Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, September 29, 2022

09/29 Links Pt1: Glick: How Benny Gantz killed Israeli-Palestinian peace; Abbas Asked Why There Is No Palestinian State. The Answers Were in His UN Speech

From Ian:

The Women Burning Their Hijabs Want the Iranian Regime to Fall. Does Joe Biden?

Khamenei’s deal-denying obstinacy ought to be viewed as a liberating opportunity by the Biden administration. Why should we allow Khamenei and his regime a guaranteed pathway to bomb-grade uranium and long-range ballistic missiles and let them extort us? Unrestricted oil and gas sales, a bonanza of foreign investment, and big, legal purchases of Russian conventional weaponry will significantly abet Iranian expansionism . . . unless we believe just down the road that the Supreme Leader and his like-minded friends will give way to more reasonable people?

Obama’s nuclear deal never really made sense unless one believed the regime would evolve into something much less malign. But the theocracy has crushed every internal effort at even the most minimal political reform, and, as Masha Amini’s death makes clear, the regime that inspired The Handmaid’s Tale is still very much that regime.

Democrats, who’ve been pushing apologias since Bill Clinton apologized to Iran in an effort to jump-start better relations, have a chance to get more realistic about the nature of the Islamic Republic. Khamenei’s decision to tell Washington to pound sand may finally allow Democrats, who’ve been addicted to arms control with the theocracy, to regain a certain moral clarity about the most aggressive, antisemitic, revisionist state in the Middle East.

Many Republicans should also thank the cleric, who is the most impressive post-World War II dictator in the region. Those who’ve wanted to believe that a “good deal” and better Iranian behavior was possible if Washington just ramped up sanctions enough to coerce the mullahs into moderation are now obliged to ask themselves whether they are willing to argue for military strikes, which could lead to a war in the Persian Gulf. Whatever the timeline was for sanctions working—always just over the horizon—it certainly no longer matches the timeline for Iran to test a nuke.

If most Republicans, too, turn out to be Iran doves, then they can at least try to develop a bipartisan approach to the Islamic Republic that involves, at a minimum, continuing economic pressure. Sanctions won’t stop the mullahs’ nuclear drive, but they can weaken the clerical regime internally and deny it hard currency for its foreign adventures. Americans, Europeans, Turks, Sunni and Shiite Arabs, and, most emphatically, the Israelis would be a lot better off if Washington forestalled the Iranian bomb.

But if Americans no longer have the self-confidence to engage in such military action, if they just don’t believe U.S. hegemony in the Middle East is worth the price, then they can still default to something less delusional and destructive than paying an endlessly lying enemy to forsake the cornerstone of its hegemonic ambitions. We should take a cue from the protestors in the streets: a regime that so easily kills women isn’t one the United States can do business with.

American and European “realists” have never been so wrong. It is the nature of the regime that counts.

Caroline Glick: How Benny Gantz killed Israeli-Palestinian peace

In 2014, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia acted as Israel’s unofficial allies in Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza. Among other things, they blocked the Obama administration from coercing Israel into accepting Hamas’ ceasefire terms.

Their opposition to the Palestinians and support for Israel only grew during Trump’s presidency. Many people who spoke with the Egyptians, the Emiratis, Saudis and Bahrainis during this period understood that they were no longer willing to stand with the Palestinians and were willing to reach a pragmatic resolution of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria that respected Israel’s rights and interests as well as those of the Palestinians.

But blinded by ideology, and guided no doubt by Gantz’s political interest in humiliating Netanyahu ahead of the third round of elections, Eshel and Gantz ignored all of this. They insisted that nothing had changed in the Arab world since 2002, when the Saudi king gave a fake peace offer to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman demanding that Israel surrender to the PLO’s maximalist demands as a condition for Arab-Israeli peace.

While Kushner seems to reject Eshel’s version of events in his recently published memoir, in a way, the veracity of Eshel’s story is less important than the fact that he takes so much pride in his version of events that he chose to share it with the Israeli public. Eshel clearly never considered that he may have been mistaken, and as a result of his own ideological blindness and political interests, he had destroyed Israel’s chance of permanently securing its national and strategic interests in Judea and Samaria.

Eshel’s blindness is a testament to the most glaring and dangerous characteristics of the left, both in Israel and throughout the Western world today. For leftists from Tel Aviv to Washington to Paris, the world is a static place where the 1960s anti-colonialist slogans that blamed all the troubles of the developing world on the West and the Jewish state are truths etched in stone—a progressive Ten Commandments. And the tablets will never be broken. Anyone who rejects these slogans, or permits reality to seep into their policymaking at any level are enemies far worse than the likes of the PLO or the Iranian regime or any terror group or regime that bases their claim to legitimacy on anti-colonialist precepts. On the other hand, unelected elites who live and die by these precepts are “objective professionals,” who protect our societies from riff raff that actually take into consideration facts, events, statements and political forces that stand these anti-Western principles on their heads.

From the progressives’ collective slobberfest over Islamic terrorists from Ramallah to Tehran, to their political and legal wars against anyone who disagrees with them, all over the West, our ability to make informed decisions, whether as voters or policymakers, is under assault. Elites who insist that their catechisms to the anti-colonialist gods are the beginning and end of all legitimate policymaking are damning us to policies that cause our nations to fail perpetually.

The Trump peace plan, including the sovereignty plan, was the first pragmatic blueprint for Israeli-Palestinian peace ever presented, because unlike all of its predecessors it was not based entirely on anti-Israel mythology. Eshel and Gantz didn’t just kill the sovereignty plan when they scared Kushner with their myths. They killed the entire concept that reality should form the basis of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians.

In his memoir and in subsequent interviews, former ambassador Friedman has said that whatever one thinks of the Trump peace plan, it was an opportunity for Israel to begin having a serious discussion about what it wants to do with Judea and Samaria. Obviously, so long as Israel’s left controls the discourse and blocks reality from entering the discussion, no such discussion will be possible.

Abbas Asked Why There Is No Palestinian State. The Answers Were in His UN Speech

PA President Mahmoud Abbas asked the UN General Assembly on Friday why the Palestinians do not yet have a state. I found the answers to Abbas' questions were in his speech as well.

He claimed to genuinely want peace with Israel, but made clear that he rejects Israel's very legitimacy. He described Israel as a colonizing power for 75 years - that is, since its historic rebirth in 1948. He airbrushed Judaism out of his "eternal" Jerusalem, in which there are only Muslim and Christian holy sites.

There was no mention that Israel dismantled its settlements and withdrew all its soldiers from Gaza in 2005. No hint that Hamas took over, and has provoked conflict with Israel ever since with indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel, teaching Israel that relinquishing adjacent territory merely empowers the forces that seek our destruction.

Abbas devoted some of his speech to Nasser Abu Hamid, whom he described as a heroic martyr who was now dying in jail of cancer, failing to note that Abu Hamid is serving multiple life terms for the murders of seven Israelis and the attempted murders of 12 more. Abbas championed the killers of Israelis - to whom his Palestinian Authority insists on paying salaries, thus nurturing the next generations of murderers.

Abbas ignored the "one condition" Prime Minister Yair Lapid set on Thursday for the implementation of a two-state solution: "That a future Palestinian state will be a peaceful one. That it will not become another terror base from which to threaten the well-being and the very existence of Israel."

Lapid offered Abbas a one-sentence formula for Palestinian independence: "Put down your weapons, and there will be peace."

On Monday, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas sent Rosh Hashanah greetings to Israel's President Isaac Herzog and to Defense Minister Benny Gantz. (For some reason, he did not send any such greetings to Prime Minister Yair Lapid.)

Naturally, the Palestinians are upset.

Felesteen quotes angry analysts who are convinced that New Year greetings are yet another sign of how Abbas is collaborating with Israel.

Politicians believe that the congratulations of PA President Mahmoud Abbas to the leaders of the Israeli occupation on "Jewish holidays and occasions" reflect the extent of the state of political weakness that the PA has reached in front of Israel, and proves that "its president tweets outside the flock."

Member of the Future Electoral List, Hatem Shaheen, considered that the PA President's congratulations to Gantz and Herzog show the state of disregard and humiliation of the rights that the authority has reached, at a time when the occupation is escalating its violations in the occupied territories. Shaheen explained to Felesteen that such a position constitutes an affront to our people and our capabilities, and is completely rejected, because of what our people suffer from Israeli crimes. "Abbas's congratulations to the leaders of the occupation express a state of weakness, lack of self-esteem and confidence, and a lack of belief that we are able to extract our rights in the future, and it represents begging."

Writer and political analyst Khaled Sadiq said: "Abbas' contact with Gantz and Herzog comes within the framework of the relationship with the occupation, which he is trying to strengthen with the aim of returning to the negotiating table." He cautioned that "this congratulations encourages the occupation and its leaders to commit more violations and crimes against our people and realize its ambitions, so that the authority appears to be a partner in the tragedies and crimes that the occupation causes against our people, and attempts to change the reality in Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

However, Abbas knows that Israel has nothing to offer the authority. Sadiq continued: "The positions of Abbas and the PA do not reflect the will of the Palestinian people, but rather reflect the positions of the personality of the PA president, to maintain his presence at the head of the PA, to please Israel and to return to the path of settlement and achieve personal gains."

The researcher and writer Magdi Hamayel stressed that the congratulation on Jewish occasions reflects the state of contradiction in the head of the Palestinian Authority. While he calls at the United Nations to protect the Palestinian people from the violations of the occupation, he contacts his leaders to congratulate them on the arrival of a new Hebrew year. He pointed out that the state of anger among the Palestinian people is supposed to be accompanied by the anger of the presidency and the authority, and to take a political position commensurate with the sacrifices it is making against the occupation, and the president of the authority must be in harmony with the position of the Palestinian street and the revolution in Jenin. Hamayel stressed that "Abbas is still gasping for the leaders of the occupation and the mirage of the settlement project," and this will not make him gain anything, as the occupation wants to control all of Palestine.

Abbas regularly sends greetings on other countries' national holidays; in fact such greetings take up at least half of the press releases from his office.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Rashida Tlaib, the Lion's Den, and the ubiquity of Jew-hate across political boundaries (plus comic)

Last week, member of Congress Rashida Tlaib said at a Palestine Advocacy Day event, “I want you all to know that among progressives, it becomes clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values yet back Israel‘s apartheid government.”

The formulation asserts both the lie that Israel is an apartheid state and that people cannot be both progressive and support Israel.

One does not see similar litmus tests for progressives. Indeed, the virtually unanimous support that the anti-Israel crowd has for the emphatically Islamist, regressive groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad shows the absurdity of the idea that these supposed progressives support only progressive causes.

This was already evident back in 2006 when gender theorist Judith Butler said, "Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important."

If Hamas is part of the global Left, and an Israel where there are equal rights for Arabs and women and gays is cast as part of the bigoted far-Right, then the terms have lost all meaning.

But there is another political theory that is far more powerful than the arbitrary Left/Right divide.

Jew-hatred explains the obvious contradictions between what "progressives" claim to believe and what they actually believe.

And it works both ways. Far right Jew haters, who are far more willing to take pride in their bigotry, regularly pretend to be pro-Palestinian - happily quoting the most far-Left personalities. The racist shooters at Overland Park and Pittsburgh were partly fueled by the antisemitism of the Left.

The far-Right pretense of caring about Palestinian human rights is as transparently false as the far-Left pretense of caring about women's and gay rights while supporting Hamas.

Another proof that antisemitism trumps Left/Right politics comes from the new West Bank terror group, called The Lion's Den. As Khaled Abu Toameh reports:

This is the first organized armed group that consists of gunmen belonging to a number of Palestinian factions – including Fatah, Hamas, IJ and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The PFLP is a Communist group. Islamic Jihad and Hamas are Islamist groups. How can they work together?

Because for antisemites, there is no Right and Left. Those political affiliations are excuses for their hate of Jews, not the reasons for it. Arab antisemites are far less wedded to their supposed Leftist or Islamist Rightist causes than they are to hating Jews - but it is the exact same logic that allows Western "progressives" to be as hypocritical as Western white supremacists who pretend to love Palestinian Arabs.

The only consistency is Jew-hate.

Perhaps it is time to resurrect the political parties like the late 19th century Deutschsoziale Antisemitische Partei whose primary ideological basis was antisemitism, so these people on the Right and Left can join together and enjoy consistent political positions.

The Lion's Den is a model for how today's antisemites can put aside their differences for the greater good of ethnically cleansing Jews from the planet.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Dr. Najeeb Qaddoumi, a member of the Palestinian National Council who lives in Jordan, has been publishing a series of articles in Arabic media entitled "Palestine: the land of milk and honey."

As an official of the Palestinian government, his opinion of Jews is state-sanctioned antisemitism.

He starts off with the idea that Canaan was a peaceful, progressive state where writing was invented. (It wasn't.) He doesn't mention the many wars, occupations and invasions. And he claims that the Canaanites invented the term "land of milk and honey." (Um, no.)

His historical revisionism continues in part two, where he says the Philistines peacefully integrated with the Canaanites and magnanimously gave their name, Palestine, to the region.

Jews? What Jews? Qaddoumi says that there is no evidence that the children of Israel ever enter the land of Canaan; they stayed in the Arabian peninsula and the rabbis made up the whole Torah while in Babylonian captivity. But he allows that there are some opinions that there was a Kingdom of Judah and of Israel.

In part 3, though, he says that somehow the Jews convinced themselves while in Babylonia that their ancestors really had a rich, detailed life in the Land of Israel, so this was an early form of Zionism. He then says:

Religious reformer Martin Luther says their Talmud and their rabbis teach them that murder is not considered a sin if the murderer is a Jew and the murdered is a non-Jew, but it is considered a sin only if the Jew kills his Jewish brother.

The Jews still cling to this belief and follow the example of their parents and teach their children to do so, and this is what the Israeli curricula that they are trying to impose on Arab schools, especially in Jerusalem, imply.

As they sow in the minds of their children hatred for the Palestinian, the Arab and the Muslim... By forgery and fabrication they try to erase the ideas of the Palestinian students who are steadfast on their land with their families and poison the facts and distort their ideas and distance them from their heritage and their ancient past.

Then, in part 4, a truly bizarre analogy is made, but one that leaves no doubt that "Zionists" and Jews mean the same thing to Qaddoumi:

The hatred between the Jewish and Christian parties deepened when the Jews crucified Jesus...

It is worth noting that Zionism has tried hard to acquit the Jews of the blood of Christ, peace be upon him, and despite the fact that the United Nations issued an important resolution in 1975 AD saying that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination. But the American and Zionist political pressures and campaigns of extortion and skepticism enabled Zionism and Israel, with the support of the United States of America and Britain, to issue a resolution acquitting the Jews of the blood of Christ, peace be upon him, issued by Pope Paul VI in 1965 AD, and a decision by the United Nations in 1991 AD to cancel its decision to condemn Zionism.

Those powerful Jews managed to take over the UN - and the Roman Catholic Church!

Qaddoumi writes for many Palestinian and Arab news outlets.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

09/28 Links Pt2: The first Jew to escape Auschwitz helped save 200,000 lives — but few know his name; What You Won’t Read in the NYT's about Al-Haq and the Designated NGOs

From Ian:

The first Jew to escape Auschwitz helped save 200,000 lives — but few know his name

On April 7, 1944, a nineteen-year-old named Walter Rosenberg and a twenty-five-year-old from the same town in Slovakia named Fred Wetzler became the first Jews to escape from Auschwitz. The two made their way through the Polish countryside and into their native country, where Rosenberg—taking the name Rudolf Vrba as cover—tried to get the story of what he saw to his fellow Jews, and to the world at large. Robert Philpot, reviewing a new biography of this forgotten hero, writes:

As soon as they crossed the border, Wetzler made contact with Slovakia’s Jewish council, the only communal organization the regime still allowed to function. The men were then subjected to a grueling 48-hour interview and cross-examination, both to establish their credibility and to record their story.

From their interviews, Oskar Krasnansky, one of the council’s most senior members, compiled a 32-page, single-spaced report, complete with professional drawings based on Vrba’s and Wetzler’s testimonies. The . . . report methodically detailed the horrors of Auschwitz and, crucially, the fictions deployed by the Nazis from the moment the cattle-truck doors were slammed on departure to that at which the gas-chamber doors were locked.

Reactions to the report in London and Washington also revealed that, despite the horrors it contained, old prejudices remained unshaken. The U.S. Army magazine, Yank, for instance, declined to use material from it in a feature on Nazi war crimes, requesting instead “a less Jewish account.” Meanwhile, in the UK Foreign Office, civil servants bemoaned the “usual Jewish exaggeration” and the amount of time expended on “these wailing Jews.”

But, alongside these responses, there was also a swirl of disbelief surrounding the report’s revelations: one which affected not only the Allies but even some Jews themselves. It was perhaps best captured by the words of the French-Jewish philosopher Raymond Aron: “I knew, but I didn’t believe it. And because I didn’t believe it, I didn’t know.”

‘The God-Damnedest Thing’: The Antisemitic Plot to Thwart U.S. Aid to Europe’s Jews and the Man Who Exposed It

On June 19, 1939, over lunch at the White House, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. attempted something he was loath to do: He prodded his best friend. “A year has passed,” he told Franklin D. Roosevelt, “and we have not got anywhere on this Jewish refugee thing. What are we going to do about it?”

No other member of the Roosevelt cabinet enjoyed a relationship as intimate with the president; the two had a standing date for a private lunch on Mondays. Across Washington, Morgenthau and his wife Elinor were known as the couple closest to the Roosevelts: Since the early 1920s, they had worked together, socialized together and, long before the New Deal, made common cause. (“From one of two of kind,” FDR had once inscribed a photograph to Elinor.) Morgenthau rarely dared to risk his most treasured friendship. But the saga of the St. Louis, the ship carrying nearly a thousand Jewish refugees that had reached Florida only to be turned back to Europe, haunted him. The tragedy, coming just days before his lunch at the White House, laid bare the grim truths of the crisis unfolding on the continent.

The only son of the New York real estate baron — Henry Morgenthau, Sr., who’d become America’s most vocal anti-Zionist — Henry Jr. was reared as a devout assimilationist. He’d never even attended a Passover Seder. But the desperate news from Europe had stirred something, brought a change that those few who were close to him would later call an “awakening.”

The war in Europe would test Morgenthau in ways unlike any other member of the Roosevelt administration. In “those terrible eighteen months,” as he would later call the period after the summer of 1942, when he first learned that “the Nazis were planning to exterminate all the Jews of Europe,” Morgenthau would find himself surrounded by threats: an anti-immigrant old guard at the State Department, “America First” isolationists on Capitol Hill and enraged Zionist leaders desperate for the attention of the White House. He would face the greatest test of his 12-year tenure in Washington, risking all that he held most dear: not only his friendship with FDR, but the trust of his best men at Treasury and even the faith of his own family. In the end, Morgenthau would rely on his moral compass — “Franklin’s conscience,” Eleanor Roosevelt liked to call him — to affirm his belief in America as a sanctuary for the persecuted, and press his best friend to act, before it was too late, to save the remaining Jews of Europe. Now, as the nation finds itself once more bitterly divided over its obligations to the world’s refugees, the story of Morgenthau’s crusade serves as a poignant reminder of what can happen when government officials stand up to the misdeeds of their own administration.

A Nazi Collaborator in the Family

Dutch filmmaker Eline Jongsma was enjoying dinner with her father when he suddenly confessed a family secret: His paternal grandfather was a known Nazi collaborator during WWII.

“There wasn’t even ever hints of this being part of my family’s history so it wasn’t a moment of ‘Oh, I see, I figured it out.’ It was a total shock,” Jongsma told Tablet in a Zoom interview from the Netherlands. “I think the reason my father told me then was his father died very recently.”

A decade later, her story sometimes voices itself in metaphor, like falling scraps of aging archival documents resembling cascading fingernail clippings—imagery that embodies a poignant turning point in her groundbreaking documentary, His Name Is My Name. Rather than bury the culpability of her great-grandfather, Jongsma, 42, mines it in the film—in a sequence of three-minute videos living on Instagram, @hisnamemyname.

With Kel O’Neill, 43, her American-born creative partner and husband, Jongsma expertly explores long discarded fragments of her complex history, generational trauma, and hope. Since its July release, the project has been gaining recognition, with 30,000 views and climbing, and installations at Kamp Westerbork, the Dutch memorial at the site where more than 100,000 Jews, Roma, and Sinti people were deported to Nazi extermination camps in Central and Eastern Europe. As a child, Jongsma and her family gathered wild mushrooms there. In addition to beingfeatured in a mural with images and a QR code at Westerbork’s The Memory of Camp Westerbork exhibition, the documentary’s 10 self-contained installments appear on YouTube.

“There was [this] idea, maybe if artists can make something about this ‘perpetrator perspective’ as they call it, we can educate the youth a little more,” Jongsma said. “We were asked to submit an idea and at first, we were not quite sure what to do with this.”

Jongsma explains a complication of visual storytelling is that the filming itself lends itself to glorifying a subject, “which of course was very problematic,” she said. “So it took us a while to think about how to approach this.”

As the heavily researched episodes explain, Jongsma shares her surname with her great-grandfather: convicted war criminal Gekke Gerrit, or “Crazy Gerrit,” a notorious Nazi-aligned mayor of the small Dutch town of Krommenie, north of Amsterdam. Known for his penchant for violence, Gerrit Jongsma sent at least one Jewish family, Esther and Benjamin Drilsma, to be murdered at Auschwitz. He subsequently hunted down their hidden 6-year-old daughter Fien (Adolphine), whom he doomed to death in Sobibor. He may not even be the only perpetrator among Jongsma’s ancestors.

Malki Roth is perhaps a name you’re sick of hearing, a stale story, an old story, the story of the Jewish girl who got blown up while eating pizza a LONG time ago. Even as you feel perhaps a pinch of guilt at your indifference, you say to yourself that it’s Israel’s fault in the first place that the woman who helped murder 15-year-old Malki is free. Which also makes the subject of Malki Roth a subject that some people just don’t want to touch.

Which, with Yom Kippur coming up, is a shame. Justice for Malki Roth should be—needs to be—a national, Jewish cause. No one should have to work hard to get the world to care about this. Instead, it’s like pulling teeth.

I have written about Malki Roth and interviewed her father Arnold several times. Each time a column comes out, the number of viewers progressively dwindles. It is as if the Jewish world collectively says, “It was cool to read about this the first time around, but nu?? Write about something else, already.”

Two weeks ago I wrote something new about Malki Roth, or so I thought. I had been struck by the way the State Department focused on the Abu Akleh thing while completely ignoring the Roth family’s letter to President Biden, requesting a meeting with him during his visit to Israel. Both Abu Akleh and Malki Roth were American citizens, but only one of them was a Jew.

It was, I thought, a new perspective on the subject of Malki Roth. Something to share around, to help raise awareness of the issue. Yet when I sent the link to a colleague, he responded, “please [sic] don't send me these news items since I know about it.”

Note that this is a man who contacted me out of the blue a few months ago. I knew his work and it was impressive. I was flattered. He had, he said, read a certain piece of mine, and liked it. Did I consider sending it to this or that publication? Also, his daughter is a musician who lives on a settlement. I would like her, did I want her number? Could I share his piece?

I did what I could to promote his piece, and he continued to send me his stuff, so I began to send him mine. Perhaps I was wrong to send him my work without seeking his consent. But this happens to be how it’s done. It’s called “networking.”

After that last email, I would have just written him off as a jerk. But it was a piece about Malki Roth, an important cause for me—as it should be for him! Even if he doesn’t have time to read it, it’s something to share with others to help raise awareness of a major Jewish cause. Instead, what bothered him was unwanted email/spam, though he’d only recently asked for my help, which I had freely given.

I have concluded that the issue began when he saw the name “Malki Roth” in the subject line. To him this is old stuff. It’s diplomatically touchy: Why should we expect Jordan to extradite a terrorist who killed Israeli Jews, when Israel itself released her to her freedom? And why should anyone expect the United States to do more to seek justice for a Jewish Israeli—even one with dual US citizenship—than Israel itself?

There’s some logic to this. Also, it is possible that Israel doesn’t want Jordan to extradite the Sbarro terrorist Ahlam Tamimi--the beast who helped to murder Malki Roth We can’t know what goes on behind closed doors. I asked Arnold Roth about this. Who is correct in this matter? Should the US stay out of it? Should Jordan be left alone? Is Israel getting in the way of justice?

Arnold was matter of fact. “Legally, there’s no case for Jordan. Tamimi is charged under US law for a crime that involved the deliberate and exceptionally cold-blooded killing of children. It was the children that drew her to Sbarro.

“But what about politics?" asks Roth.

“Jordan is a young kingdom, ruled by a family with dynastic ambitions but whose roots are in what we today call Saudi Arabia," explains Roth. "The vast majority of Jordan’s population is made up of people who call themselves Palestinians. And there’s said to be a consensus that even if he wanted to, King Abdullah would endanger his kingdom and perhaps his life if he were to hand over this heroic figure, the killer of “Zionist rapists,” (an expression often used in Jordan’s media in connection with victims of the Sbarro massacre) to the Americans. So we all ought to understand that this is something that he, Abdullah, just can’t be expected to do,” says Roth, with sarcasm.

“There’s a lot that’s wrong with that way of looking at this. But," says Roth, "it gets worse."

“Israel is quietly said to be interested in avoiding any steps that would put King Abdullah’s rule and the stability of his kingdom at risk. And to have said this to the Americans."

So, okay. We get it. Israel doesn’t want the US to press the extradition issue. But that doesn’t make it okay for Jordan or the United States to turn a blind eye to a child murderer on the loose. Also: Israel will do what Israel will do, but the Jewish people? We can be as loud as we want in seeking justice for a 15 year old girl whose blood cries out from the ground!

The same was true of the Jonathan Pollard issue. Some said it was Israel that didn't want him freed. They said he took money, he was no saint. But in the end we were loud enough, and they let Pollard go. We, as a people, fought for him and won. And now we must fight for Malki Roth who is no longer here to plead her case.

People need to hear this story. They need to know how nations have colluded to protect Tamimi, an evil being who openly delights in having helped to spill the blood of Jewish children. Her aim was to kill Jews, and specifically Jewish children, which makes this most decidedly a national problem.

What we need to do is get loud and make Malki Roth a household name. No matter what anyone says there is no reason we shouldn't press for the extradition of Ahlam Tamimi and no good reason not to adopt justice for Malki Roth as a national Jewish cause.

#JusticeforMalkiRoth

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah doesn't even pretend to oppose terrorism against Jews

Back in 2015, the official Fatah Facebook page was taken down for encouraging terror.

When the page came back, Fatah tried to be careful. But in recent weeks it has gone full-blown terror support.

Today alone it has posted about 10 pro-terror messages, mostly in support for the Al Aqsa Brigades terrorists killed this morning before they could launch a major attack.

Plus a video showing one of them in action:

And if it wasn't clear enough already, it quotes an official saying that "the Al Aqsa Brigades, the Jenin battalion and the [Palestinian Authority] security agencies are a single weapon in the face of the occupation."

Also, it quotes the PA interior minister denying a quote attributed to him opposing weapons and violence in the West Bank because it gives an excuse for Israeli forces to enter. Apparently, the PA interior minister no longer opposes gunfire in the cities under his control.

And the world is silent.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

09/28 Links Pt1: Why Haven’t Sarsour, Omar, and Tlaib Even Mentioned Iran’s Hijab Protests?; Nearly Half of Israelis Agree Iran Nuke Sites Should Be Attacked Even Without US Support

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: More can be done to support the Iranian protests against strict Islamic laws

The civil unrest that began in Iran on September 16 has been called “The Mahsa Amini protests,” named after the young Iranian woman who died in police custody in Tehran after being severely beaten by the Guidance Patrol, the Islamic Republic’s morality police, which accused her of wearing an “improper” hijab in violation of Iran’s mandatory hijab law.

“The 22-year-old woman emerged from the Tehran subway, her dark hair covered with a black headscarf and the lines of her body obscured by loose clothing, when the capital city’s Guidance Patrol spotted her,” The New York Times reported. “They were members of Iran’s notorious morality police, enforcers of the conservative Islamic dress and behavior rules that have governed daily life for Iranians since the 1979 revolution, and newly energized under a hard-line president who took office last year. By their standards, Mahsa Amini was improperly dressed, which could mean something as simple as a wisp of hair protruding from her headscarf. They put her in a van and drove her away to a detention center, where she was to undergo re-education. Three days later, on September 16, she was dead.”

The protests erupted hours after her death outside the Tehran hospital where she was treated and spread like wildfire to her home province of Kurdistan and then to other cities across Iran.

In response, the Iranian regime initially implemented regional shutdowns of Internet access, and as the protests grew, it imposed a widespread Internet blackout together with nationwide restrictions on social media.

Still, dozens of protesters have been killed in almost two weeks of rage and street battles that are certainly the deadliest since the 2019–20 protests which resulted in more than 1,500 fatalities. The New York Times called them the largest the country has witnessed since 2009, when demonstrations broke out in response to the reelection of then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a vote seen by many as fraudulent.

Chanting “Women, life and freedom” and “Death to the dictator,” the protesters targeted their anger at their ailing supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while their current president, Ebrahim Raisi, was in New York City to address the UN General Assembly. Ironically, Raisi canceled a scheduled interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour after she refused to wear a headscarf.

Phyllis Chesler: Why Haven’t Linda Sarsour, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib Even Mentioned Iran’s Hijab Protests?

Clearly, the Iranian women and their male supporters find their lives intolerable. They’d rather be dead than continue to live in the prison that Iran has become for all but the ruling mullahs and their hirelings.

The demonstrations, however, are about more than women’s rights. Iranians have demonstrated in massive numbers before — in 2009 over election fraud, in 2017 over economic misery, and in 2019 over fuel prices. Each time, the government suppressed the uprisings with bullets, tear gas, beatings, arrests, torture, and murder. What might be required for a different outcome to occur?

In a personal interview, my esteemed colleague, Ibn Warraq, points out: “The protesters lack leadership and above all they lack weapons.”

Ibn Warraq also points out that “At some point the army would have to flip, refuse to kill their own people.”

Is this possible? Can it ever happen? Are a people who were able to drive out the Shah also capable of driving out Khomeini’s mullahs? That is the question.

For all its very serious faults, including using the American flag to fashion a hijab for the marchers, Sarsour was part of a Women’s March leadership that drew hundreds of thousands of people. Tlaib and Omar have run multiple successful campaigns.

Imagine if they applied their organizational skills to rallying Americans to take to the streets in support the heroic Iranian women and men who are risking their lives for the freedoms we enjoy in America.

It could show the Iranians that we stand with them, and that moral support might help keep them going. Sadly, we are unlikely to find out.

Emily Schrader: Iran protests should be turning point in change for women, life and freedom

This past week, practically the entire country of Iran exploded over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, arrested by Iran’s infamous morality police for improperly wearing a hijab (a criminal offense in Iran). She was beaten and later died of her injuries. The response from the people of Iran has been overwhelming.

Iranians once lived in an extremely progressive and liberal country, but for 43 years now have suffered under the terrorist dictatorship of the Ayatollah – a radically Islamist regime known for its barbarity, cruelty, and misogyny. Mahsa’s death, however, has sparked an uprising. The people have had their fill of systematic oppression, in particular against women. Through massive protests and the help of social media, Iranians are doing all they can to reclaim their country. Sadly, the West appears to be failing them yet again.

From the very start of the protests, the movement was women-led, with initial slogans being “women, life, freedom.” With the hashtag #MahsaAmini, videos began circulating across social media showing Iranian women cutting their hair and burning their hijabs to protest against the Islamic regime and its brutal morality police. The protests spilled into the streets as tens of thousands of Iranians gathered fearlessly, men and women, burning hijabs in public, dancing (another illegal activity for women in Iran), and chanting, “death to the dictator!” in the face of violent regime police.

Yet at the same time as Iranians were fighting for their basic freedoms and for equality between men and women, the United States – which is supposed to be a beacon of freedom and democracy in the world – welcomed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, also known as the “Butcher of Tehran” for his role in mass executions and torture of political dissidents. Raisi touched down in New York to address the UN General Assembly, yet should never have been granted a visa.

The US prohibits issuing visas to leaders who have threatened US leaders or have carried out terrorist activities. Given that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is a terror group in the United States, the fact the US would grant Raisi a visa is appalling and disrespectful to Raisi’s victims and the Iranian people.

As if that wasn’t sickening enough, shortly before Raisi addressed the UN, he conducted an interview with 60 Minutes in which he blatantly refused to recognize that the Holocaust occurred. Later, in his UN speech, he criticized the United States and praised late IRGC Commander Qasem Soleimani, a man responsible for countless acts of terrorism.

A Western media outlet notices that Mahmoud Abbas is a dictator

France's Liberation news site has an article on Mahmoud Abbas that agrees, in the headline, that he is an authoritarian.

This has been obvious for years, but Western media has resisted saying it.

It is based on an AFP interview from Monday of Nasser Kidwa, Yasir Arafat's nephew who was pushed out of Fatah by Abbas last year. “He does what he wants, without consideration for anything: the law, the institutions, the traditions (...) It has become totalitarian”, Kidwa said.

Unfortunately, the article seems to linger more on how Abbas has appeared to be "collaborating" with Israel by maintaining some pretense of holding to the Oslo Accords. It quotes critics of Abbas who would be more authoritarian than he is. What is best for Palestinians themselves seems to be hardly a consideration.

I have yet to see a Western media outlet mention that Abbas controls the executive. legislative and judicial branches of the Palestinian government, as well as a terror group.

So to see any real discussion of the true immorality of Mahmoud Abbas, you need to go to niche sites like Gatestone Institute to read real experts like Khaled Abu Toameh.

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Arab Youth Survey: Still on the wrong side of history

The latest Arab Youth Survey indicates that as much as we would love to believe that access to the Internet has moderated the majority of Arab youth, it still isn't true.

Far more Arab youth blames the Ukraine war on the US and NATO than on Russia.

China, Turkey and Russia are considered their top three allies, while 88% say that Israel is an enemy of the Arab world, more than any other non-Arab country:

29% say the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the biggest obstacle facing the Middle East, behind cost of living and unemployment, but ahead of corruption.

9% feel that Israel has the most influence on the Arab world, third place but way behind the US (but ahead of Russia, China and the UAE:)

Interestingly, 57% of the same youth say that the one country they would most want to live in is the UAE - and that is higher than it ever was before. Meaning that the Abraham Accords does not negatively affect Arab youths' opinions of the UAE - perhaps the opposite.

It is a shame that the survey results do not break down the Palestinian youth answers to specific questions.

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Chair of a "human rights" NGO tweets antisemitism - and unapologetically deletes it

Ramy Abdu is chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and has been a regular speaker at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

He is also an antisemitic bigot.

Abdu tweeted this video, showing popular Israeli Orthodox singer Avraham Fried, wishing a sweet and happy New Year to the entire nation of Israel, with the soldiers of the Netzach Battalion then singing their own song repeating their name.

But Abdu, who was born in Gaza, chose to describe the events of the video quite differently from the reality, claiming that the "rabbi" and the soldiers were singing racist chants and insults against Muslims and Arabs.

His tweet was up for hours, even as dozens of people pointed out how Abdu was lying.

Abdu then silently deleted it and replaced it:

Two days later - no apology for his libel.

And he is a respected "human rights" figure.

One only needs one example like this to understand that nothing that Ramy Abdu or his organization says can be trusted. But there are lots of examples proving that Abdu is an antisemitic bigot and his organization similarly doesn't have any interest in facts.

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09/27 Links: Israel's 'Peace Partner' Is Slaughtering Israelis; Rashida Tlaib’s absurd acid test; Qaradawi, who endorsed suicide bombings against Israelis, dies

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Israel's 'Peace Partner' Is Slaughtering Israelis

These two bodies [Palestinian Authority (PA) and its ruling faction, Fatah] are headed by one man: Mahmoud Abbas, who has zero compunction about his loyalists murdering and wounding Israelis. On the contrary, he encourages it and pays generously for it -- with money from Europe and the United States.

Despite [an extremely long list of terrorist attacks against Israel], Fatah is also often mystifyingly referred to by some Israelis and Westerners as a "moderate" Palestinian faction as opposed to the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Fatah, however, has proved over the years that its actions and rhetoric are actually no different from those of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the terror groups that openly call for the elimination of Israel.

In 1993, Yasser Arafat, then leader of Fatah and the PLO, committed "to a peaceful resolution of the conflict" with Israel and claimed that the PLO "renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence." His loyalists, however, continued to murder and wound Israelis even after making these commitments, signing the Oslo Accords and supposedly beginning an Israeli-Palestinian "peace process."

The groups are so proud of their terrorism that they have started filming their gunmen preparing and carrying out the attacks. They are, in addition, calling on Palestinians to escalate the fight against Israel, while enthusiastically and warmly endorsing the terrorists.

The growing involvement of Fatah and PA members in terrorism is one of the direct results of the Palestinian leadership's extreme incitement against Israel. Abbas and his aides continue to level the worst charges and libels against Israel. It is this kind of rhetoric, as well as generous payments, that encourage Palestinians to carry out attacks against Israelis. The fact that Abbas and his entourage do not even bother to rein in or denounce the terrorists is apparently seen by many Palestinians as a green light to continue the attacks.

The international community, for its part, is so preoccupied with bashing Israel that no one is calling out these putative Palestinian "peace partners" over their role in terrorism. This silence is also encouraging these Palestinian "peace partners" to continue their attacks.

That is why the Fatah-affiliated Lions' Den group has felt confident enough to publish a new threat: "O Jews, The Countdown For Your Demise Has Begun; Stabbings, Car-Rammings, Clashes."

This is the "peace partner" that the Biden administration is hoping to assist in establishing a Palestinian state next to Israel. With a partner like this, it is easy to imagine what the situation in the Middle East will look like -- more violence, terrorism and bloodshed. Israel's "peace partners" are doing everything in their power to confirm the fears of Israelis about the presence of a Palestinian state just a handful of kilometers from their homes.

Rashida Tlaib’s absurd acid test

Having established a dubious anti-Zionist litmus test for Americans who disagree with her one-sided and unhelpful position on Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, Tlaib has offended some of her Democratic colleagues in Congress.

“I fundamentally reject the notion that one cannot support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state and be a progressive,” tweeted Jerry Nadler of New York.

“There is nothing progressive about advocating the end of Israel,” Ritchie Torres of New York wrote on Twitter.

“Proud progressives do support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state,” said Debbie Wasserman of Florida. “Suggestions otherwise are shameful and dangerous.”

They are stating the obvious.

Much to her discredit, Tlaib has erected an artificial barrier between Americans in the progressive movement who support Israel and those who work for its disappearance.

By Tlaib’s skewed standard, progressive-minded politicians and citizens cannot support the cause of Jewish statehood while endorsing Palestinian statehood.

Tlaib’s all-or-nothing philosophy is ethnically self-centered, nasty and destructive. It serves no constructive objective and falls perfectly into line with the policy of Iran — a theocratic and totalitarian state that suppresses free speech and assembly and squelches women’s inalienable rights — and the policies of movements like Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda and Islamic State, all of which decry progressive positions.

Contrary to Tlaib’s outlook, a progressive person can support human rights and fundamental freedoms without renouncing Israel’s right to exist. This is elementary.

Progressives can, and should, criticize Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its failure to fully integrate Muslim and Christian Arabs into Israeli society. But they are on shaky ground when they suggest that a person cannot be simultaneously pro-Israel and progressive, as Tlaib erroneously claims.

Tlaib’s view should be regarded as an opinion among a multitude of opinions in the Democratic Party. It is not carved in stone. Nor is it representative of mainstream thinking in the party or in the country.

Tlaib is entitled to her views, but she should not be under the false impression that they represent the Democratic Party or American public opinion.

Shana tova u'metuka 5783

Here is a Rosh Hashana greeting card asking that the New Year be a year of "liberation of holy places."

According to one page of the National Library of Israel website, this card was created in 1967.

Yet the Hebrew year on this card is 5700, which would make this card from 1939. That adds a real poignancy to this.

Jews were always praying for the liberation of holy places in Jerusalem and elsewhere, but if Israel had existed in 1939, there would be millions more Jews alive today.

May you have a sweet, wonderful New Year!

I will not be posting from sunset tonight in whatever time zone I'm in until late Tuesday or Wednesday.

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09/25 Links: Welcoming the year of 5783; Glick: Booking.com and the Anti-Semitic Zeitgeist; Polish venue cancels Roger Waters gigs after Ukraine comments

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Welcoming the year of 5783

Rosh Hashanah 5783 begins at sundown this evening, September 25, and ends at nightfall on Tuesday, September 27. The holiday celebrates not only the Jewish New Year, but also the birth of the universe and the beginning of the Days of Awe – 10 days of repentance and renewal that culminate in Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

The past year, 5782, has been a difficult one for Israel and the world. Although we appear to be emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been some disturbing global developments – from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seven months ago to the Vienna negotiations on a new Iran nuclear deal.

Historically, this period will be remembered for the death of Queen Elizabeth II after an almost-record sovereign reign of 70 years (Louis XIV of France reigned almost two years longer) and the beginning of a new era under her son, King Charles III.

In Israel, we are witnessing a turbulent period as the country braces for its fifth election in less than four years (the first was on April 9, 2019). Security has been tightened ahead of Rosh Hashanah as the country also faces a resurgence of Palestinian terrorism. Are there any good news for a change?

On the positive side, the Israeli economy is showing signs of bouncing back. The Central Bureau of Statistics reported, for example, that the employment rate rose in August to the highest level in four years.

Israel’s ties with Arab and Muslim states are advancing well – especially in the Gulf – as evidenced most recently in talks on a free-trade agreement with Bahrain and Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in New York on Tuesday, the first such meeting since December 2008.

Britain’s Prime Minister Liz Truss told Lapid on Wednesday at the United Nations that she is reviewing a relocation of her country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which would also be a welcome development.

Poll: 65% of Israelis Think Country is ‘Good Place to Live’

Nearly 65 percent of the country’s population say Israel is a good place to live, while 33 percent of the respondents think the opposite, according to a poll published ahead of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

The survey conducted by Maariv, showed that the degree of satisfaction is higher among the older respondents: 77 percent of those aged 61 and over said they are satisfied, compared to 51 percent of people under 29.

The positive perception of life in Israel is also more widespread among religious (79 percent) and ultra-Orthodox (69 percent) respondents, compared to 59 percent of people who identify themselves as secular.

The majority of respondents (62 percent) also believe that the State of Israel is immutable, while 23 percent, on the contrary, believe that it faces existential dangers.

Asked about what worries them the most in Israel, 68 percent of respondents said it was the cost of living. It was followed by Palestinian terrorism (32 percent), housing prices (18 percent), crime (13 percent) and political instability (12 percent).

The majority of those worried about terrorism are supporters of Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu (47 percent), while Arab respondents are much more concerned about crime (39 percent) and Jewish-Arab relations (21 percent).

Caroline Glick: Booking.com and the Anti-Semitic Zeitgeist

As for the zeitgeist, repeated surveys of public opinion show Europeans are largely hostile to Israel. For instance, a 2019 survey of European opinion by Bertelsman Stiftung Foundation found that whereas 61% of Israelis were positively disposed toward Europeans, a mere 20% of Europeans held positive opinions of Israel.

Regarding the Netherlands specifically, a 2018 study carried out by Israel’s left-leaning Institute for National Security Studies showed that the Dutch media collectively cover Israel in a manner that delegitimizes Israel’s existence and dehumanizes Israeli Jews. A popular Dutch media tactic for demonizing Israel is to claim that Israel cannot be a democracy, since during the period under review, the Knesset was debating a bill aimed at curbing the hostile activities of Dutch-funded anti-Israel NGOs.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MN) spoke to the now-rising anti-Israel, and increasingly outright anti-Jewish zeitgeist in progressive America on September 20. In remarks to an online forum hosted by a pro-Palestinian group, Tlaib said, “Among progressives, it has become clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values, yet back Israel’s apartheid government.” She added, “We will not accept this idea that you are progressive, except for Palestine, any longer.”

Tlaib’s call for pro-Israel Americans to be shunned by progressives was roundly condemned by a handful of predominantly but not exclusively Jewish Democratic lawmakers, who rightly characterized her statement, and Tlaib herself, as anti-Semitic. On the other hand, there were several other lawmakers who participated in the online conference with Tlaib—and none expressed any qualms about her remarks. Moreover, President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and the rest of the Biden administration and Democratic congressional leadership felt no need to condemn Tlaib. To the contrary, they have embraced Tlaib. When Tlaib condemned U.S. support for Israel during last year’s Hamas missile offensive against the Jewish state, Biden gushed over Tlaib; he expressed his “admiration” for the anti-Semitic lawmaker, applauded her “passion” and “intellect,” and called her a “fighter.”

When seen in the broader context of Europe’s political war against Israel and the dominant anti-Israel and anti-Jewish zeitgeist in Europe and progressive America, Booking.com’s action cannot be dismissed as the mere bloviation of overpaid, woke corporate executives. Instead, it must be seen as a sign of what is already happening, and a warning of an even worse situation that perhaps awaits us, as anti-Semitism again becomes the condition for entry into high society in Europe and America.

By Daled Amos

There are not that many arguments out there against the Abraham Accords.

After all, how do you argue against peace between Jews and Arabs?
How can you find fault in a coalition that opposes the leading state sponsor of terrorism?
What is wrong with the prosperity created by trade between the countries involved?

Now a different kind of argument is being made: the Abraham Accords are based on a myth.

Writing in Haaretz, Seraj Assi explains Why Jews and Arabs Are Not Long Lost Cousins

While Arab and Israeli leaders are celebrating the second anniversary of the Abraham Accords with language and iconography leaning heavily on a return to ancient and ancestral kinship, history itself begs to differ.

The Abraham Accords, which turn two years old this month, are founded on a historical myth long cherished by Middle East peacemakers: that Arabs and Jews are descendants of one great forefather, Abraham, and hence are both symbolic and ethnic cousins, the Arabs being descendants of his son Ishmael.

Assi goes into a detailed overview of the development of the idea that Arabs are Ishmaelites, descendants of Ishmael, and therefore brothers with the common father, Abraham.

And what is his point?

For many disenchanted Arabs and Palestinians, however, the Abraham Accords are illusory, a branding exercise milking a historical myth, just like the political fable that peace can be achieved by a stroke of pen or a romanticized leap of historical imagination. But there is more to peace than mythmaking. Perhaps Arabs and Jews can find a better way to coexist in real life and legitimate each other than depending on the delusions of historical fiction.

According to Assi, if the familial ties between Jews and Arabs are an illusory myth, then the Abraham Accords themselves are illusory as well, based on nothing more than "a stroke of the pen."

Assi's point about Ishmael is not new.

Almost 70 years ago, the ethnographer, historian and Arabist S. D. Goitein wrote about this in his 1955 book Jews and Arabs: Their Contacts Through the Ages:

To be sure there is no record in the Bible showing that Ishmael was the forefather of the "Arabs." [p. 21]

But Goitein continues that by the same token,

While the pseudo-scientific myth of the Semitic race has no basis in reality, there is much more to the popular belief that Jews and Arabs are close relatives, "cousins," because they were descended from the brothers Isaac and Ishmael, the sons of Abraham.

He writes that the Ishmaelites were an ancient tribe that vanished from history, which the Bible then used as a common noun to denote desert people who were camel-breeders and engaged in either raids or transport. During the Second Temple, when Jews had many dealings with Arab tribes, they were described as Ishmaelites. In addition, the Arabs were also referred to as dodanim, cousins, of Israel. Dodanim was a pun on the name of the Arab tribe Dedanim mentioned in Isaiah 21:13.

But according to Goitein this connection between Jews and Arabs was more than a literary invention. He writes that ancient Israel and the original pre-Islamic Arabs

show very distinctive affinities which make them akin to each other and different from the great civilizations which surrounded and influenced them. There were very definite common traits in the social traditions and the moral attitudes of the two peoples. These common traits can best be described as those of a primitive democracy. [p. 27; emphasis in the original]

He contrasts Jews and Arabs with the kingdoms of the ancient Orient, such as Mesopotamia, Egypt and Asia Minor and the later civilizations of Byzantium and Persia (3rd-7th century). In ancient Israel and among the Arabs, society consisted of rich and poor, fortunate and miserable, just like everywhere else. But unlike other kingdoms and civilizations, there were no privileged classes or castes established by law.

In his book, The Seed of Abraham: Jews and Arabs in Contact and Conflict, (p. 7) Raphael Patai writes about "pre-Islamic values and characters traits which to this day are basic ingredients of the Arab personality" described by pre-Islamic poets:

o hospitality
o  bravery
o  generosity
o  manliness
o  honor (vis-a-vis shame)

The Jewish trait of hachnasas orchim, as personified by Abraham, clearly parallels the hospitality listed above. Gemilus Chasadim (sometimes translated as "giving lovingkindness") may also parallel the generosity listed above. They reflect a tight-knit dependence common to both Jews and Arabs.

Goitein sees the source for the similarities between Jews and Arabs described in the Bible. After all, Abraham did have other children besides Isaac and Ishmael:

It would seem that the answer to this question is to be sought in the aboriginal affinity alluded to in the Bible.
According to Genesis (21:20-21, 4:1-6, 12-18), Abraham, the ancestor of Israel, was not only the father of Ishmael, but also of Midian and many other tribes living in North Arabia, and even of Sheba, a tribe most probably connected with the old country of Sheba in Southern Arabia. Genesis reports that Abraham sent these sons into the countries of the East, after giving them presents, thus leaving Isaac the sole heir of the Land of Canaan. (p. 31)

And this would signify that

The people of Israel felt themselves closely akin to those tribes of Northern Arabia or even of Southern Arabia. [p. 32]

Regardless of Assi's hangup about "Ishamael", the fact of symbiosis between Jews and pre-Islamic Arabs set the stage for the continuing relationship -- admittedly not always friendly -- between Jews and Arabs in the centuries following the advent of Islam.

Even then, the relationship is different between Jews and Muslims from the relationship of Jews within modern Western civilization

like the ancient civilization of the Greeks, [which] is essentially at variance with the religious culture of the Jewish people...Judaism inside Islam was an autonomous culture sure of itself despite, and possibly because of, its intimate connection with its environment. Never has Judaism encountered such a close and fructuous symbiosis as that with the medieval civilization of Arab Islam. [p. 130]

Where else but among Arabs and Jews today do we find religion, land, language, law and culture so closely bound together?

A review of Goitein's book in a 1956 issue of Commentary Magazine notes:

It is obvious that, backed by oil revenues and 20th-century technology, a new association of the two peoples and the devotion of their talents and resources to pacific purposes could bring both to a new level of prosperity and even spiritual satisfaction.

Unfortunately, a simple Arab-Jewish rapprochement is no longer sufficient. Near Eastern history is made, in 1956, not in Jerusalem and Cairo but in Washington and Moscow, and by harassed officials with little or no intimate knowledge of or concern for Arabs and Jews.

The first paragraph is prescient.
The second one reflects the problem of the old thinking and attitude prior to the "inexperienced" Jared Kushner.

Instead of getting tied down by Assi's semantics, there is potential for further success and even broader peace.

And as we have seen over the past 2 years -- that is no myth.

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