Tuesday, January 24, 2023
- Tuesday, January 24, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- corruption, dictatorship, Jerusalem Arabs, Khaled Al-Hassan hospital, Mahmoud Abbas, PA corruption, PalArab lies, Palestinian Authority
- Tuesday, January 24, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- antisemitism, Arab antisemitism, Arab History of Zionism, Cairo International Book Fair, Egypt, Mohamed Medhat Mustafa, Muslim antisemitism, PEZ, The Protocols
Monday, January 23, 2023
Arsen Ostrovsky: Does Harvard’s ‘Veritas’ apply to Israel?
As far back as 2009, Roth’s obsession and bias with Israel had become so intolerable, it led to HRW founder Bob Bernstein to publicly excoriate the very organization he founded, writing in the New York Times that, under Roth’s leadership, “Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective.” Instead of heeding Bernstein’s advice, in the years that followed, Roth’s obsession with Israel only intensified, to the point of fixation.When it Comes to Hating Jews, Academic Freedom is in Full Bloom
Writing for The Guardian, Roth claimed that the initial decision to refuse him a fellowship was due to his “criticism of Israel” and “donor reaction,” adding that HRW recognized that “we would never attract donors who wanted to exempt their favorite country from the objective application of international human rights principles. That is the price of respecting principles.”
Israel of course is not above the law or fair criticism, however, the undeniable fact is that Roth has systematically denied Israel equal treatment, taking his criticism to an obsessive and obscene level, refusing to accept the Jewish state has legitimate security concerns and denying it the same rights as afforded to other democracies.
In reversing his decision, Kennedy School Dean Elmendorf said he made an “error” in his initial refusal to appoint Roth, which was not influenced by any donor pressure, but rather had been guided based on his evaluation of Roth’s potential contribution to the school. Elmendorf ought to have stuck to his initial assessment.
Instead, there can be no other way to look at this reversal other than as a cowardly and pitiful caving in to Roth’s pressure campaign. One may be forgiven for asking if Harvard now has any red lines at all in the hallowed pursuit of “open debate”? What next? Maybe a fellowship to Vladimir Putin to teach modern warfare, or Ayatollah Ali Khamenei a fellowship in gender studies?
At a time of antisemitism surging to unprecedented levels on campuses across the United States, instead of taking a principled stand, Harvard has just normalized and rewarded Jew-hatred with a prestigious Fellowship.
If Ken Roth was responsible for such an epic libel and historical distortion, then just maybe he doesn’t belong anywhere near a university, most especially Harvard. After all, colleges are supposedly dedicated to objective truth, intellectual inquiry, and moral constancy. Given the woke war that has been waged on the campus green for some time now, aren’t there already enough Israel haters spreading propaganda and poisoning minds?
What about academic freedom, which ultimately guided the decision to welcome Roth to the Kennedy School? That’s all well and good on a two-way street. But academic freedom when it comes to Israel offers freedom in one direction alone: the freedom to deny its legitimacy. Viewpoint diversity about Israel, or on any number of topics on campus these days, is nonexistent.
No college in America has any plans to adopt the new definition of antisemitism proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and embraced by over 30 countries, which updates antisemitic invective to include: depriving Jews of their right to self-determination, referring to Israel as a racist endeavor or comparing Israelis to Nazis, and blaming Jews for Israel’s policies.
Evidently, the joys of campus life, and the freedoms of the academy, would be shattered if professors and students were obliged to refrain from such antisemitic rhetoric.
Ironically, it has often been stated that Roth, the Israel basher, also has Jewish blood. In fact, his father fled Nazi Germany. It’s not the first time that Israel’s enemies have trotted out their list of Jews who have discovered the career benefits of betrayal, and who have completely abandoned moral clarity and an allegiance to their people. Jewish history is littered with fellow travelers in self-hatred who would do anything to become a fellow at Harvard.
In the case of Roth, however, it is worth remembering that the organization that he once led was begun by Jews (no surprise there), and that its founder, Robert Bernstein, distanced himself from, and openly criticized, the direction Roth had taken HWR in the Middle East.
It’s time for universities to start recruiting, and handing out fellowships, to the Bernsteins of the world, too.
History will remember @KenRoth for two main contributions: (1) The first to use "Apartheid" to demonize a people. (2) The first to use "criticizing Israel" to seek sainthood. @Ostrov_A https://t.co/bs2TUyV1LX
— Judea Pearl (@yudapearl) January 22, 2023
Guardian buries the lede that ((donors)) didn't nix Roth's fellowship
The Guardian’s McGreal then published a follow-up (“Harvard reverses decision on role for Israel critic after outcry”, Jan. 19), which included this:Why is the Reform movement defending an antisemite?
Roth had accused Elmendorf of withdrawing the fellowship under pressure, direct or implied, from donors who are strong supporters of Israel. The dean denied it.
“Donors do not affect our consideration of academic matters,” he said in his statement. “My decision was also not made to limit debate at the Kennedy School about human rights in any country.”
Indeed, The Chronicle of Higher Education previously reported that Ermendorf told colleagues that his original decision was based conversations he had with people who mattered to him did. Who, specifically, asked Ken Roth, was Ermendorf referring to?
Well, Judea Pearl, whose son Daniel, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped and beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Pakistan over 20 years ago, tweeted this on Jan. 19th:OK, no point keeping it secret any longer -- it was I who advised Dean Douglas Elmendorf to block your fellowship at Harvard. Blame me, not the "Israeli lobby" and, you know what, resign gracefully, before Harvard students discover what you really stand for. @GeraldNGOM https://t.co/tyT0oXWsdn
— Judea Pearl (@yudapearl) January 19, 2023
In addition to being an academic who has received awards for his work on artificial intelligence, the widely respected Pearl is president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, which works to continue his son’s life-work of East-West understanding, and is a co-recipient of the 2006 Purpose Prize for launching the Daniel Pearl Dialogue for Muslim-Jewish understanding.
So, contrary to the smears peddled about the row, it wasn’t wealthy Jewish donors who pressured Dean Elmendorf – a fact alluded to but ultimately buried due to Guardian’s insistence on never learning any lessons about the profound dangers of antisemitic dog whistles.
A rather remarkable document was recently issued by a group of left-wing Jewish organizations, in which the task of defending a confirmed antisemite was undertaken.
This open letter, issued by Ameinu, Americans for Peace Now, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Habonim Dror North America, J Street, the New Israel Fund, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, sought to defend Rep. Ilhan Omar and deride House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s stated purpose (now fulfilled) of removing Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“As Jewish American organizations, we oppose Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s pledge to strip Representative Ilhan Omar of her House Foreign Affairs Committee seat based on false accusations that she is antisemitic or anti-Israel,” the organizations stated.
When I read this missive, I was initially put in mind of French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s remark upon reading a statement by Holocaust deniers: “Epithets came to my pen.”
I shall eschew obscenity, but epithets seem in order, because this letter is a quite monstrous document.
The reason is that its assertion that the accusations against Omar are “false” is a lie. With the best will in the world, Omar’s claims that American Jews buy control of Congress via their “benjamins” and that support for Israel constitutes loyalty to a foreign country cannot be viewed as anything other than explicitly antisemitic.
Omar has never repudiated or apologized for these statements. She clearly believes that she is merely speaking truth to power—which in this context can only be viewed as “Jewish” power.
- Monday, January 23, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- anti-Zionist not antisemitic, blame Jews, blame Zionists, ElderToons, humor, ken roth
From the River to the Sea, Palestine is already free
As Herodotus knew, the Philistines occupied a relatively small portion of the Land of Israel consisting of five city states: Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod on the Mediterranean coast, and Gath and Ekron a bit further east. And In fact, the area occupied by the Philistines was collectively termed Philistia. But Herodotus applied the name Palaestina to the entire region he described as being located between Phoenicia in the north and Egypt in the south, and which he referred to as the “land of the circumcised” (which the Philistines notably were not). In short, Herodotus applied the name Palaestina to the entire land of Israel.
One would expect that Herodotus had a compelling reason to call the entire Land of Israel by the term “Palaestina”. And, indeed, there was a compelling reason, and that reason wonderfully and absolutely confirms the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel.
As a historian and geographer, Herodotus was very familiar with the inhabitants of the Land of Israel, and their stories and history. And a key story is that of the Patriarch Jacob wrestling a man/angel all night, before encountering his brother Esau. Jacob emerged from that wrestling match victorious, and the man/angel gave Jacob a new name – Yisrael (Israel) – “because you strove with G-d and man and prevailed”, and he blessed Jacob/Israel (Genesis 32:25 – 30). Yisrael/Israel means the one who wrestled/strove with G-d.
That wrestling match and subsequent new name were so pivotal that they redefined Jewish identity forever. From then on, the Jacob’s descendants would be known as Bnei Yisrael -- the Children of Israel; and the promised land became known as Eretz Yisrael – the Land of Israel.
(Even today, as we merit to see the ongoing ingathering of the Jewish exiles as promised by G-d, the name chosen for the new Jewish state is Medinat Yisrael - the State of Israel.)
The importance and meaning of that biblical event was not lost on Herodotus, and is the key to his coining the name now devolved to “Palestine”:
The Greek word for wrestler is Palaistis, and Herodotus called Eretz Yisrael “Palaistine” – the Land of the Wrestler (Jacob/Yisrael/Israel). Palaistine is simply a Greek translation of the Hebrew name “Eretz Yisrael”, the Land of Israel.
It is time to set the record straight and jettison the false linkage between Palestine and the Philistine invaders. Palestine is an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew name Eretz Yisrael. It actually constitutes an ancient acknowledgement that the Land of Israel belonged to its Jewish inhabitants; that it never contained an ancient so-called “Palestinian” people. The so-called 'Palestinians' of today are merely Arab invaders who came not so long ago.
And, ironically, every time the anti-Israel world uses the term “Palestine” they are unwittingly confirming the connection of the Jews to the Land of the Wrestler, to the Land of Israel.
From the river to the sea Palestine is already free, and with G-d’s help may we soon merit to see the return of the rest of the Land of Israel that lies on the other side of the Jordan river.
Eugene Kontorovich: Israel’s Supreme Court Claims a Veto on Political Appointments
Israel’s Supreme Court last week invalidated the ministerial appointment of Aryeh Deri, leader of one party in the new governing coalition. The ruling didn’t even pretend to be interpreting Israel’s Basic Laws, which lay out the basic structure of government. The Knesset had specifically passed a law authorizing someone in Mr. Deri’s situation (he had pleaded guilty to criminal charges) to hold cabinet office. But the court said it would be “unreasonable” for Mr. Deri to be a minister.Lapid calls for presidential committee to shape ‘balanced’ judicial reforms
In other words, it canceled the prime minister’s appointment of a cabinet member on grounds that it was technically legal, but gross—a kind of impeachment by judiciary.
The new government’s proposed judiciary reform has provoked pushback from the Biden administration and others on the ground that it threatens the rule of law. This case is a timely illustration that the opposite is true. No judiciary in the world has as far-reaching powers over government as Israel’s. The court assumed these powers in recent decades without authorization from lawmakers or a national consensus, and there is no reason they should be unalterable.
Judicial review—the ability of a court to declare that a law violates a country’s constitution—is an American invention. Israel doesn’t have a constitution. The court assumed that power in 1995, when it proclaimed that the Knesset had given it the power to strike down laws. The 1992 law under which the court claimed that authority passed 32-21. A majority of the 120-member Knesset didn’t show up to vote, not having known the court would later claim the law as a quasi-constitution.
This was only one step in the court’s power grab. It gradually eliminated all restrictions on justiciability and standing, allowing it to rule on any issues in public life whenever it chooses, without the constraint of lower-court proceedings or fact-finding. It employed the doctrine of “reasonableness” as a free-standing basis to block government action, including the government’s makeup. And the court has claimed authority to decide whether any new Basic Laws, or amendments to old ones, are valid, ending the charade that it is subordinate to law.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has called on President Isaac Herzog to set up a committee that will recommend a “balanced” plan to reform the judiciary.
“I proposed to President Herzog that he form a presidential committee to offer a reasonable recommendation to improve the judicial system and find the proper balance between the legislative and judicial branches,” said Lapid on Monday. “President Herzog is considering the proposal. I hope and believe the committee will be formed and will prevent the destruction of our democracy and the terrible division among the people of Israel.”
The comments come against the background of a political battle around the government’s judicial reform plan, which aims to curtail what it says is judicial overreach. The plan would give the Knesset the ability to overturn court decisions that cancel laws, allow elected officials greater influence in selecting judges, and reduce the power of legal advisers attached to government ministries.
Lapid earlier this month described the prospective judicial reforms as an “extreme regime change” and vowed to continue fighting in streets across the country in “a war over our home.”
Jerome Marcus: A 'democratic revolution' against a court with unlimited power?If this is such a good idea, why wasn’t it offered by Lapid when he was PM? And if commissions with balanced recommendations are a prerequisite of changes to judicial system, doesn’t show that the Court’s power grab totally ilegit? https://t.co/haRd4ciLXZ
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) January 23, 2023
- Monday, January 23, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- analysis, Daled Amos
By Daled Amos
There are any number of issues that are raised in an effort to demonize Israel these days. Maybe because there is no shortage of ways to attack the Jewish state, another set of claims are not seen as often.
There used to be people claiming to offer Israel some "friendly" advice.
They would helpfully suggest that Israel had to change its policies or risk being isolated in the world. These days, of course, we have the Abraham Accords and the Negev Forum that grew out of that. There are alliances that Israel has formed with some countries in the EU, such as Hungary and the Czech Republic, which have prevented EU condemnations of Israel from being unanimous. There is also the growing relationship between India and Israel.
A second piece of helpful advice would have it that Israel was in a race against time to make a two-state solution a reality in order to prevent the Jewish State from being overrun by the larger Muslim birth rate. I had not seen this mentioned for a while, till I saw it brought up in a RAND Corporation report from 2021 that warned about:
the demographic shift that has been gradually unfolding because the population growth rates of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians have far outpaced Israeli Jews. [p. 2]
The report bases itself on the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, which -- contrary to what the RAND Corporation would have us believe -- does not mean that the conclusion is accepted on its face. Yoram Ettinger has challenged the numbers, and the conclusions being drawn from them, for years.
And before Ettinger, there was Ben Wattenberg.
In 2002, he wrote Parents of Arabia, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Wattenberg wrote:
Truth is, fertility rates in Arab and Muslim countries have been falling rapidly in recent decades. Indeed, it would be remarkable were they not; it’s been happening everywhere else.
...The bottom line is that the demographic situation for the Jews of Israel is not nearly as bleak as it is sometimes portrayed. The Jewish Israeli TFR [total fertility rate -- the number of children per woman] is about 2.7 children per woman. It has come down some but it remains the highest of any modern country, the only one seriously above the replacement rate, and about twice the rate for Jews in the rest of the world.
But this issue of demographics is more than a cudgel in the hands of Israel's friends to encourage a change in policy. It is an issue that concerned Zionists even before 1948.
Dr. Ariel Zellman, a lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University, wrote a blog post describing an interview he had with Ettinger. In it, he described how earlier Zionists addressed the issue of demographics.
He goes back to the time of Theodor Herzl and the First World Zionist Congress, when Simon Dubnow, the Jewish historian argued that Jews could not become a majority in then-Palestine. Instead, he preferred the idea of Jewish self-rule in Europe, autonomism, stressing Yiddish culture and assuming the rejection of assimilation.
In March 1898, he published a public letter which projected that by the year 2000, at best, the Jewish population in the land of Israel could be no more than 500,000, which was more or less the population of Kiev at the time. Condemning Herzl as a hallucinating messianic visionary, he felt it was much better to focus on autonomy in Europe.
Zellman notes that "with 5.5 million Jews in the land by that year [2000], clearly his projection was flawed."
Later, in the years prior to Israeli independence, Professor Roberto Baki, a statistician and demographer at Hebrew University, told Ben Gurion and other Zionist leaders that the 600,000 Jews at the time were not enough to create the critical mass needed for maintaining a state.
Then in 1944, Baki offered a projection that indicated that at best, one could expect 1 million Jews to make aliyah from 1944 to 2001. Jews were doomed to becoming a minority there based on the expected low Jewish birthrate (which was typical in Western Europe at the time) and the much higher Arab birthrate of 6 to 7 births per woman that was expected to continue.
Zellman writes, "In fact, 2.3 million made aliyah in that period, two and a half times what Baki expected."
In the 1970s, the Central Bureau of Statistics claimed there were no prospects for further large waves of immigration. The dual problem was that Jews in the West did not want to make aliyah, while Jews in the communist countries who did want to make aliyah were unable to.
But as it turned out, around 300,000 Jews ended up immigrating from the communist bloc.
In the 1980s, demographers argued that no substantial aliyah from the then-Soviet Union was possible. They insisted that even if they were allowed to leave, Soviet Jews would prefer emigrating to the US, Canada or Western Europe.
Instead, more than one million Jews made aliyah to Israel.
This was due in large part to Yitzchak Shamir. Zellman writes that
In the early years when Mikhail Gorbachev began to open the USSR’s borders to Jewish emigration, some 90% of emigrants went to Europe and the United States. In response (and much to the chagrin of the American Jewish community), Shamir pressured the United States in particular to limit the issuing of refugee certificates to Soviet Jews and lobbied Gorbachev to switch from a policy of allowing almost no flights to Tel Aviv to that of directing all Jewish emigrants to fly through Israel.
Yet, in 1987, Prof. Arnon Sofer, of Israel's National College of Defense, insisted that "by 2000 Israel will no longer be Jewish." Israel Harel notes that Sofer influenced generations of members of the defense establishment to perpetuate his pessimism.
Harel writes about a talk he once gave at that college, where he was part of the minority who believed in the power of aliyah to build up the Jewish majority in Israel:
I stated that had the founders of Zionism been directed by purely rational considerations, as these two [Baki and Dubnow"] were, the state would not have been born.
...Zionism was a movement that changed reality, I reminded them. Instead of fighting and changing demographic reality, I told them, you’re willing to give in to it....Fertility reflects optimism and faith in the future. What demographer had predicted such a turn of events?
In a post last year, Ettinger traced what he sees as Israel’s growing Jewish fertility rate to "optimism, patriotism, attachment to roots, communal solidarity, a frontier mentality..."
One more difference between Israeli Jews and the Jews in the Diaspora.
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! |
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- Monday, January 23, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- Adin Haykin, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, child soldier, glorifying terror, IDF, PFLP, seeking martyrdom, twitter
- Monday, January 23, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- al-Akhbar, antisemitism, Arab antisemitism, Chanukah, Christians, education, Freedom of Religion, indigenous, jew hatred, Lebanon
A picture of a booklet titled “Hanukkah” was circulated on social media, distributed by UNIFIL forces to the students of Our Lady of the Annunciation School in Rmeish, south Lebanon, on the occasion of Christmas. .Indeed, it is stated in the pamphlet that Al-Akhbar reviewed, under the title Facts, that “thousands of years ago the Jewish people lived in a land called Judea (now Israel) and there were rulers who were not kind and respectful to the Jewish people... In about 165 BC, The king of Syria destroyed the temple of the Jewish people in Jerusalem, although he knew that this building was the cradle of the Jewish people, and he was deliberately trying to disturb them and make them feel despair.According to an informed source in the town, “the Irish battalion distributed it,” describing the matter as “very dangerous, because it comes in the context of attempts to normalize relations with the occupying enemy, and it includes a denial of the right of the Palestinian people to their land, and it is a kind of introductory cultural normalization because it was distributed to students.”A source in the school administration, who refused to reveal his name, ... reduced the seriousness of what these books contained, stressing that he burned them or what was left of them, “to avoid any problem.”
The story of Chanukah is a serious danger to Palestinians because it proves that Jews lived there first and that the Temple existed.
Better to burn it than to expose children to a story about fighting for religious freedom!
In case you don't think that Lebanon is institutionally antisemitic, the earliest tweet about this story I could find was from Mays al Jabal News, which was aghast that the book "talks about the Jews, and asks the student at the end to color elements symbolizing the 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! |
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Sunday, January 22, 2023
- Sunday, January 22, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- anti-Zionist not antisemitic, globalize the intifada, incitement, Initfada Revolution, murder, Nerdeen Kiswani, Ron Eshman, SJP, The Forward, Title IV, Within Our Lifetime, Zionists not Jews
The way Jewish institutions reacted to a few dozen pro-Palestinian students protesting at the University of Michigan last week exemplifies an unwelcome trend in pro-Israel advocacy: the rise of Snowflake Zionism.The protesters marched through campus on Jan. 12 behind a woman who shouted into a bullhorn, “There is only one solution!” They chanted back, “Intifada! Revolution.”The protest prompted a storm of outrage from some Jewish organizations, right-leaning Jewish outlets and social media, amplifying concerns that college campuses are not welcoming to supporters of Israel.“We’re outraged by the chants calling for a violent intifada and demanding ‘Zionists have got to go’ by SJP at @UMich,” tweeted Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. “Let’s be clear: this is a direct call to violence and the university must investigate this as a possible violation of Jewish students’ rights under #TitleVI.”Such responses have now become a kind of Palestinian-Jewish Kabuki. Students march. Jewish organizations swoop in, hurling accusations of antisemitism, demanding investigations and threatening to strip away federal funding.There are plenty of real antisemitic threats, as well as vandalism and assaults, committed on campuses and off. . But by intervening in every campus display of anti-Israel activity — and attempting to defund schools over it — in the guise of making campuses “safe” for pro-Israel Jewish students, are we are creating a generation of fragile Zionists unable to stand up for what they believe in the face of fierce criticism?
I think the anti-Zionists are doing our kids a favor. They are provoking those who disagree to marshal their best arguments, to figure out ways to inform and persuade others, and maybe, just maybe, to consider the merits of other points of view.
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! |
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Honest Reporting Canada In National Post: As Israel Turns 75 Years Old, A (Selected) List of 75 Facts & Accomplishments About Israel
Israel turns 75 years old this spring, but despite being three-quarters of a century old, the modern Jewish state is more than merely surviving; it’s thriving.Jerusalem's Jewish majority has been restored after 100 years - opinion
In 1948, when Israel became an independent state, its population was only a few hundred thousand people; today, it’s home to well over nine million. Israel was conceived not only as a place of refuge for Jews seeking safety from persecution, but as the modern-day manifestation of an ancient dream; the Jewish people’s desire to fulfill their self-determination in their historic homeland.
In 2023, Israel — like all countries — is not without challenges, some of them quite serious. But it’s well-equipped to handle them. Despite being largely devoid of abundant natural resources — or perhaps, as a result of that shortage — Israel has become a world leader in environmental protection and the preservation of finite natural resources. The country has become known globally as the Startup Nation, famous for its innovative culture and growing number of startup companies.
For many years, Israel’s growing success nevertheless did not translate into widespread acceptance in the Middle East, but even that may be changing. The Abraham Accords shone a spotlight on a fast-changing reality in the region, namely that Israel is being increasingly seen as a valuable partner, not just a country to grudgingly accept as a fait accompli. Israel now enjoys diplomatic relations with Sudan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Morocco, Kosovo, and others. Even Saudi Arabia, the most influential Sunni Islamic state and the home of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, may be next.
What 2023 brings for Israel is anyone’s guess. But one thing is certain: the country is likely to hit new heights and achieve new dreams.
To help celebrate the Jewish state’s diamond birthday, here’s a list of 75 of some of Israel’s incredible achievements and relevant facts to give appreciation for all that the country is, and for all that it has accomplished.
1. Israel is a bastion of religious freedom where people of all faiths (and no faith) can practice (or not worship) as they see fit, without persecution.
2. Israel is a world leader in protecting natural resources and the environment, recycling as much as 90 percent of its wastewater.
3. Israel is the only place in the Middle East with a growing Christian population, expanding by roughly two percent annually.
4. Israel is the only place in the Middle East where members of the LGBTQ+ community can live without fear of oppression.
5. Israel is the freest country in the Middle East, according to Freedom House.
6. Israel is the only country to be home to more trees in 2000 than in 1900.
7. Israel is a world leader in high-tech and research and development, spending nearly 5 percent of GDP on innovation.
8. The Israeli military has been called “the most moral army in the Middle East.”
9. Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.
10. Israel represents not colonialism, but the return of an indigenous people to their own land.
One hundred years ago this past week, British census takers announced remarkable news: Jerusalem’s Jewish majority had been restored, despite long centuries of anti-Jewish persecution by the city’s foreign occupiers and in defiance of conventional wisdom about the future of Jews in Israel.
How fitting that the centennial of that revolutionary event in the history of Jerusalem coincided with the latest call by a Palestinian Arab advocate, in the pages of the New York Times, to tear Jerusalem away from the Jewish people.
The Times op-ed, which was published on January 17, was authored by Rashid Khalidi, a Columbia University professor and strident opponent of Israel. Khalidi began the article by expressing his objections to the planned construction of a United States embassy in western Jerusalem, claiming that his family owns a piece of the land in question.
But later in his essay, Khalidi made it clear that his rejectionism is not confined to that particular tract of land, he opposes building a US embassy in Jerusalem on this site or any other.
In other words, the question of whether he really owns any of that land is actually irrelevant to Khalidi’s agenda. He is saying that the Jewish people have no right to any part of Jerusalem and that neither the US nor anybody else should recognize such a Jewish right. The embassy construction issue is just a pretext for Khalidi and his camp to carry on their war to take Jerusalem – all of Jerusalem – away from the Jews.
Jerusalem has been the center of Jewish national and spiritual existence since time immemorial. It was the capital of sovereign Jewish kingdoms for many centuries in biblical times and the site of the holiest place in Judaism, the Temple Mount, where the First Temple and Second Temple stood.
Seventy-sixth report of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for PalestineIn paragraph 2 of its resolution 76/77, the General Assembly requested the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine to report to the Assembly as appropriate, but no later than 1 September 2022. The Commission recalls its report of 10 August 2021 (A/76/282) and observes that it has nothing new to report since its submission.
- Sunday, January 22, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- anti-normalization, Arab education, Arab media antisemitism, BDS, Can't have nice things, Dori Media, Fawzi Saeid, Fozi Mozi and Tutti, Good news, Israeli Arabs, jew hatred, Mememe Studios, Nadav Palti, Ultrapal
- Sunday, January 22, 2023
- Elder of Ziyon
- 9/11, blame Israel, book review, cartoons, Charles Enderlin, globalize the intifada, honor/shame, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jenin, lethal journalism, Muhammad al-Durrah, pallywood, Richard Landes
Saturday, January 21, 2023
Jonathan Tobin: Harvard surrenders to the antisemites
The willingness of The Boston Globe, The New York Times and other liberal outlets to skew their coverage on the issue by falsely describing Roth as a “critic” of Israel is equally depressing. Israel’s government, like that of any other country, may be criticized for this or that policy. But those who label it an “apartheid state” and seek to haul it into international kangaroo-court tribunals are not “critics.”The ugly reappearance of Jew hatred - opinion
Since they aim to deny to Jews that which they would not deny to anyone else—the right to self-determination, sovereignty in their ancient homeland and self-defense against terrorists bent on its annihilation—are practicing a form of discrimination that is rightly defined as antisemitism. That major publications believe such anti-Zionist incitement constitutes legitimate criticism is a sign of just how far mainstream journalism has gone in normalizing Jew-hatred. It’s a function of the acceptance of false intersectional myths deeming Israel a “white” colonialist state that persecutes “black” Palestinians.
Just as disturbing is the way that Roth and his supporters were able to make an issue of Harvard donors who had understandable qualms about his appointment. In a commendable, but rare, instance of the Anti-Defamation League calling a leftist antisemite to account, CEO Jonathan Greenblatt correctly accused the skewed coverage and editorials of being rooted in antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish money buying influence and silencing objective scholars. The American Jewish Committee also opposed the appointment. Yet, to its shame, the Boston Jewish Community Relations Council chose to remain silent in the face of the disgrace.
Still, the conclusion to be drawn from this depressing incident is that it’s high time for Jewish groups and individual Jewish donors to stop supporting schools and institutions where antisemites such as Roth are honored and allowed to spread their bile, while cloaked in the dignity and legitimacy that comes with a Harvard or University of Pennsylvania fellowship.
Any money given to these schools, whether out of misplaced alumni loyalty or a foolish belief in their past history of educational excellence, is not just wasted. It’s a contribution to making the world a less safe place for Jews, as well as one in which learning is replaced with woke indoctrination.
The Kenneth Roth controversy ought to cause the Jewish community to rise up in disgust and begin to treat places like Harvard as hopelessly compromised by fashionable ideological hate. Most American Jews—either too besotted by the idea of their children attending these schools, or so beholden to mainstream culture or liberal politics that they think there’s nothing wrong with backing leftist politics and anti-Israel incitement—aren’t likely to do so.
Still, the Roth appointment should shift our discourse about academia. The time for pretending that Ivy League venues are worth our respect and financial backing is long over.
Recently, there has been a spate of literature devoted to examining why Jews today are once again facing both verbal and physical antisemitism. David Baddiel, an author, comedian, presenter and screenwriter, wrote a book, Jews Don’t Count, in 2021. His message is that because Jews are not physically different, they do not count as being separate from the average white person.How the American cultural establishment submits to Islam
Jonathan Freedland, a journalist for the UK’s Guardian newspaper, was approached by London’s Royal Court Theatre to write a play that would give the Jewish perspective on antisemitism. The request followed complaints against the theater for having been the venue for a number of productions considered antisemitic. One production, in November 2021, was Rare Earth Mettle. The theater had to apologize publicly for the play’s antisemitic overtones.
Last September, I saw Freedland’s play, Jews in Their Own Words. It was an attempt to show how antisemitism has pervaded every aspect of life. The actors represented politicians, playwrights and ordinary folk. The London production, while meaningful, had a very short season yet produced antisemitic reactions.
To find out how antisemitism is being dealt with in the UK, the Magazine spoke to Dave Rich, director of policy at the Community Security Trust (CST). The Trust works in cooperation with the government and the police to protect British Jews by providing security services to schools, synagogues and manifold Jewish events.
Rich said there were 2,255 cases of reported antisemitism in 2021 – the highest number ever recorded. While this figure is disturbing in itself, even more worrying is that in 2018, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights carried out a survey asking Jewish individuals how many had actually reported their experience of antisemitism. For the UK, the answer was just 21%.
Social media is a prolific vehicle for spreading antisemitism far and wide. Addressing how to counteract this vicious platform, Rich said that while the online bodies have excellent rules meant to prevent antisemitism, the problem is that they are not being enforced. On a positive note, the UK government is currently working on an Online Safety Bill to compel companies to control what appears on the Internet.
CST, founded in 1994 as one of the earliest associations offering security for the Jewish community, is in regular touch with Jewish communities in other countries. It recently helped thwart a major attack in New York through online intelligence.
On the question of campus antisemitism, Rich said he believes it is projected in the form of anti-Zionism, noting that the number of reported antisemitic incidents increases when there is conflict in Israel. Another factor is that many people have never met Jews; their image and understanding of Jews are based on the negative model projected on social media networks.
Lord John Mann, the British government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, recently proposed that schools include the teaching of contemporary antisemitism as part of the secondary education curriculum. Rich noted that “there can be no doubt that starting thoughts on antisemitism with the younger generation is likely to be far more effective.”
I repeat: The university editions of Yale have decided not to publish the Mohammed cartoons in a book that speaks, strange but true, precisely of the Mohammed cartoons. Not even the illustration of Dante's Inferno by Gustave Doré.
In the case of Yale there is the aggravating circumstance of money. At Yale, Saudi Arabia has donated $10 million to create a Center for Sharia Studies. The Wahhabis, the custodians of Islam in Mecca, have funded chairs of Islam at Harvard, Georgetown, Columbia, Rice University, Arkansas and Berkeley, the major American academic centers. Saudi Arabia alone donated $650 million to American campuses from 2012 to 2018. Then there are funds from Qatar, the Emirates, Kuwait and other Muslim states.
Flemming Rose, the Danish journalist who first published the Mohammed cartoons and who has lived under guard ever since, took years to find an American publisher for his book, "The Tyranny of Silence". He had to settle for the small Cato Institute. He said: "They hesitated because they were afraid of what would happen."
No wonder the American academic world has shown no sympathy for Salman Rushdie, who lost an eye and a hand in a bombing last summer.
And just see what happened to Molly Norris, the Seattle Post cartoonist guilty of having published a cartoon about Mohammed, who became a "ghost". She changed her name, and has never showed herself in publiic again. Nothing more is known about her after the FBI placed her in a witness protection program. One of its employers wrote to the Seattle Weekly: “She compares it to cancer. It could be nothing, it could be urgent, it could go away and never come back, or it could pop up again when one least expects it..." .
After the Rushdie case, we live in a new era, in which every publisher, academic, journalist, writer, editorial director and politician is self-censoring on Muslims. The "rules of Regensburg" and of the Pope who quoted a phrase from a Byzantine emperor about Mohammed and was lynched worldwide.
Clearly, Islam is winning.
Friday, January 20, 2023
Dore Gold: The Israeli-Palestinian fight for Jerusalem's history continues
This past week, Haaretz ran jointly an article with the New York Times calling on Washington to refrain from building a new embassy in Jerusalem “on land stolen by Israel.” The New York Times used a slightly more delicate title referring to the land in question as confiscated Palestinian land.”Ruthie Blum: Tom Friedman’s lies, damned lies and statistics
The article was plastered on the front page of their joint publication. The author of this thesis was Professor Rashid Khalidi, a noted Palestinian academic at Columbia University. It quickly became evident what the author was trying to do.
Khalidi’s central argument in his writings is that Israel is a form of settler colonialism that fought against the authentic national movements in the land. In his article this week, he reminds readers that his family’s roots in Jerusalem go back more than a thousand years. According to the website of the al-Khalidis, their lineage in Jerusalem can be traced back to the 14th and 15th centuries, though some tie the family to Khalid ibn al-Walid, the Muslim commander in Byzantine Syria.
The Khalidis date back roughly to the time of Nachmanides (the Ramban), who re-established the Jewish community in Jerusalem after the Crusaders destroyed it, in 1099. The Jewish people have demonstrated a propensity to return to their historic homeland after disasters, like the Crusader conquests and even the Roman occupation.
A battle is being waged over historical narratives
Rashid Khalidi has no interest in reminding his readers of these Jewish connections to Jerusalem. There is a useful survey of the land from the Jerusalem District Committee, which handles the granting of approvals for projects of this scale. It includes the area’s recent history. Khalidi, who uses this survey, reminds his readers that the land in Jerusalem on which he is focused was known as the Allenby Barracks. An aerial photograph of this area from 1917, before the British developed it, shows that it had no buildings and the land was barren. Indeed, the Ottoman Empire used it as an airstrip for a while before World War I.
What is going on here is not so much a battle over Jerusalem’s history as much as a battle over historical narratives. Its purpose is to move readers to adopt highly politicized positions and influence governments on critical questions, including the future of Jerusalem. It sets the stage for advocating that an American decision to build an embassy in Jerusalem would constitute “a legal and moral offense.” What is he talking about?
THE PRESENT demonstrations illustrate that nothing has changed. Nevertheless, according to Friedman: “The Israel Joe Biden knew is vanishing and a new Israel is emerging. Many ministers in this government are hostile to American values, and nearly all are hostile to the Democratic Party.”Oy Vey! Thomas Friedman is upset with Israel!
To justify the first part of this ridiculous assertion, he tacked on the second part. None of the ministers in question is “hostile to American values.” But many correctly view today’s Democratic Party as hostile to Israel.
“Netanyahu and his minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, had plotted with Republicans to engineer Netanyahu’s 2015 speech in Congress against Biden’s and president Barack Obama’s wishes and policies,” Friedman wrote. “They would like to see a Republican in the White House and prefer the support of evangelical Christians over liberal Jews and that of [Saudi King] Mohammed bin Salman over [New York Rep] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”
By referring to Netanyahu’s effort to persuade American lawmakers not to back the nuclear deal with Iran as an example of his “plotting with Republicans,” Friedman was simply reiterating his longtime loathing for the Right, in Israel and the US.
Why can’t he realize that, just as he identifies with the Israeli Left, Netanyahu supporters feel a greater affinity for American Republicans, regardless of their religious affiliation? The answer is that he’s a Bibi-hating Democrat.
But stating this directly would be unseemly and make for a very short article. His solution was to quote and paraphrase similarly leaning Israelis, as though their stance – and standing – constitutes the kind of objectivity that puts them above the partisan fray.
Talk about laughable, especially when one such source, whose antipathy to Netanyahu grew so great that he did a political about-face, was in charge of organizing last week’s demonstration in Tel Aviv.
Friedman’s obfuscation of the above was blatant in the following passage: “Early this month, a former Netanyahu right-wing defense minister and former chief of staff of the IDF, Moshe Ya’alon, tweeted that Netanyahu’s judicial ‘reforms’ revealed ‘the true intentions of a criminal defendant’ who is ‘ready to burn down the country and its values… in order to escape the dock. … Who would have believed that less than 80 years after the Holocaust that befell our people, a criminal, messianic, fascist and corrupt government would be established in Israel, whose goal is to rescue an accused criminal.”
The Left’s constant invoking of Hitler’s genocide of the Jews to disparage Netanyahu – whose prosecutors are emerging as the corrupt witch hunters they’ve been all along – is not only immoral. It’s particularly appalling in light of the open goal of Israel’s external enemies to finish where he left off. Interestingly, neither Friedman nor his bleeding-heart Israeli counterparts use Nazi imagery when discussing the Palestinian Authority. Heaven forbid.
In his column, Friedman calls on Biden to get tough with Netanyahu. No more fooling around, and if Netanyahu keeps it up, namely, the effort to revise the high court, plus even an inkling to annex Judea and Samaria, the so-called 'West Bank', he should realize that the United States will cut off relations with Israel, and will no longer support or be a friend of the Jewish State.From 2019
Israel’s democracy, says he, is severely at risk. Biden must to act to save Israel…as he is saving America?
That’s Friedman today…and that was Friedman yesterday, last week, last month, last year, 10 years ago.
But this time, calling on Biden to intervene, he really means it, as do his fellow Leftists in America, Israel, everywhere.
You can practically hear their Gevalt.
So I asked one of my relatives in Jerusalem how he feels about the situation.
“What situation?” he asked.
“You know…Bibi…the high court…”
“Oh, well, here we call it just another day in Israel.”
“So what’s all that commotion I hear in the background…a riot no doubt against Bibi and his ministers.”
“Not quite. Yossi won his wings for the Air Force. So we’re having a party. Our family, as you know, does get loud.”
So they do. God bless them.