries and conduct daily business, top officials say.

In the past, when faced with financial crises, the PA turned to wealthy Arab governments in the Gulf for assistance, but that support has declined.

The Media Line has learned that, of the $100 million that the Arab League member countries had committed to the PA as part of a financial “security net,” less than $2 million has been forthcoming, according to a top official at the PA Ministry of Finance.

The donors’ share of the PA budget has dropped by a whopping 58% in the past few years, forcing the government to scramble for ways to make up the difference.

President Mahmoud Abbas dispatched Shtayyeh to Brussels this week, in hopes of persuading the Europeans to restore financial aid. The PA government has received no aid from the European Union this year.

An example of how serious the financial situation is: Gas stations in the West Bank city of Bethlehem have refused to service PA cars, including security vehicles, because the government hasn’t paid its bills.

[T]he lack of progress on the negotiations track with Israel has had a major impact on the PA’s standing locally, regionally and internationally.

Eighty-three percent of Palestinians believe there is corruption in PA institutions, according to a recent poll by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR).

According to the London-based, pan-Arab Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper, during a meeting with Palestinian leadership in Ramallah last week, Abbas became furious at the Biden administration, describing US officials as “liars for not keeping the promises they made to us.”

Those promises include reopening the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington, providing financial support to the PA, and reopening the US consulate in East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians were counting on renewed US support, politically and financially, that would encourage wealthy Arab states to restore their financial support. However, according to the same unnamed source, there is “a clear American truancy about directly returning financial support to the PA, especially as the United States accuses the PA of corruption.”

“This has affected the Gulf’s response to the requests from the PA,” the source said.

Yet even though this has been in the making for a long time, the Palestinian Authority hasn't changed.

It has not tackled corruption. It still refuses to talk to Israel. It remains irredeemably antisemitic. It still publicly supports terrorists, paying them salaries and treating them like heroes. It refuses elections. It signs international agreements with no intention of actually following them. It imprisons people whose opinions it doesn't like. It is filled with political cronyism. Above all, it never, ever takes responsibility for its problems.

Instead of looking at its own shortcomings, the PA still takes every opportunity to blame Israel. Even this week, prime minister Shtayyeh spoke at the UN Climate Change conference and claimed that Israel was destroying the environment while the Palestinian Authority was doing wonderful things to save the world.

Blaming all of your problems on the Jews is certainly a time-honored tradition, but it only goes so far.

Arab writer admits Arab "traitors" sold land to the Jews in the 1920s (and he's proud of Arabs that murdered them)

An Arab writer, in a column ahead of the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, notes that plenty of Arabs sold their lands to Jews, and that if they hadn't done that, there would be no Jewish state.

Nahd Zaquout starts off his piece by quoting a poem from 1929 by Ibrahim Toukan expressing the frustration of the writer that Arabs were selling lands to Jews. The name of the poem is "To the seller of the country."

Extend / They sold the country to their enemies in greed for money,

but their homelands were sold. They

may be excused if hunger forced them, and by

God, they would never be thirsty or hungry.

If you say: its name is “a homeland,”

they do not understand, and without understanding greed,

think of your death in a land in which you grew up and

leave your grave a land the length of which he sold

Zaquot then goes on to list the specific Arabs who sold large tracts of land to the Jews in the years after the Balfour Declaration.

The Sursock family (Michel Sursock and his brothers) sold 400,000 dunams to the Jews.

The Salam family sold 165,000 dunams to the Jews,

The Tians, Qabbanis, Bayhem, Sabbagh, Al-Quwatli, Al-Jaza’iri and Mardini families, most of them from Lebanon, are listed as having sold thousands of dunams to the Jews.

Given that Arabs like this author are steeped in an honor/shame mentality, why would he bring up this topic of shame that is rarely discussed in the Arab world?

Because some of his fellow Arabs behaved in a way he considers honorable.

The author takes it as a given that those who sell lands to Jews should be killed. He brings a story of some of those heroes who murdered land sellers:

Honorable Palestinians were strict in the issue of selling land, and they punished by death anyone who sold his land or worked as a broker to sell land. They exposed them to the public. The Arab press mentions the story of a broker from Jaffa who was shot dead while on his way to his house at night, and he was famous for brokering and selling land to the Jews. In the Muslim cemeteries, they transferred his body to the village of Qalqilya, his original town, and there was a reluctance to bury him in the Muslim cemetery. It was said that he was buried in a Jewish settlement called "Benjamina", and that his grave was exhumed at night and his body was dumped 20 meters away.

What a heartwarming story of Jew-hatred, vengeance and....honor!

Perhaps the current mainstream Arab anger at Lebanon is being manifested by trying to call the entire country traitors for having its richest people sell lands at a handsome profit to Jews in the 1910s-20s.

He doesn't mention that most of the lands sold were considered uncultivable. Last year I noted that maps of swamp areas in 1920s Palestine largely coincided with the areas Jews built up.

The land was not only legally bought by the Jews, but they worked hard to make it livable - which the "honorable Arabs" didn't consider important enough to do.

11/01 Links Pt2: Bret Stephens: Is There a Future for American Jews?; The Guardian Palsplains antisemitism; IAM: Zionist laughs at oxbridge fascist

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: Is There a Future for American Jews?

The antisemitic outbursts during the Gaza War in May 2021 were not, in themselves, murderously violent. Yet the fact that they were expressed in the open, by people who plainly felt no fear in showing their faces, and who were met with weak and equivocating condemnations from so many quarters of the American establishment, gave them the quality of an omen, like the shattering of a single pane of glass. A few months later, House Democrats were briefly forced to capitulate to their most radical members by voting to remove $1 billion in funding for Iron Dome, a system whose sole purpose is to protect Israelis from lethal terrorist rockets.

Any sentient American Jew with an instinct for danger has to know that things won’t simply right themselves on their own. To adapt Isaac Newton, social trends in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force.

What will that force be?

Many of the essays in the current volume of Sapir make the case for Jewish fortification from the inside. Richer and deeper content in Jewish education. More effective management of Jewish organizations. Smarter outreach to potential converts. And so on.

These are necessary and important conditions for Jewish survival and renewal in America. But they aren’t quite sufficient. Jewish Americans live most of their lives outside the gates of their Jewish homes, synagogues, and communities. That is where the battle for the future of Jewish America will have to be waged. A few thoughts on how to fight it.

- The intellectual battle against critical social justice theory (often called “woke” ideology) is one no true Jewish leader can shirk. That isn’t merely because a spirit of liberal-mindedness matters to Jewish well-being. It’s because woke ideology invariably combines three features that ought to terrify Jews: a belief that racial characteristics define individual moral worth, a habit of descending into antisemitism, and a quasi-totalitarian mindset that insists not only on regulating behavior but also on monitoring people’s thoughts and punishing those who think the wrong ones.

- There are a few nonprofit groups that are rising to tackle this challenge, including the newly formed Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (on whose board I sit). But woke ideology needs to be seen as an acute threat and become a key item in the Jewish organizational agenda.

- Prominent Jewish Americans need to use all the political influence, social capital, and institutional muscle they have to defend baseline Jewish interests in ostensibly liberal institutions. That hasn’t happened. Instead, in one institution after another, Jewish leaders — trustees and major donors, university presidents and academic deans, senators and representatives, CEOs and board directors — have, to paraphrase Lenin, sold the rope from which their enemies will hang them.

- Nobody today would imagine, say, a female university president sitting still while a culture of misogyny and sexual harassment prevailed in faculty lounges or student dorms. Yet Jewish leaders and donors will often bite their tongues when the institutions they oversee or support become saturated with anti-Jewish animus. They would do better to stop writing checks; start speaking up boldly at board and faculty meetings; and, if they conclude they cannot rescue an institution, publicly and vocally resign to take their talent and money elsewhere.

- For too long, Jewish Americans have sought the friendship of those who didn’t want us as friends and looked askance at the friendship of those who did. Jewish “allyship” in multiple civil-rights movements usually began early and often proved itself in the darkest hours. Has that allyship been reciprocated at a time of skyrocketing antisemitism?

- Jews will not come out well from this series of unrequited love affairs, just as we didn’t come out well from our unrequited love affairs with German, Austrian, or French culture. There is broad support in the United States for Jewish Americans, demonstrated by the fact that Jews remain the most admired religious group in America and by the widespread support that Israel enjoys outside the progressive bubble (within which so many Jews live). But our non-Jewish friends need to be far more deeply engaged by Jewish communities, not held at arm’s length out of religious differences, political disdain, or simple ignorance.

Yisrael Medad: Islamist Voice: Not Containment but Confronation

I am excerpting from "The Silent Zionist Prayers - Containment Instead of Confrontation" by Ahmed Samir Quneita, published on October 31, 2021 in Arabic. Quenita

is a Master's student in Diplomacy and International Relations and who specializes in Syrian matters.

I post his writing so that we all are presented with the terminology and the framing of the true conceptualization of the Islamic opposition to Zionism.

He is bothered by "Zionist plans to Judaize Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque, through a series of provocative activities against Muslims and Arabs" so as "to impose a new reality that enhances the Zionist presence inside the courtyards of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque at the expense of the original Palestinian right". The goal is "temporal and spatial division of the Al-Aqsa Mosque - similar to what is happening in the Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron - marking the establishment of the alleged temple on the ruins of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque".

He is upset with "the official Arab political apostasy and the rush towards normalization with the occupying Zionist entity":
"What is new this time...is allowing the establishment of 'silent Talmudic prayers' inside the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, after these rituals were forbidden to the herds of rapists who stormed Al-Aqsa...this prohibition of 'silent prayers' was not related to Zionist judicial rulings or legal regulations, but rather in response to security assessments presented by the occupation police to the official authorities regarding the possibility of confrontations between Al-Mourabitat al-Quds and the Zionist police forces...such rituals provoke the religious feelings of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims."

Christopher Hitchens wrote that @Amnesty’s actions backing the Taliban over whistleblower and women's rights director Gita Sahgal exemplified the organization’s “degeneration and politicization,” reflecting “a moral crisis that has global implications.” https://t.co/RlP5wpj6Sb
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 31, 2021

The Guardian Palsplains antisemitism

For the third time in two years, the Guardian published a letter (“If we endorse the IHRA definition of antisemitism we put at risk Australia’s academic freedom”, Oct. 29) by a Palestinian group complaining that a widely accepted antisemitism definition designed to protect Jews represents a form of oppression against Palestinians.

The letter, authored by “a collective of Palestinians who work and study in Australian universities”, follows the vow by Australia’s Prime Minister that the country will adopt the IHRA working definition, and opens with moral throat-clearing, acknowledging that “antisemitism remains a persistent threat to Jewish people”, noting the “rise of neo-Nazi white supremacist groups in Australia”.

However, whilst neo-Nazi antisemitism is a serious threat in Australia, a study currently being peer reviewed showed that another major trigger for antisemitism in the country anti-Israel protests during conflicts with Hamas. This of course mirrors the situation in the UK, US and other countries, where, during these periods, such as the conflict in May, antisemitic incidents, disproportionately perpetrated by pro-Palestinian Muslims, skyrocket.

The signatories opine that the “Palestinian cause is a fundamentally intersectional struggle” and that their “fight against anti-Palestinian racism…unquestionably includes that against antisemitism”, before making their main argument: that the “endorsement of the IHRA definition on university campuses would pose a dangerous threat to academic freedom“.

However, their commitment to academic freedom is, at best, suspect, as the main pro-Palestinian group in Australia (Australian Students for Justice in Palestine) has expressed support for an academic boycott of Israel. Specifically, they signed a petition calling for an end to academic cooperation with Israeli universities that they claim are linked to or complicit in Israeli “crimes” – language so broad that it could include nearly every Israeli academic institution. The hypocrisy of pro-Palestinian academics who, on one had, denounce the adoption of IHRA as a threat to academic freedom, while simultaneously blacklisting all Israeli academics, is stunning.

Israel Advocacy Movement: Zionist laughs at oxbridge fascist

Cambridge educated, Paul Rimmer, is one of the leading voices of the British far-right. Joseph Cohen of the Israel Advocacy Movement debated him on Israel and a number of crazy ideas he had about Jews.

I had missed this story, and it is a pretty big one. From Haaretz:

The Yom Kippur War was the first, and also the last, all-out war fought by Israel and the Arab countries after Israel became an undeclared Middle East nuclear state. The war, the most difficult since the War of Independence in terms of the number of losses Israel suffered, was the first test case of the impact of Israeli nuclear deterrence on the regional conflict.
...

According to a number of sources, Sadat’s insistence on a military action with a very limited territorial aim – to the pronounced displeasure of senior figures in the Egyptian armed forces – was partially related to his assessment that Israel would not use nuclear weapons in the face of a limited attack. At least one senior Egyptian source cites this as an explicit consideration by Sadat.

Additional third-hand testimony supporting the idea that Egypt was deterred by Israel’s nuclear capability from advancing toward the line of the Gidi and Mitla passes in the Sinai emerged in a television interview with Shimon Peres, conducted several months before his death, in 2016.

Peres related that, on his arrival in Israel on November 19, 1977, President Anwar Sadat was welcomed by then-Deputy Prime Minister Yigael Yadin. According to Peres, during the trip from the airport to Jerusalem, Yadin asked Sadat why the Egyptian army had not proceeded to the Sinai passes during the Yom Kippur War. Sadat’s answer: “You have nuclear arms. Haven’t you heard?”

The article puts this in the larger context of the Yom Kippur War and general deterrence, but it appears that Egypt, at least, limited its goals for the war based partially on the (justified) fear that if Israel was in danger of being destroyed, it would unleash nuclear weapons. Meaning that at least in this case, nuclear deterrence had an effect on how a war was fought, and even in the face of the terrible losses Israel suffered during the war, many more would have died without Israel's policy of ambiguity on its nuclear weapons.

11/01 Links Pt1: NGOs fellow-traveling with Palestinian terror; Survey shows that Rep. Tlaib, Progressives don’t represent Palestinian opinion; The joystick intifada

From Ian:

Yisrael Medad: NGOs fellow-traveling with Palestinian terror- opinion

It was Tuvia Tenenbom, disguised as “Tobias,” who in his book “Catch the Jew” shines an investigative light on what he termed the “peace industry” funded by foreign nations and NGOs. If that funding was reduced or properly spent, thousands of ‘good souls’ would lose jobs and their raison d’etre. And local Arabs would have less of an impetus potentially to siphon off funds for terror.

Instead of propping up violence, we might have had peaceful behavior, compromise and coexistence long ago. As one example, in 2019, it was made clear to the EU that their monies were spent on BDS campaigns and the demonization of Israel.

Moreover, the return, in early October, of the United States to the United Nations Human Rights Council is, in connection with this latest incident, all the more worrisome. This body, fed with lies and misrepresentations, much of it even antisemitic, by organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – who do not do independent research but rely on reports from, among others, these six PFLP- NGOs in order to besmirch Israel, has created a cauldron of spuming hostility. This is combined with the fact that the diplomatic corps and the foreign affairs officials in the related countries who attend international conclaves and approve the spending are youngish and have been brought up in universities, which are not necessarily friendly to Israel and Jews, and their training is to accept the Arab narrative to the “Palestinian Question.”

The US State Department is being briefed about the information upon which Minister Gantz made his decision. I assume other EU states are as well. If the information proves reliable and true, will there be an apology forthcoming? And will these activist diplomats admit error? Or is Israel to be treated as a pariah, the goal of Arab propaganda all these past decades?

What is also disturbing is the blind commitment Israel and Jewish groups display. A petition by the organization Peace Now refers to “Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations” who have “long faced such spurious accusations” regarding their terror links. Delegates from 25 Israeli civil society groups showed up in Ramallah on Wednesday in order to express their solidarity with their counterparts in the Palestinian Authority.

Left-wing NGO calls for US sanctions on Benny Gantz

A self-described "anti-occupation" Israeli-Palestinian non-governmental organization has called for US sanctions on Defense Minister Benny Gantz over his designation of six Palestinian human rights organizations as terrorist groups.

In a post to Facebook, Combatants for Peace said it was calling on US President Joe Biden to impose sanctions on Gantz, whom they accused of "political persecution" of the human rights groups, through the use of the Magnitsky Act.

Signed into law by then-US President Barack Obama in 2012, the Magnitsky Act grants the US government the authority to sanction individuals that violate human rights.

In addition, the organization further asked Biden to ignore Israel's terrorist designation of the human rights groups.

Combatants for Peace accused Gantz of deciding "to criminalize the six organizations without presenting any basis or proof, without a transparent procedure ...."

In addition, Combatants for Peace alleged that Gantz had "a personal interest in the matter: Some of the six organizations have raised personal accusations against him in the International Criminal Court in The Hague of committing war crimes during the 2014 attack on [the] Gaza [Strip]."

In apparent 'payback,' PLO designates 2 Israeli NGOs as terrorist entities

The Palestine Liberation Organization on Sunday designated two Israeli nongovernmental groups as terrorist entities in an apparent reprisal over a similar move made by Israel.

Last week Defense Minister Benny Gantz outlawed six Palestinian groups affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, designating them as terrorist organizations.

The PFLP is considered by several countries to be a terrorist entity, including Israel, the United States and the European Union.

The move against the groups was slammed by the Palestinian Authority and international human rights organizations as "a major escalation of its decades-long crackdown on political activism in the occupied territories," and equally criticized by the US and the EU.

Sunday saw PLO-affiliated workers unions slap a similar designation on the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor and Regavim organizations, citing their "collaboration with the Shin Bet [security agency] and the government of the occupation."

NGO Monitor is a watchdog group that analyzes and reports on the output of the international NGO community from a pro-Israel perspective. Regavim is a right-wing NGO that monitors illegal Palestinian building in Area C of Judea and Samaria and pursued legal action to stop it.

A joint statement by the Palestinian groups further urged all international institutions and NGOs to sever ties with both groups.

While it is doubtful the PLO's designation would affect NGO Monitor and Regavim's operations, but it reflects the Palestinian's anger over Gantz's move.

Here a case where the meta-story is more interesting than the story itself.

Israel’s foreign ministry announced last week that the National Library of Israel has launched a digital archive of Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper dating back to its beginnings in 1875.

Egyptian journalists are upset. They denounced the move as Israel stealing Egyptian heritage.

This is a digital archive, not the actual physical paper.

“This is a catastrophic incident that requires an immediate inquiry on the parts of Al-Ahram and the authorities in charge of the press in Egypt,” Khaled El-Balshy, a former member of the journalists’ syndicate board, told The New Arab.

“The looming questions now are: how they did acquire the archive or how did they buy it? Who can give away valuable content like this to Israel?” he asked. “Other than normalisation, the idea is about intellectual property rights.”

The answer is on the archive page itself.

Apparently, an American company named East View Information Services purchased rights to the newspaper archives eight years ago for $185,000. They work together with Stanford University Libraries and the Hoover Institution to digitize historic foreign newspapers.

Israel seems to have purchased the rights to Al Ahram, although the rights only extend to use within Israel.

The thing is, Al Ahram doesn't make its own archive available to Egyptians!

Instead of being angry with their own leaders for not making material available, Egyptian journalists are upset with Israel for legally acquiring the digital rights - and calling it theft.

Sounds vaguely familiar.

Israel's National Library has the full text of over 100 Arabic language newspapers - some of them Jewish, many of them Palestinian, but also from all over. I imagine many Arab researchers use the Israeli site for their own uses, as these archives are easily available and searchable.

The real story here are about how information is still not free in the Arab world even today.

The real story is about how Egyptian journalists still blame Israel for doing something that is perfectly normal and legal, and calling it theft.

The real story is how Arab nations still try to control all information, and how this impedes national progress.

The real story is how anger that should properly be directed at Arab leaders is instead redirected to Israel - because the Jews have been the scapegoats for everything that the Arab elite don't like rather than looking at their own shortcomings.

A LOT of news about antisemitism in the US over the weekend

This weekend, as we marked the third anniversary of the Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh, there was a great amount of news about antisemitic incidents in the US.

A citizen at the Chandler school board meeting went on an antisemitic rant:

Speaking about critical race theory and vaccines — topics not listed on the meeting agenda or discussed by the board — [Melanie] Rettler talked discursively for over a minute before blaming a number of the country’s problems on the Jewish “race:”

“If you want to talk about racism, if you want to bring it in, then let’s bring it in. Let’s get to the bottom of it. We’re talking about white supremacy. OK, let’s get to the very bottom of it. Every one of these things, the deep state, the cabal, the swamp, the elite — you can’t mention it, but I will — there is one race that owns all the pharmaceutical companies and these vaccines aren’t safe, they aren’t effective and they aren’t free. You know that you’re paying for it through the increase in gas prices, the increase in food prices — you’re paying for this and it’s being taken from your money and being given to these pharmaceutical companies and if you want to bring race into this: It’s the Jews.”

The school board complained that her screed was off-topic but did not address the fact that hate was spewed.

A New Jersey high school sent a letter to parents about incidents where students engaged in "homophobic, transphobic, anti-Semitic, and racist comments." No details were given.

New Hampshire State Rep. Maria Perez (D-Milford) posted a tweet last month calling for the destruction of Israel, echoing the terror slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."

After pushback, she deleted it - but after publicity, she doubled down, calling Israel an apartheid state and making the dubious claim that she wants a state with equal rights for all citizens, which has been code for "anything but a Jewish state" since 1947.

Jewish students at Yale University reflected on two recent incidents of antisemitic and racist graffiti at a building under construction on campus. Some said that they have heard subtle antisemitism in campus conversations.

A Brooklyn man was convicted on hate-crime charges for a brutal 2018 attack on a Jewish man walking home from his synagogue. James Vincent, 40, was found guilty of strangulation as a hate crime and assault as a hate crime. On April 21, 2018, Vincent shouted antisemitic slurs at Menachem Moskowitz, choked him and hit him in the head. Moskowitz suffered a black eye and broken rib.

A complaint was filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights over Oberin College professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, who was Iran’s ambassador to the UN from 1987 to 1989, The complaint included "anti-Israel teaching material from Mahallati’s courses, specifically noting a fall 2016 incident where students in his Religion 270 class were tasked with creating 'anti-Israel blogs online that reflect the professor’s lectures and assigned readings,' that his teachings refer to Israel as a 'colonialist state,' and citing him in connection with 'support for Hamas and terrorism.'"

There were also reports about a vandalism incident at a fraternity house at George Washington University where a student's paper Torah model (not a real Torah but including all the text printed) was ripped apart and detergent poured on it.

YNet reports that Israel's Shin Bet arrested a 29-year old Gazan on terror charges. He had been in Israel for well over a year.

Suleiman Kasab, from Khan Younis, entered Israel in January 2020 with humanitarian approval as an escort for his mother, who is suffering from a serious illness and was apparently treated in an Israeli hospital.

Kasab was in contact with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades branch in Gaza, which he was apparently a member of in Gaza. He contacted them asking how he can be of service in performing terror attacks. According to the indictment, the terror group leader Abu Abu Saif al-Din told him to lay low, and said they would provide him with weapons and money.

Kasab hid in the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Ramle.

Correspondence between the terrorist and his Gaza mentor on the Signal app showed that they discussed many potential attacks, including blowing up fuel tanks at a kibbutz to cause many deaths, shooting attacks, and abducting and killing a Jew in order to use the body for bargaining to release prisoners.

It seems that Kasab became impatient and decided to start an arson spree in Ramle. He set a bus on fire, and then he threw a series of firebombs at residents' sukkot, spraying graffiti that "Fatah was here."

When Israel haters claim that Israel is blocking people from Gaza from traveling to Israel, they don't care about the fact that there is a history of terror attacks perpetrated by people who were given permission to enter Israel. Many of them support such attacks.

There is no incentive to attack sukkot during the holiday outside of pure antisemitism. It is only meant to not only damage a symbol of Judaism but to hurt innocent Jews.

This is Fatah - the political party that is led by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.