Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Modern antisemites at USC defend hate - and even violence - against Jews

The Daily Trojan of the University of Southern California gives an overview of recent events there:

USC will establish an Advisory Committee of Jewish Life and ensure Jewish representation in the University’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts, President Carol Folt announced in a Jan. 13 email to the “USC Jewish community and supporters.”

The announcement follows months of faculty open letters, accusations of antisemitism and “racial & ethnic harassment” toward a Palestinian student that highlights persistent conflict on college campuses across the country, including navigating free speech issues, protecting students with various identities and disputes surrounding Israel and Palestine.

At USC, the most recent controversy stems from civil engineering major Yasmeen Mashayekh’s tweets last spring and summer that included statements such as “I want to kill every motherfucking Zionist,” “I fucking love hamas” and “yel3an el yahood,” — which directly translates to “curse the Jews” — though Mashayekh later on Twitter said she referred to the “apartheid regime” and that yel3an means a “request for God to cast judgment,” rather than “curse.

The article goes on to quote Mashayekh's defenders:

Mashayekh and online supporters circulated a letter addressed to Folt and Viterbi School of Engineering Dean Yannis Yortsos on Dec. 2, writing that “the language of the oppressed towards their oppressor is a form of personal resistance” against “colonial violence,” and urging the University to “stand in support of an oppressed student.”

So if you define yourself as "oppressed," you can literally do whatever you want to your "oppressors." Whom you can define as well.

Mashayekh wrote on Twitter that she and her family have received death threats as a result of online harassment, as well as an FBI visit.

“Today my mom received a phone call from someone threatening to kill me, her and my entire family because of my tweets; the person claimed to know where I live. I do not feel safe on campus. This school has done nothing but cater to my oppressor,” wrote Mashayekh in a Dec. 14 Tweet.

Mashayekh did not respond to multiple interview requests from the Daily Trojan.

If she received death threats, then she should have called the police. Did she? Perhaps she doesn't want to talk to the Daily Trojan because she fears basic questions like that.

Emad Askar, who graduated from USC in 2021 and is a past member of Students for Justice in Palestine, said the University has not properly supported Palestinian students, nor allowed for their recognition on campus. To Askar, it is “preposterous” that a girl tweeting “I want to kill Zionists” is inappropriate.

“You have every right as an oppressed group to violently rebel against your oppressor,” Askar said.

This SJP member just said that any Palestinian in America can violently attack any Jew that they perceive to be an oppressor. Not just tweet antisemitism, but physically attack Jews whom they believe are Zionist.

Where are the condemnations of this statement? Where are the "woke" people who should be deploring a call for violence on campus?

They are curiously silent.

A Jewish woman rips apart an antisemite, 1922. (The antisemite has a dorm named after him in a Maryland college, today.)

The Baltimore Evening Sun reported on April 5, 1922, about an antisemitic sermon given by the Albert Norman Ward, president of Western Maryland College, at the opening of the Maryland Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church.

He said that the Jews controlled New York City and have taken the Bible out of the public schools.

A Jewish woman wrote a letter to the editor of the Evening Sun, where she politely destroyed Ward's speech:

By the way, even today, there is a dormitory at what is now called McDaniel College named after the bigoted Albert Norman Ward.

I wonder if the people who are upset over buildings named after Jefferson or Washington would object to Albert Norman Ward Hall. Somehow I don't think they would.

But I'm willing to be proven wrong.

I filled out a complaint at McDaniel College's Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, asking why they still have a dorm named after an antisemite. We'll see if they contact me.

01/24 Links Pt2: Has the Palestinian 'apartheid assault' backfired?; Robert Kennedy Jr: COVID-19 vaccine mandates worse than Holocaust

From Ian:

Has the Palestinian 'apartheid assault' backfired?

Today, as Israeli Arab affairs commentator Jackie Hugi has noted, Abbas and the PA sit isolated, alienated, and bankrupt among the leading members of the Arab League.

The PA committed political harakiri in 2020 when Abbas condemned Arab signatories to the Abraham Accords including United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, as well as Morocco and Sudan, for normalizing relations with Israel. In Abbas’ unprecedented public assault against Arab allies, he accused them of “stabbing the Palestinians in the back and betraying the al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem, and the Palestinian cause.”

Palestinian fury at Arab-Israel normalization brought the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheik Mohammed Hussein, to issue a fatwa -an Islamic religious ruling- prohibiting leaders from Arab states, or any Muslim who normalized relations with Israel, from worshipping at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque. Arab countries reacted with unparalleled contempt towards the PA. Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan branded the PA and its leadership “failures,” and called Abbas’ snub a “transgression” and “reprehensible discourse.”

Abbas convened Palestinian terror group leaders including arch-rivals, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, to coordinate responses and actions in opposition to the accords. Arab powers viewed Abbas’ destabilizing moves with contempt, particularly his outreach to Arab League's adversaries Turkey and Iran.

In 2022, Arab countries continue to loosen ties with the PA while tightening them with Israel. The UAE recently announced a 100-million-dollar investment in Israel’s high tech sector. Morocco seeks security cooperation. Libya’s Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, reportedly met with the Mossad Chief Barnea in Jordan to discuss normalization and security cooperation. Even Saudi Arabia, that quietly “green lighted” the Gulf states’ normalization agreements, has itself moved closer to Israel, reportedly weighing normalization.

Palestinian apartheid propaganda may still find supporters in the West where Jew hatred has reached new heights and animosity towards the Jewish state poses as political criticism.

However, from a Middle Eastern perspective, the Palestinian leadership and its ongoing political assaults have hit a brick wall both among the Israeli public and most of its Arab neighbors. The PA’s weakened position among the Arab powers and its pivot to the “rejectionist front” led by Turkey and Iran, cast an even darker shadow over its already fading prospects for political viability and independence.

Human Rights Watch: Australia, Like Israel, Is Guilty of Apartheid

The title of this article is a teaser. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has not labelled Australia guilty of apartheid. I also do not believe that Israel is remotely guilty of apartheid. However, based on the criteria that HRW outlined in its recent report stating the Israel is guilty of crimes of apartheid, there is no doubt that Australia is an apartheid state. HRW’s charge against Israel is based on a newly invented definition of apartheid and a deeply flawed analysis of the conflict that willfully ignores vast evidence that contradicts their thesis. The purpose of this article is not to provide a direct rebuttal which has been handled well elsewhere[1] but to demonstrate the absurdity of HRW’s charge against Israel by demonstrating that the same criteria applied equally to other nations – in this case Australia – would show that many, and not just dictatorships, would also have to be considered apartheid, rendering their report against Israel as grossly biased garbage solely intended to isolate and punish Israel.

An April 2021 report issued by Human Rights Watch (HRW) titled “A Threshold Crossed, Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution” concluded that Israel commits crimes of apartheid, both within Israel and the West Bank & Gaza, a charge that is eagerly endorsed by anti-Zionists and those who loathe Israel.[2] The report suggests aggressive international sanctions against Israel and its officials for these alleged crimes. The misuse of the word apartheid and the inflammatory language against Israel has infiltrated the conversation where even a poll of American Jews showed a higher than expected number believe that Israel is an apartheid state.

The only country in history that has been universally recognized as an apartheid state is South Africa, where this Afrikaans term originated, and no other nation except Israel has ever been similarly labelled by recognized organizations. In order to formally apply this term to Israel, HRW unilaterally developed a new set of criteria to assess what constitutes apartheid. These criteria are of course completely subjective, decided upon solely by HRW, flagrantly contradicts international law that clearly defines apartheid, and importantly, have never been used before to evaluate any other nation.

HRW deliberately avoids comparing Israel to South Africa, which would be the most obvious method to evaluate if a nation is currently apartheid. HRW deals with this logical flaw by claiming that South Africa is conveniently no longer the model for apartheid: “The international community has over the years detached the term apartheid from its original South African context.” HRW does not explain how or when this “detachment” from the South African precedent of apartheid occurred, who comprises the “international community,” or why this new definition emerged but was never used to examine another state. In a report that HRW touts as extensively researched with over 800 footnotes, not one source is provided for the supposed shedding by the international community of the South African precedent for apartheid. In fact, a key source that HRW relies upon to support its definition of apartheid, the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (the “Apartheid Convention”), specifically states that the crime of apartheid “shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa.” HRW admits that “Few courts have heard cases involving the crime of persecution and none the crime of apartheid, resulting in a lack of case law around the meanings of key terms in their definitions,” but still decides that the only know precedent enshrined in international law – South Africa – is not useful in evaluating Israel. To further obfuscate its strategy of ignoring established international legal language defining apartheid, HRW offers this vague explanation attempting to separate “crimes of apartheid” from “apartheid state” as if an entity could commit “crimes of apartheid” but somehow not be an “apartheid state”:

The report does not set out to compare Israel with South Africa under apartheid or to determine whether Israel is an “apartheid state”—a concept that is not defined in international law. Rather, the report assesses whether specific acts and policies carried out by Israeli authorities today amount in particular areas to the crimes of apartheid and persecution as defined under international law.

??- Jewish activist hedge fund billionaire Nelson Peltz acquires sizable stake in struggling Unilever after shareholders lose $26B under the failed leadership of CEO @alanjope

Will Jope step down and the antisemitic Ben and Jerry’s boycott be reversed? https://t.co/4wYIHtvoG6
— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) January 24, 2022

PreOccupiedTerritory: Fund Makes Bank By Investing Only In Stocks BDS Urges To Divest (satire)

A securities-trading firm announced today that its most successful package of equity issues for the last five years consists only of shares in companies that have resisted the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement targeting Israel, outpacing its next-most-profitable offering by nearly eight percent in an already-lucrative period for the firm’s clients.

Diamond-Romm, LLP, which handles portfolios that include private equity, government-issue bonds, corporate bonds, and stocks, among other fiduciary assets, reported Monday that their Blue and White Fund, which restricts itself to stocks of enterprises that BDS has targeted, grew a cumulative 341% over the last half-decade, dwarfing the achievements of even its most profitable aggressive-growth fund, which grew by a comparatively paltry 195% over the same period.

DR executives attributed the success of Blue and White to a number of factors. “To begin with, Israel is just an excellent investment market,” explained Vice President for Research Vincenzo Giamatti. “The tech sector, and not only high-tech, keeps innovating in imaginative, lucrative ways. But its not only Israeli enterprises per se – international companies that partner with, or do significant business with, Israeli entities both civilian and governmental, report tremendous gains. The Israeli economy in general weathered the financial crises of the last decade-plus better than almost anywhere else. The growth potential remains enormous. Real estate alone is exploding. Any reasonably smart Israel portfolio is going to do well, and any reasonably-conceived presence of a multinational in Israel is going to do well.”

It had to happen.

Al Quds has an article, "The unreported side of the Texas synagogue attack," where the author claims:

* Israeli (and American!) media didn't report anything about Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker throwing the chair at the gunman and sparking the escape.

* The reason there is no coverage of Rabbi Walker is because he calls Israel an "apartheid state" and this embarrasses Jews who, it is implied, own the media.

Of course, the Jewish and Israeli media have had lengthy interviews with Cytron-Walker, and he is pro-Israel.

Cytron-Walker said, he does not believe Israel is an apartheid state. “When I teach about Israel, I teach about how Israel is complicated. I’m a huge supporter of Israel,” he said, noting that the synagogue’s education program works with the Ofek Learning Hub to have Israeli teachers leading online learning for youth programs, and that “we sing ‘Hatikvah’ [the Israeli national anthem] at the end of every religious school.”

On Congregation Beth Israel's webpage, it shows that Rabbi Cytron-Walker has publicly said that modern antisemitism includes anti-Zionism:

Understanding Modern Antisemitism with Rabbi Charlie on Sunday, January 17, 2021, was an insightful, balanced, and sobering look at the recent resurgence of antisemitism on both the right and the left ends of the political spectrum, and on college campuses. Rabbi Charlie gave examples of antisemitism and explained the harmful impact of enablers: The utilitarian antisemite "pot-stirrers" who enable haters magnify the impact of the extremists by expanding the circles of influence. Modern antisemitism is shockingly similar to more ancient forms, with the primary differences being the addition of the new topics of Israel and Zionism, and the adoption of modern forms of communication. There were 42 people in the Zoom session.

But why should facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory?

The Yasser Arafat Museum has a cartoon exhibit. It ended up much funnier than it was meant to be.

The Yasser Arafat Museum in Ramallah just opened a new exhibit.

Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh opened the“Palestine and Yasser Arafat” cartoon exhibition, at the exhibition hall of Yasser Arafat Museum, Sunday, January 23, 2022. The opening was also attended by Dr. Ahmed Sobh, Director General of the Yasser Arafat Foundation, members of the Museum Committee, and Palestinian and foreign political, cultural and media figures.

During the opening, the Prime Minister said: 43 countries participated in this exceptional exhibition, to an exceptional man, which reflects the extent of international solidarity with Palestine, the firm roots in the memory of Yasser Arafat in the international community and the heart of every Palestinian and Arab and everyone who loves peace and freedom in the world.

So because they got artists from 43 countries to contribute, that means that everyone loved Arafat? This is a stretch, so say the least.

The exhibit included cartoons of Arafat as well as some of the usual anti-Israel cartoons. But some of the caricatures upset some Palestinians, who bullied the museum to take them down!

They removed the cartoons that "did not receive an understanding from Palestinian public opinion."

They claim they can run a state, but they can't even run a cartoon exhibition!

Meanwhile, the generic anti-Israel pictures with depictions of bombs with the Star of David falling on children, or of Israel undermining the foundations of the Dome of the Rock, or of a guillotine of an American flag and Israeli blade murdering thousands of Palestinians, are presumably still on view.

Because showing Arafat with a big nose is offensive, but saying that Jews are mass murderers is perfectly OK, in the twisted world of the Palestinian territories.

(h/t Khaled Abu Toameh)

01/24 Links Pt1: 'Stolen land' myth doesn't stand the test of reality; How an Israel victory can become a become a win for the region; 1 in 20 Israelis now positive for COVID

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: 'Stolen land' myth doesn't stand the test of reality

One of the tragicomic if all too prevalent customs of contemporary woke corporate culture is the way many groups and corporations now open meetings with ritual acknowledgments that they are on "stolen land." It involves the convener of the gathering to begin any proceedings by first stating that those speaking are "on the lands" of whatever Native American tribe once lived there as the indigenous inhabitants of the North American continent.

That is part of the context of the claim that the State of Israel was built on "stolen land," a phrase that was used by Hussain Altamimi, one of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's staffers when he smeared it as a "racist-European ethnostate." Unsurprisingly, Altamimi didn't lose his job when this came out. Why would AOC fire someone who reflects the same hatred of the Jewish state that she and other "Squad" colleagues have often expressed?

This is a commonplace myth spread by those who believe in intersectional ideology, which deems the efforts of all oppressed "people of color" to resist the racist oppression of those possessing "white privilege" to be part of one great righteous struggle.

Part of the problem with this facile and toxic idea is that whatever you think the answer to the question about the identity of the rightful owners of the North American continent might be, the notion that Jews are merely "European" or non-indigenous to the Middle East or the land of Israel is a lie.

Unfortunately, individuals who accept and spread that lie are not confined to those who work in the offices of radical members of Congress, even if their bosses are one of the young rock stars of the Democratic Party who are planning on taking it over once the current octogenarian leadership departs.

These myths are widely accepted throughout academia and the mainstream media. They are reflected in the coverage of Israel in which, as one recent article in The New York Times about a Jerusalem property dispute put it, the Jews were accused of trying to "Judaize" their own ancient capital.

How an Israel victory can become a become a win for the region

For many years, one of the more prominent fault lines in the Middle East was perceived as being between the Jewish State and the Arab world. There was an almost facile western understanding that all of the centuries-old conflicts in the region could be seen through the prism of the 100-year conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Land of Israel.

Thankfully, this tired idea of ‘Linkage’ has long been debunked by the realities on the ground.

However, there is a very real fault line in the Middle East that has become even more stark in recent weeks.

The situation in Lebanon where Iran’s proxy Hezbollah is holding a nation hostage to its whims and narrow political and ideological aims is creating new understanding and alliances there. This, coupled, with the recent attacks on the UAE by the Iran-backed Houthis from Yemen, are demonstrating that the Middle East is now divided by the moderates who want a more stable and peaceful future for the region, and those who seek to sew chaos, conflict and bloodshed.

The peace and normalization agreements between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, as well as warming ties around the Sunni world, have demonstrated a historic understanding of the reality that the Israel-Arab conflict is dead.

The result has seen economic, security and cultural agreements between the Jewish State and its neighbors.

Nevertheless, I believe the time is ripe to go even further.

Update on the Abraham Accords

NGO Monitor: Candidates for the UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinians, Biased Candidates for a Biased Mandate

The Special Rapporteur on the “situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967” is a UN mechanism that is marred by extreme bias, selectivity, and partiality. In contrast to every other country-specific mandate that must be renewed by the UN Human Rights Council on an annual basis, the Rapporteur is the only indefinite mandate, as noted on OHCHR’s webpage, enduring “until the end of the Israeli occupation.” In addition, it is the only mandate that is manifestly selective and partial, aimed at examining alleged violations by Israel alone. Palestinian violations and systematic atrocities committed by the PA and Palestinian terror groups are expressly excluded.

According to the selection criteria for Special Rapporteur, the basic requirements for the role include knowledge of international human rights and humanitarian law, experience in the field of human rights, and credibility in advancing human rights and peace. In addition, under Human Rights Council resolution 5/1, Special Rapporteurs are required to exhibit personal integrity, expertise, independence, impartiality, and objectivity.

In contrast to these stipulations, the position of Special Rapporteur has mainly been filled by individuals with extensive histories of anti-Israel animus and who have used their platform for activism and to promote extreme hostility towards Israel, including boycott campaigns, and antisemitism. Former Rapporteurs John Dugard and Richard Falk, and outgoing Rapporteur Michael Lynk, are responsible for promoting the apartheid slander and BDS, downplaying or erasing Palestinian terrorism, and mislabeling terror-linked NGO officials as “human rights defenders.”

EMET Webinar - The Soviet Roots of Palestinian Antisemitism with @COLRICHARDKEMP
Jan 26, 2022 12:00 PM
Eastern Time (US and Canada)
RSVP: https://t.co/xvCzo0aaaJ pic.twitter.com/pp6d5B8TXW
— Endow Mid East Truth (@EMET4u) January 23, 2022

Joseph Massad's insane antisemitic curriculum

StopAntisemitism received these photos of material that Joseph Massad is teaching in his Columbia University "Palestinian/Israeli Conflict" course. It came from a student taking the course.

Ths comes from "Holy land, hollow jubilee: God, justice and the Palestinians" which is a collection of speeches given at the1998 Sabeel International Conference. Sabeel is the antisemitic Palestinian Christian organization that preaches Christian supersessionism. The co-editor of the book, Naim Ateek, is an antisemite.

The quote here is undeniably antisemitic, saying that Jews collaborated in the Holocaust. Zionists were trying to save Jewish lives, Nazis were trying to destroy Jewish lives. If this isn't antisemitic, nothing is.

And this is in a curriculum of a Columbia University professor.

This is from an out of print book published in 1967 before the Six Day War. Commentary wrote a review:

Anyone who has ever perused a John Birch Society pamphlet about the Communist Conspiracy will experience a similar sensation on reading this little book about Israel and Zionism. An impressive mass of data and facts has been assembled; historical perspectives have been traced; all the right quotations have been adduced; a good deal of the argument even manages to make sense; yet the outcome corresponds to a reality that exists solely in the mind of the author.

The point of the book is that Israel acted in a racist way towards its Mizrahi citizens. This is true - but this was also 54 years ago. The author of the book says that Israel should become more Oriental and integrate more fully into the Middle Eastern culture in order to have a chance to make peace with Arabs, and what has happened since then is that the Arab nations have (slowly) become more Westernized - and many of them have made peace with Israel.

The irony is that every time Israel adopts Middle East culture, whether it is cuisine or dance or dress or music, people like Joseph Massad freak out and say that Israel is stealing it.

Massad has a history of antisemitic rhetoric. The late Petra Maquardt-Bigman once made a quiz to see if anyone can distinguish between phrases written by Massad and the far right antisemites at Stormfront. He pushes the discredited Khazar theory. Oh, and he's a homophobe.

The question isn't whether Massad is an antisemite who is teaching antisemitism to his students. The question is why Columbia allows a professor to spew hate disguised as pseudo-academia.

Over six thousand Palestinian women work in Jewish settlements

Palestinian Labor Minister Nasri Abu Jaish announced a program to try to fund jobs for Palestinian women, as he announced the news that 6,250 women work in Jewish settlements.

About 20,000 Palestinians altogether work in the settlements, out of roughly 140,000 who work for Israelis altogether. This contributes a significant proportion of the Palestinian GDP, since 18.6% of all West Bank workers are working for Israelis.

In the Palestinian labor market altogether, only about 22% of workers are women, which means that proportionately, the hated settlements provide more opportunity for women than the local market.

On average, Israelis pay Palestinians more than double the salaries they receive for local jobs. The Q4 2020 Labour Force Survey for Palestinians shows that the average daily wage for those working in Israel and in settlements was 260.8 shekels compared to 123.5 shekels in the West Bank and 65.6 shekels in Gaza.

The Palestinian Labor ministry is alarmed at so many women working for "settlers" so they announced yet another program to encourage the women to work locally. They started a program worth 10 million shekels to provide jobs for women in the Jordan Valley.

Every previous time that they tried to discourage Palestinians from working for Israelis they have failed, badly. There is no reason to think this initiative will do any better - the average Palestinian is not going to take a 53% pay cut because the PA wants them to be more patriotic.

Did a 1738 artist anticipate a Third Temple using the Dome of the Rock?

I did a quick survey through the earliest printed Haggadot on Google Books which showed a depiction of Jerusalem and the Temple inside.

The earliest I found was from Amsterdam in 1695.

This 1712 edition, also from Amsterdam, has a beautiful woodcut of Jerusalem that looks like it is based on the 1695 one but with much more detail:

Here's a 1716 edition, from Rabbi Aharon ben Uri Lipman:

There was a 1744 Haggadah whose woodcut that was identical to the Lipman one.

The Jerusalem depiction in this 1746 is almost an exact mirror image of the 1695 one:

The one picture of the Temple that most interests me is this one, from 1738 and also from Amsterdam, but with a much different woodcut:

No one has ever depicted the Temple as an octagon.

But, perhaps, the artist was not depicting the previous Temple - but a future one. (The last three words on the top margin, "וכן יהי רצון", would seem to indicate that.) And if that is so, it seems possible that he had heard about the majestic, octagonal Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount which is at the exact spot of the two Temples - and thought that the new Temple could be built using its walls!

Popular Saudi newspaper says it is time to stop supporting Palestinians

Okaz is one of the most popular and influential newspapers in Saudi Arabia.

On Sunday, it published an op-ed by Mohammed Al Saed titled, "Is it time to break with the Palestinian cause?" And his answer is an emphatic "yes." He describes how the Palestinians have been political opponents of Saudi Arabia for over 30 years.

In the year 1990, in the fiercest challenge faced by Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states, following Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, nobody was surprised by the Palestinian leadership’s support for Saddam. Both inside Palestine and in the diaspora, the Palestinians chanted for Saddam and demanded for him to kill the Saudis and destroy their cities with internationally prohibited weapons. The chants of “Chemical, Saddam, from Khafji to Dammam” still resonate in the Saudis’ memory today.

32 years have passed since the invasion of Iraq, and the Palestinians have come out time and again against the Saudis in demonstrations, rallies and burning flags, the last of which was at the beginning of this week in support of the Houthis, and their demand that the Iranian backed terrorists bomb Saudi cities and their civilian targets. The years have changed and the Palestinians have not. They are on the same path, making the same wrong choices, and holding the same grudges that hardly leave their elders until their young ones inherit them.

In my opinion, it is time for a rupture with the Palestinian cause, for the Saudis did not cause it and do not bear responsibility for the major crimes the Palestinians committed against themselves, from neglecting solving their division, and not finishing the Oslo Accords of 1993....

Saudi Arabia has suffered enough for Palestinians, paid a lot for them, overlooked a lot, and borne its burdens.. ..There is no enemy that they have not aligned themselves with. For what, and for whom do we sacrifice our money, positions, and political alliances?

They deliberately kept a permanent path to be an obstacle to Arab countries' development. Every country that tries to work for their future is obstructed by the cause and burdened with it, and one can see this with a simple look at Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus, Jordan, Beirut and every land that the Palestinian cause has trampled upon.

The Palestinians have to live with the mistakes of their fathers and grandfathers. They are not the liberators who sacrificed for their lands as the Vietnamese did, nor are they the skilled politicians who managed their cause professionally and justly as the Indians, except for their wrong alliances, selling lands by consent and acceptance, and agreeing to employment and contracting to any forces that intersect with their psyches and thinking, from Baghdad, the Baath in Damascus, and the new Persians in Tehran and Saada, and the implementation of the policies of the Mongols of the hour in Ankara and Istanbul.

He doesn't say to embrace Israel, but in a region where people think in terms of zero-sum games, that seems the only logical conclusion.

WSJ op-ed: Don't worry, American Jews. Antisemites only attack when you do eccentric things like attend synagogue.

Mark Oppenheimer, who recently wrote a book about the Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal where he re-assures American Jews - don't worry about antisemitism unless you do something Jewy, like go to synagogue, wear a kippah or shop in a kosher market.

It seems that violent attacks on Jews in the U.S. have become a regular occurrence, like natural disasters. There were deadly shootings at synagogues in Pittsburgh in October 2018 and Poway, Calif., in April 2019, then at a kosher market in Jersey City, N.J., in December 2019. Last weekend, a rabbi and three congregants were taken hostage at Congregation Beth Israel, a Reform synagogue near Fort Worth, Texas.
...

But the reality of Jewish Americans’ security is more complicated. The recent heightened antipathy toward Jews hasn’t been focused on the general Jewish population. Rather, it has targeted the shrinking minority of Jews who regularly do Jewish things in Jewish spaces—go to synagogue, for example, or shop at kosher markets. For Jews who “Jew it,” to use a friend’s favorite locution, even the very occasional synagogue attack, while statistically insignificant, makes every religious service a little more tense.

On the other hand, for people who are Jewish but don’t do Jewish things, the U.S. is less oppressive than ever. Fifty years ago, there were still meaningful prejudices and structural obstacles that plagued the most secular, non-affiliated Jews. There were country clubs that didn’t allow Jews (or only allowed a token few), and there were law firms and Wall Street banks where making partner was that much harder for a non-Christian.

But I have been writing about American religion for 25 years, and in that time, I have not encountered a single business, school or social club where Jews are unwelcome. I am sure there are outliers somewhere, but let’s put it this way: The average Jew is no longer worried about being excluded by gentlemen’s agreements at law firms, restrictions at clubs or real estate covenants. These are artifacts of the past.

[O]utside the Orthodox world, we are becoming a people who never encounter anti-Semitism in school or at work and seldom enter the spaces where anti-Semites look for us, like the synagogue, JCC or kosher market. For such Jews, there is nearly zero risk of being victimized by anti-Jewish violence or bias. Simply put, Jews who go to synagogue are terrified of anti-Semitism right now. Jews who don’t have no reason to be.
...
Yet it will be an ever-shrinking percentage who will actually be in harm’s way. The Jews at risk of anti-Semitic attack will include the small but growing number whose clothes make them targets, like many Orthodox, including Hasidim. Then there are the teachers at Jewish schools, the kosher butchers, the nurses in Jewish homes for the aged. And, of course, there will be those eccentric holdouts: Jews who continue to enter places like synagogues, having decided that praying with fellow Jews is worth the risk of dying with them.

This essay is fundamentally wrong and offensive on a number of levels.

Allowing Jews into country clubs might have been a wonderful accomplishment in the 1960s, but there are different spaces where proud Jews are not welcome today. Like if you want to participate in the Women's March. Or run for student government at university. Or attend an online seminar on antisemitism.

For someone who writes about Jewish issues, Oppenheimer sure seems not to understand how antisemitism morphs in every generation to something new. Country clubs aren't the problem - campus and "progressive" spaces are.

As far as the "small" number of Jews whose clothes make them targets, according to Pew, 25% of those who identify as Jewish by religion wear something identifiably Jewish on a typical day, like a Star of David. That isn't that small.

What about his characterizing Jews who are public about their Jewishness as "eccentrics"? Someone emailed him and he responded that he was writing this ironically:

I believe him - he is an editor at Tablet, he hosts a Jewish podcast. But if he was going for irony, this essay missed that mark by a mile.

In the essay, Oppenheimer doesn't say that there is anything admirable about Jews who are publicly Jewish. On the contrary, the clear impression he gives is that they are eccentrics, fanatics, outliers. The haredim who are regularly attacked in Brooklyn? Don't worry, normal Jews don't have to worry about being attacked. Even though he allows that many Jews are personally upset when such attacks occur, the tone of the piece is that assimilated Jews don't have to let this bother them. Not one word in this piece made it appear that Oppenheimer isn't advocating assimilation as a magic force field to ward off antisemitic attacks.

Whether he meant it or not, the message of the article is that there are enlightened Jews who are indistinguishable from the gentiles - and then there are the rest.

01/23 Links: Bret Stephens: What an Antisemite’s Fantasy Says About Jewish Reality; The UN Descent to its Deepest Depths of Hostility against Israel; The lie of the “Gaza blockade”

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: What an Antisemite’s Fantasy Says About Jewish Reality

A moral conviction of our time, especially prevalent on the cultural left, is that the powerful are presumptively bad while the powerless are presumptively good. These categories aren’t just political. They are also social, economic, ethnic and racial. It’s why so many conversations today revolve around the concept of “privilege” — a striking redefinition of success that removes the presumption of merit from those who have it and the stigma of failure from those who don’t.

It’s also the likeliest reason there was so much obvious hesitancy to describe the attack in Texas as antisemitic. Unlike the Pittsburgh shooter or the “Jews will not replace us” crowd at Charlottesville — white, right-wing, mostly Christian and therefore “privileged” — the Texas assailant was a British Muslim of Pakistani descent. Not white. Not privileged. Not right-wing. In the binary narrative of the powerful versus the powerless, his naked antisemitism just doesn’t compute: Powerless people are supposed to be victims, not murderous bigots. If he had ranted against Israel for oppressing Palestinians, it might have made more sense. And if he had donned a MAGA hat, we would certainly have had a much fuller exploration of his antisemitism, without time wasted exploring his other motives or state of mind.

For American Jews, this small silence about what happened last week should be profoundly worrisome, and not just as a matter of a journalistic lapse. It’s bad enough that the Jewish state, which gained what power it has because its neighbors threatened it with extinction, is still treated by so many as a global pariah — its sympathizers abroad risking social or professional ostracism by mere association. It’s bad enough, too, that the foul antisemitism of the right, yoked to its old themes of nativism, protectionism, nationalism and isolationism, is erupting into the public square like a burst sewage pipe.

Now American Jews find ourselves at perhaps the most successful period in our history, at a moment when much of the progressive left has decreed that privilege is a sin and that those who hold power should be stripped of it. Anyone with a long view of Jewish history should know how quickly economic and social privilege can turn to political and personal ruin, even — or especially — in countries where it might seem unthinkable.

There’s much to be thankful for about how things ended last week in Texas, and about the outpouring of love and support, across faiths, for a little Jewish community. But the wise counsel for Jews is to be grateful for last week’s good luck, while taking it as a warning that our luck in America may run out.

Look how you spread your lies: last year, the terror org Hamas (also a terror org in the US) fired missiles on Jerusalem & civilians. You justify the attacks on Jerusalem w/ evictions still under legal procedure in Israel’s Supreme Court.
— Ambassador Gilad Erdan ???? ???? (@giladerdan1) January 23, 2022

AOC has more to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than hate crimes against Jews in her own neighborhood.

It makes me incredibly sad to see her fixate on a country she’s never visited instead of Jews being held at gunpoint in the one she leads.
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) January 22, 2022

Why 2022 will be critical for Jews in Europe

The year 2021 was alarming for Jews in Europe. In May, there was an escalation of antisemitism as violence flared in the Middle East. Synagogues in Germany were vandalized and Israeli flags burnt.

Similar antisemitic incidents were seen elsewhere, and online threats surged. Another dangerous trend has been the rise in antisemitic conspiracy theories during the pandemic. The narrative that Jews have benefited financially from the crisis continues to spread on social media.

Facebook, Twitter and other platforms have vowed to tackle antisemitic content, but more needs to be done. A Paris appeals court last week ruled that Twitter must disclose details of the human and technical resources it employs to moderate hate speech, confirming an earlier decision in favor of the Union of Jewish Students in France and other NGOs.

Governments and European organizations have also stepped up the fight against antisemitism with new initiatives. The 47-state Council of Europe issued a detailedRecommendation on Preventing and Combating Antisemitism. The European Commission, meanwhile, presented its Strategy on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life (2021-2030), including funding to protect Jewish communities. All 27 EU member states are expected to adopt national antisemitism strategies by the end of 2022.

David Collier: The outrageous hypocrisy of Anum Qaisar MP

Three weeks after an MP was bigging up increasing trade with the serial human rights abuser Pakistan, she was in Parliament calling for trade boycotts against the UK’s democratic ally Israel. Did she think nobody would notice? This outrageous hypocrisy exposes Islamist driven political bias at the heart of Westminster. Is this really what her constituents voted her into office to do?

Anum Qaisar
Anum Qaisar (she recently seems to have dropped the use of ‘Qaisar-Javed’ as her surname) is the MP for Airdrie and Shotts. Qaisar was originally a Labour activist, and was former general secretary of Muslim Friends of Labour. She defected to the SNP over Scottish independence. On the UK Government website, she identifies her nationality as Scottish, her ethnicity as Pakistani and the religion she follows as Islam. She openly says that being a proud ‘Scottish-Pakistani Muslim’ shapes the way she lives her life.

No problem so far. Although there were issues with her selection as a candidate for the seat. There were accusations that she was pushed through because of her friendship with the then SNP Scottish Justice Minister – Humza Haroon Yousaf. This was against the wishes of some local SNP party members – who said they were ‘disgusted at the way the selection had been handled and at the lack of respect to the branch‘.

Qaisar and the Israel issue
Following her defection to the SNP, Qaisar swiftly aligned with the SNP Friends of Palestine (image left 2015, image right 2016):

Qaisar won the byelection on the 14th May 2021. On the very same day, the toxic anti-Israel organisation CAABU published an anti-Israel letter signed by several politicians. Incredibly Qaisar found time to sign it – which makes this one of her first public political actions following her election win.

Leaving aside her traditional maiden speech in May 2021, the next time Anum Qaisar spoke in Parliament was on the 10th June 2021. What was the subject that drove her to ask a question? Israel. Her question was about arms sales to Israel and ‘the systematic oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israeli Government’.

Qaisar also made a tweet to let everyone know what she had done. She ended the tweet with the ‘free Palestine’ hashtag:

Last week, NGO Monitor sent a letter to the UN expressing concern over five of the six candidates being considered for the position of "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967." In the letter, NGO Monitor noted that "Special Rapporteurs are required to exhibit personal integrity, expertise, independence, impartiality, and objectivity. Unfortunately, at least five of the six eligible candidates (as appear on the OHCHR website) have records of substantial anti-Israel partisanship (see attached report). They cannot be said to fulfill the requirements of impartiality and objectivity as required by HRC resolution 5/1."

The letter was not made public.

But today, Palestinian NGO Al Haq - which has been linked to the PFLP terror group - published the letter.

Which strongly indicates that someone in the UN leaked the letter to an organization with clear links to terror, that is now being investigated by the European Commission for possible terror ties.

Shawan Jabarin, Al Haq's general director, is a convicted terrorist who maintains his membership and ties to the PFLP. (And he is also a member of Human Rights Watch Middle East Advisory Board!)

Al Haq itself - supposedly a human rights group - has never condemned PFLP terror attacks and does not seem to have ever condemned any Palestinian for any terror attack against Jews. It has downplayed and minimized the Hamas rockets from Gaza that reached Tel Aviv and killed multiple Israelis last May as merely "homemade Palestinian rockets."

Al Haq has justified terrorist attacks against Israeli Jews as being legal: "Resistance against occupation and its arbitrary practices is legitimate under international law, and these acts are considered a part of the Palestinian people‘s resistance and struggle against occupation in order to achieve their right to liberation and independence, the occupation forces call it 'terrorism.'"

So now we have a link between a UN Human Rights Council employee and a group whose leader is an unrepentant terrorist and which supports and condones terrorist attacks against Jews.

This is the cesspool that is the UN Human Rights Council.

Jew-hatred in today's Arabic media. Not this month, not this week - TODAY.

Here are some of the antisemitic articles in Arabic media from today.

MENAFN has a column that begins:

What characterizes the Zionist movement is its hostility to all human beings, selfish behavior, devoid of all noble human values. It is a destructive, arrogant movement directed by Machiavelli’s theory (the end justifies the means)...
Zionism is the most dangerous movement in human history, because they do not despair and do not rush matters. What is important to them is that they achieve what they want and achieve their goals. To demonstrate this, I would like to remind you of the first conference of the Zionist movement, which was held in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, chaired by Theodor Herzl. Decades ago I read interpretations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion...

Al Mal News has a story titled "The historical roots of Israeli psychopathy" that traces this supposed psychopathy from Jewish lust for wealth - somehow symbolized by the story of the Golden Calf - through Jewish oppression of Palestinians,

Al Watan says that the Jewish people are a fabricated people, and the Ashkenazim are not really Jews but really there is no Jewish nation altogether anyway.

Al Watan Voice reports:

The Islamic Christian Committee for the Support of Al-Quds and the Holy Sites affirmed that the United Nations resolution against the denial of the Holocaust without addressing the suffering of the Palestinian people, and the killings, isolation and Israeli siege they are subjected to, constitutes a breach of the legal and moral responsibility of the international organization.

The Israeli crimes no less terrorist than the Nazi genocide.
The commission emphasized that Israel's siege of the Palestinian people and the transformation of its cities, villages and camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip into apartheid segregation camps are no less hideous and brutal than Nazi concentration camps.

The commission added that the Holocaust has turned into a Zionist industry in order to extort positions and money, and is being used in the media and politically to cover up Israel's crimes and its historical responsibility for displacing the Palestinian people from their land through murder and terrorism.

An academic conference in Jordan said that the Jewish ties to Jerusalem is a myth, saying that "Jewish historians are the ones who write the history related to the city of Jerusalem based on their trends and whims, in an attempt to obliterate any non-Jewish historical and archaeological identities found in the city." The real facts, according to this conference, is that Jews only controlled Jerusalem for 28 years after the Maccabi revolt, and never at any other time.

Al-Fath News describes how Jews own the media, with a reproduction of a story I discussed a couple of weeks ago.

A columnist in Raia Al Youm (Jordan) says that the task of pro-Palestinian activists in the West is very difficult, because "some of them sometimes lose their job if they work for an institution where the Jews have influence."

This is just one day's worth of endemic, systemic Jew-hatred in Arabic language media.

The crimes against humanity in Ardmore, Oklahoma

Last week the Jerusalem municipality demolished two homes built illegally on land that didn't belong to the residents.

Ma'an News has an op-ed by the Palestinian "ambassador" to Portugal describing this as a crime against humanity.

Among things that this Palestinian official says are:

It is an embodiment of the Zionist nature in the ethnic cleansing of the owners of the land..... Whoever committed this heinous crime against the Al-Salihiya family of Jerusalem is not a human being.

It is a crime against humanity par excellence, is a stain on humanity’s forehead and a thorn in what remains of the human conscience.

The Palestinians are the incubator of its three monotheistic religions....What is happening in Sheikh Jarrah is demolition and Judaization with the aim of ethnic cleansing of the grandchildren of the builders of this holy city, the Palestinians.

In the small town of Ardmore, Oklahoma, population 25,000, 80 houses were demolished between July and December of 2021.

If Israel demolishing two houses is a crime against humanity, then what is the demolition of eighty homes in a tiny town in Oklahoma?

House demolitions are part of local government around the world. Only when Israel does it, and when the people who broke the law are Arabs, does it become a huge international incident with over-the-top accusations.

Even if you don't consider Israel to have legally annexed Jerusalem, as the occupier it would still have the responsibility of maintaining local zoning laws!

This obsession is just more antisemitism. It doesn't happen anywhere there aren't Jews who could be blamed.

The squatters say they will appeal to the ICC. Really.