Monday, February 21, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Monday, February 21, 2022
Monday, February 21, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Part of the plan includes negotiating (indirectly) with Israel to provide an additional 30,000 work permits for Gazans to work in Israel.
Palestinians and their allies tell the world how awful the Jews are and how they want everyone to boycott Israel, but at the same time even Hamas wants Gazans to have jobs with the hated enemy that supposedly wantonly kills Arabs.
In the end, even Hamas and Fatah don't believe their own propaganda. But credulous Westerners do, which is the intent all along.
From Ian:
Amnesty’s Israel chief criticizes group’s report accusing Israel of apartheid
Israel Has Worked since 1948 to Make Peace with the Palestinians
Amnesty’s Israel chief criticizes group’s report accusing Israel of apartheid
The executive director of Amnesty International Israel has sharply criticized the umbrella international organization over its report earlier this month that accused Israel of practicing apartheid against the Palestinians, saying the document is not helping the situation, and may even be making things worse.
In an interview with Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site, Molly Malekar aired her grievances over the report, which was rejected by Israel and has also divided her own organization.
She described the accusation that Israel engages in apartheid, as well as other elements of the Amnesty report, as a “punch to the gut.”
According to Malekar, many others who campaign for Palestinian rights, both in Israel and in the West Bank, feel the same way.
Amnesty’s report, released February 1 at a press conference in Jerusalem’s Bab A-Zahara neighborhood, found that Israel applies a form of apartheid against Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and around the world, and, most significantly and controversially, against Arab Israelis.
Malekar said that what bothered her most was not the claim that Israel engages in apartheid according to international law, about which, she said, there is a “serious debate.” Rather, she said, Amnesty, as an organization whose goal is to promote human rights, shouldn’t be concerning itself with theoretical definitions.
When Amnesty publishes a paper, “the only important question is what are you trying to achieve by it,” she said.
Malekar said she had stressed to Amnesty administrators and branches in other countries that within Israel there was a struggle between “nationalist forces and humanitarian forces.”
Israel Has Worked since 1948 to Make Peace with the Palestinians
Amb. Dore Gold interviewed by Tovah Lazaroff (Jerusalem Post)First Arab Muslim, Mizrachi woman appointed to Supreme Court
In February, Amnesty International alleged that Israel has been guilty of the crime of apartheid since its inception in 1948. For Dore Gold, Israel's ambassador to the UN from 1997 to 1999, the Amnesty report and others have little to do with matters of law and much more to do with anti-Semitism and the delegitimization of the State of Israel.
"What Amnesty has done is to advance their narrative about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by using a loaded term like 'apartheid' and then insisting that it is a legal term," said Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
"This method of slandering Israel by coating phony narratives with legality is something which Israel's adversaries do all the time," Gold said, adding that this "is a case of 'fake law.'"
It is standard practice for anti-Semites to "seek accusations which they know will ignite hatred against the Jewish people....Today the most effective instrument in the hands of anti-Semites is to say that Israel is an apartheid regime."
Article 7 of the Rome Statute, that is a common reference point for the ICC, refers to an apartheid regime as a "permanent arrangement." That is hardly the case, even if Israel adopted South African practices, which it did not.
The narrative relies on a false claim that Israel, from the start, intended to continuously oppress the Palestinian people, Gold said. In reality Israel has worked from the start to make peace with the Palestinians. Israel negotiated with the PLO for the creation of the Palestinian Authority as a self-governing body over territory in the West Bank, effectively not disempowering the Palestinians.
"It may not be ideal," but the arrangement is not one of "an apartheid regime" and, "most of all, it is not a permanent arrangement. Israeli governments have been trying to negotiate with legitimate representatives of the Palestinians for a way out. The only reason the PA lacks additional autonomy is because of the hard line taken by Abbas and his supporters."
The Judicial Selection Committee appointed four new justices to the Supreme Court on Monday, reordering the 15-justice body that sits atop the judicial branch.
The four are Judge Khaled Kabub, Judge Ruth Ronen, Judge Gila Kanfei-Steinitz and private-sector lawyer Yechiel Kasher. Kabub is the first Arab Muslim appointed to the Supreme Court, and Kanfei-Steinitz – Likud MK Yuval Steinitz’s wife – is the first female judge of Sephardi descent.
Kanfei-Steinitz and Kasher are both viewed as moderate conservatives, ensuring Sa’ar has placed his stamp on the judiciary and moving it slightly to the Right again, given that three of the four justices being replaced were affiliated with the activist or moderate activist wings.
Ronen was the main pick of Supreme Court President Esther Hayut, and is expected to follow her moderate activist approach.
Kabub has spent most of his career handling economic crime issues and has less well-known constitutional views.
He is replacing Justice George Kara to fill the “Israeli-Arab seat” on the court, and is expected to be somewhere on the moderate activist spectrum.
Kabub will also be the first permanent Muslim Israeli-Arab justice on the court. Prior Israeli-Arab justices were always Christian.
Congratulations to the new Judge at the Israel Supreme Court, Khaled Kaboub!
— George Deek (@GeorgeDeek) February 21, 2022
Justice Khaled Kaboub has been an esteemed Judge at the Economic Courts in Tel-Aviv, and has given some groundbreaking rulings. Kaboub, an Arab Muslim, is a proud son of my hometown Jaffa! pic.twitter.com/o4zwdspUiI
- Monday, February 21, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
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| Bongani Masuku |
Bongani says hi to you all as we struggle to liberate Palestine from the racists, fascists and zionists who belong to the era of their Friend Hitler! We must not apologise, every Zionist must be made to drink the bitter medicine they are feeding our brothers and sisters in Palestine. We must target them, expose them and doo all that (sic) is needed to subject them to perpetual suffering until they withdraw from the land of others and stop their savage attacks on human dignity
Despite the fact that Masuku didn't mention Jews and used the tired formula of saying "Zionist" as a proxy for Jews, the South Africa Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) complained about the obvious antisemitism in his statement.
They first complained to the SA Human Rights Commission, which agreed that the statement was antisemitic. The SAHRC found Masuku’s statements to have been of “an extreme nature that advocate and imply that the Jewish and Israeli community are to be despised, scorned, ridiculed and thus subjecting them to ill-treatment on the basis of their religious affiliation”, and therefore they are “offensive and unpalatable to society”.
They then got an equivalent ruling from the Equality Court, which ordered Masaku to apologize in 2017. He refused.
Now, the Constitutional Court of South Africa has also ruled on the matter. It upheld the Equality Court's finding that a reasonable person would understand the statement as being based on Jewishness as an ethnicity and not on anti-Zionism.
"This was primarily because of the statement's reference to 'Hitler', because a reasonable reader would have noted that a reference to Hitler to a group which was predominately Jewish was used because of their Jewish ethnicity and identity. After all, Hitler's anti-Semitic extermination campaign was not limited to people of the Jewish faith or ethnicity who identified as Zionists," said the court in its media summary.
Even South Africa, which is as anti-Zionist as any state short of Iran, recognizes that some speech that modern antisemites call "anti-Zionist" is really hate against Jews.
The courts did not seem to rule on Masuku's statements made shortly afterwards in March 2009 at an "Israel Apartheid Week" event at Wits University which even more explicitly targeted South Africa's Jewish community without saying the word "Jew":
During that speech, Masuku made other statements including that Jews who continued to stand up for Israel should “not just be encouraged but forced to leave South Africa”. He said that COSATU would do everything to ensure, whether at Wits University or ‘Orange Grove’ (a historically Jewish suburb) that those who did not support equality and dignity must face the consequences, even if it meant “something that may necessarily cause what is regarded as harm”.
Cosatu and the Palestinian Solidarity Committee continue to support this bigot.
Bongani Masuku has 30 days from the date of the ruling last Wednesday to apologize to the SA Jewish Board of Deputies.
- Monday, February 21, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
Antisemitism is
hostility toward,
denigration of
malicious lies about or
discrimination against
Jews
as individual Jews,
as a people,
as a religion,
as an ethnic group or
as a nation (i.e., Israel.)
It occurs to me that this is more than just a definition: this is a taxonomy for categorizing different types of antisemitism.
There are twenty permutations here between column A and column B. Any antisemitic incident should be able to be categorized as at least one from each column.
Let's put letters in each column:
So, for example, the popular Arab claim that there are no Jewish archaeological artifacts in Jerusalem is a malicious lie about Jews as a people and a nation. We can call that AS-LPN.
Not allowing Jews in hotels in the early 1900s was discrimination against Jews as an ethnic group, AS-AE.
The myth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is hostility towards and malicious lies about Jews as a people, religion, ethnic group and nation, so it is an AS-HLPREN.
Amnesty International's recent "apartheid" report is filled with malicious lies and discrimination against Jews as a nation, AS-LAN.
Nazi Germany included everything in both columns: AS-HDLAIPREN.
Ilhan Omar's statement that Zionist money controlling Congress is an AS-LPN, and her claim that Israel is "hypnotizing the world" is AS-HLN.
Roger Waters' claim that Sheldon Adelson was a "puppetmaster" who believed that non-Jews are less than human was clearly AS-HDLI, but the larger context was clearly that he got his ideas about Adelson from antisemitic literature about the Talmud, so we can add a R on that taxonomy.
One of the things I want to accomplish with this definition is to also say what antisemitism is not. Often, stupidity is mistaken for antisemitic acts. So under this taxonomy, Whoopi Goldberg's statement about the Holocaust having nothing to do with race was quite false but it wasn't a malicious lie nor was it derogatory, therefore it wasn't antisemitic.
Attacks on George Soros would only be considered antisemitic if they tie into his being Jewish. If they are only about his politics then they don't fit into this taxonomy.
On the other hand, I would argue that Marjorie Taylor-Greene's theory that a California utility was working with the Rothschilds on a satellite that redirects sun rays to Earth to create wildfires is AS-LI - the Rothschilds as individuals but we don't know enough to know if she believes that they are proxies for the Jewish people. However she also shared a video saying that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation” to replace white Europeans with Muslim immigrants, which is a AS-HLN, at least.
There are of course judgment calls here, and often we cannot know whether the hostility towards Jews are based on the idea of Jews as a people or religion or ethnic group without more context.
The most difficult examples are when antisemitic tropes or dog-whistles are alleged. We cannot know for sure whether the person accused of antisemitism invoked those tropes deliberately - Jeremy Corbyn's posting of a mural with antisemitic tropes, or Donald Trump' posting an anti-Hilary Clinton graphic that used a six pointed star. Those stories often follow the politics of the accusers more than the actual facts of the case. The artist of the mural clearly had some antisemitic intent but that doesn't mean that Corbyn necessarily had that in mind. Unless there is other clear evidence, I prefer to err on the side of caution - and this definition and taxonomy can help reduce the number of times antisemitism is invoked not out of genuine outrage but to score political points against an opponent. When that happens, Jews are not being defended - they are simply props.
That doesn't mean that both Corbyn and Trump shouldn't have realized how insensitive both of those social media posts were. It just means that without additional evidence they cannot be considered antisemitic.
Similarly, the use of the word "neocon" cannot be considered antisemitic in a vacuum, but in some contexts it clearly is.
I think that my definition, and applying the taxonomy, does a far better job as reflecting what is truly antisemitic than the other definitions out there. It can never be a science, but this definition makes it less of a free-for-all.
- Monday, February 21, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
The Iranian ABNA News Agency, which is geared towards the worldwide Shiite community, has many articles about the evils of normalization with Israel.
Half the time it denounces Muslim countries who have normalized relations or seem to be on the path of normalizing relations - and the other half of the time it touts interviews with low level officials of countries that hate Israel, swearing that they will never normalize relations.
The thing is, their protests against normalization show how successful normalization has been!
We see headlines like:
Do you think they are protesting a bit too much? Headlines like this would have been unthinkable two years ago. Now, seeing officials deny any chance of normalization with Israel makes it look like this is something that some people are seriously considering.
You can get the best news in Iranian media.
Sunday, February 20, 2022
- Sunday, February 20, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
I tried out Twitter streaming on this morning, talking about my new book. I didn't like how Twitter did it very much, so I edited it and put it up on YouTube along with my other streaming videos.
Enjoy!
From Ian:
Tzipi Livni opens up about her Gulf visits before the Abraham Accords
Tzipi Livni opens up about her Gulf visits before the Abraham Accords
Long before “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem, played openly in Abu Dhabi or Manama, long before Israeli military jets took part in training exercises with Gulf countries, and long before normalization agreements were signed at the White House, there was one Israeli leader engaging in quiet, and very secret, diplomacy with the Arab world: Tzipi Livni.Jewish Life More Visible in Gulf Countries as AGJC Celebrates First Anniversary
Livni, 63, who served in a variety of Israeli government positions, including deputy prime minister, foreign minister and justice minister, between 2001 and 2014, also led the country through several rounds of peace negotiations with the Palestinians. It was this role – where she worked opposite the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator, the late Saeb Erekat – that led her to forge warm ties with multiple Arab leaders, some of whom are now at the forefront of the Abraham Accords, the U.S.-mediated normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab countries.
In a recent interview with Jewish Insider, the former Israeli lawmaker downplayed more than a decade of covert meetings and conversations with country leaders, foreign ministers and other representatives of the Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, even Saudi Arabia. And while former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner has twice been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize as one of the architects of the Abraham Accords, it is possible that this entire process might not have happened if not for the groundwork laid by Livni.
“Truthfully, I didn’t think that Kushner could do this; it’s really a huge achievement. I mean, to have these agreements without the Palestinians, it really surprised me when I saw the news. It is a real game-changer,” Livni said during the interview at her Tel Aviv home. “[Kushner] deserves all the credit he is getting.”
Today, relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco are out in the open, even flourishing. Just this week, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made history as the first Israeli premier to travel to the Gulf state of Bahrain. In January, Israeli President Isaac Herzog proudly met with Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, following similar visits by Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid to the United Arab Emirates.
Livni said that she was as surprised as anyone when the White House announced the agreements in August 2020, although, she noted, there were some signs of a regional sea change. She recalled two key incidents several months before that momentous announcement, and the subsequent signing of the Accords on the White House lawn in September 2020, that made her realize attitudes were shifting.
“In 2019, not long after I quit politics, I was invited to attend a conference in Bahrain,” Livni said. “It was an international conference, but the event was sponsored by Bahraini officials, and I arrived there openly with an Israeli passport.”
“For the first time ever, I held a public meeting with [Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed] Al Khalifa, and we even took a photo together,” she continued. “It felt very normal and that was something I was not used to.”
Rabbi Elie Abadie, spiritual leader of the AGJC, says, ‘Education is practically the number one priority of any Jewish community. ... The establishment of a school is of utmost priority for us.’Call Me Back (podcast): With all eyes on Putin, enter Iran — a conversation in Jerusalem
Jews have resided in the Arab Gulf region for centuries – in parts of the region, for millennia – but their recent history has seen a sea change with the establishment, in 2021, of the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities. While each country has its own flavor and experience, suddenly, Jewish community services are now more readily available throughout the region than they ever have been before. The Media Line’s Felice Friedson sat down with Rabbi Elie Abadie, the United Arab Emirates-based spiritual leader of the AGJC, and AGJC President Ebrahim Daoud Nonoo, who lives in Bahrain, for an extensive interview. This is followed by an interview with Rafael Schwartz, an AGJC board member who lives in Kuwait. The organization is active in Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, as well.
The Media Line: We’re a region which prides itself on longevity and its ancient roots. Much has happened in the modern Gulf. The Abraham Accords was a game-changer in creating an environment to expose Jewish life in the Middle East. One year ago, the AGJC – the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities – was inaugurated. Joining me today is Rabbi Elie Abadie, the senior and resident rabbi from the UAE. And also with me is Ebrahim Daoud Nonoo, who is the president of the AGJC, and chairman of the board of the House of Ten Commandments. Rabbi Abadie, in the UAE, and of course, Mr. Nonoo in Bahrain, thank you gentleman for joining me today!
Ebrahim Daoud Nonoo: Pleasure! Pleasure!
Rabbi Elie Abadie: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you, Felice!
TML: One year later, [it’s] very exciting. No one would have thought that we would have seen this moment. Many people in the world probably thought that the Jewish community has dwindled [and] there’s no news, but what can you share. Let’s start with Rabbi Abadie.
Rabbi Elie Abadie: Well, certainly at least here in the UAE, the Jewish community has doubled in size since the Abraham Accords, and those are the number of people that are active in the community. There’s certainly many more Jews living in the UAE that are not very active in the community, and so the actual number is not very well known, but there’s certainly … the active amount of people has really doubled since the Abraham Accords.
“Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power”:https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadow-strike-yaakov-katz/1129520355
“Weapon Wizards – How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower”:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-weapon-wizards-yaakov-katz/1123749307
- Sunday, February 20, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
Al Mayadeen, a pan-Arab satellite network that is regarded as pro-Hezbollah and pro-Syria, published an article about Israel that included this example of tolerance:
A cursory look at Jewish rabbis throughout history proves, beyond any doubt, the fact that these people were associated with the Jewish religion since they were mere masters of the Children of Israel after escaping from Pharaoh, on a journey of wandering and loss, in an endless quarrel with the Prophet of God Moses and his brother Aaron. The material mind was the master of the situation in their feelings, attitudes and the nature of their interaction with all developments, and this is why the Qur’an devoted a wide space to in exposing the material mentality of the masters of the Children of Israel during the life of Moses, or after his death. This is what we saw in the sending of the Prophet of God Jesus, and how they opposed him and sought to kill and crucify him, in endless plots.The one who looks at the ordeals that afflicted the Children of Israel throughout history will find it related, in its entirety, to the level of greed and keenness to control and influence the Israeli mind, as represented by their rabbis. Therefore, the Jewish religion, as a tool in the hands of these rabbis, remained the best way to seize the sovereignty of the Children of Israel and the consequent ability to develop capital. And all the rabbis of the earth lived luxuriously, blessed with riches indescribable, which was evident at the fall of Khaybar, and the treasures were exclusively in the hands of their rabbis, specifically their chief rabbis; Ibn Abi al-Haqiq.Perhaps the historically rapid distortion of the Torah, at the hands of the Levitic and Mosaic priests since 930 BC, confirms the truth of the purpose of the distortion, so that it is easier for the rabbis to tighten control over the followers and non-followers, and not the sincerity of belonging to the religion of Moses and Aaron. So the one browsing the distorted Torah finds a severe distortion of all the prophets, as they fall into all kinds of sins, as well as the case of the Arabs, the Canaanites and other races, in a way that allows the rabbis to act as they please...
The amount of blatant antisemitism in Arabic media has increased greatly in the past year.
So have antisemitic attacks.
Here was the illustration of this article.
- Sunday, February 20, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
Executive agencies may not execute a procurement contract with a business entity unless it certifies, in writing when the bid is submitted or the onset is renewed, that:1. it is not engaging in a boycott of Israel; and2. it will, for the duration of its contractual obligations, refrain from a boycott of Israel.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations legal team sued Governor Hogan on behalf of Saqib Ali, a software engineer and former legislator who is running to regain a set at Maryland's House of Delegates.
Ali argued that the executive order violated his right to free speech and that it imposed a type of "loyalty oath" to Israel.
The argument was rejected by U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake and this has now been upheld by Maryland's 4th Circuit.
Saqib Ali cannot sue Hogan because Ali had not applied for a state contract and been rejected and thus cannot claim an “injury” due to the governor’s executive order, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stated in its published 3-0 decision.The 4th Circuit also rejected Ali’s argument that the order’s required pledge violates his constitutional right to speak freely against Israel, whom he believes oppresses Palestinians. The court said the order does not infringe on the First Amendment because it addresses “actions” taken against Israel by the contractor in the bidding process and does not interfere with an individual’s “beliefs or political ideology.”“That is, the executive order requires a business entity to refrain from discriminating on the basis of Israeli national origin only in forming a bid,” Judge Robert B. King wrote. “It does not require the entity to, for example, pledge any loyalty to Israel or profess any other beliefs.”King was joined in the opinion by Judges Stephanie D. Thacker and Pamela A. Harris.“Given the plain meaning of the executive order and the allegations of (Ali’s) complaint, we are unable to accept the proposition that Ali is prohibited from signing the Section C certification and submitting a bid on a Maryland procurement contract,” King wrote. “As such, we reject Ali’s related theory that he possesses standing to sue premised on a direct injury.”
The BDSers have been challenging many of the state anti-BDS laws on the grounds of violating free speech, and this ruling shows that the actual boycott of goods and services from Israel is an action, and not just speech.
- Sunday, February 20, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
Abdul Rahman Al-Issa writes in Kuwaiti news site Al-Anbaa that the Holocaust was a myth, and suggests that more Muslims died in World War II than Jews.
The article starts off by saying that Israel made up the Holocaust story to gain sympathy and for financial and political blackmail, as well as "to cover up Israel’s crimes against our brothers in Palestine. " Yet, he writes, "the silence of the cultural and political elites in Europe and America for this cheap blackmail is something surprising. Especially since the facts are as clear as the sun. Or is it the strength and influence of AIPAC in America?"
Yes, the evil Jews who control the world made up the entire story.
Al-Issa claims that most Jews managed to escape Europe before the war, and some even started their own companies in the US and Canada. The Jews that remained were interned in concentration camps along with other political dissidents.
I mean, what more evidence do you need?
He goes on to say that "historians" say only 200-300,000 Jews were killed, and wonders whether more Muslims died - either as soldiers in the British army, or in North Africa.
And then he moved from Holocaust denial and Holocaust trivialization into Holocaust inversion, saying that the "real" Holocaust is what Palestinians have suffered under Jews.
As always, the most disgusting kinds of Jew-hatred are not only tolerated but honored in much of the Arab world. And as always, there is no visible pushback.
Saturday, February 19, 2022
From Ian:
How Amnesty's anti-Israel apartheid report backfired
Israel ranks above Spain, Italy and US for democracy in new global index
How Amnesty's anti-Israel apartheid report backfired
Major editorial boards – The Wall Street Journal and New York Post – have also derided Amnesty’s report, reducing it to a libel and “smear.” These responses are compounded by the reality that no country has yet to openly embrace Amnesty’s report, which only suggest Amnesty’s flailing credibility and influence.
This high-profile controversy has further exposed Amnesty to attention under which it has allegedly resorted to incompetent and racist decision-making. Amnesty knows it can only advance its apartheid lie by falsely presenting Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza as one political unit, regardless of peace treaties willingly signed by both Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
The reality is that 20 percent of Israel’s population are Arabs, who enjoy equality under the law, affirmative action programs, and positions in Israel’s parliament and Supreme Court. An Arab Israeli judge, and later to be Supreme Court justice, even once sentenced an Israeli president (a Jew) to prison.
Israel is the furthest thing from an apartheid state; and while Amnesty blames Israel for Palestinian misfortune, nearly all Palestinians remain under the governance of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, or Hamas in Gaza.
So when activist Yoseph Haddad, an Arab citizen of Israel, was invited to debate an Amnesty panelist, Amnesty allegedly refused to participate, asking for a Jew instead. If true, the gesture could reflect what appears to be Amnesty’s racism, intellectual dishonesty, and will to stifle reality.
Questions concerning Amnesty’s xenophobia reinvigorate recent memories of Amnesty’s last racial controversy, which emerged less than a year ago when its UK office released an internal investigation in 2021.
Accounts of behavior included “senior staff using the N-word;” black staff members having their capabilities “questioned consistently and without justification,” and dismissive behavior targeting the religiously minded and those from the southern hemisphere.
The organization that had to apologize for its “systemic racism” now resurfaces for having previously refused to join a global call to fight antisemitism.
In sum, Amnesty’s apartheid allegations have provoked much negative exposure, setting in motion a sequence of self-defeating developments that have exposed the organization’s bad-faith motives, intellectual dishonesty, internal racism, and dwindling credibility.
Sadly, the human rights cause will bear the brunt of Amnesty’s impropriety; and as a world in which human rights abuses abound, we must demand better from our leading NGOs.
Amnesty International's recent report is dangerous. This anti-Israel bias must be condemned. Proud to see so many friends demanding truth.https://t.co/IDnBEkFPY5
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 18, 2022
Israel ranks above Spain, Italy and US for democracy in new global index
In a “stunning rebuttal” to Amnesty’s claim that Israel is an apartheid state, the country has been ranked above Italy, Spain and the United States in a respected global index of democratic values.
Published this week, the latest edition of the annual Democracy Index from the prestigious Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) puts Israel in 23rd place in the world league table, out of 167.
It has 7.97 points out of a maximum of ten, just behind France (7.99 points) and Britain (8.1 points).
The result makes Israel by far the most democratic country in the Middle East, but also places it ahead of Spain, Portugal, Italy and the United States.
The world’s most democratic country is Norway, which the EIU awards 9.75 points. China comes in 148th with just 2.21 points and the bottom three are North Korea, Myanmar and Afghanistan.
The survey comes in the wake of a speech last weekend by the Arab MK and Israeli coalition minister Mansour Abbas at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), in which he warned it was wrong to use the term “apartheid” to describe Israel. He said: “I prefer to describe the reality in objective ways… I’m not trying to say you’re racist or the state is racist, or this is an apartheid state My role as a political leader is to try to bridge the gaps.”
The top US diplomat responsible for the Middle East until January 2021, David Schenker, last night welcomed the EIU report. The former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs said it amounts to a “stunning rebuttal” of Amnesty International’s recent claim that Israel is an “apartheid state” and has been since its foundation in 1948.
- Saturday, February 19, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
Hebron is the second holiest city to Jews. It has had a continuous Jewish presence from ancient times through today, with the exception of only 19 years when Jordan controlled the city. Jews there have been subjected to shootings, sniper attacks, boycotts and massacres, including the 1929 pogrom that murdered over sixty Jewish men, women and children in the most horrific ways. During the second intifada, Jews in Hebron were murdered by snipers, including ten month old Shalhevet Pas who was deliberately targeted in her baby stroller in 2001.
Now a Palestinian group together with hate site Mondoweiss are pushing the agenda of physically cleansing Jews from the city - fulfilling their Nazi desire to make areas "Judenrein."
We, as members of civil society in Hebron, call on our international partners to take action and join in the campaign Dismantle the Ghetto, evacuate the settlers out of Hebron.
Dismantle the ghetto? You mean, like, dismantling the Warsaw Ghetto? What happened to those Jews again?
The antisemitism is not even hidden here. The "open letter" not once refers to the Jewish connection to the city. It refers to the Tomb of the Patriarchs exclusively with the term created by Muslim usurpers, the "Ibrahimi Mosque." It doesn't mention that nearly all of Hebron is already Judenfrei.
Ethnic cleansing becomes a moral imperative to modern antisemites.
(h/t Andrew P)
Friday, February 18, 2022
From Ian:
Danny Danon: Amnesty International should be ashamed
Danny Danon: Amnesty International should be ashamed
To apply the term "apartheid" to Israel in 2022, or ever, is literally to distort reality to fit a false narrative and stigmatize the Jewish state for a crime that it is not committing and has never committed throughout its history. One doesn't even need to rely on third-party sources to discover this. All those who wish to come to Israel and see the reality for themselves can do so.America’s future depends on our relationship with Israel
Or perhaps they could listen to the truth from Bassam Eid, who said in response to the Amnesty International report: "As a Palestinian peace activist and founder of the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, I am here to set the record straight. The international community is yet again lying about Israel. While it is not a perfect country, Israel is definitely not an apartheid state."
At the same time as Amnesty International falsely accuses Israel of crimes of which it is innocent, its report also entirely fails to mention that the situation of the residents of Gaza is entirely different from that of Israel's Arab citizens because the Gazan population is living under terrorist rule. The same applies to the Arabs who live under the rule of the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria.
The situations of both are dire – due to their own leadership, not because of Israel. It is their leaders who subject them to poverty, unemployment and a lack of education. It is their leaders who flood their education systems with hate and incitement.
It is their leaders who disgracefully pay and glorify murderers when they mutilate, bomb and assassinate innocent Israeli citizens. It is their own leaders who keep them in a state of victimhood. I suggest that Amnesty International turn its attention to these crimes perpetrated by Hamas and the P.A.
Amnesty International, an organization that claims to campaign "for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all," has drafted a report that is nothing more than a publicity stunt designed to generate headlines through highly charged, erroneous language.
The only thing this report does is stir up hate and antisemitism and attempt to encourage the isolation of the innocent party, Israel. It does nothing to further progress or dialogue in the region.
By blaming Israel for crimes of which it is innocent, Amnesty International should be held responsible for enabling the real crimes to continue. The so-called "human rights" organization should thus be ashamed of itself.
We’re not the only nation in Western civilization to have politicians making poor choices regarding Israel and her descendants. We have watched in recent years as there has been a dramatic rise in antisemitism in Britain, including within the Labour Party which has been the traditional home for Jewish voters, and all of this on a continent that should mind some extra caution given its history with antisemitism.Abraham Sion Faithfully Examines the Promises of the Promised Land
We all know where intolerance can lead if left unchecked, and that oppression and opposition to Jews is nothing new.
That being said, whether or not our politicians, professors and pundits leave Israel alone, I’ve got a feeling that Israel is going to be just fine.
After originally reaching their promised homeland, the people of the young nation were continually attacked by hostile tribes and other nations. In 722 BC, the Assyrians conquered northern Israel and deported its people. In 586 BC, Babylon conquered southern Israel and exiled its citizens. The Jews returned to their homeland 70 years later, but the Romans finally crushed them in AD 70, leaving them without a country for 1,878 years.
Even in the countries of their exile, the Jews were oppressed, denied rights, isolated in ghettos and persecuted. In 1933, there were nine million Jews living throughout Europe, but by 1945, two out of three European Jews had been gassed, beaten, starved to death or died of disease in Nazi concentration camps. The Holocaust led to the elimination of one-third of the world’s Jewish population.
Since 1948 and the establishment of the modern state of Israel, despite being hemmed in on all sides by hostile nations, and against all odds or human logic, Israel has survived all-out war and constant threats of domestic terrorism. The nation has been forced to maintain a continual state of warfare throughout its sixty-eight years of existence. Yet increasingly, the international press portrays Israel as an aggressor nation, an occupying force, a brutal regime afflicting poor and disenfranchised Palestinians who have had their land stolen out from under them.
Indeed many among the Palestinians genuinely want a peaceful resolution to the current conflict. But a Palestinian nationalism continues to thrive with its singular fixation: the death of Israel. The Palestinian leaders pay stipends to terrorists and their families who kill Israelis, financed in part by the Israel-hating regime of Iran.
It is almost a cliché to note that today too many historians and laypeople erroneously look at history through modern lenses that distort the picture and prevent an honest understanding of historical events.
But many others still want to read about history through the lens of as it was, not as today’s talking heads would have it. For those folks, Abraham Sion’s “To Whom Was The Promised Land Promised?” is a breath of fresh air.
Sion’s book is over 400 pages of thorough but eminently readable legal and historical analysis of the key moments and documents that led to the creation of a Jewish State in the land in which it was reestablished.
From the late 19th-century origins of modern Zionism to the British White Papers of the 1930s, the book provides a wealth of fascinating details on the legal and political understandings of the times that underpinned documents from the Balfour Declaration to the Hussein-McMahon letters.
The importance of these details to today’s debates is correctly identified by Sion, who notes in the context of the constant attacks on Israel’s legitimacy by institutions like the United Nations:
“Only by ignoring or overlooking these original treaties and resolutions could the international community arrive at the decisions adopted incessantly by the United Nations and other international organizations. These fundamental truths are ignored by the international community, and they are treated as if they never existed.”
“To Whom Was The Promised Land Promised” is at its best when it is examining the terminology found in agreements and declarations. Sion not only provides contemporary documentary sources to clarify the original meanings, but he also includes the words of key personalities of the times. The views of important figures – such as Col. Richard Meinertzhagen, Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, Emir Feisal, Woodrow Wilson, and many others – are illustrated throughout in relation to the conferences, correspondences, and agreements in which they partook.
The book contains fascinating and thorough examinations of the debates and negotiations inside the British Cabinet, the San Remo Conference, the drafting of the Treaties of Sevres and Lausanne, the De Bunsen Committee, and the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Importantly, it does not treat these conversations and events as isolated from each other or unrelated, but rather as inter-connected and reinforcing.
- Friday, February 18, 2022
- Elder of Ziyon
Palestinian media breathlessly reported this morning:
This morning, a settler performed a provocative Talmudic ritual at the Qattanin Gate, one of the gates of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.According to the official Wafa agency, a settler performed Talmudic rituals at Bab al-Qattanin, guarded by the occupation police, who prevented young men from passing through the gate to pray in Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Unfortunately, we are not privy to the exact nature of the Talmudic ritual that so scandalized the Arabs.
Did he perform a brit milah? Did he have a sheva brachot? Did he put on Tefillin? Did he build a sukkah?
Or maybe he made a blessing before drinking a Coke? Or perhaps he greeted one of the guards with a "Shalom Aleichem"?
We need to get to the bottom of this. The Israeli media is not doing their job.
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