Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, December 10, 2022

12/10 Links: Eighty years since Tunisian Jews were rounded up by the Nazis; Vigil honors victims of 2019 antisemitic shooting in Jersey City

From Ian:

Eighty years since Tunisian Jews were rounded up by the Nazis

December 9 1942 marked a turning point in the fortunes of the Jews of Tunisia. The Germans occupied the country the previous month, and 5,000 Jewish males were marched off to forced labour camps. There was little that the Jewish community could do to resist this colossal force. France 24 commemorates 80 years since the first round-up:

Moncef Bey: signed every antisemitic decree
On December 9, 1942, when Tunisia had been occupied for a month by the Germans, 3,000 Jewish men over the age of 18 were ordered to do forced labour, but only 120 men showed up. The occupier then ordered a round-up. Nearly 5,000 Jews were sent to forced labor in camps where they suffered ill-treatment.

“While the chief of SS rants, I mentally take stock of the situation, ” recalled community leader Paul Ghez.” We feel very small before the colossal force which has been unleashed. I look to my right at the pitiful group of gloomy and silent prisoners. I can make out the beard of the rabbi, I see a child shivering with fear.” On December 9, 1942, Paul Guez, head of the Jewish community in Tunis, turned out to be quite powerless. While the German occupier conducted the round-up in the Tunisian capital, the Jews could not put up any resistance. Nearly 5,000 Jews were sent to forced labor camps.

This date marks a turning point. Until then, the Jews of Tunisia, about 90,000 people, had not suffered such persecution. Since the establishment of the Vichy regime, however, they were the object of anti-Semitic measures, according to the Statut des juifs promulgated in France in October 1940. “In this statute, article 9 stipulates that it is applicable in the countries of the protectorate”, explains the historian Claude Nataf, president of the Society for the History of the Jews of Tunisia (SHJT). “But for a draft law to be applicable in Tunisia, it must have the seal of the bey (the Tunisian sovereign)”, he says.

At the time, Ahmed II Bey ruled the country. “He is an old man who will die two years later. He is more concerned about his legacy and what he will bequeath to his children. He does not want to come into conflict with the Resident General of France, especially on the Jewish question”, says Claude Nataf. The statute was therefore introduced on November 30, 1940 and excluded Jews in public service and in the press, radio, theater and cinema. However, it turned out to be “more moderate” than in mainland France, according to the historian, since a second statue exempting certain professions was promulgated in June 1941.

The Adas Affair

The life and death of the richest Jew in Iraq

A woman makes a frantic journey from the southern city of Basra to the Royal Palace in Baghdad. Her name is Aliza (Alice) Adas. She is Shafiq Adas’s wife and will soon be his widow. Waiting for her inside the palace is the Hashemite prince Emir ‘Abd al-Ilah, the head of the Iraqi Royal Family. She genuflects before him, falling to the ground and kissing his feet. Little does she know in this moment that hanging in the balance is not only her husband’s life, but also the fate of the whole Jewish community.

It was September 1948. Together with her husband Shafiq, 40-year-old Aliza had brought into the world three sons (Zaki, Victor, and Sabah) and three daughters (Dolly, Vicky, and Stella). In this couple, Aliza was the local one, the daughter of a wealthy family engaged in the tea and sugar trades. Shafiq was born in Aleppo, Syria, and had followed his eldest brother Avraham to Iraq to try his luck in business after the First World War, in which Iraq was conquered by the empire on which the sun had not yet set. Iraq was a whole new world for them, a place of boundless business opportunities. Aliza had a broad face and sharp features, and her posture hinted at her hands-on disposition. Despite having been born and raised in Baghdad and speaking flawless Arabic, she was entirely illiterate in the language. Nevertheless, she had a masterful grasp of English and French, as expected among the Jewish elite in Iraq in that era.

The Emir, for his part, was much weaker than he appeared. Perhaps the most eccentric figure in the Iraqi Royal Family, ‘Abd al-Ilah knew that the opportunities facing him were extremely limited. Ever since his brother-in-law, King Ghazi, had been killed in a gruesome car accident at the entrance of the Royal Palace in Bagdad nine years earlier—a telegraph pole had fallen on his race car and sliced his head in two—the Emir had served as the formal head of the Iraqi state, since the legal heir, Ghazi’s son Faisal, was only four years old. As Queen Aliya’s brother, living with her in the palace, ‘Abd al-Ilah also became the interim head of the royal household, with the title of regent.

This regent had never managed to endear himself to the Iraqi people, most of whom saw him as a pro-British collaborator. He was a gazelle-like figure, wrote a British diplomat, with large eyes, a prominent forehead, and an oval face. His choice to fill his guestroom with photographs of the British Royal Family, and the fact that his main hobby was horseback riding, added nothing to his popularity. He once questioned how Arab he truly was at all. The rumors about his suspected homosexual tendencies did little to help him, either.

Vigil honors victims of 2019 antisemitic shooting in Jersey City

A vigil was held in Jersey City Thursday night to remember the victims of a 2019 antisemitic shooting.

At the vigil commemorating the three years since the deadly shooting at a local kosher grocery store, NJ First Lady Tammy Murphy said, "Detective Joseph Seals, Mindy Ferentz, Moshe Deutsh, Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, and Michael Rumberger. They were spouses, parents, children, neighbors and friends."

Investigators say two gunmen, 47-year-old David Anderson and 50-year-old Francine Graham, killed 13-year veteran Detective Joseph Seals.

They then targeted the Jewish deli and killed three people inside the store including 24-year-old Moshe Deutsch, 49-year-old Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, and 31-year-old Mindy Ferencz.

Later, investigators determined the pair had killed a fifth victim, who was their Uber driver, Michael Rumberger.

Police shot and killed both of the suspects.

Everyone who saw the scene that night or that next day will never forget how much worse it could have been.

As horrifying as the attack was three years ago, it was far from an isolated event. In fact, the experts say it was just a drop from of their hatred.

In early 2020, officials said there was evidence that the suspects had been planning the attack for months.

The gunman allegedly checked out the JC Kosher Market on Martin Luther King Drive on at least two occasions and entered the store during one of them, even driving by the business twice on the day of the shootings.

In the years since these lives were lost, antisemitism has been on the rise.

12/09 Links Pt2: The Toxic Stew of Anti-Semitism; Can J Street still get away with pretending to be ‘pro-Israel’?; Rep. Ritchie Torres: ‘Holocaust deniers are the scum of the Earth’

From Ian:

The Toxic Stew of Anti-Semitism

Jew haters use the code words of "Zionists" and "Zionism" to condemn Israel, when what they're really voicing is their hatred of Jews and Judaism. Thinly-disguised hatred of Israel has helped to fuel anti-Semitism, to the point where many synagogues now arrange to have police officers on duty outside their places of worship during the high holidays.

It's become a necessary precaution, given that Jews were once again the most targeted religious group for hate crimes in Canada last year, according to Statistics Canada data. To pretend that hatred of Jews isn't linked to hatred of Israel is absurd. As the late British Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, head of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, wrote, this is just the latest example of how anti-Semitism survives by mutating over time.

Today, with human rights the paradigm, Israel is falsely accused of being the world's worst human rights violator - including at the UN General Assembly - which every year passes more resolutions condemning Israel than all other nations on earth, combined. Selectively holding Israel to a higher standard of moral behavior than any other country is anti-Semitism.

Jonathan Tobin: Can J Street still get away with pretending to be ‘pro-Israel’?

In order to be pro-Israel, you don’t have to support Netanyahu, the Likud Party or his new government. You can hope for Israel’s defeated left-wing factions eventually to prevail.

You can dream of a two-state solution with a peaceful, progressive and democratic Palestinian-Arab state living in harmony beside Israel (even though, in order to harbor the fantasy, you have to ignore the workings of Palestinian politics and a culture that glorifies the shedding of Jewish blood, and war to the death against Zionism).

But you can’t really be really be considered pro-Israel if, like J Street, you declare that Israel’s voters, the vast majority of whom have long since rejected the land-for-peace myth for the foreseeable future, don’t have the right to decide their country’s future.

You can’t be considered pro-Israel if, like J Street, your purpose is to promote policies that Israelis oppose, and back the use of brutal pressure and the threat of aid cutbacks to get your way.

You can’t be considered pro-Israel if, like J Street, your goal is to promote appeasement of despotic, terrorist-supporting Iranian regime that has as its stated goal the elimination of Israel.

You can’t be considered pro-Israel if, like J Street, your campus groups and many of your activists make common cause with antisemitic BDS groups whose goal is Israel’s destruction.

You can’t be considered pro-Israel if, like J Street, you support intersectional ideology, which gives a permission slip to antisemitism and depicts Israel as a “white” country that is an “apartheid state.”

Strip away the thin veneer of liberal Zionism that it still seeks to maintain, and all you have is a group that exists to wage political war on Israel’s democratic leadership, to force it to bend to policies imposed by Democrats. Ultimately, this makes it too radical an organization to be supportive of a relative moderate like Blinken, in an administration whose lower echelons are composed of doctrinaire leftists far more hostile to Israel than those at the top. It’s nevertheless a dangerous foe that’s in sync with the intersectional progressives who view Netanyahu as the head of an illegitimate red-state nation.

J Street is irrelevant to what is happening in Jerusalem. But with the far-Left on the rise among Democrats, those who are interested in building support for the Jewish state need to regard the organization as a malevolent and treacherous enemy, whose malign influence is a genuine threat to the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Congressman Ritchie Torres: ‘Holocaust deniers are the scum of the Earth’

You are known for your love of Israel, and you have been noted for not joining other progressives such as ‘the squad,’ why?

I'm independent and I call myself a pragmatic, pro-Israel progressive; I come to my own conclusions. You know, my view is people should be careful not to rush to judgment against Israel, that before rushing to judgment you should actually go to Israel and speak to both Israelis and Palestinians, and within Israel speak to both Jews and Arabs and listen to a variety of perspectives and then come to your own conclusions.

But what I often find is that people who know nothing about Israel, who know nothing about the region, have some of the strongest opinions and are quick to demonize Israel as a Jewish state, and so much of the criticism comes not only from malice but also from just sheer ignorance.

A few years ago, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America circulated a questionnaire to city council candidates, and it was about 14 pages and on the final page it was a foreign policy section. And the foreign policy section only had two questions. Question number one: Do you pledge never to visit Israel if elected to the city council? And question number two: Do you pledge to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement? And I found that question to be blatantly antisemitic, but it also was telling because there's nothing that the BDS Movement fears more than people actually going to Israel and seeing the truth with their own eyes, rather than allowing themselves to be brainwashed by the propaganda that is amplified on social media.

Speaking of propaganda, what do you say to Holocaust deniers?

To Holocaust deniers? Holocaust deniers are the scum of the earth. I think the Holocaust is one of the greatest atrocities ever perpetrated in humankind. It has left deep scars, not only in the Jewish community but on humanity. Anyone who denies it is engaged in a profound evil. I have no patience, no tolerance for Holocaust denial – it's the worst form of conspiracy theory.

Nazih Khatatba, general director and editor of Ontario-based Arabic newspaper Meshwar, writes in Wattan.net:

I am a Palestinian Canadian journalist. Our newspaper, Mishwar, is published in Arabic and distributed in the Ontario region, especially Toronto. We have the right to attend any event, especially if it is related to Palestine and the Middle East. We are not anti-Semitic, and we have not spoken badly about Jews in Canada or other countries. Rather, we criticize the Israeli occupation policy and stand with the Palestinian people. Those who accuse us of “anti-Semitism” without evidence are themselves supporting and protecting the Israeli occupation that commits daily murders against Palestinians.

He is especially upset at Honest Reporting Canada, which has exposed his and his newspaper's words publicly.

So here are some of their highlights:

Accusing Jews of dual loyalty:

The vast majority of ambassadors and mediators the US administration sends to the Middle East are Zionists and hold Israeli citizenship, and they owe more loyalty to this entity [Israel] than the US itself, including the US envoy Amos Hochstein [who was assigned] to negotiate with Lebanon on the demarcation of the region’s maritime borders and gas resources. He is not considered a mediator but rather a negotiator for the occupation entity more than his leaders. He is trying to play on the factor of time and procrastination, buying the debts of some loyal Lebanese leaders and activating the role of pawns to pressure Hizbollah. Still, this game that succeeded with the Palestinian Authority will not gain success with [Hassan] Nasrallah [leader of Hezbollah].

(Hochstein is not a dual national.)

Casting doubt on the Holocaust:

Why are the Zionist organizations afraid of opening the Holocaust file, preventing researchers from approaching it, and protecting it with strict laws that threaten those who come near it with imprisonment, prosecution, and even dismissal from work? Is it possible that they are hiding something, and we do not know?

Crazy antisemitic conspiracy theories:

Some world leaders in the West, who belong to the Zionist-Masonic movement, have already long ago drawn their plans to divide the Arab homeland in order that the Zionist-Masonic generations will inherit it generation after generation.

All aforementioned details confirm without a doubt that there is today an actual track to implement the Zionist -American enterprise, which is aiming at weakening Iraq and Syria, to tear them apart and to fragment them as a basis to tear apart and fragment the entire Arab region. This also confirms without a doubt that the goal of the attack, which the entire Arab region and areas are subject to, is basically to tear apart this region in order to serve the colonial Zionist -American enterprise.

And in 2015, it published an article that said that killing is ingrained in the Jewish faith.

Sounds pretty antisemitic to me!

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!

12/09 Links Pt1: A tale of two narratives; Melanie Phillips: The Good Jew/Bad Jew demonization strategy; Are Israeli-Australian ties in danger?; Bibi: What Rashida Tlaib Doesn't Seem to Know

From Ian:

A tale of two narratives

At the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies a clash of two narratives.

On the one hand the stirring, fact-based Zionist narrative, on the other, the openly conceded fabricated “Palestinian” narrative—which as one senior PLO official openly admitted “serves only tactical purposes”, and whose sole purpose is to function as “a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel.”

Although enormous international efforts have been invested in futile endeavors to portray these two narratives as reconcilable, the truth is that they are inherently and incontrovertibly mutually exclusive. Either one of them will prevail, absolutely and exclusively, or the other will.

The reason for this unfortunate impasse is—as is becoming ever clearer with the passage of time--that Palestinian-Arab enmity toward a Jewish state does not arise from anything the Jews, do, but from what the Jews are.

This enmity, therefore, can only be dissipated if the Jews cease to be.

Successive Israeli governments, cowered by left-leaning civil society elites, have refused to articulate this "inconvenient truth", and refrained from formulating policy that takes it adequately into account.

Accordingly, they have perpetuated the myth that there is some fictional "middle ground", which, if found, would leave both sides not totally un-aggrieved ", but still tolerably satisfied enough to eschew violence.

Melanie Phillips: The Good Jew/Bad Jew demonization strategy

One of the favorite strategies deployed by Jew-baiters is to divide the community into Good Jews and Bad Jews.

Good Jews have politically correct, progressive opinions. Jews who don’t hold with those opinions are Bad Jews.

This distinction is helpful to Israel-bashers, who can use it to claim that they can’t possibly hate the Jews because there are Jews who support their hostility to Israel.

The White House this week hosted a round table on antisemitism to discuss the alarming escalation in attacks on American Jews. Yet the Biden administration conspicuously failed to invite to this discussion the Zionist Organization of America, the Coalition for Jewish Values and the Jewish Leadership Project.

These organizations defend Israel and the Jewish people against left-wing ideologies. They are therefore Bad Jews.

Sadly, this odious Good Jew/Bad Jew trope is now being promoted within the Jewish world itself.

Both in Israel and the Diaspora, progressive Jews have been convulsed over the composition of the new government being assembled by Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu.

This is because he is handing out government positions to three highly controversial lawmakers.

The rabble-rouser Itamar Ben-Gvir is set to become minister of national security.

Bezalel Smotrich, who hankers after an Israeli theocracy, will reportedly be a junior defense minister with certain powers over the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria.

Avi Maoz, whose party opposes LGBTQ rights and other progressive causes, is apparently being given control over outside input into the school curriculum and a new office devoted to “Jewish identity.”

This has produced epic pearl-clutching by Diaspora Jews, who are falling over themselves to announce that they might now withhold their support from Israel. Such hysteria also promotes the Good Jew/Bad Jew agenda.

Caroline Glick: Lapid and friends use demonization to incite a civil war

Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid has never been a high-minded politician. During his five months in power as caretaker prime minister, he tried to get the only non-leftist television station in the country thrown off the air. He called his political opponents and their voters “s**ts,” and “forces of darkness,” who have no right to exercise their legal right to oversee the actions of his lame duck government.

In the leadup to the elections, he accused Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu of being anti-democratic and warned that Netanyahu would not accept the election results if he lost.

As is invariably the case with progressive elitists like Lapid and his colleagues, it turns out that it is they who reject the basic rules of democracy and refuse to accept the results of the elections. Rather than accept that they received a drubbing at the polls and will spend the next four-and-a-half years in the opposition, Lapid and his comrades have doubled down on their demonization. They use their slanders of Netanyahu and his colleagues to raise the barricades and call for civil war.

Lapid’s opening volley came last Wednesday during the official annual memorial ceremony for Israel’s first premier, David Ben-Gurion. In his speech, Lapid used Ben-Gurion as a means to justify the statements and actions he took in the days that followed. Lapid did two things in his address: First, he totally distorted Ben-Gurion and what he stood for, and then he used his imaginary Ben-Gurion as a foil to demonize Netanyahu and his coalition partners.

Ben-Gurion, of course was the leader of the Zionist revolution. He was a Jewish nationalist. He led the settlement of the Land of Israel before and after the establishment of the state. He built and led the IDF in two wars. He defied the American Jewish leadership and transformed Israel into the voice of the Jewish people and the center of Jewish life worldwide.

From Algemeiner:

More than 200 artists have signed a statement pledging to boycott Finland’s leading gallery of contemporary art because of its links with a Finnish-Israeli philanthropist, in a move denounced as “antisemitic” by the Bishop of Helsinki and other public figures.

In the statement, the signatories pledged to “refuse to sell our labor and art” to the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki as long as it maintained links with the Zabludowicz Art Trust, an initiative of Chaim “Poju” Zabludowicz, a London-based billionaire who holds dual Finnish and Israeli citizenship.

Responding to the statement on Thursday, Helsinki’s Lutheran Bishop charged the artists with having adopted an antisemitic stance.

“If an individual Jew is held responsible for the actions of the state of Israel, or if an individual Jew is prohibited from supporting Israel, or if Israel as a state is required to do something more than other democratic states, we are guilty of antisemitism,” Bishop Teemu Laajasalo told Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat news outlet.

In a separate tweet, Laajasalo commented that “antisemitism has many faces. A neo-Nazi or an Islamist is identifiable. It is more difficult to recognize the Jew-hatred of the Academy or [among] culture workers.”

What, exactly, are the boycotters accusing Zabludowicz of?

Artforum writes:

Citing Zabludoiwcz Art Trust cofounder Chaim (Poju) Zabludowicz’s position as CEO of the private investment organization Tamares Group—a company founded by his father that indirectly supports the Israeli state via its stake in Knafaim, a provider of maintenance services to the Israeli Air Force—BDZ accuses the art trust and its subsidiaries (including the Zabludowicz Collection, Zabludowicz Art Projects in London, and Daata Editions) of “artwashing” what it describes as Israeli state policies of racism and apartheid by using “art and cultural activities in the UK to enhance the image of Israel.”

There is no doubt that Zabludowicz is a Zionist. But the boycotters need to exaggerate links between the museum and the IDF to justify boycotting the entire museum, so here is how they inflate it.

The Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art has eleven board members. One is Zabludoiwcz.

He is the head of many institutions, including owning a hockey team. He has given millions to art initiatives as well as medical research. He is also head of the Tamares holding company, which mostly invests in real estate (it owns 40% of downtown Las Vegas.)

Tamares has equity stakes in at least 25 companies covering a wide range of interests, including entertainment and technology. One of them is Kanafaim, which is in turn another holding company that has four business units, including El Al Airlines and Maintenance Wings. The latter provides maintenance services for the Israel Air Force.

This is a minuscule part of his holdings and the relationship between the museum, Zabludowicz's art ventures and Maintenance Wings is nonexistent.

Boycotting the museum because of this tenuous link makes as much sense as boycotting every company that includes Vanguard Funds as one of its major investors because Vanguard also invests in defense contractors.

Anyone can find an excuse to boycott any Jew they want if they look hard enough for a reason. And that is exactly what the boycotters here are doing - including every one of the 200 artists.

Every major art gallery and museum can find a patron that also invests in companies that are involved with ventures that some will consider unethical - if one is willing to dig for them.

But the interest in finding such links begins and ends with rich Jews.

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!

This week, Chinese president Xi Jinping is in Saudi Arabia for a Saudi-Chinese summit, a China-Arab summit and a China-GCC summit.

He met with 14 Arab leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas.

I've seen some Western media urge the Arab leaders to bring up the persecution of Muslim Uyghurs with Xi. But the topic has been completely missing from Arabic language media (outside of Arabic language services of Western media.)

And, of course, there is no indication that any Arab Muslim leader has said a word to Xi about the topic.

This is causing no end of frustration to Uyghur human rights advocates.

Dolkun Isa, president of the Munich, Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, or WUC, said China is not only committing genocide against the Uyghur Muslims, but also has declared war on Islam.

“It is completely unacceptable that the leaders of the Muslim world will sit with China’s dictator on the same stage and just talk about business and cooperation by turning a blind eye to China’s attack on Islam,” he told Radio Free Asia.

Gheyyur Qurban, office director of WUC’s Berlin office said countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran not only have remained silent on the Uyghur genocide, but also have supported the Chinese government’s position, even at the U.N. at the expense of their fellow Uyghur Muslims.

“It is extremely disappointing to see Saudi leaders who claim to be the Protector of the Two Holy Cities receive Xi Jinping, the main culprit of Uyghur genocide, with pompous ceremonies and allow him to hold summits with Mideast leaders to expand China’s infiltration and influence in the heart of Islamic world,” he told RFA.

China is Saudi Arabia's top trading partner, and the kingdom serves as a vital source of crude oil for China.

I could find only a handful of news articles that mention the Uyghur issue in Arabic over the past year - and not one headline. I could not find a single Arabic op-ed that was even mildly critical of China before or during these summits.

The contrast between how the Arab world covers the Palestinian issue - with front page articles every day about Jews quietly visiting the Temple Mount - couldn't be any starker. There have been hundreds of articles about pro-Palestinian fans in Qatar for the World Cup, and practically nothing about the UN releasing a (late, relatively short and subdued) report in September saying China may be committing crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.

Clearly, the Arab world's fixation on the Palestinians is not about concern over their fellow Muslims. A million Muslims in detention camps is simply a non-issue, and China is not considered a persecutor of Muslims, but an ally.

The fixation of Arab media and the Arab public on Israel has nothing to do with support for Palestinians. It has everything to do with hate for Jews.

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!

Al Jazeera writes about a project funded by the British Library and the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library to restore a volume of fatwas by Sheikh Othman al-Tabbaa, of Gaza, written in 1904.

The article features this fatwa by the sheikh not to sell land to Jews:

About 118 years ago, Sheikh Othman al-Tabbaa, one of the notables of the city of Gaza, issued a fatwa prohibiting “selling lands to Jews directly or through traitorous brokers, because it weakens the physical and moral strength of Muslims and strengthens the enemies of the nation and the homeland, (especially) when it appears that their intention is to exterminate patriots as a whole, and to take over their countries and homelands by various means, just as it is not permissible to support or support them.”

And the Jews referred to, according to the fatwa of Sheikh al-Tabbaa, “were not people of dhimma, security, and they had no covenant from the caliph of the Muslims, but rather they were deviants and vagabonds from the horizons, so it is not permissible to empower them from the homes of Muslims and sell them lands whose price was the blood of the mujahideen heroes, as well as the prohibition of brokering and mediating in selling to them, Rather, it appeared that the harm of the brokers is more severe than the harm of the Jews themselves, because they guide them to every path that will help them reach their goals and facilitate obstacles for them.

Al-Tabbaa supported his fatwa with what was established in the books of the four schools of thought that “it is forbidden to sell to the people of war and sedition that which strengthens them in war, such as weapons and horses, and it is not carried to them even after reconciliation, and selling land and mediating in it to them is more severe and harmful than selling weapons and horses, and whoever does not adhere to his religion and act according to his orders. He avoids his prohibitions and pretends to commit what is prohibited by Sharia, so he is an avowed immoral person who must be insulted and boycotted.”

Al Jazeera is positioning this sheikh as a hero, who saw the danger of the Jews early and sounded the alarm not to sell land to the "deviants and vagabonds" who were Jews.

The manuscript should be preserved, because it is a very nice example of Muslim Jew-hatred from the early 20th century. I'm not so certain that this is what the British Library and HMMI have in mind, though, when they spend money to preserve it. I think they just think that this was an important scholar whose words should continue to be studied.

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!

12/08 Links Pt2: Does Europe Support This? Al-Haq Tells the World to Dismantle Israel; BBC faces parliamentary probe over its coverage of Jews and Israel

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Does Europe Support This? Al-Haq Tells the World to Dismantle Israel

On November 29, 2022, the Palestinian NGO Al-Haq published yet another antisemitic screed dedicated to denying the Jewish people sovereign equality, by defining Zionism and the State of Israel as inherently illegitimate. For 200 pages, the Palestinian NGO – designated as a terrorist entity by Israel in October 2021 over its ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization – extorts the international community to dismantle the Jewish State. To achieve this goal, Al-Haq absurdly distorts Israeli policy and practice beyond recognition, and misrepresents international legal standards.

Central to Al-Haq’s publication is the repetition of the claim that Israel’s existence as a Jewish State represents “apartheid.” This assertion was debunked in NGO Monitor’s 2021 and 2022 analyses: “False Knowledge as Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimise the Jewish State” and “Neo-Orientalism: Deconstructing claims of apartheid in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

Al-Haq’s publication is intended to influence the UN Human Rights Council’s permanent Commission of Inquiry’s (the “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel,”) plan to formally declare Israel to be committing “apartheid”; to pressure the International Criminal Court to indict Israeli officials for crimes against humanity; and for third states to apply a wide variety of sanctions against Israel, associated institutions, companies, and individuals.

While broader in scope, this publication echoes the same ideological position expressed by Al-Haq in a formal submission to the COI in May 2022. (For more information, see “Al-Haq’s Antisemitic Submission to the UN’s Permanent COI”)

EU and member states support for Al-Haq
If not for the millions of Euros in support from the EU and its member states Al-Haq has received over several years, the Palestinian NGO would not enjoy nearly the same level of influence and access as it currently does. Despite the organization’s reported ties to the PFLP, and its campaigning to dismantle Israel, Europe has yet to denounce and reject its longtime partner.

While the EU froze financial support to Al-Haq in May 2021 as a result of its links to the PFLP, in June 2022, the organization claimed that this freeze had been lifted – and as yet uncorroborated assertion.

Notably, in May 2022, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra, met with Al-Haq officials in the West Bank – despite the Israeli designation.

Moreover, Al-Haq is listed as an implementing partner on multi-grantee projects funded by the French (€900,000 for the entire project) and Swedish (Al-Haq receives over $2.5 million of the over $8 million project) governments.

John-Paul Pagano: What Is a Conspiracy Theory?

When I began studying Antisemitism two decades ago, one of the first things that occurred to me was its essential nature as a conspiracy theory. While mundane anti-Jewish bigotry is always found, the form of Jew-hatred that is historically salient identifies “the Jews” as a preternaturally powerful, secretive, evil elite which enslaves and exploits humankind. Even a surface examination of conspiracy theories shows that while the identity of the elite changes, this narrative outline is common to all of them. Alternately—and with good reason we will explore later—Antisemitism is sometimes singled out as the ultimate conspiracy theory.

So we can better understand conspiracy theories if we widen our scope to include insights from the much larger literature on Antisemitism. The history of the “Longest Hatred” is an opportunity to examine more than a thousand years of the consistent social practice of a single conspiracy theory. In this vast and detailed record, we will detect patterns and peculiarities that expose the essence of the thing.

The definition I propose hence will leverage scholarship on conspiracy theories and conspiracism, but be situated in the living context of Antisemitism—the up-punching form of racism that is centrally rooted in the cultural heritage of the West and has done so much to shape its social and physical reality. This approach yields a dense definition, but one that is also—after some clarification of terms—comprehensive and empirically legible.

It is, as follows:
A conspiracy theory is a belief that a circumstance or event is a deliberate, connected, and occulted product of the timeless struggle between the forces of Good and Evil, attributable to the malign influence of a secret elite that supernaturally coordinates to enslave and exploit humankind, fabricates false consciousness to hide its activities, and indulges in pleasures and rites of extreme misanthropy.

In upcoming (though not necessarily contiguous) posts, I will clarify the terms I highlighted above and will also discuss three conceptual domains—Manichean, Epistemic, and Magical—in which many of the features and themes of conspiracy theories should be evaluated. I will explain and justify my definition over posts that I will specially mark for this purpose, so they become a series that readers can revisit and reference.

As a variety of racism, the historian Paul Johnson viewed Antisemitism as “so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in a quite different category.” Defining that peculiarity also helps to reveal what is a conspiracy theory—a mode of thought that is in some ways more corrosive than caste-based racism, but against which we’ve mustered no social movement to stigmatize and diminish it.

An open letter to progressives: It’s time to speak out

I wanted to believe perhaps I’d simply missed something. After all, I have always worked in progressive spaces myself. I know how much this movement cares about the safety, dignity, and flourishing of all communities in this country.

But diving into various digital channels and searching through recent public statements yielded nothing. I saw plenty of commendable statements of solidarity aimed at other groups. Perhaps I wasn’t searching hard enough.

It shouldn’t take this much effort to uncover sentiments of support in a time of need.

The progressive movement should be a seamless, natural ally to the Jewish community. But despite the fact that so many Jews in this country find themselves ideologically aligned with the progressive left, for a long time now that movement has behaved as if we are either inevitable supporters – no matter their approach to our oppression – or unimportant ones.

Throughout my tenure in progressive environments, I encountered deafening silence through the violence in Pittsburgh, Poway, and Colleyville. I was told my identity didn’t qualify me to join workgroups focusing on diversity, solidarity, and inclusion. I was called a Zionist (I am one – they meant it as a slur). Assumptions were freely and unapologetically made about my political leanings, my perspectives, and my general pleasantness based on the fact that I was born in Israel and that I am a Jew. Throughout it all, I was expected to continue supporting the causes that have always meant so much to me – and I still do. (h/t jzaik)

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"I Get To Reclaim My Ancestors' Home Because They Sided With A Failed Genocide" (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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I Get To Reclaim My Ancestors' Home Because They Sided With A Failed Genocide

by Issa Awad, Palestine Refugee

Haifa house Tulkarm, December 8 - The morality is of the situation is clear: my forebears fled Haifa in anticipation of Arab liberators slaughtering the Jews of the city and making ample plunder available, but when that didn't happen, and the Jews actually won and took over the place, my great-grandparents set up here among the Iraqi soldiers who failed to push further west and the Jews into the sea as promised. Had the promised massacres of Jews taken place, my family would probably be running a fishing operation, while enjoying some swag looted from the Jews. But it didn't, and now the only fair thing is for their descendants to return to Haifa as if nothing had happened.

Why else would UNRWA exist? All refugees other than "Palestine Refugees" as defined by UNRWA follow a simple, if challenging, path: the UN Commissioner for Refugees cares for people fleeing conflict or persecution, and arranges for their permanent resettlement in some other country. Tens of millions of refugees have followed that route, but Palestine Refugees are special. We get to remain in perpetual statelessness until the war our people lost can be fought again and again, and maybe one day the result will be different. Until then, we live in dependence and squalor, because... I guess because pride and honor? That sounded better in my head.

In any case the legal and moral issue demands that my family and I get to go where my great-grandparents left so they could avoid all the unpleasantness of seeing Jewish body parts strewn about the place. It's somehow different from every other refugee story in history. Those other refugees were forced out, living in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in an unfortunate situation. My family, on the other hand, maybe was, maybe wasn't forced out, and really wanted to come back, unlike all those other refugees who had no attachment to where they'd been living. It's a Palestinian thing? Even though the only people who identified as "Palestinian" at the time were Jews? I'm unclear on that part, but not on the morality.

The point is we get to flood Israel with "refugees" and win by demographics what we failed to do with bullets, because they had no right to defend themselves from the manifestly just pillaging we wanted to enjoy at their expense. It's about justice. Yes. That's what I meant to say.

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12/08 Links Pt1: Lies, libels and the justification of terror; 12% of Gazans Have Fled Gaza Since Hamas Took Over; The UN envoy to Hamas; Far-Left Groups Accused of Campaign to Delegitimize IDF Soldiers

From Ian:

Lies, libels and the justification of terror

Nov. 29 marked the 75th anniversary of United Nations Resolution 181, which called for the creation of two states, a Jewish state of Israel and an Arab state of Palestine. The Jewish community accepted those terms, and declared the State of Israel, while the Arab community refused, and launched a war that they then lost. Over time, however, Palestinians developed their own version of the “big lie” in the form of the “nakba” myth, a retelling of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war in which the would-be genocidal Arab armies that failed in their mission to eliminate the Jewish state are reimagined as the helpless victims of a horrible catastrophe (or “nakba,” in Arabic) of destruction and displacement. The legend of the nakba is at the heart of much of modern anti-Zionism.

Right on cue, on Nov. 30 the United Nations General Assembly voted to officially commemorate the founding of the State of Israel as a nakba. U.N. resolutions are not legally or morally binding, and they obviously cannot create truths. But they do lend a sheen of credibility to an otherwise ridiculous claim. Such a resolution makes it easier for the big lie to spread, because people can rely on and appeal to the GA’s “authority” on the matter without having to defend or even care about the details of such a heinous accusation. And once a lie has become officially acceptable to speak in the halls of power, it is only a matter of time before it gets picked up and amplified by popular culture. This one certainly did not take long.

On Thursday, Netflix began streaming the Jordanian film “Farha,” which purports to focus on the experiences of a young girl during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The hero watches as Israeli soldiers, portrayed as inhumanly cruel, brutally and graphically murder innocent Palestinian families, including children. While the film claims to be “based on” true events, the director has admitted that it is not factual, and that these scenes did not actually occur. But that does not mean they will not have a very real-world effect on anti-Jewish hate and violence, because many will watch the movie, and few will read the disclaimer.

There are two reasons to publicly correct the record on the nakba. First, it is simply not true. There are primary sources, from the Jordanian side, attesting to the fact that the vast majority of Arabs who left their homes did so voluntarily, or under orders from the invading Arab armies, not the invaded Israelis. Many left confident that the combined armies of Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt would quickly overwhelm the tiny Jewish state. As the Jordanian newspaper Filastin reported, “The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.” But as another refugee quoted in another Jordanian newspaper, Ad Difaa, explained that “The Arab government told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.”

Second, it is incredibly dangerous. In 1976, Mahmoud Abbas said that “The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live” (emphasis added).

Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Lironne Bar Sadeh (Irish Times): Israel Is Not an "Apartheid" State

The letter in the Irish Times, "Israel and the Palestinian people" (Nov. 30), signed by various Irish luminaries, repeats the usual canard that Israel is an "apartheid" state.

This is an outrageous falsehood. Israel is in fact the only long-lasting liberal democracy in the entire Middle East. It is the only country in the region with freedom of speech, party, press, and association and judicial transparency.

It has equality under the law for all its citizens, a fifth of whom by the way are Israeli Arabs, both Muslim and Christian. It is also the only country in the region with rights and equality for the LGBTQ+ community. In terms of its legal and political systems, its vibrant press and rich civil society, Israel is remarkably similar to Ireland.

Those who signed the letter think they are helping in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, but in fact they are not. By constantly demonizing Israel and ignoring the deep flaws on the Palestinian side, such as the Islamic fundamentalism of Hamas, and the squalid corruption of the Palestinian Authority, they make themselves morally and intellectually bankrupt.

People who genuinely want to help the Palestinians should encourage democratic, moderate forces within Palestinian society and those who will eventually realize that peace with Israel can only come about through dialogue and mutual compromise, not by demonization and intransigence. It is tragic that some people in Ireland, instead of supporting Israel and the moderate Arab forces in the region, prefer to demonize Israel as much as possible and fail to condemn Iran and the forces of extremism which blight the region.

12% of Gazans Have Fled Gaza Since Hamas Took Over

In the 15 years since Hamas seized control of Gaza, 12 percent of the Strip’s population has fled, according to a study released by an organization associated with the terror group. The report appears to mark the first time Hamas is acknowledging — indirectly — widespread Gazan emigration since it violently seized control of the Strip in 2007.

The report, written by the Hamas-affiliated Council on International Relations, was published in September and recently seen by the Tazpit Press Service. It claims that over 60,000 Gazan residents have migrated from the Gaza Strip in recent years to escape poverty and war.

The CIR report blamed Israel’s blockade of Gaza for the Strip’s poverty driving Gazans to flee. Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza in 2007 to prevent weapons smuggling.

The Strip has seen several waves of immigration due to dire unemployment rates, growing poverty, sanctions imposed by the Palestinian Authority, and rounds of conflict with Israel. The CIR did not acknowledge Hamas’s authoritarian rule as a contributing factor.

“Gaza is being emptied of its residents,” the authors of the report said.

The Palestinian Authority has no data on the scope of migration from the Gaza under Hamas rule. Till now, Hamas hid the data, making accurate numbers difficult for human rights organizations to gather. The CIR’s chairman of the board is Basem Naim, who is also a senior figure in Hamas.

Various estimates in the past year shed some light on the Gaza exodus.

Between 2007-2021, approximately 236,000 Gazans left the Strip, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, reported during the summer. That number is also about 12 percent of the total residents of the Strip.

Based on those numbers, it appears that an average of around 17,000 Palestinians have left Gaza every year since 2007.

On the occasion of its 35th anniversary, Hamas has announced that it will give out $2 million in aid to needy Gazans.

Aid will include repairs to 100 homes of the poor at a value of $5,000 each, and changing the roofs of 200 homes of needy families at a value of $300 per family. Also they are giving money to older groomd to pay for weddings.

Hey, if they can replace roofs for $300, they can make a fortune in the US.

A Hamas spokesman said that these projects are a "thanks from Hamas for the steadfastness of our people and their preservation of the resistance project."

They said that the recipients were chosen based on need. From past experience, one can be sure that they are all also members of Hamas. (The spokesman denied this.)

Hamas and other terror groups often also engage in "charitable works" in order to help their public relations and to help recruit more members.

Sometimes it pays off, as the PFLP has graduated from being a terror group to being just a political movement and a founder of human rights NGOs, according to Human Rights Watch, despite still being very involved in terror.

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80 years ago: The State Department says paying ransom for Jews is a crime

A small item on page 4 of the Los Angeles Times, November 25, 1942:

This came in response to a report out of the Netherlands that the Nazis were extorting huge sums for exit permits.

There is, unfortunately, a large body of literature on ransoming captives under Jewish law. A summary from Din Online:

The Rambam (Matmos Aniim 8:10, based on the Gemara in Bava Basra 8b) states in the context of charity donations: “There is no greater mitzvah (i.e. use of charity funds) than redeeming captives.” Based on its special importance, redemption of captives is the first priority for allocating charity funds. Echoing the Rambam, the Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh De’ah 252:1) likewise states: “No mitzvah is as great as redeeming captives.”

The Gemara (Bava Basra 8b) highlights the plight of the captive in the hands of his captors. The latter can torture him, pass him through great suffering, and even kill him. He is entirely at their mercy. The Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh De’ah 252:3) thus writes that one who can redeem a captive yet fails to do so is considered to be murdering at each moment.

Nevertheless, the Mishnah (Gittin 45a) teaches that captives should not be redeemed for any price: “Captives are not redeemed for more than their value.”

The reason for this is discussed by the Gemara, which mentions two possible reasons, without deciding which of them is the true reason. One reason is that it is too weighty a burden on the community. According to this reason, Rashi writes that a private individual is permitted to redeem his own family or loved ones, even for great sums of money.

Another suggested reason is that payment of large ransoms encourages captors to continue in their evil ways, taking further captives to make money. Based on this rationale, a private individual may not pay exorbitant sums for the release of his family, since this encourages kidnappings and places the community at risk.

It seems to me that both those reasons for not paying ransom would not apply in this case. The first reason, as stated, would not apply to the family of the relative being held hostage. The second reason, that it encourages the captors to take more prisoners, doesn't seem to apply because all the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were already effectively captive and already in great danger.

Indeed, there have been halachic rulings that if the captive's life is in danger without being ransomed, there is no price too high to pay.

The State Department's reason - that paying ransom will add money to the enemies' coffers - is not at all a consideration in Jewish law.

Yet as far as I can tell, this was not even a subject of debate in 1942. The fate of the Jews was well known at this point in time, and there was plenty of pretend outrage in the West, but it didn't extend to actually trying to save their lives.

Jews who wanted to save their friends and family were to be considered criminals.

For context, here is the entire Los Angeles Times page 4 where these two articles were. The main two articles on the page were about the Nazis wiping out the Jews of Europe by the millions:

At the very same time the readers were being given the details of the horrors of the Holocaust, they were also informed that saving some of those Jewish lives is a crime.

Here is an editorial from a British newspaper, the Dumfries and Galloway Standard and Advertiser (December 12, 1942), that goes on at length and detail about how terrible the Nazi persecution of Jews is and how there is no longer doubt about the Final Solution:

Yet when it comes to whether something can be done to save these unfortunate Jews, suddenly the tone changes:

"The humanitarian feelings of humanity must not be traded on for the purpose of financing the Nazis."

Sure, Jewish lives matter - but not to the point of actually paying money to save them. Better to write op-eds about how terrible it is that we have no choice but to let them all die, as long as we know the Nazis will eventually be "brought to justice."

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

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Moroccan education unions against coexistence and tolerance (of Jews)

This week, the Atlantic Council held the N7 Conference on Education and Coexistence in Rabat, Morocco.

Oren Eisner, President of the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation, explained the purpose of the conference: “It is critical to the future of normalization that the region’s younger generations engage with each other and learn from each other. Our Conference on Education and Coexistence is designed to produce actionable policy recommendations for the region’s governments that will increase cooperation and foster tolerance in education.” Eisner added, “We are thrilled to bring the N7 nations together to the conference and are grateful to the participating governments for working together to develop stronger and lasting friendships in the Middle East.”

The Kingdom of Morocco supported the conference, which included participants from Sudan, Jordan, Bahrain, the UAE, the United States and Israel.

Two Morocco education unions wrote a letter denouncing the conference, and the idea of coexistence altogether. The letter is a crazed combination of paranoia, lies and antisemitic conspiracy theories.

For example, it says, "They consider normalization to facilitate the future control of the Zionist entity over the wealth of the region and its people, and in an effort to complete its expansionist colonial project, and the ensuing dangers to future generations."

In a classic case of projection, the education union "considers the process of normalization in the school curricula as part of many manifestations of the attempt to normalize under the justification of spreading a culture of tolerance and coexistence..., while the Zionist educational curricula perpetuate absolute hatred of the Arabs."

And these open-minded educators also recommend that a "blacklist of shame" be created with the names of anyone who supports coexistence with Israel and Zionists.

It's hard to tell how widespread these opinions are in Morocco. There is a very noisy and active anti-normalization contingent, but mainstream media in Morocco has been treating Israel relatively fairly, and there have been lots of articles about the Jewish community and history there. There are more articles about the Moroccan anti-normalization movement in Algerian media than in Moroccan media.

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Abbas says that the PA might officially return to terror

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told Al Arabiya that there is a chance the Palestinian Authority will return to an official policy of terror in the near future.

Palestinian news sites quoted the interview, where Abbas renewed his threat to cancel security agreements with Israel. “If Israel continues with its actions, I will cancel the security agreement with it. Why continue? Why am I committed to security coordination? And we can breathe without security coordination. Before that, we were breathing, and our people were fighting the occupation,” he said, referring to the second intifada terror spree.

Abbas went on to say that terrorism is still on the table: "I do not endorse armed resistance at the moment, but I may change my mind later."

He then elaborated, "I do not adopt military resistance at this time, but it is possible that I change my mind tomorrow or after tomorrow, or any time.

"We grew up in the armed resistance, until we reached the international club,” Abbas added, apparently pining for the days in the 1970s when Palestinian international terrorism resulted in Europe and the UN rewarding the PLO with increased prestige.

We recently noted that both the PLO Executive Committee and the Fatah Revolutionary Council, both led by Abbas, supported terrorism as a right under international law in meetings this month. Here he is saying that the Palestinian Authority, also under his control, might follow suit.

And this interview, where Abbas says that terror is an option - meaning he has no moral problem with it, just it is not a smart tactic at this time - will likewise be ignored by the media.

Because they already spent their entire capital on the lie that Abbas is a man of peace, and the truth takes a back seat to the narrative and admitting they have been wrong since he took over from Arafat.

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