12/16 Links Pt1: Boris Johnson to pass anti-BDS law; The Myth of the Nakba, and Its Consequences; Defund Lebanon. And Do It Yesterday. ~ EoZ

From Ian:

Boris Johnson to pass anti-BDS law, official says

The new Conservative government in the UK will pass a law making it illegal for public bodies to engage with BDS, UK Special Envoy for post-Holocaust issues Eric Pickles said at the International Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s conference in Jerusalem on Sunday night.

"BDS is antisemitic and should be treated as such," Pickles said, explaining that the new law will not allow public bodies to work with those who boycott, divest from or sanction Israel in any way.

Queen Elizabeth will read the traditional "Queen's Speech" – prepared for her by the prime minister and his cabinet, which outlines the government's agenda for the next year – at the opening of the new parliament on Thursday. A UK news website called "i" reported that Johnson will write the anti-boycott law into the speech.

The Conservative Party’s platform in the UKs general election last week included a commitment to "ban public bodies from imposing their own direct or indirect boycotts, disinvestment or sanctions campaigns against foreign countries. These undermine community cohesion."

The move is meant to bloc local councils controlled by the Labour Party from using taxpayer funds to boycott foreign countries, including Israel.

UK election result ‘divinely inspired,’ says senior UK rabbi

“I believe that it was a divinely inspired result,” said Rabbi Joseph Dweck, senior rabbi of Britain’s Sephardi Jewish community, describing Thursday’s landslide defeat of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in the UK election.

A member of the Conference of European Rabbis, Dweck told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that he was “grateful for the results. I believe that there is a renewed confidence that the Jewish community has both in Britain and the British people. We know now that we have a fast friend of the Jewish community at 10 Downing Street [Prime Minister Boris Johnson], who has, throughout his political career — especially during his time as mayor of London — proven his care, attention and protection of the Jews of Britain.”

Asked how Johnson should continue dealing with antisemitism in the UK, Dweck said he believes that “he should continue as he has: denouncing antisemitism, and to work with his government to eradicate any and all expressions of it in the country.”

Dweck said he is “deeply concerned” about rising antisemitism, but made it clear that he is as “concerned about it here in Europe as I am about it in America. We have seen a great upsurge of antisemitic crimes occurring in the States, and the antisemitic rhetoric that is rampant in many American universities is profoundly worrying. It will not be long at all until those students hold government office.”

Corbyn and the thrill of defeat

The Labour Party got a taste of wipe-out, and it could not have happened to a nicer bunch of antisemites, who are already busy, guess what, blaming the Jews.

From the “Well, that didn’t take long Department,” this Labour woman has already got it figured out. The Jews did it…yes, not the butler…the Jews.

The Jews, she says, won it for Boris and lost it for Corbyn, which is an amazing feat, when you consider the math.

The figure I’m getting is 270,000, so far as the (decreasing) number of Jews throughout the UK…from a total population of 67 million otherwise.

To which you can only scratch your head and say… what? How can so few have made all the difference, unless you are an anti-Semite and do math differently.

For some people, life is so simple. No matter who, what, where, when, it adds up to the Jews – even if there is only one left in town.

I mean, to be an anti-Semite you should need Jews, and in the UK, there are hardly any at all.

Some soccer stadiums draw bigger crowds.

Spectacularly, the British rejected that man Corbyn and his message, plus the leftist agenda altogether, and let’s hope the song of deliverance reaches America.

CAA joins eighty-eight Lords in calling for Jenny Tonge to withdraw her disgraceful claim that the “pro-Israel lobby won our General Election by lying about Jeremy Corbyn”

Eighty-eight members of the House of Lords have published a letter in The Daily Telegraph condemning remarks on Facebook by the disgraced peer, Jenny Tonge, following the general election.

Baroness Tonge posted on Facebook an article detailing the Simon Wiesenthal’s labelling of Jeremy Corbyn as the world’s worst antisemite and commented, alluding also to the Chief Rabbi’s unprecedented intervention in the election: “The Chief RabbI must be dancing in the street. The pro-Israel lobby won our General Election by lying about Jeremy Corbyn.”

In their letter, the peers wrote: “We believe that members of the House of Lords are required to conform to the highest standards of public life. The use of language by Baroness Tonge in a published statement that the general election outcome was a result of “the pro-Israeli lobby … lying about Jeremy Corbyn” falls well short of that high standard.

“Her language is both shameful and in clear contravention of Britain’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism [also known as the International Definition of Antisemitism]. Baroness Tonge has brought Parliament into disrepute and we demand that she withdraws her remarks and issues a full and unqualified apology without delay.”

The letter was endorsed by inter alia Lord Pickles (the UK’s Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust Issues), Lord Mann (the Government’s Independent Advisor on Antisemitism), Baroness Deech, Lord Young, Lord Pannick, Lord Levy and Lord Mendelsohn, with almost ninety peers signing in total.

Livingstone still denying Antisemitism

Ex-Labour MP who got rats on doorstep says now’s time to tackle anti-Semitism

Before last week’s general election, former UK lawmaker Joan Ryan chose not to reveal the massive abuse she suffered for what she believes was her role as the Labour Party’s leading pro-Israel advocate.

But now that the die has been cast — with her former political home and its prime ministerial hopeful, Jeremy Corbyn, having been handed a massive defeat by the Conservatives and its triumphant leader, Boris Johnson — Ryan no longer wants to be silent about the personal price she had to pay for her stance on Israel.

She received several death threats. Dead rats were placed in front of her doorstep twice. And a letter slipped under the door of her House of Commons office, likely by someone who had regular access to the corridors where parliamentarians’ private offices are located, called her a “Jew whore” who should be “shoved back in the oven.”

“These are attempts to frighten you and intimidate you and bully you. It’s toxic. It’s the kind of atmosphere and behavior that’s been brought into the party over the last few years,” she told The Times of Israel in an interview in Jerusalem on Sunday.

There are now more anti-Semites in the Labour Party than we’ve ever known before

Ryan, who is not Jewish, said she does not know who was responsible for those acts, but presumed that they were perpetrated by anti-Semites. It wouldn’t be surprising if it had been fellow Labourites, she added.

I'll be talking about this on today's podcast, but this is fairly representative of the online response to the piece: that something was "done" to Corbyn and is now being "done" to Sanders. Give it a read if you missed it. There will be more to talk about in a couple hours. https://t.co/zxu2nrqQVC
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) December 16, 2019

Government’s independent antisemitism advisor Lord Mann to investigate The Canary website

Lord Mann, the Government’s Independent Advisor on Antisemitism, announced that he intends to launch an investigation into The Canary and other hard Left websites in relation to the rise in antisemitism.

The peer wrote on Twitter on Friday morning: “I can this morning announce that as government advisor on antisemitism that I will be instigating an investigation this January into the role of the Canary and other websites in the growth of antisemitism in the United Kingdom.”

He was responding to a tweet by The Canary’s editor accusing a Jewish Guardian columnist of “manufacturing” the result of the general election. Its editor has been a staunch defender of the Labour leadership and disgraced MP, Chris Williamson.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.

No surprise that he's an antisemite too.

And Bernie endorses him.

Bernie tolerates antisemitism. It's a fact. https://t.co/fU9lcM8fbm
— Crusty Hanukkahstein (@NathanWurtzel) December 16, 2019

The Myth of the Nakba, and Its Consequences

Used by Palestinians to denote the creation of the Jewish state, the term nakba—meaning “catastrophe”—has come to be part of the vocabulary of anti-Israel activists. Shmuel Trigano investigates the historical narrative summed up by this word, which involves a deft inversion of good and evil and has evolved in such a way as to appeal to Western, especially European sympathies:

The defeat of [the Arab] armies and [the Arab states’] political failure in opposing the partition of Mandatory Palestine have been rewritten . . . as a shocking, congenital injustice of which [Palestinians] are the victims. This injustice is affixed to the very existence of Israel, which, in order to exist, purportedly dispossessed an innocent people of their land so that it could take their place. The Palestinian aggressors, [through this interpretation] became the victims. The [failed attempt at the] extermination of others became [reason for] self-pity and compassion.

The actual term, nakba, is an evident translation of shoah, meaning “catastrophe,” and it derives its emotional impact from accusing the victims of becoming the executioners, so that the new Palestinian “victims” have taken the place of the victims of Nazism, the holders of the memory of the Holocaust. This follows exactly the formula coined by Edward Said: “The Palestinians are the victims of the victims.”

By manipulating the West’s sensitivity and feelings of guilt, the Palestinians have not only become known as victims, but they also offer Westerners a delayed reaction to the Nazi extermination of the Jews, thereby freeing themselves from blame. Westerners can now denounce the victims’ descendants by accusing them of the same atrocities as the Nazis and the Europeans of [the colonial] era. In this way they accomplish two goals at once: Nazi Europe effectively becomes colonial Europe, and honoring the memory of the Holocaust becomes, through this manipulation, an occasion to condemn racism—“apartheid”—by the Israelis against the Palestinians and to accuse them of colonialism [and even of] Nazism.

Lost Jewish property in Arab countries estimated at $150B

Lost Jewish property in Arab countries could amount to $150 billion, according to a government assessment obtained exclusively by Israel Hayom.

The property valuation pertains to assets left behind by Jews who were expelled or fled Arab nations and Iran in the late 1940s and 1950s. The review was two years in the making and its authors stressed that it is a conservative assessment that does not account for current inflation rates.

The report sheds light on a particularly tragic chapter in the history of Arab and Iranian Jewry and constitutes the first time that the government has compiled comprehensive data on this issue, whose historical, sociopolitical, and international political ramifications could be highly significant.

The project has been in the works since 2002 but it wasn't until 2017, when Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel assumed the mantle, that serious progress was made in this investigation.

Gamliel teamed with the National Security Council, which cast a wide international net with the aim of estimating the scope of lost Jewish property in Arab nations.

The exact methods used to compile the report remain classified, but a rough breakdown of the figures shows lost Jewish property in Iran is worth some $31.3 billion. Assets in Libya, for example, were pegged at $6.7 billion, followed by Yemen proper ($2.6 billion), its temporary capital of Aden ($700 million), and Syria ($1.4 billion).

Ex-Mossad head instructed deputy: Tell CIA official to 'Kiss my a**'

During the Yom Kippur War then-Mossad chief Zvi Zamir was told that the CIA was threatening to not help Israel. What was his response? He told his own deputy Efraim Halevy to call then-CIA deputy head, Lt.-Gen. Vernon A. Walters, and say "kiss my a**," Ynet in Hebrew reported.

Halevy, also a former Mossad head, told the story at the annual FSU Study Association conference this past weekend in Ashdod.

Walters told Halevy that the US was not sure if Israel really needed its help, and that it wanted a summary of the war from Israel saying that Israel would win – because US policy was to support the winner, according to Ynet. Halevy further stated that the CIA official threatened that if Israel did not give the US what it needed by the end of the day, the CIA would sever all ties with the Mossad and Israel.

Before he knew it, Halevy was presented with a non-secure phone, meaning the conversation could be heard by anyone, and Zamir was on the other end. He reportedly instructed Halevy to call Walters and say 'kiss my a**.'

Austrian Parliament to Declare BDS Movement as Anti-Semitic

The initiative is being spearheaded by Sebastian Kurz, a former (and most likely the next) chancellor of Austria who also leads the center-right Austrian People's Party (Österreichische Volkspartei, ÖVP).

"For Austria, Israel's right to exist is non-negotiable, and any form of anti-Semitism, including Israel-related anti-Semitism, is unacceptable and must be severely condemned. Of course, factual criticism of individual measures by the government of Israel must be allowed." — Austrian Parliamentary Resolution condemning the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as anti-Semitic.

"This [BDS] movement calls for a boycott of... Israeli artists, scientists and athletes. It demonizes and measures Israel by double standards, makes Austrian Jews jointly responsible for Israeli politics, and by calling for the right of return for Palestinian refugees and all their descendants, it questions the right of existence of the Jewish state." — Austrian Parliamentary Resolution condemning the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as anti-Semitic.

The BDS campaign "undermines the possibility for a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by demanding concessions of one party alone and encouraging the Palestinians to reject negotiations in favor of international pressure." — U.S. House of Representatives Resolution 246.

IDF officer: Hezbollah still has tunnels on Lebanese side of the border

Israel is ready to stop a potential Hezbollah invasion, including from tunnels that the IDF has yet to destroy, the head of the IDF's Underground Warfare Department in the North revealed on Monday.

“If there is any [Hezbollah] tunnel near the border, we will know about them,” said Lt. Col. Aviv Amir, an Engineering Corps officer who oversees IDF efforts to to detect and destroy tunnels, whether from Lebanon or the Gaza Strip.

In late 2018, the IDF destroyed six Hezbollah cross-border tunnels and proclaimed the tunnel threat from Hezbollah vanquished.

In his presentation on Monday, Amir said that in 2018 the IDF also meant to demolish a Hezbollah tunnel near the Israeli town of Misgav Am.

Sudan will close office of terrorist groups Hezbollah, Hamas

The Sudanese transitional government is slated to close the offices of foreign terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, according to a report in the Middle East Eye.

The Qatar-regime-financed Middle East Eye reported that “A reliable Sudanese source close to [Prime Minister Abdallah] Hamdok’s office disclosed to Middle East Eye that the government will close the offices of foreign groups designated as terrorists by the US, including Hamas and Hezbollah.”

According to the report, “The Sudanese source who spoke to MEE, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said: ‘The government will close the offices of Hamas and Hezbollah and any other Islamic group designated as terrorist groups that has presence in Sudan, because Sudan has nothing actually to do with these groups and the interests of Sudan are above everything.’”

The Sudanese source added: “Actually they have hidden their presence in the past few years, but we won’t tolerate any individual’s presence in the future.”

Hamas official threatens Israel, urges Palestinian reconciliation at mass rally

A senior Hamas official threatened Israel if it does not remove its blockade over Gaza amid reports of progressing efforts between the terror group and the Jewish state to achieve a long term ceasefire.

“The enemy must understand that we will draw new equations if the siege is not lifted,” said Osama al-Mazini at a rally attended by tens of thousands in Gaza City, marking the 32nd anniversary of Hamas’s founding.

Gaza has been under blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt since the Hamas terror group seized power in 2007. UN officials have called for the blockade to be lifted due to its negative economic and humanitarian implications, but Jerusalem says it is necessary to keep Hamas, which avowedly seeks Israel’s destruction, from obtaining weapons or materials to make them.

With Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh currently visiting regional leaders abroad, al-Mazini addressed the anniversary mass rally and touched on a range of issues, including Palestinian reconciliation efforts, negotiations toward a prisoner exchange with Israel along with broader efforts against the Jewish state.

He claimed Hamas had made dozens of concessions toward Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement in a bid for reconciliation and called to hold Palestinian parliamentary elections.

Josh Hammer: Defund Lebanon. And Do It Yesterday.

Let’s state the obvious: The U.S. taxpayer funds far too much in the way of foreign military and civilian aid. And though foreign aid constitutes a small percentage (sometimes as low of 1%) of the federal budget, it consistently ranks as one of the least popular things that the federal government funds.

This widespread sentiment is justified, on the merits. It is possible that there is no more quintessential “Drain the Swamp” issue than the notion that we should be far more judicious in how we dole out taxpayer-funded foreign aid to venal and restive foreign countries. Indeed, there is actually a compelling argument that we ought to cut off foreign aid for everyone. But we should at least start cutting off aid somewhere, and there is no better place to start than the Hezbollah-overrun Levantite state of Lebanon, which U.S. taxpayers subsidize to the tune of $250 million per year.

This is not exactly a new battle for fiscal and anti-Islamist conservatives — or really, anyone who opposes the U.S. taxpayer funding of an erstwhile sovereign nation that that has been thoroughly taken over by a transnational criminal and jihadist outfit. As Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has painstakingly demonstrated for years now, there is no longer a tenable distinction between “Lebanon” and “Hezbollah.” Militarily and politically, they are one and the same — and they have been for years.

Bear in mind that Hezbollah currently maintains scores of Iranian-funded, precision-guided missiles currently stationed in southern Lebanon and aimed straight at the hearts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Israel’s next war — and it is a matter of when, not if — with Hezbollah is going to be a long, bloody mess. And foreign aid to Israel aside, the U.S. taxpayer presently also funds the horrifically wrong side of that inevitable war.

US Sanctions Men, Companies Accused of Laundering Money for Hezbollah

The United States sanctioned two top Hezbollah money-launderers on Friday—one in Lebanon and the other in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—and their companies.

“Hezbollah continues to use seemingly legitimate businesses as front companies to raise and launder funds in countries like the DRC, where it can use bribery and political connections to secure unfair market access and evade taxes,” said US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “This administration will continue to take action against Hezbollah financiers like Nazem Said Ahmad and Saleh Assi, who have used money-laundering and tax-evasion schemes to fund terrorist plots and finance their own lavish lifestyles as the Lebanese people suffer.”

Ahmad, who has a vast art collection, is reportedly one of Hezbollah’s top donors, generating funds through his longstanding ties to the “blood diamond” trade.

Assi reportedly provided financial support to Hezbollah financier Adham Husayn Tabaja, who has direct ties to senior Hezbollah officials and Hezbollah’s operational component, the Islamic Jihad, which is responsible for executing Hezbollah’s terrorist attacks globally, according to the US Treasury Department.

Tabaja has already been sanctioned by the United States.

The United States also sanctioned Tony Saab on Friday for allegedly providing support to Assi.

Four German parties call for ban of Hezbollah activities

In a new initiative, the Bundestag political factions of four parties on Friday urged Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration to ban Hezbollah’s activities.

The German wire service DPA reported that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Party, the Christian Social Union Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Free Democratic Party support the ban of Hezbollah activities in the federal republic, and that the initiative is slated to be discussed this week in the Bundestag. Merkel is a member of the CDU.

The anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany already advocated a full ban of Hezbollah in June.

In a parliamentary debate that month, an array of parties comprising the Christian Democratic Union, Christian Social Union, the Social Democratic Party, the Left, the Greens and Free Democrats opposed an anti-Hezbollah bill authored by the Alternative for Germany Party.

The Free Democratic Party in November called for Hezbollah’s entire operation to be outlawed.

Hezbollah’s “political wing” operates in Germany by raising funds, recruiting new members and spreading antisemitic and jihadist ideologies. The European Union, including Germany, classified Hezbollah’s so-called military wing a terrorist entity in 2013.

Rage In Lebanon Over Statements By Iranian IRGC Official Morteza Ghorbani Threatening To 'Level' Tel Aviv From Lebanon: Outrageous Comments That May Drag Lebanon Into A Devastating War

On December 12, 2019, Morteza Ghorbani, a senior advisor in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), threatened that Iran could attack Israel from Lebanese soil. Responding to the Israeli foreign minister's remark that an Israeli attack on Iran was "an option," Ghorbani stated: "If the Zionist regime makes [even] the smallest mistake vis-à-vis Iran, we will level Tel Aviv to the ground, from Lebanon, without having to launch a single missile or any [other] device from Iran... God knows that if, one night, Iran's leader [Ali Khamenei] will order a missile attack [on Israel], those Zionists will all surrender... Today, the hearts and spirits of the Yemeni, Syrian, Iraqi, Lebanese and Gazan peoples are with Iran."[1]

Ghorbani's statement evoked outrage among many Lebanese officials. A conspicuous response was that of Defense Minister Elias Bou Saab, considered to be close to Hizbullah. He said that, if Ghorbani had indeed made the statement, it was very saddening and was an infringement of Lebanon's sovereignty. Other officials said that Lebanon was not a no-man's-land to be used by Iran, or a conduit for relaying IRGC threats to other countries. Describing the statement as a violation of Lebanon's honor and dignity, some called to demand an explanation for Ghorbani's statement from the Iranian ambassador and even to expel the ambassador.

Criticism of Ghorbani's remarks was also expressed in Lebanese press articles, which condemned not only Ghorbani but also Lebanese officials, for failing to respond to such Iranian statements and allowing Iran to trample Lebanon's sovereignty.

In response to the uproar, IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif issued a denial, stating that Ghorbani's remarks had been "distorted and misconstrued by the media." Sharif added that "Ghorbani does not currently serve as an IRGC advisor but serves in other capacities in the armed forces."[2]

Demonstrators in Baghdad Burn Effigies of Trump, Muhammad Bin Salman, Netanyahu pic.twitter.com/woTUrpzAk2
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) December 16, 2019

Turkish President Erdogan: West's 'Insidious Policies Of Assimilation' Are Hostile To Muslims

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking at the opening of a Ministerial Conference on Social Development held by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on December 8, 2019, at the Renaissance Polat Istanbul Hotel in Istanbul, described "insidious policies of assimilation" as an example of hostility toward Muslims in the West. Regarding such hostility, including violence against Muslims, he asked "do we have no obligation, no responsibility to hate from our hearts? For as long as we do not do this, we will take many more beatings." Warning of Western threats to Turkish families, he said: "However much we take ownership of children, women, the elderly, and the disabled, against threats whose source is the West, our family structure will be protected to that degree." Surveying the turmoil in various Middle Eastern countries, he concluded: "The imperialist understanding of 'divide, break apart, and swallow the Islamic countries' is continuing on its path." He announced that following Turkey's invasion of northeast Syria, "370,000 people, by their own wish, have returned [to Syria] and settled in the regions of Syria that we have made safe."

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