12/31 Links Pt2: A Jewish prisoner's longing for Zion; 5 reasons why mainstream Jews should drop the Palestinian cause in 2021; How Wikipedia is breeding armies of antisemites

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: A Jewish prisoner's longing for Zion

Pollard paid for that fateful decision with 30 years in prison and another five years of conditional release during which he was barred from moving to Israel.

I asked him back then to describe his life in prison.

"I don't want to go into detail," he responded with a brief, sad sigh. "I will give you an impressionistic description of my life. Life here involves constant noise, endless noise that is impossible to imagine, all the time; constant violence; profanity every conceivable type of profanity. There is no place to be quiet or to find quiet to read. You really have to be disciplined not to be provoked. You need to be disciplined to see when a situation is getting out of hand and to get away as quickly as possible. I have to be ready if my door opens at 2 in the morning."

I asked Pollard what he thought about when he was sitting in his room.

"My dream is to be with my wife, at home in Israel. I am worried about my wife. She is a cancer survivor. But she refused to have chemotherapy because it would have destroyed any chance of having children. Do you have any idea of what it feels like for a husband to have to hear over the phone that his wife has cancer?" he asked in an expression of unending distress and barely disguised desperation.

"I want to come home so that I can be with my wife, my people and my land. That is all I want. I love my nation."

Thirty-five years after his initial arrest, 15 years after I met with him, early on Wednesday morning, Jonathan Pollard finally realized his dream, the dream of a Jewish prisoner longing for Zion.

5 reasons why mainstream Jews should drop the Palestinian cause in 2021

As we close the chapter of an unprecedented year filled with enormous loss and begin a new year with unparalleled opportunity, I believe now is the time to ask bold questions with answers that may be uncomfortable for the mainstream Jewish community in North America. As we made, and now pursue, resolutions for our personal and professional selves, our families and our communities, let us also have the courage to ask the more uncomfortable, more durable – and frankly, more honest questions that we only have the courage to ask in the light of this most challenging year.

How do we engage with Israel? What core policy objectives do we as a community and our organizations seek to achieve? Which organizational policy objectives, written long ago in boardrooms far far away, are still relevant? Which objectives are not relevant? What is achievable? What is not? What is the “needle” – and in what direction do we push it? Which causes embrace all of our identities? And which causes force us as Jews, as Americans, and as Zionists to leave our identities at the door?

I have a resolution.

In 2021, and in the years and decades beyond, the organized Jewish community should abandon its paralyzing, archaic, immoral and dangerous objective of establishing a Palestinian state.

Our world has changed. The Middle East has changed. Israel has changed. The American Jewish community, and its objectives, must too. Suppress your anger, lay down your talking points and hear me out.

1. The Abraham Accords

2. John Kerry’s Middle East is gone – if it ever existed after all

3. No Jewish Organization was actively involved in the Abraham Accords – and likely won’t even be involved in any other breakthrough

4. The Palestinians, and any future potential Palestinian state, would be an organized society and nation whose values and lack of rule of law would be completely antithetical to the Western world

5. The PLO, our alleged partners in peace, incentivize and pay terrorists to kill Jews

David Collier: Exclusive - Project Wiki - how Wikipedia is breeding armies of antisemites

Tell people that Wiki is a problem when it comes to antisemitism or historical revisionism and they will most likely brush you off. You will hear stock responses that range from ‘everyone knows that about Wikipedia‘ or ‘I only use it as a guide‘ to the more expertly constructed excuse that ‘most people understand it isn’t 100% accurate, but it is a good starting point to gather further sources‘. Sometimes they’ll acknowledge Wiki is a minor problem but claim it ‘does its best’ in the circumstances and suggest it has far too many benefits to give up.

I think these attitudes grossly understate the danger Wiki poses and the damage it has already done. Far too many people are still making donations to a platform that has long since turned from ‘doing its best’ into a manipulated monster that breeds ill-will towards Jewish people. To those that say Wiki isn’t a serious problem

BBC watch, Honest Reporting, UK Media Watch, Camera – these are all organisations set up to tackle misinformation – in the understanding that bias or non-factual articles in newspapers influence readers. CIF Watch was originally set up just to monitor the Guardian. How many readers did the Guardian have?

Wiki is the 13th most visited website in the world. If you search for a term online, the most visited website in the world, Google, will *almost always* put the Wiki entry in top spot. Whether we like to admit it or not – Wiki is probably one of the greatest influencers in the world. Everyone knows media outlets such as the Sun and Daily Mail are full of inaccuracy – but would anyone in their right mind suggest that they do not influence people? What is written in Wikipedia matters. You can dismiss it all you like, but I promise you, more people in the west will have their opinion shaped today by the words of Wiki than any other source on the planet.

Read what Wikipedia says about itself:
“Wikipedia is not a reliable source for academic writing or research. Wikipedia is increasingly used by people in the academic community, from freshman students to distinguished professorship, as an easily accessible tertiary source for information about anything and everything, and as a quick “ready reference”, to get a sense of a concept or idea.”

As one of the most popular websites on the planet, Wiki is therefore a builder and protector of paradigms. Even amongst those who won’t use it as a primary source, there is a growing habit of turning to it as a collector of further resource material. This holds true for academia too. Thus – if you are in its pages – you are part of the conversation – if not – you are left outside of the normative paradigm.

The damage it can do
Bad references, or sources on the issue of the Titanic, may be a catalyst for sloppy articles elsewhere, but they probably won’t lead to anyone financing terrorist groups or joining racist movements. But when it comes to issues that matter – Wiki is a clear and present danger. Given what can be found on its pages, Twitter and Facebook should carry a disputed warning on any Wiki article linked to their platforms.

Wikipedia possesses its own Overton window, but this fluctuates according to subject matter. How bad can it be? Here are some examples of the massive brainwashing / disinformation campaign that is taking place:

Col Kemp: We Need a Global Alliance to Defend Democracies

Under a Biden administration, many will be mindful of the Obama-era sell-out of America's Middle East allies while accommodating the hostile Iranian ayatollahs.

Despite the optimistic indulgences by foreign policy experts and politicians over decades, China will not reform to allow normal coexistence within the world order but must instead be contained.

A modern alliance to resist today's "attempted subjugation and outside pressures" should focus not only on China and the immediate challenges of 5G technology and supply chains, but also on the other major strategic threats to democratic states.... The object should not be... to lecture governments such as Hungary, Poland and Romania... While [Biden] may find their internal policies unpalatable, they pose no threat to any other country.

An interests-based, rather than ideological, alliance of strategically like-minded democracies should be built, each with the economic power and will to counter the authoritarian entities that oppose the Free World.... The alliance should work to push back the authoritarians and radicals across the economic, cultural, political, cyber and technological realms and deny them access to critical infrastructure and technology as well as opportunities for cultural subversion. It should also act to deter their further advances.

An important function of the proposed alliance would be to encourage member states, and their allies against authoritarian and extremist entities, to both provide adequate defence resources and where necessary adapt and modernise forces to ensure credible deterrence.

If a country lacks the confidence to stick up for its own values at home, how is it to robustly defend its virtues against those who wish to undermine them? This weakness in Western democracies has already allowed great strides across the world by China, Russia and jihadism and has helped create the situation that a D10 alliance is now urgently needed to repair.

Combating Double Standards Is the Key to Human Rights for All

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls to ensure that all people are guaranteed fundamental freedoms - to life, liberty, safety and more. The denying of these rights to any group, individual or country undermines the entire system. The Holocaust provides just one example of Jews being singled out and systematically targeted, and the world stood by in silence as six million Jews were slaughtered.

On Nov. 30 we marked the Commemoration for Jewish Refugees from Arab Lands and Iran - recognizing 850,000 Jews who were ethnically cleansed last century from the Middle East, wiping out communities 2,500 years old. Rights granted to refugee communities all over the world were not provided to these Jewish refugees.

Some 42% of all countries are religious in some way, yet only Israel - the only Jewish state in the world - is singled out. Israel - the Jew among the nations - is the only state treated with consistent condemnation by the international community and its institutions, even as mass human rights violations are committed in China, Iran, Syria and elsewhere.

2020 achievements in the battle against anti-Semitism

The decision this year by the European Court of Justice that the Flemish and Wallonian governments can only allow ritual slaughter of animals after stunning was a major anti-Semitic act. It also affects part of the Muslim population. When Adolf Hitler came to power, the Nazi government introduced a similar measure in Germany, as it fit their anti-Semitic policies.

Though the European court effectively backed up Hitler’s approach, it is possible that the judges were ignorant of the anti-Semitic character of their ruling.

Anti-Semitism born of ignorance is one of the hatred’s many strains.

The court wrote that its judgment strikes a “fair balance” between animal welfare and religion. This is a lie. Jews who observe the laws of their religion are forbidden to eat animals that have been stunned before slaughter. There is thus no balance at all. The court’s decision should be seen as one more step in the more than 1,000-year anti-Semitic culture that permeates European societies, whether the judges were aware of the fact or not.

Yet 2020 also saw a number of positive developments in the battle against anti-Semitism. The most important of these result from policies initiated by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Its decision to stop American financing of the Palestinian Authority was a major step against anti-Semitism. No more U.S. government money would be made available to an organization that rewards the murderers of Jews.

The cessation of U.S. funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) falls into the same category. This U.N. agency finances hate literature against Israel and makes it available in Palestinian schools, among many other anti-Semitic acts. Any renewal of funding by the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden to UNRWA, which it might falsely call “humanitarian aid,” would boil down to an act of anti-Semitism.

Within the broad framework of Trump administration policies, several other measures favorable to Israel had a positive effect in the battle against anti-Semitism. While visiting Israel in November 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S considers the anti-Israel BDS movement to be anti-Semitic. There is indeed ample documentation of the profound anti-Semitic motivation of the initiators and main promoters of BDS.

Another important issue that came up only marginally (there was no follow-up) occurred in the final days before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3. Sources inside the Trump government made it known that the State Department may declare three major human-rights organizations—Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Oxfam—anti-Semitic. That this is factually correct was not news to anti-Semitism experts, but to hear it expressed in U.S. government circles was a radical step forward.

Can Georgians be foolish enough to vote for hate-filled lyiing phony like Warnock?

I don’t get it. I just can’t figure it out.

Of course Raphael Warnock has no business running for a serious political office. Still, he certainly is allowed to try. The man is a phoney, a liar, a Jew-hater, a White-hater, messed with his wife, a man who would chant “Amen!” to those who would curse America. Still, he is allowed to seek high office, just as prominent haters in other American states have done.

The thing is, the people of other Amrican states see through the masquerades and camouflage. They reject the haters in state-wide contests. Are the people of Georgia multiple times less intelligent than the people in the rest of America? For example, a hater in Louisiana repeatedly has been rejected by that state’s voters. Are peaches and Coca-Cola more devastating to the brain that beignets and jambalaya?

I am a Jew. So I readily regard Warnock as despicable. For me, that part is personal. Anyone who hates Jews — well, howdaya expect me to feel? Indeed, a statement recently was issued by more than 1,500 Orthodox rabbis, under the aegis of the Coalition for Jewish Values, recoiling from Warnock’s years of hatred.

But Warnock does not only hate Jews. He hates Americans a great deal more.

For years Warnock would get up in church, week after week, and attack Jews in Israel, accusing them of horrific things that have no relationship to reality. It was safe for him to do so. He was preaching in a Black church. Jews don’t attend Black churches in any particular numbers, if at all, so there is nowhere safer to beat up on Jews.

Compare us to Nazis — who is going to take umbrage? Tell a Black audience that Jews in Israel are like those who imposed Apartheid against Blacks in South Africa. Who will stand and exclaim: “You are a liar!” In a room where even Waldo will not be found, it is safe to slander Jews and Israel. So, with no Jews in the church to bear witness to truth, this anti-Semite compared the Prime Minister of Israel to . . . former Alabama Governor George Wallace, the ultimate racist encountered by Blacks in southern segregationist states like Georgia and adjacent Alabama.

Warnock used his Black church pulpit for years to attack Jews, to attack Israel. Who can know or gauge how many truly decent, kind-hearted Black Americans in Georgia have been converted for life into Jew-haters by this evil man? Preachers carry enormous influence.

.@AMPalestine Chicago activist and lawyer Tarek Khalil laments Jews being Jewish in the Jewish homeland: “The Judaization and Zionization of Palestine continues.”https://t.co/eW64gjI4T6 pic.twitter.com/Ra6Jql5iCb

— Canary Mission (@canarymission) December 31, 2020

PreOccupiedTerritory: Jews Only Group Guilty Of Cultural Appropriation From Position Of Submission (satire)

Anthropologists examining the controversial phenomenon in which a more powerful society adopts and adapts elements of a subject people’s heritage have observed that the insistence on the direction of the dynamic pertains to every situation except for one involving Jews, who can be accused of the practice even when serving in the role of the less-powerful group, a new study confirms.

Researchers writing in the sociology journal Tosh note the exception to the normal rules of “cultural appropriation” when Jews figure in the picture in some way: when Jews absorb or adopt cultural elements from their host cultures over the course of centuries or millennia, they face the same opprobrium from Social Justice Warriors that any other culture faces only in the position of host or dominant.

Thus, the article explains, Jews who brought to Israel the foods, musical styles, or dress of the Muslim societies that hosted their communities face more fury for appropriating those elements than their Muslim host societies will ever face from activists for the reverse.

“By mechanisms that we can describe,” the article states, “the cumulative documentary evidence regarding cultural appropriation indicates that as a rule, the phenomenon applies only when the party or society perpetrating the appropriation exerts or has exerted imperialistic influence on the culture from which the practices, objects, or styles are appropriated; this contrasts with the reverse phenomenon, similarly criticized, of the dominant power imposing its culture on the subject culture, often to the detriment of the subject culture’s integrity and sustainability.”

Telegraph corrects claim Palestinians in 'occupied' Gaza live under 'Israeli control'

An otherwise unproblematic and, in fact, interesting Telegraph article (“The world’s fastest Covid inoculation drive: Israel vaccinates half a million in nine days”, Dec. 29) concluded with the following sentence:
Israel’s vaccination programme covers all Israeli citizens over 16 but currently excludes the millions of Palestinians living under Israeli control in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

We contacted Telegraph editors to express two main concerns with the sentence:

First, it falsely suggests that it’s Israel’s responsibility to vaccinate Palestinians.

As we made clear in yesterday’s post about this Telegraph piece, under Oslo, the responsibility for healthcare (including vaccinations) falls under the Palestinian Authority. Further, Palestinian leaders have stated publicly that they “do not expect Israel to sell them, or purchase on their behalf, the vaccine from any country”, and that the PA will soon receive millions of vaccines from the US, UK, China and Russia.

The other element of the sentence we argued was substantively misleading is the claim that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank live “under Israeli control”. Whilst the overwhelming majority of Palestinians in the West Bank (in Area A) are governed by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, Gaza, which Israel totally withdrew from in 2005, is of course governed by Hamas.

They upheld most of our complaint, and revised the sentence erroneously suggesting Israeli control over Gaza and West Bank Palestinians.

Here’s the new sentence:
Israel’s vaccination programme covers all Israeli citizens over 16 but currently excludes the millions of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Hamas led Gaza Strip.

BBC News ignores the latest display of Hamas’ budgetary priorities

Nine months ago the BBC began telling its audiences that the ruling Hamas authority’s ability to deal with the Coronavirus pandemic in the Gaza Strip is compromised by a shortage of medical supplies, high population density and poverty. That messaging has been repeated numerous times since then across all BBC platforms, including in an interview with a senior official at the Hamas-run ministry of health aired in September.

Al-Haj: “You know the health services in Gaza, the healthcare system, which depends mainly on the governmental ministry of health facilities because of the health insurance that is almost free due to the very bad social economical situation in Gaza, so people are relying on the government, more than 96% of them. I know that we have a big problem in our resources either for the human resources – not receiving the salaries – or with the resources of medication that are more than 47% of the medications are zero stock in Gaza since a month and also more than 28% of our consumable medical supplies are also zero stock besides the laboratory material which is also 61% of them are zero.”

Neither in that nor any other BBC report throughout the past nine months did audiences hear about the issue of Hamas’ budgetary priorities which place terrorism over healthcare and other services. While report after report told audiences of a shortage of ventilators and medical supplies, the discovery in October of a cross-border attack tunnel costing millions of dollars was ignored by the BBC.

The corporation has likewise turned a blind eye to the highly-publicised military drill held (despite the high number of cases of Covid-19) on December 29th in the Gaza Strip. Organised by the ‘Joint Operations Room’ which comprises Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, Fatah and additional terror factions, the drill included the firing of rockets into the sea, which was closed to fishing.

The @guardian cannot help itself - it runs a story about Israel's jaw-dropping vaccination drive but they are just not allowed to pay Israel compliments -
so in the headline they take a swipe about Palestinians -
this is racist, brainwashing, deceptive, gutter journalism. pic.twitter.com/Uxra7z0aVQ

— David Collier (@mishtal) December 30, 2020

Where the UN ‘peace envoy’ @nmladenov thanks Hamas ally #Qatar, for their peace efforts in the Middle East 🤦🏻‍♂️ https://t.co/5GAHdU6J6m

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) December 31, 2020

Police Search for Suspect After Four Brooklyn Synagogues Vandalized

New York City police released footage on Wednesday of a man suspected of vandalizing four Brooklyn synagogues last weekend.

In a video published by PIX11 News, the man is seen vandalizing the Young Israel of Midwood, one of a string of similar incidents that took place on Saturday night. The other three synagogues targeted were Kahal Darkei Noam, Khal Toras Chaim D’Flatbush and Knesses Bais Avigdor.

WATCH: Man caught on camera vandalizing Brooklyn synagogue with anti-Semitic graffiti

Police say he vandalized multiple synagogues Saturday night, even breaking into one of them

Full story: https://t.co/F55j2fWg8O pic.twitter.com/Rtmv3mCBhJ

— PIX11 News (@PIX11News) December 30, 2020

The New York Police Department Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating, and New York Governor Cuomo has asked the state’s counterpart to assist, according to CBS News.

“Let us remember, hate, in any of its forms, will not be tolerated in New York and we will always stand united against the cowards who seek to sow division and attack people for who they are or what they believe,” the governor said in a statement.

According to police, derogatory language was included in the graffiti, and one of the targeted synagogues, Knesses Bais Avigdor, was also burglarized.

French Court Convicts Man for Threatening Jewish TV Presenter Who Called Out Rapper’s Antisemitic Lyrics

A French court this week convicted a 33-year-old man for an attempted assault last September on a Jewish TV presenter at the Paris studio where she works.

The court in Nanterre, near Paris, gave a two month suspended sentence to the assailant, named in French news outlets as Samir E. He was convicted for leveling insults and death threats at the presenter, Valerie Benaim — including telling her that he had come “to do battle with the Jews.”

The court heard that the assailant had been angered by Benaim’s trenchant criticism of Freeze Corleone — a French rapper whose hit debut album is steeped in “antisemitism, conspiracy theories, and apologies for Hitler, the Third Reich and [Afghan Taliban commander] Mullah Omar,” according to one leading French anti-racist organization.

Appearing on the live talk show “TPMP” on Sept. 17, an angry Benaim denounced Corleone for lyrics such as, “I arrive determined like Adolf in the 1930s,” and, “Every day I f_k Israel like I live in Gaza.”

“I’m going to try to be very calm, because the words of this boy touch my heart, because I am a Jew, I belong to the Jewish religion,” Benaim declared. “He speaks about humanity, but when you attack a black person, a Jew, a Muslim, you attack humanity.”

Shipping firm Zim publishes prospectus for New York IPO

The Israeli shipping company reportedly plans to raise up to $500 million at the end of January, at a company valuation of $1.5 billion, before money.

Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd. has published a prospectus ahead of an initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange. Market sources believe that the Israeli shipping company will try to raise between $300 million and $500 million at a company valuation of $1.5 billion, before money. Zim's CEO is Eli Glickman.

Zim is believed to be working with Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Citi, and Jefferies to lead the IPO, which is planned for the end of January.

Earlier this year, Zim first reported that it was planning an IPO and several months ago it repeated its intention in an announcement about the early repaying of $55 million in debt.

Zim's most recent financial results have been positive with revenue of $1 billion in the third quarter of 2020, up 20% from the corresponding quarter of 2019, and net profit of $142 million, up from just $4 million in the corresponding quarter of 2019.

16 expert predictions for 2021 – the year of the homebody

As we near the end of a totally unpredictable year, it may seem a bit bold to predict what’s in store for 2021.

And yet one megatrend emerging from the Covid-19 crisis will influence everything from ecology to economy, healthcare to lifestyle in 2021: “WFH” – working from home.

For better or worse, WFH is now part of our vocabulary. This figures into many of the predictions you’ll read below from our experts.

HOW WE LIVE AND WORK
Lior Fisher Shiloni, partner in lifestyle and design trend forecasting agency The Visionary

Fisher Shiloni and her partner, Nataly Izchukov, predict the homebody trend will continue boosting self-care products and practices: cosmetics, immune-boosting supplements, at-home workout systems, “stress baking,” organizing and nostalgia.

“We see a renaissance of nostalgia because in times of crisis, society has a tendency to think about what was great about the past,” she explains. “We’re even seeing content on Netflix that is so much more nostalgic and retro in its visual appearance.”

A Look Back at Israel's 2020

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